The Poison Morality by Stacey Kathleen Page A

were already opening and closing very slowly.
    “Will you be here when I wake up,” she mumbled.
    “I don’t know.”  Eyes closed, she fell to sleep and he covered her with the tatty throw from the back of the sofa and went to the kitchenette.
    Switching on the kettle, he rummaged for what he needed for a cup of tea.  He was lost in thought until the kettle snapped off.  Dangling the tea bag in the cup, moving it up and down absently, he stared out the window across and the lights of the city mixing with the stars of the night sky.  The rubbish bin was full of take away containers and cups, spaghetti ring tins, the smell of curry wafted up strong; he dropped the tea bag on top.
    He found a pint of milk along with a few other items in her fridge and poured a small amount in the mug and sipped it.  Something about a good cup of tea made things seem better, along with her soft snoring; he was starting to feel content.
    The chair with its faded flowers looked comfortable enough for his fatigue and he could sleep almost anywhere.  He sipped the tea and fingered the hole in the fabric, listening to Sophie’s quiet snoring and the distant sound of sirens.  The flat was small, the furniture second hand, and the wallpaper faded and torn in some places. 
    Aside from the dismal state he also saw piles of books everywhere.  Some on bookshelves, carefully stacked and lined just so.  Books of all kinds: novels, scientific, complete works of Dickens, Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays, and Austen.  Random books with library tags cluttered the tables and the floor.
    But it was the paintings propped against the wall and fallen over easels cluttering the corner beside the window that interested him more and he walked to them.  Flipping through canvas after canvas he saw they were indeed beautiful.  He turned to her, her dark waves fell across the cushion, her mouth, red and defined, beautiful like she is.  Lifting the easel upright again and straightening the little nook she used for her art, he realized that the art represented the lighter side and the deaths the darker.
    He felt her forehead again for fever, she stirred but that was all and satisfied, he started to kiss her there, stopping just short of contact, his lips centimetres away from her skin, then he moved down the slope of her nose, then her lips, wanting to kiss them too but he decided against kissing anywhere, not wanting to wake her, just hovering, feeling her breath on his face, warm, like a caress. 
    He dropped down on the floral chair and fell asleep.  Oliver awoke to the sound of the clatter of cutlery, the shuffling of utensils, and the slamming of the drawers, and then no sound at all.  The silence seemed out of place after all the commotion.  It took him a minute to remember where he was.
    He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.  Groggy, he quietly walked into the kitchen to find Sophie staring straight ahead.  A knife gripped in her left hand, the tip of it pressed into her right wrist enough to indent the pale skin, the blue veins in danger of being nicked any second.
    The reflection in the window showed her eyes open in a vacant stare unblinking.  Cautiously, he walked towards her until he saw both her reflection and his own in the window.  She was sleep walking, he deducted because he was pretty sure she was not suicidal.  And yet she was the one that teetered on the edge of the platform.
    “What are you doing?” he whispered, the tip of the knife pressed into her flesh.
    Her expressionless face changed to a look of challenge.  She gave a sideways smile, almost a smirk and then she closed her eyes and when she opened them she looked at the knife perplexed and then rubbed her wrist on the side of her leg like she was wiping something off. 
    Staring at her likeness in the window, she was just as puzzled as Oliver was by what he had stumbled upon.  Oliver reached for the knife, not knowing if he would be stabbed but she gently placed the