The Slaughter Man

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  “I suppose I’d better get on with this, hadn’t I?” The Slaughter Man shakes his head. The gun-stock gleams as he lifts it to his waist. “It’s a shame, but sometimes these things have to be done.”

  Yes, she thinks, yes yes yes, and then, wretchedly, no no no, just me, not him, please, I didn’t mean this for him too. But it’s too late. There’s no more time. This is it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The bang is so huge that it takes her a moment to realise she’s still alive. She’s braced so hard for the impact that she can’t quite process that her body’s intact, no blood, no missing limbs, no slow dissolve into silence as all her time leaks out onto the floor. But the noise echoes in her head. What, then? Is Luca—? When she turns to him she sees the same bewilderment on his face, the same foolish bracing for a trauma that isn’t going to come.

  “What the fuck? What the fuck? Fucking hell, what the—?” Luca is gasping for breath, looking wildly around for evidence. “Where is he? Has he gone? Did he get you? Did he—? No? So what the… Did he shoot and miss?”

  There are no signs of a shot. No splinters, no cracked tiles, nothing damaged or disturbed except the two of them, clutching at each other. It takes them an absurdly long time to understand what has happened. The sound they mistook for the blaze of the shotgun was simply the slamming of the door. They’re not dead but imprisoned.

  “Jesus,” Luca whispers. “I really thought—” He shakes his head. “That absolute bastard. I’ll burn his fucking house to the ground.” He grabs the door handle, shakes it as if he’s trying to kill it. “He’s jammed the door with something.”

  He’s locked us in, Willow thinks. That’s what he’s done.

  “Come on, you fucker. Open up.” Luca is pulling so hard on the door handle that it’s as if he’s forgotten how it works. “I’ll get us out of here. Give me a minute, just another minute, and—”

  With a nasty little metal crack, the door handle comes away.

  “All right,” Luca says. “All right. Now we’re getting somewhere. We just have to keep going and it’ll come open by itself. Won’t it?” He pushes against the door with his shoulder.

  No, thinks Willow. Now we’re definitely shut in here until he lets us out.

  “I mean,” Luca continues, and aims a kick at the base of the door, “people do this shit in movies all the time. You need to kick it in the right place and—”

  The lights go out at the same moment that the slow background hum of the generator dies away, leaving a silence and a darkness so profound that Willow feels the pressure against every inch of her skin.

  “Willow?” His voice is shaky. “Willow, are you still there?” He laughs. “Sorry, stupid question, obviously you’re still there. Are you all right? Come on, this isn’t funny. Talk to me so I know you’re all right. Willow, you are all right, yeah? You’ve not, like, fallen off the table and cracked your head open or nothing?”

  Don’t you think you’d have heard me fall? Are you so frightened you’ve forgotten I can’t—? Perhaps if he shut up for a minute he’d hear her breathing.

  “Christ, sorry! Sorry. I forgot. Okay, keep still and I’ll come over there.” She hears his slow clumsy movements as he gets to his feet, the scrape of his hands as he makes his way around the wall.

  “This place is twice the size in the dark. You ever notice that? Everywhere gets bigger in the dark? Is this the table? No, it’s the freezer. Oh shit, is all the meat going to defrost and start stinking and that?”

  No, Willow thinks. It takes hours. It’s all frozen solid. It’ll be fine.

  “Willow.” Luca’s voice is ragged. “Can you please make a noise or something so I know roughly where you are? I mean, if you want to start talking, then this’d be a fucking marvellous time to do it, but can you move around or something so I can find you?”

  She gropes upwards through the darkness, finds the knives hanging on the wall, runs her hands over them so they clink together.

  “Jesus Christ.” Luca’s laugh goes on a little too long. “That’s got to be the most creepy thing I’ve ever heard.” He’s beside her now, fumbling at the edge of the table, finding her knees and feeling along them as if he isn’t sure what part of her he’s touching. “That’s better. I know it’s stupid but for a minute I thought—”

  She reaches out for him, feeling blindly in the dark. She’d thought her eyes might adjust, but there’s no light for them to adjust to. She finds the skin of his chest, makes her way up to his shoulders to get the shape of him.

