Fridging Women

The gaps that separate every house on Ewe Street from its neighbours are a precise and identical ten strides of borderline-neon lawn. So too is this the case in Mare Street to the right and Gilt Avenue to the left. Each stands a concrete oasis with arms opened wide for whatever middle-class socialite has the nerve to temper feuding gossip without the gall to challenge the yearly Christmas decoration expectations. The sort of beauty to be found along that road is nothing if not meticulous and orderly – those who seek refuge in Ewe Street come to the sweet epiphany that heaven is simple, unchanging, and always bending to the ebbs and flows of Better Homes and Gardens magazine covers.

The suburb lives beneath the blind eye of a painted blonde fondly dubbed ‘Mrs Pritchard’ by the locals. Right before you turn into Ewe Street be sure to pull the car over to admire her lips, from the peeling scarlet paint to the way they curl in awe at how astonishingly easy Pritchard’s debut ketchup brand is to open.

Stop opening the bottles for her! Buy Pritchard’s.

Life under the ever saintly and two-dimensional Mrs Pritchard ought to be idyllic, that’s how she would have it after all, and the near spotless record of that suburb and its collective streets of residents almost fulfills her vision. There’s no doubt that the words ‘near’ and ‘almost’ have snagged your attention. Whilst other collections of tract houses may have the sort of criminal history limited to the odd penny theft or domestic trouble between screenings of I Love Lucy, the underbelly of this particular suburbia runs a little differently.

Notorious, and to be discussed exclusively over hedges as the hose still runs.

It’s the type of fraught past that real estate agents will carefully tiptoe around. Hence why it never came up as Mary Mann toured her future dream home. The Manns, moving across the country from sunny Arizona, had been a Ewe Street seller’s dream.

Besides, the locals were always hopeful that their little traditions were over. Stretches between incidents always ran to a comforting length, and as mimicking crimes echoed further and further outside of their region everyone collectively let their held breaths run free and chose the ignorant bliss of believing the perpetrator had chosen to let go of their potato salad recipe sharing slice of heaven.

But on a Tuesday morning, Mary would find herself not only educated on the matter, but oddly enamoured with it.

As most of her days did, this one began to an in-spite-of-best-intentions kind of start. Mr Mann has disappeared to work, a disappointing lightness to his brown paper bag as Mary had forgotten to buy more green apples yesterday, and she’d tried to take to pre-emptive ironing to feel more accomplished in her duties. Around fifteen minutes later she was stood flushing her burnt ring finger with the coldest water from the tap, kicking herself all the while. It swelled beneath her thin band of gold. If she were smarter, she thought to herself, she would have taken the ring off while she still could.

No. If she were smarter, she wouldn’t have burned herself trying to smooth a shirt.

There was a terrible lull in her days. See, Mary (new to marriage and newer to Ewe Street) always found her early hours whipped through whatever household chores she could think of, and the day only dragged on from there with no friends in town nor hobbies to wheedle her time. She’d tried to take to reading, but she found whatever was ‘all the rage’ from the past decade to be consistently depressing – she found the Orwellian more of a wet blanket than hauntingly thought-provoking, and Mr Mann found this opinion so delightfully amusing he’d patted her head like a child.

“You just don’t understand it,” he promised. Mary took his word for it.

So, she took herself for a walk that Tuesday, wanting to make the most of the vaguely Arizonian sun before it disappeared for sixth months. She was the solar-powered sort, after all. It was then, upon locking her freshly painted door behind her, that Mary caught sight of a vision in pink on just the other side of her front gate.

Lydia Holiday dressed to stand a step behind her husband on inauguration day – she was the predecessor of fashion magazine First Ladies that would come to haunt the later 20th century. When Mary first laid eyes on her, she thought she’d never seen anything quite so striking or memorable as that woman in a pale pink dress. Waist cinched, skirt triangled out, and collar pressed. Despite the short white gloves, Mary was certain this woman hadn’t burned herself ironing that gown.

