Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  “But—”

  “Quiet. Listen. Do you know what a prenuptial agreement is?”

  Something sunk in my chest. “Yes, Mum. It means you signed a form agreeing to keep your hands off Dad’s money if you get a divorce.”

  “Finally, the girl gets something right. You see… Your father has his hobbies, and I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is you ruining my good mood and this lovely day. Get rid of that ugly thing. I never want to see it again. I never want to hear about this again.”

  Hobbies…

  That word has stayed with me, bouncing around my head, ever since she used it.

  I stand and pace up and down the studio, my phone on the floor, waiting to cause me more pain. I grip my hands together tightly, telling myself I’m nothing like Mum.

  But is that true? Has Jamie always been the fairy-tale husband I present to my followers?

  “You think you’re lonely now?” Mum had hissed, finding my most vulnerable part and prodding viciously at it.

  I don’t want to think about any of this, but losing these followers is making me think about what else I could lose, and what I’ll have to stomach if I want to keep what Jamie and I have. A lovely home, a picture-perfect marriage, enough money so we never have to worry.

  I groan and scoop up my phone, shaking my head. My thoughts are moving too quickly to catch. I refresh the page.

  Fifty-seven more followers have abandoned me while I’ve been trapped in the past.

  41

  Before

  She had become friends with the little sprite by helping him look for his poor orange kitten. People said she had done things to him when she was younger, but she never believed them; it didn’t make sense. She wasn’t sick or broken or wrong.

  The pet still hadn’t returned, and Millicent thought maybe it had jumped off the cliffs and landed in the sea, and climbed aboard a raft with lots of other kittens and sailed far away, someplace happier with a real rainbow in the sky.

  The little sprite – the son of Philip and Diana – danced across the rocks in front of Millicent, a big goofy grin on his face. They shouldn’t have been out this far, but the cute pink-cheeked boy could trust Millicent. Of course he could. She was older than him. He was rightly grateful for her attention.

  “Whoa.” He turned to her and became a silhouette, the sun glistening over the sea and flooding the sky blood-red. Millicent smiled, and it felt real. She was sorry his father was Comrade Philip. “It’s so far up, Millie.”

  “Be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  He smiled. “I won’t.”

  Millicent smiled back, but it wasn’t a very clever thing for him to say. I won’t, he’d said, as if he alone was in charge of who hurt him, or how he was hurt, or when, and with what tools.

  “Millie.” He skipped over to her. He had a round face and a big pink smile and his hair was always sweaty. His eyes were far too soft. As light shifted, he became Comrade Philip, wrinkling and decaying. “Thanks for coming out here with me. You’re my best friend.”

  Millicent touched his shoulders, both his shoulders, and she thought about how she could push and run and push him right off the edge, and he’d sail and he’d fly and he would see his orange kitty again.

  Why was he so fucking smiley? Comrade Philip was a devil, and the devil’s son was all grinning teeth.

  “You’re my best friend too,” Millicent told the lad.

  She looked up and down and then – when she saw they were surrounded only by nature – she punched the boy in the belly. He grunted and fell. She walked around, judged the best angle, and punched him again.

  “Ahhhh. I’m sorry.”

  Millicent bared her teeth like a vampire. “Why are you sorry?”

  She’d seen vampires on the TV shows in the electronics shop. Sometimes the owner pretended not to notice if she sat there all afternoon watching the television sets. Then Millicent would do nice things like steal change from ladies’ purses and leave the money on the shelf.

  “For my dad.”

  Millicent dug her fingernails into his flesh. “Why?”

  “Because he’s old and ugly and stupid,” the boy whined. “He’s horrible to my mum. He hits my mum—”

  “What else does he do?”

  “He tortures animals and drinks their blood and—please, Millie, I can’t remember.”

  “Their heads. Remember their heads.”

  “He cuts their heads off. He poisons the heads and he feeds them to other animals and kills them. Please, please.”

  Millicent let him go and stared down as he lay crumpled on the rocks. She’d told him what to say, and the worthless idiot couldn’t even do that properly.

  He looked up and she began to cry. She sat down, coughing out painful sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The tears felt real and the tears felt fake.

  “It’s okay.” The boy wheezed as he climbed to his feet. He rubbed her back with his small hand. “We’re still friends.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll say it right next time?”

  “Yes,” the boy said, voice shivering, his back-rubbing pausing for the barest moment before continuing in mechanical efficiency. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She hopped to her feet and leaned down, kissing him on the forehead. “Come on, little sprite. Let’s go and see what your mother has made for lunch.”

  The boy smiled, jumping up. His forehead tingled from where the girl had kissed him. He knew he deserved whatever she chose to do to him: he knew he had it coming. He knew he was to blame for being Comrade Philip’s son and doing nothing to stop the pain his father dished out. He didn’t blame the girl.

  Nobody could blame the girl.

  42

  Jamie

  Elijah Wrigley’s living room is dusty and full of ornaments. The sofa and the chairs are brown and look about a century old. It stinks of dog, but I can’t see a dog anywhere.

