Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  The phone ceases buzzing, there’s a pause, and then it buzzes twice, telling me he’s left another voicemail.

  I pause on the photo Hazel took today, studying the shape of her mouth, the glint in her eyes. She smiled at me earlier, and when I smiled in return, it didn’t feel as feigned as it ordinarily does. There was something there, a breed of humanity.

  This is an unforeseen development. The woman on the screen is silly-looking: futile, facile, redundant. I hate to say it, but in the flesh, she is different. Twice now I have felt this conviction: at the party and the gym. She reminds me of myself. I can see how insecure she is beneath the glamour, the same way I was as a younger woman.

  I have to remind myself why I’m here. It has nothing to do with Hazel Smithson or her sparkling unreality. Hers is a life filled with friends and holidays and laughter and art and feelings. It’s the sort of life I was denied, and which I accepted long ago would never be mine.

  I don’t want that sort of life, do I?

  Opening the desk drawer, I take out the lockbox and remove the key from the slot I keep in my memory-stick pendant.

  I open it and retrieve the engagement ring, placing it on the desk and letting it sparkle in the late-day light. It looks no less cheap than it did when the corpse gifted it to me, but somehow my perception of it has changed. It’s a curious metamorphosis. I can more easily imagine bearing such an item now. I don’t quite know what to make of it.

  I take out my dolls. There are two women and a man, and each of them is burned and broken and half-ruined. I place them in a circle and move Millicent over to Jamie, and raise her hand and bring the hand down on his chest. He groans and falls, and then Millicent and Hazel hold hands and skip off together.

  Tears rise unexpectedly into my eyes. This happens sometimes: this capricious appearance of emotion.

  There is a problem with this pantomime, however. I have learned enough about people to know Hazel won’t be my friend if I kill her husband. Or perhaps I’m allowing myself to be too easily defeated. Perhaps I simply have to think harder. The right words – the right construct – and the greatest of edifices implode, and marriage is not an especially sturdy structure.

  My phone vibrates again, the bothersome thing. Hazel was right when she called me Victorian. I wish I’d been born into a letter-writing culture.

  “What?” I hiss, putting it on loudspeaker.

  “Finally,” the man says. “I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon.”

  The impertinence in his tone rankles. I think about feeding him strips of his own skin, piece by piece. I’ve never toyed with my victims like that before, but it might make a nice change. And if I’m going to end this with my death, why not cause a little mayhem beforehand? Maybe I should hunt this failed abortion down and teach him some fucking manners.

  I pick up Jamie and move him over to Hazel. She collapses backward and he collapses atop her. He slaps her and spits on her and hates her. Is that the way of their marriage? Does he beat her? Or does he abuse her in more creative ways?

  “Hello?” the man says.

  “Yes, hello. What do you want?”

  “My money. We agreed half before and half after.”

  “We agreed you’d make your performance believable. Let’s smash our bodies together. You sounded like an idiot.”

  “You said I should come across like a sexist asshole. Isn’t that something a sexist asshole would say?”

  It amuses me that he cares enough to defend his acting. I found him on an online message board, yet another theatre student with too many bills and too few opportunities. He would’ve crawled around on the floor and snorted like a pig if I’d told him to. He has no self-respect. He’s pathetic.

  “You didn’t come across as human in the least.” I should know. I’ve spent my life imitating them. “You were—”

  “I was trying—”

  “Quiet,” I snap, letting Jamie and Hazel drop. “I wasn’t done talking, you fucking rapist cunt.”

  “Woah. Jesus, all right. Christ.”

  “You were a caricature,” I tell him flatly. “If you want to make it as an actor, you can’t despise the person you’re portraying. To become somebody, you have to be them, both inside and out. People don’t hate themselves, not deep down where it matters.”

  I wonder if any of those Comrades hated themselves after what they did to me, marking my flesh dozens of times in dozens of different ways, with more tools than I can remember. I wonder if any of the men ever stared at themselves in the mirror, begging their reflections for some explanation…

  How could they do this to a child? How could they find pleasure in a little girl’s inferno?

  “You failed,” I snap, pushing away the past. “You don’t deserve the second half of your payment. I should ask for a refund, truthfully.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” he whines. “I did everything you asked. Your friend was impressed, wasn’t she?”

  “You were amateurish. But, because I’ve decided to take pity on you, I’ll pay you what you mistakenly believe you’re owed. But first you have to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  I sit up straighter and brush down my hair. I shouldn’t have to stoop to this, but it’s what I need. At the very least, I have to make the effort.

  “I’m going to send you a text. You will recite the words to me, passionately, with heart. Make it humane. Make it real.”

  The man sighs. “Then you’ll transfer the money?”

  I followed this man home after we met, just in case I needed to put a fright into him. He has no idea how close he is to waking up with me standing over his bed, a rag of chloroform in one hand and a blade in the other.

  “Yes. But fix your tone, or we’re going to have a problem.”

  He swallows audibly, unsure of how to reply, the same way most people are when I show them my true self. “Okay, sure. I’m sorry. Send the text. I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

  “Good boy.”

