For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

Her eyes bulged from their sockets. Veins swelled in her head and neck. The rope gouged deeper. The bricks of the walls swam around her as the glaring light of the fluorescent strips began to fade. The beam buckled again.

How dare he.

Vaguely, she felt the overturned chair against the tips of her feet as the cellar closed in, light giving way to darkness. She closed her eyes.

Damn him.

The starved rope’s teeth sunk deeper.

Damn Rye.

Suddenly, from the darkness of her dying mind, it dawned on her. It emerged from the black and hit her like that fist all those years ago, except this was different. All the horrors of her life shrank before it, cowering from its terrible totality. It was the final key to the last door of her subconscious. It was the one simple, absolute truth. One and only one.

Rye had to suffer.

Her eyes shot open.

She tore at the rope, not in an automatic effort of self-preservation, but in a battle of pure, crystallised purpose. Her toes fought to balance on the overturned chair, a grotesque ballet dance. A hint of ghostly blue fell over her face as her neck crushed, but still she clung to consciousness like fingers on a cliff edge.

One truth: Rye had to suffer.

…one truth…

Suddenly, her hand left the rope and dived into her coat pocket.

One…

She fumbled desperately.

…truth.

She switched pockets.

One truth…

Deeper, deeper her hand plunged.

…ours.

Her fingers met brass, the Zippo’s engraving vaguely familiar under her touch.

Thank you, Quentin.

She pulled the engraved lighter from her pocket and flipped it open, every twitching, aching muscle begging for unconsciousness. Like a driver falling asleep at the wheel, her mind battled her body’s demands. The lifelong victim within shrank to nothing as something else rose, something invigorated, something with no interest in dying this day.

Something vengeful.

Again and again she flicked the flint until a flame finally sparked into life. She held it to the rope above as she battled to keep her toes on the chair. Her body began submitting to the noose. The warmth of letting go rose within her. Gravity hugged her arm and pulled.

Still she held up the lighter.

Through fading vision Renata watched the burning rope in the distance, strings of black smoke rising from the small flame. Her head slumped forward. Her drowning awareness bobbed up and down on the surface of her failing consciousness, struggling to stay afloat in the blackening abyss. She had work to do, she couldn’t die, not now, not like this, she had work to—

Her arms fell. She lost the chair. The lighter clapped against the concrete thousands of miles away.

The rope snapped.

Thank you, Quentin.

The floor flew towards her, the thousand-mile distance closing in an instant. She didn’t register the impact, only the tidal wave of air crashing through her throat as the noose loosened. Her windpipe exploded open. With tingling fingers she removed the rope. Light poured in as she devoured the cold air. She reached for the lighter by her side and turned its engraving to face her.

One truth: ours. Thank you, Quentin.

Her scream filled the cellar as she threw the Zippo across the chamber. She fell onto her back and stared at the ceiling as her ruined hospital gown inflated and deflated like a balloon over her gasping chest. Inflated and deflated, inflated and—

A shape fluttered past the severed rope, circling it twice before scrambling across the ceiling to the far end of the narrow space. The feeling of realignment with her body’s respiratory processes was euphoric. She felt the overcompensation of blood in her head return to her extremities and watched her world fall into focus, and with it the fluttering moth. The frantic insect descended from the ceiling towards the desk from which she’d dragged the chair. It landed on the dirty sheet and strutted along the covering. Renata watched, suddenly realising something lay beneath.

She steadied her breathing then struggled to her knees, before crawling to the desk and hauling herself up. The moth froze in cautious observation then fluttered away. She pulled the sheet from the desk, coughing at the dust. Her throat settled. She opened her eyes. On the desk lay her mother’s typewriter.

Renata’s only recollection of the machine was when she found her mother pecking at the keys in the empty lounge in the dead of night. It soon disappeared forever, apparently relegated to the same purgatory as her collection of romance novels. Here it had been all along, waiting to be discovered.

It was of a similar design to her own, a solid metal brute with functionality modelled after the IBM Selectrics of the sixties and seventies, interchangeable typing elements allowing for emboldened or italicised type, amongst others. Renata’s eyes moved up the keys to the carriage, where a single, aged sheet remained loaded. Her eyes pulled the print into focus:

I know these words will never reach you, Rennie. I write this in a cellar I didn’t know existed until a few days ago. Your father’s upstairs, finally in the throes of infirmity. He requires constant care now. I’ve been forbidden to contact you and I know I won’t, no matter how badly I want to.

I wish I could tell you how sorry I am. You deserved so much better. What happened wasn’t your fault – this is still your home, and we’re still your family. You once promised that you’d be there for your father if anything happened to me. As I get older, as I approach the end of my life, I find myself praying every day that you don’t remember that promise.

I’ve been told it’s best to leave you alone, and I think I believe that. You’ve found peace away from the truth. I pray you never come back here, and that your peace remains.