by Krishna Ahir
The problem was doing so without Veronica noticing.
An evil glint of metal pulled his attention back to Veronica.
The knife was closer to him now. Lingering in the air in front of his face; sleek and silver and wickedly sharp.
A vision entered his head of her plunging the knife into him. Slashing his skin and baring the gore of his body to the open air. As the fear took him, his straining bladder twinged in pain and a sliver of urine escaped.
Noticing Christopher's expression, Veronica dropped the knife and took a step closer again. "Are you okay Christopher?" When she received no reply, Veronica leaned in and analyzed his face intently, through darting grey eyes. Seemingly coming to a conclusion, she dropped her voice to a whisper. "Do you need to go to the toilet?"
Christopher didn't say a word. He couldn't find his voice to speak. Whether it was the embarrassment of wetting himself in fear, or due to the fear itself, his tongue was unable to form words.
Instead he nodded, quickly.
Suddenly stepping back, Veronica stood up straight. "Wait right there."
Without another word, she turned around and disappeared quickly out of the room.
Seizing the opportunity, Christopher quickly anchored his left thumb in the socket before jerking it rapidly to the side. With a sickening locking sound, the finger came loose and fell onto the arm of the chair.
Just as he prepared to do the same with his index finger, however, Veronica reappeared in the doorway. In her hands she held an empty milk bottle.
Laying eyes on the container, Christopher's mind shut down in disbelief.
She's not... he thought.
Crouching down in front of the chair Veronica set down the bottle and reached out for Christopher's belt. Her hands moved clumsily, as if she were overcome with nerves, but soon she had it unfastened. Next she set to work on the buttons of his trousers.
Shifting his hips around, he tried to impede her progress. Having her hands down there made him feel uncomfortable and violated. The very idea of her touching him in such an intimate area made him feel wrong and afraid.
Despite his struggling, Veronica managed to unbutton his trousers. One hand settled on his hip, her fingernails digging in and holding Christopher in place with a surprising strength, as the other delved inside his boxer shorts and came to rest on his penis.
A horrible sensation of vulnerability smashed into him as she squeezed down on his smooth skin. Much to his shame, he felt himself unintentionally hardening, and he fought back the urge to cry.
Pulling out Christopher's member, Veronica's eyes lingered in fascination for several moments, before she lifted the empty bottle and slipped the tip inside.
"There you go," she said innocently, finally releasing him and holding the bottle with two hands.
Christopher clenched his teeth and fought against every urge that he had. Even after everything that he had been through, peeing in front of this girl was out of the question. Doing so would strip him of his last shreds of dignity. He already felt horrible and disgusted, and doing that would only make it worse.
"I thought you said you needed to go," Veronica said, her voice raising slightly. Despite still being soft, there was an ever so slight aggressive edge to it. "Did you lie to me?"
His eyes now closed, Christopher took the cue from her voice and imagined her picking up the knife. Tears beaded in the corners of his eyes and fear overtook him.
Terror trumping his dignity, he finally let go and pissed into the bottle.
When he was finished, Christopher opened his red tear-filled eyes and breathed heavily. His heart was hammering in his chest and he felt like he had just run a mile. Stress seared his nerve endings and he began to tremble.
"There we go," Veronica said with a smile.
Setting down the half-full three liter bottle, she prepared to return him to his trousers when she stopped. Biting her tongue between her lips, she ran one hand gently over his shaft and gave him a quick stroke, before seemingly coming to her senses.
Even as she buttoned his trousers back up, Christopher felt sick. The contents of his stomach churned, and he had to fight back the urge to vomit.
He didn't even notice that she had picked up the knife again.
"Now that's done with..." she continued. "I can show you my surprise."
Turning his attention back to her, and seeing the knife, Christopher's thoughts immediately turned torture.
However, in that moment, the girl did something that he didn't expect.
Taking the knife to herself, Veronica dragged the blade around the ring finger of her left hand. Digging the edge in so deep that Christopher was sure she would cut the finger off, she parted the skin and revealed bone and muscle. Crimson blood flowed from the wound and splashed against the carpeted floor.
"What are you doing?!" he blurted out, unable to contain his horror.
Breaking into a smile, Veronica strode back to the chair. Laying her hand down on his left hand, luckily not noticing his dislocated thumb, she wound her fingers around Christopher's own in a bloody clasp.
"Now we both have one," she said. "It's like I said: It's like a wedding ring. That's what you do when you love someone."
Without warning, she reached out with her right hand and slashed the knife over the skin of Christopher's left forearm. Pain shot up the limb like a bolt of electricity and locked his muscles in place. A scream formed in his throat and escaped his lips in a harsh cry.
Veronica just continued to smile. The same dead-eyed, deluded smile. "Sometimes love hurts, Christopher. That's what Daddy used to tell me. And I love you a lot."
Grinding his molars together, Christopher inhaled a deep breath and shuddered with the exhale. Swallowing the pain, he focused on his left hand. Veronica had since released it, leaving both it and the belt slick with blood.
It was his only chance.
