The Dark Corner

*Trigger Warning – death of a child*

A thick drop of sweat slides down my spine, pooling in the band of my leggings. A
dank, unwashed smell rises from my body.

The roar of the engine and the ineffective hum of the AC surround me. The sun is
high in the cloudless sky, and the road is lined with sloping hills. Bushes grow wild
and unkempt, rolling toward the tarmac. They remind me of the brambles from
Sleeping Beauty—unnaturally wild, inching forward onto the road, shutting it off from the outside world.

I glance in the rearview and am startled by Emmie’s doll’s dead eyes staring back at me from the car seat. The doll looks like a tiny, frozen version of Emmie. What is it doing in the car seat? Emmie will be frantic without “Baba.” She’s taken it
everywhere since she got it last month. At thirteen months old, she’s already
obsessed with everything baby and motherhood. Paddy had picked a plush dog for
her first birthday because he insisted, “She loves watching the dogs!” But I knew it
would be all about the baby doll. He wasn’t happy I was right; her birthday was filled with tense, pointed silences.

My thighs feel hot and sticky against the seat of the Peugeot, my palms moist on the wheel. The air is dead; no clouds are moving, the sun directly overhead casting a hazy, ethereal glow. I need to get off this stretch of road and back to my baby.
Motherhood is all I have ever wanted. I hate that I struggle so much. I thought it
would never happen for me, and then Paddy came along and things moved fast. I’m grateful I froze my eggs and gave us a child, but being a mother in my forties is
exhausting. I don’t recognize myself as I lurch from day to day, bedraggled and
stressed. “The mammy monster,” Paddy calls me.

I wish it was coming easier; I wish I was better. Paddy is always dropping comments on the state of the house or me. He avoids me more with each passing week. Hopefully, this fog will lift as Emmie gets older, and I can get us back to where we were without having damaged Emmie or our relationship permanently. I push a little harder on the accelerator, needing to get off this road and get Baba back to Emmie.

The heat is rising sharply; it’s getting oppressive. The air pouring out from the AC is
getting warmer with each passing minute. I wipe sweat off my forehead and press
the button to lower the window to get some air into the car. Nothing happens. I press it again, but still nothing. I try the other buttons, desperate to get something to work, but they all seem jammed. I stab my fingers into the armrest over and over. Damn this car. I need cool air. The AC’s hot fumes are suffocating. I turn it off, and the humming is replaced with a heavy silence and an increasing pulse of heat. I don’t understand why the windows won’t budge. The sun is blindingly bright in the sky. The surface of the black tarmac is buzzing as it reflects up at me.

“Call Paddy!” I say, expecting to hear the confirmation and dial tone. He might know how to fix the windows. Nothing comes back. “Call Paddy!” I demand again, clearer and firmer. Still nothing.

“CALL PADDY!”

Dead air. I poke at the screen on the dashboard holder, pressing the power button,
but nothing. Is it dead? How can that be? I would never let my phone die! But I guess I have been so out of it lately. Motherhood has made me a mess. This summer has been the hottest I remember, and Emmie won’t sleep unless cuddled up next to me nursing. I wake like a banshee—white, worn, and scary. My patience is razor-edged. My sweet Emmie, cooing up into the face of a sleep-deprived, haggard “mammy monster.” And now that she is toddling and exploring, the days have no respite. I try to enjoy all the moments of motherhood, but I can’t wait until I can sleep again. My head feels heavy now. The heat tugs me down as the black road pulses past me.

“WAAAAAAAH!”

What was that? My head snaps around to the backseat, to the piercing, blood-
curdling squeal. I jerk the steering wheel but manage to regain control.

Nothing is there, just the damn doll. The noise must have come from outside on the
road, in the brambles. My heart is pounding, and sweat is running down my chest.

I grab my phone from the holder and stab at the power button, gripping the wheel
with one hand as sweat drips into my eyes. The black screen mocks me.

“Piece of shit!” I scream, flinging the phone onto the passenger seat. I push the
window buttons, but still no response. My lungs feel like they can’t expand, like I’m
inhaling streams of hot steam that is pushing out in beads of sweat all over my body.Desperate, I hit the emergency light and try to steer the car onto the hard shoulder, but it’s just brambles. They slap into the side of the car like they are attacking it.

Out of nowhere, my side window shoots down! My body floods with relief as I wait for a flow of welcome fresh air, but the relief doesn’t come. The air that pumps in around me is somehow hotter. The branches push inside the car, scraping my face like long, arthritic nails dragging down my skin. I scream as they reach for me. The car swerves. The wheel is out of control. It races forward uncontrollably into the thick swarm of brambles. The windshield smashes as the branches reach further into the car, completely consuming the bonnet.

