Read Online A Gentle Hell by Autumn Christian - Free Book Online

but there was no response except for the crashing of the trees and her lonely howl, echoing from half a mile away.
    I didn’t know what else to do - I walked back through the darkened field, climbed over the fence and went back into the house. When I came back, I found myself shaking uncontrollably and unable to stop, like someone had stuck a live wire through my head from ear to ear. I couldn’t swallow. Could hardly breathe. I went into the bathroom and pulled off my shirt and found the ragged, red claw marks. Only then did the sharp pain strike me, and I grabbed a bottle of iodine and splashed it across my ribs. As I burned I paced the living room floor. I peered out the curtains. I kept picking up the phone to call the police, but then I’d laugh and shake my head and put the phone down, only to come back several moments later and pick it up once more.
    The night clamped down on the house and maybe in that moment I felt what she felt, trapped inside the house with a rabid dog in every periphery. Trapped inside her head in the white dress unable to breathe, training her hips to be a hypnotist’s pendulum, pulling off the bloody sweater to look back in the mirror at the wings she lost and perhaps never had.
    I climbed up into her attic studio and I looked out the window. I looked for her but I could only see the dark field and the moon and the tops of trees and the reflection of my head pressing against the glass stirring sinking spit on my chin, claw marks and kisses leaving burns on the glass.
    I went to sleep curled up on the floor of the attic and I dreamed of winter storms, but what fell from the storm clouds wasn’t rain, but dead owls. They littered the lawn and the field and the roof, all facing up, necks broken, eyes open. My eyes.
    And I dreamed of her.
    I woke to the hazy morning and a dog barking. I glanced toward the window and I saw sunlight streaming through. Suddenly last night seemed unreal, but when I moved I felt the ache in my bones and the cuts from her claw marks. With slow, deliberate motions I got up off the floor and climbed down the attic stairs. I went into the kitchen, the dog still barking outside. Then I went into the living room, crossed the floor, and peeled back the curtains.
    I found her outside lying on the porch. I ran to the front door, yanked it open, and ran out toward her. June lay on her back, naked. Gore streaked her hair and fingernails and mouth. I bent down to check her breath. When I did so, she coughed and her eyes fluttered open.
    “June, what happened?”
    “I bit him back,” she said. “I got him good.”
    She touched her hair and left red streaks on her hands. Quivering, she lay her hands back down and turned her head toward the wooden porch floor. A smile splayed across her face.
    I picked her up and she wrapped her hands around my neck. She buried her head in my chest. I carried her to the car parked at the end of the gravel road.
    “Where are you taking me?” she asked as I maneuvered her to open the car door
    “Somewhere safe,” I said.
    “Love you,” she whispered, and kissed my mouth. Closed her eyes. I tasted the caked blood. I put her in the back of the car, gently, so as not to hurt her. Without protest she lay across the backseat and grew still.
    “I’m going to get you some clothes,” I said. “Stay here, okay?”
    I closed the car door and went back into the house.
    I took a blanket from the top of the washing machine.   After that, for the longest time I stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to find something to grasp onto, trying to find a stray memory, a stray piece of fabric, to hold onto so I wouldn’t fall straight through the floor. I felt myself being pulled outside of my body and the sticky strands of my muscles roping my ghost.
    June called my name from outside.
    “I’m coming!” I said.
    On the way out, I grabbed the wrench.
    “Do you still love me?” she asked as we drove out of the gravel driveway, the blanket draped