Torch Song

(Fair warning - this is not a nice story, and it gets a bit sweary and gory in its bitterness.)

Torch Song

by Iain Lowson

She meets them at the door. Her friends. Her neighbours. She waits a moment each time before opening the door, spending that time quickly straightening her hair, smoothing down her clothes. She fixes her smile in the mirror, then opens up. The last of them are here, stepping in from the growing dark of the balmy late summer evening.

“Miriam. Dear.” Mrs Pembroke sounds as sincere as her brittle voice can ever manage, forced out as it is through a lipstick-smeared sphincter. “We’re so pleased you invited us. Aren’t we Derek?” Her husband barely looks up from staring at the floor, his eyes making it as far as Miriam’s breasts before the shame of his pathetic existence drives them down to the floor again. Still, the visions now in his head make him smirk. His wife has kept talking, but he’s beyond listening these past decades.

“Deirdre” Miriam manages. The animated corpse, its sun bed skin the shade of shat-out orange peel, passes Miriam a Tupperware sacrifice. Miriam remembers her lines. “Oh, you are so kind. Do let me take your coats. The others are on the patio.” She keeps the bile down as Deirdre peels off her designer wrappings to reveal a neckline that thrusts two domes of the only smooth skin left on her shrivelled frame into prominence. Mr Pembroke’s coat feels moist. They creak off down the magnolia hall.

Miriam watches them go, her smile fixed. Once they are out of sight, she pushes open the door to the cloakroom. Without looking, she throws the coats in. She cracks the Tupperware seal, peeling back the lid, flicking the whole lot into the little room. The pustulant guacamole spatters the walls and scattered clothing. It mingles with the confections, savouries and preserves. Deirdre doesn’t bother to close the door to hide the offence. It no longer matters.

She locks the front door, dropping the key into her back pocket. Miriam is keenly aware of it, the metal loop off-centre, prodding her flesh. She likes that she can feel that, instead of the residue from the twice ‘accidental’ contact of Brian Desmond’s pasty-pale and puffy hand while she stocked the buffet tables out on the patio.

In the dining room, she collects the paper-bound cylinder of the flare. She sees that Deirdre and her preposterous tits are the centre of attention, with people rising from their fold-down chairs to greet them and their bearer. Miriam had relied on Deirdre’s flare for the dramatic, knowing the shrivelled wretch would have watched from her window to ensure all of the usual set had arrived before waiting another five minutes and making her entrance. The twisted theatre of it all allows Miriam to slip through the French windows, slide them shut and lock them. Two keys now combat the outrage of Brian’s touch.

Miriam barely hears the comments as she walks to the edge of the patio.

“…does she think she’s wearing…?”

“…must’ve overfilled the patio heaters. Typical. That’s a man’s job…”

“…short to keep the moss from growing…”

“…left her, you know. Not great surprise…”

“…nice arse…”

“…I would…”

…canapés are shop bought, of course…”

She stands at the front, just on the grass. She hadn’t bother cutting it, enjoying the looks of near-pain on the faces of the pointless bastards she’d gathered there. She stands, smiling genuinely for the first time. One by one they stop talking, their words trickling to a stop like an incontinent’s piss. Miriam is holding the flare. She grins broadly, unwrapping the cord and tugging on it, hard. The red-orange flame hisses up, the most startling and beautiful thing. The assembled corpses stare at it, gasping, transfixed. As she slowly half-kneels, Miriam gently moves the torch side to side. The hypnotised creatures watch it, slacked jawed. Miriam’s hand finds the trigger grip of the hose. She stands again just as Deirdre snaps the moment in half.

“Woman’s unhinged” the crone mutters. There’s some scattered chuckling, and the talking resumes.

Miriam had filled the long, long hose with petrol that afternoon. She lets Deirdre have the benefit of it first, before quickly spraying the others. They fall back from her with a few shouted protests and shrill cries. Too reserved, to proper to be able to contemplate laying hands on Miriam, the guests pack together like terrified rodents, squealing in indignant terror, clawing at the locked escape route. Deirdre is standing still, her horror at being so violated rendering her immobile.

Miriam stares at them, eyes wide, teeth bared. She lets them hear her hatred.

“Useless cunts!” Miriam screams. She throws the torch amongst them, quickly dropping the hose, now spraying just water, to pick up instead the large knife she left lying at the edge of the unkempt grass.

The great blast of heat washes over her, flames igniting her hair and one arm of her blouse. Miriam is blind in one eye now, drooling from the pain as she grins in ecstasy at the shrieks. The patio heaters pop and flare as their fuel ignites. She has enough vision left to see that Deirdre is standing still, burning like a screaming stick effigy.

Someone tries to stagger past Miriam, blackened and burning. She slashes out, the keen blade paring crispy flesh from passing shoulder.

Someone else finds the pond doesn’t have water in it anymore, and the reasonably priced fence beside it catches fire as a result.

Miriam drops to her knees. She idly throws her knife at a twitching corpse, unrecognisable, hissing fat spitting through crackling skin. Miriam is laughing.

“Best… fucking barbecue… fucking ever!”

Giggling, she tumbles over onto the grass and is still, then quieter, then silent.

Delicious-smelling smoke obscures the stars she could never see through streetlights’ glare.