by NJ Moss
Ray is a problem, however, with his leather-bound flask and his flushed cheeks and his silly gestures: gestures he imbues with far more significance than they merit. He presented me with a necklace last night, welling up as though he thought I was going to collapse to my knees and choke on his dick for the diamonds.
I spin, indulging him.
He makes some piggish grunting noises. “Now there’s a picture. You’re gorgeous, Millie.”
Ray does have his uses. There’s no way I’d be able to afford this dress without his financial assistance. This time, I even let him know he was making the payment, rather than swiping the money from his bank account. I allowed him to buy me two more dresses, a pair of shoes, some tights, some lingerie, and a set of hair straighteners.
It’s been a very productive day.
I drift over to the bed. “Ray, I want to thank you for buying me these lovely things.”
He leers at me, his cheeks glowing with liquor, the same way Mother’s face blazed as she melted into the sofa and stayed there for hours and hours. I’ve encouraged dear Ray in his drinking, it’s true. It’s his natural state. I see no reason for him to pretend.
It’s quite funny to see how readily he has fallen into the abyss. He hasn’t even tried to fight.
“You’re welcome.” He licks his lips. “What say I shut the door, eh, sweetheart?”
“So we can have sex.”
His eyes widen and he nods quickly: a boy eager to answer yes before the offer is snatched away. He is a little sprite as he sits there, gazing adoringly up at me. “It’d be so, so good, Millie. I’ll treat you right.”
“That does sound nice. But I think I’d rather break-up.”
“What?”
“I said I think I’d rather break-up. Yes, that sounds preferable to me.”
“Break… up?”
“Yes. Separate. No longer associate with each other.”
Walking to the door, I scoop up my shopping bags with a deft movement.
“Wait a sec.” Ray trails me through his lurid apartment, with its hundred protestations of sophistication, none of them convincing. “Millie, fucking hell. Will you stop? We need to talk about this!”
I pause in the hallway, near the front door and the door to the kitchen. He cringes away from me when I turn to face him. I’m not showing him my Millie-face anymore, with the quirked eyebrows and the approachable lips and the docile dimples.
I am Millicent Maidstone, and I would rather die than lie beneath him as he grunts himself into oblivion.
“If you wish to talk, talk. But it won’t change anything, little lamb.”
“Little what? Why’re you talking to me like this? Millie, we can work this out.”
“Work what out?” He can’t be serious. “We’ve known each other for a few weeks. You’re nothing to me, and I should be nothing to you.”
“But you said you loved me. You said time didn’t matter. You said we bonded quicker because we were meant to be together. You said you’d never leave me.”
I don’t bother to remember if any of this is true. Perhaps I did say some words, and perhaps some of them are even the words he’s claiming I spoke, but what of it? I created a reality with my speech and I can break it just the same. “Anything else?”
“Can you at least tell me why?” His full-flushed cheeks shudder. Anger has worked its way into his voice, the anger of a man who is used to hearing yes: yes, yes, yes, from his employees and his women and a world that contorts itself disgracefully for a fleeting taste of his exempted existence.
“My life is heading in a new direction. I’m making friends, real friends, for the first time in my life. I have plans that do not involve you. You’ve outlived your usefulness to me.”
He gawps as though I’ve muttered spells in Latin. “This is a joke.”
“Is it?”
“This has to be a fucking joke. After everything I’ve done for you. Do you have any idea how much that necklace cost?”
“Ten thousand pounds.”
“What? How did you—”
“I checked your banking app last night. I sold it for much less.”
Bovine tears brim in his eyes. He’s the same as every other man I’ve allowed to believe I cared for them. But the sort of man I could love only exists in mind-made fantasies. I despise Ray and his ilk, and I especially despise anybody who thinks jewellery gives him invasion rights.
To be inside somebody is the greatest intimacy there is. It’s worth far more than a few ounces of metal.
“You sold the necklace?”
“I sold the necklace. Are we done?”
“You sold the fucking necklace.”
I walk toward the door. I need to get home and decide which dress I want to wear when I meet Hazel and her friends – my friends – later. I need to paint my face in the right way and practise my laughter and straighten my beautiful black hair.
“I knew there was something wrong with you. I knew you were a fucking freak.”
I shouldn’t care what he thinks, but something is throbbing deep inside of me, pulsing, shimmering: starlight and pain and fragments of memory rock and I don’t know what else. That word was thrown at me, at all of us, many times growing up.
Freak, freak, freak.
I spin. “Excuse me?”
“Daddy get too handsy with you, did he? Put you off dick so now you walk around thinking you’re better than everybody else?”
“My father never touched me, Raymond.” I really wish he’d stop, stop this before he goes too far. There was a room and there was a rainbow and there was a secret knock, and there was a slice of the sky, and I will show them, I will show them all how special I am. “Shut your mouth, Raymond.”
“Oh, your father never touched you.” He grins horribly, strolling over to me, bringing with him the stink of whisky and sweat and prurience. “It was somebody else then. Who? An uncle, a family friend? Because somebody did, love. You’re fucked.”
“Get away from me.” I’ve dropped the bags and my hands are shaking. “I mean it. Step back.”
