THE FILING CABINET OF DOOM
Swan, Madeleine (Burning Bulb Publishing, July 2013, ISBN 9780692245200)
I got the Murder Cabinet at Vincent Raux Second-hand Furniture on Clayton Road. Inside the shop it looked like any other sheet metal filing cabinet. It had four working drawers, less rust than the Carpentaria, and smelled no worse than the shop itself. They kept it against a wall. That should’ve tipped me off. I didn’t behold the stain until I got it home.
A wide, blotchy stain streaked down the back. Thickest and blackest at the bottom, it thinned into a carmine cracklature at the top. As Colin expressed it, you could never quite convince yourself you looked at something other than blood. From another room you could laugh that your imagination must’ve got the better of you, that next time when you looked, you would just see brown paint. But when you got there, you couldn’t shake the impression that you saw blood. Continue reading