Trust No Bitch: Part 1

Clara Wright

Clara was given to turning to drink when something went wrong, always had been, but the last couple of days were unlike any drinking binge she had gone on before. Coming out of her drunken languor had felt a lot like coming off anaesthetic after surgery; all her memories and her knowledge had been severed and sawed at and then stitched back together in all the wrong places. Every so often there was a slight twinge but it was old and anomalous like a friend she hadn't seen in 10 years. The grief? She couldn't feel it in her chest anymore but it was still there, instead clogging up all the passages in her brain, making her want to open her head up and fish it all out just so that she could think more lucidly. She had to call Joe. She had to do that. And Lilly was pregnant, according to Gemma. That was new. Cleo was dead. There was the twinge.

And a drip, drip, drip.

Cleo was behind her, she was sure of it. But you're just imagining it, don't turn round, she told herself. You have to call Joe.

"Hi babe." She croaked after dialling his number and waiting, overwrought, for him to pick up.

"Clara! Shit! I've been so worried about you! Did Alice Jenkins tell you-"

"Yeah. She told me she saw you. And I meant to call you, I honestly did, but it's just been so busy and-"

"Clara," Joe said calmly, "it's no problem. Take as long as you need. I just needed to know you hadn't done anything stupid."

"No, of course not."

"Do you want to come to mine later? We can watch a film and get Chinese and-"

"That sounds amazing. And we can fuck too, if you want." She heard Joe chuckle down the phone. It made her heavy heart lift just a little.

"Yeah, you're okay." He said fondly.

"I'm okay." She replied before hanging up, knowing that she shouldn't do that; keep purporting the Clara that she knew Joe wanted. What he didn't want was the Clara that lay in bed for hours at a time, like she went on to do. For so long, that the duvet was moulded to the shape of her body by the time she finally decided to get up, the moon hanging low in the sky, kept company by the glimmering stars that enwreathed it. Practically esurient from the accidental abundance of hours she had spent without food, she decided to drive to the nearest McDonalds to get a snack, hunching her shoulders up to her ears and hugging herself tightly as she made her way down to her car. Her bones were quivering, stinging again due to the sudden introduction of the November nip after days embosomed in the toasty confines of her duvet cover. The back of her cardigan was flapping out behind her in the evening zephyr as the pink blazer she'd borrowed from Lilly the night of the party had done. The last night she'd seen Cleo.

Cleo.

That was really all her imagination needed, Cleo's name the fuel that powered it to churn out those viscid, atrophied arms that weaved themselves round Clara's shoulders. It was someone, something, Cleo, but not a Cleo Clara had ever known, hugging her from behind and then resting its mouldering head on her shoulder. Wet clumps of mire oozed out of its open mouth down Clara's chest and onto the palm of her hand like water from a broken, old tap.

Coal-black blood.

Clara shook her head, wiped her hand on her cardigan and screwed her eyes shut as she flung open the car door. Nothing's there, she told herself as she clambered into the drivers seat, cranking up the volume of the radio to try and ameliorate her hallucinations. To try and drown that corpse in the most turbid alcove of her mind, back where it had came from. She drove straight out the front of campus, her car maundering along the curved road that ran around the St.Edmund's site, the afforested clifftops running along its other side. The road, after skirting the cliffs and then the cove, went back inland and past the back side of campus before becoming fully engulfed by woodlands. You had to drive through the forest for about 10 minutes before you reached the dual carriageway which led to the town centre and the rest of civilisation. No student liked the drive; the road was narrow, often deserted and well known for being a bitch to drive along at night when the tree tops blocked out the faint beam of the moon. It was no surprise that when Clara first caught a glimpse of it in her rear mirror she brushed it off as her paranoia.