Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  We haven’t met since the dinner, but we’ve been texting, bantering like we’re going to become best friends. It’s a novel experience.

  Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m faking it. Sometimes it feels real.

  I stare at the Word document, at the words I’ve just brought into reality. I can’t stand to look at it for long. I close the laptop and take a sip of my coffee.

  A mother sits on the other side of the café, a swollen specimen with five rats screaming and making a fuss over every little thing. She looks up and sees me staring as she’s cleaning a chin with one hand and wrestling a boy with the other. She smiles, because she sees the façade. She sees my suit jacket and my kind eyes and my professional demeanour.

  I return her smile, even as I imagine tackling her through the window and leaping on her. I’d take a shard of glass and drag it up from her slit to her neck, slicing her middle right open, screaming madly in her face as blood pissed from her useless body.

  Still, those children will probably have it better than me, even with a wreck for a mother, with her sports-shop jacket and her gaudy faux-gold chain. We called people cattle in our… religion, cult, what? Whatever it was, we called them cattle, and none have fit the description more than this troll.

  Yet part of me glows when she brushes hair from her son’s face. She must love her boys to worry over them so much, to bring them to a café, to do it all by herself.

  Rare shame touches me. She doesn’t deserve to die. It’s the fucking men.

  They were always the worst, the ones who found unique ways to punish me. Some of them told me I enjoyed it, insisted upon it, as they committed their monstrous acts. They would plead even as they did it… even as they did things that made it impossible for me to reply. They would ask, beg for deliverance.

  You like it. Look. She likes it. Listen to that moan. A bitch don’t moan like that if she’s not having fun, does she? Do you? Answer me.

  I close my eyes and take a breath. Exploring these avenues is dangerous. But lately I can’t seem to avoid them.

  It’s the writing.

  Or it’s being close to Jamie, to the life he’s made: to his wife, Hazel, who tugs at parts of me I’d rather leave untouched. She makes me wonder what it would’ve been like to have a sister, a true comrade instead of the liars in the Rainbow Room.

  Every single one of them could smile when they were in public, could clap other men on the back, could tend to their sick children. They wore masks – nowhere near as effective as mine, but good enough for most – and only let their true selves out when they had a child tied to a table.

  That’s why I refuse to feel guilty about what I do, because they earned it, either in the past or in the future. They all do something unforgivable somewhere along the way. They all steal what lust they can, whenever they can, ignoring the feelings of their lovers, partners, victims.

  If I were to take the most upstanding man in the country and put him in a hotel room with a scared girl and complete assurance nobody would ever find out, he’d take her the same way all men do.

  Scratch a little beneath the flesh and they reveal themselves to be monsters.

  They stole any chance I had to be normal, and somewhere along the way I stopped trying. But a possible new path is opening before me. I may still execute Jamie and end my own life before the police can apprehend me, but what if Hazel is offering me something I was always denied? Perhaps she’s my chance at beautiful mundanity. It’s worth a try, at the very least.

  That’s why I’ve chosen to nudge reality into my favour, to move Hazel’s limbs the same way I moved my dolls when I was a girl, contorting them into whatever shape I needed them.

  Finally my phone buzzes. The number is Unknown, like he said it’d be.

  “Hello.” I use my professional voice. The woman across from me probably thinks I’m taking a business call, but this is very personal. “Thank you for ringing.”

  “So polite.” He laughs gruffly, sounding like a teenager. Maybe he is. “Bit weird you wanted to talk on the phone.”

  “I’ve been messed around in the past. I don’t want it to happen this time. If I pay you to do something, you have to deliver.”

  “And talking helps with that how?”

  “Because I will know if you’re lying to me. If you’re just trying to take my money. And I will make it my mission to find you.”

  He snorts laughter. My temples pulse. If this little bastard had any idea who I am, he wouldn’t dare disrespect me. At least, he sounds little, little and pathetic. “Jesus Christ, lady. It’s only a grand. Relax. I’ll do what you want. How fast do you want it to start?”

  I drum my fingers on the table. The Dark Web is a useful place: for drugs, for services impossible to find on the regular internet. I’ve had fun using it in the past for a variety of projects, all of them used as predator’s tools, the same way less imaginative hunters use knives and tapes.

  This man calls himself a hacker. I don’t like the term. It sounds too science fiction, too ridiculous. But if he can make Hazel desperate, that’s all that matters. When she’s desperate, she’ll be more inclined to seek solace in her new friend.

  And then what?

  I’m not sure exactly.

  But I can’t stop thinking about her perfect life, her perfect hair and teeth and her shiny smile, a smile that makes me think nothing truly bad has ever happened to her. Perhaps being a part of it will help me believe nothing bad has ever happened to me. Or perhaps it will fail, and I’ll be forced to revert to blood.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” I clear my throat: too much thinking. “I want it to start slow, and then get progressively worse.”

  “Easy. There’s lots of potential here. What did she do to you, anyway?”

  “That’s none of your business. Just do your job.”

  “Fair enough.” The sound of tapping keys in the background. “From what I’ve seen, this is going to drive her really crazy.”

