My Writing

Just a few examples of my work – for when you’re really bored …

Binoorie

by Angela Slatter (originally appeared at The Daily Cabal)

The minstrel made a harp of my sister’s bones, polished and shaped them as he needed. He used the silken threads of her hair for strings; plangent, guilt-inducing.

It had seemed such a simple thing to push her over the seawall, to watch her founder and splash and drown. To think that was the end of it all. The wedding day came and I could not feel joy. I took no pleasure in my husband’s face, nor in the thought of our life together, of what lay ahead. Each time I looked at him and tried to smile, all I could see was him aging before my eyes, faster and faster, becoming death.

When the minstrel arrived, his strange instrument on his back, I was grateful for the distraction. He plucked at the strings and it seemed they had anchors in my stomach for the noise wrenched at me. He played my shame, for all to witness; my sister’s bones singing our story for wedding feast guests to hear.

It was simple enough to take the harp from the minstrel’s hands – he gave it up easily, as if he knew it was his only to borrow – and I walked from the hall. I took to the roads, earning my keep with the bones of my sister, singing over and over. I wear my guilt like a cloak, begging forgiveness as a beggar does alms.

My days are cold and lonely, cut adrift from all things that might once have afforded me comfort: husband, hearth, home. Worse still are the nights when she sings me to troubled sleep, her strings moving of their own volition, her voice something that drops through the air like bitter rain. And the sound of the sea, the crash and swell of it just as it was the day I threw her in comes back to haunt me like a refrain.

It would be easy, I suppose, to throw her in once again, to tie something heavy to these polished bones and let her sink into the green darkness; to drown her a second time. But I cannot let her go. I did so once and it was, I now know, my greatest loss. So I keep my penance close, to pierce me like a bone through the heart.

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Sunday Drivers

by Angela Slatter (originally appeared at The Daily Cabal)

The dead girl sits in the passenger seat, watching me. Her face is etched with spider-web petichia and her eyes are jelly-red.

My hands are pale and tight at ten and two.

“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I say. I really mean it, not just because I’m in big trouble.

“I cannot believe,’ she spits between blood-stained teeth, “that you slept with my husband.”

“It was an accident.”

“What, you slipped and fell on it?” It’s amazing the volume the dead can reach. I feel a trickle from my ear. My fingers come away red.

“I’m sorry,’ I whimper.

“Sandy, if you say that again, I’m going to kill you.” She deflates. “My own sister.”

“I’m – not going to say it again.” In front of us the headlights gallop, illuminating the bitumen and the piles of banked-up snow. I should have put the chains on.

“How long?”

“Only a few months.”It was more like eighteen, but least said …

“He decided he wanted to be with you so much that he strangled me?”

“Well, maybe he just liked someone who didn’t spend all her time in front of the mirror.”

“You could do with a bit more time in front of the mirror.” Recognising the truth, her retort lacks sting.

“There was no need for him to kill you. I really am sorry about that.”

“I appreciate you avenging my death,” she admitted.

Walter hadn’t realised that family comes first. He called me to help get rid of Rachel’s body. He dropped her into the boot and leaned over to brush hair away from her face. That’s when I hit him with the claw-hammer. Seven times. He slumped in on top of her.

Rachel is still talking. “It’s almost enough for me to forgive you.”

She reaches out. I flinch. Her hand passes through mine like needles of ice. I reef the wheel hard to the left.

The car fishtails, skids, ricochets around the bend and slams into a parked police car with an ear-shattering crash.

I hit my head on the steering wheel, see dark stars. I turn to Rachel, to see if she’s okay.

She smiles, fading away. “Almost.”

There’s the ‘pop’ of the trunk and I see the lid rising in the rear-view mirror. Two pissed-off cops clamber out the undamaged side of their vehicle.

I let the darkness flood over me. I’m not going anywhere.

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The Problem of Thorns

by Angela Slatter (originally appeared at The Daily Cabal)

Around the tower, a wall of thorns, in some places so thick she cannot make out what lies beyond. In a very few spots, she can see grey stone and ravens on an untamed lawn. The road she has taken ends abruptly at the prickly barrier. Left and right, the thorns have melded with the usual flora: she will find no path there. She reaches out to touch one of the branches, but misjudges and snags a finger on a long thorn.

