She was silhouetted against the headlights. They were the only source of light on the back road. Ommi would be raging at her, being out so late. The thought floated in some quiet space in her mind. It erased the pricks of rocks and pebbles and stones digging into her palms and carving a home for themselves in her knees.
The night we met I knew I,
Needed you so.
And if I had the chance I’d,
Never let you go.
She watched the gnarled and matted mass of her hair sway in the breeze. All her oils and sprays hadn’t held up to their glossy promises. She laughed, once and gasping and rough. So that’s what made mams ‘write them a letter. Maybe Ommi would write one for her.
Her wrists were red and stinging. Her nails were scuffed and several were broken and ragged. Her favourite ring – a sapphire that Ommi got from her mam, and her mam, and her Ommi – was covered in a dark splotch.
“-Enny?” The tinny voice crackled into the night air through the open door of the idling car. “Benny? –ick up…radio!”
Benny sat back on her heels. The spike of one pressed against the small of her back. She could feel the cooling and sticky stretch of blood speckled on her skin and splashed in her hair.
So won’t you please,
Be my, be my baby?
Be my little baby,
My one and only baby.
A leg hung out of the car on the driver’s side. She hauled in a ragged gasp of air and bared her pearly teeth in an expensive snarl.
“Benny! Hey – give it!”
“Benny? Pick up the radio Benny. Will you – fucking gonnae drive faster!”
Benny dragged and scraped her palms and shins across the dirt and gravel road towards the car. Little pricks of pain littered her way and a red, spotted line charted her progress, like a treasure map. A shoe dangled from the foot when she was finally close enough to grasp the ankle, and she fell on it with all her weight, meagre as it was. She thought mournfully of Ommi’s kunafa. Sweet and creamy and crumbly, and always ready in hefty platefuls when Benny was having a bad day. But she was never allowed more than half, and Abi took his share. Ommi would worry too much, otherwise.
She grabbed the ankle with both hands, balanced herself on her feet. kept herself low, and pulled.
The body was stuck fast.
Benny checked her grip, grit her teeth, propped one foot against the bottom lip of the car. She tugged and pulled and yanked and wiggled, but he was so bloody heavy. The adrenaline that had helped her escape the car had petered away, and now she slipped in the gravel and fell back on her wrist which twinged and throbbed, and she swore into the dirt. Snot and tears tumbled after the words and she used her good hand to wipe it all of her face. But even in the dark and without her pocket mirror, she knew she’d only smeared it in with the blood, sweat and dirt; all together in an awful, sticky mess.
Cradling her hurt wrist to her chest, Benny laughed, hurt and frantic and sad. But she could hear an engine in the distance and reminded herself how they came to be here.
She stood on wobbly legs and lurched back towards the body in the car. She reached inside and grasped its belt buckle and her throat felt a hot and sour rush as she noticed the bulge was still there.
I'll make you happy, baby,
Just wait and see
For every kiss you give me,
I'll give you three.
“Come on, you utter wank stain.”
With one foot again braced against the car, Benny hauled until her arms burned, and the body flopped and tumbled from the car, landing with a meaty thud at her feet.
She laughed, gasping and high, and at the same time the body groaned. A hand crept towards Benny’s foot. Fingers tickled the tips of her toes her laugh turned into a screech, into a scream, into a roar, and she stamped on the hand with the one spike heel she had left. It pierced the skin in a bloody gouge.
Trying to dislodge the hand, Benny kicked and thrashed and fell on the ground and fought until her heel slipped off and she scrambled away.
A car came tearing up the back road and she could smell burning rubber and smoke as it jerked to a violent stop.
Doors were thrown open and stones skittered under shoes before a radio was thrust in her face.
“Do you know what this is?! Forget how to use one?!”
Benny batted at it, and a pair of arms worked their way under her armpits and started to tug her upright.
“Leave her, Oliver,” and it was said with bite. “Clearly it aw’ gone a bit tits up, here.”
The arms around her started to sway a little, and the same voice hummed quietly, like Benny was being rocked and soothed. Ailsa. She allowed it, for now.
Ailsa propped her pointed chin on Benny’s shoulder. Benny felt it jut towards the body. “Here I though he’d be the premature one.”
Benny’s belly squirmed and Ailsa’s arms squeezed in protest but let her peel away all the same.
“He’s not dead, yet,” she said. “Stubborn prick.”
