Take Away the Saints

We Always Come Back to Kill Her : Part 2 || Max Shephard

The morning after he worked on the Madame's fence, Ben is outside her gate again. There's no bell—no way to reach her at all, other than shouting. But he never has to shout.

"Why are you bothering me?" The Madame stands on her upper balcony wearing a silk nightgown the color of the sky. A gust of dry wind lifts it away from her body. She wants me to see, he thinks.

"These boards," he shouts back, pointing to the leftover lumber on the inside of the fence. His house needs some repairs and he hopes she'll let him use them.

"Wait right there," she commands, then disappears into the house.

Ben waits, and as he waits, he remembers.

***

The day Daphne disappeared, Ben was outside the Madame's fence, vision white with anger and hands clenched around the iron bars of the gate. He'd gone to Daphne's house and found it deserted. There was a note on her cot, scratched in charcoal, which read:

I'm sorry, I had to.

I know how you felt.

D

Ben banged on the gate until his hands were bruised and bleeding. Finally, the Madame appeared at her front door. She made her way down the steps—slowly, like molasses dripping from a spoon—savoring every single second Ben had to wait.

"What did you do to her!" he screamed when she reached the bottom. "She was my only friend!"

The Madame stood with her hands behind her back, a poisoned grin snaking across her face. "You did it to her, Ben."

"Me!" he repeated, spittle flying from his mouth. "What did I do?"

"You loved her, Benjamin. And that was quite enough."

"You...evil...bitch!"

"Oh, come now," she cooed. "Let's be civil. You should know she left on her own volition. Unharmed."

"Now you're a lying bitch! She wouldn't just leave me!"

"Not so. I gave her a choice. She could leave, or I could kill you. She was gone within the hour."

Blinded by anger—the kind that twists your gut like a sudden sickness—Ben pressed his cheek against the bars and reached through, his fingers stopping only inches from the Madame's face.

Before he could blink, she'd grabbed his arm and spun around, pressing her back against the gate for leverage. "Let's teach you some manners, shall we?"

Ben felt the knife before he saw it. It pierced Ben's skin just below the elbow and filleted his forearm all the way to his wrist.

She let go as he yanked it back, gasping in pain.

"Now you have something to remember her by," the Madame spat, the knife dripping red. "Now run along and bandage it before you bleed out."

***

"Take what you want," the Madame says, still in her gown. "I have no need for them."

Ben walks inside the gate and begins gathering the lumber in his arms. The Madame passes him as she goes out to inspect the repairs. As Ben exits the gate, his arms full of lumber, he thinks he sees a flicker of movement behind the Madame.

When the shot rings out, Ben thinks for a moment the universe itself might have ripped—that things are finally over, thank god. Then he sees the look of terror on the Madame's face and the hole that has opened right above her breasts. He realizes his hands are covering his ears. Ben waits for her to clutch at the hole, to try and stem the red tide spilling out of her, but she can't. She's already dead. She falls onto her face, her blood pooling only momentarily before soaking into the dry earth.