Bronwen was feeling distinctly out of her element as she drove back home from the little magic shop. While she was buoyant with hope sprung from the possibilities the old woman, Mala, had proposed, there was still the niggling doubt of the marginal field she’d just flung herself into.

As the strip blurred by, she had visions of decapitated chickens and blood pentagrams in her head,  black candles melting into blobs encrusted on hardwood with blood stains. Fuck man, what had she been thinking? Really? Totally bogus voodoo shit and superstition…

The look on Mala’s face though when she’d walked in, the livid white-faced shock, lingered in her memory. It was a look she’d seen on people from Belfast as they walked away from smoldering rubble, or on addicts begging for change on the subway. It was the truly atoning stare of one who has seen terrible things. It had truly seemed like she had seen a ghost.

HA! You’re so amusing Bronwen. Despite your heavy outer layers, you shield a small amount of naivete  within…what were you expecting anyways? Did you think you could take a pill of ginseng and wormwort to banish me, your mental inferiority demon?

She scowled.

You’re appealing to quacks now? What’s next, acupuncture. “Yes sir, that’s the spot,” you’ll say, “voila, exorcism complete, and you even lessoned my tendonitis.”

Bronwen shrugged, and focused on the impression of Mala’s eyes, a galaxy of black infringing on brown valleys and ravines, craters of knowing wisdom. There had to be answer…her mental state going into it on the other hand, would play a much larger part. She pictured a magicked scene of her, on all fours, pulling a black twisting wraith out of her chest, screaming and sweating, face flushed, a sick smile of victory shadowing her face.

Yeah, victory.

You son of a bitch, your time is done. You are over.

She was mildly surprised to pull into the driveway to a dark house. He’d told her that he was making dinner that night, that it’d be burning by the time she got back, and the fire trucks would be pulling away into the dusk. Bronwen punted the kickstand of the Norton and slowly walked up the front steps of the small bungalow shaded by vines and lilacs.

The door squeaked open when she pushed it, automatically setting her on guard as she quietly padded into the living room. Everything was still, and darkly silhouetted in the dusk, untouched.  The kitchen was serene and darkly lit, the hum of the refrigerator kicking in being the only noise that jarred her out of the quiet. The carpet squeaked under her Cons as she crept up the stairs. Dark and silent furniture shone in the office, the spare bedroom was untouched, while the sheets in the master bedroom were the usual ball of cool sheets. She walked into the bedroom and flipped on the light, while managing to pull her hoody off to toss on the bed with the other. A crinkle of paper as she pulled her hair out of a long braid, made her swing around. A yellow piece of legal pad poked out from under her pillow. Deftly she grabbed it and shook it out of its folds in the light:

“I’m tired of this. I’m out. Don’t follow me, don’t contact me.”

-Shane

She swallowed hard as she read the lines over and over, before she noticed a smaller subscript squished into the corner of the crumpled legal, barely legible.

“P.S. Be wary of your perceptions regarding deceptions.”

The note slid out of her grasp and settled lightly on the hardwood floor before she sank down on the bed in a daze.

Well, that’s what you get for fucking around with other people. Don’t they usually frown on that In a monogamous and legally binding agreement?

“I did no such thing,” she murmured.

Oh, did I not mention that this morning?  

His laughter coldly tinted an image, a trailer of forgotten memories, flooding her mind. She could see herself twisting and sinuously blending her body with that of another, not Shane, in a hotel room shining white with sunlight and brightly knotting sheets. Forgotten or contrived? The taste of his earthy skin came to her tongue, a cinnamon tang unfamiliar to her husband.

Nothing says repressed infidelities like the lingering taste of another man, isn’t that right? 

She could feel the blood flooding the capillaries of her cheeks as unbridled rage turned into a clenching and unclenching of her fists, a hot clamouring at the forefront of her mind.  With some matter of controlled restraint, she lightly placed the note on her night table, and laid down her body into the duvet that rose around her like a cocoon of confusion, doubt, anger and self-loathing.  The picture of her pulling his distorted visage out of her body returned to her mind’s eye.

