Little Orphan

The Moon was a whining crescent, seasick on a swirl of cloud. The wind in the willows did little to ease the ambiance.

As for Angie, she looked like she'd walked into a door. Which in fact she had this time: thing was, anyone who knew her husband would find that difficult to believe.

Which was not...exactly why she was out here on the moors at midnight, looking like a slightly disfigured Kate Bush: Angie was waiting for the Rag and Bone Man.

At length, a thin, high sound faintly pierced the wind's hustle. As it came closer, a tune was faintly floating aloft. At first, Angie thought “Londonderry Air”, but when it neared, she realized it was the theme to Eastenders.

A small, wizened figure appeared through the mists. Well, he looked bigger than he was, covered in an an array of coats and jackets, a tall hat atop his wizened head. As he approached, he stopped whistling. He stopped before Angie, knelt and shrugged off his heavy backpack.

“How many ribbons. How many straps of leather and velvet. How much muslin.”

He spoke in a monotone and Angie answered:

“I want twelve black ribbons. Four straps of leather and three of purple velvet. Two yards of muslin. And more -”

The Rag and Bone Man stood up.

“I know.” He said, and he reached under his many coats into one of his many pockets. He drew out a leather drawstring pouch, and extracted from it a gleaming white bone.

“This,” he said as he presented it, “Is the foreleg of a lamb from Saint Brigid's convent farm. It was consecrated before being killed and eaten. A Lamb of God, if you please.”

Angie studied and accepted it, and was about to ask again when the man slipped a wizened hand into another pocket and produced a small vial of clear purple liquid.

“Powder the bone, and mix it with this.”

“What is it? Asked Angie.

The man looked sly. “It will help the medicine go down.”

“So it's agreed, I meet you at the next crescent moon with the bones.”

The Rag and Bone Man looked up – he was packing a small sack with Angie's requirements.

“That was the agreement. There is of course a small matter of security.”

Angie just looked.

“We don't know that you'll go through with it dear.” He said. “Or that you won't welch on the agreement. It happens. And we do want those rags. And those bones.”

“I – we – have a house.” Said Angie.

“Houses can burn.” He fidgeted with his whiskery beard.

Angie thought. She reached down under her dress, past the scar on her belly, keeping eye contact with the Rag and Bone Man, and slowly pulled out a sharp knife. She slowly raised it to her head, and cut off a hank of lustrous, dark auburn hair and proffered it to him.

He took it, and twirled it in his fingers.

“Hair. The problem here, ha ha, is that I can't give it back to you to be reattached.”

“I know.” Said Angie. “But I believe it can be repurposed, should I not honour our agreement.”

The man reflected and nodded. “That's true.” He wound the hair up carefully, making sure not a strand went astray, and put it into the bag the bone came in and drew it tight.

He stood and nodded. “Very well. Next crescent moon.” He shouldered his bag and disappeared back into the mist.

After a moment, Angie did the same.

She walked to her house. She opened the front door, very quietly, very carefully. Slipping off her shoes, she entered, listening intently. All she could hear was the rasping from her husband's deathbed.

She ate only plums and oats, and waited through the phases: half, gibbous, full. That was when she decided it was time. She collected her things and padded upstairs with her bag, and entered his room.

Onan, her husband, was barely conscious, which made things easier. He only shuddered as Angie pulled out the leather straps and began to tie him down. To calm him, she murmured a low lullaby, with indistinct words.

A lost language. She lit two candles.

She wrapped a strip of purple velvet around his neck, and another on his head, over his eyes. Onan tried to cry out, but language was lost to him now.

Angie did as directed, and ground the bone to a fine powder. She warmed the clear purple liquid between her thighs as she knotted the twelve black silk ribbons together. When she came to the end of her lullaby, as Onan lay gasping, she began.

Angie looked down upon him, bound and convulsing. Onan, who had murdered her parents so as to lay claim to her at twelve. Fed their bodies to the neighbours' pigs. No trace. Onan, who would rather waste his seed than give her the child she so craved – and make sure no one ever would. But still communed with devil worshipers like the witches next door. Very well then.

She bent over him. She had mixed the bone and potion into a viscous fluid, in a small flask. He was still gasping, open mouthed, making it easy for her to pour it down as he swallowed involuntarily.

At the same time, she began feeding the twelve black ribbons down his throat. He gulped them down along with the mixture. He only gagged a little, and then she could see them snaking down his thin body. She could hear the neighbours behind her: shrieking like banshees and wailing like unwanted weeds. Angie began singing again, the same indistinct lullaby but louder now to mute their caterwauling. Again singing what might have been words, but in a language we'll never know.

