[The room was small and compact. I sat on one side of the table while the woman sat in front of me. I’d read about her in some journals and she was exactly as described. A young woman, about half way through her twenties. I put on the tape recorder and motioned for her to begin her story.]
My name is Alice McKinly and everyone I know is dead.
I’ve never had a lot of people in my life. Growing up it was just me and my dad. Mum had committed suicide just a week after I was born. I don’t think about her much. I used to just accept it; some people had one mummy, some had two, some had none. And then, when I finally worked out why she had ended her life….let’s just say, it hurt a lot less to ignore everything.
[I asked her what she thought the reason was. She didn’t answer, continuing as if she hadn’t heard my question. It was possible that she hadn’t. She was relating her story in a monotone voice, as if she’d learned it off by heart.]
I had a quiet childhood but a happy one. Then it all changed a year after I turned eleven. My best friend had been round to play with my birthday toys. There had been a fire. Dad had got me out then run back in for Cindy. The roof had collapsed and buried them both. Apparently it had been caused by an electrical fault. It didn’t really matter. After that I was sent into care.
I hated it. There were too many people. The only place I could get any sort of peace was in my room. I was one of the lucky ones; to begin with I had one all to myself. After a few months though Mercia was dropped into the home and I had to share. And it was great because there was finally someone to share it all with, you know? We were both a bit shy but we sort of latched onto each other. We became like sisters.
[She paused here, a look of pain in her eyes. Some emotion crept into her voice. Her fingers idly wondered around the table, as if looking for something.]
I’d been at the home a year and a half when she died. I was thirteen by this time and was sitting next to her when we were eating a meal. I thought she was choking at first. Then I saw her whole face swelling up. She slipped sideways on her chair and fell to the floor.
Official cause of death? Ingesting some form of nut. She was allergic, you see. Not sure how it got into the food but there was the proof, her puffed up blue face.
She was such a sweet girl.
[Again she paused and looked down. She seemed for the first time to notice her hand’s spider antics. She smiled apologetically.]
Sorry. I used to smoke and whenever I tell this tale…..the nicotine just helps, you know?
[I took a cigarette out from my pocket and handed it to her. She looked surprised.]
Thanks.
[She took a deep drag, seeming to savour every bit of the smoke]
That hits the spot. Smoking always was the only form of self-harm I could deal with.
Where were we? Oh right, Mercia, coughing out her last upon the floor. Poor kid, she didn’t deserve that. Though I suppose none of them did.
Life without Mercia was hard. I kept away from everyone. You couldn’t really blame me. I think at that point I knew, even if only subconsciously. At the home I just sat in my room, doing homework and reading books. At school I sat in the back of the class, doing the same. My grades were good and the home had me going to see a psychologist once a week so no one took much notice of me. And I didn’t take much notice of them.
But I was a teenage girl and I found myself slowly coming to notice a boy in front of me more and more. Marty, that was his name. Curly brown hair and a chipped front tooth that gave him a wicked smile. I thought I saw him noticing me as well but I barely talked to anyone in those days. It took me about eight months to ask him about it.
And he said he felt the same and life was wonderful and continued to be wonderful until the day he chased me up the deserted stairs in a teasing sort of way and I stopped at the top and turned to kiss him. He was so surprised, I could see it in his face, and he took a step back and fell, almost like an angel, to break his neck at the bottom.
That was my first kiss.
[I asked how long they had been going out. She smiled, sadly.]
I thought you might ask. At least you did some research.
Four months.
After that I ran away from the home. I don’t know if I thought it was cursed or what. I just needed some space, away from anything that would remind me of Dad and Cindy and Mercia and Marty. Ended up with a gang of other kids, my age and older. They were alright; they recognised that I was running from something. I guess we all were. We looked out for each other.
I’m not saying they were happy times. We were sleeping in subway tunnels and lived mostly on handouts and what we could steal. Winter was a nightmare. It was cold and wet. We all fell ill. I thought of going back many times but I never did. I thought I’d finally escaped that life, had been reborn in some way.
Of course I was wrong.