The woman, not quite old enough to be her mother but certainly late into her forties at least, was stood in front of a lamppost beside the road, chin so slightly tilted and hands folded in front of her as she examined something. Mary likely wouldn’t have approached if she could avoid it, but since her front gate brought her so close to the perfectly tailored enigma she allowed herself to be suckered in.

As she stepped onto the path, Mary could see that the lady was studying a printed poster stuck to the lamppost. ‘Missing Cat: Cleopatra, Won’t Respond When Called.’

“Good morning,” Mary chirped, hovering on the sidewalk. The woman turned her head with a minimal speed that commanded attention. She gave Mary the smallest smile, lifting a single gloved finger to point at the poster.

“Awful, isn’t it?” she said.

“I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

A twist of recognition passed across the woman’s face. “What’s your name?” she asked, every word poised and so slow to escape her there wasn’t a chance she’d ever stutter.

“Mary Mann.”

“Lydia Holiday. How long have you lived here, Mary?”

“A month come Saturday,” she smiled. Lydia returned the action, but hers was far more knowing. Mary followed up with a reminded politeness, “How about you?”

“Long enough to know that cat won’t be turning up. Not how you’re hoping, at least.” Lydia stated this almost comically foreboding sentence with the light-heartedness of a weather compliment.

Mary stared quite blankly, an amused smile twitching at the corner of her lips to completely give away her unsureness over how real that sentence is. “Sorry?” she concedes to ask.

Lydia cleared her throat, the strange grin at her features suggesting she might well enjoy getting to explain this. “Cats don’t last too long around Ewe Street, Mrs Mann. Haven’t done so for around three decades – on account of the throat slitting, likely. But who’s to speak on trends?”

“Sorry?” There was more fervour to this second sorry, and significantly less smile. Mary found Big Brother quite morbid, so she didn’t much take to this passing explanation.

“It’s the entire district, don’t worry,” Lydia assured her, as if that was the concern. “Not just Ewe Street. And there are incidents further and further away, maybe copycats or maybe a response to lack of cat adoption around her as of late, but-“ she taps on Cleopatra’s sweet nose with her fingertip “- seems we’ve returned to our roots, hm?”

“Somebody kills all the local cats?” Mary hesitated, her feet taking a half-shuffle back.

“It’s not too gruesome to find one, don’t worry,” Lydia seemed to misunderstand what would worry a person. “Throats slit and butchered up, but always cleaned and left out neatly on the streets a few days later. Ever meticulous and consistent, I’d applaud him if it weren’t so taboo.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell us that when selling the house?” Mary said, hushed with a dumb shock.

“Because they wanted to sell you the house, dear.” Hm. Fair.

She was a young lady of scrunched noses and a hatred for B-Horror, but Mary was nonetheless of a curious mind. In a post-Arizona world, the Sunday crossword was perhaps her sole friend. “Why would anybody possibly have a cat, if that’s true?”

Lydia’s dark eyes flitted across Mary’s entire being for the first time. “Well,” she said, “I suppose we go so long without any incidents, or the last word of a cat killed is someplace far enough that we think the local perpetrator must have moved, and people get cocky. It’s the American way, is it not? Never back down in the face of adversary. Don’t let those dozens of kitties go out in vain.”

“That feels awfully cruel,” Mary said firmly, surprising herself. “I would never adopt a cat if that were such a risk.”

Lydia smiled again. Perhaps, Mary decided, every smile that woman gave had a natural aura of knowingness. Perhaps she couldn’t help it, or perhaps it was on purpose, to give her a sense of power. “People like to have a cat more than they like the cat,” she said decisively.

There was a long moment’s pause. Mostly because Mary didn’t really know what that meant. She’d have escaped the odd conversation, but she’d been hooked in; this was far more curious than strolling symmetrical concrete streets for an hour. “Why the missing poster, then?” Mary asked eventually, “If they know she isn’t going to be coming back, I mean.”

