Hobnail

Fannie Poteet sat cross-legged on her Uncle John's front porch; her favorite rag doll clutched under one arm. The late afternoon sun shone through the leaves of the giant oak tree, casting its flickering light on the cabin. This golden motion of light entranced the child and she sat with her face turned upward, as if hypnotized. The steady hum of conversation flowed from inside of the cabin.
     "Ellen, I'm sure happy that you came to church with us today. Why don't you spend the night? It's getting awfully late and it will be dark before you make it home."
     "I'll be fine Sally," replied Fannie's mother. "Anyhow, you know how Lige is about his supper. I left plenty for him and the boys on the back of the stove, but he'll want Fannie and me home. Besides, he'll want to hear if Sam Bosworth's wife managed to drag him into church."
     The laughter that followed her mother's statement broke the child's musings and she stood up, pulled her dress over the protruding petticoat, and stepped inside.
     "Get your shawl Fannie. When the sun goes down, it'll get chilly."
     As the little girl went to the chair by the fireplace to retrieve her wrap, her uncle came in from the back with a lantern.
     "You'll need this Ellen. The wick is new and I've filled it up for you."
     "I appreciate it Johnny," Ellen said. "I'll have Lige bring it back when he goes to town next week."
     Ellen kissed her younger brother good-bye and hugged Sally gently. Patting her sister-in-law on her swollen belly, she said," I'll be back at the end of the month. Don't be lifting anything heavy. If that queasy feeling keeps bothering you, brew some of that mint tea I left in the kitchen. Lord knows I've never seen a baby keep its mammy so sick as much as this one has. It's a boy for sure."

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     Upon hearing this, Fannie frowned. She was the youngest in her family, and the only girl. After living with four brothers, she had prayed fervently to God every night for Him to let her aunt have a girl. The only other comfort she had was the pretty rag doll that her mother had made for her. Tucking the doll under her left arm and gathering the shawl with the same hand, she stood waiting patiently. Aunt Sally kissed her lightly on the cheek and squeezed Fannie gently. "If I have a girl, I hope that she will be as sweet as you," her aunt whispered. Uncle John patted her on the head and said, "Bye Punkin. When that old momma cat has her kittens, I'll give you the pick of the litter."
     This brought a smile to Fannie's face and swept away the darkening thoughts of boys.
     Ellen secured her own shawl about her shoulders and tossing one side around and over again, picked up the lantern, which had already been lit. Taking Fannie's right hand, the pair proceeded on the three-mile trek back home. Heavy rains during the last week had left the dirt road virtually impassable for anyone on foot. Ellen and her daughter would return home the way they had come, by following the railroad track. The track was about one half mile above the road. It wound and wound around the mountains and through the valleys carrying the coal and lumber, which had been harvested from the land. Once on the track, they proceeded in the direction of their own home. Ellen began to tell Fannie about the trains and all of the distant places they went to. The little girl loved hearing her mother's stories of all the big cities far away. She had been to town only a few times and had never traveled outside of Wise County. Fannie remembered her papa talking about his brother Jack.
     Uncle Jack had left the county, as well as the state of Virginia. He was in a faraway place called Cuba, fighting for a man called Roosevelt. She wondered what kind of place Cuba was, and if it was anything like home.

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     The sun's last rays were sinking behind the tree-studded mountains. Shadows rose ominously from the dense woods on both sides of the track. Rustling sounds from the brush caused Fannie to jump, but her mother's soothing voice calmed her fears.
     "It's all right Child; just foxes and possums."
     A hoot owl's mournful cry floated out of the encroaching darkness and Fannie tightened her grip on her mother's hand.
     Finally, night enveloped the landscape, and all that could be seen was the warm glow of the lantern and the shadow of the figures behind it. It was a moonless night, and the faint glow of a few stars faded in between the moving clouds. Fannie tripped over the chunks of gravel scattered between the ties and Ellen realized that her daughter was tired.
     "We'll rest awhile child. My guess is that we have less than a mile to go."
     Ellen set the lantern down and the weary travelers attempted to get comfortable sitting on the rail.
     "Mammy, it's so scary in the dark. Will God watch over us and protect us?"
     "Yes, Fannie. Remember what that new young preacher said in church today. The Good Lord is always with you, and when you need His strength, call out His name. Better still, do what I do."
     "What's that mammy?"
     "Well," Ellen said, stroking her daughter's hair," I sing one of my favorite hymns."
     While contemplating her mother's advice, Fannie was distracted by a sound. The sound came from the direction they had traveled from, and the girl's eyes peered into the ink like darkness. It was very faint, but unlike the other noises she had grown used to along the way. The slow methodic sound was someone walking, and coming in their direction.

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     "Mammy, do you hear that?"
     "Hear what child?"
     Fannie moved closer to her mother and said, "It's somebody else coming!"
     Ellen gave her daughter a comforting hug and replied," You're just imagining things Fannie. We've rested enough. Let's get on home. Your papa will be worried."
     Ellen picked up the lantern, took Fannie's hand, and the two resumed their journey. After a while, the sound that had unnerved the little girl began again. This time the steps were more distinct, and definitely closer. The distant ringing of heavy boots echoed in the dark.
     "Mammy, I hear it again!"
     "Hush child."
     Ellen swung the lantern around.
     "See, there's nothing there."
     Fannie secured the grip on her mother's hand and clutched her rag doll tightly. The hoot owl continued its call in the distance, and the night breeze rustled the leaves in the trees.
     "The air sure smells like rain," said Ellen. "The wind is picking up a mite too. We'll be home soon, little girl. Yonder is the last bend."
     Fannie found comfort in her mother's voice, but in the darkness behind them, the steps rang louder. It was the sound of boots, heavy hobnail boots.
     "Mammy, it's getting closer!"
     Ellen swung the lantern around again and said, "Child, there's nothing out there. Tell you what; let's sing "Precious Lord".
     Fannie joined in with her mother, but her voice quivered with fear as the heavy steps came closer and closer. She couldn't understand why her mother seemed oblivious to the sound.
     Ellen's singing grew louder, and up ahead the warm glow of light from their own home glimmered down the side and through the trees. A dog barking in the distance brought the singing to an abrupt end.