They all began dying, one after the other. Ted got mugged. A rock fell from a tunnel roof onto Alessia’s head. Caspar slipped and drowned in sewage. He was the last one before I left. And I left voluntarily. They didn’t drive me out. Sometimes I think those were the truest friends I’ve ever had. But I had to leave. I’d finally figured it out.
If I am emotionally attached to someone for more than a year, they die.
I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true. Ever since I was eleven this has been happening. I don’t know why, I just know it’s true.
Well by that point I was fifteen and I returned to the home. They weren’t exactly pleased to see me. But they took me in anyway and I somehow managed to pass all my exams. Then I applied to be a librarian.
It seemed like the perfect job. I’d always liked books and this way I’d get to be around them all the time. And I was cutting myself off from all human contact. I thought I could just hide in the shelves.
It was a quiet five years. I didn’t really talk to anyone except my boss and I hated my boss. I mean, who doesn’t? But she was the closest I ever got to someone. I was completely alone. At times I’d read aloud in my house, just to see if I could still talk.
And then he came.
[She was silent for a long while. For a moment I thought she wouldn’t speak. Then she took a deep breath and continued.]
It was almost like Marty again. At first I didn’t notice him. He was just another shape wandering around in my world of shadows. I might have stepped around him a few times and apologized but that was it. But occasionally I’d stop and look at him. I remember it was the time when he asked for a book. I can’t even remember what book but I’d just finished reading it and was buzzing about it. We had a quick discussion, then I went to jump in front of a car.
I had recognised the signs, you see. I’d had a long time to think over my curse and I’d come to notice certain similarities. When I bonded with anyone I always got a cold. So when I sneezed I knew that it was all beginning again.
[She must have seen some sort of look of disgust on my face because her eyes narrowed at this point. She began to talk more passionately, occasionally slamming her hand on the desk for emphasis.]
You’re judging me, aren’t you? Do you know what it’s like? Have you any idea? Everyone around you dropping like flies, knowing that you’re the cause? You hear about soldiers on the news or psychopaths or doctors or anyone surrounded by death and you think, it must get easier? Surely? Eventually you must just get numb to it.
Well I don’t know about them but it never gets any easier for me. It’s always the same, always just as hard, never ceasing. And it’s not quick. You’ll have read the reports, you must have if you’re here. You know I can’t sleep at night. Because every time I close my eyes they’re there, waiting.
I suppose suicide might have been a bit extreme. I could have just left. He would have survived. It’s not an instant death sentence. Once I break contact their lives continue normally. I occasionally see some of the people I used to run with and they're fine. Well as fine as they ever were.
[I asked whether she had ever picked the relationships back up, to see if it reset the curse or whether it merely froze the condition. She looked at me scornfully. I could see that any residue good feelings the cigarette might have produced were long gone.]
No. Of course not. I know what they say about me but I have never wanted them dead. Do you hear me? I wanted them to live!
[She screamed this last sentence at the two way mirror on the wall. For a moment I thought she might have to be sedated. The thought had obviously occurred to her as well because she took a deep breath and with visible effort calmed herself.]
I’m ok, I’m ok. You don’t need to get anyone.
Can I have another cigarette?
[I gave her the packet and asked if she wanted to stop. She didn’t answer for a long while, until most of her new cigarette was gone.]
No. I’ve got to do this. It’s part of the deal. I have to talk to anyone who wants to interview me. It just…sometimes it gets a bit much.
[She was silent for a while longer. I was about to leave anyway when she suddenly focused on me.]
So suicide didn’t really work out for me.
[I could tell she said this as a sort of joke. Her mouth twisted into a warped approximation of a smile. She knew I didn’t fall for it and I knew she was just doing it to move things along. The interview continued.]
Don’t get me wrong, I really tried it. My library was right on one of the main streets and the traffic was very busy. I waited till I could see a lorry coming. I wanted a big vehicle otherwise I might just get broken legs or something. I focused on the opposite side of the street and started walking. I remember my thoughts were all muddled. I was thinking a mixture of, ‘just get to the other side, you’re just crossing the street,’ and, ‘it’ll all be over soon.’ The lorry was almost upon me, I could hear the start of its horn blaring and I closed my eyes, hoping never to open them again.
