The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  ‘What d’yer think I should do about it?’ I said.

  ‘Bout what?’ he said.

  I looked right at him. He was sat forward in his chair, eyes straight ahead, focused on the next fix, that was all. Nowt else mattered. He’d genuinely forgot the whole of our last conversation, the one where I was all het up about what might of happened to the only family I had. That was it then, the moment I decided he was going. I would put the nob out of his misery, cure his addiction for good.

  Mark was no better than an insect, a nasty piece of garden mush, and I was going to kill him just like I’d kill a beetle, caught in a jar.

  Back when Mark’d wanted Phil out the way, he’d told me these rules about revenge. Once I’d decided I wanted my own back on Mark, I wrote them down in a notebook, just to remind me what he’d said. I wrote the title ‘The Scotland Method’ then three sentences.

  Revenge should be quick.

  It were quite funny to see this, written on my Silver Jubilee notepad in the girlie bubble writing we’d all cultivated at school. I wondered what ‘quick’ meant. A week, a month? Mark hadn’t specified. I was planning to get mine just as soon as I could pluck up the guts. That’d have to be quick enough.

  You need to see your revenge for it to work.

  It wouldn’t be dramatic, Mark Scotland’s death. He wouldn’t go out with a bang, like what Duggy had, and it wouldn’t be as ugly as Phil Tyneside’s sticky end. And the way I was planning it, I couldn’t stand in the room with him unless I wanted to suffer the same. But I could watch it. I had just the equipment for the job. One afternoon when Mark was out, and I knew he wouldn’t be back till the night time, I took down our security camera from the front door. I wasn’t worried he’d miss it, and thought if he did I could tell him it’d been nicked or summat, and say it were ironic, a word what usually shut him up.

  I balanced the camera on top of the wardrobe and hid it under one of the spare blankets so’s just the lens poked out, and you would never see that unless you knew it were there. This bloke round the corner’d swapped me this video extension lead for a few grams of speed. It were a long thing what stretched all the way downstairs. I trailed it under carpet, where we had it, and beneath the floor boards where we didn’t. I plugged it into the telly downstairs, and tuned it to the video camera. I looked at the picture. It missed the bed, pointing too low. I went upstairs to adjust the camera, shoving some pillowcases under it, but ended up with the top of the wall and some ceiling on screen. It took a few trips up and down stairs before I’d got it sorted. Then there it were. Mine and Mark’s bed, perfectly framed. Like I was planning a dirty movie or summat. But that wasn’t what I was planning.

  Make sure the fucker knows it were you.

  This was the hardest by a long way. There were no way I could make Mark so vulnerable to me that I could tell him. If he found out it were me before he was dead, then I’d cop it as well. He’d make sure he took me with him, no matter how weak he was. I decided it wasn’t all that, this rule. Maybes I could ignore it. Would have to.

  I’d dug the poison up from the garden. It were just a matter of waiting till the right moment. Mark’d have to be wasted on heroin for it to work. It were the only way he’d not work out what was happening to him, not wake up. As I switched the channels back to the TV, I hoped he’d come home wasted that night. The longer this sat round all set up, the more likely it’d be that Mark’d cotton on. In a practical sense, that first rule was all important.

  He came home wasted that day, but it were from booze and not heroin. He’d had some smack, earlier in the night, then got pissed. He had all sorts of other shit in his system too. A line of coke. A bit of speed to keep him awake. When he’s like that he twitches, and notices stuff he wouldn’t normally. It were dark outside and I hadn’t expected him to see that the camera was missing, but he did.

  ‘What yer done wi-the camera, Kez?’ he said as he came in the door.

  I had my answer, about it being stolen, but then I thought, what if he found out what I’d done with it? If I said it must of been nicked and then he saw what I’d set up he’d know summat dodgy was going off.

  ‘I needed it for summat,’ I said.

  ‘Fer what?’ Mark said.

  ‘A surprise,’ I said.

  He sniffed up hard, and adjusted his-sen on the sofa. ‘We got any beer?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t know. Don’t drink it,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Yer might as well do, Kezza duck, all the shit you put in yer system the odd pint in’t goin-ter crack it.’

  I ignored him pointedly, staring at the telly. Coronation Street was on.