Lydia pondered this. “Hope, maybe,” was her first answer, which made Mary feel like a dolt for even asking. “Or perhaps they just like to be seen grieving.”

The conversation dwindled a while longer. Mary tried her best not to let her mind pique with such gruesome interest, but with one foot kept outside the realm of quite believing what she’d been told it felt easy to detach. Eventually Lydia excused herself, apparently on her way to an early lunch date, and invited Mary to come visit for an iced tea one afternoon. The very first house on Ewe Street, apparently. She agreed, but very much doubted it would ever happen.

“And Mary,” Lydia called out as her companion walked back into her house (much over her walk idea), “Don’t worry about the cats. I like to think they give him hell until the very last second.”

About three weeks later, Mary Mann found herself proven wrong as she rapped her knuckles against the Holidays’ door.

The night after her conversation with Lydia, she eagerly nattered to her husband all about the cats and the woman by the lamppost. Tall tales, he called it, unaware of the pun. It wasn’t until he went to work the next day and brought it up that Mr Mann came blundering home, furious that nobody had told him. It was a revelation of his own. But they loved their house and the clean cream paint on the door that distinguished it from the rest. So, there wasn’t much to do except not get a cat.

Which was fine with Mary. She’d always found them distasteful.

The problem arose weeks after. She was in the kitchen, scrubbing at the frying pan. The sequence of noises she heard went a little like this: a called-out farewell from her husband, a reminder to pick up the dry cleaning she didn’t pick up yesterday, the click of an opening door, and finally, a horrified “God!”.

On a cloudy Thursday morning, the Manns woke up to find Cleopatra splayed out on their doorstep. Mary would always remember the image quite vividly – in spite of how her stomach churned to see anything like that small body, she couldn’t quite peel her eyes away. Cleopatra was a curious sight. Her throat had been slit and her stomach sliced like a gutted fish, but she seemed to have been cleaned up quite nicely out of respect. The wounds were there, but there was shockingly little blood clotting her off-white fur. She’d been hacked and cleaned. It didn’t look as though any of this had happened suddenly, rather that the body had been kept and preserved on ice like a museum exhibition.

The police were called, seeming more annoyed to have to handle the parade of ‘the cat killer returning’ than actually sympathetic to the Manns, or the family the cat belonged to. Mr Mann mistook Mary’s quiet thoughtfulness for upset, trying to comfort her on the matter.

“I can’t think of anything so downright evil,” he lamented, “Cats, of all creatures, for God’s sake. As sweet and gentle as they come, frankly. Far more placid and loveable than a mutt – I would have had dozens if my mother weren’t so allergic. Always adored them.”

Mary says nothing, but cannot help thinking his idyllic view was unlike any actual feline she’d ever met.

It takes her less than twenty-four hours to go find the very first house on Ewe Street.

Whilst it’s absolutely true that every house looks so wonderfully the same on this street, the Holiday home still managed to be an unrecognisable vortex of regal inside. Books and sculptures and paintings littered every spare nook and cranny of the house. She fell a few steps behind Lydia, taking a few seconds to admire a canvas hung on the corridor wall. A golden-haired man with something like a harp in hand standing at the top of a staircase, looking over his shoulder. A few steps below him, a ghostly woman in a white gown is pulled by her ankle away from him.

Mary looked for as long a moment as she could steal, but their conversation continued as Lydia led her to the living room, where the silver-haired Mr Holiday put his book down upon her arrival. She was given iced tea as promised, but wasted very little time in formalities before confessing the reason for her visit. A respectful moment of solemn nodding passed before she received a reply.

“We did hear,” Mr Holiday muttered, “A terrible welcome to the neighbourhood. I promise that things are typically quite pleasant when there aren’t bodies at the door. Poor thing, it didn’t deserve such a brutal end as that.”

“Why would she have been left at our door though?” Mary pressed, dismissing the ‘tragedy’ of it all.

