Tiger Fierce
By Harriet Bradley
Malmesbury, England. 1703.
Tell him I wasn’t afraid. Tell him it was anger, drink, madness, but don’t say fear.
The inn stinking of stale beer, the back door always letting in the freezing air. My man in his velvet coat on top of a fine horse trotting round the market cross. Laughing. Older than my father. His hands big as the horse’s head. They could span my wrist, my waist, my head, crush those things easy. But I wasn't afraid. Nor was I, when they first brought the travelling beasts into the inn yard.
Come for a good dinner and I'll show you something, Innkeeper said to the big men in the town that summer, standing on the corner of the cross in his stained apron and cuffs. He did it to save the inn, keep us all going another winter. If the job went, I was out on the street. So I was happy when the beasts came from the city: the snake and the vulture, the tiger beast. I thought they’d save me. My man the reverend says God makes all things possible. Posters up on all the trees - the lion in the middle was a lie, though Innkeeper would’ve put a mane of horsehair on the tiger beast, if somebody asked for it.
Nobody did. By winter, we were quiet again. The tiger beast coming like the lazy ginger tomcat at the bakehouse: fur matted with yard dirt, jaw stained with old spit, one eye gone funny. The snake died and they sent his skin to London to make a bag. The beasts squatted in leaning shelters that Innkeeper’d built out of sticks and hay and when it rained they’d moan and cry because the water would get in. Seeing them like that made me happy, and mean. Like the way my man got with his hands around my neck. It makes you big, hurting somebody. There’d be a chicken bone and I'd bring it out to the yard and stand close to the cages, watch them lick their lips. I’d hold it out and pull it away. Over and over. Cook did that to me for ages too, when I first started at the inn. I was hungry all the time. I was so small. My man brought me sweets in jars, brighter than anything, back then. When I dreamed of my baby, he was glassy like them, hard and full against my tongue. I ate him whole, crushed him in jaws stuck tight with sugar, like I was the tiger beast. I never dreamed that one when my man was in bed with me. He made me dream of nothing.
The bull in the river, the day I lost my baby. How when I bent down to wash between my legs it came back bloody - pink rivers running down my legs, freezing numb feet, and this bull’s just stood there watching. I sat down in my skirts and cried. My man thought I was just getting fat, crushed my flesh in his hands till it hurt, said Innkeeper fed me too well, which ain’t true.
There was a baby, I said to the bull. Now it’s gone. He didn’t speak.
When I came back from the river, I was carrying a bundle of sticks for the fire and I dropped one by the tiger beast’s cage. He was sleeping. I was jealous. My man don’t let me sleep. His big feet on the stairs, big weight in my bed, beer on his breath, big hands on me, in me.
Hannah. His hands crushing. You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?
No, I said, like he wanted an answer. Do you love me?
Love is patient and kind. He said that in his sermon the other day, my man. Sometimes I think he lies.
I touched the tiger beast, I told him. True: I'd picked up a stick from the ground and poked it through the bars of his cage. I jabbed the stick into his thick dirty fur, looking for the tender spots. Do you love me? I said. The tiger beast closed his eyes. I dropped the stick. That was the start of it. Next time, I picked up a stone from the river and slipped it in the pocket of my skirts, aimed it at his head. My aim got better and better.
Touched him where? my man the reverend said. His fingers spreading mine, crushing. Kissing him, I tasted sweets. I filled my mouth with that taste, knew I’d be out on the street, still tasting it. That choked me worse than he ever did. I was so small next to him, even lying down. You’re so young, he said.
The day I died, the tiger beast was sleeping in his corner of the inn yard: smoked breath, faded colours. I was dragging pails from the ice-house, still waking up. I’d slept on the floor because my man pissed the bed. I was tired. Too tired to throw stones or poke sticks. Smelling of piss. Bitter mouth. But I wasn’t afraid. I dropped the pail and went to the tiger beast's cage. I lifted the lock. It was like a birdcage for rich ladies, for their doves and peahens. It was very easy.
The tiger beast opened his big jaws and yawned with his funny eye, stupid as a cow.
Do you love me? I said. Call it madness, not fear.
I bent to pick up the useless river stone that never hurt him or anything. I wanted to see my baby crushed in his jaws, shiny-red and real. I wanted to be a bag made of snake, smooth and still under somebody’s gentle hands.
Hannah, the tiger beast said then. I’m going to kill you.
But I’m so young, I said. I'm so young.
Tell him I wasn’t afraid.
THE END
Author Bio: Originally from the UK, Harriet Bradley is currently a candidate of MFA in Fiction at Temple University, Philadelphia and previously lived in New York City and London. Over the past decade, she has developed her craft through courses with Faber Academy, Curtis Brown Creative, and the Yale Writers Workshop while working full-time as a copywriter and writing teacher. Her flash fiction piece “Snowbird” was recently shortlisted in the South Warwickshire Literary Festival and was read by the poet Tomfoolery on the ONCE Fiction podcast. She is also in the process of querying her first novel, a historical thriller set in the Pacific Northwest in 1989.