  That we can agree on. I wonder if I should feel guilty, but there is no wrong; there is no right. There are only words. And when this is over, perhaps I’ll be there to speak the right words to Hazel, in the right combination to make her love me.

  Yes, maybe that’s how this will end: in hope instead of blood.

  24

  Hazel

  Jamie groans, dropping into the poolside chair. “Can’t we just have our drinks?”

  It’s a warm Friday night and we’ve decided to have a few cocktails in the garden. The lights around the pool make the water shiny. The sky is clear and lovely-looking. I’ve gone through the effort of doing a full face of make-up and fixing my hair, and Jamie’s still in his work clothes, looking handsome in a rugged way.

  “I don’t see the problem with taking a few photos.”

  He rubs his jaws. He hasn’t shaved since the party. He’s got a prickly black beard, with a few white hairs dotted here and there. He’s going to be a real silver fox one day. “There’s not a problem. I’m just not in the mood for a photoshoot.”

  “It will take two minutes, if that.” I try to keep my tone level, but the fact he’s arguing with me is annoying. He knows social media is part of the deal with me. He knew it before we got married and he should know it now. I put up with a lot from him. He should do the same for me. That’s what a marriage is supposed to be. “Please don’t make me fight you on this.”

  He makes to pick up his drink and I shake my head quickly. “I can’t even have a sip?”

  I gesture at the cocktail glass, with the stick positioned perfectly, the lime wedge angled perfectly, with everything just so. “After we’ve taken the photos, you can neck ten glasses if you want.”

  “H, we don’t even know who’s looking at that stuff.”

  I clutch my phone harder. “What do you mean?” My shoulder throbs from the bite. “My followers are looking at it.”

  “And who are they? They could be anybody. Bunch of fucking weirdos online. I
f you had any sense, you’d delete that stuff and find something worthwhile to do – H, Hazel, wait.”

  But I refuse to wait if he’s going to speak to me like this.

  I march through the house and up the stairs, picking up speed when I hear Jamie hurrying after me. Tears prick my eyes, but I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be weak. I understand if work is stressing him out, fine, but that’s no reason to be cruel.

  I haven’t done anything wrong. I wanted to capture how wonderful our lives are: or at least how wonderful they seem from the outside.

  I march over to the wardrobe and pull out my suitcase, throwing it onto the bed. Jamie paces over to me and, grabbing it, he tosses it to the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t say things like that anymore.” I fold my arms and face the window. The garden is even prettier from up here, the lights seeming brighter. “You said I could make this my career. You said you were proud of me.”

  “I am.” He wraps his arms around me and tries to make me soften against him, but I keep myself rigid and cold. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t about you. It’s work. I made a mistake today.”

  There’s pain in his voice, a side of himself he rarely lets out. He hates when he doesn’t do every little thing right. “What mistake?”

  “It was stupid. I sent an email. I thought I did anyway. But it didn’t leave the outbox.”

  “Jamie, that’s silly.”

  “You know what I’m like. I can’t stop thinking about it. What if I make more mistakes? What if it all comes crashing down?”

  I turn to him with a laugh. He always does this to me, somehow, finds a way to rip me out of whatever bad mood I’m in, even if he’s the cause of it. Especially when he’s the cause of it. Maybe that makes us both a little messed up. “Over an email? Come on, that’s melodramatic.”

  He shrugs, looking lost and boyish. “Maybe. But the point is, H, I’m sorry. All right? Let’s go outside. We’ll take a million photos. A billion. I don’t care.”

  “It’s not the same now.”

  He brings his face close to mine, smiling like he did the first time I saw him. I never expected him to be there. I never expected to care so quickly, so violently, with so much certainty. I just wish it had stayed like that; I wish he hadn’t added the extra parts, the parts that fill me with resentment. “I see you, Hazel Smithson—”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “What can I do to make this right?”

  I shrug, looking out on the garden again. Is there an itsy bitsy part of me that likes it when we’re like this, when he knows he’s done wrong and he’ll do anything to prove how much he loves me? Yes, maybe there is, and I won’t feel guilty about it.

  Little moments of disrespect can stack up if a wife lets them.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he says, a quirk in his voice. My smile twitches, but I don’t face him. “H, switch your phone on. Start recording me.”

  Now I’m interested. I turn. “Why?”

  He grins. “Just do it. Trust me.”

  I open the camera app and start the video, aiming it at him. The lighting is really good in here.

  “All right, ladies and gents, boys and girls.” He offers his endearing smile, the one that lets him get away with so much. “It’s Friday night and I’ve been a real arsehole to my lovely wife, the woman of my dreams. It’s nothing serious, but to show her how sorry I am, how dedicated I am, I’m going to jump off our balcony into the swimming pool.”

  I gasp and his grin gets wider, and then he starts moving toward the balcony door behind me. I want to tell him no, don’t do it. It’s too dangerous. But another part of me is captivated. I move backward, holding him in frame the entire time.

  He’s not really going to do this, is he?

  He’s waiting for me to call out, to stop him.