  I leave my milky tea on the charity-shop-style coffee table and lean forward. “Millicent Maidstone.”

  When the man frowns, his purple birthmark puckers. He’s tall and thin and has scared eyes. He’ll only look at me directly for a few seconds before glancing down at the floor. If this was a client meeting I’d already be signing the contract in my head. “You must be the husband.”

  “What do you mean? You know who I am?”

  He picks at his brown corduroy trousers with clipped fingernails. “I tried to warn Millicent you wouldn’t like it when she became friends with your wife. But she’s a troubled woman. She always has been. She was a troubled girl and she’s a troubled woman.”

  “You need to start making sense.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here? She’s befriended your wife, hasn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I told her it was a bad idea, but she became obsessed.”

  “Obsessed with what?”

  “Your wife’s… Hazel, right?” I nod. He goes on. “She became obsessed with Hazel’s social media page. She stayed with me for a while, you see.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t make much money. She stays with some of us from time to time. We let her, out of respect for the old days.”

  “Out of respect for the Freaks, you mean.”

  He shrugs. There’s no fight in him. He’s like a deflated balloon. “Some people used to call us that, yes.”

  “So she started following Hazel’s Instagram?”

  “Following is an understatement.” Elijah takes a small sip of his tea. His hands are shaking. Why are his hands shaking? “She’d spend hours at a time scrolling through her photos, studying them in detail. She kept notebooks about each photo, commenting on what she was wearing, her facial expression… everything. She wouldn’t stop. I told her it was unhealthy.”

  I run my hand through my hair, letting out a long breath. “But she’s been fucking with me. She’s been trying to blackmail me.”
<
br />   “Yes, she does that. She’s always done things like that.”

  “But if she’s interested in Hazel, why target me specifically?”

  “She wants to get you out of the picture so she and Hazel can be together.”

  “Be together as in… be together? I don’t think she’ll have much luck there.”

  Elijah hugs his arms across himself. It’s like he’s waiting for me to hit him, and it makes me want to hit him twice as much. There’s nothing more pathetic than a weak man.

  Is this why Mum left, because Dad was weak? Or was it because I was weak?

  “Speak, Elijah. You clearly have something to say.”

  “I don’t think Millicent is interested in your wife in that way,” he mutters. “It’s something else, something stranger. I think she’s convinced herself they’re going to become like sisters.”

  “All through studying her Instagram.” I shake my head. “That’s madness.”

  “That’s Millicent,” he counters.

  “And the photos?” Screw it. Let’s see how much he really knows. “Why does she carry around photos of dead men?”

  Elijah pulls a long thread of fabric from his trousers, rubbing it between his fingers, staring at it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. “She shouldn’t have those.”

  “What are they?”

  “A few years ago, Millicent seduced a police officer and persuaded him to give her access to certain case files… files where men had been killed in particularly gruesome ways. For some reason, these fascinated her.”

  For some reason. Yeah, because it had nothing to do with growing up in a cult.

  “Sounds plausible. But the thing is, Elijah, I don’t feel like you’re telling me the truth.”

  He flinches. “What?”

  “I lie to people for a living. All damn day, I lie. I lie through my teeth. And you’re shit at it. Why don’t we cut…”

  My gaze moves over the cabinet on the other side of the room. There’s a bunch of brown ornaments, wooden skulls, model boats, dice, and there are photos too. People standing on a cliff edge with the sun setting over the sea. People standing in a circle with a younger Elijah holding a drum proudly in his arms. The photos go on like this, dotted between the ornaments, but one has been turned face down.

  I lean up to make sure I’m seeing it properly. Yeah, right there, he’s flipped one of his photos down.

  Why would he do that?

  “I’m telling you the truth.” Elijah stands and stares down at me like a chicken-shit baby. “I’d like you to leave now. I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “Why’s the photo flipped over, Elijah?”

  “What?”

  “That photo, why’d you flip it over?”

  “What photo?”

  I laugh darkly, rising slowly to my feet. The man’s got a couple of inches on me, but I probably have five stones on him. I think about little Luca and Flavia singing happy birthday as Penelope blows out her candles, and I think about how different our last birthday with her was, and I think about how I’m really not in the mood for this shit.

  “All your photos, proudly on display.” I gesture at the cabinet. “Except one. Why?”

  He frowns and backs away. I stalk forward, inching around the coffee table, wondering what it’d feel like to hit somebody so hard their nose shattered. I haven’t been in a fight since I was a boy. But after the month I’ve had, I’m ready to get stuck in.

  He spins and leaps for the cabinet.

  I jump forward and wrap my arm around his hip. He squeals as I tackle him onto the sofa, pressing my knee on his bollocks, leaning down so his eyes bulge and he gasps.

  “No more games.” I slap him across the face, open-palmed. I’m shocked by how loud the noise is, whack, like his skull is hollow.

  “Please!”

