"Standstill"
by Anna Dobles
I’ve always thought there was a certain calmness to an empty house. The way the floorboards creak on their own; readjusting and reveling in the rare moments of relief they are offered between patterns of hurried footsteps, cat scratches and dropped dishes. The curtains no longer held back by their daily ties sway unwittingly in the wind, a peaceful addition to the melody of solitude.
My parents aren’t home. They never really are, always off to some distracting mirage of a vacation, sponsored by my father’s company. I think it’s the Hamptons this time. My sister is the same way, though her escapes are on a more reasonable scale: always drinking, always partying. She left earlier, the sound our front door the only sign of her departure I am offered.
So now, of course, I am left alone to enjoy the small delights found in isolation: resetting the record player over and over again, “Earth Angel” on crackling repetition, painting my nails without being scolded for the fumes. I would give Ricky a ring if it was any earlier, but he’s quite the conversationalist and I am already exhausted. It seems counteractive, as well, to invite interaction when I am so hellbent on enjoying all the relative quiet.
As if through some strange sort of holy retribution, the very moment I decide to let the telephone be is when I hear a knock at the door. At first it is singular, and then it transfers into knocks, an incessant rapping of knuckles against the mahogany. I listen to the pounding for a short while, allow my curiosity and common sense to battle within my conscious, before setting aside my magazine and tugging a sweater on over my slip dress.
The knocking persists throughout my journey to the front door, ceasing only when I open it.
For a mortifyingly lengthy second, I am not able to comprehend the sight in front of me. All I see is blood, liquid crimson covering the figure on my porch.
“Felicity?” My voice is sharp, clipped, cutting through the silence. She’s wearing her favorite dress, baby pink coated in deep red, and her golden locks are matted down to her forehead.
I say her name again. In response, she slumps forwards, my arms wrapping around her on instinct. I allow my fingers to comb through her hair, ignore the grime that greets my skin.
“It’s not mine. All this - all this blood, I mean.” She speaks into my chest. I have encountered few declarations in my seventeen years that have stirred such acute confusion within me. Dread and relief flood my senses, so instantaneously I could have drowned. If I had been offered the time for a moral quandary, perhaps I would’ve taken it: decided whose blood I preferred.
“It’s John’s.” Felicity answers the glaringly obvious question I could not bring myself to ask.
“John…” I repeat thoughtlessly. She nods. Her beau is an awful man, loud and harsh, difficult and demanding. I always had my doubts about him, always wished she’d leave him. (Always begged, too, whenever she and I found ourselves tangled up in satin sheets: please, forget him, think of me.)
“What, uh, happened?” My words are a pathetic display, stuttering and shaking around the syllables.
“I shot him.” The phrase is muffled by my sweater. I take a step back, place my hands on her shoulders, try to look her in the eye.
“Huh?”
Felicity swallows hard. “I shot him.”
“How many -”
“Three times. He’s dead.”
There is a piece of me, buried deep within my soul, within my mind, that is glad to hear it. The rest of me is horrified, both at the deed and my capacity for joy at a time like this.
“He - I told him, I told him if he hit me again, if he hit me again, I’d kill him. It was -” She starts shuddering something awful, teeth clattering and clanking as she marches through her speech. “I don’t know if he heard me. He was yelling real loud, standing over me and pulling my hair. I said, Johnny, I said, Johnny, if you hit me again, I’ll shoot you. He didn’t say nothing - just started to attack me again, punching my face and all.” She pauses, takes a deep, shivering breath. “So, I shoved him off. Ran to the study and grabbed my father’s pistol. When he, when he caught up with me -”
“You shot him.”
“I shot him.” She taps her own forehead, just between her brows. I nod.
“What did you do with the body?” I can’t quite tell if I’m saying the right thing, if I’m thinking straight. Everything smells like blood and nail lacquer and my heart is pumping at racehorse speed, battering my ribcage.
“Dragged it to the lake. I cleaned up all the, all the blood and everything, just - they won’t know it was me, I don’t think - just…” She trails off into incoherent rambles and I debate the validity of her statement. I think of my father, how he doesn’t believe that girls are capable of anything crass, much less violent, and I know she’s right.
“Come here.” I pull her towards me, through the threshold, until we’re standing together in the front hall, droplets of blood hitting the hardwood below us.
“I feel - I need to sit down.” Felicity manages. I guide her to the plush bench next to the coat rack, gently push until she’s sitting.