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     "See child, we're almost home. Tinker will be running up to meet us. Big old Tinker. He's chased mountain lions before. He'll see us safely home."
     "Let's hurry then Mammy. Can't you hear? It's closer and I'm scared. Let's run!"
     "All right child, but see, I'm telling you there's nothing there."
     Ellen made another sweep around with the lantern and as they proceeded she cried out, "Here Tinker! Come on boy!"
     The dog raced up the path leading to the track and the two nearly collided with him as they stepped down on the familiar trail to home.
     "Ellen, is that you?"
     Fannie's heart filled with joy as her father's voice rang out of the darkness.
     "Yes Lige. I'm sorry we're so late. I'm afraid I walked a bit fast for this child. She's worn out."
     Elijah picked up his daughter and carried her the rest of the way home. Once inside of the cabin, Ellen helped Fannie undress and gently tucked her in bed.
     The comforting sounds of her parents' voices drifted from the kitchen. Even the snores of her brothers in the back made her smile and be thankful that she and her mother were safe and sound. Before closing her eyes, her mother's voice rang in her ears.
     "Lige, I heard the steps. I didn't want to frighten the child. I kept singing and swinging the lantern around and telling her there was nothing to be afraid of. But Lige, just before we got off the tracks, I turned the lantern around one last time. That's when I saw what was following us. I saw the figure of a man. A man without a head!"

The Masque of the Red Death

The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal - the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were incidents of half an hour.
     But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
     They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the 'Red Death.'
     It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
     It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven - an imperial suite, In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extant is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the 'bizarre.' The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor of which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue - and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange - the fifth with white - the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes were scarlet - a deep blood colour. Now in no one of any of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro and depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or back chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was within this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. It pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and while the chimes of the clock yet rang. it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colour and effects. He disregarded the 'decora' of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure he was not.

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     He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm - much of what has been seen in 'Hernani.' There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the dreams - writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away - they have endured but an instant - and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
     But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept, with more of time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, of horror, and of disgust.

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     In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood - and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
     When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell on this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but in the next, his brow reddened with rage.
     "Who dares" - he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him - "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him - that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!"
     It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

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     It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple - to the purple to the green - through the green to the orange - through this again to the white - and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry - and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
     And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Oval Portrait

The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary- in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room- since it was already night- to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed- and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.
     Long - long I read - and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
     But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought- to make sure that my vision had not deceived me- to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

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     That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life.
     The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filigreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea- must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:
     "She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. And be was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks bad passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved:- She was dead!

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The Brass Teapot

The old woman running the roadside antique stand spoke with a heavy eastern accent. She skirted the table with two limping legs, hidden by loose, draping leather pants and no shoes. John couldn't help staring at the woman's black toes, as if she had once suffered frostbite.
     Everything about her seemed to have once suffered an altering cold.
     Alice and John were on their way home from visiting their oldest daughter in college. They had only stopped so John could stretch his sore back. Alice had been sleeping the entire drive, or pretending to sleep, while thinking about all of the money they had given their daughter as a loan. They had secretly had to scrap the idea of a small vacation so she could retake her algebra in the summer.
     The old woman approached John's wife. With her long fingers she pushed a brass teapot into Alice's hands. The transparent skin on her arms swung with the momentum of her tiny motions.
     "Thank you," Alice responded politely, not knowing what else to say.
     The old woman's stand consisted of one green table, overwhelmed with useless things from the past. Heavy, iron mementos.
     John rolled his eyes when his wife set the brass teapot in the backseat of their Ford Festiva. The car was noticeably struggling as they drove down the interstate, burdened by the small weight of weekend suitcases.
     On the drive home they argued about money. Wasted money. With two children in college, neither having been able to maintain their scholarships, not only was John and Alice's retirement dwindling but also their ability to make ends meet.
     There had been mention of a second mortgage.
     As the car pulled into their house each went to collect a suitcase. John slammed Alice's finger in the trunk, accidentally, before she could snatch her hand away.

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     "I'm sorry...." He started to say as he took her hand to kiss it. A clanging emanated from inside the car. Like someone tapping on a brass kettle.
     When Alice's finger stopped throbbing she picked up the teapot, removed the top and saw that inside was five quarters.
     "Practically paid for itself," she remarked.
     Still, John was annoyed when she insisted on setting it on the stove.
     For days he felt disrupted by its presence in their otherwise modern kitchen. They had overhauled everything when the children moved out. They got a fridge with two doors and a self-cleaning flat-surface oven. If they had known the children were going to lose their scholarships and that Alice would be demoted, they would have never done it. In three years it would all be paid for and the warranties would simultaneously expire.
     John was most aggravated when Alice decided to make their morning coffee using the brass teapot.
     "The electric one's broken," she reported.
     John watched her, standing in her business suit; her graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail, as she clumsily boiled water and added coffee grounds.
     "I've never done it this way," she said, stirring with a plastic spoon that bent in the boiling heat. John tried to show her the right way to do it, but it was too early to be giving orders. Neither was in a good mood until they had coffee and breakfast. Kisses, hugs, any affections came after food and caffeine.
     "You've got to stir it...like this," he said. He dipped a metal spoon into the cavernous depths of the darkening teapot. She looked away, like she always did when John was correcting her.
     "No you don't!" she snapped. She pushed his hand out of the way, causing the pot to lurch and send one boiling wave cresting onto John's exposed wrist. He yelped, climbed into the kitchen chair and poked at the tender pink skin until his wife brought him an ice pack.

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     "It's going to blister," she said, applying the ice. He nodded and the two didn't speak until after she'd poured the coffee and he'd set out toast for each of them.
     "What time do you think you'll be home tonight?" she asked.
     "Late," he replied. There were shipments coming in from all over the country and he alone could work the new processing system for incoming orders. There was one other person, an up-and-coming woman straight out of college, but John preferred to do it himself. If she proved her worth too quickly he might find himself out of a job.
     With his last gulp of coffee, just before he was going to stand up and kiss his wife goodbye, John found something floating in his mouth.
     "Did you wash this thing out?"
     "Of course. It's clean."
     He pulled out some paper that had adhered to the roof of his mouth. It was a two-dollar bill.
     "What the hell is this then?" he asked.
     They both bent over the kitchen table where John laid the bill out to dry. Neither of the two could explain the presence of the money except to say that Alice must have missed it somehow when she was cleaning, though she swore she had scrubbed every angle of the brass teapot.
     The two soon embraced for a long kiss, both regretting the fighting they had done over the long weekend. Alice's tongue snuck in through John's slightly parted lips. He squirmed with genuine surprise. His burned wrist brushed against his wife's cotton top as he reached to put his hand beneath it. He yelped again from the raw pain.
     A nickel dropped in the teapot.
     The two bent over and stared in wonder. John picked it out, held it up to the light.

<  4  >

     Alice reached over and pinched her husband's arm as hard as she could. Before he could cry out or push her hand away, there was the sound of dimes dropping in the teapot.
     "How did that happen?" John asked.
     "Hit me," she said.
     He stared at her.
     "Don't knock me out or anything. Punch me in my arm. Hard enough to leave a bruise."
     John wouldn't hit her. Instead, he picked up his briefcase and headed for the front door.
     "If I'm late they're going to let her handle the shipments. We can't afford for me to miss out on all of this overtime. We have tuition to pay in less than a month."
     He kissed Alice and closed the door behind him.

