by Zoe Caldwell
I catch Julian looking over. He seems pretty far gone, but maybe I should fake a call just to be on the safe side. I pretend to be dialling. I hold the phone up to my ear.
‘Hey, Becky! How’s it going?’ I ask, before shrinking behind the piano so Julian can’t see me.
I click out of his emails and scroll through his gallery instead. There are a few pictures of him with what I can only assume is his brother – same nose, same eyes, same mouth. They’re both in pink shirts; Julian’s is baby pink, his brother’s salmon. They’ve got matching black unbranded sunglasses hooked to the top of their button plackets and they’re both smiling into the camera on a balcony somewhere. Probably Marbella or something. So nouveau riche. So try-hard. There are more pictures of the fluffy dog. The dog lying on its back. Julian cuddling the dog. The dog in a jumper. The dog with its tongue out, Julian posing next to it, also sticking his tongue out. Fucking hell. There are a few taken at some kind of street festival. Julian posing with friends around a bonfire. He looks stoned, eyes bloodshot, puffy. I keep scrolling. It’s just friends, the dog, a few gym selfies, quite a lot of gym selfies actually, the dog and then, oh shit, what’s this…? A woman, naked in bed, with a split lip, eyes swollen shut, huge reddish-purple bruises all over her thighs. She looks unconscious. Beaten unconscious. Fuck. My heart hammers in my chest. My fingertips prickle with sweat. I scroll to the next picture. Julian’s cock in her mouth. Her mouth bleeding onto his cock. She’s lost teeth. He’s grinning into the camera. My hairs stand on end. I glance over at him; the back of his head protrudes over the armrest.
I remember that I need to maintain my fake phone call.
‘What are you up to?’ I ask ‘Becky’ as I scroll on, my hand shaking.
Julian’s fucking the same girl from behind now, there are scratches and bruises all over her back. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I keep scrolling. It’s the bichon-fucking-frise again. Friends. A joint. A bowl of noodles. The gym. A sunset and then bam. Another one. An unconscious redhead with purple eyes, lying on a bed, legs spread, bite marks on her breasts and thighs. Smears of blood on her skin. Cunt. Fucking cunt. I want to scream. I want to charge to the kitchen, grab a knife and plunge it into Julian’s neck. I scroll to the next shot. It’s another blow job selfie. Perhaps it’s Julian’s signature move: stuffing his cock into the mouths of unconscious girls, grinning into the camera. In the next shot his dick is rammed so far down the girl’s throat that he looks like he’s suffocating her. Maybe she died that night. I realise I’m crying and flick the tears from my cheeks. I thought my date rape experience was bad. It was bad, but at least I got out in one piece. The only scars I had were emotional. God knows what these girls are going through now.
I don’t want to see any more, but I need to know exactly what I’m dealing with. I wade through more normal life pictures until I find shots of a battered and bruised Asian girl lying in an alleyway, her skirt hitched up around her waist. Jizz all over her pussy, covering her thighs. He’s sick. He’s so fucking sick. My skin is prickling. I’m scared. This monster is in my flat. I know he’s drugged and disorientated and I could take him down in a second, but I’m still freaked out. I keep scrolling. Dog. Gym. Dog. Friends. Brother. Food. Car. Girl. This one looks barely eighteen. Out cold on a bed, makeup smeared all over her face, her mouth hanging open. Her skin is covered in red slap marks. Julian’s fucking her from behind. I can’t take any more.
I slam the phone down on the piano, forgetting it’s a fucking piano. Jangled notes ring out. For fuck’s sake.
Julian turns his head and blinks groggily, stupidly, curiously towards me. I look back at him, my heart pounding. Can he see the fear, the tears in my eyes, the fact that I’m shaking? I force a smile and push it all down.
I need to be strong. I need to be tough. I need to be powerful. I need to be a huntress, because tonight, Julian has to die.
2
I feel like a kid before Christmas as I think of the kill I’ve got lined up for Julian.
I know I should probably be more morose after the pictures I’ve just seen but I can’t help smiling to myself as I look out of the window of the minicab, lost in thought, London passing blankly over my irises. It’s a slaughter I’ve been imagining for a while. A fantasy that’s been building in my mind. It’s going to be spectacular. I knew I’d find the right person to bring it to life with eventually. Or death, in my case. Maybe this date was written in the stars.
‘Stop it!’ I grumble as Julian attempts to slide his hand over my thigh, groping up towards my crotch.
