Slay Me in My Sleep

The old woman and the boy.

She woke at three with a thumping heart: she had dreamed once more of the night they met (19th of May, 1928, Chateau de Chaalis, Seine-et-Marne)

She was also watching on the occasion of his first break in. His face was lit by the moon, and was so familiar she’d thought he was a ghost. She’d listened to him moving about the house, and when he’d fallen quiet, she had said a name aloud. There was a sudden commotion of running steps, and he was gone. In the room he had left, an album of photographslLay spilled across the floor.

She quietly makes her way down the stairs as he rummages away in the room.

She stands in the dark for a long time.

Two cups sit on the table. The kettle is on and the bread is toasting. As the sky lightens she falls for a third time.

He raises her gently into a chair. She tells him how to make a sling for her arm using a tea towel. As he works she marvels at his face.

They sit facing each other at the kitchen table. He notices she is missing a finger.

“What’s that in your pocket?” “A photo” “Of who?” “I dont know”

With the photograph lying between them, she tells him her story and they talk for a long time.

The boy’s story of his faithful family dog.

The story of May 20th, 1929.

How, three days later, she wandered heartbroken and ruined into a mountain village. Overlooking the village was an Abbey.

The lament of the regretful ghost.

She asks him to pack her a bag for hospital. In her bedroom he finds a great wardrobe filled with all the beautiful clothes of her youth. He also finds a single suit.

He leads her by the arm in the old manner out into the music and the dancing light. She asks him, so he whispers something he thinks he might have said. She closes her eyes tight then, and when she opens them again she is different somehow. The nurse waits smoking against the car at the far end of the garden, and from over the fences the neighbourly sounds of cooking and children swim on the wind.