“Braw!” Ailsa patted her shoulder and skipped over to Oliver, who was staring at the body, calculating, assessing. He was unperturbed as Ailsa fished around in his coat pockets for a tiny little key. “Back to Plan A! I’ll get the gear.”
Ailsa trotted towards the rear of the car and when she was gone, Oliver turned his gaze to Benny. She met it, bloody chin and all.
“You still up for this?”
Benny nodded. “’Course. For Frankie, mind.”
Ailsa returned laden with aluminium foldable spades – like they sold in that aisle in Aldi. “Who wants to start the shovelling?”
Benny thrust her good hand out. “Geez it here. I’ve done my bit with that. The rest is you two.”
Ailsa waved her off and Oliver slid a careful arm out of his jacket. From around his shoulder, he pulled an old, dirty rifle, its farm life spattered over its body.
Ailsa held eager hands out for it. “Give it, and see if you can get him up.”
Oliver handed the rifle over, gently and trying the temper Ailsa’s eagerness with a warning look. He approached the body, kicked Benny’s bloodied heel back towards Ailsa and he heard her pluck it from the ground.
Oliver raised his boot and slowly, firmly, pressed on the wounded hand until the body emitted a weak, breathy groan.
“Alright, Mr Capaldi?”
He felt a pathetic tug under his boot as Capaldi tried to dislodge him.
“C’mon, Mr. C. Up you get.”
He did look a frightful thing, Oliver would give Benny that. Capaldi’s face was bruised and bloody. Scratches ran in ragged slices down one side of his face, from the soft indents under his left eye until they cut into his top lip. A slice from his right earlobe was missing and there was a blistering, raw burn, about the size of a cigarette, burned into the podge between his jaw and neck. And now, finally, he opened his eyes a sliver, irises rolling on an unfocused track.
Ailsa had crept up to Oliver’s shoulder. “There he is!”
Blood spluttered out of Capaldi’s mouth as he worked his jaw and garbled.
Ailsa tutted. “Did Benny get him in the neck?”
Oliver frowned. “Doesn’t look like it. Maybe she got him in the belly. Ask her after.” He turned back to Capaldi, whose eyes were wide with a slowly dawning understanding. “No worries, Mr C. We’re friends with Frankie.”
The stones slipped underfoot as Ailsa stepped round Capaldi until she stood opposite to Oliver. Together, they blotted out his night sky as they leaned over and peered down at him. And what a sight they made: Ailsa beaming with cheerful vengeance, and Oliver stern and resolute.
“He was your son.” For all her cheer, for all that everyone took Ailsa’s cladding at face value, she whispered those words like she was loathe to say them. “You shouldn’t have touched him.”
Oliver shook his head and raised one hand to press against the curve of Ailsa’s skull.
“Do you even ken his name?” She asked him. “Because it isn’t cunt. Or poof. Or shite bag. It’s Frankie. And that lassie you tried to grab – her name’s Benny. What did you call her?”
Benny could always derail Ailsa from her course Oliver squeezed and dropped his hand and cut in.
“He’s in the hospital. You're such a useless bastard, you couldnae even kill your own wean right. But don’t worry. We'll make sure you don't make it back to the hospital to see him.” He called over his shoulder. “How's it goin' Benny?"
From the blackened field, Benny cursed and they heard the sound of a shovel being thrown to the ground. “Aye, a whole load better if somebody actually helped me!”
Ailsa looked to Oliver, eyes light and hopeful.
“Go on. I’ve got it.”
She tossed the rifle back to him and tore off into the field, both spades in tow.
Oliver was alone with Capaldi. He’d imagined this, plenty. Time and time again, he’d held fantasies about the myriad of ways they could incapacitate a man grown like Mr Capaldi. Poison, sedatives, an auld fashioned whack to the melon. Sometimes, if it was Mr Salem his brain conjured up, it would get a little bloodier. A little bolder. But one of the first things they’d figured out, one of the first promises they’d made to each other when they embarked on the road that got them here, was restraint. Besides, as beastly as Capaldi was, he wasn’t who Oliver really wanted to hurt.
Oliver prepared the rifle.
“Look. This got slightly out of hand, I'll admit. But everyone's just been so profoundly fuckin' useless, we didn't really have another choice.”
No sounds came from the man on the ground as he watched Oliver take aim.
“Cheerie.”
A shot broke the still night. In the field, Ailsa cackled and howled.