Starletta and the Others

You do flatter yourself, Starletta.

This was what Eileen thought bitterly as she climbed up the darkened steps to her sister-in-law‘s home. Here was another evening lost to calming a crazy, trembling reed of a woman who believed that ‘the others’ were coming to get her. Eileen did not know who or what ’the others’ were, only that they had seemingly taken up residence in the old farmhouse when her brother inexplicably walked out on his wife, and that it had become her job, somehow, to keep them at bay.

Eileen could not fathom who would want this simple, pale mouse with the dirty snow hair and unstrung eyes. In the five years since Malcolm had gone, Starletta had given herself over to conspicuous strangeness. Though she had always been a little quiet and nervous before, her eccentricities had now bred into full colour absurdity, something Eileen could not muster compassion for. Instead, she was resentful, because it had become her problem and she’d never especially liked Starletta to begin with, which Malcolm had known. To leave her as caretaker to this weird and needy creature was hateful, she thought. A punishment for a misdeed she had not done.

Starletta had taken to writing letters to Eileen and mailing them weekly. The letters varied slightly, but the main message was always clear. Starletta believed that she was going to die, that by the time Eileen received the mail, she would be reading the words of a dead woman. There’s nowhere in this house to hide where they can’t find me, and when they do, they won‘t let go. The first few times Eileen read these letters she’d race over to the farmhouse in a frenzy, only to find Starletta sitting on the old back porch in a rocking chair, sipping on iced tea and stroking her old, orange cat, Milo.

‘What do you mean by sending me a letter like this!’, she’d screeched the first time, only to be met by a blank expression. ‘Are you crazy, worrying me like that?’

But Starletta never answered, somehow calmed and renewed every time Eileen’s car spit gravel up the driveway. She’d offer very little by way of apology, only motioning for Eileen to take a seat next to her, pushing her a glass of tea. Sometimes she’d talk a little about the weather, or she’d wonder aloud as to where Malcolm had gotten to, but most of the time she remained silent, stroking the cat and rocking in her chair.

It wasn’t as though Starletta never spoke, though. She called Eileen over and over on any given day, mumbling and frantically raging that ‘the others’ were coming for her. After so many years of it, Eileen had grown tired of trying to figure it out. Years ago, people wrote off these kinds of things as odd, but nothing more, and Eileen didn‘t want to invest more energy in working to find the cause or solution. Starletta was peculiar, that was all, and while it bothered Eileen more than it amused her, it was less troublesome to ignore the oddities and adapt to them. She was the only one suffering, really.

‘Eileen?’ Starletta had whispered into the phone earlier in the evening.

‘Yes, Starletta,’ Eileen sighed angrily, ‘what’s the problem now?’

‘They took my cat. The bastards took my cat!’

Eileen didn’t bother asking who, because the answer was always the same. It made no sense to argue because Starletta had convinced herself that the others were real and there was no room for debate. They had moved in long ago, and wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.

‘Why would they take your cat?’ Eileen snapped.

‘How should I know?’ Starletta responded angrily. ‘Maybe he rubbed against one of them or something. I don’t have any idea why they torment me the way they do.’

‘It doesn’t seem logical that they’d take your cat,’ Eileen reached for her glass of wine.

‘You think they trouble themselves with logic?’ Starletta asked.

‘I’m just saying that Milo is probably running around looking for mice, that’s all. He’s got better things to do than sit in that old house all night. Cats like the dark.’

‘They have him,’ Starletta whispered with certainty. ‘I know they do. Please come, Eileen. Please come and get my old cat back.’ Starletta then began to cry on her end of the phone, starting small like a child, before bursting into big, wet wracking sobs. ‘They’re going to get me, you know. They’re going to get me, just like they keep saying they’re going to.’

‘No one is going to get you,’ Eileen tried to reassure Starletta, but her heart wasn’t in it. Part of her wished someone would get her, that raving lunatic in the dowdy, floral dresses. If only someone would go into that house and finish that business, taking all the trouble from Eileen’s life, she might even be grateful. She fantasized about stumbling on Starletta’s lifeless body, perhaps partially consumed by a fat, smiling Milo, and she had to stop herself from smiling. It would mean the end of an emotional raping, the cessation of a responsibility she’d been tricked into.

‘You don’t care about me,’ Starletta wailed across the line. ‘You only care about yourself. You’re evil, you know that?’

Eileen sucked in a breath. A bitter retort would not penetrate the armour of this insanity. Starletta was no longer on the planet, she thought. She was delusional and trying to best her would serve no discernible purpose, sapping the little energy Eileen had left.

‘Starletta,’ she said sweetly, ‘you know I care, hon. It’s just that we’ve had this conversation before and not once has anyone tried to hurt you.’

