by Stuart Keane
She smiled, astounded by the utter luck, a feeling that intensified when she realised she’d followed her new cohort to the shower a few moments later. She didn’t have any blood on her feet at the time – somehow – but the grisly, uncomfortable feeling as it slid and dribbled down her hot sweaty flesh, the liquid oozing into the sensitive nooks and crannies of her body that made her squeal and shiver and chuckle, like the penetrating rain in a heavy downpour, was intense and vivid. Hell, on three separate occasions she had flinched uncontrollably during the massacre, spraying the walls with excess blood from her fingertips. Again, she looked at the carpet, marvelled at its fortunate cleanliness, and smiled.
Her eyes flicked to the end of the hall and she noticed the office door, now standing ajar, the interior uncharacteristically silent. She tried to recall the graphic events of that afternoon, which had occurred over the course of several pleasurable hours. The murder, the mutilation, the bloody violent epiphany, and the concluding shared shower. It seemed like days since she had last set foot in her home, such was the magnitude of her sudden evolution only a few hours ago, but the freshness of the copper smell and the cloying damp in the air told her otherwise.
Odette shrugged off her coat, carefully balled it on top of her handbag, and walked to the bathroom. Gathering a bucket and mop, along with some towels and carpet cleaner, she headed to the bedroom for a quick assessment. She spotted the first smears of bright blood on the half-closed door. Her stomach upended, flipping a little, and Odette was suddenly glad she had refused a Danish from the diner. She swallowed air that felt like pure concrete, took a deep breath, and pushed the door with a firm knuckle, easing it open.
To prevent fingerprints? You live here.
The second voice had a point, and it left Odette with a difficult quandary.
She wasn’t an expert on police protocol by any means, but when it came to Gavin’s sudden violent murder, and the subsequent discovery, she had a strong inclination that she would be suspect number one. Partners and wives always were when their husbands were murdered, it was textbook.
She groaned, taking in the scene before her.
The double bed was drenched, every inch of the bundled bedclothes a dark glistening red. In places, shallow pools of crimson had formed in the creases of the sheets, and shimmered under the blood-flecked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, the yellow light hindered by the bodily mess around it. The overall hue of the space streaked onto the pale walls, turning them, and the entire room, a vibrant pink. On further observation, Odette saw multiple spatters and sprays of blood of all shapes and sizes beneath the pink glow, the walls newly decorated with Gavin’s messy insides.
As she moved her foot forward, it knocked against a discarded hand, Gavin’s, which was severed at the wrist. The pale bone protruded from the stump, itself soaked in blood. Raw muscle and tendons lined the bone, ragged gristle flopping onto the carpet like torn red cotton, and the skin was frayed and shredded in places. A small pool of blood had formed around it, the surface of the liquid a dark, crusting brown. Odette remembered that the apartment possessed underfloor heating, and nodded.
That could present a problem, it could speed up the decay. Remember to turn it off before you leave.
She kicked the hand with a probing toe once more, unbothered by the notion. She shrugged, stroked it aside with the edge of her foot, and moved into the room. She wanted to check on something, and soon found it behind the bed.
Gavin’s naked, headless corpse sat slumped against the wall, his slashed neck now nothing more than a dark gouged hole. The pulpy muscle circled a small, uneven crevice where the spine had once resided, leaving a dark, deep void in its absence. It reminded her of a fleshy pipe, its end aiming to the ceiling with no real purpose.
His untoned chest was a mishmash of puffy welts, swollen nicks and deep, painful slices that reminded her of oversized papercuts, the pale flesh cut perfectly both horizontally and vertically. Blood had dripped and oozed to such an extremity that it formed an uneven sheet of red across his flabby form. Some dribbles remained alone, streaking unevenly off to the side. Odette noticed curled hairs poking from the crimson mess, the strands glistening in the light. She didn’t look down at his legs, or at the carnage between them; she’d spent hours there, enjoying herself, lapping at the spilt blood as she castrated the cheating cunt, playing a mutated form of ping pong with his severed testicles. The violent image was still raw in both senses, and would be for some time. Behind his body, a smear of blood painted the wall, a result of his skinned back. Shay’s brutal handiwork. Odette licked her lips, and couldn’t help but groan deeply.