  ‘This is shit,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Let’s put a video on. Pulp Fiction or summat,’ Mark said.

  I prickled. ‘I’m watching Corra,’ I said, too quick.

  ‘C’mon baby, since when’ve me and you argued like middle-aged pricks about whether to watch Pulp Fiction or Corra,’ he said, getting up from the sofa and laying right across the floor, playing with the video controls. The batteries in both remotes’d gone ages ago, and we’d never bothered fixing them. It were less effort to lean across from our chairs or spread across the floor to change channel, size of our front room. As he reached for the TV buttons I felt sick, and I nearly gave me-sen right away, my instincts being to run out the room and hide. But I held firm. He flicked channels. There it were, our bedroom on the screen. Mark turned to look at me. ‘What’s going off?’

  I smiled. ‘I was hoping we could use it fer that special movie, the one you was talking about when we first got the camera,’ I said.

  Mark carried on staring at me, and I grinned at him but it felt well fake, more like a grimace. His face didn’t change for so long I didn’t think I could hold the smile no more. Then he grinned. He threw back his head and laughed. It went off in slow motion. ‘Now yer talking, baby,’ he said. He walked over to the sofa and grabbed hold on me. He picked me up. I was skinny as owt and feather weight, and it seemed like I flew into the air under his arms. He was skinny too, but still strong despite that. He swept me out the room and up the stairs. I didn’t point out he hadn’t pressed record.

  We never made love them days, me and Mark. We had sex, fucked each other from time to time. It depended what type of muck he’d took. If he was coked or rushed with speed, he wanted to manipulate me into awkward positions, tie me up and play-act fantasies. If he’d took smack he wasn’t interested in doing much more than picking his nose or sleeping. He didn’t drop pills very often them days. Maybes it wouldn’t of made much difference in any case. He was so messed up who knows.

  He threw me on the bed and started pulling at my clothes. I lay back and tried to kiss him but he laughed, and pushed me over onto my front, pulled up my mini skirt.

  ‘Yer a dirty lickle slapper like yer mam,’ he said. And he pushed my face into the pillow. ‘Is that nice and comfy?’ he said. ‘Yes?’ And he pushed me harder. ‘Now?’ I made a muffled sound from inside the pillow. ‘No?’ A pause. ‘Good.’ I couldn’t see what he was doing behind me, all’s I could hear was his clothes rustling round. Then I felt him push up inside me. He thrust hard over and over so’s my messed-up screams went straight into the pillow. Having me half suffocated must of really turned him on, cause he’d cum in about a minute. He groaned and fell off me, and I could move my head away from the pillow and breathe again. I gasped for air. ‘That’ll look nice on film,’ he said. I didn’t say owt. I was just glad I’d got away with the video shit.

  It were two afternoons later he came home wasted and went to bed. I checked he was proper gone, dropping things in the room and banging loud as I could to make sure he was as dead to the world as I needed him to be. He didn’t stir. I went downstairs and found the potassium cyanide.

  To make a killing jar for an insect, you need to put a layer of plaster in the bottom, and soak it with a tiny bit of liquid. Just a drop on cotton wool’s all you need. I knew, cause
Mrs Ivanovich’d told me.

  To make a killing jar for a person you needed a lot more. I knew this too. Mrs Ivanovich’d told me.

  She didn’t set all that up her-sen, course not. She was too weak, in too much pain with arthritis in her arms and legs and back. She couldn’t of lifted all them bowls of poison, placing them on top of the ‘gram, beside her chair. At that point, she couldn’t even get her-sen upstairs to get a bath. ‘You need a couple of washing-up bowls to be sure,’ she’d told me.

  ‘I don’t want to get found and put into one of those home places, Kerrie-Ann. We’ve got to make sure,’ Mrs Ivanovich’d said. I’m sure she thought I understood but I swear down I didn’t, not till I saw her laying still and stiff and cold as a dead fish the next day. Then I knew what she’d made me sort for her. All’s I thought at the time was I was helping.

  ‘It’ll stop hurting me if you do this, Kerrie-Ann,’ she’d said.

  I was five for fuck’s sake. Course I didn’t understand what I was doing. But I did this time.

