Short Story: Krowley's Korner

Short Story: Krowley's Korner

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“Let’s stop here and eat.”

I could tell by her tone and the way she blinked rapidly as she spoke that she knew that I knew that she knew that I knew that she was being disingenuous.

Okey-dokey, I thought, deciding to play along. Let’s do that. Let’s stop right here, beside Aleister Crowley’s old house – the one where he managed to fling wide the portals of hell, then neglected to crank them shut - and have a pleasant, relaxing lunch.

I bumped the Agila up on to the verge. “Righty-oh. I’ll get the picnic rug and the cool-box. Can you manage the flask?”

I had parked at the foot of a steep embankment, right by a stagnant ditch and under a murky stand of alders, and although none were presently visible, the place shrieked “midge”. I cranked open the sunroof to its fullest extent, then got out and slammed the door firmly, locking it behind me before fetching the picnic stuff from the boot.

A few hundred yards away on the loch side, stood the crumbling, ivy-covered gateposts at the head of the driveway to the dreaded house. The sky was steel-grey, and the air still as death.

She turned to me with a glare. “I can’t get out.”

“Can’t you?” I replied, glancing casually at the thicket of nettle-tops that reached half-way up the passenger window. “Oh. How dreadful. You’ll just have to clamber over to this side.”

“Won’t you move the car to somewhere that’s not next to nettles and a midge-factory?”

“No. You said you wanted to stop here, and here we have stopped.”

I felt her eyes boring into the back of my head as I stood in front of the car, whistling, bending my knees and flexing my arms above my head.

“You bastard.”

“Lovely spot for a picnic. Look at that nice raven, on the gatepost. Hello, fella!”

“I can’t clamber. My back’s on amber alert. You took that last bend like Lewis bloody Hamilton.”

“Well I’m not moving the car. Keep mobile, that’s what the physio said.”

“I hate that physio. She’s a cow.”

I opened the cool-box and took out a chicken mayo deli wrap. Some of the filling squirted out as I bit into it.

“Can I have one?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m starving. When you get back into this car, I will kill you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

The raven flew to an alder branch above, disturbing a vast, humming cloud of midges. I put my hood up as the swarm descended in their predictably relentless search for blood. The advance guard was already filling the car via the sunroof as I hurried away. She was frantically straining to reach the handle to crank it shut, but to no avail as I’d already wedged it open with a tube of hand-gel.

The raven flew back on to the gate-post as she finally toppled out of the car and into the nettle-filled ditch. Driver’s side.