The Black Geranium

The Black Geranium

is in a part of the city given over to weeds and wildlife, a bookstore that was a bar that was a bank. What it is now is only for the crows to know. As I approach the faded door, a pair of them attempt a murder, cackle at my smile.

Inside, the black cat stretches across a hammered-copper counter, huge dusty bulbs turning fur to wet ink. I risk scritching behind her long ear; she shows fangs, a reptilian blink of green eyes. I withdraw, laugh: she might be the most dangerous thing here.

Past the bookshelves bowing under the weight of a thousand stories, is the room that was a vault then an office. Carmine is at his antique desk, his face haunted by cool lamplight. The metal walls remain in this space, now dulled pewter, softened by oil paintings. Carmine favours baroque; the intense light and dark. When you’re in here, it can feel like you’re in a canvas, made up of layer upon layer of texture. Of intension or wild abandon. It can feel like you’re the creation of an artist.

‘You’re fashionably late,’ Barstow growls. He’s leaning like a half-felled oak against a wall.

‘You pissed off the cat,’ I reply.

His laugh is a hammer on the metal walls. ‘She loves me really.’

Then Carmine stands, shaking with rage, and tells us the job.

#

They took something precious to me, so you kill them all.

Even him?

Especially him.

Carmine’s words pummel like the rain as we drive through the city’s wet-black streets. Barstow seething like a storm cloud in the passenger seat, his jaw tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing. I close my eyes and picture the vault-room paintings, those intense baroque oils. That sense of being an artist’s creation. We were war-bludgeoned vets, too young to have the eyes we had: Carmine took us, added layers upon layers until we were different killers. The work’s always been about money, and power if we’re honest, until now.

Now you could say it’s about family.

Dark and light, in balance.

#

At the back of the building, rain making us slick as reptiles, I pick the lock while Barstow un-sheaths his knives. Two, because he’s greedy. Ambidextrous, dickhead. There’s the satisfying click and we slither inside, instantly walloped by the stench.

We move into the workshop; shelves loaded with green foam and graveside pots. The smell irritates, Barstow snorts like a rhino.

‘Fucking Hell, she could be done for already.’

I hiss at him, then at the three cookie-cutter tough guys who were playing games on their phones at a table littered with takeout and broken-down handguns. They’re rising now, coming all cocksure with knuckle dusters and nightsticks.

Old school. I can respect.

That smell though, it’s overwhelming; I’m hit with a wave of nostalgia. Grandma Sue, hair dyed ginger crisp, perfume like a weapon. A strange place to be in my mind when I slice open one tough guy’s neck with my only knife, watch him drop to the floor. The other two are silently dispatched by Barstow - who is unexpectedly and alarmingly quiet when he kills. Pleasant almost. He nods at me, flicks blood from his blades and we move into the shop front.

#

More tough guys, all custom black suits and gym muscle – Devlin must have them cloned somewhere. I leave them for Barstow who’ll be irritating as hell if he only gets two, and I approach the shop’s long marble counter. Devlin sits behind it on a high chrome chair, surrounded by bucket upon bucket of lilies. My nose itches furiously, I hear Grandma Sue’s cigar-scraped laugh.

Soldier? You’re not serious?

The white cat is on her side like spilled milk on the marble. She washes her face slowly and precisely. When I scritch her neck, she chirrups, licks my hand.

‘This was reckless,’ I say, slicing off flower heads with my bloodied knife. The stench pulses from the injuries. ‘She could’ve got real sick. Worse.’

Devlin sighs. ‘She’s not interested in pretty flowers. I needed him to hurt.’

Friends since boys’ home days, Carmine and Devlin are now rivals, enemies even. The how and the why of it long forgotten. I note he’s gotten skinny, maybe even terminal. There are three vivid scratches on his badly tanned face.

‘Seems you got hurt too.’

His bony fingers hover over the wounds, an ugly gold watch hangs loose from his wrist. ‘The black one, she’s mean as the Devil.’

Barstow’s laugh is a freight train building speed. He’ll be ready for food. I splash the lilies with red, staining the funereal flowers forever, and scoop up the purring cat.

#

Carmine’s tears finally spent, he hugs us like sons, a rare gesture I find both comforting and strange. He retires to his apartment above the bookshop. Barstow thumps me on the shoulder, says later, brother while he picks hamburger from his teeth with the stiletto knife he keeps in his boot. Greedy.

I take a moment with the paintings, with that feeling of being oil-layered canvas. I imagine peeling back those layers, curious at what still lingers underneath. A cocky kid in desert camo ripped into manhood by the butchery of war? A boy too sweet for the world according to his mama, who loved animals and his baby sister? The lure of the peppermints in his Granny Sue’s purse – wrappers smelling of sickly flowers, but the taste like winter in his mouth.

Maybe all of it. Intense dark and light.

#

When I pass the cats on my way out, they are entwined on the copper counter. They are sisters, sweet and sour, obsidian and pearl.

Mostly we kill for money, and power too, if we’re honest.

I stroke their mingled coats, feel the combined purr, get slivers of green and gold, a reveal of fang.

Sometimes we kill for family.

In a part of the city given over to weeds and wildlife, it’s almost dawn. The Black Geranium is a bookstore that was a bar that was a bank. What it is now is only for the crows to know. There’s a homicide on the roof when I close the faded door. Forty dark eyes knowing, knowing it all.

BIO: JP Relph is a writer from the Northwest of England, hindered by two cats. Tea helps, milk first. She spends far too much time thrifting for haunted objects. JP writes about apocalypses a lot (despite not having the knees for one) and got a zombie story onto the 2024 Wigleaf longlist. Another dystopian story made Ellen Datlow's recommended Best in Horror list 2025.