"So, what about your parents?" Christopher asked, trying to sound casual, in spite of the pain that he was feeling. He was grasping at straws, trying to find grounds to distract her. As long as Veronica was looking at him, there was a chance that he would be caught trying to escape. No matter how careful he was, there was no way he could slip his restraints while he was the centre of her attention.
Veronica gained a distant expression to her face. She cocked her head to the side and stared at Christopher through glazed eyes, as if she didn't quite comprehend the question. "My parents?" she parroted back.
"Yeah," Christopher confirmed, nodding his head and insisting. Noticing her eyes trained on his face, he used this opportunity to inch his dislocated thumb past the bloody leather of the belt. "Your parents."
The corner of Veronica's eye twitched. Wound around the handle of the knife, her fingertips began to tingle; the sensation spreading through her body at lightning speed. Blood rushed to her head and she could practically feel it bubbling up and filling her skull. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn that Christopher could see the meniscus of the blood rising across her eyes. "Dead." she replied, simply.
She said the word casually, without a hint of sorrow or remorse. Christopher got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that something had happened to Veronica's parents, or rather that Veronica had happened.
That was when she started to babble. The words tumbled from her mouth in a continuous stream of consciousness, like marbles dropping to the floor. "They got everything that came to them, after what they did to me. They wanted me to be perfect, I had to be perfect; I had to be what they expected, and when I wasn't the punishment came, and the punishment meant the water and the closet and- and- and that darn fork. And Daddy would tell me that it wouldn't happen anymore, every time, but it did and-... and it happened so much he stopped saying that it wouldn't, but he still told me that he loved me — Daddy always told me that he loved me — but Mummy couldn't know, and when she did there was the water and the closet over and over and over and over!" Disoriented fragments of her life entered Ch
ristopher's head and flickered in front of his eyes, as she spoke. "I just wanted them to stop, to know how it felt when they did those things to me!"
Storming over to the other side of the room, Veronica flung open a door set into the wall. Spewing from the tiny space a sour, tepid smell assaulted Christopher's senses. He gagged and fought back the urge to vomit again. A dull buzzing filled the air, along with a wet rustling, like thousands of tiny objects were squirming across a damp surface. Evidence of flies and maggots burbled out of the closet, and as Christopher's eyes adjusted to the darkness of the storage space he was able to make out two vaguely humanoid objects. These were the third and fourth dead bodies Christopher had seen in all of several hours and they still filled him with a sickening and vile sensation.
Veronica slammed the door, shutting out the horrific sight, yet the smell remained, lingering in the air and clinging to Christopher's clothes. A crawling feeling tingled over him, almost like he was surrounded by the maggots and they were wriggling over his skin.
"I just wanted them to understand," she continued, the jaded look on her face only seeming to become more pronounced. "I was sad that I had to do it at first, but now... Now I know that they deserved it! For all the times that they hurt me! For all the times that they told lies!"
For the first time since he had awoken, bound to the chair, Christopher noticed something about Veronica. It was her arms. He hadn't realized it before, but her forearms, visible now that she had rolled up her sleeves, were covered with puncture wounds. The majority had healed and scarred, however a number of them still bore darkened scabs.
"Fuckers..." he found himself gasping under his breath. Even in spite of all the horrible things that she had done, Christopher found himself feeling sorry for her; hating how her parents had treated her; figuring that she wasn't born like this, she was created and molded into what she was. Through years of systematic abuse.
"Yeah, the fuckers deserved it," the girl said, turning to the side and flicking her eyes over the blood that smeared the walls.
Christopher was stunned at the presence of the swear. Even dazed as he was, he knew that it wasn't normal, despite how natural the word sounded coming out of her mouth. Up until this point, she had been using synonyms of dirty words, substituting phrases. He realized with a sudden jolt that she was mirroring him. Veronica had heard him use the word and was working it into her own vocabulary, in an effort appear more like him. It was what hopeless people did on dates; copied the behavior of the other person, in a vain attempt to become more appealing.
"Do you want to know how I did it?" she asked, taking a step closer to him and clasping Christopher's right hand with her bloody digits. Her eyes, staring deep into his own, were glazed and still, like tempered glass. "It wasn't as easy as you'd think."
Christopher swallowed hard, feeling his Nash's apple bounce in his throat. Yet he did not dare look away from her eyes. Her gaze was so intense and focused that it bore into his skull.
"Mum told lies," Veronica continued. "Too many lies. So she had to be punished. I waited for them to fall asleep, and went into their room at night. Daddy always had a lot of belts, so I used those to tie them to the headboard. Mum had to be first. She needed to be first. Stabbing her the first time was harder than I thought... But after she woke up, the struggling made it easier. The only problem was how long it took." A horrifying expression of wonder took over her face. "Do you know how long it takes to stab someone thirty seven times?"
Christopher felt his heart kick and lurch in his chest. His breathing quickened and came in short, panicked gasps. The inside of his forehead throbbed, the dull ache spreading down across his brows and settling on his eyes. It felt as if the thoughts storming through his head were attempting to punch their way out from inside his skull.
"Daddy woke up while I was doing it... He kept screaming and screaming at me. I couldn't get him to stop. So in the end, I had to cut his throat. I didn't mean to kill him. I just... I just wanted him to stop screaming." A shuddering smile formed on her face. "But now I know that he deserved it too."
