The doorbell chimed.
Knowing his wife Janet was busy cooking his dinner and him being a man of modern sensibilities, Richard pulled himself up from the chair, pausing the television as he did so. He called out a quick “I’ve got it.” to his wife, followed by a gruff “Coming!” towards the door. Making sure his gown was tied neatly, Richard ambled towards the door, fairly certain that it would be someone selling him either eternal life or plastic kitchen solutions. Neither was standing on the threshold as he pulled the door open.
“Hello, Richard.”
Richard stared at the woman standing on his doorstep. Although between then and now various facial piercings had come and gone, the nose ring remained. The hair was dyed a resolute black with none of the blonde peeking through. She was almost unrecognisable, but Richard knew exactly who she was.
“It’s you, isn’t it F…”
The woman’s index finger shot out and pressed hard against Richard’s lips, pushing him back slightly and shushing him instantly.
“You don’t get to call me that. No one gets to call me that, not anymore. You remember what happened when you last called me that.”
Richard nodded slightly, his hand instinctively rising to the side of his head where the cricket bat had struck him all those years before. According to the doctors, the damage could have been much worse if the handle hadn’t have broken as the bat hit. He had never called her that ever again, not once in the last twenty years. That kind of thing stuck in the mind of a 14 year old.
Her finger still on his lips, the woman pushed Richard firmly back into the house, closing the door behind her as she did. Giving him a look that made it clear what she wished to be called, she removed her finger. Richard had another go.
“It’s you, isn’t it, Myfanwy?”
Myfanwy nodded slowly, taking the opportunity to appraise her old friend Richard.
“You’ve expanded into middle age well, Richard my dear. Bit softer around the edges now than last time I saw you.”
“We were eighteen then,” Richard frowned, cinching in the belt of the gown as much as he dared. “We we all a lot thinner then. Well, not you. You’re possibly thinner now than then.”
“That a compliment?”
“Not really, no. Thin is possibly too expansive for you. Gaunt is possibly too much.”
They stood awkwardly looking at each other, the silence between them tense. Myfanwy at least knew why she was there, Richard was just scared as to why she was there. The silence dragged on for just a bit too long when it was broken by Richard’s wife coming on from the kitchen, patting her hands dry on her apron as she came towards them.
“Oh, hello,” Janet smiled at Myfanwy as she came up beside Richard. She gave Richard a sharp jab in his ribs and a “are you going to introduce us?”
“Ah, yes. Janet, this is Myfanwy, an old … acquaintance of mine. Myfanwy, Janet. My wife.”
“Hello Myfanwy,” Janet smiled as she extended her hand. “Any old friend of Richard’s is a friend of mine.”
Myfanwy took Janet’s hand and shook it gently. “Pleasure to meet you Janet. Mind you, I’d be cautious of Richard’s old friends if I was you.”
“But not you, I’m sure.” Turning, Janet let go Myfanwy’s hand and with a quick glance back over to her shoulder as she left, she headed back to finish making dinner.
“Nice catch, Richard,” she said, craning her neck to watch Janet as she walked away. “She’s cute, quite adorable. She and I should catch up for coffee sometime.”
“No, just no. I heard you were married to Melody anyway?”
“I am,” Myfanwy said distractedly as Janet went into the kitchen and out of view. “But, you know, we’re open. You?”
Richard bristled at the suggestion. “Definitely not.”
Myfanwy leaned in close and whispered “Don’t be too sure, she gave me a glance.”
Richard ignored the last comment as he beckoned Myfanwy into his study. His night had gone from pleasant sitting in front of the TV to being derailed by his past that he assumed he’d left well behind him. Myfanwy has been the harbinger of doom for a while before they had all gone their seperate ways. Her being here, her finding him here could not be good. The quicker he got to her reason for being here, the better. He asked her as such.
“You know why, Richard,” she replied, investigating his study as she did. “Surely you know why.”
Richard shook his head defiantly. Myfanwy sighed at his inability to see what was coming.
“Your dear cousin, my brother. He’s undoing his past, our past. Richard, surely you’ve heard the rumours. Joseph is on his way back and he is nearly here. If we’re lucky, we’re not next but we can’t be far from it.”
Richard continued shaking his head. Of course he had heard the rumours. He knew that Joseph hadn’t adjusted as well as the rest of them had when they had returned. Myfanwy, well, she just did her thing and rebelled against the world. Bessie had moved on and travelled the world extensively. Richard had met Janet at university, and she and himself settled in together and eventually married. But Joseph, he couldn’t shake what had happened as they neared the end of university, and as Myfanwy, Bessie, Janet and himself moved on with life, Joseph spiralled down into something nearing a psychosis. Richard knew that Joseph had received treatment, but had lost contact with him over the years. They all had. He’d heard the whisperings though, that Joseph had gone off again, to deal with his past. Now with Myfanwy turning up, Richard has beginning to get really worried. It didn’t help that the doorbell decided to chime again.
