Willy Wurton the farm minder took a step down from the muck trailer and rapidly found himself splattered on the rough concrete below. His master’s cob house hovered dizzily on either side of his face as he groaned in agony. A sharp smell of ammonia hit his nose, and despite the obvious urgency of the situation, Willy felt fine. He reckoned he had a good fifteen minutes before debilitating pain hit. He lobbed himself to the closest bathroom to wash off the smell before collapsing in a heap on the stables bathroom floor, water still running alongside the blood that rushed from his gaping head. It swirled nicely in a salmon-pink spiral round the drain.
He was just about conscious enough to notice that the pain was not unbearable, considering the overpowering weakness that had made him fall to the floor and rather unable to stand up.
A scream erupted from a few houses away, and Angela picked it up as something very unlike the fox and owl noises she was used to. No – it was human. She wondered what could possibly have happened to the neighbours this time.
Harriet and Jake had been busy in bed while Willy lay dying in the stables shower. It was the most heated session yet since their wedding back in April. Harriet had been inexperienced then, but was learning fast from heavy-handed Jake.
Her blind love for him enabled her body to contort into awesome poses – whichever he so desired – and his obvious pleasure made her tremble in aching bliss all the more. The whimpers from her wet mouth led him to ecstasy. His own pulsing finish wrought an altogether new moan out of Harriet’s throat, for at last she had joined him at the final destination.
Sweat dripped down and across their bodies; they sloshed decadently in a puddle of their own fluids, basking in the musk of love.
Meanwhile, the crack at the back of Willy’s skill continued to release vital fluids from his brain as he lolled in the running water directly beneath their bedroom. He could just about hear Harriet’s squeal of lustful abandon before passing into the next world accompanied by the landlady's first orgasm.
Angela knew something was not right when the scream rose high and low in breathless horror for a good five seconds before dead silence took over the valley. It was most definitely a woman. But where had it come from? She hobbled through her fields over the hill where the nearest neighbours lived.
“Andy?” she spoke through the letter-hole, having knocked to no avail. The half-deaf man hobbled over to open up.
“Where’s Tammy?” asked Angela in a quiet, shaking voice. Tammy was her longtime best friend in the village and they both enjoyed fearing for each other’s lives on a regular basis.
Tammy had been diagnosed with a seemingly terminal illness which gave her only about three months to live, but two years had since passed and she was still alive and kicking, unlike her supposedly younger, healthier husband who tottered about like death itself. She could barely stand the look of him and relied largely on Angela to keep and strength and spirits up.
“Angie!” shouted Tammy from atop the stairs. “Thank god, I thought that was you, god forbid!”
“She thinks she heard some sort of blood-curdling scream,” said Andrew witheringly with a roll of his good eye. The other had glazed over with age and over-use in peeping through keyholes at the local high school, or so Tamara liked to say.
“And I was terrified it might be you!” exclaimed Angela with a hand on her chest. The two women clutched each other at the door as Tamara swatted the exasperated Andrew away like an old dog. The two began immediately to contemplate the likely source of the scream.
“Well, Richard lives up there but he’s got no women on site, of course,” giggling Angela, who was sure the middle-aged farmer had a touch of the gay. “It was definitely a woman, then, right?”
Tamara nodded wholeheartedly.
“Not a doubt in the world. I’ve heard that sound once before, from a girl who gave birth to a stillborn.”
Tamara had begun her adult life as an assistant midwife, but had rapidly moved on to housewifery upon marrying Andrew.
“Well, there is Geoff and Leila over to the east but that is rather far for a scream to carry… then of course, Jake and Harriet,” mumbled Angela, deep in thought. “Perhaps we ought to pay a visit to the newlyweds, though I’d never expect...”
“Who knows, Angie darling? They barely knew each other before the marriage. And you know how men can be,” said Tamara conspiratorially, raising an eyebrow towards Andrew who had limped his way back into his newspaper at the kitchen table.
When she and Andrew had married, the man had changed as soon as they stepped over the threshold of their new home. Little things would annoy him; slightly bigger ones angered him; any mishap that required extra effort on his part could render him violent.
Tamara had learned quick enough to stay out of his way. To be fair, he did not ask for much. A meal a day would keep him satisfied, plus or minus a few snacks. He would even go to the shops, sometimes. But if his favourite foods ever did run out when he particularly craved them, Tamara was first in his line of verbal fire.
She had established her own life over the years, around his schedule. For another quality of his was a total disinterest in her personal affairs. As long as she did not too heavily advertise their marital discomforts to the locals, she could do whatever she wished.
