the house by the sea pt. 10: the yellow dress

Inside the house by the sea Linda was lying face down on the sofa. She held a rolled up tea towel against the wound on her shoulder and the tea towel was wet with blood, and she was crying soundlessly and it was only the occasional heaving movements of her shoulders against the stillness of her body that were indicative of consciousness. She had taken her shirt and jeans off and they were in a ball on the floor at his feet and he could see thick dark lines of blood coursing down her back from beneath the tea towel. She wore the yellow dress from their memories. He remembered everything about it, every stitch and seam. He had kissed her in it in the dark of the empty street, had pushed it up and made love to her to the sound of passing night buses. He closed the door and knelt on the floor next to her and rested his hand on her flank and the heaving worsened, and he stroked her hair and lifted it up away from the wound, then held the hand that clutched the tea towel and lifted it carefully away. The wound was raw and deep and the tooth marks were unmistakable, and he could see the edge of clavicle beneath the tissues where they had been bitten away. He placed the hand still holding the tea towel back onto the wound and told her to apply pressure, and walked to the kitchen and dampened another towel with cold water. His hands were still bloody from the dead outside so he washed them and scrubbed them with an old kitchen scouring pad worn through with holes. He went back to Linda and helped her to sit up, and carefully cleaned the wound with the damp towel, wiping away the blood as best he could. He noticed that the wound was already starting to clot which he assumed was a result of the virus but he chose not to say anything to Linda. The flesh was discoloured around its peripheries, greying like spoiled meat. He didn’t know how long the problem took to develop. She was sweating and her eyes looked distant, as though she were very old and no longer recognised him. He rinsed off the bloody towels in the kitchen and held one to her brow to try to lessen the fever. He lit several candles and drank the last mouthful of scotch straight from the bottle and pulled a chair up alongside the sofa and watched Linda. The movements she could make were uncoordinated and when she tried to feel the wound she was unable to position her hand appropriately. He lifted some water to her lips and poured slowly but it made her sick and the vomit dripped onto the sofa and was laced with blood. He begged her not to look and carried the whole cushion away but she had seen it and he heard her crying as he threw the cushion outside.

“I’m very frightened,” she said. She was slurring her words like a dismal drunk. “Please don’t fall asleep.”

He told her he wouldn’t, that he would stay awake all night, that he remembered the dress and remembered everything, that whatever happened now they would still have what they’d had. And he thought of all the things they would never do, of their relatives and friends, of a future as empty as it was inevitable. He thought of Linda, of the day they had met and the years after that.

They sat quietly while Linda fell in and out of consciousness, and her joints cramped and she moaned with the pain but no longer spoke. Sometimes her eyes opened but she didn’t see him. The tone of her skin changed with the falling minutes. Her body was dying. The candles danced to the sound of the sea. He kissed her mouth and it was very cold beneath his lips.

When he awoke the candles had burnt out and the room was bathed in grey early light and Linda was still and silent. He felt for her pulse and raised her eyelids and there was nothing. Her flesh had already begun to decompose in great patches around her body. He stood and walked to the window and looked out to the sea and to the fields before it, and there were scores of the dead walking the fields and the road by the house as though nothing had altered, as though they were living their lives, and their groans echoed through the thin panes of glass. He heard movement behind him and turned to Linda. Her eyes were open and she was trying to pull herself upright. He stood next to her and laid his hand on her thigh and said he was sorry. She grabbed at him and the tips of her fingers sank far into the flesh of his forearm and he yelled out and she bit him and he watched her gnawing his flesh and his freckles working around her mouth and the convulsing tendons in his arm and his blood dripping down her chin like spilt sauce. Her moans were unrecognisable and merged inseparable with the dead outside. He heard the shuffling of their feet outside and they rattled the door of the house and their limbs pressed through the glass of the windows which tore easily through their flesh, and they hammered the boards with startling relentlessness. He held one of the screwdrivers tightly in his good hand and shoved Linda back onto the sofa and straddled her and held her still by her throat and pushed it through her ear and into her brain and she was motionless. He rolled onto the cushionless seat next to her and gripped the wound on his arm and listened to the breaking boards and the crumbling brickwork and the exquisite moans and the ever encroaching sea and waited for something to happen.