As the ribbon protruding from Onan's mouth began to wiggle, Angie fetched up a vial of oil and poured some on it. She kept singing. You could maybe make out some words now:

Softly, softly, soon it will be over...

As she drew the blade again from her dress and made the incision, across, beneath the belly button. She could see the snake moving. She sang it out.

The other end of the snake poked its head out. Its tongue flickered. Angie smiled and poured oil on it too. Then she used the candle to light the mouth end first, and then the belly end. They both caught, and started burning down immediately.

Over, over, soon you will be done...

Angie stood back, the flames illuminating her face and bright smile as she continued to sing, ever louder against the ululation of the witches, as Onan burned from the inside: every vital organ, every sinew, every tendon, snapping. Until nothing left but skin and bones.

The wailing died down, and Angie stopped singing. After a time, she sat down on a chair in the corner. A fire was lit next door, and she watched the light from the flames flicker across the wall.

Again, she lived and moved very quietly, on plums and oats. The moon's phases passed again, until the night before the next crescent moon, when she packed everything needed. She made a very quiet, stealthy mission next door and stole away unnoticed, even by the sleeping pigs.

The next night, Angie made her final preparations and set out once more for the moor. While a few jaundiced clouds drifted by, the crescent moon shone bright. She expected to wait for whistling, but was a little surprised to find the Rag and Bone Man waiting for her, leaning on his crooked stick. They regarded each other.

The Rag and Bone Man suddenly broke into a spontaneous, violent coughing fit. He recovered after a minute and cleared his throat.

“So...You are done then.”

“I am.” Said Angie, laying down three sacks before her, which the Rag and Bone Man eyed with interest. He turned his eye and his wizened fingers to the one to her left.

“His clothes.” He pulled them loose; they were mostly rags themselves now. He held them up, sniffing, breathing in their tainted scents, their stains. “Yes, very good”, he whispered. “We can use these.”

“Great.” Said Angie and nudged the middle bag, which rattled.

“Ah, the lovely bones”, he said and opened the bag to sniff and finger through them with some pleasure. His rotten-toothed grin faded after a moment though, when he noted there was no skull.

“That's right.” Said Angie. “It went into the pigsty next door.”

“Oh really...may I ask why?” He fingered through the bones.

“So he could talk with my parents.”

His chuckle came through as a series of explosive wheezes. “Much good may it do them all.”

He pulled out a vial of something and swallowed what was left in it, and eyed her.

“So now...you will return home?”

“My home is on fire.” Said Angie.

“Burning our bridges, I see and understand. Doesn't leave you much by way of...security however.”

Angie toed the last sack. “Take a sniff.” She said.

The Rag and Bone Man opened the bag and drew out the rolled up skin of Angie's dead husband. He examined it, smelled it, breathed it in. It was almost obscene the way he ran his crinkled fingers over the parched, tattooed, warty skin with such pleasure. And when he turned his eyes back to Angie it was with a flash of joy.

“Yes my dear.” He almost bowed. “This might even earn you an indulgence.”

“Wonderful.” Said Angie. “But you know what I want.”

Without a word, he fished in his pockets and retrieved the small pouch containing the hank of her hair. She held it, and something else, unknown, clinked in there. She chose not to ask. The old man put everything into his seemingly bottomless bag and clambered to his feet, hanging on his crooked stick.

“So Miss Angie.” He said. “As a lady of independent means, where will you go to now?”

“Better Days.”

“Ah. To be a waitress or a whore?”

“Screw you old man.” Said Angie. “I've written a play. I'm going to get it on stage.”

“On the bright lights of Broadway in Better Days.” He mused. “May I ask what it's called?”

“Little Orphan.”

Another wheezy chuckle. “Autobiographical?”

“Not too much hopefully.”

“Well.” Said the Rag and Bone Man. “Best of luck to you, Little Orphan – Angie.”

He turned and vanished into the mist, and standing there a while, Angie could still hear the strains of him whistling the Eastenders theme tune.

In time, she too turned and walked back across the moor, back past her house which was burning to the ground, and past the neighbours' where there was screaming, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and on down the road with a smile on her face in the dark, and a tune of her own in her head. Lyrics were kind of forming: place holders maybe.

I killed ya, I killed ya, you're dead now, I killed ya...

Thinking that might be a bit dark for the stage...

(the sky ahead brightened as she walked toward it)

Shrugged it off, figured she'd come up with something better. Tomorrow.