Day #5: Many Colours by Amber Averay
Fill the ground with rotting corpses
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Perish mothers’ sons and daughters
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Feed the soil with blood and tissue
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Flood the earth with bone and sinew
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Who doesn’t love this time of year? The craziness, the frenzy, the absolute chaos – nobody knows what they’re doing while pretending they have it all under control. It’s beautiful. In the confusion all sorts of strange and unexplainable things happen, most of which is attributed to the ‘miracle of Christmas’. The darker occurrences – well, they tend to get overlooked until much later, by which time trails are usually cold and coated in snow.
It’s lovely. And so damned convenient!
It is also a marvellous method of judging a person’s character. Some folk see a woman struggling with too much for one person to carry, and offer assistance. Those people live to see Christmas morning. The others, who yell at me to move out of the way or ‘hurry up’, or – my favourite – ‘plan better next year!’…well, they find themselves fertilising my wondrous gardens.
It is easy to be overlooked when you’re a woman. It’s especially easy to be dismissed as of little consequence when you appear to be small, helpless, and, in effect, fragile. People either assume you need help, or that you’re fair game.
When the person’s quality has been judged, the next steps happen quickly. I am stronger than I look, faster, and quite capable of doing whatever is necessary to clean society of the rude and uncouth clogging it. The target is rendered unconscious, transported to my workshop, and secured to a bench. That’s when the fun begins!
With cheery Christmas carols blaring from the speakers (to get into the festive spirit and conveniently smother any screams) I get to work. The methods I resort to depends on the person and the level of disrespect they directed toward me.
My current mood also plays a part in deciding what the target is put through.
For example, my most recent recipient was a real discovery. She spewed vitriol and vile threats from the moment she regained consciousness, either not realising or caring about her situation. When I enclosed her wrist in a vise she hurled abuse at me, such words as have no place during the Christmas season, and when I tightened the clamp around her bones until they crunched she gasped in a breath, then her tongue let loose again.
When I snipped off the tips of her pinkie fingers she howled, thrashed, somehow nearly flipped my workbench! So I smashed her kneecaps with my hammer, which turned her stream of curses into wordless screams of rising pitch. They blended charmingly with the soaring voices pouring from the speakers, invigorating and inspiring me.
When I was finished, and she was in chunky pieces, I’d loaded her into the wheelbarrow and lugged her out to the garden shed.
Now, Christmas is the time for traditions, and I have my own. When a chosen one has finished testing their vocal chords against the soaring voices of the children’s choir, I trim them into manageable pieces and dump them in the shed for a few days. I have a mulch pit there, where I tip the remains, mix them in, and turn up the heating so the bodies begin to soften and liquefy.
When I go back in a few days’ time I always – always – take the time to admire the bruise of colours decaying human flesh takes on. It doesn’t matter the ethnicity of the person – Christmas is a time for all – the shades mottling rotting skin are unique, intricate designs that deserve appreciation.
And then they are transferred to my gardens. I’ve found that liquefying remains make for superior fertiliser, and the proof is in my magnificent blooms and creepers, bushes and beds. It almost seems that the more colour staining the remains, the more juice leaking from them, create bigger and bolder blossoms incomparable with any other.
I tip the last of the soil around the shrubs tufting from the ground and pat it smooth before drizzling some of the extract around its base, then rock back on my heels and admire my latest project, humming away as the light melts from the sky.
Spread the mulch about the sapling
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Now the bitch’s bones are rattling
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Deep inside the ground beneath me
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
See the worms around her wreathing
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
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