“Wait here. Don’t answer the door, or go anywhere. Okay?” (There is, within my tone, a genuine tenderness, the sort that invariably appears when I speak to Felicity.)
The bathroom is dark. I do not bother with the lights, cannot fathom viewing my own reflection. I grab a rag, run it under warm water.
By the time I reappear, Felicity has leaned back and closed her eyes. Her body is still trembling, skin pale and sweating.
“Felicity?”
She opens her eyes.
“I’m gonna clean you up now, okay?”
She nods.
The blood on her hands is thick, coagulated and crusted around her fingers. I try to scrub lightly, as if I’m worried she’ll notice it is there.
Once I clean her arms, I intertwine my fingers with hers.
Felicity’s neck and face are better, covered only by the remnants, stains. Her personal injuries emerge beneath each swipe of the cloth. Bruises litter her jaw, her nose has shifted out of place.
After minor negotiations over preferred nightgowns, I assist in unclasping her soiled dress and slip one of my sister’s nightgowns over Felicity’s head. She swims in it; too skinny to fill the offered space.
“I would’ve done the same thing., I supply, after an interlude of silence.
Felicity looks at me. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“No, I suppose not.”
If we were experiencing a night of status quo, we would sleep in each other’s arms, kiss until the morning. It seems wildly inappropriate now, and we lay with our backs to each other, an abundance of space between us. My record has long since stopped circulating, and the quiet I once enjoyed seems to engulf me now. I begin to feel the sharp blade of understanding stab through my shock: she killed him. She killed him.
My approaching unconsciousness dulls the knife, however, eyelids becoming heavy in retaliation to the surrounding shadows. I am on the verge of rest, of - god willing - waking up to a life no longer knocked off its axis, when I hear an all too familiar sound.
Somebody is knocking on the door.
Felicity tenses, turns wide-eyed, to me. I nod in response to her glance, slide out from under the covers. If it is the police, I will admit nothing; I decide on my descent down the stairs. Nothing.
After a brief pause to recollect, recompose, fix my hair, I open the door.
I open the door, and standing there, dripping wet, is John. His skin is yellowing, blotched with blossoms of purple, and just between his eyebrows I can see three jagged holes; detached chunks of flesh deep within his brain. Three rough caverns, right where the bullets entered his skull.
by Anna Dobles
I’ve always thought there was a certain calmness to an empty house. The way the floorboards creak on their own; readjusting and reveling in the rare moments of relief they are offered between patterns of hurried footsteps, cat scratches and dropped dishes. The curtains no longer held back by their daily ties sway unwittingly in the wind, a peaceful addition to the melody of solitude.
My parents aren’t home. They never really are, always off to some distracting mirage of a vacation, sponsored by my father’s company. I think it’s the Hamptons this time. My sister is the same way, though her escapes are on a more reasonable scale: always drinking, always partying. She left earlier, the sound our front door the only sign of her departure I am offered.
So now, of course, I am left alone to enjoy the small delights found in isolation: resetting the record player over and over again, “Earth Angel” on crackling repetition, painting my nails without being scolded for the fumes. I would give Ricky a ring if it was any earlier, but he’s quite the conversationalist and I am already exhausted. It seems counteractive, as well, to invite interaction when I am so hellbent on enjoying all the relative quiet.
As if through some strange sort of holy retribution, the very moment I decide to let the telephone be is when I hear a knock at the door. At first it is singular, and then it transfers into knocks, an incessant rapping of knuckles against the mahogany. I listen to the pounding for a short while, allow my curiosity and common sense to battle within my conscious, before setting aside my magazine and tugging a sweater on over my slip dress.
The knocking persists throughout my journey to the front door, ceasing only when I open it.
For a mortifyingly lengthy second, I am not able to comprehend the sight in front of me. All I see is blood, liquid crimson covering the figure on my porch.
“Felicity?” My voice is sharp, clipped, cutting through the silence. She’s wearing her favorite dress, baby pink coated in deep red, and her golden locks are matted down to her forehead.
I say her name again. In response, she slumps forwards, my arms wrapping around her on instinct. I allow my fingers to comb through her hair, ignore the grime that greets my skin.
“It’s not mine. All this - all this blood, I mean.” She speaks into my chest. I have encountered few declarations in my seventeen years that have stirred such acute confusion within me. Dread and relief flood my senses, so instantaneously I could have drowned. If I had been offered the time for a moral quandary, perhaps I would’ve taken it: decided whose blood I preferred.