  “You scared?” Luca asks, sounding calmer now they’re next to each other again. “You’re all right. I’ll look after you. Come here.”

  The kiss is slow and tender, even sweeter because she’s not expecting it. Then his hand leaves her waist and finds the curve of her breast and everything becomes harder and more frantic.

  “Yes,” he mutters. His hands knead at her flesh as if he’s trying to mould her into a new shape. “Yes.”

  His hand fumbles downwards, presses hard between her thighs. It doesn’t feel like anything much, neither hurting nor feeling good, just pressure in an unusual place; but he groans against her neck.

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Willow, please. Now. Right now. Oh God, yes, please…”

  Is this what she wants? That doesn’t matter. This isn’t about what she wants, it’s about what she owes. She’s brought him here, he’s been locked in the dark by a stranger, and it’s all because of her. The least she can do is let him do what he wants with her body. Why not? She won’t be needing it any more.

  His hands fumble with her jeans. When the denim slithers to the floor, she can feel the places on the aluminium table top where she was sitting. Warm where she’s touched it. Cold where she hasn’t. She strips him in return, feeling his clumsy movements as he kicks them off over his shoes. The skin of his erection feels shockingly young and tender.

  “Oh God,” he sighs, hoarse and sweet. “Oh my God. Willow. Willow. Wait. I don’t know if I—”

  She wriggles forward, pulls him closer towards her, feels the first tentative contact. She’s fairly sure he hasn’t done this before either, but they’ll figure it out. Human beings have been figuring this one out for thousands of years.

  And then, unexpectedly, gloriously, she can feel how it’s all meant to work. He’s pressing against her, eager little jabs that are almost in the right place, and then she slips her hand down and guides him and she hears his sharp intake of breath and it’s going to happen, all of it.

  “Willow.” He sounds as if he’s on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t make me do this. I can’t. I want to but I can’t. I just – fucking – I just—”

  He’s still close to her but he’s not touching her any more. Something has changed in the energy between them. Without the heat of his skin against hers, she feels cold and exposed. She’s glad he can’t see her. When she slips off the edge of the table to fumble for her clothes, her foot makes contact with him. He doesn’t move towards her. He doesn’t move away. Her touch is no more to him than the leg of the table.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  She doesn’t know what she feels. She feels empty, aching. She feels ugly and brazen. She feels relieved. She wishes she could disappear.

  “Willow? I’m so sorry. Please don’t be angry with me.”

  He sounds so young. She sits down on the floor and inches her hand out towards him, finds the shape of his ankle. When she touches him, he flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

  “I thought it might be all right.” Luca’s fingers close over hers, take her hand away from his ankle, holding on tight. Almost too tight. “I mean, I’m really into you, you’re amazing. Way too good for a knobhead like me. I want to. So much. Swear to God, you are so fucking gorgeous and I’d like nothing more. But, you see – I – I need to—”

  She feels her own neediness throbbing in her veins, her own longing for completion. She’s the broken one; she’s the one who needs h
elp. If she could speak now, that’s what she’d say, an unpleasant little whine, What about me? What about what I need? She’s glad she can’t speak.

  “If I tell you,” he whispers, then stops. “If I tell you this. Can I tell you – I don’t know if I – okay. Okay. But I mean it, Willow. If I ever get even a fucking hint that you told anyone this, like even a little sniff, like if I even suspect you might have breathed a single fucking word to anyone – then I swear to fucking God, I will – I will—”

  No, she thinks. You won’t. She keeps still. Waits to see what he’s going to say.

  “So,” he says. His voice is slow and halting, as if each word is something he has to cough up with great pain and effort. “What it was, right. My mum used to work Saturdays, not like every Saturday but like two in four or two in five, something like that. They had this rota so everyone got a fair share of Saturdays off, only sometimes it got messed up with holidays and that, cos people booked weeks off and it had their Saturday in it, so then they’d have to call people in. There was a big argument about it once, like whether it counted as overtime or just extra hours.”