“Plenty of people have had to find one over the years,” Lydia explained, making every syllable count. “I wouldn’t read too much into it, Mrs Mann. It’s probably just because you’re new.”

When Mr Holiday spoke, he commanded the room. “You cannot try to find reason in all of this, whoever could do such an act has no heart nor logic, I guarantee. You know, Edgar Allan Poe once said that the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world – I’m starting to think a butchered kitten may be a close second.”

“None of them were kittens, darling. Only cats.”

Mr Holiday didn’t seem to take to this correction, shooting his wife a look. Mary took another sip from her glass, thinking it had been too long since her last.

"Lydia is intrepid, Mrs Mann. Sometimes I think she mourns these poor cats so because she's just as evasive and difficult as they are."

Lydia didn't seem to take to this comment, shooting a bitter glare towards her immaculate bookshelf. Mary smiled a sort of smile to take the place of a laugh, because laughing seemed too off-the-fence a move.

"Are you a cat lady, Mary?" Such a placid question came abruptly and with surprising force from Lydia, an expectant expression across her face as she smiled a fraction too wide.

"Only ever dogs as I grew up,” Mary answered. “Never really took to cats... always scratching."

"That's the problem," Mr Holiday proclaimed. It hadn't taken him long to take hold of the conversation once more. "The feline are a commanding sort. Dogs; now dogs will obey a master, love a master. A cat lashes out, slinks off on its own."

"Awful," Lyda agreed. She sat with shoulders rolled back and legs crossed, looking so pristine that Mary is sure she must be mimicking some lady from a renaissance painting. "A cat will tell you exactly how she feels. She purrs until she scratches."

Things patter along. Mary wanted to pick their brains endlessly on the matter, but feared coming across too overly intrigued – or, worse, too pushy. They discussed instead the Holidays, who provide history on one another through sly comments and jabs that made Mary drink far too much iced tea just for an excuse not to say anything.

“Been in the area our entire lives,” Mr Holiday declared proudly, “Well before it got this lavish upgrade. Lydia’s blood runs Ewe Street – but always having to take long drives and weekends off with your parents, aren’t you dear? Can’t handle the gossip and neighbourhood eyes. She very much cares for what people think, Mrs Mann.”

“Would you like to see the rest of the house?” Lydia asked Mary abruptly, who leapt at the chance to leave.

She was taken through a gallery of Greek myths and classic tales captured in various paintings throughout the home. Mary recognised the image of Narcissus immediately, but doesn’t try to prove her knowledge, as she could not name the woman that takes the foreground of the piece. It isn’t until they traipsed through to the garage, empty of cars but instead filled with paint and easels, that Mary embarrassingly realised the work was all Lydia’s.

It settled in that Mary would spend her whole life trying to emulate everything Lydia Holiday was. Perfect, put together, peaceful, and placid. Nothing was out of sorts – an artist without a splatter of paint on her dress, a wife who could keep her passions without letting slip the wellbeing of her home. Even this, her gallery and sanctuary, had a clean white refrigerator and an almost industrial-sized freezer. Lydia was the sort of woman to have drinks and food stowed away, ever ready for a street-wide party she hadn’t yet planned. Mary is considering asking if Lydia even paints with her gloves still on, but the older woman was speaking before she got the chance.

“You know, it didn’t start with cats, Mary.” Her eyes lifted in curiosity. Lydia didn’t look at her as she spoke, studying instead some half-finished work of art on the easel. “A little girl died around here. When I was perhaps fourteen.”

Mary instantly felt ill, thinking her detached interest in this entire ordeal suddenly monstrous. “Is that… related?” she asked hesitantly.

“It was much the same way. She went missing, and they found her a short while later. It was a bit worse than just a slit throat, but the first cat died within a year after that.”

“Did you know the girl?” Mary asked the question before thinking, suddenly fancying herself a detective.

