Horrible Harvest

 Cut near in two, Monroe went limp, and Tate set him quiet on the floor. A sea of red sprawled out like a spider stretching its eight gangly legs.

Bailey stood in open-mouthed awe for a moment before a soft, little giggle jumped out of her throat.

“Bailey-girl, you gather up Constance, Rosette and the others and get as far from this place as you can – ”

“No, sir, Mr. Tate,” she growled as she lurched toward him and grabbed the knife from his hands. “They’s men in this house who owes me some dying, and I aim to collect their debts.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you – ”

“Then shut your mouth and get on with your business.” She knelt and placed the palm of her hand in the drench of blood that’d crawled out of Monroe. “Sure do feel cold. Cracker-bastard got him cold blood.” She pulled her hand to her chest and wiped the blood onto her breasts. Her faint laugh grew crazier and crazier by the second. “Master – he solt my baby. He lie and say he didn’t. He say he had my baby cooked up like a roast. Served it up to some clay eaters. Just to get a laugh out of it. I know’d he was lying. I surely do. I ain’t bothered by it because it ain’t true. I am bothered that he’d tell me such a thing. To get a rise out me. To find good times in my broken heart.” She scooped up more blood and continued to wipe it from belly to forehead. To me, she said, “You don’t kill that man, I’ll get it done. One way to another, he’s deader than dead ‘fore this night is done.”

Tate grumbled. “You do what you got planned, and you are dead, girl.”

“I was born dead, Mr. Tate.” She stood, spat on Monroe, and then headed to the servant’s stairwell at the other end of the kitchen. Before she took step one, she said, “I’ma burn this house to the ground. You best get your work done quick, Mr. Conspirator, and Mr. Tate, don’t you hold him up with your thinking. This ain’t a time for thoughts. This is a time to spill blood.”

“Hold up, girl,” Tate said before he knelt and retrieved Monroe’s service revolver. “At least arm yourself.” He stood and held out the weapon.

She held out the knife and said, “I am armed. They gonna know what it’s like to get a vile thing shoved up in ‘em. They gonna feel what they done to us.”

Me and Tate watched her as she climbed quick up the stairs and disappeared into the bloated darkness.