Christopher tried to speak, but the words never came. Horror gripped him like a vice and refused to let go.
The expectation of her next words crashed through his mind like a tsunami. All of his other thoughts were swept away, leaving only a desolate void of fear behind.
Just as Veronica opened her mouth to speak again, however, something happened that Christopher did not expect.
There was a knock at the front door.
Chapter 23
Harold arrived just as Barbara's parents collected her from the scene. He watched as the mother peeled away in her blue Honda, the teenage girl in the passenger seat, while behind the father departed in the car that Barbara had no doubt driven to the scene. Stepping out onto the pavement, the ageing Detective stared at the two cars as they disappeared down the end of the street.
Massaging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, Harold turned his vision back onto the house. Police tape was already strung across the front garden in a blue and white barrier, forming crosses in his vision. Scene of crime officers swarmed the garden, moving in and out of the building, their forms covered entirely in hazmat suits, masks and plastic goggles.
The sea of activity repulsed him, forcing Harold to linger momentarily beside his car. He flashed back to a crime scene in North London, thirty years past. He hoped against hope that this wouldn't end the same way.
The walls built around his life were starting to break apart, and he was terrified of what might spill through, should the cracks widen enough.
Harold pushed his way through the crowd, turning aside the quixotic theories of the uniformed officers as he went. He had little time for the ramblings of the uninformed masses; regarding them in the same way you would an overly optimistic child. Looking back at them, he wondered if there was just something fundamentally different between himself and them: a disconnect between the brain and the mouth where words arrived before conscious thought kicked in. The minds of others just seemed so distant from his own that there had to be something different in the way they perceived and experienced things. Harold often wondered strange things like that. Like if blind people dreamt in sounds, or if the deaf thought in signs.
Bagging his shoes and snapping on a pair of latex gloves, he delved into the depths of the house. Temporary light fixtures had been set up inside, until the forensics team had finished dusting the fuse box for prints, and collecting trace from the under-stairs cupboard. Tampering with the box at this point, to restore power to the house, would have compromised evidence.
Leaning out of the way of a woman, swamped in an anti-contamination suit, Harold briefly flicked his eyes downwards at the small plastic bag held in her hands. No doubt some kind of fibrous evidence collected from the kitchen.
He found Drake Gregory and Perry Wilson stood around the dining table, in the kitchen. Each of them wore gloves, shoe protectors, and sour expressions. While Drake bore the twisted look of uncomfortable pessimism, he noticed something else on the face of the Detective. The curdled expression on Wilson's face was so pungent that Harold unintentionally associated him with off milk. Spoilt, sour and ruining his day.
"-doubt that she saw anything. He was probably long gone by the time she came to check on him."
Harold caught the tail end of one of Drake's sentences as he entered the room. He also heard the response of one of the forensic specialists.
"I think you're right," she replied, her features all but hidden from view. As she spoke, her eyes seemed to overcompensate for the lack of defining features on show, giving her an almost cartoonish air. "The blood on the floor has completely dried. Coagulation happens quite quickly, but not that fast. At a guess I'd say the room's about 20 degrees, maybe a touch colder."
"Meaning that it's been here for at least an hour," Harold cut in. "If we take it that the girl called Drake right after arriving and finding the scene, she can't have arrived more than a ha
lf hour ago. That's still thirty minutes out... At least. I agree with Drake, she didn't see anything."
Wilson turned quickly to face the DCI, just barely managing to discard the annoyed expression that had previously donned his face. Upon closer inspection, a faded smudge of lipstick swiped a line from the corner of his mouth. No doubt from his wife. Harold quickly made the connection and realized that the new development must have ripped him mid-date from his wife.
Too bad... he thought, steeling his gaze so as to not wear his thoughts on his face. You think you're the only one who's got somewhere better to be?
The last thing Harold wanted to be doing was staring down evil. In a perfect world he would be at home with Joslyn, making sure that nothing happened to her. Being there for her in case she needed him. He took a small comfort in the fact that Macie and the grandkids were with her. At least Joslyn was with family, instead of just being handed off to the nurse.
Mechanically, his eyes flicked down to the floor and spotted the hard brown of dry blood, smeared across the tiles.
His heart hitched momentarily in his chest, as he thought about the boy that lived in the house — the boy that was missing. He wasn't with family.
"Has anyone thought to contact his parents?" Harold asked, pointedly staring at Drake.
"Someone should be calling them now," Drake replied, his words catching on the hook of his nerves.
"He left his parents' mobile numbers when he gave his first statement," Wilson added. "As well as the number of the hotel they're staying at."
"Okay, good. What about canvassing the street? I saw uniforms outside, but are you making use of them?" Harold knitted his brows and stared long and hard at Drake, analyzing his response for areas of fault.
"Priority was securing the scene. We set up a perimeter around the house, and we've got a couple of guys on standby in case the press show up. Once more of our guys arrive, though, we're going to start door to door. Probably won't have to, though... All those gawkers outside, someone must have seen something." Drake's top lip curled in a grimace of distaste. "Nothing's private anymore..."