Ah, I see what you’re trying to accomplish here. Out of irritability, I will return to speak to you sooner than later.

 “I don’t think– I didn’t do that,” she said quietly.

The image flipped back into her mind, a moan of ecstasy flashing into laden memories of dark twisting shapes exultantly laughing, a whispery paper sound, around the edge of the hotel bed. She knotted the duvet in her fists as she sat up in the darkness of the room.

“I DID NOT DO THAT!” She roared.  The house was silent in response but for the tick of the refrigerator, and she lay back down and wept.

Her dreams that night were demonic replays of Till’s face leering at her out of the darkness and laughing in amusement, intermingled with small puffs of dreams that had Shane sliding into the cool sheets next to her, nuzzling her neck in greeting.

“Sorry I was gone so long,” he’d say each time the dream played out. When she awoke however, and hopefully stretched out a leg, it was to find that the bed seemed ridiculously huge and cold with his absence. She rolled into the indent where he usually lay on his side as he slept, arm flung out towards her with his head curled sweetly towards her.  The faint smell of Marlboros, sweat and aftershave greeted her nostrils and she tightly closed her eyes to fight back her frustration.

Bronwen did not leave bed for the whole day. The phone rang three times, the shrill ringing echoing through the house insistently. It was not Mala, she was certain, as she’d given Mala her cell number, for the little black piece of shit now silent on the nightstand.  As she lay in bed unmoving in her despondency, she checked the cell often. Maybe he’d call. Maybe he’d text. The rest of the day was spent in horrible imaginings of what kind of trouble he could be in, or have gotten into.

At around 5 in the afternoon, hunger beat down despair with an iron pipe and she made her way down stairs, hitting the answering machine button in passing.

“Hey,” a familiar voice intoned, “we don’t care about you, so why the fuck would you call?” *BEEP*

“Shane, dude, you said you wanted to talk about the match today, and you never fucking showed up. Where are you dude? Fucking cocksucker, you think I have all the time in the world or something?”

Ian Ballistic.

“Bronwen,” a clipped voice kicked in, “I will be arriving from London imminently, I would like to elicit a ride from the airport and possibly coordinate a mutual lunch time. You can return this correspondence by….”

Annika Reizeiger.

The third message took a second to kick in, started playing as she jammed a banana into her mouth, apathetically mushing it around before swallowing.

“Hey Shane,” a husky female voice said, “I really enjoyed those new moves you were showing me the other day. Can I get another lesson sometime? It’s me,  Destiny, make sure Bronwen doesn’t---“

Bronwen ripped the answering machine off the wall and threw it as hard as she could down the length of the tiled kitchen. It hit the frame of the sliding windows and smashed into a million pieces of shitty plastic. She sniffed.

“Overreact? Of course not. I’d never fucking do that.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent discovering all the possible functions of the cleaning supplies they’d bought upon settling into the new house, but had never actually used. She scrubbed the floors, the walls, the bathroom, the trim, and dusted every surface, searching for clues and staving off the temptation to freak out, all ultimately in a vain attempt to think herself out of her burgeoning lack of control.

        At about midnight, the house was sparkling clean, and she’d run out of dirt to oust out of cracks and crevices. While her ass was slightly sore from bending and kneeling to scrub the lower stuff, she realized as she stepped into the shower that her pent up frustration was far from gone. Her thoughts and reckonings about Shane had dead-ended at hour two, and here and now in hour five, a sharp restless rage was beginning to intensify within her. She started nodding her head a little in the shower to the tune of “Rock n’ Roll Queen” by the Subways, and by the time she exited the hot water and pulled on her clothes, she was fully aware a rampage was needed.  In the kitchen, she turned to the top shelf of the pantry and grabbed down a bottle of Wild Turkey. Leaning against the counter, she cringed a little, remembering the jokes they’d made about how accessible the alcohol should  be in the  house.

“Not low enough to reach if you’re already drunk…” he’d chuckled.

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