The longer the silence, the more awkward Oliver felt. He smelt something unusual in the air. Fear. His armpits stank. Embarrassed, he turned. He had every right to leave. The door was there, ten feet away. He was a big boy. She was just a woman, a mere woman whom, despite her height, he could overpower if he wanted. He didn’t, but he could if the situation got ugly.
“I’m leaving.”
“No!” Carmella bellowed in her thick voice so loudly that Oliver shuddered.
“This is obviously not working,” Oliver put on a good show, not wanting to admit defeat, not wanting her to see him trembling. Perspiration dripped down his face. He longed to reach up to catch the drops before they darkened his pale blue shirt. Before she saw his fear.
Oliver wanted to get outside to the fresh air, to the leaves turning into vibrant shades of reds and oranges. He had always hated the fall season that proclaimed the end of several too-short months of warm weather and upcoming cruel months of Canada’s winter, but that moment he longed to see the sight. Icicles and sleet and metres of snow flashed before him, making him colder than he was. He shivered and headed to the door.
“Stop!” she bellowed again. “I’ll tell you when you can go. I invited you here. I’ll tell you when to leave.”
“No, it’s time now. I have an appointment.” Could she see through his lie? “I must go.”
#
“I killed a woman once, but it wasn’t Carmella.”
One day, I told the story of Oliver to my grandson, Royce. Naturally, I couldn’t tell it in the first person because I didn’t want him to know the story was about me. As well, since kids enjoy scary stories, I embellished certain details to make the story more interesting and frightful, such as the bits about the circus and nursery rhymes and weird noises and Oliver running for his life. Other references, like the sexual connotations, I omitted because Royce was too young for a sexually explicit story.
My name isn’t Oliver, not legally. A long time ago, when I was about four, my parents—my long-dead parents—had nicknamed me Oliver after Oliver Twist. Nothing really to do with Oliver, the lad; more to do with his last name of Twist.
Back then, I would take my mother’s yarn from her knitting pouch and twist that yarn around and around. The actions drove my mother crazy. That’s how I got the name, Oliver. Father thought Mum strange for calling me Oliver. He had never liked the nickname, but it stuck for a while—until I killed someone.
Yes, I killed a woman, a girl actually, who never had the chance to mature into a fine woman. She was my age, just seven, and lived next door to us. Lydia was small, and I towered over her. She didn’t stand a chance. After twisting the yarn tightly around her neck, I grabbed a rock and bashed her head in. You could hardly see the blood because of her dark hair.
I’m not sure why I did it.
My family moved after that episode, to the west coast of Canada where the weather is warmer than the east. There, however, the rain pelts down, and I’m still not sure which I hate worse, snow or rain. Rain is moody and chilling, and though snow is cold too, it’s fresh and white, and I like the sensation of the freezing flakes when they land on my tongue.
#
Oliver detected a smirk on Carmella’s face when he told her he was leaving. “I’m leaving. You can’t stop me.”
Carmella snickered; Oliver shivered.
She ambled toward him, a sneer plastered on her face. When she faced him, so close that they could stick out their tongues and lick the other’s face, she laughed. She then shook her head. Strands swatted Oliver in the face. He smelt the apple shampoo and his stomach growled.
“You think this was all an accident. That YOU pursued me? No, I pursued you and you fell for it.”
Oliver stared. He quaked even more.
“Yes, you are so stupid. Oliver. And what a farce of a name.”
“How…how do you—”
“How do I? I’ll tell you how. I have a good memory. Do you?” Her hands went behind her head, where she scooped up her long hair and turned backward. Her fingers parted her hair. “See what you did? Look.”
Oliver stared. “I don’t understand….” Slowly, though, dawning sunk into his thick skull. He couldn’t remember the little girl’s name but remembered her coal black hair.
“Lydia. My name is Lydia.”
“But….”
“You thought I was dead, right? Wrong. Yeah, your parents didn’t tell you I survived, did they? Perhaps they wanted to teach you a lesson, let you suffer for the rest of your days thinking you were a murderer. My parents stuck with me, ensured I survived, breathed life into me. And what did your parents do? Run off, snuck away in the dark of night. None of you Phillips could face the situation. You lucked out my parents didn’t charge you ‘cause they would have found you, had they wanted to. Just as I found you. It wasn’t hard actually, even tracing you from Halifax to Vancouver. No one can hide, you know. No one.”
This story is poignant. I haven’t read anything like this in a long time.