*

The routine was that Alice made dinner because she got home first ever since her demotion from accountant to glorified messenger. John made breakfast and handled all of the meals on the weekends. When John returned home that night, however, there wasn't the smell of any cooking in the air.
     He found his wife lying on the couch, the teapot resting on her stomach. It was late, after ten, he had told his boss that he could handle things alone and told him to send her home because she would only be in the way. Without any help, it took him hours longer than it should have to finish processing the shipments.
     John's stomach grumbled painfully at the lack of ready food. He hadn't eaten since toast at breakfast, there had been no time. The bile that churned, and had been churning everyday for months, had created an ulcer in John's stomach. His knees ached from standing for hours at a time.
     The living room was dark, except for some light flickering out of the muted television set.

<  5  >

     "What are you doing?" he asked, turning on the overhead light.
     She tried to hide her face with a pillow from the couch, but he saw the bruise and the swelling.
     "What happened?"
     Alice's right eye was bloated, colored a dark purple. There was only a slit that she could peer out of. He ran to the kitchen and got the ice pack out of the freezer, laid it against her eye.
     She jumped up, said it was too sensitive and asked him to wrap a towel around it first.
     "Did someone attack you? Do I need to call the police?"
     His heart beat in his ears. Beneath the worries that his wife might suffer a hemorrhage and die was the worry about the impending hospital bill. They had been forced to stop making the payments on Alice's health insurance since her company had doubled employee responsibility.
     "No," she replied.
     She handed John the teapot. He removed the lid and saw inside it three ten dollar bills.
     "I hit myself with the iron," she said. She looked ashamed but was determined to tell him the truth. "It gave me ten dollars. I did it two more times." She told him that she thought it might eventually be more.
     "We've got to get you to a hospital."
     She refused.
     "The swelling will go down." After a long, heavy breath, after resting her throbbing head on her husband's shoulder, she suggested they use the money to go out to eat.
     The thought of food, of a restaurant, which they couldn't afford anymore, was enough for John to forget the strangeness of his wife hitting herself in the face with an iron, if only momentarily.

<  6  >

     "I will think better on a full stomach," he ruminated.
     As they gathered their things to go out to dinner, Alice took the teapot and held it close to her stomach. He asked her to leave it behind, but she refused.
     "What if someone broke in and stole it?" she asked.
     She set it on the table at the restaurant, much to the confusion of the waiter who eyeballed John like he was an abusive husband. It was the first time anyone had ever suspected him capable of violence.
     "What do you think we're going to do with that?" he asked, after he devoured his salad. They went to the Italian place where they used to go on birthdays and holidays. It was their favorite.
     "I don't know," she admitted. Little droplets of white pus sneaked out of an opening beneath the bottom lid of her eye. John dabbed at it with his napkin after wetting it in his water glass.
     "I just know that we've got an opportunity here...."
     "Opportunity?"
     The waiter returned with their meals. John got the veal on top of pasta, Alice had a sample plate consisting of a small portion of several things on the menu. They didn't speak as they ate. At Alice's job there was no time for lunch that day either. She ran memos around a huge office building, going up stairs and down long hallways all day long. They wouldn't let her wear sneakers because of the dress code so her feet were always blistered. The pay was much less than what she had received as a full-time accountant, a job she lost because of her tendency to make mathematical errors. Reportedly, she had cost the company millions by misfiling a tax return for an important client.
     When the bill came it was over thirty dollars. The two hadn't been to the restaurant in so long that the prices had risen and they hadn't even looked at their menus.

<  7  >

     "We could put it on the Discover," John suggested.
     "It's maxed."
     They sat in silence. They were eleven dollars short of even being able to pay the check, much less leave a tip. The trip to see their daughter over the long weekend had eaten what was left of their checking, with gas and giving her extra money. Payday was still three days away.
     "I could write a check and...."
     "No checks," she said, pointing to a sign in the window of the restaurant. John's ulcer screamed within his stomach, no longer satisfied by the warm, nourishing food.
     After a few moments of avoiding eye contact with the waiter, John took the teapot with him into the men's room. He locked the door behind him, thankful that it was a bathroom for one person only, and he proceeded to punch his fist into the wall. At first, his tentativeness profited him only in small change, dimes and nickels. He counted after five strikes into the porcelain tiling of the wall. There was not quite three dollars, though his fingers were red and burning.
     He drove his kneecap into the sink as hard as he could make himself. The pain sent icy blood in every direction starting at his heart. Toppling over, he leered into the teapot. A five dollar bill. With every ounce of his courage he ran the water as hot as it would go, sitting on the bathroom floor to the right of the spigot, and he held his hand beneath it for twenty seconds while it burned his skin. With his eyes tightly shut, he listened to the sound of quarters dropping until he was sure that he finally had enough.
     Alice was embarrassed to pay with so much change. As they left, she tried not to look at the other diners who stared at them. She propped up her mysteriously wounded husband, searching for the front door through her one good eye.

<  8  >

*

John had passed out on the couch not long after they returned home. Alice tinkered for a bit in the kitchen. He could hear whispers of "ow" and "shit" coming from the room, followed by the sound of change sprinkling into brass.      In the morning he realized he had overslept. Normally he would've been in his bed where the alarm was set, but in the living room all was silent. It was ten a.m. Alice was unaccounted for, as was the teapot. John rushed into work where they told him to go ahead and take the day off. They told him he looked "beat up." She could handle it on her own. She'd already proven that in less than two hours of processing shipments.
     Dejected, John returned home to find his wife also not working.
     "Why are you home?" she asked. He stared into her face. The noon sunlight made her face look even worse than it had in the restaurant.
     "Why didn't you wake me up before you left this morning?" he asked.
     She told him that she hadn't left that morning. She had accidentally knocked herself out in the garage when one of the hanging shovels had fallen on her head.
     John felt around her skull until his fingers reached the bump.
     "I'm fine," she said.
     "We have to stop this!" he shouted. He forcefully took the teapot out of her arms and put it on top of a kitchen cupboard, where she couldn't reach. Undeterred, she scooted a chair over and took it down.
     "We have an opportunity to finally get ahead!" she screamed back. This time she would not let him take the teapot from her grasp.
     "Get ahead?" He explained to her that the only way they were going to get ahead was if they both worked their overtime. "Today's already set us back...."