  The automatic light switches on and Jamie approaches the balcony railing. I’ve seen photographs from when he used to play rugby, and he has the same look in his eyes now, a couldn’t-give-a-fuck look. It’s like he’s accepted he might get injured, but he won’t let himself worry about it.

  I move to the edge of the railing and look down. The pool must be more than five feet away, maybe more. There’s no way he can do it without a running start.

  But I keep watching, keep recording, as he grips the railing. He kicks one foot over and then starts to move the other.

  “Jamie.” I place my phone on the table and move toward him. The fear flurrying through me tells me he’s worth it, even if he’s far from perfect, maybe even very far. I can’t stand the idea of him getting hurt. If that’s not love, what is? “That’s enough. You’ve proved your point.”

  He straddles the rail. “I can do it.”

  “I believe you. But please come down. You’re a madman, Jamie Smithson.”

  He climbs onto the balcony and I grab his face in my hands and stand on my tiptoes, and I kiss him passionately. He groans and kisses me back, lifting me and placing me on the table. I can feel my phone digging into my bum.

  I want the heat of his body. I want to feel how much he needs me. I want to belong and, with Jamie, I do. I always will.

  “I love you,” I gasp between kisses.

  “I love you, H.” He moans. “You’ll never know how much.”

  We kiss again, melting into each other. I drag my hands along his neck and his shoulders and then down his back, feeling his taut muscles beneath the fabric of his suit. He tastes of Jamie. He smells of Jamie.

  “Where were you going to go?” he says, our noses tickling each other as we remain close.

  What’s he talking about? Oh, the suitcase.

  “I don’t know. Anywhere. I just needed to get away from my mean grumpy husband.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I place my hand on his chest, feeling the hammering of his heart. “I know. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. You deserve respect. I’ll work harder. Sometimes I forget… Just because I was raised like an animal, it doesn’t mean I have to be one, you know?”

  “I think that’s a very mature thing to say.”

  “Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Leave with me? Start a new life, go to Europe or America or wherever else?”

  I prod him. “Nah, you’re too much of a bully.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Why? We have such a lovely life here.”

  “I know. But we could have an even better life somewhere else. Humour me.”

  “Your job…”

  “I could make money anywhere,” he says, his emerald eyes gleaming with confidence. I love that about him. He’s always so sure he’ll land on his feet.

  “Hypothetically speaking, yes, of course I would. It’s me and you against the world. I’d follow you to Hell.”

  Sometimes when Jamie and I talk like this, I feel like we’re putting on a show for an invisible audience: saying and doing the things a madly in love couple would say and do. It makes me wonder if he feels the same: that we’re constantly hovering on the surface of our marriage, never delving deep to where it matters, to real issues… But we’re not a couple of real issues. We’re a couple of big dramatic gestures and exaggerated statements.

  “Are you okay?” he whispers, his eyes flitting with worry, reminding me of my reflection for so many years. It’s the need not to be alone, to never be alone.

  “Yes.” I push the unhelpful thoughts from my mind. “I’m sorry. I was a million miles away. Come here.”

  I pull him into a kiss, stifling that little voice inside that tells me something is wrong, that something has been wrong since the beginning.

  25

  Jamie

  People can say what they want about Ray, but the man can deliver. I woke up this morning to a text telling me he’d made the connection with Tom Brown. He sent an address and told me to be there by eleven.

  Don’t be late.

&n
bsp; I drive through the industrial estate, scanning the units.

  My head’s a little groggy from last night. After the madness on the balcony, after the mind-blowing sex, Hazel and I returned to the pool and had our cocktails. I smiled extra hard for her in the photos. I felt like a jackass for taking out my anger on her. She doesn’t know any of this is going on, and it’s definitely not her fault.

  If I have my way, she’ll never find out.

  Pulling up in front of the unit at the end, I glance at my phone, making sure this is the right one. There’s scaffolding all over it and it looks like they’re stripping the paint or something.

  I jump out of my damn skin when he knocks on the car window.

  A man around Ray’s age stands there, real skinny-looking, bald. He’s wearing a leather jacket and gloves. He looks like he’d kill me and dispose of my body without any hesitation.

  I roll down the window. “Are you Tom Brown?”

  “You’re late,” he says. I glance at the dash. This guy’s going to chew me out over two minutes? “Did you bring the money?”

  Five grand. The bastard better be worth it. Luckily, Hazel had a brunch date booked with Trish, so she wasn’t around to see me raid the safe.

  “Yeah.”

  He nods. “Wait a minute and then follow me.”

  I’d laugh at how MI5 this is getting if there wasn’t a psycho killer on my case.

  I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, letting my mind wander back to an idea I had last night.

  What if Millicent isn’t a killer? What if she got those photos on the internet and she’s trying to freak me out? Just because she said she was a killer, just because she sounded convincing, it doesn’t mean she is. She’s clearly a good actress.

  But I don’t believe it. There’s something about her. She’s not like the rest of us. Maybe I break a few rules with what I do, but I’m not feral. I’m not like her. She didn’t even flinch when I got angry with her in her dingy flat. A normal woman – a skinny-as-fuck woman like her, with no way to defend herself if I attacked her – would’ve reacted, would’ve looked scared, anxious, something.