STORY: ‘Closure’

When she heard about it on the news the next day they were calling it a murder-suicide but it soon became a murder in search of a suicide.

And she knew where to find it, even if the police didn’t.

Bang, bang, bang.

First she fed the animals. Canned meat for the cats and dogs, seed for the birds, scraps for the chooks. Leaving the bowls on the back step, she wiped her hands on her apron and shuffled across the yard to the shed.

His shed.

The door opened with a squeak, a tell-tale squeak. The smell of dead grass and petrol wafted out, and she stepped inside, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light.

He was stretched out on two empty canvas bags behind an upturned wheelbarrow, the rifle beside him. Stocky, sunburnt and asleep.

She banged hard on the barrow and he woke slowly, turning to look up at her with wide brown eyes. For a second she thought he looked familiar.

‘You going to use that thing?’ she said.

He sat up and saw the gun. Reaching out, he touched the stock, the touch becoming a caress.

‘Where are the cops?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Where they’ve always been.’

‘You gonna call them?’

‘This is between you and the girl.’

His body sagged and his head fell forward. When he looked up, though, his face was stiff. ‘Got any food?’

She gave her hands another wipe on her apron and said, ‘I’ve already fed the animals.’

His nostrils flared and the rifle was up in an instant.

She stared at him over the barrel. ‘Like I said, are you going to use that thing?’

His breathing slowed in the silence. Then, reversing the rifle in his hands, he held it out to her, stock-first.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘you take it.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s yours. Always has been, always will be.’

She turned and walked to the door.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he shouted after her, ‘just call the fucking cops.’

The door was half-closed when her dogs squeezed through. ‘Out,’ she screeched, but it was too late.

Bang, bang – and, after a pause and a whimper – the bang that closed the case.

 

(Image from gwens-nest.com)