Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

  The Death Club Sneak Peek – Check it out now!

  I was happy once. Not that I can recall that feeling now.

  When the woman I loved was torn from my grasp, I was thrown into the never-ending fires of hell.

  But there’s one thing they don’t tell you about men without souls when they’re cast into damnation. Once we make a home for ourselves in hell, there’s nothing left to fear from life. And a man without fear is a man without limits. I hadn't had any limits in ten long years.

  Sometimes I felt like an old man, broken by the weight of time and grief pressing down upon my shoulders, though my pa assured me regularly that I was still young. Virile. Had my whole life ahead of me. In fact, he was at it again now, while I tuned him out and watched a pigeon strutting along a rooftop like he owned the motherfucking world. Mrs Pigeon certainly seemed to think he might be right about that if the way she was eyeing him was anything to go by.

  "Did you hear me, lad?" Pa's voice bit out, thick with his old Irish accent. There was enough snap to it that I knew he was wishing I was with him in person, so he could clip me round the ear like I was a small lad.

  "The line dropped," I replied casually, my own accent more subtle and born from spending years in the homeland as a child before returning here to the states.

  My back pressed firm to the window frame as I sat eight floors up, watching the sun rise over the city and waiting for this call to end so I could finish up my job here. Scaling this wall had been no easy feat and I didn’t much appreciate the interruption.

  "Like hell it did," Liam O'Brien snarled in that tone he used when he wanted to remind me that he owned me. Owned the whole family. The whole fucking world too, no doubt. And I made myself listen because he was right about at least two of those claims and possibly the third.

  "I'll be expecting you home for breakfast at nine. Dress sharp, lad, I won't have you embarrassing me," he said in a tone that brokered no arguments and he'd get none from me. It wasn't worth my time, or my life, pitiful as it was.

  "Home at nine," I confirmed, taking my phone from my ear and adding a reminder to it. I wasn't likely to remember that shit even if it was only three hours from now. And when he said ‘home’ he was referring to his mansion of course, my own residence holding no interest to him even if he had known where it was. Which he didn’t. The house which I rented and he knew about lay as empty as the day I’d first signed the lease on it, but what he didn’t know didn’t hurt him. Besides, if he cared so much about the place his youngest son called home, he could have asked to come visit me. Which he hadn’t once done in the ten years since I’d moved. "Anything else I can do ya for?"

  "Burnley. Is he dealt with?" my pa asked smoothly.

  "About to be," I replied, turning my gaze to the closed window beside me where the man in question lay fast asleep in bed. I hoped he was having nice dreams because there was a nightmare coming his way which he wouldn't be waking from.

  "What took you so long?" Liam sneered, the suggestion of incompetence clear in his tone but I couldn't give a fuck about that. I was the most competent man I knew. I just liked to pick my moments.

  "I wanted to be certain he wasn't infected," I said with a shrug he couldn't see.

  The world was currently held hostage in the grips of the Hades Virus, more than half the population hiding out in quarantine from the sickness that killed sixty percent of the people who got infected with it. But I didn’t much care for wearing face masks and in my line of work I didn’t come into contact with many people, so I was content to go without and take my chances. I’d gone up against death and won plenty of times before now anyway, I doubted fate was kind enough to let me die in sick my bed.

  "What difference does that make? You should be wearing the mask I provided you with regardless."

  "Of course I am,” I replied – assuming by ‘wearing it’ he meant he hoped I’d left it in my car. “But it seemed like letting him suffer through the virus might have saved me a job. Anyway, he got the all clear, so I'm doing it now."

  Liam tutted and I could imagine him stubbing out a cigarette while he thought up ways to punish me. "Home. Nine." He hung up and I considered tossing my phone all the way away. There was a man walking along the street and if my aim was true I'd likely kill him with the damn thing from this height. He had the look of an asshole about him so in all likelihood he deserved it.

  Perhaps it wasn't the brightest idea to consider using a phone that could be linked back to me as a murder weapon though. Pity that.

