THE RECORD DEAL

“YOU BITCH, CATHERINE, YOU STOLE MY WORK!” he yelled, all semblance of sanity gone.  He gave chase, cloakless, uncaring of the freezing cold.

She ran ahead on the moor, nearly out of sight.  “Fuck you, Heathcliff!  I was happy before I met you!”

He followed her voice, their footprints fast becoming filled with snow.  He’d find her and when he did there’d be hell to pay.

Lead him a dance through thick falling snow, that’s what to do.  She knew the moors better.  Run north of Heygate Bank, go west and she’d hit New Road.  With snow like this, he’d lose her and his way.  He wouldn’t survive long.  The deal would be hers and there’d be no tricky questions about where the album had come from.  He may have written the music, but she’d provided lyrics and found an agent to whom she had forgotten to mention his name.  Fuck Heathcliff!  His commitment phobic ways had screwed her up, he deserved this.  Hang on, had she become too preoccupied?  Had she missed the turn?  Shit!  She could freeze out here - she was only wearing a rather threadbare white dress ...

His breath tore in his throat; “CATHY!  You crazy bitch!  Where are you?”  He couldn’t see far in front and was sweating through his shirt; the cold invading his body.  Bodies, that’s what they’d been, all those nights of passion in the Holiday Inn and she’d been planning all along to steal his beats and riffs.  Bitch!  He staggered to a hilltop, shielding his eyes from the white-out, but the snow gave and suddenly he was tumbling into a ravine.  He came to an abrupt halt and there she was.

“Trust you to fall down the same fucking hole!” she snapped, trying to rise and screaming; her leg was broken.

“Your leg’s in the same state as my heart!”

“Don’t be fucking dramatic!  You never loved me, narcissist!”

“You’re incapable of love!”  He attempted to get up, but a fit of coughing choked him.  He pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, intending to get help.

She snatched the device away and threw it against a standing stone.  Still coughing, he crawled towards it, when suddenly there was a terrific blow to his head.  The bitch had slid after him and hit him with a rock.  He collapsed, feeling the blood running down his face, swiftly turning cold.  A shiver ran through him; “Gotta share body heat,” he slurred.

“It would degrade me to warm you up,” she responded, but not spiritedly as before.  The ice, snow and pain were taking their toll.

With the last of his strength, he caught her wrists and pulled her against him, so their hate contorted faces were inches apart.  “I’ll get you for this!”

A dog walker found them the next day, frozen solid together at the bottom of the ravine, his dead hands clamped around her neck.  They could not be parted ... without the aid of a saw.