Dirtier Work

Maybe, she thought, staring at one of the barn’s many walls, it’ll blend in with the paint.

Then, it dawned on her. The knife fell from Angelica’s hand, and onto the hay-bedded ground.

“Oh, God...oh my God.”

The blood most definitely did not blend in with the paint. Both were beautiful colors, Angelica decided, but it was something about the red of the living that set a fire in her heart.

Only this time, the match didn’t light.

It had flickered as she’d stabbed him, over and over again, but never quite stayed aflame. As Angelica’s gaze lingered on her brother’s new corpse, she realized that it was no longer the red of the living that was splattered on the barn wall.

Angelica crept towards the body, its limbs dangling off the haystacks. She dared to press a hand to her brother’s chest.

Still warm. Angelica’s own body was growing warm, too. She whipped her head to the barn door, where a beam of fresh sunlight poured through the crack she’d left open.

Sunrise...Uncle’ll be out soon. Angelica caught her own thoughts, and her breaths quickened, an entire hay bale rising in her throat.

“He doesn’t come in here,” she panted, straining to keep her voice at a whisper, “he never, ever comes into this one.” She wasn’t lying to herself—the old farmer abandoned the scarlet barn with the peeling paint decades ago. No bacon or beef in sight. Angelica turned back to her brother’s body and let out the very worst: a scream, a young girl’s shrill cry.

An alarm. It was only a moment later that Roo let out his own scream from the main property, below the hill that the old barn rested upon. Angelica had always imagined that the rooster was even more ancient than her Uncle Josh. Then again, despite his age, Josh was still completely able to run a farm on his own.

Except for that summer, clearly, when he sent for the Dyer siblings. Angelica didn’t ask questions when her parents stuffed her and Michael into a train car on the first day of vacation, and bid them farewell to the middle of nowhere. She was mad at them for a while, for making her spend her summer with her older brother instead of with her friends. As Angelica had shoveled manure, she could just picture Mary and Shelly at the roller rink, meeting some cute boy and fawning over him without her.

Angelica had tolerated Michael for a while. Actually, she’d never stopped tolerating him at all.

She was still asking herself why.

Why, Ang? Your own brother? What made you do it?

‘No one’s gonna ask, Ang,’ her mother had said, ‘because no one’s gonna find out.’ Angelica wiped her brown skin clear of tears, took her brother by the ankles, and dragged him out the barn door.

Michael was heavy, even for a high school quarterback. Angelica swore under her breath. Who’s gonna replace him? Oh, God, oh God, oh God.

Angelica kept at it as the sun rose higher and higher. She dragged him all the way down the backside of the old barn hill, and when she reached the woods, Angelica picked Michael up. With her brother slung over her shoulder, she trudged through the illuminated trees. It was a pain to pick up a dead body every time she tripped, but this was what she was being trained for, after all.

Now maybe Uncle’ll think twice before he asks me to carry those sacks of chicken feed down to the coops every blistering afternoon.

When Angelica reached the spot she’d prepared, she set Michael down on the dirt and wiped her hands on her nightdress.

She froze.

I wiped my hands on my nightdress. Angelica stared down at her bloodied attire.

So, so red. Patches of silk could still be made out, but for the most part, the gown was stained with Michael’s dirty remains. Angelica pulled her midnight curls back with one scarlet hand and clamped her mouth with the other. She tasted metal, and mumbled every curse her parents would beat her for repeating.

“Momma,” she choked to the wood, “if you...didn't want...a son, you could have...just killed him...yourself!”