You have no items in your cart. Want to get some nice things?
Go shopping
There’s a skull on the kitchen table. Right in the middle. Bone on pine. Human, she knows. Whose is it? Whose was it? It wasn’t there last night.
It looks clean. Old. She won’t touch it. She turns her back, puts the kettle on, puts a teabag in a cup, looks over her shoulder. She thinks of the phrase bone china. Then, bone white. The skull is yellow. Brown. Stained in patches like aged paper. Like tea.
The kettle rumbles.
Was it Marv? A med student joke intended to frighten? Or Fi’s mates larking about after the pub?
She isn’t scared.
She pours boiling water into the cup, watches the teabag darken, dip, bob to the surface. She could take a spoon, squeeze the bag damp, dab it over the skull in the lighter places. To even things out. As she thinks this, she wants to.
But she won’t. It isn’t her skull, after all.
Aware of her bare feet on the lino, of the flesh on her toes, she pads to the fridge for milk. Then she pulls out a chair and sits. They are face-to-face, a distance apart, her and the skull. She thinks of a hammer in her fist. Power and heft. Her arm raising up. Smashing down. The crunch and the crack. Metal on bone. Splinters. Powder. Pow!
The eye sockets are fixed on her. She sips her tea, doesn’t look away.
‘I wouldn’t,’ she says in a whisper. ‘Never.’
There’s no sound from upstairs. No one awake.
What would happen if she took it? Now? Up to her room?
Possession.
Can you own the dead?
‘Well?’ she asks, studying the small yellow teeth. ‘Can you?’
There’s a skull on the kitchen table.
Alone.
It isn’t hers but…
About Louisa Scott
Louisa Scott lives in London, UK. She is in the process of editing her debut novel, Naked As Paper, set in 1970s expat Algarve. She has a masters in Creative Writing from RHUL. 9-5, she writes and advises on sales and marketing copy for professional services clients - on a mission to rid the world of corporate-speak. When not working or writing, she loves doing jigsaws with her children and running in the park.
