the dust-cloth covering the spinning wheel. Now it looked like a torture device too, all deadly curves, hard wood and spindles. The next sheet away revealed an exercise bike, the next a stack of cardboard boxes marked ‘Books’ and some concertina files. The third exposed more boxes and a sewing machine on a wooden table. I was nearly at the corner. The next sheet would be it.
CHAPTER 6
My breathing came in laboured gasps, horrible to hear. The clamminess and dizziness were there, the racing heartbeat, but this side of a syncope, a total shut-down, I had to do it. I might never find the courage again.
Jack, oh, Jack, I thought. How would the readers of our article react? Was this the sort of thing to bring to the larger world?
Writer Fixated on Sewing Dummy!
Sex Maniac Confesses : Give Me an Oedipal Proxy Every Time!
Domestic Prostheses Let Me Back on the Streets!
Potential Serial Killer Diverted by Makeshift Sewing Surrogate!
Laughing and terrified, I began drawing away the sheet. No matador flourish— voilá !—to cause Madame to come toppling forward into my arms. No assisted trappings of life. Just a slow, torturous hauling away, my hand a detached and separate thing locked on the edge of the fabric.
And there she was. Worn and well used, possibly a thrift shop special given a new life—new half-life, quarter-life, whatever it was—but another turn. Shiny silver plate atop the neck, slightly pitted with rust at the edges, grey chest and body panels, a drab steel grey, with little white adjustment wheels set between the segments. The points of her breasts were worn through to the plastic or fibre-glass from years of use, years of too tight bodice fittings and who knew what else? A rust-pitted chrome silver pole went right through her centre, from neck plate down to round metal base. And, yes, she was on casters. I could see the edges of a set. Such a well-used, experienced Madame this one, seasoned veteran of sewing rooms, quiet hours and hauntings by appointment.
And how is Madame feeling tonight?
So so, David . Sew sew . Thank you for asking .
It was done. I had faced the demon. Shaking and dizzy, with perspiration cooling my brow and a headache drumming in time with my heart, I’d done it.
And now there was a final tolerance test if I could manage it. I’d slept so easily after finding the bottle-trees wrecked. I’d survived the new images on Disks 4 and 5. Now forcing myself, forcing it all, I raised the sheet and draped Madame again, did the same with the other things that kept her pinned in her corner. Like reciting a mantra, like working through a ritual, yes, completing an exorcism, I moved back the way I had come, restoring the room to its previous order, then switched off the light and locked the door behind me.
Done. It was done. I made peppermint tea and carried the plunger and a cup through to my room. Then, after using the bathroom, I took a sleeping tablet and turned in, finding it easier to distract myself with Renault’s fine writing than I expected. Feeling the sedative take hold, I had to smile. Leave one thing, I’d told Beth Rankin, and The Mask of Apollo had been it. Little could either of us have known there had been something else.
But that had been dealt with too.
A sound woke me, or a dream of one, because it wasn’t repeated and may have been imagined. I had no idea of the time, but reached out and touched the tea plunger. It was cold. An hour must have had passed at least. I was well on the way to morning.
I lay there feeling wooden and vague from the sedative, listening to the wind in the trees.
Be easy. Be easy about this, Davey, I told myself. You knew it would happen.
I had. I’d known that, sooner or later, Madame Sew would use my imagination, my dread of her, to arrange some kind of follow-up. I had hoped to make it through to morning, but here it was.
It was so easy to picture her in the storeroom, little white adjustment wheels beginning to tweak this
CHAPTER 6
My breathing came in laboured gasps, horrible to hear. The clamminess and dizziness were there, the racing heartbeat, but this side of a syncope, a total shut-down, I had to do it. I might never find the courage again.
Jack, oh, Jack, I thought. How would the readers of our article react? Was this the sort of thing to bring to the larger world?
Writer Fixated on Sewing Dummy!
Sex Maniac Confesses : Give Me an Oedipal Proxy Every Time!
Domestic Prostheses Let Me Back on the Streets!
Potential Serial Killer Diverted by Makeshift Sewing Surrogate!
Laughing and terrified, I began drawing away the sheet. No matador flourish— voilá !—to cause Madame to come toppling forward into my arms. No assisted trappings of life. Just a slow, torturous hauling away, my hand a detached and separate thing locked on the edge of the fabric.
And there she was. Worn and well used, possibly a thrift shop special given a new life—new half-life, quarter-life, whatever it was—but another turn. Shiny silver plate atop the neck, slightly pitted with rust at the edges, grey chest and body panels, a drab steel grey, with little white adjustment wheels set between the segments. The points of her breasts were worn through to the plastic or fibre-glass from years of use, years of too tight bodice fittings and who knew what else? A rust-pitted chrome silver pole went right through her centre, from neck plate down to round metal base. And, yes, she was on casters. I could see the edges of a set. Such a well-used, experienced Madame this one, seasoned veteran of sewing rooms, quiet hours and hauntings by appointment.
And how is Madame feeling tonight?
So so, David . Sew sew . Thank you for asking .
It was done. I had faced the demon. Shaking and dizzy, with perspiration cooling my brow and a headache drumming in time with my heart, I’d done it.
And now there was a final tolerance test if I could manage it. I’d slept so easily after finding the bottle-trees wrecked. I’d survived the new images on Disks 4 and 5. Now forcing myself, forcing it all, I raised the sheet and draped Madame again, did the same with the other things that kept her pinned in her corner. Like reciting a mantra, like working through a ritual, yes, completing an exorcism, I moved back the way I had come, restoring the room to its previous order, then switched off the light and locked the door behind me.
Done. It was done. I made peppermint tea and carried the plunger and a cup through to my room. Then, after using the bathroom, I took a sleeping tablet and turned in, finding it easier to distract myself with Renault’s fine writing than I expected. Feeling the sedative take hold, I had to smile. Leave one thing, I’d told Beth Rankin, and The Mask of Apollo had been it. Little could either of us have known there had been something else.
But that had been dealt with too.
A sound woke me, or a dream of one, because it wasn’t repeated and may have been imagined. I had no idea of the time, but reached out and touched the tea plunger. It was cold. An hour must have had passed at least. I was well on the way to morning.
I lay there feeling wooden and vague from the sedative, listening to the wind in the trees.
Be easy. Be easy about this, Davey, I told myself. You knew it would happen.
I had. I’d known that, sooner or later, Madame Sew would use my imagination, my dread of her, to arrange some kind of follow-up. I had hoped to make it through to morning, but here it was.
It was so easy to picture her in the storeroom, little white adjustment wheels beginning to tweak this
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