I felt his warm arms around me, pulling me out of the lorry’s way, and the rush of wind as it only just missed me. The screech of its tires, the sound of him yelling at me. Those are the sounds I’ll always associate with my failure.
Why did he have to be a hero?
As soon as I realised what had happened and who had saved me I burst into tears. He sat me down on some steps and began comforting me. I didn’t listen to the words, just the sound of his voice. And I knew I was lost.
I tried avoiding him. It was impossible. He was at the library far more than someone with a job should be. It seemed every time I turned around there he was. No matter how harshly I treated him he just grinned and shook it off. I couldn’t escape him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t always find me at my work. I needed a pay cheque every month so I could pay my rent and new jobs aren’t that easy to find. I thought about running away to the streets again but I couldn’t. To survive there you need someone to rely on and that would kill them. I’d just be swapping his life for the life of someone I didn’t know.
I couldn’t try to commit suicide again. I’d been too freaked out the last time. That nanosecond when I thought it was all over, when I really thought I was going to die…it was too scary. I could never go through that again.
It went on for a month before I surrendered to the inevitable. I went for coffee with him.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Well that’s a lie but I wish I didn’t. I was thinking that here I could be happy. Just for a little while. I’d get rid of him somehow but just for a few months I could laugh and talk with this man and pretend that my life wasn’t completely fucked up. Maybe I hadn’t been trying as hard as I could to get rid of him, whatever. I was here now and I was going to enjoy it.
How selfish is that?
He saved my life you know? And I don’t just mean with the lorry. I mean every day since then. I wasn’t alive before. I just existed, drifting like a ghost around the library. No one would have noticed if I was dead. And I did want that, at the time. But once you’ve experienced real life….
[She went silent again, half obscured by the smoke from her latest cigarette. The pile of ash in front of her was getting bigger. Eventually she pulled something from around her neck and passed it over to me. It was a gold locket.]
This is him. His name was Dennis. I got this locket when he proposed to me. I knew that soon it would be all I had to remember him.
[I opened it. Inside was the picture of her ex-husband. He was handsome, in a bookish sort of way, and laughing. Alice was standing next to him, her arms round his chest. She looked completely happy. There was space for another picture inside but it was conspicuously empty. As I handed the locket back I noticed how worn it was, as if it was opened regularly.]
I did tell him, by the way. I didn’t just let him go to his death. I wasn’t that selfish.
It was the first time he kissed me. We’d just got back from our fifth date and he had walked me to the door, like the gentleman he was. He leaned in, kissed me and I burst into tears. It was only the second time I had kissed someone and I couldn’t help but remember Marty.
He came in and we sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking. You ever heard of The Night? That one magical night where you do nothing but sit, talking? Well that was us. We would do it a lot later on, when the night was dark and sleep felt like wasting time, but that first time? None others beat it.
I told him all about my life, all of it. I told him about all the deaths and how he was likely to be the next. He didn’t say anything, just sat there, absorbing it. I didn’t really look at him, finding it easier to talk to the table but I imagine that they both had the same wooden expression.
I didn’t know what his reaction was going to be. Part of me hoped he’d just get up and go, without a word, to never return. Part of me knew that would truly kill me.
He proposed. He fucking proposed!
He wasn’t meant to do that. I don’t know what he was meant to do but not that.
I can remember his exact words. I finished telling him and looked finally at his face, wanting some sort of reaction. He just shrugged and said, “Well in that case we’d better get married now.”
[She went quiet again then abruptly stabbed the cigarette out on the table, leaving a small scar of ash.]
I didn’t want to accept. But I did want to. I don’t know.
Well we got married. It was small and fast. His parents were surprisingly fine with it. It didn’t seem to bother them that he’d proposed on the fifth date. I don’t know what he said to them but they seemed accepting of me. I asked him once if they knew about my curse. He said they did. But I’m fairly sure he lied. What sort of parent would let their child walk so willingly up that aisle to their death?