He steps closer. He has me pushed against the door. I can feel his belly against my belly and his chest against my chest and he is way too close.
“Or what?” His hand glides up my thigh. Worms crawl over my skin, and the worms are rainbow-coloured, and there is a purple blotch across this moment in the shape of a moon. “Relax a bit. I can help you relax.”
“Please stop touching me.”
“But you like it. I can tell you like it.”
“I do not like it. I have never liked it.”
His hand sends unwanted sensations to the place between my legs, and that is the most confusing part: the piece of this most people will never comprehend. There is a survival mechanism in perversion and it is called pleasure. But not real pleasure, not humane pleasure. This is the body’s ape response, nothing more, an excretion in response to stimulation. It’s the most foetid aspect of a victim’s development.
But no, no, I have never been a victim. I make victims.
I am the jaguar in the park, with the mask and the gloves and the hair net and the rock and the conviction. I am Millicent Maidstone.
“Last chance,” I say.
“You’re getting wet.” He groans as he grinds his palm against me, as the heel of his hand rubs unpleasantly up and down my underwear, and my body does things, prompts things, over which I have no control. “You want it, Millie. I’m sorry for what I said. I’ll be nice, I promise—”
“I said get the fuck away from me!”
I whip my hands up and around to clear his attacking belly, and I plunge my thumbnails into his eye sockets and press as hard as I can.
He weeps tears of blood as I bury my thumbs deep. He grunts and he falls and he brings his hands to his face, gasping, panting.
Fuck, fuck.
This was never part of the plan. I’ve committed assault. A living witness to my actions, to my true self. I can’t afford that.
Skirting around him as he spins in a blind circle – as though he’s the one in the brand-new outfit and he’s putting on a show for me – I walk into the kitchen and grab the biggest knife from the metallic knife block. I pull it out with a hiss, a knightess’ hiss, the same sound swords must make sliding from scabbards.
When I return to the hallway, Ray is at the door, fumbling sightlessly for the handle.
There is a fact about death most people do not know: the dying don’t always remember to scream, to beg for help. The shock and the pain and the disbelief that this could be happening to them – to he who is untouchable – sometimes renders them mute.
“I have killed ten men.” I stalk forward. “I’ve told myself things, little lamb. I’ve told myself they were rapists. They were evil. They would go on to hurt women. And now I see – maybe it is Hazel who has allowed me to see – these have been lies, or half-truths to justify what I’ve done. That’s what emotion has taught me. But you, you…”
He grasps at me, as though for deliverance.
I step back and he claws at the air, lurching and murmuring nonsensical cattle words.
“You really are the worst of the worst.”
I stab him in the gut.
40
Hazel
This is such a silly thing to do.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of my studio, the yoga mat pressing into my thighs, I stare down at my phone as I refresh the page over and over and over. As if it’s going to magically leap up, as if my followers are going to stop abandoning me. I try to keep my breathing steady as I stare at the descending number – at least a few every minute – but it comes in gulps.
I’m supposed to be relaxing before getting ready for the girls’ night, but instead I’m torturing myself. I know I should stop but I don’t feel like I can.
I hate the sound of my OTT breathing. It’s so melodramatic. And yet I can’t stop it from happening, the tight nerves in my belly making my breath tangled and ugly.
I close my eyes but that does little to help. It just makes me think about why this bothers me so much, the deep-down reason I never talk about.
Dad grins at me from my mind, his eyes glassy with alcohol.
He’d been out with his work friends that night and I was waiting up for him, sitting on the stairs with my arms across my knees. Mum had crushed a pill and passed out hours ago, like she often did. She’d pull a mask over her eyes like she couldn’t stand to be alone in the house with me.
Dad brought his fingers to his lips and made a shh noise as he clumsily tried to untie his shoes, stumbling back and slamming into the wall. He laughed strangely. I didn’t like it.
But I was still happy. Fine, he was drunk. Fine, I could tell he wouldn’t be able to remember this in the morning, but he was looking at me. He was smiling at me.
“Let me help.” I rose from the stairs and walked across to him. Leaning down, I untied his shoes and slipped them off his feet as he grasped onto the heater for balance. “Fun night?”
He murmured something under his breath. I couldn’t make it out. “Pardon?”
“So polite, eh? Just like your mother.” He burped, covering his mouth. It was odd to see the Captain like this. It fascinated me. He was human after all. “Yeah, yeah, fun night. Good times. Good to get away, to forget for a while, you know?”
I don’t think he was aware of what he was saying. The words tumbled out as I placed his shoes next to the welcome mat and stood to help him with his jacket. He was like a child as I pulled it from his arms, twisting to let me help him.
“Why don’t you go and sit down, Dad? I’ll make you a cup of tea or something.”
“Okay, dear. That sounds lovely.”
He stumbled toward the living room, tripping on his feet and catching himself on the bannister. He laughed like a teenager and turned to me, his grin even wider, boyish in a way I’d never seen before. I found myself grinning back, even if part of me didn’t like seeing him like this.
How old was I? I know it was before I started acting out for attention with bulimia and boyfriends and half-naked social media posts… which failed, because they never noticed anyway.
