Mr. Fox

DR. LUSTUCRU

Dr. Lustucru’s wife was not particularly talkative. But he beheaded her anyway, thinking to himself that he could replace her head when he wished for her to speak.

How long had the Doc been crazy? I don’t know. Quite some time, I guess. Don’t worry. He was only a general practitioner.

The beheading was done as cleanly as possible, and briskly tidied up. Afterwards Lustucru set both head and body aside in a bare room that the couple had hoped to use as a nursery. Then he went about his daily business as usual.

The Doc’s wife had been a good woman, so her body remained intact and she did not give off a smell of decay.

After a week or so old Lustucru got around to thinking that he missed his wife. No one to warm his slippers, etc. In the nursery he replaced his wife’s head, but of course it wouldn’t stay on just like that. He reached for a suture kit. No need. The body put its hands up and held the head on at the neck. The wife’s eyes blinked and the wife’s mouth spoke: “Do you think there will be another war? After the widespread damage of the Great War, it is very unlikely. Do you think there will be another war? After the widespread damage of the Great War, it is very unlikely. Do you think. .” And so on.

Disturbed by this, the doctor tried to remove his wife’s head again. But the body was having none of it and hung on pretty grimly. What a mess. He was forced to leave her there, locked in the nursery, asking and answering the same question over and over again.

The next night she broke a window and escaped.

Lustucru then understood that he’d been bad to the woman. He lay awake long nights, dreading her return. What got him the most was the idea that her vengeance would be fast, that he would be suddenly dead without a moment in which to understand. With that in mind, he prepared no verbal defences of his behavior. Eventually his dread reached a peak he could live on. In fact, it came to sustain him, and it cured him of his craziness, a problem he hadn’t even known he’d had. After several months there was no sign of his horror beyond a heartbeat that was slightly faster than normal. His whole life, old Lustucru readied himself to hear from his wife again, to answer to her. But he never did.

Hey. . What’s going on here?” I asked. We’d changed positions. I was in a chair, sprawled across it, as if I’d fallen. I assumed we were still in my study — I couldn’t say for sure, because Mary’s hands were pressed firmly over my eyelids.

“Mary?”

She didn’t answer.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

“I’d rather you didn’t look at me just now,” she said.

“Are you all right?”

“What do you think? After what you did, you — you great oaf.”

“Are you saying that that was us? Actually us? Me and you? The doctor and his lady wife?”

She was curt. “Yes, yes. I just need a couple of minutes, if that isn’t too much trouble.”

I whistled “I Can’t Get Started” until what she was saying sank in. That’s my go-to tune, my haven during many a mindless hour. I experimented with the length of the notes, drawing a couple of bars out here, rushing over a couple of bars there, fast, slow, fast, fast, slow, slow, slow. The tremor in Mary’s hands told me she was laughing silently. That was reassuring. I broke off halfway through the third rendition to ask if I could look at her yet.

“No, better not—”

She didn’t need to tell me it was bad. Put it this way — she was close, right in front of me, but her voice was coming from another direction entirely, from my far left.

“Listen — how did we get — I mean, how did that happen? How did we do that? How is that even possible? For us to do that together?”

“It’s all very technical,” she said haughtily. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Try me.”

“This isn’t a good time, I’m afraid.”

I missed her hands when she took them away. “Don’t look — I mean it,” she warned. A moment passed, I heard a clicking sound, and she gave a ragged gasp. I kept my eyes closed.

“Mary — that’s just the way the story went. I didn’t know that was us. Maybe if you’d explained beforehand—”

“Oh, you knew. Of course you did.” Her voice was thin. “But never mind. Serves me right for letting you go first. The next move is mine, and I assure you, you’re not going to like it.”