Lydia nodded curtly, evidently unbothered by the discussion. “In passing. She was wild. Used to scream at boys and come home messy, once she cut some mean girl’s hair at school when she wasn’t looking. I know she gave whoever took her utter hell.”

It was an utter damper on the conversation. Lydia assured Mary that nothing of the sort ever happened again, that someone had been arrested for the incident, that it was all decades ago. Still, it was a bitter thing to hear. Lydia lifted the garage door to bid Mary farewell, and from that angle of the street the billboard was in clean view. Mrs Pritchard wouldn’t care for discussions such as these, Mary decided. She didn’t wish to visit the Holidays again, despite how they insisted she brings her husband next time.

About two days later, Mary Mann found herself proven wrong as she walked down to the Holiday’s garage with a gift box in hand.

That morning was a foul one. Mr Mann had been miserable ever since he woke up, hounding her for the fact that he was going to be late because she hadn’t ironed his shirt as she’d said she would. Mary bit into her lip so furiously as she stood and ironed and apologised and let herself be berated that her mouth started to taste metallic. He clicked the door open without a goodbye, letting bitterness tinge his voice as he called out simply, “There’s a package for you.”

There was indeed. Once he was gone, Mary collected the gorgeous blue box from their doorstep, instantly concerned by the strange weight distribution inside. Her name was is elegant calligraphy on top. She brought the box inside, opening it up on the kitchen table and instantly at a loss when she lifted the lid.

The kitten inside was picture-perfect. A sort of Disney fantasy, all ginger fur and a neat ribbon in place of a collar. Inarguably adorable. Mary brushed fingers across the kitten’s small head gently. For a moment, both of them relish in the pat, but after a second those sharp young teeth swirl around to bite at the hand. Just the smallest amount of blood is drawn. To her own surprise, Mary smiles as much as she flinches.

But it’s an utterly ridiculous gift. Even if they didn’t live on Ewe Street, she couldn’t possibly just announce to her husband that they had a cat now. It’s not the sort of present you dump on another woman’s doorstep. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind where it came from, and she whispered an apology to the little kitten as she replaced the lid and walks them both over to the very first house on Ewe Street.

Nobody came to the door when she knocked. She gave it several goes before resigning to leave, but as she walked back down the path she spotted that the garage door was open. Lydia was no doubt too busy in her studio to hear the door then, and if it wasn’t for the need to vent paint fumes Mary considered that she might’ve gotten away with a horribly inconsiderate gift.

As Mary turned the corner, kitten boxed in hand, she stopped dead. When she was a teenager, she’d been taken to see The Wolf Man, and had squealed at the smallest jumps and watched the whole thing through her fingers. But when she found Lydia Holiday, she simply stopped in her tracks and looked. Blood pooled around the woman’s green dress, a short kitchen knife not too far from her fingers, still donned in a now ruined white glove.

She hadn’t finished her painting before slitting her own throat, Mary noticed. It wasn’t the sort of thing she thought she’d be concerned with in this scenario, but here they were.

Mary put her box on the ground, finding it in her to tolerate the nauseating stench of copper to step closer to Lydia, who let herself look imperfect and like every other woman only in the clutches of morbid death. Mary looked at her for a long moment, not trying to make sense of her feelings, before her eye was caught by the popped lid of the industrial-sized freezer.

Were others around, she’d fear being too nosy, but that gut instinct of everything being wrong here overwhelmed her and the solitude allowed for it. She went over and peered her way into the freezer solemnly, finding herself oddly quick to gag at the sight of a half dozen cats lined neatly along the bottom, all cleaned and tended to but one.

Fearfully, but all resigned to force everything upon herself now, Mary went to open the fridge. It was, thank God, empty. No drinks or anything, at that. Even the shelves had been taken out. Mary is sure she could curl herself up and fit easily inside, shutting the door and hiding from the nightmarish woman just outside.

Without a bow attached to keep the lid on, the kitten nudged its way out of the box and slinked away into the garden. Mrs Pritchard watched on, disapproving.