  I copy and paste the text from the note where I saved it – transcribed from an Instagram video – and send it to him. A few moments later, he says, “Right, I’ve got it. Let me put you on speakerphone.”

  He clears his throat and I take the engagement ring and hold it against the tip of my finger. I close my eyes and try to imagine the face of a man I could love. He has kind eyes and a clever smile and he would never deride me. He would never hurt me. He loves me and he is not rainbow-coloured.

  He is an impossible man, but that doesn’t matter.

  “I see you, Millicent Maidstone. I see all of you. You’re never invisible with me.” With each word, I slip the ring further and further up my finger, the cold metal kissing my skin. “Everything you do, everything you are, I’ll always be watching.”

  A pause, a breath – and nothing. I feel nothing.

  I open my eyes and aim my finger downward. I’m too skinny for the ring anyway. It slides and clatters against the desk. “Very well. I’ll send the money.”

  I’d rather send him an envelope of anthrax, but I have to keep him docile. Otherwise, he may inform Hazel she was an actor in a play without ever suspecting it.

  17

  Before

  “You must understand what we’re trying to achieve here, little lamb.” Comrade Charles paced up and down the Rainbow Room and waved his pipe, and his pipe smoke danced and his daughter watched with eyes that never stopped tracking his movements. “Have you noticed how the men and women share the labour in all things? Cooking and cleaning is not solely a feminine pursuit, as has been mistakenly promulgated in this patriarchal society.”

  Millicent could have said the labour was not shared equally, because her father didn’t contribute. He spent most of his time in his office, bashing at a typewriter. He never finished a single piece of work. He’d tear the paper to pieces, roaring that language was insufficient to capture what he was trying to say. In the evenings, he’d sit in one of the Comrades’ living rooms as t
hey detailed the innumerable ways they’d failed the cause that day. She’d never seen him scrubbing a floor or dusting a curtain rail.

  “Yes, Father—”

  “Charles,” he snapped. “My name is Charles, and even that is a mere representation. My real name would be a list of all the things I have ever done. But you see how that might become cumbersome, don’t you?”

  What a load of incomprehensible shit this man spewed. He deserved what happened to him in the end.

  “Yes, Charles.”

  “So you understand.”

  Millicent nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

  “What do you understand?”

  “Everything in society is a construct. All the things people do, they only do because it’s learned behaviour.”

  “And you accept that?”

  “Yes, Charles.”

  “Hmm.” He tapped his pipe against his teeth, click-click-click. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  The thought passed through her precocious mind: What truth, Father? There are only words. She was very clever for her age, already far smarter than most of the grown-ups in her life, even if she was still too confused and naïve to act upon her genius. “Yes.”

  He reached into the back pocket of his tatty mud-brown corduroys. The girl knew better than to react when she saw what he’d done to her precious dolls. There were three of them, two women and one man. She’d stolen them from a supermarket, one at a time, over the course of a month. She was clever at stealing things and, even when some nosy Nelly tried to stop her, she knew she could make them go away by saying she’d tell the police they tried to touch her. She was constantly fascinated by how people let her get away with things.

  But not Comrade Charles.

  He’d burnt off most of the women’s hair, and their skin was charred and crumpled in places now. The man’s face was hardly a face. He’d ruined them and it wasn’t fair.

  “What are these?” She stared defiantly. “Hello? Am I audible? Little lamb, you better start explaining yourself.”

  She knew better than to let any emotion into her voice. “They are my dolls.”

  “Your dolls.” He shook his head. “Surely you can see how this is a problem. With this one act, you have undone much of what we’re trying to accomplish here. Who taught you to want to play with these?”

  The question confused her. She’d taken to sneaking away from their cul-de-sac and exploring the wider world, and sometimes these wanderings took her to the supermarket. She’d pick up packets of crisps and eat a few and then put them back. She’d move things from people’s baskets and trolleys without them looking, and then follow them and giggle to herself when they doubted their sanity at the checkout. She’d seen the dolls and she’d wanted the dolls and she didn’t understand what he meant.

  “Do you think I enjoy this?” He dropped them and grabbed his belt, freeing it from its loops. “I don’t know why you refuse to understand.”

  “Father.”

  “My name is Charles.”

  “Please don’t hit me, Father. I don’t want to be hit. I don’t think I deserve to be hit.”

  “No? Did you play with these? Because I have it on very good authority you were down by the rocks, playing with these like a stupid little girl.”

  Somebody had ratted on her. It was unacceptable.

  “Please, Father. I was pretending they were us, me and you and Mummy, and we were going on holiday and—”

  “Shut up, you little fucking whore.” He wasn’t Father or even Charles anymore. He was Master, as some of the Comrades sometimes called him. He was God. He was going to make it very difficult for her to sit down for a while. “Turn around and take what you deserve.”

  The door burst open and Constance flew in. “Charley!” she shouted. She was wearing a long dirty dress and her hair was wild and her cheeks were sunken and haggard, and she looked half-alive, but she was Mummy and she was here. “You won’t touch her. I won’t allow it.”

  Millicent let out a cry and buried her face in her mother’s belly. “Please, please,” she moaned, as a sob made her voice quake and shiver. “Mummy, I wanted us to be happy. And now he’s going to hurt me.”

