Theater Macabre Read Free

fa—"
    Sobs wrack him; he struggles to compose himself.
    Alarmed, she glances at him, then away as his eyes turn in her direction.
    "When they bury you," he says quietly. "They'll bury you as you were in life, not as he left you in death. It's something, I guess."
    "Tell me about the poem. Tell me what it means."
    Another car swishes by, but it is traveling in the opposite direction, back where there is nothing but memory. Carrie sees the pale smudge of a woman's face studying them before carrying on.
    "He wanted your beauty. Your identity. He wanted to take it from you. To own it." He dries his eyes on his sleeve, talks in a strained voice. "Why? For God's sake, why...?"
    Ahead, hazy rectangular lights shimmer in the murk.
    Almost home.
    "I'll drive this road every night until I can't do it anymore."
    She smiles. "I'd like that."
    "I see you, you know," he says wistfully. "Just as you were on that last night, and I will always see you that way. You were the bravest, most stubborn girl I'd ever met. Maybe I should have tried harder to convince you not to walk alone."
    She clucks her tongue. "But I'm not alone. I have you."
    He stops the car and kills the radio. The night becomes a held breath, caught in the throat of fog.
    With a shaky sigh, he leans forward, places both hands on the top of the steering wheel, then presses his chin against them.
    The girl stops too. The amber lights ahead beckon.
    She turns and steps close to the car, puts her pale fingers on the door and faces The Poet.
    "Will you tell me what those words mean? What your poem means? Did you write it for me?"
    "You're safe now," he replies. "No one will hurt you again." She stands there, smiling, watching the man who will never be frightened by the running darkness that fills her red hood, and she leans forward and kisses him softly on his cheek. He doesn't move, but his breath slows and he turns, looks directly at her.
    "I can't see you anymore" he whispers, the tears in his eyes trapping green light.
    "It's okay. I'm almost home," she tells him, and thinks of her mother, whom she suspects will be drunk, and high, and not at all happy to see her.
    "I think I might love you," she says as she gives the man a shy finger wave and moves away from his car, leaving him awash in the verdant glow until the fog erases him and everything else. Then she listens carefully to the sound of her footsteps, to how the night receives them, and hears nothing at all.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The Acquaintance
     
     
     
    I got into town just after nine, the lack of adequate street-lighting conspiring with the darkness to make it seem later. On the weekend, Dungarvan would be full of life and the cursing and shouting of drunks, the jubilant carelessness of the young, armed with fake ID’s and fresh livers, all making their way across the Devonshire bridge toward the night clubs. But this was midweek, and I suspected the rain dripping from the heavy boughs overhanging the bus stop would be the only sound I would hear once the wheezing vehicle pulled away after coughing me out. I was right.
    Head thick from a semi-doze on the epileptic bus, I reviewed the options available to me.
    No, not options.
    Obligations.
    Family and friends awaited me on the other side of that bridge. Some of them would be glad to see me, others wouldn’t, but all of them would say the same thing, “Ah, yer back”—a common Irish expression generally reserved for immigrants which somehow manages to make you feel welcome and ashamed at the same time, as if your return is the fulfillment of some smug prophecy that was made as soon as you went abroad.
    So, fuck it, I decided. They could wait.
    I headed for the nearest pub. Figured if I were going home, it would be best to prepare myself. Dulling the senses would make it just that little bit harder for them to get to me. Might as well make them work for it. Hard drinkers don’t make for easy targets. Not in my family, at least. We have a short temper. Not