The Retreat

by Mark Edwards

Our sex life was in a coma. It was all my fault, but I was unable to do anything about it. I was in a pit, wallowing in self-pity, and I wanted to dig myself out but the shovel was too heavy, my limbs too weak. Everything was too much effort.

‘Witches were just clever women that men couldn’t tame, weren’t they? Women who wouldn’t conform.

I examined the bookcase, something I do whenever I visit someone’s house. I can’t help it. If I enter a house with no books it makes me uneasy. I wonder what’s wrong with the people who live there.