  She has no idea what he’s talking about, but at least the words seem to be coming more naturally, as if he’s found a rhythm that will let him get out what he has to say.

  “It was really hot. I remember that. My mum had this bee in her bonnet about me going out into the sunshine and getting some fresh air. I mean, fuck off, you know? I don’t want to go outside and get all sweaty and skin-cancery, it’s disgusting. I knew this Spanish lad once, he told me the best thing to do in Spain in August is go to the cinema, cos it’s all air-conditioned. Back-to-back movies, as many as you can afford, then go home in the evening. They don’t piss about getting fresh air and that. If outside’s so great then why did they invent the internet?” He takes a long, shuddering breath. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. If you tell anyone I’ll fucking kill you. Are you even listening? Be a right laugh if I told you and you’d gone to fucking sleep or something.”

  Her fingers are going numb with the pressure of his hand closed around them. She wriggles them as much as she can manage. He responds by clamping down even tighter. She wonders if she might end up with gangrene.

  “Anyway,” he says, “I had the place to myself so I was on the Xbox, because that’s what normal people do, right? It’s too hot outside, you shut the curtains, you go on the Xbox. Well, boys do, anyway. I mean, I know girls can be gamers and that, I’m not fucking sexist or nothing. I just don’t really think of it as something girls do. I mean, I’m thinking, I don’t know, pissing about on Insta or something? I don’t know.”

  With her free hand, she feels blindly for his arm. She works her way up towards his face and lets her fingers rest against the back of his neck. Perhaps she can convince him to let go of her other hand, which is going from uncomfortable to actively painful. The muscles of his neck are tight and rigid. She feels the faint movement as he swallows hard.

  “So I played for a bit, nothing serious, just a bit of mindless slaughter,” he says. “It got a bit boring after a while. So. Yeah. Anyway. I was bored.”

  He seems to think this should convey something to her, but she has no idea what he’s getting at.

  “I mean,” he continues. “You know what boys are like, right? Fucking animals, the lot of us. Leave us on our own in the house with an internet connection, it’s what we’re going to do, yeah? I mean, I should have gone up to my room and that, but I was feeling really relaxed. Got the place to myself. Got my laptop. I mean, shit, it’s not like it’s illegal or nothing, is it? I don’t know why people even get so hung up about it. Animals do it all the time and they don’t think it’s weird.”

  Can he feel her blushing? Perhaps he’s holding her hand too tightly for the blood to reach her fingers.

  “Do girls do that too? I mean, when you’re on your own and you’re a bit bored, is that like your default activity? Or is it just us filthy pig-boys that think, Yeah, bit bored, why not have a wank? Oh shit, it was my fault, wasn’t it? It was my own fucking stupid fault.”

  They’re talking about The Day. She should have guessed that already. The day when he attacked his mother’s boyfriend. The day that turned him into a dangerous criminal. Except he’s not dangerous. He acts as if he is, but he isn’t.

  “Thing is, our front door’s, like, the least discreet way of getting into a house you can imagine.” For a blessed moment, he lets go of her hand. She flexes her fingers frantically. “It sticks all year round, but in, like, different places, so you have to change where you push it depending on the weather. So, when it’s hot and dry, you have to shoulder-barge it. And when it’s cold and wet, you have to kick. And it’s really small. I think people in the olden days must have been much thinner or something, cos you can’t get through it properly, not if you’re carrying a bag or something. I mean, what’s that all about? Didn’t women used to have these fucking massive dresses and stuff? Were they like unfeasibly tiny or something? Sorry, I’m rambling, it’s just…”

  He sniffs, long and deep and disgusting, then takes her hand again. She tries not to mind that the fingers are slightly damp.

