The observed actions of conceited Tilly Andrews

My shopping bags feel even emptier in my hand when I arrive at the store front – which is evidently not open. It feels so adult to be disappointed by my favourite grocery store being shut, my fiancé would tease me incessantly about it with a big smile on his face. The smashed windows are taped up and the homely stained-glass door that would squeak open and closed for customers is missing completely. A reporting team surround the reporter as she finishes off her story of the assault on my dear store. Tilly Andrews; the most famous crime reporter around town. The best way to describe her is put together and gorgeous. Perfectly blown out coffee-dark hair, large piercing eyes outlined to a cat eye, blood red matte lipstick and a tall slender build. All eyes of the reporting team and bystanders are solely on her, following her every move, and she knows it. There have been rumours circling around the past year that she had been about to publish a book. Apparently part autobiographical, but my mother’s childhood friend’s mother knew the editor who found it hard to believe - “Such drastic, heroic stories.” And then her superstar boyfriend, Mathew Rennison died, and she never spoke on the book again. The media and been overtaken by photos of him and all she posted was a photo in which she looked like a model, and he’d been distracted by something off camera. No description.

My mother will love to hear that I saw her in the flesh today. I sigh and go find another store to fill my bags.

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I’m sitting on my front veranda with my ceramic mug of chamomile as Tilly trudges past. She is wearing that damned beige trench coat I see every afternoon in the colder months, she is holding her phone to up her frowning face. She turns onto the path leading through the garden at the front of her townhouse, neighbouring mine. I’ve always wanted that garden. It has a gorgeous mosaic on the façade of fence between our gardens, peach trees and a wise-looking old tree that we had named the Grandfather tree soon after I moved here as a young woman. I pretend to sip my too-hot tea when Tilly gets closer, and I overhear her.

“I don’t understand how that can be, my job isn’t an optional part-time one, Brad. People are used to seeing my face, they love it.” A pause. “No. Stop saying that. There’s no such thing as no crime.” Tilly huffs as she listens to his response. “Make my own crime? That’s a silly thing to say. Goodbye”

She fumbles with her keys, unlocks her door and slams it behind her. Funny woman, she is.

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The Moon is bright tonight. This is bad news for the likes of me.

“It’s bad luck to see a Black Cat.” They say.

So, I blend in. I have a hiding spot is in the branches of a tree, with rooftops nearby to provide a quick escape. My safe space is mercilessly flooded with more light when a door down below opens. What for? Who are they? Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe they’ve come looking for me. Maybe they saw my tail and know where I am and now are going to throw pieces of unwanted food at me.

“The food is always poisoned.” My mother told me.

I am about to make my escape, but then I catch a glimpse of the figure. They’re all in black, like me, ready to blend into the night. Should I go warn them that the Moon doesn’t want the likes of us to blend in? Do they have a tail? Should I warn them to control it tonight? They walk toward the forest and I’m relieved. I climb down from my tree to follow them to the beginning of the thicket of trees. I expect them to climb up a tree, or crouch down – not that they need more cover from the unforgiving Moon. If only I knew how to hide my Eyes and Tail like that. But no, they walk into the forest. I go to follow but stop myself.

“Never go into that cursed forest.” My sister had said.

And so, the Moon keeps me company.

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I have spent many years hosting the Garden. Many months watching Her walk through. Without so much as acknowledging me. Every morning and every afternoon the fractured shards of glass in the house’s mosaic reflect pieces of her as she leaves and comes back. Many hours in the dark tonight I have felt the absence of Her in the house. My roots reach far under house and know all that’s going on. I host graciously, yet I’m not acknowledged. I deserve to be as appreciated as I was back in those days I was given a name. The Grandfather Tree. I think it’s fitting. It is unfitting to host someone who does not know their place in nature, know that they are passing through and I have forever been here. In so many years, no such darkness has entered this garden as it has now. The moon has nearly finished its arc of the sky when she returns, barefooted and grimy. She is as damned as Persephone, wanting to be recognised in nature but with no place in it, called to the darkness.

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“You’ve taken it too far Tilly.”

“I haven’t, you’ll see. There was no other way.”

“There are always greater ways.”

“No greater than this. The world deserves to see our face.”

“Yes, greater. Less extreme. Our face will always be seen, we know this.”

“Nothing is greater than revenge.”

“He did take a part of us that we’ll never get back.”

“Yes. Took it all the way to the underworlds.”