“I’ll get it!” called Janet from the kitchen. Myfanwy and Richard shared a glance and both of them made for the door to head her off. After much fussing at the door to Richard’s study as they both tried to get through at the same time, they made it to the front door just as Janet was shutting it, a largish box under her arm. Covered with “Fragile” and “This Way Up” labels, the fact that it was neatly tied up with string rang alarm bells in Myfanwy’s mind.
“Umm, Janet,” Myfanwy purred as she edged towards her, “could you just, say, put that box down there and maybe sneak behind Richard.”
Trying to keep both Janet and the box in sight at the same time, Myfanwy moved slowly towards the box. Once she was sure Janet was cowering behind Richard who looked for all the world like he wanted to cower behind Janet, Myfanwy slid what Macbeth would have comfortably called a dagger from her boot and kneeled down beside the box. With a quick look back at the trembling Richard and the confused Janet, Myfanwy deftly cut through the string and with the dagger at the ready, opened the box. She slid the dagger back into her boot, gently reached in to the box and pulled out the contents, recoiling a bit as she did so.
“Wha, what is it?”
“It’s a saucepan, Richard, have you never actually been in your kitchen? Ooo, Janet gave that glance again.”
“But what’s in the saucepan?”
Myfanwy walked over to Richard, holding the saucepan out to him as she got close. “Well, it’s not Gwyneth’s head in the box this time.”
Richard peeked in through the glass lid and immediately turned to vomit in the umbrella stand. The sight of Saucepan Man’s lifeless eyes looking up at him from one of Saucepan Man’s own saucepans would haunt him forever. Myfanwy put the saucepan down on a coffee table just in time for the doorbell to chime for the third time that evening. Sliding the dagger back out of her boot and hiding it behind her back, Myfanwy advanced on the door.
Upon reaching it, she quietly turned the door knob and on a quiet count of three, pulled it open rapidly. There, standing on the doormat, soaked in blood and with leaves and twigs matted in his hair, large duffel bag hanging from his hand, stood Joseph, Myfanwy’s older brother and Richard’s cousin.
“Why, hello there Fa…”
Myfanwy’s finger shot out, stopping short of Joseph’s lips.
“No, not anymore. Not for a long time.”
Joseph entered the doorway, brushing Myfanwy aside as he did.
“Whatever. Oh hullo Dick. See you’re cowering in the corner again. Got my gift, did you? And who does the washerwoman belong to?”
Straightening herself and brushing down her apron, Janet introduced herself. “I’m Janet, Richard’s wife.”
“Ooooo, Richard, Myfanwy, well, well. Haven’t we all shunned the monikers of our youth. Feel quite childish still passing myself of as just a Jo. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Anyway, as you can see, I’m dealing with my past. True, does involve confronting and then burying bits of it, but I am dealing with it.”
“What do you want, Jo?”
Jo spun back around to Myfanwy, “You’re what’s left of that disastrous tree, the rest had been done for. Mrs Slap will strike no more, Silkie and the Pixie fell into a bug zapper, and poor Dame Washalot. Alas, fell and slipped into her very own mangle. It’s okay Janet dear, you’re quite right to shudder at that. Moon-Face had an accident on his slide, very unfortunate that one. Quite messy a misalignment of the segments can be, quite messy. Saucepan, well you know what happened to him. As for the rest of them, the tree burns as we speak. It will all be nothing more than cinder and ashes before long.”
Jo reached down and pulled a sizeable axe from the bag, and gesturing towards Richard and Myfanwy he quietly added “And that leaves just you two. Janet you may run. Or stay. See what happens to your poor Dick and little Fa…”
“Don’t.”
“…nny over there.”
Myfanwy figured two warnings were enough. That and the very real threat of dismemberment, but mainly being called Fanny again. With three quick steps, she closed the gap between herself and Jo and using her momentum drove the dagger up under his rib cage, through his diaphragm and straight into his heart.
As Joseph’s eyes widened with the shock of the ice cold dagger being plunged into him up to the hilt, Myfanwy whispered into his ear. “No one get to call me that. No one, not ever, never again. It is the worst name to have to suffer under as a woman.”
As his eyes dimmed, Myfanwy lowed him down to the floor, his head beside the coffee table holding the last resting place of Saucepan Man. The sirens of the fire trucks and police cars began to swirl around the house, drowning out Richard’s sobbing into the umbrella stand. As Janet helped Richard into the kitchen, she gave a quick glance back to Myfanwy. Myfanwy smiled as she turned and headed out the front door to wave down a passing police car. Janet would need some comforting after this sordid affair and it looked like Dick just wouldn’t be up for it.