Never Again... Chapter 01

Elsa heard the top stair creak; her world seemed to pause; she waited for the next foot fall on the next step of the stairs, the next sound of his shifting weight moving down toward her.

Elsa waited, and waited.

Opening her eyes, she raised her head from the cushion of her folded arms. The kitchen was silent. The rest of the house was silent. There was no sound on the stairs.

She looked down at the open cigar box.

Inside it were a neatly folded piece of blue velvet, a lightly soiled rag and a small oil can. It was an old box and the oil can looked like an Edwardian antique; it was mostly a silver steel colour, except for a small brass coloured bump on the side had been burnished by the regular touch of a thumb over many years.

Whatever the box had held was no longer within.

Her confusion cleared as the memories resurfaced; she closed her eyes again and laid her head back upon her folded arms. The rest of the day could wait; for now she just wished to stay were she was, eyes closed, tying to keep her mind blank.

Within minutes Elsa slept again... her sleep was deep and dreamless...

***

The shadows across the kitchen lengthened. The light streaming through the back door and windows faded through the rich yellow of the late afternoon to the pale shades of evening.

The telephone began to ring, the harsh electronic braying rousing her from her sleep.

Again, Elsa opened her eyes and slowly raised her head. As she sat up straight her back screamed in protest at having being stressed in a sleeping position that had been consigned to the past along with little bottles of milk and teacher’s nap time stories.

The phone was still ringing...

Elsa stood and made her way into the front room. She snagged the handset from its cradle and just listened. At the other end of the line the voice was frantic,

“Elsa! Elsa! Is that you?

Can you hear me?

Elsa, if that’s you please say something!”

Elsa took the phone from her ear, looked down at it resting in her palm; she could still hear the other voice, clearly shouting now... she pressed the END button and dropped the hand set back into its cradle.

After a moments consideration she grasped the cable running from the cradle to the phone socket in the wall and pulled hard; it gave way on this first go.

Outside it was getting dark but there was still enough light for Elsa to see the room. She looked around, nothing particular caught her attention. She stood there for a little while longer, as though pondering some significant decision, then sat, turned and lay on the sofa.

Within minutes Elsa slept again... her sleep was deep and dreamless...

***

She opened her eyes again, staring up at the ceiling... it was fully dark; the only light was the orange sodium glow from the street beyond the window.

For a moment Elsa thought she could hear his breathing, heavy and steady, coming from the foot of the stairs. Panic threatened to consume her, and indeed would have done but for the memories that again resurfaced. She listened more carefully, there was no sound, the house was still.

She sat up and looked toward the door that led to the foot of the stairs. The shadows there were deep and foreboding.

Elsa shivered, realised that she was still in the nightdress that she had been wearing when he finally came home the previous night. She thought for a moment; all her other clothes were upstairs; all her coats were on the rack at the foot of the stairs. To get to anything she would have to step into those deep, dark shadows.

Her rational mind pointed out that the simple flick of a switch could dispel those shadows; then her memory added that some shadows were best left undisturbed...

She drew her knees up to her chest and pulled the hem of the nightdress down to her ankles.

She slowly and gently began to rock backwards and forwards in this tightly curled position.

She was still in shock... but she was only really conscious of the symptoms rather than the cause.

The shivering was subtle as it started; once the trembling had moved to her jaw it seemed that her teeth were clattering together in her head, a cacophonous sound, fit to raise the dead...

But nothing was going to raise her dead; the dying had been sudden, violent and definitely permanent. She tried to push the memories from her mind, but they were insistent and all pervading.

In the darkness the scene began to replay as vividly as the best high definition movie with full surround sound.

The images were disturbing but the sound, the volume of the sound, was shocking, even as a memory... and over and over the fragment of song played through her mind, the prescient backing track to the end of their lives...