I must’ve been around sixteen when I found out my dad was cheating on my mum.
I always wanted to be closer to him, which is probably why I found myself searching his jacket pockets. I didn’t even think about it. It was like my hands took on a life of their own as I rooted around.
There were a few receipts in his wallet, and then I found the lipstick-red knickers, bunched into a ball, with a handwritten note inside, Don’t wait so long next time, Captain.
I reeled and almost fell. I feel silly thinking about how close I was to fainting, but it’s the truth. I stumbled my way to the stairs and slumped down, drawing in ragged breaths.
I bunched the knickers into a tight fist and stared down at the note, at how crude the writing was. Mum’s handwriting was beautiful, elegant, but this was a scrawl, something a cheap woman would hastily put to paper while her married boyfriend cleaned her stink from his balls in the en suite… of where? Her flat, some dingy hotel?
I went into the living room, no idea what I was going to say to him.
He was curled up on the sofa. He looked strange lying there, knees tucked up, mouth slack, hand hanging over the edge. I’d always seen him as big, almost like a celebrity even if he was my father. He came and went as he pleased; he dominated every room he stepped into. He was a loyal, good, wholesome man, the sort of man people aspired to be and be with, and yet he was cheating on my mum.
Now his giggling and his drunkenness made sense.
I pulled a blanket over him and stuffed the knickers in my pocket, unsure of what to do.
Now, I open my eyes and let out a breath, trying to make it as long as I can. I rarely let myself think about any of this stuff. I try to focus on the good things, the positives in my life. I have a wonderful home, a wonderful husband. I had a budding social-media career until recently.
But I can’t stop my traitor mind from skipping back to my mum’s reaction when I told her.
I waited a week before I revealed Dad’s secret. I wanted to make sure I was right. Maybe there had been some sort of mistake. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, I could’ve got this wrong, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I followed him, which was crazily difficult considering he drove and I didn’t. In the end I went onto his phone and installed a Find My Phone app, linking it to my email. Dad didn’t know how to work his mobile properly, so he never noticed. I would wait for him to leave the house and then – using money stolen from Mum’s purse – I’d take a taxi to wherever he went. Most of the time it was the pub, the snooker hall, his gentleman’s club.
But once or twice he went to a dingy-looking hotel at the edge of town, near the motorway, and he’d disappear inside for a couple of hours. I’d wait in the car park, sitting under a tree, pressing my back against the trunk so it scraped against me. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted the pain to blot out what I was seeing.
Dad left fifteen minutes before the woman, and then out she came: probably around twenty, wearing a miniskirt, a leopard-print top, big blocky heels. She looked like trash compared with Mum, nothing elegant about her, and I hated her. I hated her more than I can even fathom. I wanted to hurt her.
I dreamt about what it would be like to push her into the motorway traffic. But of course I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. But the urge was there, swelling inside of me. Make this bitch pay.
I waited for Dad to return to the ship for work and then I laid out the note and the knickers on the kitchen table. Mum had her back to me, fussing over her green tea, swishing about the kitchen in a billowing summer dress.
She turned with the tea in her hand, her eyes flitting to the table. I expected her to drop the mug, to snap, What the fuck is that? I expected some sort of emotional explosion, but instead an inconv
enienced look came across her face, as mild as if she’d forgotten her reusable bag at the supermarket.
“What are you planning on doing with that, Hazel?” she said as she sat down, taking a dainty sip of her tea.
I waved an urgent hand at the knickers and the note. “They were in Dad’s jacket. He’s cheating on you, Mum. I saw him go to a hotel and then this woman came out, and she was clearly… She was young, and she was—She’s fucking Dad. Look, read the note.”
My words came out jumbled as I tried to work them into some sort of order. But Mum’s perturbed stare was unbalancing me. It was like she was more annoyed at me than Dad.
“How foolish do you think I am? Your father isn’t as discreet as he likes to believe. In fact, he’s as clumsy as they come.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Put that disgusting thing away,” she snapped, nodding to the knickers. “Now, Hazel. I don’t want to look at it. I’m offended you’d ambush me with such a petty plot.”
“Ambush you. I’m trying to help you. Didn’t you hear me? He’s cheating on…”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said that.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Your father has hobbies.”
I expected her to go on, but she left it at that, hanging like a rotten stink in the air.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Language,” she hissed. “God, you always have been such an uncivilised little tramp.”
I reeled back in my chair, gripping the table. I wanted to flip it. I wanted to run.
“How is this my fault?” I whispered, sounding pathetic even to myself.
“What do you suggest I do with this? Do you want me to leave him? Do you want to be the daughter of divorced parents? Do you want to lose our wonderful home, our wonderful life? God, what an immature way to look at things. Your father has hobbies and visiting certain hotels with certain acquaintances is part of that.”
“Mum—”
She slammed her mug down. Scalding tea swilled over the edge and slapped against her hand, but she didn’t react. She stared hard at me, her eyes as icy as her pearls. “You think you’re lonely now? Imagine what it will be like when your father only has to visit you once a month by law… a duty he’ll most likely neglect anyway. Imagine what it will be like when I have to work at some horrid café simply to support myself. You’re looking at this like a child.”