<  9  >

     "We'll never get ahead, John. We never have and we never will. The moment we get any money something breaks or one of the children...."
     They argued for an hour, Alice the entire time clutching the closed teapot. She called him a loser three times during the fight and he once, out of frustration, told her that she had been a bad mother. It was the dirtiest they had ever treated one another. When they finished, when both were hunched over in exhaustion from not having eaten breakfast, Alice lifted the lid to find the teapot filled with twenty dollar bills. There was just over four hundred dollars.
     "But how?" John asked.
     Alice reared back and spit in his face. She then told him how she came home for lunch whenever she could in hopes that the postman would be walking his route and say hello to her.
     A twenty dollar bill appeared, though John was too hunched over to see it.
     "Now you do me!" she said.
     "You're a bitch!" he said. Change clinked.
     "No! Do me for real. Tell me something that you hate about me or something awful that you've done. Something that will really hurt my feelings."
     John thought as he sat at the table, still trying to form the picture of what their postman looked like.
     "I slept with Ellen Waterson...."
     "I already know that," she interrupted.
     "I slept with her after you and I were dating," he said spitefully.
     It had been a secret. Words festering beneath John's skin for twenty years. He could smell the words at night while he was lying in bed, next to Alice. Mildewed, damp, green words under his skin but not in his blood.

<  10  >

     Her face was pale but a smile crept onto it as she looked in the teapot and saw a fifty dollar bill appear.
     "Keep going," she said.
     The two proceeded to tell one another everything. Things which no married couple have ever shared. John told her about the woman at work, the one who might be replacing him, and how wonderfully upright her breasts were. Alice told him about the men she had been with before him and the things she had allowed them to do that she would never allow John to do to her. They did still love one another and by the end of the day the pot had given them over a thousand dollars. More than either of them could make in a week at their job.
     They continued on the next day, after shouting at one another so furiously that they had each finally retreated to their corners and cried themselves to sleep. John got a call on the fourth day from his boss saying that he shouldn't bother coming in again. That she could handle it.
     "Fine," John replied. "I've found something else anyway." His boss was surprised at the lack of emotion. Alice, too, decided to not return to her employer. Though they were running short on secrets and genuine insults - insincere insults didn't pay a dime - they had still worked up enough money to get by for months.
     Each morning they woke up late, sometimes not until after noon, typically alone, and they met at the kitchen table where they set the teapot in between them.
     "I always referred to you as loose when we were in high school," John said.
     Clank. Clank. Clank.
     "You have never given me an orgasm," Alice replied.
     Three twenty dollar bills.

<  11  >

     Alice was learning to predict how much money would be in the teapot by the recoiling countenance of her husband. The insults, the beatings, the degradations were having a slightly more permanent effect on him. His face was beginning to not spring back.
     By the third month the teapot was rewarding them with less and less money each day. Alice had begun reverting to slamming her fingers in the cupboards to reach the minimum amount needed to survive. The two figured if they could get at least a hundred dollars a day from the teapot, they would be fine.
     When their eldest daughter called them that third month to inform them that she was coming home for a weekend visit, Alice tried to gently suggest that she not come. The girl wouldn't listen. She showed up on their doorstep the very next night, not expecting what she saw.
     When she entered her childhood home, things were different. The pictures that had been on the mantle were smashed. Some by fists, others by emotions. Her mother's hair was short, cropped close to the head. She told her daughter that she had wanted something different, but honestly she had been pulling it out by the fistful for money to the point where she had to shave it to get it all one even length again.
     The girl's father was the biggest surprise. His hair had gone gray and he was heavier than he'd ever been before. The two had been eating well and never getting any exercise. They never wanted to leave the teapot, to miss a moment when they might make a little money.
     As she sat on the couch, drinking a cup of tea, staring at the changed environment in wonder, she began telling them stories of her classes and her professors. Normally, they would've listened intently. They would've had questions or comments about the girl's stories, but neither spoke. Both Alice and John were thinking of the teapot which was sitting, waiting on the coffee table in front of them.

<  12  >

     When the girl picked it up both parents lunged at her and pulled it from her hands.
     "It's an antique," Alice commented, setting it back down gently on the coffee table.
     "What happened to your eye, Mom?" the girl asked. There were four separate scars if one looked closely, but there was one brutal gash from where she'd struck herself with the iron that was noticeable at any distance.
     "That's nothing. I fell," she said. The words in her mouth formed like "thank you" and "hello".
     Alice looked at her daughter's unpinched, uncut, unbeaten skin with greedy eyes. When she hugged her, just before climbing the stairs to go to bed, Alice pinched her daughter beneath her arms and on her back.
     "What'd you do that for?" the girl yelled. The sound of change clanging in the pot went unnoticed to her.
     "Sorry," her mother said, disappointed by the familiar sound of nickels.
     As she handed the girl her suitcase, Alice banged it into her daughter's still sensitive shin. She howled and hobbled about for a few moments while her mother apologized over the promising sound of sprinkling quarters.
     John and Alice waited for their daughter to go out with her high school friends or to go to bed at night before starting their ritual of insults and physical attacks. When the girl asked in the morning what had happened, why her mother's lip was swollen, the two remained quiet.
     The girl left on Sunday, earlier than she had planned, because her mother had tripped and accidentally pushed her down the staircase while walking behind her. Her elbow might have had a small fracture and she wanted to go home to take advantage of the college's medical facilities. She thought it was strange that neither parent offered gas money.

<  13  >

     "You shouldn't have done that," John said, as they smiled and waved.
     "It's fifty dollars that we're going to use to pay for her education!"
     With all of their secrets scattered about their modest home, covered in broken glass and splintered wood, the two were forced to go back to beating themselves. John called his old boss and begged for his job on his boss's voicemail, but his calls were never returned.
     The tuition bills came every three months, they were on the payment plan. In addition to that there was the electric bill, the mortgage, the water and the credit cards. Not to mention the fact that they had to take Alice to the emergency room to treat a concussion that she had given herself with one of the garage shovels.
     A policeman had visited John in the waiting room and asked him questions. He had written John's answers into a little notebook and showed John pictures of Alice's bruises.
     "She fell?" the policeman asked.
     John nodded his head and stared off in the other direction.
     At the end of each week John took a giant bucket of change to the bank to be counted out and returned in bills. The change was even diminishing. They had begun to expect four hundred dollars a week in change, but it soon dwindled to two hundred and fifty.
     "The fridge doesn't work," Alice reported.
     "What? Why not?" John asked, returning from a disappointing trip to the bank.
     "I don't know," she replied. "Maybe because you punched it a thousand times."
     Her attitude was changing with each new day. John suspected that she had given herself another concussion the week before when she'd "slipped" in the shower and he had to pull her unconscious body, dangling, crimson, wet head to the bed. She said it was an accident, but the teapot had been suspiciously in the room with her. They had found through trial and error that the teapot only worked when it was within a certain range of the person being wounded.

