Scarlet Stiletto - the First Cut Read online

  Born in the Victoria’s west, Janis has also lived in Canberra and Melbourne. Her stories have appeared in a number of literary journals, and in 1999 she came equal first in the Canberra National Short Story Competition.

  ~ * ~

  Waight, Julie

  Dust Devils (2005: First Prize Trophy)

  A writer from regional Victoria, Julie has been a teacher, storyteller, exercise instructor and currently works in an aged-care leisure and lifestyle program. She studied professional writing and editing through Victoria University; won first place in the 2002 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Competition; and is undertaking a screenwriting course.

  ‘Dust Devils’, Julie’s hilarious tale of housework and revenge, won both the Scarlet Stiletto first prize and the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic Award.

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  ~ * ~

  Introduction

  I was sitting in Leo’s Spaghetti Bar in Melbourne, downing another glass of house red, when my client walked in.

  Small and blonde, she meant business as she plonked a scarlet stiletto on the table. It looked like no other stiletto I’d ever seen or worn. Its heel had been crafted into a blade: a thin, sharp, steel stiletto plunging into a wooden mount.

  Running her fingers over the shoe’s worn leather, she said in a low voice, “I want you to find out about this mysterious thing. Is there more than one? Is it some sort of fancy weapon?”

  I asked the obvious question. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m a sucker for a good mystery,” she said.

  She admitted to being a publisher in from Sydney. Couldn’t promise much by way of payment but said if I played it right, I might see my name in print. She left me her card and sashayed out into the St Kilda night.

  Idly I turned over the scarlet shoe. Etched into the base were the words, “It’s criminal what a girl has to do ... to get a good read.” Now that rang a bell ... somewhere.

  I cornered a snitch at the next table and waved the scarlet stiletto under her nose. “Ever seen one of these?”

  “It belongs to one of the Sisters.”

  Sisters? This stiletto wasn’t something a nun would wear.

  “Sisters in Crime,” she explained. “They conspire to inspire women’s crime. They’re doing it now, in Leo’s back room.”

  I headed straight there, hoping to catch these conspirators in the act. They were there, all right. Twelve of them. I considered roughing them or calling for back-up, but my quest for the truth proved much easier: they wanted to come clean.

  Turns out Sisters in Crime Australia has no suspicious motives; their idea of crime is purely fictional. They scheme on behalf of only their members: 500 like-minded women who strangely ‘fit no known profile’.

  These Sisters, and a few brothers-in-law, range from young to old; some work for pay or are retired; some work at home; some are teachers, solicitors, academics, nurses, librarians, social workers, unionists, cops, pathologists, mothers, judges, even crime writers. And they come from all over Australia.

  “But what’s with this?” I asked, waving the bladed red shoe.

  “Too much wine,” said the ringleader, “and we decided that a scarlet stiletto was the one thing a discerning woman writer needed in order to walk the mean streets.”

  I looked blank.

  “You write the right story, you win a shoe.”

  Ah, a competition. It was all falling into place.

  “We’re in our second decade,” the ringleader continued, “and we still love the way the award’s name combines the extreme femininity of the stiletto shoe with the deadly speed of the stiletto knife and the sauciness of scarlet women.”

  So, there was more than one shoe. It was time to report in. I rang the blonde’s phone.

  “Women have been committing tales of murder all over Australia!” I exclaimed. “The only mystery is how they’ve gotten away with it for so long.”

  “I knew this would turn out in my favour,” said my client. “Get me the stories. I want to spread the word!”

  Carmel Shute

  National Co-convenor, Sisters in Crime Australia Inc.

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  ~ * ~

  Dust Devils

  Extraordinary things happen all the time. Cyndi knows this to be true because she watches Maury Povich, Oprah and Jerry Springer.

  Her house is a mundane suburban weatherboard, dirtier than most. Cyndi is not fond of cleaning. Tonight, the six o’clock news appears decidedly hazy through concentrated layers of dust on the television screen. As Cyndi sits on the couch, Danny struts between her and the television, holding the Electrolux vacuum cleaner.

  “What do you do all day?” he says, brandishing the nozzle in the air.

  Cyndi notices a carpet thread hanging from the end, a long dirty piece that wriggles about like an erratic worm.

  “Why don’t you clean?”

  Cyndi frowns. She thinks to tell him that Oprah had a host of burn victims as guests this afternoon and that Jerry Springer’s show had centred on paternity tests, but it doesn’t seem appropriate.

  “I went to the supermarket,” she says.

  “Look at the dust devils,” Danny says, wide-eyed and vacuum-cleaner encumbered.

  “Dust devils?” Cyndi can’t imagine what he means. “Don’t you mean dust bunnies?”

  “Nothing so harmless,” he says. “Not when you’re a chronic asthmatic.” Danny wheezes the last two words to add credence to his asthma chronicability. And he’s wearing his satisfied expression, the one where the side of his mouth curls at the corner.

