Stripey

I wouldn’t give him my bag. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Please, I can’t.’ So he took his knife and whipped it across my cheek.

The bag was still in my hand, but now I couldn’t think: every fibre of my attention was on the gash in my face, on how to stop staggering, how to hold still so the pain didn’t split me open. How to keep the blood from dripping down. 

‘That’s the second time I’m asking,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me ask a third.’

‘I – I can’t give you the bag,’ I said. ‘Please don’t ask me. I’ll take my wallet out of it. Please, let me give you my wallet.’

‘You want striping again?’ he said. 

‘No.’ The blood was in my mouth, bitter salt and the raw tang of meat. ‘Please – please just let me –’

I lifted the bag, trying to dig in it. I needed to clean my hand; there was blood on it from where I’d clutched my face, and I had to wipe it off, on my skirt, on my hair, on anything that would keep it from the bag.

He raised the blade, turned it a little so the moonlight flicked across it. ‘I’m going to count to three,’ he said.

I shook the bag open. I stared inside. My wallet – my wallet. If I could just see my wallet. If it wasn’t too deep in. 

Then there was another slash, and another shriek. It wasn’t mine. He’d cut the bag to spill its contents, to make it spill its guts across the road. 

Then it was him who screamed. 

Even though he’d cut my face, I couldn’t blame him. He’d never seen leather bleed and writhe. He’d never seen the teeth of a zipper slaver. 

It jumped from my arms before I could stop it. I was tugging the strap, trying to pull as it encased his head, gnawing with vicious relish; I could see the blood run down his neck in curtains.

‘Drop!’ I said. ‘Stop it! No blood! Bad bag! Naughty!’ 

I couldn’t pull it free till after it got his head off. Founts of blood shot up from the tatters; the walls of the alley were more striped than my face now.

I shook the bag, and it chattered its teeth towards me. It could smell the blood dripping from my cheek.

‘Spit it out!’ I said. ‘Spit it out, or – or I won’t stitch you up where he cut you. I’ll – I’ll take you to the cobbler for fixing!’

It stopped. It snarled in resentful self-pity.

‘A scar won’t kill either of us,’ I said. ‘But if you don’t spit out that head this very minute, it’s the cobbler for you. You want to go back to him? I won’t rescue you twice, not if you mean to be this naughty. You spit him out, and then I’ll – I’ll have to get my own face stitched first, but then I’ll stitch you, and I promise I’ll do it with a fine needle and nice beeswax. And I won’t send you back to the cobbler. But spit it out. I won’t have it in my house.’

The bag grumbled around the severed head for a moment, and then disgorged. It rolled across the pavement, leaving a streak of blood behind it. 

posted by Kit Whitfield  # 10:47 am