This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  Woah.

  You’ll what?

  I feel my lip curl and I try to stay calm.

  I really, really do not want to kill Flora.

  But I can already feel my predisposition leaning that way. I can already feel her fate changing, the course of her life shifting to one where she ceases to exist and I feel a sharp pang of regret as I stand over her lifeless body.

  “I should have ended this long ago,” she says. “All you do is use me. You never loved me. You never loved me like I loved you.”

  “Love?” I echo, and I am astonished.

  She thinks she loves me?

  She thinks this is love?

  My dear, I do not know what love is.

  I have not felt it, nor have I seen it or tasted it or heard it. As far as I know, it does not exist.

  She has a far more twisted mind than I ever thought she had; she must do to think up something as wicked as love.

  “You…” She’s crying now. I hate it when she cries. “You… you never loved me. Did you?”

  Is this a surprise to her?

  Is she actually needing me to verbally confirm this?

  “Did you!” she screams so hard her voice breaks.

  “No…” I say, my voice hushed. “And I never expected you to love me.”

  She is shaking her head more and more vigorously, crying more and more vigorously. Everything about her reeks of a breakdown, and I need to be careful, need to be wary.

  She is clearly unstable, and she could be more dangerous than I realise.

  “You don’t even love my mum, either. Do you?”

  “… No.”

  “And you never have.”

  “… Of course not.”

  She shakes her head as if this is some profound enlightenment.

  “Then leave,” she says. “Leave us both. You’re not my real dad, you don’t owe me anything, you don’t owe her anything. If you don’t love either of us, then why stay? Why put us through this?”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Then try me.”

  Try her?

  Should I even try to verbalise my reasons?

  Would she even begin to understand?

  “Because it looks normal,” I say. “Because it makes me fit in.”

  “What?”

  “Because it’s part of my fancy dress, Flora. People have wives so I have a wife. People have stepdaughters, so I have a stepdaughter. It’s all part of the image.”

  “You have invaded my family for image? What kind of monster are you?”

  This rings many, many alarm bells. Not just one, but many, screeching and wailing, setting off terrors in my mind.

  She thinks I’m a monster.

  She thinks like you.

  Like society has taught her to.

  And now she can see through it.

  But I don’t need to kill her.

  Not if I can get inside of her.

  She believes it when I’m inside of her. She knows what this is, what it amounts to, what role she plays. She knows the passion she sparks in me and the passion I spark in her, and she’s forgotten it, but she’ll remember it, I know she will – but only when I’m inside of her.

  “Come here,” I tell her.

  “No.”

  I step forward and she moves so the kitchen side still remains between us, and this is getting frustrating.

  “Come here,” I tell her.

  “Come near me and I’ll scream!”

  I know you will, you little minx, and this is how I know I’m right. Because I always make her scream, and she wants me to make her scream again.

  “I said come here.”

  “Stay away!”

  I dive across the kitchen side and she yelps and she runs and I run after her and I’m faster than her so I catch her, and I wrap my arms around her, and I laugh as she cries out, “No, no, no!”

  But it’s part of the game we play.

  I turn her around and I force my lips on hers and she tries to bite again but I bite back and two can play at that game.

  I turn her around and she struggles but I grab her hair and hold her head down on the dining table.

  Finally, she submits. She cries but there is no more struggling, no more fighting.

  It’s just us.

  And I know she’ll feel it, I know she will, as I lift up her skirt and drop her knickers and I’m already hard, already ready, and I slide myself in and my God I could never live without this. She is just so warm, so tight.

  I lean over her and I speak in her ear as I thrust, and she cries with every thrust, just like I know she will.

  “I told you you’d feel it,” I tell her. “I told you you’d feel it.”

  And I’m close and I’m getting faster and I’m closer and that is why.

  Why I don’t hear the car.

  Why I don’t hear the front door.

  Why I don’t hear the drop of a bag from the doting mother who had come home early to surprise her daughter.

  In fact, I don’t even realise Lisa is there until she screams out, “What the fuck are you doing to my daughter!”

  18

  Monogamy is one of the most bizarre of society’s concepts. I don’t think it comes out of necessity or reality, but rather out of jealousy that under-hands all human interaction motivated by this word love.

  And let’s look at love for a moment.

  So many people say they love someone else, and that’s fine, and each time it means something different from the person who says it.

  So say you love someone, you dote your life to them, and perhaps you mean it, and perhaps you even stick with it, and don’t become one of the exceedingly high statistic of marriages that end in divorce. You live together until you die.

  You might then say to me – well I’ve proved love exists.

  To you, I would say, well, hang on – I reckon – no, in fact, I guarantee – that the person you die with was not the first, or the only, person with whom you claimed you love. Even if you were fourteen in an early romance, or a fleeting infatuation in your twenties where you finish it and meet this next person and declare that you weren’t previously in love because it doesn’t compare to what you have now.