<  14  >

     "So you're blaming me for the refrigerator being broken," he asked her. "What about the car? I could blame you for the shattered windshield."
     Her skin was bluish, pale. Her eyes had no white, only red and green. Sleep deprivation gave a little bit of money, but that wasn't why she lay there awake at night. She was in pain. Her head ached endlessly but she refused to go back to the doctor, saying that they would never get ahead if they had to pay yet another hospital bill.
     When the repairman came to work on the refrigerator he informed them that their warranty didn't cover the damage. Alice exploded in the man's face. He was short, bald, heavy. On his fingers were rings, gold and silver. He wore long blue overalls with a nametag that read "Randy."
     "Miss, I don't make the rules...." he started to say.
     John, dabbing at an injury on his chin that wouldn't stop bleeding, walked in on his wife striking the man on his head with a wooden spoon. He was older, slow from his weight and had a limp in his right leg.
     "Alice!" John yelled. He pulled her off of the heavy man who was covering his face with his hands. The clank of the wooden spoon hitting his rings had played in unison with the change rattling in the teapot.
     Alice lurched at the recoiled man with her feet, John having hold of her top half. Her foot planted firmly on the man's nose, breaking it instantly. Blood roared out of his nostrils, onto his lips and eventually onto the already blood-stained floor.
     "You're crazy!" he screamed at her. "You're wife's a crazy bitch!" He covered his face with his hand.
     "She's not crazy," John responded calmly.
     John walked over to the teapot and pulled out a newly formed hundred dollar bill. He handed it to the repairman.

<  15  >

     "Will you fix it for this?" he asked.
     The man laughed.
     "I'm taking you to court. My nose is broken!"
     John leered at Alice. Her bluish skin basked in the kitchen light. The phone rang somewhere in the distance, but no one heard it. All anyone could hear, including the repairman, was the tearing sound of the knife Alice pushed into the repairman's stomach. Both of his hands reached to the handle, to pull it out, but Alice pushed it in farther and turned it like she had seen done in movies.
     "What the hell did you do?" John yelled.
     Immediately he started thinking about what they would do with the body. How could he protect her from this?
     The fat man's body fell to the kitchen floor in two stages. Some undead portion of his spine tried to stay upright, while his thighs and ankles wanted to lay flat and be deceased. Alice kicked him to the ground once before his heart stopped beating.
     "What the hell did you do?" John asked again.
     She got down next to him, stabbed him three or four more times, in hopes that he could still feel the pain. She then lifted herself, John standing horrified in the corner, and walked over to the teapot. She lifted the lid. A blood-spattered smile charmed across her face.
     "Look at this!" she said. She held the pot out for him to see, though he didn't look. It was full of hundreds. Stuffed full of hundreds.
     "You killed a man!" John yelled. In a panic he looked out the kitchen window. There was no one in sight. "We'll have to get his body into his work truck outside. See if you can find his keys."

<  16  >

     John went to grab towels out of the bathroom to mop up the blood. When he returned she was at the man again with her knife.
     "It doesn't work after they're dead," she said.
     "Can you help me?" he asked.
     He had taken out several cleaning agents.
     "We've got to do something with him before people know he's missing."
     Alice wasn't listening. She was staring into the now empty pot.
     "We could buy our way to paradise," she whispered. "There's got to be fifteen neighbors in houses right around here that trust us. Don across the street has a gun in his closet. He keeps it loaded."
     He had shown both of them on the fourth of July.
     "This is over ten thousand dollars," she said, fumbling through the unchanging faces of Benjamin Franklin. "We could buy our way to Paradise," she repeated.

Kay Sexton Starving Makes It Fat

Matthew stepped onto the scales. Trish, the coordinator, read out his weight. He'd lost three pounds, bringing him to his target weight. He got the loudest cheer of the night. He smiled modestly. Under cover of writing down his achievement on his Weight Warriors pocket card, he looked the women over.
     He'd already had four of them: Angie, Claire, Jane and Sonya. He could have had Trish too, but he never did coordinators. They were inclined to be vengeful and more intelligent than their clients. If he got Sharon in the sack tonight, he wouldn't have to come back next week. He glanced at her. She blushed. He looked around the room. Angie simpered, Claire grinned, Jane looked down, and Sonya refused to catch his eye. A good haul. Of course, they were oblivious to their collective nature, each thought herself the only recipient of his attentions - these women didn't boast about sex. He could never have got away with it if they did.
     Sometimes, when he looked at women, he saw them composed of food. Claire, the fast food queen, with vanilla milkshake flesh-tones, and hair the stringy, bleached texture of reconstituted French fries. Jane: cocoa-colored skin and candy pink lips. Sonya - a dairy maid with dimpled hands like cheese fingers, and acres of creamy curves.
     He timed his exit so Sharon was shoulder to shoulder with him. More accurately, her shoulder - mottled but solid, like prime beef sausage - brushed his elbow. She was nearly as wide as she was tall, and her blonde moustache showed how inefficient facial bleach could be. Matthew wished she waxed. Smooth skin was much easier to transmute in his imagination, especially with his eyes closed.
     'May I offer you a lift home?' He spoke gently, both to avoid startling her if she was skittish, and to ensure the other women didn't overhear.
     Tonight Sharon would be his J-Lo. He hoped she wasn't a grunter. It was hard to imagine Jennifer's sultry tones and lavish love-gifts of Rolex and iMac, if the woman beneath him was honking and squealing. He hoped she wasn't a virgin either. He hated the tedium of it, and deflowering was always followed by much emotional guff. He began to hum under his breath, 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, I should be so lucky in love.' Sharon giggled.