She came to an obvious conclusion.
The mop and bucket would be useless here, as effective as a sponge in the ocean.
She remembered Shay’s idea of burning the place down, and seriously considered it.
Twice, three times. She stroked her chin, her eyes narrowing.
Odette ambled to the bedside cabinet, opened the drawer, slid her pink vibrator aside, and withdrew her oak incense box, complete with worn Zippo. She couldn’t smell the scented sticks over the now-turning stench of blood, and even held the lighter in her steady hand for a long moment, her thumb pressed on the flint wheel.
Simple. Light a sheet or a curtain. Even better, find one of your beloved books and use the pages. You’ll soon have the place burning.
Go on, you know you want to. Use a book, strike a chord against the written word. We’ll call you Edgar Allan Pyro, it’ll be a cool nickname.
Fuck that.
Really? You become a murderer and still cherish your books. What a loser!
Fuck off.
Still, she had a duplicate copy of Stephen King’s Firestarter that might just work.
Odette considered it for a moment, chuckling. Then, she shook her head.
“No,” she said aloud. “Why highlight it? Fire is an obvious cover-up. Insurance companies are all up in its business. I need something … better, more subtle.”
She pocketed the lighter, replaced the box in the bedside cabinet, and walked to the door.
Then, a glint of metal caught her eye from the end of the bed.
Nestled between a large, crumpled sheet of bloody skin was her knife, the one she had used earlier on. She knelt down, gently lifting the skin from the floor with a hollow squelch. It fell to the floor with a thwap and curled into the corner. As she collected the knife from the ground, holding it at a sensible arm’s length, she smiled. The crusted blood along its serrated blade took her back a few hours, and made her gasp.
She remembered castrating Gavin with the knife, slowly and purposefully, slitting his wrinkled scrotum and detaching the testicles. She had felt alive, immortal, and untouchable; for the very first time in her mundane life. The distinct sounds came back to her, a visceral soundtrack of the mutilation itself, one that would play on repeat in her shattered mind for years to come; the scratch of coarse pubic hair flittering on the blade, the effortless slice of the withered skin that sounded like the cutting of a succulent rare steak, the wet plop – although she didn’t expect the sound to be so hilarious – as his testicles slipped from their safe haven and bobbled onto the carpet.
Gavin had murmured and cried throughout, his entire body trembling, his hands hardly raising from the blood-soaked ground. At that point, he was entering the fragile stages of shock, and his skin was paling and sweating. She wasn’t sure what had started the normal bodily function, but looking at the discarded sheet of skin – with the familiar gaudy musical note tattoo that previously adorned his lower back – she had a rough idea.
She recalled Shay sliding her head beneath the sheet while it was still attached to Gavin’s trembling body, to have a nibble on his exposed spine and muscle, and remembered the skin bulging smoothly over the back of her head.
A fleshy balloon. She thought it had looked like a fleshy balloon, all hideously bloated and stretched but perfectly rounded by Shay’s intruding skull. No, it resembled a
big ball of pus, like a shiny, painful pimple had been mutated before her very eyes. The thought of a spider laying a vast, distended egg sac beneath his skin had been her third thought, and actually made her gag before Shay has stripped the torn flesh and tossed it aside like a soaked towel.
Odette turned to face the headboard of the bed. She chuckled loudly, pushing her brow into her hand. After a few minutes, and when the initial surprise had left her completely, she glanced up and nodded, thoroughly impressed. During the bloody chaos, she had missed Shay’s final act of brutality, her thoughts consumed in her own butchery, her first of its kind. Odette looked at the ‘memorial,’ for want of a better word, and discovered she was a little jealous.