  That’s irrelevant. You still said you love them at the time.

  And this brings me back to what I asserted a moment ago – love is just a word. A word that springs jealousy. And it is jealousy that forces monogamy, not common sense.

  And, for fuck’s sake, your wife or husband or girlfriend or boyfriend or partner or whatever is not listening right now – you have to force monogamy, don’t you?

  Maybe it’s easier on some days, when things are really good. But throughout an entire life with someone, you would undoubtedly be lying if you were to claim you weren’t ever in the least bit tempted.

  Because we are cavemen and cavewomen.

  We fuck and we reproduce as nature intended, and nature never intended for us to fuck or reproduce with just the one partner.

  And we don’t. Rarely do you come across someone who only has sex with one person for their entire lives – and, if you do, despite what that person says, I do not believe their singular sexual history was by their own choice.

  Unless it was because they were abstinent for God.

  God, which is the only thing more ridiculous than monogamy.

  I digress.

  My point is, I just fail to see why Lisa is so immensely incensed.

  Albeit, her daughter won’t be seen as the optimum choice for my indiscretions. And, from the perspective she had as she entered the room, I’m fairly sure she assumed I was attacking Flora, that I was forcing myself upon her.

  But seriously, did she expect me never to search for something else? It is in our instinct to search out new sexual conquests, and the only thing more ridiculous than denying that is refusing to go along with it.

  Flora utilised my immediate shock t
o rush out of my reach and push her skirt back down.

  “Don’t do that,” I tell her.

  “What?” she groans, almost indistinguishably from the amount of sobbing she is doing.

  “Pretend you weren’t party to this.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You like it when I’m rough, when I bend you over and make you–”

  “I don’t! I don’t like it! You don’t listen to me, I said no!”

  “And I told you you’d feel it when I was inside of you.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Lisa snaps. She is moving toward her daughter and I am not going to let them form some fake united front against me, so I step between them, and Lisa freezes.

  But she doesn’t back down.

  I can see the wrath of a woman scorned, the fury of a protective mother. This, again, is nature. Protect your young.

  It’s the first time I can see something real about her.

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” she demands. “I wish to get to my daughter!”

  I look at Flora.

  Tearful Flora.

  Distraught Flora.

  Fake Flora.

  “No,” I say, my voice calm and deep and grave. One of us has to keep some rationality in this situation.

  “I said get out of my way,” she repeats, as if this confident vigour, this instinct to protect, is going to do anything to deter where I’m standing.

  I even chuckle a little, amused at the situation.

  “Why don’t you make me, Lisa?”

  “Mum…” Flora whimpers.

  “Cut it out!” I snap, and now I am getting angry. “Stop pretending! Stop making it seem like you didn’t want it!”

  “I didn’t want it! I never wanted it!”

  “You mean,” Lisa says, edging toward me, “this isn’t the first time you’ve attacked her?”

  “I have not attacked her.”

  She tries edging forward again.

  “Honestly, Lisa, if you come any closer, I will be forced to kill you.”

  “Mum…”

  Lisa knows she won’t get past me, and inevitably her next instinct is to arm herself, so she sprints to the kitchen where she takes the sharpest knife from the knife rack and holds it out to me like it’s a present she won’t let go of.

  I grin.

  I can’t help it.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m warning you.”

  “Are you going to stab me, Lisa?”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “But I’m your husband.”

  “I’m going to call the police.”

  This stumps me.

  The police.

  That’s the last thing I need.

  I can’t risk them discovering…

  Oh, Lisa.

  Why did you have to say this?

  Why did you have to go and ruin a perfectly good sham of a marriage?

  Why have you forced me to have to kill you?

  “Mum…”

  “Just stay there,” Lisa says.

  I walk toward my wife.

  I walk toward her and she backs away at first, then stays strong, holding the knife toward me.

  “Don’t come any closer!” she says.

  I can’t stab her, it’s too messy. But I don’t have anything else.

  Ah, well.

  Flora is here.

  Two hands will get this cleaned up twice as fast.

  I walk until I’m a step away and she holds the knife out and she looks at her daughter for what will probably be the last time.

  “Give me the knife,” I tell her.

  “Get out of my house.”

  “Give me the knife, or I will have to take it from you.”

  She makes her final mistake. She swipes the knife toward me, I grab her wrist and, whilst I’m not the most muscular or well-built chap, I am far stronger than she is, strong enough to twist that knife around and push it toward her with her own hands.

  She releases it and it drops to the floor.

  Good idea. Now I don’t have to be so messy.

  I grab the back of her head, getting a good tuft of her hair, and she yelps, and if she thinks this is pain then she is not going to cope well with what comes next.

  I bring her head down into the marble of the kitchen side so quickly and with such force, with everything I have in fact, that her nose clicks out of place and a few teeth clatter into the sink.