  “He is not. Unless he wants me to go to the police and tell them about the things that go on here.”

  “Connie—”

  “Fuck off, Charley.”

  Comrade Charles rolled his eyes, and then leered viciously at Millicent. “Do you truly think this woman loves you, little lamb? She’s using you. She’s trying to get her ration sooner than she’s earned it. Fine. I’ll show you what she really cares about.”

  Comrade Charles left and Millicent rushed over to her dolls. She held them up to her mother. “Look. It’s me and you and—”

  “Did you see his face?” Constance stared at the open doorway.

  “Mummy, I think we should go. I think me and you should go and then we’ll be happy.”

  “Hush. We’re not going anywhere.”

  Millicent cradled the dolls to her chest and Comrade Charles returned and he handed Comrade Constance the glass pipe and she smiled and she kissed Charles on the cheek and she fluttered from the room without pausing to look at her daughter. Charles remained in the doorway, shrouded in pipe smoke. Millicent often thought about the pipe smoke going poof and making him disappear.

  “See, little lamb. It’s a show. She doesn’t love you. Do you know why? Because she’s not your mother. You have no mother. You have no father.”

  “I’m keeping these dolls,” Millicent said.

  He chuckled grimly. “Oh, is that so?”

  “Yes. Because if you try to take them from me, I am going to sneak away and go to the police station and tell them Charles Maidstone has drugs here, and he hits children, and he’s a sad pathetic cult leader who can’t even finish a single page of a book.”

  Her father’s face became red with rage. He glared at her. He needed her to shrink before him, she knew, the same way the Comrades shrank. But Millicent stood up straighter and she stared at him and it was the scariest thing she’d ever done, but she did it.

  “You’re pathetic.” He turned away. “You’re a joke, little lamb.”

  He left and she slumped on the floor, and she curled into a ball with her dolls cradled to her face and she wept. She would later come to learn this was the wrong response: this, in fact, made her pathetic. This made her deserving of his punishment. But it would be years before she’d realise this, and in the meantime her only option was to succumb to her anguish.

  18

  Jamie

  I groan when I see Richard’s Rolls Royce in the driveway. I forgot we had dinner plans. I wanted to crash when I got in.

  Today has been a pain in the arse. Ray won’t shut up about how Millie is different, about how he’s never felt like this before, about how they could really be something. Sometimes I find myself looking up to Ray. In the business world he’s a smooth operator. But other times I pity him.

  I sigh and climb out, practising smiles the same way I do before an important meeting. I’m not a fan of Richard and Amelia. I called him Rich once and he corrected me like I was his servant.

  I still don’t know what to do about Millicent. I’ve been chewing it over ever since I met with her yesterday. I want to throttle the bitch and dump her in the River Avon, but I’d get caught. And really, do I have it in me to strangle a woman to death? I don’t think so.

  I open the door and glance at the security alarm keypad, checking it’s disabled. It’s a habit I can’t break after so many years spent hunting. I smell lasagne and I hear raised voices. I dump my briefcase in the hallway and head to the kitchen.

  This is going to be torture.

  I expect to see my wife standing at the obsidian kitchen island. What I don’t expect is Millicent fucking Maidstone with blotches of blood and gore covering her shirt and neck.

  She freezes and stares at me, and then the bitch smiles.

  I clench my fists and move toward
her. This is it. She’s made my decision for me.

  “Where’s Hazel—”

  “I’m so sorry.” Hazel emerges from the pantry with a kitchen towel clutched in her manicured hand. She dresses like a businesswoman when her parents come to visit: suit trousers and shirt and block heels. The same type of outfit Millicent was wearing yesterday. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  Millicent holds my gaze as she takes the towel. “It’s no bother. Accidents happen.”

  “You always were such a clumsy thing,” Amelia says from the back patio, her posh voice grating.

  Hazel rolls her eyes. “I only went and spilled sauce on our guest, didn’t I?”

  She faces Millicent, moving the way she does when she’s anxious. Everything is quick and jerky. I’m not surprised she spilled the sauce. I hate how nervous her parents make her. I hate that Amelia insists on having these dinners, when she doesn’t give a damn the rest of the time. At least my old man never pretended.

  Most of all, I hate the way Millicent is grinning at me.

  “I’ll get you a change of shirt. I’m really sorry, Millie.”

  “You didn’t do it on purpose, H.”

  H? Fucking H?

  I wait for Hazel to correct her, but Hazel smiles. It’s the sort of smile she reserves for her actual friends, not people she barely knows. There’s me, there’s Trish who she’s known since she was a child. A couple of others, people she’s known for years. But Millicent Maidstone?

  “Go and sit with Mum and Dad.” Hazel brushes her hand along my side as she passes. Her touch is delicate, innocent. She doesn’t deserve this. “I’ll bring you out a drink in a sec.”

  I grab her hand and lean close, lowering my voice. “You good?”

  She nods. She thinks I’m talking about her parents. “You know how it is. Go on. I need you for backup.”

  I give Millicent a wide berth as I walk around the kitchen island.