  ‘This’ll mek yer all better,’ I said to Mark, as I placed a washing up bowl beside the bed. ‘All better,’ I said, putting the bucket next to it. I thought about pouring the stuff all over the quilt cover, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, cause it wouldn’t of woke him, not how out on it he’d got his-sen.

  I kissed him then, and drew back. The kiss what’d send him to sleep, like the reverse of sleeping-fucking-beauty. There were nowt beautiful about neither on us though. ‘This is goin-ter mek you feel all better, baby,’ I said. I took the clingfilm I’d brought up from the kitchen, and pushed and pulled it round the edges of the window where they let in cold air and would of let out the fumes. This was another little detail Mrs Ivanovich’d had me deal with all them years back.

  I took one last look at him from the bedroom door. He looked nice and peaceful. I could almost imagine him as the kid I’d first known. But I knew it were a fake peace, virtue of stuff he’d injected. I could see his works sitting on the dressing table, in a glass of water. They was sat there like a normal bedside thing, false teeth, or a glass of water to drink if you woke up. You’d get a nasty shock if you drank this water. It were misted with blood, a vivid red snaked through the water out the end of the syringe. It made me sick.

  I closed the door, and used the rest of the cling film to seal that as well. I went downstairs then, and turned on the telly.

  There was a perfect image of Mark on the screen, asleep on our bed. His head was at the centre of the picture and as he breathed the pillowcase moved underneath his mouth. I watched. I pulled my eyelids wide for fear I’d drop off and he’d wake up. I was ready to sprint, without even the money bonds if need be, away from Mark’s vicious streak. But he didn’t wake up. The only movement on the screen was his breathing, up and down. It were narcotic. Soporific.

  It were a lullaby.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I dreamed I was crawling along the garden on my stomach. But the grass towered round me, and I was tiny and could swim in the mud. I couldn’t work out what was going off, then I tried to look at my hands. But I didn’t have no hands, or legs ner nowt else for that matter. Just a long green body, wiggling through the mud. I knew then I was a caterpillar and things made sense. Sometimes, when I’m asleep, I know I’m dreaming. But I didn’t. You’d think you’d realise cause of how silly it all were. It sounds stupid, but this dream felt like real life.

  I was chewing up leaves and chewing up leaves till I heaved on them. I couldn’t of stood to sink my teeth into one more. They tasted like grass smells when the council get the mowers out. I decided it were time to cocoon. It were like I’d had some sort of practice at being a caterpillar before, cause I knew it were time to spin me-sen into my own little prison and wait till my wings came. I spat out brown goo, and wrapped it round me and round me. The world went brown, then black, but still I kept winding me-sen up in gooey mess. I knew it were worth it, see. Cause when I’d finished changing I’d be gorgeous. I’d be able to fly.

  In my dream, I slept then. Funny, how you can sleep in a dream. But I did. I slept and slept till I could feel wings sprout from the side of me, feel them grow and get sticky and restless. Like I’d practised it all before, I knew when I was ready, and I woke up. I fluffed my wings, but course, I couldn’t move nowhere. I was dying to see what colour they were, what patterns were on them, but it were dark as the inside of a wardrobe. I pushed then, thinking if I didn’t get out I’d run out of air. I pushed and struggled, and it were all sticky and messy round me and I wasn’t getting nowhere. But I knew if I didn’t keep going I’d die, suffocate stuck there in a cocoon I’d made me-sen. So I kept kicking and flapping till I saw a small pinch of light. I pushed my eyes through the hole, then my shoulders, then I could open up my wings. They were red. The colour of blood from an artery. I was an Admiral. A leader, summat to admire.

  Then I hit glass. I felt the wind knocked out on me and fell to the floor.

  I was operating on insect logic and couldn’t see no glass, so I thought I might of imagined it. I took to the air again, tried to fly off to go suck nectar from flowers. But I was into the glass again soon as I got any rhythm going.

  I tried all the different directions I could but each time I hit this invisible wall and fell down with a thud. I was trapped.

  I sat up sharp on the sofa, my breathing funny. My arms and legs hurt like wanno.

