The Killing Hour

‘Yeah, I know.’


‘Then why do it? Don’t you trust me?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then you’re not tying me up, okay?’

If I don’t tie Jo up I won’t be sleeping either. I let her use the bathroom and then she makes it easy for me by not struggling as I tie her to the bed. I lie back on my own bed. The alarm clock looks twenty years old. I fiddle with the buttons and set it to give us three and a half hours. Assuming we can sleep.

My body moulds into the previous outline of thousands of other people who may or may not know what love is, but probably came here to experience a fifteen-minute imitation of it. I turn on the TV and am given the menu for porn or wholesome family TV. It seems every motel these days has religion and sex only a fingertip away. I flick channels looking for some news and come up with nothing.

On Sunday night I was a schoolteacher with a simple life and complicated students. My head is starting to throb and I raise a hand to the lump. It’s still the same size as yesterday. I think about untying Kathy from the tree and how grateful she was for it. I think of Cyris and how dead he looked. I never checked his pulse, because I was sure, so sure, that he was dead. Jesus, I was so stupid. We left him there, just a body of evil trapped inside human skin with a bad name and a poor haircut. We left him in the dark to come back.

And that’s exactly what he did.





12


Jo watches him for movement and, satisfied there isn’t any, sets about finding the piece of broken blade she hid in the folds of the bedspread while Charlie was cleaning up the stakes and tools. Twisting the broom handle and snapping the blade had been no accident.

She splays her fingers to cover what little distance she can on her right-hand side. When Charlie tied her up she had put her hand as close to the blade as she could. Now she’s starting to wonder if it was close enough. She pushes at the bedspread, stroking her fingers back and forth, and after a few moments of despair she finally comes across it. She slips it into her fingers and moves it to her fingertips. She twists her hand and touches the blade against the towel and begins sawing. If she doesn’t get all the way through then when he unties her he will see she tried to escape. Thinking about his reaction encourages her to saw quicker.

Her hand moves up and down, up and down, her wrist quickly tiring because of the tight angle. The cutting seems loud but not loud enough to wake anybody. She thinks about the traffic outside and is aware that any altercation out there, a car horn or the shrieking of tyres, could be enough to wake him. Or the alarm Charlie set could be faulty and go off early.

Twisting her head she can see the blade making steady progress. The cut edges of the towel become fluffy and start to loosen. Once she gets through this then she still has to get through the phone cord wrapped around her body and holding her to the bed.

And then?





13


The ghosts are back. They’re telling me this is no dream, but I find it hard to believe them. I’m with Kathy and Luciana and they’re alive again, but in this dream I don’t even know they’re supposed to be dead. Do they know? I try to ask but the words don’t come out. Kathy is leaning into me, my arm around her as I help her leave the paddock the same way we arrived – alive and in one piece. She knows Luciana is alive because I’ve told her, and she smiles at me knowingly and without words tells me this is soon to be a lie. Luciana jumps from the car the moment she sees her friend and the two lock themselves in an embrace. It’s the embrace of close friends. I stand there looking at my car, this car that I’m sick of seeing, this car that I want to trade in, but at the moment is the best damn car in the world.

The two women break their embrace to include me in it, and no, they’re not ghosts, they’re very much alive, alive and grateful and warm to touch, and I try to warn them, try to tell them that they mustn’t go back home, that they mustn’t take me with them, but the dream is a memory and the memory has only one place it can go.

We pile into the car, Luciana in the back and Kathy next to me. We head to Luciana’s house, and as much as I try to steer us towards the police station, as much as I try to save their lives now, there can be no changing it. They want to go home. They want to clean up. Put on some fresh clothes. They want to reclaim some of the respect they’ve lost before walking into the police station and telling them their story.