He’s out of it, his eyes barely open. The second roofie tipped him over the edge, but it still wasn’t enough to stop him being a gropey perverted prick. I keep batting his hand away, but within seconds, he’s at it again. Bat. Grope. Bat. Grope. Bat. Grope. Is he going to keep this up all the way to Hayes?
The driver glances up at the rear-view mirror. He works for a dodgy minicab company down the road. They have terrible reviews. One of the drivers was in the local paper recently, arrested for stealing from elderly passengers. They seem crooked as hell and I’d never dream of using them usually, but they’re a good choice for tonight since it seems they give the authorities a wide berth. I don’t want anyone talking to the police about having seen me. I avoid the driver’s gaze, even though I’m already in disguise, wearing a new wig: a long, wavy, brown one I bought off Amazon called ‘The Ciara’. I’ll be Ciara tonight. Her hair is the complete opposite to my naturally dark, neat, shoulder-length bob. Julian hasn’t even noticed. I’ve teamed my wig with a denim cap I bought from H&M during my lunch break a few weeks ago. I wouldn’t be seen dead in such a thing usually, but it was a good addition to my disguise wardrobe. I gave Julian one to wear too, and a hooded coat. Told him it was cold out. He was too out of it to question anything. I wanted to keep his face covered, not that I really needed to. He can barely hold his head up as it is.
Tonight will be my last kill. I have to stop, I really do, but sometimes, I just can’t help myself. I can’t let someone like Julian walk the streets, I simply can’t. It’s not like I’m going to report him to the police. What’s the point when the entire system is stacked in favour of men like him? When less than two per cent of reported rapes result in a charge or conviction. Julian’s victims have been through enough, the last thing they need is to be dragged through the courts, forced to face him on the witness stand, endure a jury poring over the tragic, degrading images on his phone. Even if they manage to fight their way through all of that and Julian’s found guilty, what’s he going to get? A slap on the wrist? A couple of years in jail, if that? He’ll get out having served half his sentence and he’ll be back to smoking pot with his friends and taking selfies with his dog, like nothing ever happened.
No. I can’t take that. I can’t tolerate that kind of bullshit. Suspended sentences, custodial sentences, community orders, slaps on the wrist, blind eyes turned to people who should be locked away. I can’t just pretend it’s okay. No, I fight back. Sometimes I snap.
Death is what Julian deserves, and death is what I’m going to give him.
But it’s risky. After all, I didn’t exactly plan to kill him tonight. If I had, I’d have been a hell of a lot stealthier about it. I wouldn’t have met him at a bar for one thing. But I think I can get away with it, just about. The bar was empty. It’s a quiet Sunday night and Julian and I were the only customers. We snuck home via a shadowy side street. Lawrence wasn’t paying us much attention. And even if he was, and Julian’s disappearance makes the papers, Lawrence is hardly going to talk to the police. He wouldn’t want them poking around his bar, since rumour has it that he deals on the side.
I peer out of the window. We’re far out of central London now and I scan the streets, trying to get my bearings. We’re getting nearer to Julian’s resting place. I recognise an old police station, converted into cheap flats. This part of London feels darker than Mayfair. It’s as though the street lights don’t shine as brightly. Che
aper models, not as many. I like it. Every time I come here, on a certain level, I relax. It almost feels more like home than Mayfair. Mayfair is who I want to be, Hayes is who I am. My veins are the dark streets, pulsing with traffic. There’s wreckage all around: craterous potholes, crumpled railings, abandoned cars, derelict homes. Nothing’s ever repaired. It’s all broken. The poverty’s inescapable. The air perpetually stinks.
Julian’s hand creeps over my thigh again. Fucking hell. I bat it away. Although can I blame him for feeling frisky? I told him we’re on our way to a sex party at my friend’s house. I said that’s what I was talking about when I borrowed his phone. Still laughing to myself about that one.
I ask the taxi driver to pull into a lay-by and Julian and I disembark. Julian looks around at the dull A-road, lined with bushes.
‘Where’s your friend’s place?’ he asks, although it comes out more like ‘woplice’. I’m surprised he’s still talking. That shouldn’t last much longer.
‘This way,’ I reply, slipping my arm through his for support.
Julian nearly crushes me as we walk down the road towards my garage. I’m small, and he feels even heavier now than he felt before, his body dead weight, but it’s not like I could get the taxi driver to drop us off right next to my deepest, darkest, most secret place, even if I did choose to use a dodgy minicab firm.