  In front of me, on the telly screen, was Mark. Sleeping like an infant, all tucked up and peaceful. But it didn’t tell the full story, the one where he was being poisoned. Breath by breath, beat by beat of his traitor heart. My own heart felt like a trapped butterfly, it fluttered in my chest like it were trying to escape. I wasn’t sure how much of this was down to the dream I’d just had, and how much was cause of what I was doing, how I was killing Mark. The bloke I’d lived with ever since my mam ran out on me. The only person I’d been able to rely on over the years. I told me-sen not to think that way. He’d beat up my brother, or worse, and at the very least he’d made him so scared he’d run off from me for good. Mark had it coming.

  But I could only remember that when I looked away from the telly screen. I wondered then if Mark knew me better than I’d realised. If that rule about seeing it when you’re taking your revenge was there for his own protection. Perhaps he thought if I looked at him as I was harming him I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But I wasn’t going to fall for that shit. I flirted with the idea of him waking up, scaring me-sen with what he’d do to me. Trying to make sure I remembered why this was happening, what he was like, but it were hard to keep it in mind. He looked so peaceful.

  I told me-sen it were an artificial peace. He’d paid for that contentment, God knows how much an ounce for the shit he got, but he’d once told me it cost more than gold. Then he’d laughed and said how he couldn’t work out why gold was worth so much, it wasn’t like you could snort it or smoke it or owt. That was the junkie talking, the bloke I hated. I could see him, in my mind’s eye, and I could see me making faces at him, full of contempt. But the thing was I couldn’t feel it. The look on his face reminded me of when we were first together.

  I shook my head to try and get rid of that image. I stared at his left arm riding visible above the sheet. The tracks running down it. I looked right at his badly shaved head. I searched in his face for signs of the animal I saw on the video, laying into my brother like a vision of evil. But there wasn’t no signs of this in the man what slept on my video screen. Maybes it were a trick of the light, or summat to do with the slight blur of the picture, but all’s I could see was a little boy. On his bike, doing wheelies on Cinderhill tip. Smiling at me from under floppy blond hair. Talking bollocks after a shared hit of speed. Climbing through attics to get stuff out a house the police’d got surrounded.

  I tried to remember the first time I’d seen him without them bangs what fell into his eyes and softened the harsh lines of his face. It came to me, a picture of a lad coming down the sta
irs. Behind him, my little brother, all pleased with his-sen for growing dreadlocks. Me, picking up the little boy, holding him and saying thanks over and over to Mark. God, I wished I could still pick up that little boy now, hold him tight and protect him from all the crap in this nobhead world. But I couldn’t deny it, Mark’d looked after him then. So it didn’t make no sense that he’d of hurt him. No sense at all. I watched Mark’s chest, up and down, up and down, waiting for it to stop. I sighed. Did I want it to stop?

  I tried to focus on the needle, sitting there in a cup of water beside the bed. It made me feel sick but didn’t do as much as I’d hoped to turn me back against him. He was a fucking addict, I told me-sen. A sad fucking case with nowt going for him, and no loyalty to owt but the needle and the spoon. I searched for that feeling what usually haunted me when it came to his addiction. To any junkie for that matter, starting with my mam. Contempt it were. A raw nasty feeling what made you want to cut someone. But no matter what I thought about, what picture I brought to my head to try and hate Mark Scotland, to despise him as a junkie and a wanker, I couldn’t. I felt sorry for him, that was the truth.

  He wasn’t stupid, not Mark, not by a long way. He’d of been dead years before if that’d been the case. Dead or in prison. You can’t afford to be owt but sharp and snide in our line of work. He’d been good looking too, before he got too thin and his skin went all nasty from the rubbish he was shooting up and snorting and doing God knows what all with. He was caring too. I thought about his tender side, the times he’d held me, and the way he’d kissed away all the tears after that shitty abortion.

  The things he would of done for me. Scary things, like setting light to some kid cause he’d beat me up. Making sure Tyneside got what he deserved. These things, shit what’d made me angry a few hours before, they had this other status now. Like he was some sort of hero who’d looked out for me. I couldn’t help but think how stuff could of been so different for Mark. If he’d been born into a family like Tyneside’s or Rob’s, people with a bit of money and respect for themselves, he could of really been summat. He could of saved lives instead of taking them. Done summat important for a living instead of cutting heroin with other shit and selling it on.