Clover came up the stairs from the bathroom. He could not hear the treads creak, nor the silent step of shoeless, sockless feet. He could smell the floral mixture of her talcum powder. He could see the dappled texture of her skin, here dusted, here damp, the pattern of camouflage. He could see the wet footprints she left across the floorboards of his bedroom. Watched them vanish into air, heel to toe, like will o’ the wisp.
I dreamed it last night
That my dead love came in
So softly she came, that her feet made no din
She laid her hand on me
And this she did say
It will not be long love, till our wedding day.
She stretched out next to him, her lips touching his ear, both hands gripping his upper arm, one leg slipped over his, the foot slowly easing his legs apart, the rough skin on her heel scraping against his thigh and raising goose pimples on his skin. He woke calm and curious. No screams. He could still feel the imagined touch of her dead hand on him. What was it Pritch-Kemp had said? Why does the dead hand grip so? Ripped from its context, pushed into the man’s own field of literary symbols, rather than literal truths, Troy knew exactly why. The demon/dead lover comes back from the dead – to claim you for death. ‘Our wedding day’ was death. Consummation was death. Sex was death. The dead hand gripped simply to remind him of this.
Time for the little yellow friend.