from Parricide :
A bedtime story, eh? A bedtime story …. What a funny thing to want. Can’t you just sigh after we’ve made love, roll over, sleep? …
Yes yes, I heard your sigh. Very nice it was too.
I’m sighing inside, you know. I’m so glad to have you back …. I know I don’t sound like this often. But I mean it. It’s been so long since March. And then over summer – your preposterous commune – ouch! Pax! Pax! – your remarkable pagan experiment at Westley Waterless. Your world-defying experiment. Is that all right? …. Then term begins, and you just smile at me for four weeks. Smile from a distance. Until tonight – you turn up at the door. Why tonight? … Oh of course, the fireworks. Guy Fawkes. … I can still hear them. Can you? That was a sky-rocket. Ptttth-wack! ….
No, no, I’m not trying to get out of it. A story you shall have. If you dare. If you don’t think it too dangerous, so late in the day. You know my work. You know how I use tale-telling. I’m not restful ….
All right, all right! As promised. Snuggle down. I don’t suppose you came back to me for restfulness. So don’t blame me….
What am I going to tell you? Ah. This.
I am not restful. But the best – that is, the scariest – story-teller I’ve ever known … oh, she was far worse. My stories are forged weapons – gas to burn lungs, maces to shatter skulls, bombs to vaporise. Hers choked. They pushed you out of time into the void where there can be no air.
She was my grandmother. Lady Culpepper. Brenda. A woman of the twentieth-century ....