Tim McGregor

I’m told villagers used to toss pennies into it as a wishing well, back when the fishing was plentiful. People hold onto their pennies now. The coins are long gone, taken by the village boys who dove in to fetch them from the bottom of the fountain. All those wishes, stolen by naked, shivering boys.

He is absentminded, with a potato-shaped head that leaks things

Her brazen freedom offends them somehow.

These terrible thoughts nibble at my brain the way the rat natters at a sack of winter grain.

But I am a coward and, worse, a breaker of vows. I make no move to murder the brute and save Agnet. When I stand before the gates of paradise, the Almighty will cast my ragged soul into the pit for this, and this sin alone.

Boys dressed in frocks. Men hiding at home while the women go about. Our little world has turned upside-down.

I feel something wicked bloom inside my chest, like mold blackening an overripe apple.

I want to feel exultant over this, but that is not to be. I feel nothing, in fact. Neither remorse nor triumph. I have despised Gunther with everything I have, but now that he is dead, that anger dissipates like smoke. I tell myself that I have been merciful by putting the harpooner out of his misery. I have freed Agnet from a life of grovelling poverty caring for half a husband. I want to feel like a hero from the old sagas, but what have I really accomplished here? I have smothered a cripple. It is no more heroic an act than drowning a kitten

I will tell her how I had brought the brandy to ease her husband’s pain, only to find that I was too late. Poor Gunther has expired in his sickbed. She will be shocked, and she will cry. I will pour Agnet a dram of the brandy to settle her. My arms will hold her, my words will console her in her grief.

When the shock ebbs away, Agnet will dry her eyes and be relieved. She will even be grateful for my shoulder to cry on. I will take her gentle face in my hands and tell her that I will always be hers,

is the cost of patricide? How damned is one’s soul for murdering their own father? I imagine there must be a special grotto of scorching hellfire for us.