Gavin’s intact, gristle-clad skull balanced on the headboard, the hole behind the mandible acting as a makeshift anchor point. Through one of the eyeless sockets, Odette noticed a wooden spur from the middle of the headboard, thrust deep into the cavity. She saw pink tissue puffed around its tip, the wood glistening with dried blood, and realised Shay hadn’t removed the brain. Strips of flabby flesh still adorned several parts of the mutilated face, the pale flesh outshone by the pinkish bone that glistened from beneath. A small tuft of hair remained on the top of the head, flanked by a sliver of skin, the isolated patch of hair seeming strangely inadequate in the grand design of it all.
Most impressive was the spinal cord, intact and still attached to the skull via the foramen magnum – the hole beneath the skull, one of her many rhyming tips from the difficult revision back in college. She smiled, impressed that she could recall the Latin words for great hole. The vertebrae, its magnificent column congealed and stained with stringy viscera and bloody rotting flesh, snaked down the headboard, stopping an inch from the pooled mattress, the feather pillows that normally decorated that end of the bed now discarded.
Oh, we should soooo keep it, a fabulous trophy from your first ever kill. Please. Please. Please say we can keep it? Pleeeeease.
No.
Why not? It’s so shiny and pretty and round. It’s almost like a giant diamond with eyes and a mouth and several holes you can stick your tongue in when the need arises. A fucking no-brainer, literally once you clean it out. Imagine shoving it between your legs when you get yourself off? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but skulls should be for life.
No.
Why not?
Because I said so.
Spoil-fucking-sport.
It’s bloody evidence, you moron.
The voice remained silent.
Odette found herself gawking at the skull, mesmerised. Her eyes observed its sloping contours and design, the deft ridges, the line of the jawbone, the perfect bow of the eye sockets. She didn’t see Gavin in that skinless face – not that she expected to, she’d never seen him minus a visage before – and didn’t see the man she once loved, the man who offered her a financially stable future, a man who changed her life forever and, something she knew would affect her in due course, a man who broke her heart. Gavin was the first, and only, to pull off such a crushing feat.
In the skull, she now saw … nothing.
The way it should be, she thought.
Odette chuckled. Poor guy.
Well, he should have kept it in his pants.
Odette nodded, not replying to her inner voice.
I need a solution.
And she knew, right then, that the knife was the answer.
So simple, she thought.
Taking one final glance around the red bedroom, she stopped in the doorway. Taking a deep breath, she rubbed the blade on a curled up sweater sitting atop a dresser beside her, and wiped away the congealed blood. With the blade reasonably clean, she placed the shining metal against her hand and sliced her palm open, flinching, hissing as a fiery pain erupted down her arm.
She closed her fist and watched the blood spit from within, dripping onto the carpet and running down her wrist. As she flexed her muscles, and kept her hand below waist level, the trickle of blood became heavier. It began to thud on the carpet.
Right, she thought. Now for the hard part.
Stepping carefully, Odette walked around the bedroom methodically, leaving a small trail of blood. After a stunted semi-circle, she stopped by the bed and paused, allowing a significant amount of blood to dribble onto the soaked sheets. The shimmering pools plinked and sploshed as they increased in size.
Ducking her head forward, she pulled several strands of hair from her scalp, stretched them to their maximum length, and sliced them at the base with the blade, one swift cut. The hairs wobbled and coiled on the air, before settling on the blood below.
Perfect, she thought.
Odette grabbed one of the useless towels from the equally useless bucket and wrapped it around her bleeding hand. She cautiously walked to the door, nearly clear of the bloodshed. Careful not to leave any footprints, she stopped at the edge of the blood, as one does on the beach when the rippling tide is near enough to soak your shoes. The clean edge of the carpet stretched out inches before her, unblemished. Using her toes, she carefully shuffled her shoes off, one by one, stepping onto the clean carpet as she did so. Odette lifted the shoes and threw them at the bed. They bounced off the mattress with a dull thud and landed on the floor.
I’ll miss those shoes.
Yeah, well, buy some new ones. You’re such a fucking woman.
Odette smiled. Yes, yes I am.