  I shifted on my perch, my gaze sweeping out to take in the rising sun again as the pigeons stopped dancing around the subject and got down to fucking. I gave them a moment to have at it. No need to ruin their day after all.

  With the coos of pigeon pleasure calling out to me, I looked at the sun and thought of the time me and Ava had trekked up that fucking mountain in Ireland and watched it set. She said it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen and I’d promised to take her up that mountain every year so she could see it again. Not that we ever went back. And she didn't get much of a forever. That was the curse of loving me.

  Of course, thinking of my wife made me think about the state her corpse had been in when I finally got her back. Too late. Too fucking late. Time hadn't meant a whole lot to me since that day.

  The pigeons finished up their fun and I offered them a round of applause. That noise right there was Burnley's chance to wake up, spot me, scream, run, beg - but he must have been a deep sleeper because he just slept on.

  I sighed, shrugged one shoulder and slid the little wire I'd been holding beneath the bottom of the sash window. Honest to donkey dicks, I didn't know why people were dumb enough to have these old piece of shit windows still in place on their properties. It was like they assumed being eight floors up and overlooking a busy street was enough of a deterrent to psychopaths who might wanna crawl in their window and take a shit all over their lives.

  Not so, my friend. Not so.

  With a twist of my fingers, the curled end of the wire hooked around the catch at the bottom of the window and I gave it a sharp tug to unlock it. The thing gave way easier than I'd expected and I came damn close to falling all the fucking way down to the street below.

  No such luck of course. The devil didn't want any competition so he'd refused my admittance to hell more times than I could count by now. He'd done me the courtesy of making sure I lived within my own personal hell at all times though, so I guessed he was winning.

  The window slid up with a bit of muscle and a grinding noise that really should have woken Burnley. But no. Maybe I was about to find him dead and my work completed for me. Unlikely, but I supposed it was possible.

  I dropped down into his fancy pants room with its bachelor pad grey on grey on grey on - oh shit is that a bit of red? Kinky fucker. Right above his bed too.

  I tilted my head to one side as I tried to make sense of the splashy splotchy piece of art, but I’d be damned if it looked like anything other than a cat’s arsehole to me.

  I took the hammer from my belt and gave it a few casual test swings as I approached the man of the hour, whistling a bit of that song from the advert with the cat and the duck playing the violin. I wanted to say it was for a tin of something. Peaches maybe? Nah, no one advertised tinned peaches. Tuna? Lima beans? Sweetcorn? Well, fuck me, I couldn't recall. That was gonna eat at me all damn day.

  My gaze moved to the red blob art thing and I decided I wanted to know what it was. I reached out gently with my hammer and used it to peel the comforter away from Burnley's sleeping form.

  He was a middle aged man, stout of stature and sporting some rather stylised chest hair. I couldn't say I'd ever considered growing my chest hair into a pattern before, but I guessed it was a conversation starter. 'Oh hey, Wendy, did you hear I manscaped my chest hair into the shape of a heart? Does that make ya wanna fuck me?' I had to say, I couldn't picture it flying so well, but maybe the women Burnley liked went in for that. Or men
. Not judging. I was an equal opportunity serial killer. All races, genders and sexual preferences catered for.

  "Is it meant to be a vagina?" I asked loudly and Burnley jerked awake with a shriek an eighty year old granny would have been proud of.

  He lurched up, seeming inclined to run and I pressed the flat head of my hammer to that fancy heart shaped hair on his chest to force him back down into the mattress.

  "What do you want?" he gasped.

  Always with those same questions. 'What do you want?' 'How did you get in here?' 'Is that my wife's hat you're wearing?' 'Did you just piss on my rug?' 'Why do you have a knife?' blah, blah, blah. I wasn't in the mood for the old usuals today, so I just jerked my chin at the painting, getting him on track with my thought process.

  "So, a vagina then? Or a never-ending portal to nothing and nowhere? A dog on a bench? What is it?" I asked and he craned his neck to look up at the painting for a moment.

