carmella chihuahua
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Another miserable story similar to the first-sorry!I ave cheered up since 
THE RED RED ROSE
Last night I came home to find a red red rose on my pillow. I knew who had left it there. No one else has the keys. Or the cheek. Like Medusa unleashed I flew to his house and ranted and raged at his stupid idiocy, his lack of sense or sensitivity as I clutched the rose so hard it’s thorns entwined themselves in my flesh, a double cruelty so that when I slapped him, blood mingled with the tears on his cheek and turned them pink.
It was already starting to die. Already I could see a wrinkling on scarlet fronds, indication of inherent death within. Like I need any reminder.
Last time the flowers were white. On the tiny coffin where you lay, rose like, plucked in youthful blossom to wither and decay.
He professes ignorance as to the reason for my anger, talks frenziedly and eagerly of love. Ha! What’s love ever done for me? Talks of renewal, romance, things apparently that I have forgotten. Like he seems to have forgotten you. What need have I to go back to the one who gave me the most precious thing in the world and watched it die? Who shed no tears at the funeral? Maybe he wants to take me to bed and churn out a grey pastiche of you, buy one get one free. Well he can go to hell, deeper, worse. What use to buy me flowers? I am not innocent. Flowers for me when your grave lies bare? Has he already forgotten you?
A droning intonation drifts around my ears, fragments of imploring, speaking of letting go, not blaming myself or feeling guilty, trying again. I knew it! How dare he? Not feeling guilty? Why not? Does he think I killed you? Or was he jealous of my love for you and wanted to see you gone himself? How could I forget those six weeks of wonder that turned to blight and poison my world, how could I dare to try again? No one else would ever be so beautiful. Or so still.
I bought her a red red rose and stole like a thief into our marital home to leave it on her, our bed. A single red rose, crunchy in cellophane, blood red and perfection. Like she used to be before grief and whisky tore her face and heart into tiny poisonous shards, all aimed at me. But I suffered too. And I always will.
But its been a year since I found Amy dead in her cot, big blank blue eyes staring at nothing and skin so flawlessly white and cold that I thought at first that she’d been hidden and replaced with a china doll before reality swooped in on black flapping wings and carried me to somewhere far far away from my loving beautiful wife and darling gurgling baby. I didn’t seek solace in bottles of Jameson’s and anger and blame but chose to merely cut myself off, stranded myself on a tiny island to watch the main throng of humanity with detached curiosity, wandering how they dared to be so rudely alive when Amy wasn’t. Yes, I wallowed through the valley of the shadow of death, yes, I cried, shouted, berated myself and others but what use? Surely it was better to try and salvage something from the tattered ruins of our lives? But negotiations would be thwarted by steely murderous eyes and lies and my attempts at building our relationship anew out of the rubble thrown back with suspicion, derision and bile.
In time honoured clichéd style, I found my bags packed and waiting by the front door when I returned home from another blank black office day. I didn’t deserve that. Other men for the same punishment at least get the pleasure of an illicit fuck, thrill, excitement, decadence, and betrayal.
I get a dead baby staring sightlessly at a Tomy mobile.
We used to be so happy. Didn’t appreciate it at the time, you never do until something so foul and unimaginable stains and seeps over your very existence so you look back over those petty empty miseries and yearn for them, dream wistfully of the selfish joy of moping over bald spot, paunch, mindless job of pushing buttons on machines more intelligent than I am. But now it’s unthinkable to mourn anything other than the loss of my baby girl. Even the loss of my wife. I can’t decide whom I miss more. Isn’t that awful? A dead innocent baby as opposed to a deranged alcoholic whose only aim in life is to hate and blame me. But I loved Sarah before Amy. Sarah and I created her and although to compare and contrast makes me so impossibly guilty I miss Sarah more. She was reality, Amy a possibility, unformed, delicate and dangerous to approach due to her fragility and vulnerability. Didn’t want to taint her lustrous velvet skin with my clumsy shop soiled hands.
Oh I loved her and I always will and I will still eternally think about what and how and who she might have been if Fate hadn’t been so cruel. But to think of her hurts and the pain is pointless for will achieve nothing but becoming as bitter as Sarah.
I would rather concentrate on putting all my despairing energy into attempting to salvage Sarah and I’s relationship. Saving Sarah, saving myself.