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She had left the back door ajar. I consider this. She wouldn’t have done it for me, or had she? She must know I’m here; she believed in all sorts of life after death. The deep earthy brown of the doorframe looks so inviting, a portal back to her. I leave the early morning mist and go through, and I’m hit with memories from my life, our life together. Photos scatter the coffee table: photos of her leatherbound journals, the front of her apartment with its twisting and twirling iron rails, red stained, smudged lips, her side profiles, her in the beige coat that I spent my weekly paycheck to buy her, her hands, her eyes, her hickory hair, her shoulders, her exposed neck, her... photos of her. Multiple journals lie open on her incredibly ink stained oakwood desk sitting by the window. The sun illuminates them through the sheer canvas curtains. Empty pages, half-filled pages but most of them had so much writing. So many words to the extent where it looked like there was more ink than paper. A small journal caught my attention in the corner. It was the same, an all too familiar name over and over – Mathew Rennison.

I guess when you stop going outside and seeing people to instead stay home and journal, you ultimately run out of things to say. Photos and names will make do. I wonder what she would think of me being here now, after what I did to her; after I died on her.

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A dainty hand reaches for me to flick a switch and jolt me awake. A knob is turned, and I pick up a signal. Frequencies change, air charges, antenna up. I am settled on a different channel and left lonely in the corner, far from quiet. The front door closes. She is kind and never leaves me alone for long. A time late her voice is heard coming out of my speakers.

“Early this morning, witnesses were at the local graveyard paying respects to loved ones. They reported a disturbing sight that we all hope to never bear witness to. The late star of the town, local Mathew Rennison’s grave has reportedly been found overturned. Dug up. A pair of ruby-red shoes were left by the crime scene. If anyone happens to know any more on...”

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I had sat neatly by the arched doorway between the kitchen and living room that leads to the outside wilderness and spirits. It was dark out there. Then, cold feet had been slipped into my soles. The heels, like pillars, held the weight of that important women. I was walked outside. Satisfying click clack on the wooden floors. Dulled thud off the porch and onto damp earth. Wet mud cloaked my beautiful ruby-red colour and soaked away the peach fuzz of my suede. My strong pillar-like heels had been sunk into the mud. Step after step until… the scrape of metal on stone. Slicing into the earth, hitting small stones as it went. I’m placed forcefully onto the shoulder of the shovel and shoved. On it went. Over and over. I was discarded then, and she left me behind. I had been so very loyal.

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One of her perfectly manicured, taloned hands holds the peach. The other holds my neck as if she deserves to be born with a silver spoon in hand, holding so tight as if reluctant to ever let go. I am used to dig out the peach flesh and transport it straight into that grimy, black lair of a mouth. Now she holds too tightly to my neck, and the convex of my face is replaced with the warped reflection of hers. Oh, if only everyone else saw that overlarge and suspicious nose the way I do.

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She takes me and my cold glass pot out of my isolating desk drawer. Her nimble finger screws off my lid - my roof - to expose me to the suffocating air. Already I yearn for my isolation. A fountain pen is dipped, and I hold my drop for as long as possible before it is yanked away. To be twirled into shapes of rhyme and reason is to translate, and act as conduit for her endless thoughts and musings. On and on I am bled into paper, consumed by the paper. Inevitably, I will dry on this page as I have on all the other many hundreds. Countless, scattered landscapes of inked graveyards. I was once Pangaea in my pot.

She places the pen down and walks away, leaving off my protective lid. The bed groans as she lies down. I hope she never dreams of blissful inky blackness.

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The barren and dismal woods seemed to swallow the light. Nature without light can barely be counted as nature, barely qualifies in fact. The world does not continue without a force for nature to hold on to. The sun is dull, a meagre impact through the canopy and enveloped by the shadows on the ground.

The leaves and damp earth feel welcoming under the soles of my feet. The sun clings on to me, as I am its only welcoming destination. Made of star dust, trillions of years of life and trillions more to come – the Sun recognizes its kin. The woods must be jealous of my comfortable place on this Earth, though they accept me still. The trail I leave is bright and flourishing, I open the Earth up to the idea of welcoming the sunlight and growth.

Then I’m in coldness, the Universe decides it wants the Moon and not my Sun. Deadened and masculine hands reach out of the ground and grasp my ankles. Matty. The ground beneath my feet turns to the consistency of quicksand. I grasp at the branches of a peach tree, the peaches hang peacefully, immortalised by their fruitful seeds, golden and pink – my branch snaps and I am pulled under. No one ever realises.