“It’s John’s.” Felicity answers the glaringly obvious question I could not bring myself to ask.
“John…” I repeat thoughtlessly. She nods. Her beau is an awful man, loud and harsh, difficult and demanding. I always had my doubts about him, always wished she’d leave him. (Always begged, too, whenever she and I found ourselves tangled up in satin sheets: please, forget him, think of me.)
“What, uh, happened?” My words are a pathetic display, stuttering and shaking around the syllables.
“I shot him.” The phrase is muffled by my sweater. I take a step back, place my hands on her shoulders, try to look her in the eye.
“Huh?”
Felicity swallows hard. “I shot him.”
“How many -”
“Three times. He’s dead.”
There is a piece of me, buried deep within my soul, within my mind, that is glad to hear it. The rest of me is horrified, both at the deed and my capacity for joy at a time like this.
“He - I told him, I told him if he hit me again, if he hit me again, I’d kill him. It was -” She starts shuddering something awful, teeth clattering and clanking as she marches through her speech. “I don’t know if he heard me. He was yelling real loud, standing over me and pulling my hair. I said, Johnny, I said, Johnny, if you hit me again, I’ll shoot you. He didn’t say nothing - just started to attack me again, punching my face and all.” She pauses, takes a deep, shivering breath. “So, I shoved him off. Ran to the study and grabbed my father’s pistol. When he, when he caught up with me -”
“You shot him.”
“I shot him.” She taps her own forehead, just between her brows. I nod.
“What did you do with the body?” I can’t quite tell if I’m saying the right thing, if I’m thinking straight. Everything smells like blood and nail lacquer and my heart is pumping at racehorse speed, battering my ribcage.
“Dragged it to the lake. I cleaned up all the, all the blood and everything, just - they won’t know it was me, I don’t think - just…” She trails off into incoherent rambles and I debate the validity of her statement. I think of my father, how he doesn’t believe that girls are capable of anything crass, much less violent, and I know she’s right.
“Come here.” I pull her towards me, through the threshold, until we’re standing together in the front hall, droplets of blood hitting the hardwood below us.
“I feel - I need to sit down.” Felicity manages. I guide her to the plush bench next to the coat rack, gently push until she’s sitting.
“Wait here. Don’t answer the door, or go anywhere. Okay?” (There is, within my tone, a genuine tenderness, the sort that invariably appears when I speak to Felicity.)
The bathroom is dark. I do not bother with the lights, cannot fathom viewing my own reflection. I grab a rag, run it under warm water.
By the time I reappear, Felicity has leaned back and closed her eyes. Her body is still trembling, skin pale and sweating.
“Felicity?”
She opens her eyes.
“I’m gonna clean you up now, okay?”
She nods.
The blood on her hands is thick, coagulated and crusted around her fingers. I try to scrub lightly, as if I’m worried she’ll notice it is there.
Once I clean her arms, I intertwine my fingers with hers.
Felicity’s neck and face are better, covered only by the remnants, stains. Her personal injuries emerge beneath each swipe of the cloth. Bruises litter her jaw, her nose has shifted out of place.
After minor negotiations over preferred nightgowns, I assist in unclasping her soiled dress and slip one of my sister’s nightgowns over Felicity’s head. She swims in it; too skinny to fill the offered space.
“I would’ve done the same thing., I supply, after an interlude of silence.
Felicity looks at me. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“No, I suppose not.”
If we were experiencing a night of status quo, we would sleep in each other’s arms, kiss until the morning. It seems wildly inappropriate now, and we lay with our backs to each other, an abundance of space between us. My record has long since stopped circulating, and the quiet I once enjoyed seems to engulf me now. I begin to feel the sharp blade of understanding stab through my shock: she killed him. She killed him.
My approaching unconsciousness dulls the knife, however, eyelids becoming heavy in retaliation to the surrounding shadows. I am on the verge of rest, of - god willing - waking up to a life no longer knocked off its axis, when I hear an all too familiar sound.
Somebody is knocking on the door.
Felicity tenses, turns wide-eyed, to me. I nod in response to her glance, slide out from under the covers. If it is the police, I will admit nothing; I decide on my descent down the stairs. Nothing.
After a brief pause to recollect, recompose, fix my hair, I open the door.
I open the door, and standing there, dripping wet, is John. His skin is yellowing, blotched with blossoms of purple, and just between his eyebrows I can see three jagged holes; detached chunks of flesh deep within his brain. Three rough caverns, right where the bullets entered his skull.