  “But we always use the front door because the back door’s such a fucking pain to get to. It’s down this shared alley where all the bins are, and our neighbours are all right and that but they have this shitty little dog, like one of those ones that go in handbags and look like rats? And they put its shit in scented bags in the green bin and it absolutely fucking stinks. Specially when it’s hot. Mum always says the smell would gag a maggot. And it would and all, I mean it was repulsive. So we don’t use the back door. I don’t want to tell you this, I don’t know why I’m even fucking talking about it. What the fuck did you ask me about it for anyway? We were all right as we were…”

  The darkness presses against them like velvet.

  “Anyway,” he says, as if he’s following a path in his mind that only he can see. “That’s why I didn’t hear him come in. Because he didn’t use the front door.”

  She’s starting to see the shape of it now, the true monster that lurks in the dark places in Luca’s mind. She’s starting to glimpse the way it moves, see the sharp smooth gleam of its claws.

  “And he came in, all quiet, like, and I—” Luca stops. “No, sorry, I don’t think I can. I really don’t think I can. You’ve got no fucking right to ask me this, no fucking right at all.”

  She can feel the train wreck inevitability of it, the words that have been building inside him, waiting for their moment to slink out and make themselves known. She wants to tell him, Stop, please stop, don’t do this. But it’s all too late. Everything that was done, was done long ago. She’s only here to bear witness. The one thing she’s learned about Luca in the short time she’s known him is that he can’t, absolutely can’t, keep quiet in the face of her silence.

  “And when he came in,” Luca mutters at last, “I didn’t see him at first. I mean—” he chokes with embarrassment. “I kind of had my mind on other things.”

  She can’t picture the other person in this story, but she can picture Luca. She makes herself think not of his hands, the swift furtive working of his palms and fingers, but the look on his face. The way all his young-blood toughness softens and dissolves under the pressure of wanting, the sweet blankness in his eyes, the swelling of his lips. He’s like her, just a kid.

  “I thought I was going to fucking die,” Luca mutters, and she can feel the heat of his shame making its way down into his palm, the sudden sweat springing out from his pores. “Getting caught, doing that, that’s got to be, like, the worst thing that can happen to you, right? I mean, that’s what I thought at the time. I thought that was the worst fucking thing that would ever happen to me in my whole life.” He squeezes her hand. “Don’t you fucking laugh at me, Willow. I know it sounds funny but this isn’t funny to me. Please don’t fucking laugh at me or I’ll have to kill you.”

  She pictures her fingers as a row
of dead piglets, fat and swollen, ready to split their skins. She won’t let him know it hurts. This is the least she can do for him.

  “Shit. Sorry.” He lets go of her hand. “I didn’t mean to… Have I hurt you? Shit, I didn’t realise I was. Shit. Shit.”

  She stretches her fingers, then offers him her other hand instead.

  “Fuck off,” Luca says, sounding exhausted. “I can tell you this without holding your fucking hand, all right?”

  He takes it anyway, crushing it against his chest as if it’s all that stands between him and the void.

  “It was the way he said it,” Luca blurts out at last. “Like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like he’d come in and found me, I don’t know, eating chips or something, and asked for one. Mind if I have a look too, mate? That’s what he said. And he sat down beside me and got hold of my laptop and turned it towards him and then he fucking, he fucking, he just, you know, he unfastened his jeans and he just, he just -” he laughs. “Like it was nothing, you know? Like it was normal! The normal thing to do. Sit down next to your girlfriend’s kid and get it out and start… start -”

  This is the most awful, grimy, destructive thing she’s ever heard. She feels soiled just listening to it. She wants to wipe her hands on her t-shirt, then jump in a bath and scrape at her skin with a pan-scrubber. How must it feel to live with this memory lurking behind your eyelids, waiting to pounce?

  “I thought that was all he was going to do,” he said. “You know, sit there and, you know, give himself a fucking treat. But then he looked at me, and he said… No, I don’t think I can—”

  She doesn’t want him to. She doesn’t want to hear this. She wants him to stop. She can’t bear the weight of his pain on top of her own.

  So say something. Because if you don’t, he’ll keep talking.

  She opens her mouth. She feels the smallest sound take shape in the back of her throat, a soft little uh. Then, nothing.