Curse
Ihave to move with Messina’s body before the sun rises.Reluctantly, I let Aurora go.She looks so peaceful, asleep like this.It makes me ache.
I don’t want to leave her yet.I want to keep my body around hers forever.Seal myself to her like a second skin.
And in a more practical sense, I need to sleep.I haven’t done so yet, and the grueling activities post-injury are starting to catch up with me.I feel somewhere between drunkenness and the sensation of opioid withdrawal.When I move, things slur around me.
My leg hurts, too, much more now that I’ve been still in the bed with her for so long.I grit my teeth, sweating as I put weight on it.I’m still fairly sure there’s nothing broken in there, but I think there’s got to be some serious soft tissue damage, or maybe a bone bruise.
I’ll deal with my own fucking body after I deal with Messina’s.
When I return outside, it becomes clear very quickly that I won’t be able to pull him off the fence.The iron fence posts are shaped like long arrows at the top.It’s impossible to try to shove his body back up the posts and off the fence.He’s too heavy, and my leg gives out when I try.
That’s fine.I’ve never turned down the chance to chop somebody up.
I just hope Aurora doesn’t wake up and see me doing it.She may feel better knowing the last Messina male is dead.But I somehow doubt she’ll appreciate actually watching me dismember his body on the fucking lawn.
Inside the house, I find the tools that I need – varying knives meant for butchering meat, as well as large plastic garbage bags in the kitchen.Then, I get to work, taking Messina apart.Once most of him is in the two bags, and he’s nothing but a limbless, headless torso on the fence, I can more easily widen the holes punctured by the fenceposts and remove him.
There’s blood all over the grass.I can’t do anything about that right now.But I can at least clean the fence posts, which I do, meticulously.
By the time I’m finished, the sun is rising, casting warm light over the Sicilian landscape, turning every blade of grass to gold, Messina’s blood the colour of wine.There are birds chirping in the trees, and there’s another sound now.Footsteps, and a wheezy voice humming a tune that sounds familiar.Like maybe I heard someone else sing it in Sicily more than twenty years ago.
The sounds come from an old man in the church graveyard.He seems to be occupied with pulling weeds out from around the headstones.I don’t think he’s a priest.A gardener, maybe?
A gardener would have a shovel.
Not even bothering to stow the bags full of Messina out of sight, I stride down the hill, then up the one that leads to the church.When the man’s eyes bulge at the sight of me, I realize I haven’t washed my hands.Or face.Or clothes.And I am completely covered in blood.
Oh well.Too late to bother lying now.And I’m too fucking exhausted to, anyway.
“I need a shovel,” I tell him bluntly, in Italian.“I have a body to bury.”
The old man startles, his eyes flying to the house behind me.
“The girl?”he asks, his face torched with worry.
“No,” I respond immediately, because that thought is so abhorrent to me that I have to extinguish it at once.“The man.”
His expression relaxes, though only slightly.He’s pale beneath his tan.He scrubs a hand across his eyes.
“I need a shovel,” I tell him again.“I will pay you for the use of it.And pay you more to never tell anyone about this.But if that is not acceptable to you, then know that I will get what I need from you anyway.And know that I have absolutely no qualms about putting two bodies in that hole if I have to.”
He lowers his hand from his face, then makes the sign of the cross on his chest, then turns away.I’m just wondering if he’s going to try to run when he returns with a shovel.
“I’ve always hated the Messinas,” he says, handing it to me.
He makes himself scarce while I do the actual digging, hiding in the church.Maybe praying for forgiveness.I don’t really give a fuck.All I care about is getting this done before Aurora wakes up.
It takes a stupidly long time to dig the hole, especially with my fucked-up head and leg.By the time it’s finished, I’m absolutely drenched in sweat under the morning sun.I drag myself back to the house, and then drag myself plus Messina back to the graveyard.I dump the bags in, then cover it all over with the dirt.
I’m about to leave, about to go clean up, then return to her, when I see it.Carlo Messina’s name on a big, shiny headstone.And suddenly I’m fucking digging again, agony and exhaustion all but forgotten.The shovel bites into the earth of Carlo Messina’s grave, dirt flying.
I’m going to find him.I’m going to break every bone that’s left.
Something beyond rage drives me now, manic, terrible.When I get to the lid of the coffin, I’m no longer digging at all, but swinging the shovel like a sledgehammer and screaming.
That’s how Aurora finds me.Nearly insensible, hacking at the coffin.