<  2  >

     Five hours later, tired and smelling of the magnolia shampoo that was all he could find in Sharon's bathroom, he escaped. It was easy to get away.
     'Sharon, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me. You know I'm getting married soon? It's why I'm at Weight Warriors - to lose weight before the wedding. I just couldn't resist you, but please ... can we pretend it was just a wonderful dream? I love my fiancÈe and although she could never match up to you physically... well, she's blind, and so ....' No fat woman ever impeded his departure once he mentioned the sightless bride-to-be.
     He sat in the car and dictated a long message to Liz's mailbox. Now it was over to her. Tonight's Fat Fighters was his last meeting in Stroud. He would be home with her in three hours. They'd have two weeks together before it was her turn to come up here. He swung the Volvo around Stroud's rain-slick streets. Overweight women appreciated a big safe car. The seduction started there, in a seat that didn't cramp them, riding a suspension that didn't groan under their bulk, with space to relax and appreciate how Matthew attended to them. The car was his introduction to their bedrooms - and it worked every time.
     Lazily he calculated the takings. Twenty women in five weeks. Monday night: Weight Warriors - six women. Tuesday night: Lighter Ladies - six women. Wednesday: Yoga for Weight loss - only three women bedded there, a disappointing score. Thursday's Fat Fighters - five women, all of them coy and respectable. His quota was met; twenty bed-post notches meant he could go home to Liz and relax for a while. He grinned to imagine how much money they would make from these lovelorn fatties, then scowled, remembering the strenuous evening with Sharon. Catching sight of his forehead in the rear view mirror, he relaxed it immediately. Women fell for his boyish, tousle-haired sensuality. He couldn't afford frown lines.
     For a while now he'd been wondering how they would make their money when he couldn't do this any more. Nobody stayed young and charming forever. He found it ever more wearisome to superimpose imaginary women on the chunky bodies he seduced. He'd never failed yet. But one day, morbid obesity would defeat him - the tickle of a walrus moustache would not translate in his mind to the silky tresses of a visionary inamorata and he would wilt ... forever.

<  3  >

     Liz said not to worry. She said she was thinking about what scam to operate when he ceased to conquer weight-challenged women. He should feel reassured, but he didn't. Suppose Liz decided he was expendable?
     He pushed the thought back into the mental crevice from which it had crawled and resolved to think only about money. Money was his aphrodisiac: if all else failed he could imagine the women - Buddha-like - were composed of soft buttery gold. Infinitely attractive. Then the bigger they were, the better.

*

'Good morning, may I speak to Miss Claire Henderson, please?'
     'Speaking.'
     The voice was bright, conveying feminine bubbliness. There was nothing to suggest the speaker was six stone overweight. Liz pondered that, as she continued the conversation. Very few women had fat voices.
     'Miss Henderson, are you able to speak privately, or would there be a better time to call you?'
     'Why, what's this about?' Most of the bubbles had popped now, replaced by flat urgency. Liz always wondered how many of them expected what was coming next. What proportion of the large unloved had a premonition of certain punishment for their one horizontal transgression? Suppose she just said, 'Two weeks ago you had sex with my Matt. You must have known he didn't want you for your looks. Now he wants payment for services rendered and I'm ringing on his behalf to collect.' How many would pay up? But that would be the lazy approach. Dear Matt had worked hard, now it was her turn.
     'Miss Henderson, I'm afraid it's not good news. Mr. Matthew Helme has asked me to contact you on his behalf. Are you alone?'
     'Yes. Yes I am, what's wrong?' Now the voice was leaden - old, and at least as heavy as its owner.
     'Possibly nothing. I do not wish to alarm you unduly, however ...' Liz allowed the pause to grow, opening a crack in the universe through which the woman's worst fears could crawl. '... I am sorry to say Mr. Helme has a communicable disease.' Another pause. Sometimes the women rushed to fill it, sometimes they were mute. Neither response reliably predicted their future conduct. Some garrulous ones baulked at Liz's fees and refused her appointments, while silent ones could cave in swiftly, handing over cash for three or four 'repeat treatments'.

<  4  >

     'He is deeply ashamed. He has paid for you to have a private consultation with me to establish whether he has transmitted any infection to you. This consultation will be completely confidential and avoid the need for you to visit your doctor or a clinic for sexual diseases.'
     Liz used 'clinic for sexual diseases' to shock the women into submission. Miss Henderson was no exception. She accepted the first appointment offered to her. Liz hung up before the woman could bid for reassurance. Time for a reward: she hit the media player button on her laptop and the rich sound of JosÈ Carreras singing Nessun Dorma filled the room. She loved Carreras - he had a voice bigger than himself, unlike Pavarotti whose voice was smaller than the man.
     The Regency office in which she sat was a sweet gem of architecture. Mellow brick and paned windows wrapped her in the comforting illusion of old money. It was on a short lease, of course. Six weeks. The scam always started with the short lease. She flicked through the spreadsheet, checking the future office rentals.
     After Stroud, it was Taunton. Matthew - dear boy - would have bedded all the lardy ladies he could manage, and Liz would spend a fortnight dispensing placebo treatments at £500 a pop from an office in a barn conversion. Then Telford, a rather austere but impressive office there, and then they'd be off to Spain. Matthew would need to restore his tan and Liz liked the Algarve. It gave her a chance to inspect the half a dozen villas which brought in enough genuine income to keep the taxman at bay.
     She logged onto the Internet and updated the appointment diary. When Matt got up, he'd be able to see how many of Stroud's largest ladies were already wriggling in the net. Then she checked her e-mail account.
     Normally she was good at spotting spam, but this time a message got past her, and she found herself confronted by a hideous image. A pale, huge woman, to whom a robe clung in obscene detail. It molded over lumpy nipples that showed bruise-purple through the white fabric. It clung to vile curves, delineating not just their general form but hugging even the cellulite craters and deep ominous dimpling on the woman's upper arms and thighs. Her legs were spread and between them the seaweed tendrils of pubic hair smeared nightmare undertones on the wet cloth. The woman's expression was blank, her eyes were closed, her skin maggot pale.

<  5  >

     Liz stared, transfixed with horror. Her thoughts whirled round the giantess like sparrows caught in a storm. It would be better if the behemoth were naked. The clothing gave spurious dignity to her gargantuan ugliness. It was terrible to think people paid to look at this vileness. Even worse - was this the kind of thing darling Matthew had to deal with? Poor boy, no wonder he was exhausted at the end of a seduction period. Suppose a woman like this rolled on top of him in bed? He'd never get her off.
     She shook her head free of the gruesome picture, deleted the e-mail, hit the pause button so Carreras vanished in mid-note, and moved on to the next call. Angie Blake was about to have a nightmare come true.

*

Matthew checked the diary. Liz had surpassed herself. Every woman he had penetrated in Stroud had taken up her offer of a free private consultation with Dr Elizabeth Cavella. He wondered if any would dare refuse the treatment Liz prescribed: three courses of sugar pills discreetly posted on receipt of check.
     Today he had to go to the Carvery for lunch. He'd be back on duty soon and he needed to be at least thirty-five pounds overweight for the Taunton diet circuit. The thought of eating made his gorge rise, but he'd force down the garlic bread, roast chicken and New York Cheesecake. He used as much imagination on meals as he did on women. As he ate fried food, he imagined fresh sardines, charred over a fire on a Spanish beach. In his imagination the rich sauces became piquant olives, and the creamy, sugared coffee turned to sharp wine from an Algarve vineyard.