  “You can’t expect me to do it,” he sighs in pretence of great weariness and breathlessness. “Work all day to come home and work some more.”

  The white hose thumps the Electrolux’s side. The hose is as thick as a boa constrictor.

  “You’re high maintenance,” Danny says. “High maintenance.”

  Cyndi supposes she is.

  “And lazy,” he adds, as if this new information is a sudden epiphany.

  “I’m not lazy,” Cyndi says, looking at her hands. Her nails are chewed to the quick. Raw cuticles dangle and bleed at haphazard intervals. She might be high maintenance, but not lazy. Cyndi gets up to change channels on the television; Danny doesn’t. Only lazy people use remote controls.

  The house surrounds them in dusty repose. Cushions are squashed into uncushion-like shapes on the couch, crookedly hung curtains hang in the blotchy windows, and spider webs droop heavily from the ceiling. Cyndi had meant to disengage the webs last Tuesday; Tuesday came and went, but the spider webs didn’t.

  But dust devils? Who’s heard of such a thing? Danny is making it up.

  Cyndi stops staring at the ceiling because Danny is staring at her.

  “What is wrong with you?” he says. The satisfied expression has slipped from his face.

  “Nothing,” she says, chewing at her index finger and tasting blood. “Lots of people don’t like cleaning, you know.” She points the bleeding finger in his general direction.

  Danny scowls. This expression makes the left corner of his mouth dip further than the right. It isn’t an attractive look and she’s meant to tell him this, but like removing the spider webs, she hasn’t got around to it.

  “Like it or not, people still clean.”

  My mother used to whistle while she worked, Cyndi thinks.

  Her mother had whistled, except for a brief period after her father had knocked out three of her teeth. Her mother had said that they were only false teeth and that it didn’t matter.

  Cleaning had been her mother’s passion. Less likely to be beaten if you were scrubbing the floor, or had your head in the oven.

  At least Danny doesn’t hit her. It’s a small concession, but a worthwhile one.

  Cyndi’s mother is in a nursing home now. The last time Cyndi visited was after the home’s co-ordinator complained that Cyndi’s mother had wrestled a cleaner to the floor for ownership of a Chux Superwipe and a
bottle of cloudy ammonia.

  Danny begins to stride about the living room, dragging the Electrolux behind him. One of the wheels squeak. It’s her mother’s vacuum cleaner, a family heirloom.

  “You know my condition,” Danny says. “You know how I suffer.”

  How can he think she doesn’t know when he reminds her daily? She considers telling him about yesterday’s episode of Maury Povich titled, ‘My husband had sex with my brother’, but decides against it.

  “You need help,” Danny states.

  It would be nice to have someone come in and clean, Cyndi thinks. They could certainly afford it. But she realises that isn’t what Danny is talking about.

  “Pardon?” Cyndi says.

  “I said, this therapist comes highly recommended.” He drops the Electrolux nozzle to the floor and reaches into his pocket. For a moment, the hose slithers on the carpet then lies still. Danny hates to repeat himself. Cyndi waits for him to say just that.

  “Why don’t you listen to me? You know how I hate to repeat myself.”

  Frisbee-like, he throws a business card at Cyndi. Its corner jabs the base of her throat. She swats at the spot and when she looks, her fingertip bears a smudge of blood.

  He has made her bleed for the first time.

  That night Cyndi dreams she’s on Jerry Springer.

  She sits on stage in a red leather chair. Without surprise, Cyndi sees that the audience is articles of furniture and fixtures from her house. Lying across an entire row is the couch and, next to it, the coffee table. In the row above are the lamp, a set of crockery with white flowers on the plates, the clock from the kitchen and her and Danny’s wedding photo. The television is perched in the front row and somewhere there will be the remote control.

  Their bookcase leans into the aisle, dusty encyclopaedias fall out. Jerry steps over these on his way to the stage.

  It isn’t until Jerry reaches the stage that Cyndi glances to her right. Her mother sits in another red chair, wearing her favourite pink blouse, black slacks and of course her floral apron and rubber gloves. Her mother smiles and claps, the rubber gloves make the sound hollow and squishy.

  On Cyndi’s left are three empty chairs. She wonders which guests will be joining them, then she looks again and sees that the chairs are occupied—by dust devils!

  Threads of fear twist in Cyndi’s stomach. Danny didn’t make it up after all. Here they are, not dust bunnies, no; nothing so harmless. They’re darker and dirtier than dust bunnies and not fluffy at all, but share their appearance with that of overused steel wool.

  One has ears, or are they horns? Another has a piece of old cheese for a head. The last has a spongy middle made of mould, the sort you find on vegetables left too long in the fridge.

  Jerry nods, smiles and turns to face the homely audience. He opens his mouth but it’s her mother’s scream that Cyndi hears.