Julian and I shuffle along, one step at a time, until finally we arrive at a row of garages. The ninth one along with the peeling burgundy door is mine. Julian looks around, perplexed. He mumbles something but I ignore it. We walk towards my garage.
I reach into my jacket pocket and retrieve my key. I’ve changed my outfit since our date, swapping the Chloé dress I was wearing for a pair of leggings, a hoodie, a puffer jacket – all black, all from H&M. I’ll dispose of them later. Julian didn’t notice my outfit change either. He was probably too busy picturing me naked to have even remembered what I was wearing in the first place.
‘Wha…?’ he slurs as I insert the key into the garage door and unlock it.
‘Just sit down. I need to get something. Some sex toys,’ I explain, trying not to smile.
Julian flops down onto the tarmac as I pull up the creaking garage door.
This garage is where the real me lives. It’s where I keep everything I need to kill: a wide selection of the sharpest knives and cleavers, a few choice tools I keep as torture implements (a screwdriver, a pair of plyers, a mini saw, rusty nails, a corkscrew), an axe, a vat of acid, latex gloves, cable ties, a hammer, rope, drugs, bin bags, a few more wigs, a few more hats. Stuff like that. I have a bunch of ill-fitting men’s shoes I picked up in Primark and a load of socks that I layer on when I wear them. Better that the footprints I leave at crime scenes resemble those of a size ten or eleven man than a size six woman. I’ve also got a bin bag full of bits and pieces I’ve stolen from various rapists, wife beaters and paedophiles who’ve been on my radar for a while. According to forensic science theory – Locard’s exchange principle – the perpetrator of a crime will always bring something to a crime scene and leave with something from it, and both can be used as evidence. But what if the perpetrator leaves a ton of red herrings? What if the perpetrator leaves five people’s DNA? Then what? Then who’s the perpetrator? I like thinking of the police, following a million different pointless leads, spinning their wheels, getting nowhere. Or, best-case scenario, they bang a paedophile rapist cunt up for my crimes, while I slip through the net, undetected. It makes me smile. I like fucking with people, if you hadn’t guessed already.
The only furniture in my garage is an old armchair that smells of damp and a cheap, nasty chest of drawers. The top drawer contains my burner phones. Ones with pay-as-you-go SIMs that I use for getting up to no good, like ordering roofies online or going Tinder-hunting. The middle drawer’s full of random crap – crime novels, newspaper clippings, a few notebooks where I jot down thoughts and add to my hit list. The bottom drawer is my favourite. Like every serial killer, it’s where I keep a box of trinkets, souvenirs from my kills. I know, I’m that clichéd. Like something from a movie. I always thought I’d be tough enough to resist that particular trope, after all, I do hate clutter, but I couldn’t help myself. I guess I’m just a sentimental old schmuck like all the rest. I wanted tokens too. Mementoes. I keep them inside an old aluminium box sealed with a padlock, the PIN of which is the one I used for my bike lock back when I was eleven. Imagine if that girl could see me now. God no, she’d have nightmares.
I look over at Julian, passed out on the ground. Perfect. I hook my forearms under his armpits and pull him inside. He slumps onto the floor. I yank my garage door shut and flick on a camping lamp. I feel like having a little meander down memory lane. I find my box of mementoes and kick off my trainers before settling, cross-legged, in my skanky old armchair. I place it on my lap and click through the dials of the lock, entering the PIN: three, eight, two, four. The padlock springs open. I slide it off and open the box.
The first item I pick out is a silver cock ring I pulled off the corpse of a ‘sugar daddy’ who went by the name of David online. Real name: Edmond Wyatt. I noticed some sex workers sharing pictures of his ugly mug on forums, warning each other that he was luring women to hotel rooms, promising £500 for a fuck, before beating them unconscious the second the door closed, raping them, taking their cash and leaving them with nothing. I couldn’t resist. I posed as a hooker and reeled him in.
