Wil was on my bed, motionless on the woven cloth, his wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with the black velvet restraints. He wore a gray my dive T-shirt I’d given him, and in the center of his chest was a dark wound with scarlet blood blooming all around it like a prom corsage from the devil.

eight

Love Lies Bleeding

There was such a stillness to Wilcox that I didn’t need to touch him to know he was dead. But I did. I stroked his fine bleached hair, feeling the grit of sand from a day of surfing. I kissed his cool, smooth forehead, and ran my finger over the well-shaped, narrow lips that had always been quick to smile and laugh and kiss.

My tears fell on the pretty face that had been so full of life and happiness.

I wanted to cut myself, to pour my blood into the deep knife wound in his flesh, to make him heal, whole, well—my laughing, lusty Wil again, but I knew I was too late. The dead couldn’t be brought back.

I closed Wil’s empty hazel eyes, smudging the kohl, and untied the velvet restraints from his wrists and ankles.

My survival instincts cut through the fog of grief. Someone was setting me up and I had to move fast.

I blew out the candles but didn’t turn on the lights. I wrapped the soft woven cloth around Wil’s body, and then I swiftly changed into jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. I threw my laptop, wallet, the composition books, clothes, and other necessities into an enormous sports bag.

I tore up the receipt from the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective and shoved the velvet restraints in the sports bag.

I didn’t know when I would be coming back so I packed Jane Eyre and a leather box that held my most valuable possessions, Ian’s gifts to me: ruby necklaces, Victorian garnet earrings, an enamel fountain pen, the mirror ball earrings, gold bracelets … The last thing I put in the bag was my knitting project, the blue-gray scarf for Oswald.

Placing the bulky bag over my left shoulder, I picked up Wil’s shrouded body and hefted him over my right shoulder. The cloth released a puff of the fine powder.

I balanced Wil’s body as I hurried to the stairwell and down to the garage. After placing him in the bed of my pickup, I positioned gardening tools on top to hide his bulk.

I drove out of the garage and into the dark street just as a black car with a long radio antenna pulled up in the red no-parking zone in front of my building.