  “Look out!”

  Heart thumping, Cyndi watches her mother leap from the chair. Somehow she’s acquired a broom; perhaps she wrestled it from a stagehand.

  “Filth!” She screeches. “Get out of the way! I’ve got to clean.”

  Jerry moves incredibly fast. He is, Cyndi supposes, a professional at handling volatile guests. With the assistance of some extremely clean cameramen, Cyndi’s mother is dragged from the stage. In the scuffle, a rubber glove falls to the floor. Cyndi sees her mother’s hand, as white and wrinkled as a dead fish, flap on Jerry’s shoulder.

  Left in the company of the dust devils, Cyndi nervously grips the arms of her red chair.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the dust devil with the mouldy middle says. “You are our friend.”

  “Yes,” agrees the dust devil with the cheese head. “You leave us in peace.”

  The audience clatters, ticks, and flashes. More books tumble into the aisle. The television tunes into a station with applause.

  True, thinks Cyndi, her fear subsiding. She certainly has no reason to be considered an enemy to anything composed of dust, dirt, or even the black goop that accumulates in the plastic base of her kitchen tidy. Doesn’t she leave sleeping dust devils lie? By God, she does.

  When the dust devil with horns speaks (Cyndi can now see that the horns are crumbled corn chips), it sounds like Yoda from Star Wars.

  “Help you, we will.”

  Cyndi isn’t fond of the character, Yoda. She can’t understand how something so all knowing and wise fails to grasp the English language.

  “A friend in need, you are. Yes.”

  Books fall. The lamp flashes. The wedding photograph slips between seats and disappears. The television tunes into another station and there’s Darth Vader, sounding like he’s suffering an acute case of asthma.

  The dust devils say other things, but Cyndi can’t make out their words. The awful gasping, wheezing sound coming from the television gets louder. Cyndi realises that it’s Danny panting in the bed beside her and thinks how strange to comprehend something like that from inside a dream.

  Danny leaves for work the following morning and doesn’t kiss her goodbye. He hardly kisses her at all any more, but they still have sex regularly. This puzzles Cyndi and she considers writing to Jerry Springer to request a show based on dwindling kisses and invariable sex.

  The card Danny assaulted her with yesterday sits by the phone. She stares at it as if it may come alive and attack her of its own will. She senses it is dangerous.

  Danny expects her to call. He’ll ask if she has called when he gets home. Does she want to sit with a stranger and discuss her personal life? No. Will the stranger gaze at her chewed nails and write something on a notepad? Probably. Will it be decided that she needs some sort of experimental drug or treatment? Anything is possible. Extraordinary things happen all the time.

  Cyndi hurries to the bathroom to inspect herself in the mirror. The face that gazes back is plump and unattractive. Her hair needs cutting. Fear lies beneath her eyes in the form of dark smears. She can’t possibly go out looking like this. Her gnawed fingertips painfully grip the basin. Something brushes against her hand.

  Cyndi yanks her hand away and glares at the grubby basin. The three dust devils from her dream are assembled by the drain, like fat spiders trapped by the slippery surface.

  “You don’t need therapy,” Mouldy Middle says.

  “You have to take control,” Cheese Head adds.

  The horned dust devil wears pieces of Cyndi’s hair from the drain. “Fine, you are.”

  Cyndi isn’t convinced. “Danny thinks I should speak to someone. He thinks ...”

  “He is unkind,” Cheese Head says.

  “But, he’s never hit me.”

  “Bosses you, he does.”

  Mouldy Middle agrees. “And he talks down to you, like, like ...”

  “Dirt,” Cyndi finishes. She hopes she hasn’t offended them, speaking of dirt like it’s something bad. They don’t appear offended.

  “If you want to speak to someone, why not your mother?” says Mouldy Middle.

  “My mother?”

  The thought wraps around her brain like hair in a drain.

  The Treeside Hostel is a pleasant enough place, yet Cyndi doesn’t like coming here. She suffers an uneasy feeling in her stomach. She knows what the feeling is, but avoids using its given name.

  Her mother spent her life poised between Cyndi and her father’s fists. Being put in a home is hardly a reward for heroism.

  Cyndi wishes she could look after her mother, but Danny won’t allow it. She knows this to be true, even though she has never suggested it. The very thought of bringing up the subject makes Cyndi’s insides queasy. Danny doesn’t hit her—no—but he does something.

  He keeps me under control, she thinks.

  In her mother’s room, Cyndi finds a bottom sticking out from under the bed. This position is familiar to Cyndi. Apart from allowing close-up cleaning, it protects her mother’s face from fists and flying objects.

  “Mum?”

  The bottom wiggles out a
nd reveals a beaming face.

  “Cyndi!”

  Her mother totters upright and gives Cyndi a massive hug.

  The scent of Windex, washing powder and furniture polish, wafts into Cyndi’s nostrils.