Tying the wide laces on her DC trainers, Odette pushed her freshly showered hair over her shoulder, shivered as it slapped her back with a wet splat, and stood up slowly. She surveyed the room with a diminishing fondness, knowing this would be the last time she would ever grace the room with her presence. The fresh essence of her clean clothes, and a gentle unique smell that only existed through the intentional absence of living – she’d only slept in this room once, years ago, and they rarely had guests – made her smile, brought back fond memories. She felt a small turmoil in her stomach.
She didn’t want to leave her home.
Awww, diddums! Suck it up, you cowardly bitch. You did this, you and Shay picked your destiny, now live with it. Or, deal with the repercussions of your murderous ways.
I suppose you’re right.
Besides, you weren’t extremely happy, were you?
Both good points, she thought.
Odette glanced down at her clean jeans and white t-shirt, her mind lost in a thoughtless haze, and sniffed the stringent essence of her tea tree shampoo. Her clean bra tugged at her lithe shoulders, the straps a little uncomfortable on the clean flesh, which was normal. She glanced at the fresh bandage on her palm, checking it was clean and free of blood, and ran her hands down her front, smoothing some small creases from the garments.
Fresh clothes, fresh outlook on life.
A new beginning.
She lifted a crumpled Tesco bag of clothes from the bed – no suitcase; that would look suspicious in an investigation since it was registered on her home insurance policy – and exited the second bedroom, which was used as a walk-in wardrobe by both her and her deceased boyfriend. She placed it on the floor in the hall and chuckled. Taking one final look at the main bedroom door, and roaming her gaze over the bloody smear on its surface, she collected the bag, sighed, and walked down the hallway. She stopped beside her handbag, paused, and bit her lip.
After a second, she upended the handbag, spilling the contents onto the floor. Tampons and various makeup items and a thin diary, not to mention a purse and her mobile phone, all thumped to the carpet. Kicking them around to portray a hasty mess, she tore her purse in half, the seam ripping and showering a mass of plastic cards and change. Once it was empty, she took careful aim and threw it at the framed picture on the wall. It toppled to the ground, shattering and spraying broken glass.
Navigating the mess, she strode down to the office, nudging the door aside, and lifted a pen from the desk. Locating the wall safe, one that was hidden in plain sight behind a ridiculous pot plant, Odette used the tip o
f the pen to punch in the security code. After four bleeps, the safe thudded. She hooked the pen into the handle, gripped both ends, and pulled it open. Tossing the pen aside, she wrapped her hands around thick four bundles of cash.
Finally, Gavin’s paranoia about the banks and their protocols has paid off. A wealthy man, particularly an OCD graphic designer, is always going to be suspicious of other people handling his cash. It used to annoy her, drive her to the brink even, but now?
Now, it had a major benefit.
She smiled, returned to her Tesco bag, dropped the money into it and sighed, looking at the front door. As she covered the top of the bag with her coat, she stopped, a burning heat rising within.
Am I really doing this?
She didn’t answer as her eyes closed, and a dark realisation finally lowered the curtain on the previous chapter of her life. As she opened the front door, and pocketed her door keys just in case, she realised nothing would ever be the same again.
Nothing.
Am I really doing this?
Yes, yes I am.
VI
Shay walked from the café and headed directly down the street, passing a neglected row of old charity and betting shops. It was now night and the weakened October sun had settled long ago. The streets seemed unusually quiet, occasionally dotted with the odd, late-night shopper. A couple of homeless people were begging on street corners. She held her hands up in defiance as she passed, signifying that she had no spare change.
This town really has gone downhill.
Reaching the intersection, she glanced over her shoulder before crossing the road to ensure she wasn’t followed. As far as she could tell, the coast was clear.
She cast her mind back to the strange conversation that had just taken place with Odette, and a mischievous grin crept across her face. She couldn’t comprehend that there was someone else just like her out there in this world, let alone someone who was willing to partake in a macabre game so audacious and so ruthless. She had too many excitable thoughts running through her mind. Her mean streak looked forward to the reign of terror that was about to ensue.