Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

Did you ever see Punch and Judy? What a little horror. Like they figured out how to stage a nightmare. He beats her, he kills her child. He gets away with it. Punch laughs. Ha Ha Ha Ha. We laugh. Ha Ha Ha Ha. The show only works if you don’t see the hands. It’s all a puppet show. And I saw the hands, my darlings.

Oh, I’m going to fall for you, Betty thought to herself wearily. Fuck. I’m already in the air, plummeting down the side of the building.

a man who wants to listen is seldom in want of a welcome.

There were curses to be learned, such as the infamous Malacht Cromail: May you carry your child until its twentieth year, which Betty vowed to work into casual conversation at every opportunity.

There was a line between pleasantly scary and grotesque and upsetting, and Eilis had lightly stepped over it and grinned at her while she did it.

She hated giving condolences. It always felt like adding to someone’s suffering, not taking away. Forcing them to acknowledge you. To thank you for the gift of useless, meaningless words.

She was coated in his blood, saturated. She had gone swimming in the man.