‘They took my cat!’ Starletta shrieked.

‘Well, we don’t know where that old cat has gone, do we? He might even be curled up at the end of your bed right now, purring away without a care in the world. Is that possible?’

‘They‘re coming,’ Starletta whispered. ‘Why don’t you ever believe me?’

‘I didn’t say I don’t believe you,’ Eileen said wearily.

‘They’re coming, and when they do, blood will run.’

‘I have to go now,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m sure big, old Milo will be back when he’s finished his business. Until then, do something nice for yourself, like make some warm milk with vanilla and cinnamon. You like that.’ Five years of this nonsense. So many nights of reasoning with a crazy woman. Go kill yourself, Eileen wished silently, please let the others find you and take you with them.

She’d given up on the guilt in wishing Starletta ill because it held no value. What she longed for was freedom, the ability to ease herself out of the burden that had been foisted on her without warning. She found herself lazily praying for the end of the woman, to find her swinging from a tree or with a crooked neck at the bottom of the looming staircase. In these fantasies, she grabbed on to a limitless life again, barring any hint of shame or indignity. Right now, it was all about Starletta and her bizarre transformation from an annoying neurotic into a full-fledged parasite, and with every menacing phone call, every baleful, spidery-script letter, a little of Eileen’s blood was siphoned away.

When thoughts of a dead sister-in-law exhausted her, Eileen turned her thoughts to her brother. He’d brought this woman into her life without asking, and then he left her behind, like an unwanted puppy, confident that a person with some level of kindness would assume the duty. He must have known, she thought, that I was the only who would do it. It was just like him to flee when things got to be too much. It was what made him impossible to love, Eileen decided, his unwillingness to think about her in any capacity other than functional and reliable . For this, she wished him dead, too.

As she sipped on her wine, fingering the cold, elegant smoothness of the glass stem, she began to wonder if anyone would notice if Starletta should just…disappear. No one ever called on her, and she rarely mentioned anyone other than Malcolm, who recently had vanished from conversation altogether, leading Eileen to wonder how visible Starletta had ever been. There hadn’t been much of a wedding all those years ago, with only a handful of Malcolm’s family present, and it had none of the fanfare one would normally expect of such a celebration. Starletta had seemingly come from nowhere, which was where she had elected to remain. No one got personal with her and everyone was fine with that, including Eileen, until she was pushed into a bigger role. The incessant intrusion of this non-person into Eileen’s life felt almost predacious, and should Starletta suddenly be gone it would alleviate the pressure of living a life of unwanted obligation. Eileen smiled to herself as she imagined all sorts of sinister scenarios, each one punctuated by a lifeless Starletta, quieted by the grace of fate; electrocution in the bathtub, or a fire which would start in the second-floor bedroom as the madwoman slept. There were others, some sensational, some bloodless, but all ending the same way, with a cold corpse lying on the farmhouse floor.

Eileen shook her head then, shocked at herself for what she’d been thinking. She must not let Starletta’s lunacy infect her. This was a human being, after all, and even if life would be easier without her, there was no call to wish her a sloppy, untimely death. It would not go on like this forever, and eventually things would escalate to a point where Starletta would require real help, where she could be locked away somewhere without a phone. So far, it had been nothing more than paranoia and mild harassment, but at some point Starletta would lose all control, reduced to a quivering, crumpled heap so that a pair of restraining hands could grab her and forever limit her reach. For now, though, this was about a cracked woman and her missing cat. It was about putting ‘the others’ to bed for one more night.

Eileen drove out to the old farmhouse on the silver-licked gravel road, occasionally catching the quick blinks of shining eyes in the ditch along the way, eyes that never revealed more than reflected light and alarm. The black night was filled with blazing diamonds, and the air was as crisp as an apple, with the scent of burning wood and wet dirt in every breath. An anonymous night, thought Eileen, a time reserved for audacious acts and secret ceremonies.

When she reached the house and began to ascend the front steps, it did not occur to her that this night would be any different than any of the ones before it. She was still angry with Starletta and her irksome imbalance, and with her brother Malcolm for running away rather than deal with the derangement, but tonight she would simply try to quell the mania of this woman whose cat was missing. It was the right thing to do, after all.

When Eileen opened the door and moved inside she looked straight down the darkened hallway, straining to make sense of the shadows and the sounds around her. She did not see the expression on Starletta’s face as she came up from behind her, nor did she see the glint of the knife as it caught a stream of moonlight on its blade. What Eileen saw was the door closing after she’d hit the floor, the last of the light extinguished with a deep blackness that flooded around her, like the rich slick of blood that wet her face as it ran down from the base of her neck.

She didn’t bother screaming; better left to mice fleeing cats, better spent on nights that lead to morning.



Word count: 1988