  “Please what? Please let you lie to my face about my wife? Please let you treat me like a gullible prick? I’m getting that photo now. If you try to move, if you breathe in a way I don’t like, I’m gonna feed you your teeth. Understand?”

  He gazes up at me dumbly.

  I slap him again, this time with the back of my hand, my knuckles smashing into his cheek. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re hitting someone. His birthmark looks like a moon.

  “Understand?”

  “Yes, yes,” he whines.

  I stand and turn so I’m facing him, keeping him in view as I walk around the sofa and over to the display cabinet. He crosses his arms over himself and closes his eyes, rocking back and forth, like he knows this isn’t going to bode well for him.

  I pick up the frame and flip it over.

  Elijah and a few others stand in the middle of a street. I can make out an overgrown garden in the background, and washing lines criss-crossing between the houses.

  My dad’s grin is the most surprising part. I’ve never seen him smile like that. No, maybe I have, maybe since he’s gotten ill. But never before he lost his mind. He looks content and happy. Mum stands at his side, her eyes aimed demurely away from the camera, her hair falling across her face. She looks young. She looks beautiful.

  And then I remember where I heard the name Elijah.

  Dad mentioned it when I went to visit him, when I was running for the door as fast I could. I’m sure I remember it. What did he say?

  We had some fun, didn’t we, Eli, old boy?

  Yeah, that’s it.

  I smash the frame over Elijah’s head. The glass shatters and he screams, falling onto the floor, crawling across the room. Then I run around the sofa and collapse on him, driving my knee into his back.

  “Time for the truth, Eli, old boy. Or this is going to get really fucking bad for you.”

  43

  Millicent

  I have killed ten… I have killed eleven men and not once have I been tasked with cleaning up.

  I start by moving his body, which is a more difficult prospect than I had imagined. He is heavy and the best I can do is drag him into the pantry in the corner of the kitchen, closing the door on his facile eyes. I will deal with him later.

  Next – and this pains me far more than what Ray forced me to do – I wrap my sopping new dress in several carrier bags and lay it in the corner.

  Standing still for a moment, I let the cool air prick my skin. I must remain calm. I cannot allow this mishap to ruin my plans this evening. I never expected to be welcomed so wonderfully into Hazel’s inner circle, and I won’t let Ray spoil it for me.

  He is… he was such a stupid, presumptuous man.

  A woman has every right to end a relationship. That doesn’t give him the right to push his body against mine, to make me think things, feel things I’d rather keep locked away deep inside of me.

  Moving to the under-sink cupboard, I search for some cleaning supplies. Most of the mess is on the wooden floor in the kitchen, where he stumbled after the first puncture. I don’t recall much of what happened next, but the crimson pattern of his blood tells the story.

  I think he tried to hide in here. Where did he think he was fleeing, out the window? There is only one door in and out of this room.

  After rooting around in his disorganised cupboard, I find some bleach and a few old rags. I suppose his cleaner brings their own supplies. I abandon the rags and go into his bedroom, grabbing some of his T-shirts and a few pairs of socks. I’ll bring order to the kitchen first and then worry about the carpet in the hallway.

  How am I going to dispose of the body? I’ve never had to ponder this problem before.

  I pause in the kitchen, a thought occurring to me. Ray was taking a break from work before returning for the evening, which means people are expecting him.

  I lay everything on the counter and walk over to the pantry.

  He stares up at me as I reach into his pocket and take out his mobile phone. His eyes are red, blood-red, the red of an apology made too late. The screen is partially cracked from our tussle, but I can still use the lock pattern
. I’ve observed him swipe the clumsy Z dozens of times.

  I text his assistant, letting her know he’s decided to abscond for the weekend. I don’t give any further details and she doesn’t ask. It’s as easy as that for people like him. They do what they want when they want. And he has the temerity to gaze up at me like I should feel guilty for what he made me do.

  I close the door and turn to the kitchen. The blood is congealing between the tiles and sparkling in the light. If it weren’t such a nuisance, it would be quite enthralling.

  I can handle this. People disappear all the time. He’ll have to wait here for a few hours while I fulfil my social responsibilities with my new friends. It isn’t fair that I should have to forgo the blossoming of my new life just because he got himself killed.

  It’s time to get to work.

  Walking across the kitchen, I grab the bleach and one of his football T-shirts and I fall to my bare knees.

  As I drop his third T-shirt onto the reeking pile in the corner, I hear my phone ringing from deeper in the flat, from his bedroom. I sigh and spin in a slow circle, studying my work. Most of the blood has disappeared and the floor has begun to sparkle, as though new-made, like me: ready to start afresh.

  I don’t want to answer my phone before this work is complete, but what if it’s Hazel? What if she wants to meet sooner than we planned?

  I grab a pair of his socks from the counter and pull them onto my feet. The last thing I need is to leave a trail of bloody footprints through the rest of the flat.

  I walk into the bedroom and pick up my phone, answering without glancing at the screen. I don’t want to waste any time. Our last telephone conversation was so fun and intimate and downright lovely.