<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comes out of the town. Comes out of Hayshead or Brechin Road or Demondale. There\u2019s spilled chips and broken bins and a twitch to his torso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Seaton, the cloying Den, down to the Flairs\u2019 stony bay and up to the cliffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He doesn\u2019t know if it\u2019ll happen today, but he knows it will happen one day. He\u2019s not planned it, there\u2019s never been a plan, he\u2019s never thought about afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s not long to wait but then he\u2019s not waiting. He\u2019s only walking, a tic-man on the path at the top of the cliffs, the sea cliffs where seabirds wheel below him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0tic-man<\/em> tic-man<\/em> the birds shout off the rocks, their voices carry to the cove where the seals haul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He won\u2019t let them pass him on the path even if they walk quickly, heavy and quickly, heavy they move along, in threes or twos. Two women or one. One heavy woman. There\u2019s him and the path and one heavy woman who scans the sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He slips back a yard to watch her thighs rub, the width of her arse, to feel the sticky stench of her hair. He sees her legs and her arse and her head turn as he jerks along the path, just a pace behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He could bury his hand in the flesh of her back. His hands, his fists. Bury them in all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Middle-aged women eat and eat. They eat cakes and pills and hope. Mothers, meddlers, they guzzle cakes and wine and power. They gobble men. They gorge on young men like him. School mistresses, mothers, meddlers, cakes and pills and rules and laws. They\u2019d have him tied and titted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s fast now, down she trots on the slubbed path to the promontory, together they\u2019re a pantomime cow. See the red arches and the red caves, the cities of white birds screaming. His breath\u2019s on her lobes. There\u2019s a red stone turned in his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n stone-man<\/em> stone-man<\/em> the birds cry off the rocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s at the edge of the cliff. The cow\u2019s at the end now. Stupid cow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when the stone comes down she\u2019s slipped away like a flipper and he\u2019s the one who\u2019s falling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He twists, drops, the fat woman\u2019s at the top of the cliff, smiling, of course she smiles, his body winds around the wind, there are women on a shelf of rock, almost a circle of women, and waves froth over their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n they\u2019re liars liars liars<\/em> screech the birds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His clouding eye won\u2019t see his ribs bent brittle or ligaments pulled off the bone or the skin riffled and flayed from muscle or the women peel off their clothes and stow them above the tide. It won\u2019t see them don their skins, sky-grey, pebble-grey, dappled-seal-grey. Won\u2019t see them swim out to the cove to bask in delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n liars liars liars<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They come to land and shed their skins to seduce and win and it\u2019s a harsh wooing. They wait for raging young men to come out of the town. This year or next, they always get one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Young men who walk out of Hayshead or Demondale or Lochlands or Keptie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally published in <\/em>Pushing Out the Boat, May 16, 2021.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Zusana Storrier’s chilling, supernatural story of murder on the cliffs of Arbroath racks up the suspense until the end. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[141,15,109,37,22,99,38],"class_list":["post-1400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-crime","tag-dundee","tag-fiction","tag-horror","tag-nethergate-writers","tag-supernatural","tag-suspense"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}