Tamara particularly loved to organise activities for the local children, teaching them names and smells of plants, the safe handling of cattle and horses and dogs, how to play a tin pipe. She craved the devotion only eager children could deliver.
Never would she grace her despised husband with offspring, she had decided, and instead kept her looks intact for her excursions outside the county and raised the children of busy parents. Tamara became like their second mother, if not the first woman to make an appearance in their earliest memories.
This was a particularly gratifying thought to the glossy black-haired young woman as she tied her characteristic ponytail before hitting the town, some twenty-five years earlier. She had just been through a shouting match with Jake’s mother and in need of a night out. The boy had come briefly under her tutelage before the jealous woman grabbed him as soon as he insisted on seeing Tamara on the regular. Perhaps he had since evolved down dear Andrew's path?
She hoped on the surface of her mind that this was not true, for Harriet was defenseless as a sheep.
“Let’s go.”
Harriet and Jake, still coated in their juicy aromas, milled about the yard desperately looking for help. Their farm hand had just died in the shower and they had no idea what misfortune could befall them from such a situation. Could it be pegged on Jake for a lack of safety measures? Did Willy have a vengeful family who might sue them out of their new home? They had only just moved in to the farm Harriet’s father had so kindly bought them; they had only just employed Willy, the first to answer their help wanted advert.
Harriet was calling the ambulance while Jake scrubbed at the bloodstain on the ground by the trailer to make it appear that the man had simply fallen over in the shower, when two skinny and concerned elderly ladies arrived at the gate.
“Fuck,” muttered Jake under his breath, knowing the cleaning might look suspicious. They did not even have anything to hide! Maybe the blood was from earlier in the year, or an injured creature. He did not quit brushing the ground, as this might look more suspicious.
“Hello there, Jake. We are so sorry for the disturbance, but we heard a scream and got very afraid,” said Angela dutifully.
“We have been asking around, you see,” added Tamara tactfully.
“Right yeah. That was us. Our groom… cracked his head in the shower. Harry’s on the phone to the ambulance now,” Jake answered in the politest possible tone and continued scrubbing the concrete like a nervous tic.
“I had been meaning to do this for, for weeks,” he stuttered. “The sight of him sent my insides trotting. I need to calm my nerves. Need to get this… yard looking good,” he gave one last fervent scrub and threw the brush in the soapy bucket. The bubbles had taken on a reddish hue, but so was the bucket itself, which helped to conceal its bloody contents.
He could not hide the act any better than he had done. He knew Harriet’s scream would have attracted the neighbours and resented the ridiculous suspicions it had plainly aroused in their crotchety minds.
He had no memory of adoring Tamara at any point, and only saw her for the gossiping snake that his mother always described her as. “Tamara is just a batty cow who likes to take children into her miserable, twee little home and escape her husband on the weekends to get up to god-knows-what,” were her words whenever the subject arose.
He bade Angela no ill will, though she did have a funny taste in friendships. He turned to her and said, “you really oughtn’t see this, Angie, it’s a wreck. We haven’t fixed up the barns or the courtyard or the garden yet. It was going to be so perfect. Willy had so much experience, he was going to tidy it all beyond recognition. Now this!” he finished with a tremor.
Tamara felt a rush of attraction for the passionate boy before resentment settled back in. Angela meanwhile did not trust him one bit. “Where is Harry?”
“She is calling the ambulance.”
“How long does that take?”
He did not appreciate the question.
“Harry! Come out here, please,” he shouted through to the kitchen.
“Why! Jakey! I don’t want anybody to see me like this. I can barely open my eyes from the shock,” she whimpered back.
“Oh, darling...” Jake melted. He ran in to comfort her, but Angela did not buy it. Would he drag her out in a rush before a bruise formed on her face?
Soon enough, Harriet came out pale as a humpbacked dolphin, clutching her arms and staring wildly about her. “Hi Angie, Tammy,” she said. “I’m so sorry, I’m just, I’m sure you heard...”
“Please don’t be sorry, sweet girl,” insisted Angela. “What happened to you, child?”
“Hasn’t Jake said? We have just seen Willy… keeled over… in the shower. All his work clothes scattered about as if he had been in some mad rush to wash, and fell over.”
“I suspect he slipped in some age-old compost, got it all over himself and rushed in for a quick wash,” Jake said. “All the filth round the old stables is beyond belief. They could have taken a good chunk off the price if we had seen it,” he added matter-of-factly.
The ambulance came soon after the two women had retired to their homes.
Willy was taken away, almost no questions asked. The police inspector raised his eyebrow slightly at the scattered clothes upon the floor. Why such a hurry? Had he been delirious? He took a few photos of the scene before paramedics carted off the body.
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