Twist

Twist

Claire gunned the car up the hill, the road ahead gleaming in the moonlight, relieved to get away from Dave. She had sat there, seething, as he emptied most of a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen of their holiday cabin.

‘Couldn’t help it, Claire. I fell in love.’

His eyes were luminous with alcohol and regret. Claire had been gratified to see little wrinkles of irritation on her husband’s face, a sign the gloss was already coming off his mid-life office romance. He was most unattractive when he got drunk. Usually she would haul his slight form up to bed, but this time she had left him slumped on the table.

Typical of her clueless mate to apologise for the impending catastrophe of Alice, while offering no solutions. He was a sucker for short-termism, and sex with his rather dull secretary—sweeping papers off his desk and fucking her on top of it—had no doubt been exciting, but imagine the sticky mess. Had he used wet wipes on the desk afterwards? Probably not. Dave never was one for clearing up after himself. Claire wanted to slap that little tramp Alice, but most of all, she wanted to wring Dave’s stupid neck. Stupid fucking Dave. The divorce would be ruinous. Sorry, my ass, thought Claire as she turned the corner and gravel spat upwards.

The glint of an eye and a light brown shape arced from the side of the road and collided with the bumper. Thump. Claire slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt. She’d hit an animal, but what? A deer, most likely. This remote road saw little traffic, so the wild creatures were clueless about cars. She cautiously reversed back until she saw the humped form lying on the tarmac. She got out of the car a little unsteadily and walked over to the animal. A deer, front legs clearly broken, unable to move. Claire flopped down on the road beside it, wondering what to do. At that moment, the moon came out, and she stared into a limpid eye. It was like staring into a brown pool of water.

‘Hush now,’ she said, touching the rough cheek with her forefinger. Then she moved closer and took the warm head onto her lap, cradling it.

‘Are you in pain? You probably are, but in shock, too. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t see you coming.’

She hadn’t seen Alice coming, either. Dave was a right dope, and they both knew it. Couldn’t keep it in his pants, the silly goose. His Ivy League colleagues would look askance at that smug bitch Alice arriving in her fucking fur coat to the law firm’s next Christmas party. They would smile knowingly behind his back. He would be just another one of those sad middle-aged men who fell for his secretary. Alice was no babe. Not hot at all, and quite dim. Claire was now sorry for poor old Dave. Yes, perhaps that was what the counselor called a resolution.

The deer flinched and tried to get up, then stopped and panted. A trickle of blood came from its nose. Oh God, it was injured inside, too. And it smelt, a musty animal smell, feral, probably had fleas. They all did. She turned to the side and vomited onto the gravel, gagging as the puke spurted out.

Dave had gone hunting on a corporate weekend and arrived back at the cabin with a dead deer. She had helped him carry it to the worktable in the garage. Dave had been strangely excited, his pasty city face wobbling with horrified glee. He had said it had been easy to finish the deer off after the shot that had dropped it—just a painless flick to the neck. So easy, and very humane. He had set to work and chopped away for a few hours, cleaned up the gore afterwards pretty well. Afterwards, they had a freezer full of high-quality lean meat—waste not, want not.

‘Can I save you?’ Claire asked the deer, but there was no reply. ‘Probably not. I should put you out of your misery.’

Claire could not imagine eating this deer. Not at all. This deer was special. But even special things get all used up. Served up on a plate, the life gone out of them. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of this. Claire wept for the poor deer, and also for the English country girl who had fallen in love with a dorky, sweet mathematics exchange student at Oxford University, married in white, looked forward to keeping a home and combining a part-time job with raising some children, although those children had never come. She shed tears for all those years when they had lived amicably. Claire wanted those familiar things. The stairs, she loved that way they meandered up the four floors of their townhouse, family pictures lined along the walls, carefully selected ornamental tables on each floor. She wanted to go home, but that was impossible for Dave had already left, and the townhouse and the cabin would be sold as part of the settlement. Her home would be slaughtered in divorce court, sliced and diced up, and given to someone else to consume.

Damn, damn, damn.

Something had to be done about this…situation. Claire ran her hand tentatively down the back of the animal and felt the knobs of its backbone, counting them like stairs, one, two three. When Dave had cut up his kill, he had insisted on using all of it. Nose to tail. Even the bones were ground into bone meal to use on the roses; Claire had helped with that part (and had also provided sustaining sandwiches and cold beer throughoutof how), surprised at how interesting it had been to hack the bones with a small axe into pieces small enough to poke into the grinder. Four, five, six. The roses had done so well. Their sex life had improved, too. That deer was perhaps their most successful collaboration. Seven eight nine…

‘It’s the way of things. Life gets all get broken up, and then something new is born,’ said Claire to no one in particular.

With the tips of her fingers, she continued up the line of bristles to the animal’s slim neck. Seven, eight, nine. Just here. An idea emerged, something simple, yet awful. Claire could go back to the cabin, put her hands around Dave’s neck, and twist. There would be a small crunch. She imagined dragging Dave out of the living room into the garage and methodically dressing his corpse. With a bit of help from Google and her experience of over 30 years of preparing a Sunday roast for that ungrateful son of a bitch, the rest would be easy. By morning, Claire would be long gone, the garage carefully cleaned, and no trace left, apart from several parcels of ‘venison’ buried in the bottom of the freezer. She could fake a note from Dave explaining his departure, plant a few clues that implicate Alice. But first, she would practice the twist. Claire patted her co-conspirator, the panting deer.

Nah, that was all just ridiculous, the kind of thing that happened in cheap crime novels. In a corner of her brain, Claire was aware that she was dragging the corpse of her dreams around like a soiled security blanket. A small voice whispered that it was time to move on. Not a very loud voice at all, and clearly not used to being heard. A young, inexperienced voice, neither strong nor substantial. It sounded like the younger Claire who had happily followed her heart. And yet here she was, a middle-aged cast off with a half-dead, flea-ridden deer for company. As she sat, the silence was broken by a rustle or two from the undergrowth. Small, live things were scurrying there. Life, a web of separate dramas and secret disappointments, would carry on.

‘Shh,’ she said, and patted the deer’s warm neck. ‘I’m going to fix this.’

Claire got up with some difficulty and went back to her car. Keep things simple, nothing dramatic, no cutting up of corpses or filling freezers, or laying the blame on Alice, that was all just stupid. Only one thing mattered; the twist. After that, everything would fall into place. She rummaged around the glove compartment, pulled out her purse and flipped open the mirror, which had a handy internal light for makeup. She assessed the lined, blotchy face, tendrils of dampened blonde hair with darker roots, smudged mascara. She looked perfect: an upset woman that would stay with a pathetic wounded animal. Someone who would creep into her car, pull a rug around herself and fall asleep while waiting for assistance from the first morning traveler down this lonely road. Exactly what her phone and GPS coordinates would confirm. She took the Airtag tracker from its hiding place in the trunk and placed it beside her mobile under a prominent rock. Then she walked back to the waiting animal.

‘Sorry, my love, but this has to be done.’

The deer whined and began to struggle as Claire took a deep breath and wrenched the neck. Crunch, the deer lay still. That was easy—the creature looked so peaceful. She hauled the corpse to the side of the road with ease for it was a bit lighter than her husband. Then Claire got into her car, turned it around, and drove back to sort out poor, dear Dave.