  "I-I don't know. It was expensive and I liked the look of it, so-"

  "So you just plastered a huge vagina on your wall without even knowing it was a vagina? I mean, do you think you subliminally had vaginas on the mind that day or are you generally in a vagina mood?" I asked.

  "W-why do you keep saying vagina?" Burnley stammered. I heard a lot of stammering in my line of work, begging, pleading, bribing, lying. Saw a lot of people piss themselves too. And shit themselves. Killing wasn't pretty work, that was for sure. Aside from all the red of course. My favourite colour.

  "Well, if you've no answer to my question, I guess I might as well get on with it." I heaved my hammer back, lining up the best strike as he screamed again.

  "Why?" he wailed, cringing away from me.

  "I'm Liam O'Brien's boy," I said with a shrug and his eyes widened in realisation. Yeah, there it was, he'd just figured out that fucking over the biggest crime family in the city was a bad idea. Why was it no one ever had to tell people not to stick their dick in the garbage disposal and yet they needed reminding not to play games with mobsters which they couldn’t win?

  "I've never seen you before," he breathed, shaking his head.

  "I'm Niall," I explained, stowing the hammer in my belt and offering him my hand to shake. He did because he was one of those well-bred bastards and I gave him a good old squeeze because I appreciated manners even if mine were few and far between. "The youngest."

  Burnley's eyes widened as I shook his hand vigorously and his whole arm kinda flopped up and down before I released him.

  "The...unhinged one?"

  "You've heard of me?" I asked, smiling widely because who the fuck didn't like being famous?

  "I thought you were a rumour, a myth. You're never at corporate events or meetings, everyone says you don't even exist and you're just a lie they tell to make people fear them."

  "Well, turns out I'm no legend - just a hot blooded man with a bloodstained soul. I’ll be killin’ ya now then,” I warned him, hefting the hammer in my grasp once more and giving him a moment to process that fact. “It won’t be fun and it won’t be pretty. But if you wanna write out a quick note to your mammy or whoever to say goodbye then I’ll give you a moment to do it. But don’t go gettin’ any daft ideas about mentioning me in your note. Because then I’d have to cave her head in after I deliver it. And I hate killing mammies because of stupid fuckers like you.”

  "I want to live," he gasped. Why didn’t they ever take me up on the offer of writing that note? I’d wanna remind the people I cared about that I loved them if I knew I was gonna die. Or at least, I imagined I would if I gave half a shit about a single soul on this planet. Unfortunately I wasn’t convinced I did, so maybe I wouldn’t take up the offer of the note either.

  "Are you sure about that? Because I can make it swift if you wanna accept it. But if you're so certain you wanna live then we can make a time of it. I have a few hours to kill before I'm to meet my pa for breakfast and no doubt you'll be begging for death before I have to leave."

  Burnley tried to run and I struck him with the hammer, straight to the temple. Hard enough to stun him a bit, but not enough to finish the job. He’d said he wanted to live after all, so it made sense to put that to the test.

  He fell back against his pillows, pressing a hand to his head where I'd hit him like he couldn't quite believe I'd actually done it. I cocked my head as I watched him, waiting for that lightbulb moment - the one where he'd look up at me and see the devil I was. And as his gaze met mine again, I got my wish. Bingo. Total terror – wait a moment, was that ad for corned beef?

  Burnley lurched out of the bed and I let him go this time, following him from the room as he staggered away, making a predictable run for the door. I'd have gone for the kitchen knives personally. Better to give yourself a fighting chance and all that, but maybe Burnley just didn't have any fight in him.

  He reached the door and started struggling with the lock just before a blow from my hammer sent him crashing to the floor with a cry of pain. I grinned down at him as he stared up at me like I was a monster, trying to do a kind of backwards elbow crawl wriggle away thing, like that would make a jot of difference.

  The next time I struck him, I was fairly sure I fucked him up good enough that he wasn't with me anymore, but I let my inner animal loose and made a blood bath out of it all the same. I hit him over and over, not stopping until my arm was aching and the job was complete.

