Dog Blood

his vociferous tirade. When the soldier pulled the door shut in his face, he simply turned again without pausing for breath and continued unloading at Mark, who shook his head.
    “Don’t understand,” he said, desperate to shut the man up. “Speak English.”
    “No English,” he snapped back, then continued his rant in Punjabi.
    “He can’t stay here,” Kate’s mother screamed from the bed. “We can’t have his type here…”
    Singh pointed at her, or was it at the bed? He rubbed the small of his back, then thumped his hand on the mattress and raised his voice to an ever louder, even more uncomfortable volume. Mark tried reasoning with him, desperate for him to be quiet. Singh ignored him, then picked up his bag and angrily sat down in the armchair in the corner of the room, still yelling furiously and pointing at the bed.
    Kate stood by the hotel room door, her hands over her ears, desperately trying to block out the endless, directionless noises coming from both her mother and Gurmit Singh. Mark tried to hold her, but she pulled away from him, almost recoiling from his touch.
    “I can’t stand this,” she sobbed. “Either they go or I go.”
    “None of us can go anywhere. For Christ’s sake, Katie, that’s the problem, there’s nowhere else to go.”
    “I don’t care. Kick them out. Throw them out on the street if you have to.”
    “Who are you talking about now?”
    “You know exactly who I mean. It’s too dangerous. We’ve got to think about ourselves and the baby and just screw the rest of them-”
    “I can’t. You know I can’t-”
    “Then I will. I mean it, Mark, if you don’t get rid of them, I’ll leave.”
    “Katie, there’s nowhere for them to go. Please, sweetheart, just calm down and-”
    “Don’t patronize me. Don’t tell me to calm down. How can I calm down when-”
    “Shh,” he begged, putting his hand up to her mouth. “Please don’t shout, Katie, they’ll hear us. Don’t do anything that’ll give them any reason to come back in here. You know what’ll happen if they do.”
    “Maybe I should,” she said, pushing him away. “Maybe that’s exactly what I should do. Maybe if they knew what was going on here they’d help. They’d come up here and get rid of-”
    “Shut up!” he hissed angrily, covering her mouth again.
    Gurmit Singh, who had just started to quiet down, suddenly exploded into life again, startled by the appearance of Lizzie, who emerged from the bathroom.
    “Who the hell’s this?”
    “Mr. Singh,” Mark answered. “He’s just been delivered.”
    “But we don’t have any space-”
    “We can’t have his kind here,” Kate’s mother yelled, reaching out and grabbing hold of Lizzie’s arm and pulling her closer. Lizzie shrugged her off.
    “Too many here,” Singh yelled back, suddenly switching to English. “Back bad. Need bed.”
    “Oh, you can do the language when it suits you, then,” Kate sneered at him.
    “What’s going on, Mark?” Lizzie asked.
    “Nothing we can do about it,” he began. “We don’t have any say-”
    “We can’t go on like this,” Kate interrupted, desperate tears welling up in her eyes.
    “We have to-” Mark started to say.
    “Tell me what I’m supposed to do, then, Kate,” Lizzie snapped angrily. “I heard what you were saying. I know what you want-”
    “Then do something about it!”
    “Where else am I supposed to go? What do you want me to do?”
    Another outburst from Singh interrupted the argument. He got up from his seat and pushed between them, still gesturing toward the bed. Furious, Lizzie shoved him back down again.
    “Back off!” she spat before turning to face Kate again. “Put yourself in my shoes, Katie. What would you do?”
    “She can’t stay here. It’s not safe. You’re putting all of us at risk.”
    “Look around, we’re already at risk. Everyone who’s left alive is at risk, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Calm down, both of you,” Mark whispered, trying unsuccessfully to separate the two women, worried that their noise would bring the soldiers back.
    “I’m not going to calm down,” Kate yelled, throwing open the bathroom door and pointing inside. “That thing in there is evil.”
    “That thing in there is my daughter.”
    “She killed your sons!”
    “I know, but she’s still my daughter.”
    Lizzie knelt down in the doorway. Curled up on the floor in front of her, chained to the sink pedestal, gagged and bound and heavily sedated, lay Ellis.