*

Claire Henderson was a nervous eater. Since discovering Matthew might have given her the almighty hellish clap, she'd put on six pounds. That was the first thing she said.
     Liz sighed before speaking. Far too many of them were like this. Didn't they understand the severity of their plight?
     'If you have contracted syphilis you need not worry about your weight. Before it kills you, the disease will reduce you to a bald-headed stick.'

<  6  >

     Henderson, whom Matt had nicknamed The Stroud Sow, had gone a vile shade of dirty white. Her skin was exactly the color of a peeled banana, but much less appetizing.
     Liz had a special seat for the women. They must be properly cowed and humiliated to be convinced to hand over money on a regular basis and the seat was a major instrument of their suffering. An old birthing chair, patented in the 1950s, it had levers and cogs to realign her victims. They sat down as fat women, and she turned them into vast mounds of supine blubber. The ultimate refinement of this nastiness was the way the women were reflected back to themselves in the chair's chrome surfaces and levers. She polished it herself and transported it in a van Matthew drove. Few women survived the chair with self-esteem intact.
     Once the Stroud Sow was installed, Liz pulled on surgical gloves and resumed her patter. In the back of her head she could hear dear JosÈ singing 'Some Enchanted Evening'. The Sow might wish it was 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair' but a simple rinse and run wasn't going to work for her - she was about to invest in a high maintenance regime.
     'Of course, you're very lucky to have caught me. In a month's time I'm closing my private practice. I shall be running a fascinating research program for a pharmaceutical company - it will take up all my time. I shall support any clients already on my books but I shall not take on any new ones. Now ...'
     She poked vaguely at the Sow's nethers with a wooden tongue depressor. Then with great care and ceremony she placed the instrument in a clear bag, labeled it, and stripped off the gloves. Only then did she return the victim to an upright position.
     'We should have results within a week, or - if you wish to pay for premium service - I can have the analysis completed by six this evening. Rapid analysis costs seventy pounds for the lab and my courier costs are another hundred, so adding in my time to call you at home tonight ... let's say £200?'

<  7  >

     The Sow, weeping, handed over £200. Liz laid out the programme.
     'If you should be unfortunate enough to have contracted the disease, you have two choices. You may go to your own doctor and request treatment or ...,' in the long pause, the victim's frightened eyes welled again with salty terror. 'I can prescribe it for you privately, and confidentially.' The Sow's gusty sigh of relief rattled papers on the desk. Liz continued inexorably.
     'Some cases clear in twelve weeks, more intransigent ones can require twenty-four or even thirty-six weeks of treatment. Each treatment regime will cost you £500 and is supplied by mail. At the end of a course of treatment I will send you a small kit to use and return, to see if we have succeeded in eradicating the disease. Each kit costs £500.'
     Here she paused. The Sow nodded so vigorously several of her chins began random Brownian motion, shivering sideways or galumphing up and down at eccentric angles. Liz frowned and continued.
     'Today's consultation has been paid for by Mr. Helme. He wishes me to convey his sincere regret for any distress caused to you. Is there anybody with whom you have had sexual contact since then?
     It was a hundred to one against, of course, but every so often one of these behemoths had been inspired by Matt's attentions to trap another man. It was easy to double the income from one appointment by arranging to 'examine' the poor fool. The patient shook her head dolefully. That was no surprise, generally if they were fat, they were also stupid, gullible and naïve. They were scared to consult their own doctors and they had too little life experience to see they were being gulled. Normal people, non-fat people, would never fall for this kind of thing. She knew it served them right.
     'Good,' said Liz, 'then we don't have to notify anybody else. If you'd like to rearrange your clothing I'll ring the laboratory on my mobile and organize a priority analysis.'

<  8  >

     Once outside, Liz inhaled the wet Stroud air greedily. She would give the pig-woman long enough to poke through the papers on her desk. If the Sow was inquisitive, she would be reassured by a letter asking Dr Liz to sit on a Royal Commission, tickets for the Ballet, a receipt for the annual servicing of a Porsche. All forgeries, of course. Liz was good at this. She knew how to cover her back. Even if one of the women had second thoughts, she would remember Dr Cavella had already left general practice to administer research, so there would be no obvious way to check up on her credentials.
     She texted a quick message to Matt, reminding him to buy sun-cream for their Algarve trip. She'd missed a call while she was dealing with the Sow, but when she hit the replay button there was nothing but a strange underwater sighing, like whale song. She deleted it.

*

Matt stared dolefully at his chicken. It reminded him of the ruched hips of a big woman with poor circulation. The kind of woman he knew only too well. The cheesecake was pale and flat, like a face with features smoothed by excess weight. Raisins took the place of small eyes, glinting with hurt and shock. For the first time, he failed to finish his dessert. He looked at the cheeseboard: crumbly pale slabs, rich golden mounds, sheeny acres of pallid soft calories, like the spread limbs of victims. He stumbled from the restaurant without leaving a tip.

*

The Sow was sent off, lumbering and fearful. Liz turned to lunch. She lifted a vacuum flask of bouillon from her bag and opened the fridge to extract a box labeled 'medical supplies - refrigerate'. From it she took a bag of pre-packed salad.
     As she sipped her soup she studied the hand holding her spoon. Wrist-bones showed elegantly through amber skin that diet and sun kept lean and glowing. Matt called her his 'gazelle'. She'd never been fat, not even plump, even though for a while she'd seen a fat woman in the mirror. She despised people who had blubber, except for sweet Matt of course, when he was bulked up for work. She knew he worried about the drastic weight swings their scheme required, but she'd said dieting had never done her any real harm, which reassured him.

<  9  >

     Idly she flicked up the laptop screen, wondering if he'd emailed her. It didn't look like it. But he had installed a new desktop image. Sweet boy. It was of marble or perhaps ice. Something blue-white and chilly anyway. The draperies of a Greek statue? Wind-sculpted snow in the Arctic? She shivered, peered closer. She saw a blue hollow like ... a navel? Diagonal lavender shadows were folds of white fabric drawn across a body. It was a close-up of the disgusting female she'd seen in the earlier e-mail. It must have contained a virus that had invaded her machine. How ghastly.
     She slammed the laptop shut. Suddenly she didn't feel hungry. She'd make up a few treatment packs to post out and then have some salad - she didn't want to get too thin. She was in control of her food, of course, it didn't control her anymore. No, she'd learned that lesson. It was understandable that she'd lost her appetite when she saw that grotesque monster, that hideous creature, on her computer screen. Involuntarily her eyes turned to the closed laptop and she shivered again. First work - then lunch. She was managing her diet, she would eat; she wasn't making excuses to skip a meal. She didn't do that anymore.