  I stowed my hammer back in my belt and took a knife out next, removing a finger for Pa.

  I had a fancy little gift box all ready in my pocket to put it in and everything. He'd never actually asked me to start bringing him proof of death when I killed for him, but I liked to present it as a gift and tell him I had a no returns policy. He just accepted it these days. Besides, the true meaning behind my presents for him was a joke I'd only ever told myself and I still found it really fucking funny. Because I didn’t just pick any finger. Oh no. It was the middle finger, just so that I got the pleasure of knowing the mark was flipping my pa off when he opened the box to see it. Little pleasures and all that.

  Once that was all wrapped up with a bow, I strolled away from the bloody lump of flesh that had once been Burnley and headed into his bathroom to take a shower and wash the blood off. Apparently it didn't do to stroll around town covered in blood, though I did feel that I shouldn't have to hide my lifestyle to conform to social ideals. Were there any occupations that had to deal with so much hatred as psychopaths? Where were the equal opportunity protesters who flew my flag? Although I had heard that there were some people who liked reading stories like mine about fucked up men like me and fantasised about taking them to bed, so maybe that was where I’d find my people. The readers who understood that sometimes a bit of choking was perfectly acceptable or maybe even desirable and wouldn’t judge me for it.

  Once my dirty blonde hair was no longer tainted with red streaks and the only stains marking my skin were the countless patterns of ink which I'd put there permanently to coat my muscular frame, I dried off and pulled my jeans back on. I stole a blue button down from Burnley - because let’s face it, he didn't have use of it anymore anyway - and I strolled my ass right on out of his apartment with my bloody shirt balled up in my hand and the freshly rinsed hammer tucked into the back of my pants.

  I strode down the street to my cherry red muscle car and hopped on in, wondering if I could find somewhere to get a burger at this time of day. The Hades Virus sweeping the world really had fucked with my eating habits. Though I guessed lockdown made it a hell of a lot easier to sneak about and kill people seeing as there weren't any witnesses out and about to take notice. Silver linings.

  The ventilator mask I'd promised to wear sat in the footwell, glaring at me with its glassy black eyes and whispering 'you could be sick, you stupid bastard'. I stamped on it to shut it the fuck up, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the glovebox, lit one up and turned on the radio as I started the engine. Luck would have it that that fucking tune was playing, the duck quacking along so we didn�
�t forget about him in the audio version of the ad and the whole thing ending with an enthusiastic man suggesting I buy his tomato soup.

  Fuck no. Who wanted food that came without chewing? He could keep his soup and his fucking tune too. I was just glad my question had been answered and it had been purged from my brain.

  Daisy by Ashnikko came on as the ads finished and I inhaled deeply, nicotine searing my lungs and giving me a moment's reprieve from the monotonous misery of my life. It wasn't that my life was oh so fucking terrible really, more that it was oh so fucking empty and pointless since I'd failed the only woman ever foolish enough to love me.

  Thirty fucking two and I swear I'd lived more of life and learned more of its lessons than men three times my age. I was so tired all the damn time and yet I never actually felt awake. Never felt a whole lot of anything if I was being honest.

  I leaned my head back against the headrest, carving my fingers through my hair and filling the car with smoke, sighing as I equally hunted down the memories and wished they'd leave me be.

  "I'll love you forever and a day," Ava breathed, looking up at me from beneath those blonde bangs which always got in her eyes and I smiled before stealing a kiss.

  "I'll love you until death and beyond, my girl," I promised her in return. And oh how fucking right I'd been about that.

  I took my phone from my pocket and opened it up, scrolling to the video I watched too often, the one they'd sent me. The one that had damned me for all of time.

  My thumb hovered over the button to play it and through some sense of repentance or insanity or just pure fucking misery, I pressed down.

  I watched as Ava was hauled into the room the camera was aimed at. She was naked, her body battered and bruised, cut and beaten. They told her to beg for me to save her. She begged for me not to instead.

  "I'm already gone, my love," she wheezed out. "Don't let them take you too."