I’m not going to talk about the rest of the year we spent together. I’m just not. There would be no point. It doesn’t give you anything for your study and it’s too personal. I’m not sure if he ever truly believed me about my curse. Maybe he thought it was just bad luck or something. But even if he didn’t believe, we lived life as if he did. I said he made me live. Well I sure did live that year. I did more in that one year then I’d ever done in my entire life. And about halfway through I found I was pregnant. When I told him he looked so happy even thinking about it makes me want to cry.
He would have made a great dad.
The end came too soon. What sort of a thing is that to say? It came when I knew it would. And when would have been the right time?
There is no right time to die. There’s just the time you’re given.
I’d bought him a watch; counting down to when that time would come, near as I could estimate it. It was a sort of, get-out-while-you-can gesture. He always wore it but he never really believed. Though as the time got nearer I could tell he wasn’t sure.
We didn’t sleep much that last week. All the time we had we spent together. I savoured every minute of it, like I savour cigarette smoke. Bitter, killing me, but sweet in a way that I can’t explain. Our last week, our last day, our last night. Our last morning, when we watched the sun rise, sitting at the same table where he’d proposed to me. We went outside in the last hour. He said he wanted to die in the sun.
As the alarm on his watch rang we kissed, standing on the street, next to Central Park. Then he pushed me away. I think it was then that he believed and he didn’t want harm to come to me and his unborn child.
Fucking lorry.
Let me tell you this. There may be a God, there may not, but there’s definitely a Devil, watching you suffer and enjoying it. As he pushed me away he pushed himself back just a step. That step was all it took for a lorry to swerve into him.
It had to be a lorry that hit him, the very thing he’d saved me from.
[Again, she was silent for a long moment.]
Well I think it was then that I knew what to do. It all became so simple.
I waited till I had my child. It was a little baby girl. I left her to the care of her grandparents, then I came and checked in here.
[Her voice became deeply sarcastic for a moment]
You were all so accommodating. After I told my story and they verified all the facts they were happy to admit me. After all, if anyone should be in a mental asylum it should be someone with a story like mine.
I’m doing it for my little girl. I don’t know what she’s called and I don’t want to know. It’s better that way. I don’t.…..I want to stay as far away from her as possible. I think it’s the only way that she’ll be safe.
But that’s part of the deal. When my girl turns eleven she has to know. I’m behaving myself and doing all this so that you tell her. The true version, my version.
You wanted to know why my mum killed herself? Simple. She was braver than me. She had the same problem and she took a more noble way out.
[Now that she was finished with her story I began asking some questions, to understand the situation better. I asked if it was true that she’d been the one on the dinner rota at her home the day that Mercia died.]
Yes.
[I asked her to describe where she’d been when her friends from the street had died. However she’d obviously had experience with these sorts of questions and she realised where I was leading her to. She became agitated.]
You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of the ones who think I’m a murderer. You think I killed all those people.
They sometimes let me read the journals, you know. I’ve heard the theories. That my mother’s suicide broke something deep within me. That I might have started the fire, or that it might have sent me right over the edge. That I was the one who put the nut in Mercia’s food, that I pushed Marty. After all I did carry the food to her and there wasn’t anyone around when Marty died. They couldn’t find reports on Ted, Caspar and Alessia. I could have done for them as well. And there were plenty of witnesses around when Dennis died. Plenty who weren’t looking but saw everything. I know that an equal amount said that I pushed him as didn’t. There was never any conclusion about it. You hear me?
[She began to get angry, shouting at me, the packet of cigarettes crushed in her fist. She got up, waving her arms, at me, at the mirror. The door opened and some burly orderlies stepped in carefully. She saw them and immediately calmed herself.]
I’m sorry. It’s just….it’s hard for me. You know?
[She gave me a sad smile and asked if I had any more questions. I shook my head and she allowed herself to be escorted out. I was just tidying up my notes when Dr Armen, the head of the institute, walked in. ‘Well?’ she asked me. What did I think? Was she a murderer, unlucky or was the curse real?
I couldn’t answer. I had no idea.]