Anne Billson - Suckers

If she'd been wearing sensible footwear she would have regained her balance easily. But this was Lulu , and she was wearing flamboyant fuck-me shoes with lizard-skin trimming and four-inch spikes. So when the earth moved beneath her feet she teetered back and forth in a dainty cha-cha movement, one arm windmilling into the bathroom cabinet; one corner of it came away from the wall and sent more jars and bottles crashing across the room. The smell of vetivert was now mingling with verbena and bergamot and Rive Gauche. I put my head down and butted her, and she fell backwards with a surprised grunt, and the rim of the bath caught her behind the knees and she landed in the water with her legs in the air.

For one brief blissful moment, I thought that was it, I thought she was going to lie there quietly, and it would all be over. I was standing there thinking that when she came up screeching and clawing. I pushed her back again but her fingers fastened on to the sleeve of the bathrobe and pulled me down with her. For a few seconds our faces were only inches apart. Her teeth gnashed shut, just missing the tip of my nose, but I managed to push her under the gushing tap, and she twisted her head from side to side and made an enraged burbling sound, letting go of the bathrobe and scrabbling at my forearms so that fine threads of blood dribbled into the water and uncoiled there, turning it pink like dentist's mouthwash. I tried to hold her down, but she was too hot and slippery. My nose and mouth were filled with fragrant steam, but I caught a whiff of something spicy and unpleasant lurking beneath the overlay of perfume. Lulu's face was coming out in large shiny blisters which burst, one after the other. She sat up suddenly, shaking her head so that drops of water flew in all directions, and shaking me off as well. It caught me off guard and I felt myself tumbling backwards.

My feet were cold. I couldn't work out what I was doing on the bathroom floor, but it would have been comfortable enough had it not been for the cold feet and the nagging thought there was some other matter to which I should have been attending. I tried to get up but everything tilted. I slapped my hand down to steady myself, and felt broken glass sink into the palm. I said, very crossly, 'Oh, shit ,' as it started to sting. My hand wasn't the only part of me which was hurting; the back of my head was throbbing where I'd cracked it against something, and now everything was going hazy, and the steam and the smoke swirled up and made it even hazier. Through the haze, I saw someone stand up in the bath, and her black dress was clinging to her figure and I recognized Lulu, even though her face was red and shiny. She didn't seem to mind about the mess her face was in — she was laughing as if this were the most fun she had ever had in her life. It was all so deja vu that I knew I had to be dreaming.

'Dora Dora get up Dora…' Someone was saying my name over and over again. I tried to pull myself up, and then the clouds rolled back and I saw that Duncan wasn't dead after all. He was prancing around like Errol Flynn, holding my biggest crucifix back to front, like a dagger. Lulu snarled, and swiped at him, trying to knock it out of his grasp, but as the metal touched her flesh there was a hissing noise like an iron on a damp shirt, and she jumped back with a howl, pawing at the steaming red mark on her hand. Duncan stepped back and held himself on guard, and glanced at the crucifix in surprise, as though he hadn't really expected it to have had such a drastic effect. Then he lunged and yelled 'Touche! ' as he struck her just above the left breast. This time nothing happened — her skin was protected by the fabric of her dress — and both of them looked rather taken aback. Duncan shrugged it off and lunged again. She dodged, but the metal brushed against her chin and left it sizzling, and she squawked and lashed out with her fingernails. He stepped aside and started casually to cut and thrust at her face. He was treating it as a game, and Lulu appeared to be going along with it, as though they'd rehearsed this many times before, but her retaliatory swiping was getting wilder and he was barely having to sidestep now, and scoring more and more hits, each one followed by a gratifying amount of hissing and yelping. So entrancing was this spectacle, I almost forgot what I was watching until I heard him saying, 'Suck on this, you vampire slut,' in an eminently reasonable voice. Then he half-turned and said over his shoulder in a businesslike manner, 'Don't just sit there, Dora, go and get something.'

I tried to reply in an equally businesslike manner, but all that came out of my mouth was a feeble croak. How come I always seemed to be on the critical list when things got lively? Duncan was having all the fun again. I pushed myself up with my uninjured hand, and immediately got broken glass in that one too. I staggered as far as the kitchen, and it wasn't until I sat down to rest that I remembered what I was there for, because I found myself sitting on the wobbly chair. I tugged at the loose leg but it wouldn't come off, so I rocked the chair violently backwards and forwards until the wood split down the middle with a sharp crack, so now I had a useless three-legged chair and a useful chair-leg with an uneven point. I was tidying up the splinters with a vegetable knife when I heard someone shouting, 'Dora! What the fuck are you doing?' so I shambled back to the bathroom.

Duncan had tired of his Captain Blood routine. Now they were lying in the bath together. Lulu was gargling and kicking her legs and the water was slapping rhythmically. If I hadn't known better I might have thought they were humping. Duncan had somehow got hold of my chiffon scarf and had wound it around her head and was holding her under the water with it. I tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the chair-leg. As he loosened his grip and rocked back on his haunches, she sat up and started to scream, and he said 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up,' and jabbed her with the stick. The point sank in about half an inch and snagged on her ribcage, and they both stared at it in surprise and then looked at each other. They were still looking at each other when he tried again. This time it slid between the ribs and her eyes opened wide, and she made a sort of 'oof' sound, and fell straight back into the water like a toppled tree. He put one knee on her stomach and worked the chair-leg free. As it came out it made an obscene sucking sound, and a lot of dark blood came out with it and turned the water an even darker red. He stuck the stick into her again, several times. The chiffon scarf floated up and away, and half her face seemed to come away with it.

'It's not enough,' I said. 'We have to cut her into little pieces, before she starts singing Madame Butterfly .'

'She's not going to sing,' Duncan said, hauling himself out over the side of the bath. 'She's not like Violet.'

'They're all the same,' I said. 'They all wind up with stakes through their hearts.'

'Cut it out.'

I peered down into the bath. The water wasn't running any more; it was thick and stagnant, and there was a lot of red froth on the surface. She was under it with her hair floating like seaweed and the chair-leg sticking out of what looked like a gallon of blackcurrant jelly spread all over the middle of her chest. Her face was almost unrecognizable. Duncan took a hand towel from the rail and let it drop over her head; it floated for a moment and then the water weighed it down and it sank around what remained of her features.

I didn't want to look any more. I looked down at the floor instead, and spotted a diamante crucifix gleaming in the middle of a lot of broken glass, so I picked it up and watched the light glint off it in all kinds of crazy directions, and decided it was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.