We met at a hotel in Bond Street. ‘David’ was mid-sixties and looked even worse than his pictures suggested, with dark rings around his eyes and sallow, pasty skin. It made my heart hurt thinking how desperate these girls must have been to be willing to fuck him. I get that £500 is a lot when you’re broke, but he was so rank even £5,000 would have felt low. His eyes were bright blue – wolf-like, cold, blazing. We went up to the hotel room. My hand was clamped around the knife in my trench coat pocket. The door clicked closed. We were alone. He placed an envelope of cash on the bed. I looked into his wolf eyes and waited for a blow, but he lunged towards me and kissed me instead. It took everything in my power not to vomit into his mouth. I pulled away. His hands were shaking with anticipation. He started trying to remove my clothes, his fingers fluttering around the lapels of my coat. I excused myself and nipped into the bathroom, in shock.
Closing the door, I wondered what if these girls were talking shit? What if David’s just a regular punter and someone’s got a vendetta? What if he doesn’t try to hurt me at all and only wants sex? I don’t approve of crusty old fucks paying vulnerable women for sex but it’s not exactly a murderable offence. I couldn’t knife him for that. When I came out of the loo, he was naked. Standing there in all his skinny, wrinkly, flaky, shrivelled, repulsive glory, with a silver cock ring on his dick. I was still gripping the knife in my pocket, not knowing what to do. I’d never prayed for someone to punch me before, but I did then. I walked up to him and he came to me again, wanting to kiss, his hands quivering with excitement, rattling around my tits. Then all of a sudden, our eyes met, and his pupils exploded like volcanos, his eyes dilating, eclipsed by blackness and I knew it was coming. His quivering hand hardened into a fist and he swung at me. I ducked, pulled out my knife and plunged it into his stomach. Pulled it out of him. Plunged it in. In and out, in and out, piercing him like a pin cushion. I was crying tears of joy, overexcited. I couldn’t contain myself. I was gasping with relief.
After, I went into the bathroom, cleaned up a bit, changed my clothes and left. I was wearing a blonde wig that day, dark sunglasses. I even added a fedora. The papers were all over that story for weeks. A grainy CCTV image of me leaving the hotel ended up everywhere, but no one recognised me. The papers dubbed me the ‘Sugar Daddy Slayer’. I liked that. No one ever caught me though. Obviously. The investigation was half-arsed since it turned out that old Edmond had convictions for rape, GBH and sexual assault. Not particularly surprising. He had no close friends, no family. No one really gave a shit he was dead. You can get awa
y with murder far more easily if you choose your victims right. The whole city was able to breathe a sigh of relief: one less piece of trash to worry about. People were retweeting my picture, a few were even thanking me, calling me a hero, using praying emojis. It was great. I even hit ‘like’ on a few of the tweets. Didn’t dare retweet them though. I drop the cock ring back into the box and wipe my hands on my leggings. Just the memory of Edmond makes me feel dirty.
I pick up a decaying pink rose, a token from a paedophile I found online. I posed as an eleven-year-old girl called Emily in a chat room for kids and waited for the nonces to come. The messages were buzzing through in seconds. Dick pics, wanking videos, bored ‘hey, how are you?’ messages, but it was @justaguy78 who caught my eye. I could tell he was the real deal. His opening messages were sweet and gentle; he started softly, softly, going for the long game. Always the way for the most manipulative, committed and dangerous groomers. Conversation was friendly to begin with – light, peppered with ‘lols’, as he tried to build my trust. He told me his name was Darren and asked questions about my family. Like Julian, he wanted to make sure I was an easy target, with few people around who cared about me. I told him daddy wasn’t in the picture, mummy drinks – poor lil’ Emily. ‘That sucks, babe, I’m here for you. You got me to talk to now lol,’ he said. A few days later, the messages intensified. ‘What you up to? Feeling a bit lonely tonight, babe xxx Wish you were here’ and ‘I’d love a cuddle. Bet you smell so good!’ ‘Wish I could cuddle u n make u feel better!!! xxx,’ I replied. The stream of delighted kisses he responded with felt like it was going on forever. Darren was over the moon. It wasn’t long before he started telling me how he ‘can’t talk to anyone like he can talk to me’. He said I was ‘a smart, special, beautiful girl’. He opened up about some ex of his, saying she’d broken his heart, as a segue to ask me about boys. He wanted to know if I’d ever kissed anyone. Ever seen a cock. Ever touched one. I said no. He said ‘a mature girl like me needs a mature man’ then he started sending sickening selfies of himself doing kiss-faces. Then a dick pic. ‘This is what they look like lol! xxx’ ‘Omg!!! Lol!’ I replied with a string of bear-covering-its-eyes emojis. A few days later, he suggested we meet, saying how he’d been feeling ‘really lonely’ lately. Poor thing.