Whisky Night
by Rob McInroy
SINGLE CHARACTER
At seven in the morning on the Monday after the old man’s death Ash Harker cycled to the Colony. The old man had snared the lower fields, probably on the Friday morning. Half a dozen rabbits were stiff with rigor mortis, eyes gone, flesh ripped by crows. A couple were already maggoted. The American girl released them and threw them into a ditch and picked up the snares. Four rabbits were still fresh, one alive. She despatched it and gutted them all and piled them into her bag.
She proceeded methodically, trying to free her mind of thought. It didn’t work. She kept seeing how the old man would have done it, the deft way he could gut a rabbit with a couple of flicks of the knife and a single delve with his hand, the ease with which he could pull a snare from the ground. She tried not to think about his death. How much did he know? Did he feel the flames on his body? Did he suffer? The moment – her vision of the moment – kept replaying itself in her mind. Anyone who reckons time is a once-only event knows jack-shit, she thought. Some moments never end, eternal recurrence as long as there’s someone to remember, to care. The smoke would have left him unconscious, she argued. Stands to reason. Be reassured. But the visions she had were never like that and she would not be reassured. Not knowing the truth was like a pain in her heart. What did he do? What did he think?
Did he think about me? She knew the question was impertinent, a vanity, unworthy of her or of him. To measure a life in relation to your own was cheap. The thought, though, could not be erased.