This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  And if you want to know whether or not they can definitely kill you, I can tell you from the sight of the dead man beneath me that, with upmost certainty – yes, it bloody well can.

  I WHISPER

  I whisper, “What have you done?”

  I cover my mouth in shock as my only salvation dies.

  As a living man before me fades.

  As the person who is supposed to protect me from men like this dies on his own defence.

  I whisper, “Oh, God, no…”

  Gerald talks, but I don’t listen.

  He says something about faking suicide.

  He puts him in the police car and puts the pepper spray in his hand and props him up.

  He takes the handbrake off and turns the steering wheel and closes the door and lets the car fall into a field. It gathers a little speed before stopping at a hedge.

  And another dead person is there because of him.

  Because of me.

  Because I did nothing.

  I could have warned him sooner.

  But I didn’t. I just assumed they were there to help me… Not that they were there about insurance…

  Insurance!

  Another moment of stupidity, and all I can do is whisper.

  I whisper, “You idiot,” and I say it to myself, not to him.

  He just faked a young officer’s suicide.

  Surely, they would question the stab wound… Surely, they would question why he suddenly…

  I whisper, “So silly.”

  Have I not learnt anything yet?

  Gerald has money that can buy his freedom.

  Even if they do question that stab wound, if they do speak to the last person he spoke to by tracking the license plate – there is no evidence he gave that stab wound.

  The officer said he was attacked by youths. He said it in the radio.

  Even if they did accuse Gerald…

  There would be nothing to go on.

  His lawyers would probably stop there even being a trial.

  No matter what happens, he walks free.

  He kills my mum, kills Mark, kills this innocent man…

  And he walks free.

  That is how he does it.

  And I see him thinking it. I see him holding the knife, twirling it, wondering how to get rid of it. He’ll have to burn his clothes too, ensure there is none of the officer’s blood.

  But I know.

  I am a witness.

  And surely, after an officer claiming he was going to kill himself, police would be on the way.

  I just have to stall.

  I just have to wait.

  I am the key to putting him away, and I whisper it to myself just so I can hear it aloud: “I am the key.”

  Before he can deal with the weapon and the clothes, he has one more thing to deal with.

  Me.

  I back away.

  He tells me to come here.

  But I don’t.

  I hear sirens.

  I hear them coming.

  I whisper, “Hurry.”

  I do not wait for him to get any closer.

  I turn.

  And I run.

  He doesn’t come after me.

  He gets back into his car and he turns it around and he races after me.

  I throw myself over a bush and into a field.

  I run and I don’t look back.

  I sprint and I sprint and I sprint as hard as I can, until I may pass out, until the wobbling the taser has sent through my legs destroys my balance and I fall into a pile of mud.

  I go over a fence into another field, through a set of trees and out into another field.

  I leap over a fence, fall to my feet, and land on my back.

  I get up.

  I look over my shoulder.

  I look and I search for him.

  The sirens are louder.

  And I whisper, “He’s gone.”

  I don’t see his car, I don’t see him, and I might just be safe.

  I whisper, “I can’t be.”

  So many nights wondering when I can die, safety just can’t seem possible.

  But I see the police cars arrive.

  I see them, in the distance. Too far away to even hear me scream. I am so many fields away now, so far have I run, but the police are there, they are there, if I can just get to them, I’ll be safe.

  I whisper, “I’ll be safe.”

  So, I run again.

  I stumble all the way across the first field. I feel my legs ache and they feel as if they are wading through water, but this is it, the final push, the final bit of resistance.

  If I get through this, I live.

  If I get through this, I am safe.

  It takes longer than I can guess to get back through the trees as I have lost all sense of time, but it feels far longer than it did when I ran through them.

  All the time I search for him – search so I can keep distance between us.

  For his car.

  For that voice or those steps or that incessant appetite for murder.

  The sun is dimming now.

  It is getting lower.

  I run and I run.

  I slow down.

  Fatigue takes its grip on me. I push myself through it, but I fall after almost every step.

  All the stress and anxiety and despair and repressed grief I have pent up pushes me down, and it feels like roots are coming through the mud and grabbing hold of my ankles and fixing me in place, desperately claiming me, telling me I belong here.

  But I don’t.

  I whisper, “I don’t.”

  And I push forward.

  It’s raining now.

  The perfect cure for evidence.

  But when they look for my evidence, they will search for places the rain can’t get to.

  They will find pieces of him there.

  And he will go away to prison, and he will go there for a long, long time.

  A few more are in the field now.

  I can see them.

  Police tape around the car.

  Paramedics are leaving, but the police remain.