The red red rose beckoned and whispered of all that had been lost and all that could be won anew. It was a sign of salvation, a new beginning, mystery, enchantment and lust and to leave it on her pillow was a gesture of such romance and whimsy that she couldn’t fail to be won over. So I stole through the night to deposit it on her pillow in the familiar yet unfamiliar bedroom where a blown up framed photograph of Amy in tacky gilt frame stared down from stark walls caught in unflattering windy scowl for all eternity. If I’d know she was going to be rotting in her coffin within a fortnight then I’d have tickled her to make her as pretty as she resides in my memory. I thought there would be more photos. More memories. There were no traces of me in the bedroom. No traces of anything but bare necessities. Not that I need talk much. My bed-sit is a testimony to sitcom bachelorhood with stiff stray strands of chow mien snaking over even stiffer socks, old newspapers and useless gimmicks to fill an empty life. I can’t bear to tidy, domesticate it because to do that would be to admit defeat, blankly accepting that the bed sit is permanent not some temporary deviation from marital bliss. That this is all I have left.
I know Amy’s not coming back. To admit it fills me with pain but it’s an accustomed accepted pain, a part of me. But there’s no NEED for Sarah not to be with me still. She’s not mouldering in plywood, she’s alive, hurting for the same reason I am and I don’t understand why there needs to be two losses, why we can’t help each other deal with what happened. Why does she blame me so? I keep hoping time will draw a protective healing veil over the past but the scars aren’t healing, they’re festering. I want my life back. I want my wife back.
He has helped me, Amy. I pick at the welts on my hand that look like some perverse stigmata and as the blood wells anew, I feel lighter, free. Because the trickling of the blood is a release and a sign of how to make amends.
I never meant to kill you Amy.
A gauzy haze surrounds that night, a shimmering dreamy memory of tiredness, such tiredness as the high pitched wailing began yet again just when my stinging weary eyes had finally slammed thankfully down. I tried bottles, breast, dummies, comfort, cajolement but nothing would stop your incessant screams and I remember crying with frustration and self-pity, I remember lifting you out of your cot and I remember shaking you. Then I remember the silence.
The inquest said it was Cot Death. Such a simple all encompassing word. I should have felt relief. But I didn’t. I wanted to be punished but couldn’t bear to tell them. Couldn’t bear to see the look on Tom’s face when he heard that his beloved wife was a murderer. So I thought it best to keep my hideous secret, best to blame and berate others in a vain attempt to shift some of my awful burden for if Tom had been there for me, to support me and not at some stupid conference then this never would have happened. It was his fault for not being there and for being there when it was too late and for being so dumbly loving and sympathetic to the woman who murdered his baby, for trying to repair what was irreparably destroyed, for being a constant reminder of what I had done.
But I can salvage a little repentance, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. A death for a death. So I get the Scabatier knife from the kitchen and once again leave the house with quick agitated footsteps and resolve in my heart.
Your pathetic little grave swamped by moonlight and dwarfed by all the others. The same year of birth and death hinting the unspoken, an eternal monument to my evilness.I’m so sorry Amy.Tom.
As the knife slices into my wrists, a spurt of blackish blood splashes onto the white marble and fills into the indentations of your name. I hope someone wipes it off. As the knife cuts higher it wobbles as I desperately try to maintain pressure to the left wrist whilst my right one spurts and trickles, ebbs and flows red red blood. I see the rose floating in my blood, our blood and I can, I can see roots forming and unfurling, pushing into the ground and delicate buds and tendrils sprouting and a rose tree and a rose tree has grown and blossomed in the blood of my sacrifice, a little miracle has occurred, I hear a happy gargle. I have been granted absolution.
When I heard, I can’t really say I was surprised. Nothing really surprises me anymore. I just blankly accept. When Sarah hurtled screaming and sobbing out of my bed-sit, I knew my last attempt at winning her back hadn’t come to fruitation.
I didn’t expect it would kill her though. I know I shouldn’t blame myself. It wasn’t like she was blooming with happiness beforehand but to commit suicide the same night? And on Amy’s grave with the flower still in hand, an obvious indication that I managed to accidentally kill the one I love best of all. A claim not many can make.
The police said she was found smiling. Strange. I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile. Must have been Rigor Mortis.
I thought about planting a Rose tree on her grave, finally she’s next to Amy but I don’t know if she’d like it.
I’m sorry Sarah.
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