I try to breathe in, but it feels like I’m inhaling sawdust. The horrible dryness fills up
my lungs. I click the seat belt free and heave myself into the backseat, sweat
pumping out of me, blood from my scraped face pooling with water and flowing down my body, my hands slick. My hair is soaking wet. As I lug myself onto the back seat, a horrifying scream fills the air. I look down, seeing Emmie’s baby doll staring up at me from her car seat, its little plastic face contorting as its mouth opens into a yawning, echoing scream.

I start violently shaking as I recognize the screaming.

“Emmie!” I gasp.

Emmie’s terrified, petrified yell is coming from the plastic, lifeless doll. I grab its
artificial hair and fling it out of the broken windshield into the brambles, but the
screaming only grows louder. Emmie’s screaming—Emmie mixed with a shrieking
sound, like a banshee’s wail.

Bile rises fast in my stomach. I grab the door handle of the back seat, desperate to
escape this hell, but it won’t open. Heaves are coming as a salty taste hits my
tongue. I throw all my weight against the back door, but it doesn’t budge. I expel a
foul-smelling bile all over the back seat.

“EMMIE, EMMIE!” I scream into darkness.

My body is being pulled up by the shoulders like a rag doll. The brambles are gone,
replaced by a tangled mass of bedsheets, putrid with my sweat and vomit. Paddy
pushes my head backward against the headboard, wiping my sick and shushing my murmurs. His breath is hot against my cheek as he pulls a greasy strand of hair out of my face. My sleep-fogged mind floods with the horrible, inescapable reality that is worse than the lingering terror of my nightmare. Emmie is gone. Dead. My Emmie left alone in the car on the hottest day on record. My mind shatters as sobs escape from me.

“Oh, Emmie,” I whimper up at Paddy.

“It is all okay Ruth! ” Paddy coos at me. “I’ve looked after it. Everyone knows what
happened and they don’t blame you, not really. Poor Ruth, so exhausted you forgot
your baby.”

I try to speak, but my throat feels like it’s closing. My mind cracks, struggling to
understand, to clear the haze, to make sense of his words. They aren’t right. I
remember it all, finding Paddy’s car in the driveway—a rare surprise for midday.
Emmie was asleep in the backseat, her little doll Baba clutched tightly in her hands.
The heat was stifling, but I thought I’d only leave her for a moment, just long enough to greet Paddy. I found him in the kitchen, casually perched on the island, laptop open. He told me his office had closed early. I asked him to watch Emmie so I could take a bath—a rare luxury. He told me that he would; he told me to relax. I remember trusting him, thinking everything was under control as I sunk into the tub.

I remember waking in cold water, confused and disoriented after falling asleep. It
was three hours since we had gotten home. I remember finding Paddy still perched
on the island in front of his laptop and screaming, horrified. I remember him pulling
her little body from the car, still motionless, her little doll Baba dropping to the hot
tarmac as my world broke.

“I—I…” My dry mouth and foggy brain don’t form the words. “You… said…”

“No,” he cuts me off, his voice colder, tense. “I said nothing. I wasn’t here.”

I blink rapidly, trying to focus. “No… you… were… you said…”

His face contorts into a calm smile. “Said what? I wasn’t here, remember? I was
working from a café that afternoon. Came home to find you bathing, you completely forgot about Emmie in the car.” His tone is calm and deliberate. He sounds so certain. Is he right? Was it really all me?

“No… no… you… were… home,” my voice cracks. My head feels like it’s splitting
open.

He leans closer, locking his eyes with mine, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Everyone knows it was your fault, and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

I try to sit up, but my body is so weak. “Why… why are you doing this?” My voice is
barely a whisper.

“Because it’s true,” he says with a casual shrug. “And it’s okay, sweetheart. People
feel sorry for you. They’re proud of me for sticking by your side. The doctor’s been;
prescribed sedatives. ”

My eyes dart to the bedside table, and I see what he’s been preparing—a vial, a
needle, a syringe. My heart pounds in my chest.

“What… what is that?” I croak, panic rising in my throat.

“Something to help you rest,” he says smoothly, his tone eerily calm. “Until you
remember things my way.”

He pulls my arm, and I can’t break free from his grasp. He jabs the needle in with
such force that I feel it to my core. He pushes the plunger, smiling as I struggle
pitifully to break free. My body is too weak to fight, my mind in turmoil, broken by my horrifying reality—my sweet baby dead, imprisoned by a sadistic husband.

Blackness descends, sending me back down to that dreadful heat, lost on a road,
desperate to get back to Emmie. Back to a home that is gone forever.

Sharon Keating works for one of Ireland’s leading mental health charities. Originally from Dublin, she now resides in Wexford town with her young family. Sharon enjoys writing short stories and poetry, and she is thrilled to have her works featured in The Wexford Bohemian, Wexford Women Writing Undercover, and New Word Order.