*

Matthew felt fat. Gravity pulled his six course meal down, and his heart with it. He was soundly, roundly, utterly, depressed. He sat in the car for a while, trying to summon the energy to drive. Big lunches always did this, drained his vitality and left him prostrate with melancholy. Eventually he turned the key, wishing Liz would hurry up and think of another way to make money.

*

Liz looked at the neat pile of padded brown envelopes - discreet and lucrative. She wondered how much longer Matt could play his role. One of the women hadn't followed up on her last test kit by placing a new order ... odd. Liz flicked through the address labels, unwilling to open the laptop and look at the spreadsheet of names there. It was Cynthia Edwards, first course completed two weeks ago, kit used and returned to the PO Box that Liz maintained for just this purpose. Liz had sent out the standard letter, saying Miss Edwards wasn't yet clear of disease but a new treatment would probably 'resolve the situation'. No reply. Which one was Edwards? Oh yes, the Grantham Gargantua. Probably the biggest woman Liz had ever seen. The chair had creaked and groaned under her weight like a foundering ship. Rich too. It would be a shame if she didn't pay for a new course of treatment. Something else about the Edwards woman nagged at her mind. Manacles. That was it. When Matt got to the huge woman's huge house he'd found a pair of handcuffs hanging over the front door. He'd wondered what he was getting into - but it turned out handcuffs were the woman's logo, meant to show how businesses were manacled to the big software companies. Edwards had described herself to Matt as the key that unlocked the cuffs of business. She'd said she hated the way people were tricked into paying for things they didn't need and couldn't use, just because technology moved so fast.

<  10  >

     Her phone beeped, probably Matt ringing to tell her what he'd had for lunch. She grabbed it. The same sound again ... eerie sighing, long bubbling ripples like waves on a beach. It must be a fault. She looked at the screen and saw an image forming with portentous slowness. Maybe it was an advertisement. Scuba-diving? Tropical holidays? A beach holiday would be fun - they could skip Spain this time and go to the Caribbean. The image resolved into a pallid arm, pale as marble, monumental, powerful. It flexed and turned as though reaching for something. It dripped water. The huge wet hand plunged out of the screen, fingers spread wide ....
     Liz felt her throat constrict. A vast power squeezed her airways shut. Scooting backwards on her wheeled chair, she tried to escape the pressure on her throat. Her hands fluttered around her neck, the bird-like bones no match for the strength that held her. Terror congested her face and panicked her heart into surges and troughs. By degrees she quieted until she sat still, eyes wide and dark, staring at nothing. Her hands fell to her sides, shaping a gentle composition of loss. Even in death she was elegant.

*

Matt felt a bump. Had he run over something? Surely he'd have seen it though. He glanced in the mirror. Nothing in the road. Another bump: harder. Was something trapped beneath the car? A third bump, this time a bang on the grille so violent it made the steering wheel shudder. He thought he saw a vague white shape. He shook his head hard. Too much food had made him slow. He needed to pull over and work out what had happened.
     The next blow struck the car from behind, so it jumped forward, kangarooing along the road. In the rear-view mirror Matt could see a huge dent in the boot. He struggled to regain control, but the vehicle jounced along as though pummeled by a giant fist. Fenders crumpled and dints the size of footballs appeared in the bonnet and wings. Within seconds the car had banged off the road and embedded itself in a grove of trees. The airbag inflated and deflated, but Matt was past saving. His neck had snapped and his head hung at an obscene angle, eyes gazing sadly down at his well-nourished frame.

<  11  >

*

'Sarge, you remember that Edwards woman?' W.P.C. Carter asked.     'It'll be a cold day in Hell before I forget her,' said the Desk Sergeant. 'The nastiest suicide I've ever seen. What kind of person handcuffs themselves to the steps at the deep end of their own swimming pool?'
     'A rich person?' quipped Carter before returning to her task. 'Anyway, there's a report here that relates to her. Except ...'
     'Except what? Don't start what you can't finish, and that includes sentences.' The Sergeant had an aphorism for every situation.
     'Well ... you know that vehicular death I queried? The man who'd driven his Volvo into a wood? The reason I asked for details was the trace evidence suggested he'd hit somebody. No victim was found, but Scene of Crime Officer reported it was a person wearing a cotton garment impregnated with chlorine. They found blood, pool-water, and clothing scraps adhering to the car.'
     'Did they really?' The Sergeant paused for a second, shook his head, and carried on filling in the Day Book.
     'The Edwards woman had cuts on her legs and hands, remember? When we queried them, the pathologist said they were 'inconclusive'. They must have happened post mortem, because they hadn't bled, but there was no evidence of anything in the pool that could have caused them.' W.P.C. Carter wasn't sure where she was going with this conversation. She didn't like anything about it. The Edwards suicide had been a grim business.
     They'd been called to the house by a hysterical cleaning woman. Cynthia Edwards had climbed into her pool, cuffed herself to the steps and sat down to die. She'd been a big woman, huge in fact. They'd had to drain the pool to get her out. There was no obvious reason for her to have killed herself. She was rich and solvent, and apparently she'd seemed happy enough recently. Her business as an internet technology consultant was lucrative enough for her purchase a substantial mansion on the outskirts of town. Until around three months ago she'd even been a member of some diet club. She'd recently visited a Harley Street clinic, which refused to disclose anything - except to say the health concern which had brought her to them was a false alarm. She had not been unwell and was not suffering any disease that could have triggered a death-wish.

<  12  >

     The immense bulk of her, sitting implacable and pale, under the lucent water had haunted the officers called to the scene. There was something horribly powerful about her, even in death. Something stubborn and forceful projected from her, and surrounded the scene with a tangible, threatening misery. Worse than all of it was Kylie in the background, warbling 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky ....' You had to be irredeemably sick in the head to commit suicide to the sound of Kylie Minogue.
     'So - the way I see it, Sarge - we've got a car that drove off the road after hitting somebody wearing cotton clothing and dripping pool water and we've got a dead woman in a pool wearing a torn cotton robe, with lots of cuts and grazes. Doesn't that sound odd to you? The only problem is, we found Cynthia Edwards dead, about ... um ... two days before the crash.'
     'W.P.C. Carter, if I were you, I'd keep my wilder imaginations to myself.' The Sergeant moved closer though, to peer over her shoulder at the fax. 'What's that then? That's not a hit and run report.'
     'No, it's not. It's a murder. Elizabeth Cavella; the wife of the man who died in the car crash. She was found strangled in her office earlier today. The analysis of the fingerprints on her neck shows the killer was very large and covered in chlorine.'
     'Odd,' said the Sergeant.
     'Mmm, something else too,' Carter shivered. 'The same music playing at all the scenes: the swimming pool, the car stereo and the laptop - all belting out Kylie Minogue, singing 'I Should Be So Lucky'.

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