  This gives me an idea.

  I put the plug in the sink and pour both the taps. I make it as hot as I can just to make it worse for her.

  She groans, groggy, and I smash her head against the side again. I pull her head back and her eye is black and it won’t open.

  Once the sink is full, I push her head into it and hold it there. The heat of the water is harsh on my skin and I have to endure it even though it’s tough.

  Her arms push a little bit, but she’s already pretty out of it and losing consciousness so it’s not like they do much.

  It doesn’t take long for her body to fall limp.

  But I know this is not the end. I know your body falls unconscious before it dies.

  So I hold it longer, probably longer than I have to. I hold it there and wait, and three minutes go by on the oven clock, and I see Flora watching me out of the corner of my eye.

  She doesn’t move.

  She stares at me.

  The fact that she doesn’t run can either be one of two things.

  A sign of her adoration for me and the fact that she would forgive me for killing her mother, for us.

  Or that she is so shocked her legs have become dead weights and she is completely unable to move.

  I pray it’s the first, but I can’t take any risks.

  I decide it’s been long enough, and I let go of her mother’s head, and her body just stays there, limp and heavy.

  I reach beneath her head in the sink and take out the plug.

  When the water has drained, I see her eyes are closed, so I open them.

  Her pupils have fallen to where gravity has pushed them – though I can only see one clearly, of course, as one of her eyes is still mangled.

  I look at Flora, who looks at me, her mouth catching flies as the saying goes.

  I don’t really like sayings, but I do like that one.

  “Get the cloth,” I tell her. “We need to clean this up.”

  We’ll clean it up and then we’ll go.

  We can’t stay here.

  Not anymore.

  But that’s okay, because when we get in the car and we drive, the car has Bluetooth.

  I have the perfect playlist that Flora will love.

  19

  Flora does fairly well, considering.

  I mean, I’m fine.

  But Flora still suffers some predisposition toward the human condition, and this means that I should expect her to feel some sadness toward her mother’s demise.

  It is said that there are five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I know this because I often go through these five stages when I realise it’s time for me to go home to Lisa’s tea.

  Denial – it can’t be real, I am not going home for Lisa’s tea.

  Anger – why do I have to fucking bother, this is so shit.

  Bargaining – ah, well, it’s just something I have to cope with to keep up the façade.

  Depression – I really wish I didn’t have to though, this is shit.

  Acceptance – well, I best get going.

  Luckily, I will no longer have to go through those five stages.

  Flora doesn’t appear to have entered these stages yet, however, and I am hoping that’s because she doesn’t need to. She is still yet to say anything, and she is walking around most peculiarly. It is like every step she takes is on a floor of squeaky toys and she is trying not to wake a baby. Her movement is so stiff and cold, and her face is so pale and empty.

  It will pass, I’m sure of it
.

  Either way, she does everything I say, as I say it. I hope this is out of understanding and adoration rather than fear or dread, but I am yet to see any evidence either way.

  She has sprayed the kitchen side as thoroughly as I have requested, using the best quality antibacterial spray we have. You can’t just spray it a little, you have to coat the surface, wipe away, then repeat again and again until you are sure that any smidgen of blood, however invisible, is gone.

  She does struggle, however, when I tell her to help me lift the body.

  She stares at it, then rushes to the other sink where she throws up.

  Which is annoying, as it delays us further, and she has to spray the sink multiple times as well.

  I let her off, and I drag the body, even though it feels so much heavier than it did when she was alive. Flora opens the doors for me at my request until we make it into the garage via the door of the house.

  She opens the car boot of Lisa’s crappy car, and I shove Lisa in there. I close the boot and I look at Flora.

  She doesn’t look back at me.

  “I need to know,” I say, “whether you are going to be a burden or not.”

  She still doesn’t look at me.

  “Flora, you are being rude.”

  Still.

  I lean forward, move her chin with my thumb, and try to lift her face but she snatches her head out of my reach.

  I forget she is just sixteen. She is young, and as filthy and adult-like as she is with her sexual maturity, maybe she has not built the resilience to know how to remain polite in such situations.

  So I grab her chin with my whole hand and grip hold so she can’t wriggle out of it. I lift her head until it is directed toward me, yet she still doesn’t look at me.

  “I really don’t want to kill you, Flora,” I tell her. “I need you to look at me.”

  That worked.

  She looks at me, but it feels like a scowl, or a look of caution, which is not what I wanted. I want her to feel at ease with me, to know that this is good, that it means we can do whatever we want.

  We are free of secrecy.

  Free of the burden of an overbearing wife and mother.

  No more stupid girly nights as a solution to her problems.

  We will fuck all of her problems out.

  Do it the real way.

  But for now, I need to be clear. I need to shock her into acquiescing to my requests. I cannot deal with any unpredictability.