When the Devil by Emma E. Murray

Author:Emma E. Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781959565314
Publisher: Shortwave Media

five

I swore to myself I wouldn’t see her anymore. She was more than a sinner; she was a murderer. That word bounced in my stomach, a nauseous clump, every time the memory of those lifeless eyes full of sky wormed its way into my mind. And yet, when I thought of June, it wasn’t Buck’s corpse that came to me but her smirking rosebud pout and tender hands, surprisingly soft despite the hard work she put them through, her dirty fingernails bitten down to the quick. I could nearly smell her intoxicating mix of fresh air, cut grass, and warm cinnamon musk just by pretending she was there with me, breathing deeply into the pillow where she’d rested her head next to mine. Something more than lust quivered and pulsed through my veins, nipping at me like crawling fire ants and keeping me up all night, torn between what I’d seen and what I wanted.

The longer I contemplated it, the more I convinced myself that June had been left with no other options. The world would have had her run away, maybe scratch and kick, but ultimately cower and give in, even die at his hand rather than fight back. And hadn’t that been what she’d done in a way? Preemptively taking back the power he’d sought to assert? I knew I was stretching my morality cobweb thin, but I couldn’t help but have a little admiration. I’d never seen a woman be so clever and cruel. Thinking of her eyes shining as she looked at me, elven in her coyness, melted my heart all over again. I couldn’t stay away. The power that oozed from her every pore was irresistible. And then there I was at her window, gently tapping in the earliest hours of the day, like a moth drawn to her light. She let me in without a word or even a smile. We made love then I crawled back out into the golden morning, slightly ashamed but fully satisfied.

Three days of sheer bliss followed. I forced myself to flush Buck from my memory. It helped that the cops didn’t even go looking for him ’til he’d been missing two days and his momma got worried, and then I heard through the smalltown grapevine that they didn’t find his death at all suspicious when they found him. Turns out paraquat and cyanide suicides aren’t all that rare out in the country, even if it’s a rough way to go. Cheap and easy, a lot more people swallow deadly cocktails than you’d ever guess. I couldn’t believe they just accepted it and moved on, and it was even crazier how easy it was to keep on living as if nothing had happened at all. The memory faded rapidly over those first few days, June’s smile so bright it overexposed all the worst parts of each day into white emptiness, leaving me with only thoughts of her spitting beer across the table as she laughed, watching her through the window as she worked in the field, and the dark velvet of her tongue slipping between my lips.

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