She puts the digit in her mouth, sucks away the welling blood, tastes its metallic tang. The drop of blood remaining on the tip of the thorn gleams then begins to eat away the thorn bush like acid eats at metal. Soon, there is a wound in the wall, big enough for her to walk through. Behind her, the blood continues to erase the thorn bushes as if they never were.

Inside the tower, in a room at the very top of the stairs are the bones, the thread and the canvas of skin, waiting for her touch. On a roughened tabletop lie a quill, a needle and a bottle. At first, she thinks it filled with ink, but closer inspection shows a sluggish dark red: blood uncongealed after passing years. She twists the lid; it comes away with surprising ease. The scent of iron stains the air. She feels ill.

The quill is sharp. She picks it up, feels a tingle in her hand, and dips the nib into the blood-ink. She does not hesitate, sketches swiftly the face of the woman who inhabits her dreams. She knows without knowledge that this is her grandmother. The blood-ink soaks straight into the canvas of skin; it knows where it is to stay.

While she waits for the sketch to dry she picks about the tower, trying to find a trail, a story in the left-overs of a life. There is little enough and she realises the only truth here is that of the bones, for the bones remember everything.

She threads the fine silver needle with a long strand of tightly twined flax and black hair. As she stitches, the thread takes on the required colour: ebony black for hair, white as new snow for skin, red as a ripe apple for lips. She stitches and stitches, and wonders what will happen when she is finished.

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Little Green Apples

by Angela Slatter

(Originally published in Antipodean SF # 110; on the Recommended Reading List in the Fourth Annual Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy)

I’m not meant to be like this, I know it.

When I hug myself all I can feel are ribs, trying to escape the thin shell of my body. My arms are long twigs and my thighs don’t meet. My skin feels so thin it shrieks; I can hear it.

Yet I’m lauded for this. They throw money at me, beautiful clothes, as if this skeletal structure of mine is an achievement.

I’m not an ascetic; I don’t deprive myself to prove a point. I do it so people can drape me with the latest clothes and send me down a catwalk. This is my contribution to society, the sum of my existence. Lately, it’s been worrying me.

I don’t eat. It’s not as if I’m giving it to someone less fortunate — I just don’t eat. No food is apportioned to me anyway because my mother, who is also my manager, watches carefully over my food intake. For a while now, I’ve been existing on champagne and cigarette smoke, with the occasional lettuce leaf treat. How long can I go on like this? The body accommodates a lack of food for a while, but, eventually, it shuts down, a fire deprived of fuel.

So, how long do I have?

There’s a fruit vendor on the street outside the warehouse where the latest fashion show is. I pass by, four or five times a day. Have done for the last two days. Even when I don’t need to be outside, I nip out and stare at the fruit, lined up in rows, glossy and colourful as parrots. A girl stands there, green apron to match the barrow, hair as black as ebony. She’s nice and plump, this girl, not fat by any means, but normal. Her smile is bright and real, no one ever tells her when to smile, glare or pout. She smiles when she wants, at whom she wants.

I walk past again and she grins, offers me an apple. It’s a sharp green. Saliva floods my mouth at the memory of fresh apple. I know I shouldn’t — Mother will be royally pissed — but I want it so badly; I don’t care how sick it will make me, how much it will distress my shrunken stomach.

I reach out my thin hand, stretch my twiggy fingers, wonder briefly if my wrist will snap under the green weightiness, snatch the fruit.

I bite hard into its firm flesh, ache as the thin, sharp syrup flows into my mouth. I swallow and breathe in at the same time. A chunk of apple catches in my throat. I cough, but the moist membranes of my throat close over, holding it in place. Deprived of oxygen, I crumple.

I think of strange women and poisoned apples and stupid, unsuspecting girls. I feel the apple plucked from my limp hand and the fruit girl smiles. Black veils creep across my eyes. All I can taste is bitter-sweet apple.

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