  He must be dead.

  But I am not.

  I whisper, “I am not.”

  And I endure the last few moments of agony and I force myself forward.

  I can’t run any longer.

  No more running.

  I walk, I wade, I even crawl.

  But I make it into the field.

  And I can see them, a few football pitches away.

  They are still so far away, still across a large patch of grass. I am barely visible to them, but they are all I see.

  My salvation.

  I whisper, “Help me.”

  I mean to shout it, but I whisper it.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I will stride up to them and fall into their arms.

  I’m free.

  Free of him, free of death, free of everything.

  Time to face the trauma.

  Time to tell my story.

  Time to whisper no more.

  I take my first step into the field.

  And then I see him.

  Gerald has changed his clothes.

  Gerald stands there, telling them how he was the last person Officer Ian Darling spoke to.

  Gerald gives his statement, that he drove away, saw the car veer off, then turned back and called the police straight away.

  Some youths ran away, and he was positive he saw some knives on them.

  And how he saw Officer Ian Darling swallow something in his car…

  Gerald asks if Officer Ian Darling is okay, and the Inspector breaks the news to him. Gerald looks down and covers his eyes and, as he looks up, his eyes pry across the field, and they meet mine.

  And they are the only eyes that see me.

  How did he change his clothes?

  How did he discard the weapon?

  How did he act so convincingly?

  He smiles. His fingers give a
little wave only I see.

  I whisper, “Please, no.”

  And my voice is so hoarse that my scream does not come out.

  37

  It’s all so easy.

  I thought getting away with murder was supposed to be tough.

  Honestly, it’s all just so simple.

  You give the police a story that fits with the story the officer gave them.

  Because, of course, how could I know what he had told them on the radio?

  How could I possibly interlink the stories so clearly without knowing?

  The answer they come to is that it’s because he’s telling the truth.

  There is no blood on my clothes because I have a spare suit in the boot where I also have a safe that I can hide the weapon with the spare tire. With no grounds to disbelieve me there is no reason to look.

  And the clothes with little Ian’s blood on them are burnt on the fiery carcasses of a farm I passed. A wonderful, convenient opportunity. So much so it could be like I’m making it all up.

  But remember, dear voyeur, this is a memoir – there is no lie to anything I am saying.

  But that’s what happens when you’re rich.

  All the luck points your way.

  The officer thanks me for the statement, takes my details in case they need any more information; though they say my account is so thorough they may only need to ask a few follow-up questions – this officer had only just returned from a period of illness due to mental health issues, another piece of fine luck.

  The officer was attacked. The officer killed himself. And there is only a single witness to corroborate the story, and the officer’s words in the microphone I couldn’t possibly have known about.

  I’m sure there will more enquiries, I am sure they will question this further – but I am confident I have covered everything.

  I turn to leave.

  And, just as I think I am already the luckiest man in the world – I get just that bit luckier.

  There she is.

  I see her.

  And I lock eyes with her.

  She could come screaming toward us, claiming I killed the cop and that I abducted her.

  But she doesn’t.

  Because she knows I am too powerful and too indestructible to have fortune not end up in my favour and she will end up just as fucked, back in my possession.

  Instead, she freezes, hidden by the shadows of trees. Officers don’t think to look, but I am always looking, and I see you, Flora, I see you.

  I return to my car and I turn the ignition and it’s time to collect what is mine.

  It’s time to resume our task, Flora.

  The police couldn’t stop me.

  Do you really think you can?

  I cackle all the way across the road that loops to the field she is in. She turns and runs away but I bring my car to a stop next to a gate to the field and I leap out and I am so much faster than you, Flora, I am so much faster. You are so tired, so fatigued. You have had no sleep, but I, Flora, have slept the best sleep I’ve had in a while.

  Honestly, if you really wanted to kill me you should have done it while I slept.

  But you didn’t want to take the risk, did you?

  And bleach is what you come up with?

  I’m too rich to be fucked over, Flora.

  Money gives me luck you cannot afford.

  It takes seconds for me to have covered the stretch of the field and to have her back in my arms. She tries to kick and tries to put up a fight but her body is losing energy and losing hope.

  We fall to our knees and it annoys me that I have mud on my suit trousers, but soon I will have blood on it too, so I suppose I just have to come to terms with it.

  I shush her.

  I stroke her hair.

  I tell her it’s all okay.

  She cries again. But these are real tears, ferocious tears, despairing tears.

  You thought you got away from me, didn’t you, Flora?

  You thought the police could save you?

  But you are poor. Poor people don’t have luck.

  I have luck.

  I am too fucking rich to be destroyed by some childish little brat.

  I enjoyed fucking you, Flora.

  Really, I did.

  And I enjoyed those few days where I believed you were enjoying fucking me too.

  But it’s over.

  And it’s time for it to end.

  I take her by the hand, and she doesn’t fight, and I drag her back to the car.

  She is despondent, but resolute.

  She knows her chance to run has gone.

  We reach the car.

  We stop outside of it.

  You lean against it, out of energy, out of fight.

  You look up at me, those puppy-dog eyes again.

  “Please,” you say, in a whisper, because your voice can’t produce anything bigger anymore, your body is too empty to make a real sound. “Please, just make it quick.”

  I smile and I lean in and I lock eyes with you and I say, “Not a chance, Flora. Not a chance.”

  And I duck your head under the bonnet and I move you into the passenger seat.

  And we drive away into the sunset.

  38

  It’s getting dark now, dear voyeur, and I am growing tired of Flora’s company. It has been a long day, and I am hungry, and I need the toilet.

  Flora is slumped down in her seat, arms by her side, staring catatonically forward, awaiting her death.

  This drive is her walk to the gallows.

  Oh, I wonder what it is like to know you are about to die a slow, painful, violating death.

  Maybe she’ll convince herself heaven exists in an attempt to make it all better.

  But it doesn’t exist, dear voyeur, it doesn’t exist.

  And even if it did, there is no place in it for a delinquent child who fucks her dead mother’s husband.

  Not that I believe such a thing is right or wrong, but religion always seems fixed in the black and white view of things.

  Then again, the bible does condone abominable acts.

  Oh, you don’t believe me? You think your religion is all full of love and hope?

  Or is it that you choose to ignore those passages that don’t fit with your society’s conditioning?

  Well, let’s take a closer look…

  If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives – Deuteronomy 22:28-29.

  Not enough?

  Kill every man in the town. But they may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies – Deuteronomy 20:10-14.

  One more for luck?

  When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be brought back again – Exodus 21:7-11.

  See?

  I, society’s outcast atheist, is more of a Christian than you are.

  At least I learnt about what I hate, whilst you plead ignorance about what you love.

  I drive for almost an hour, enjoying the peaceful lull. I do not drive anywhere in particular, I just drive farther and farther into the countryside, until we are so deep in there is not another soul for miles around.

  I bring the car to a stop by a field.

  We say nothing for a few minutes.

  She doesn’t move.

  I kill the engine.

  “Is there anything you wish to say before this happens?” I ask.

  She still doesn’t move.

  “No begging? No pleading for me to take you back? No desperation for forgiveness, for me to free you and for us to return to the life we had just started to make for ourselves?”

  She turns to me, her head slowly rotating, and fixes her angry,
evil eyes on mine.

  “I would rather die than return to that life.”

  Ah, and so you will.

  And so it is like this that you depart this world.

  A defiant little schoolgirl.

  A childish little wretch.

  A motherless, pathetic, scrawny little sack of unloved skin and bones.

  I open the car door.

  I return to the boot and seek out my safe. From it I bring out my knife.

  I twist the blade, inspecting a few splashes of dried blood. I consider how I will do it. Whether I will stick it in her gut and twist, or whether I will begin by chopping something off just to get started.

  I return to the passenger side and open it.

  “Get out,” I tell her.

  She does as she is told, and she walks into the field without my having to say anything.

  She just walks, stumbling from one foot to the other, edging along the grass.

  I follow her.

  Intrigued as to where she wants to die.

  She reaches the other side of the field and stops beneath the shadow of a tree. There, she turns to me and looks.

  I stop, a few paces away.

  And we look at each other.

  Two souls, hurting, in pain from the other.

  And then she puts her hands at the base of her dress, that blue dress I picked out for her. It seems weeks ago now, but really it was just this morning.

  She lifts the dress over her head and puts it to the side.

  And there she stands, her black laced underwear covering the only non-concealed skin of her body.

  She is just as beautiful as she has ever been.

  She has a body most men would kill to touch.

  And it was my body for so long. I witnessed her body turn into this body, I watched the curves develop and the breasts grow and the body hair that she removes on almost a daily basis.

  And now I look at it and am overcome with a wave of sadness.

  I am going to miss this body.

  “Do you want to touch me?” she asks.

  Yes.

  God, yes.

  I want to run my hands all over it, then my tongue, and then grab all the bits that you have kept covered.

  She reaches behind her back and unhooks her bra.

  It lands beside her dress.

  And there they are. Two perfect, symmetrical triangles. Enticing me with their petite perfection.