by C. J. Skuse
‘You could go to your sister. I can get someone to drive you over the border, if that’s what you want.’
‘That’s not what I want.’
He downed the rest of his poached eggs. ‘I’m gonna take a shower. Don’t forget your consultation tomorrow. Paco will take you at eleven.’
‘Why aren’t you taking me?’
‘I can’t go to Cabo,’ he said. ‘Even with a facelift, I’m a dead man walking there. Are you making my smoothie this morning or am I?’
I looked away. He set about doing it himself, chopping and blitzing all the ingredients, pouring them in his glass before he said one more word to me.
‘Don’t be miserable, gatita. Enjoy yourself while you are here.’
He scuffed out of the kitchen and headed upstairs.
I sat watching the knife drawer he’d inadvertently left open. I looked out at my little seedlings on the patio, quietly growing away. I would be here to see those flowers grow, one way or another.
Monday, 4 February – Hacienda Santuario
Virtue-signallers who barge into fan forums for the express purpose of educating people on why their fetishes are wrong
The Prossers who’d done an interview with a Sunday newspaper where Jayde agreed with the journalist that I was, indeed, ‘pure evil’
Terminally gullible people who believe everything they read, including that I severed every one of my victims’ penises
American true crime YouTuber and Rhiannon super-fan Dash Kuric who’s got a GoFundMe page going to raise funds to travel to the UK and locate said penises
I didn’t want to kill Tenoch. It didn’t feel right, just necessary. Everything was so uncertain again, like the ground had become unmoored. I was a bad, bad person and I needed to hide but he wasn’t giving me any other choice. There was nowhere else to go. Across the pond, my celebrity was growing each day.
Several more fan sites had popped up since the last time I’d looked. Tumblrs, blogs, Facebook pages, and a couple of teenage crime enthusiasts in the UK had even filmed a video of their pilgrimage to some of my kill sites and posted it up on YouTube – it had over 150,000 hits so far. They’d rocked up at the Gazette offices and Jim and Elaine’s house, leaving gifts of knitted mushrooms and Sylvanians on the gate. Two girls had dyed their hair blonde like mine used to be, others wore sweet peas tucked behind their ears.
People loved me. To the point of obsession.
And these weren’t kids, by the way. These weren’t K-Pop groupies giggling in kitten ear filters sucking on vanilla frappes – some were grown-assed people wearing wedding rings. One woman was even talking about having surgery to look like me.
Knowing that lifted my spirits briefly, taking my mind off my impending bad decision. The ‘Rhiannon Stans’ were causing a wildfire on the socials too. Some bragged about their ‘murderabilia’ – handfuls of grass ripped from the front garden at Jim and Elaine’s, gravel taken from behind the police cordon at the farm shop car park, and some ghoulish website was selling blood-spattered unicorn onesies because there’s a picture of me in one on some night out with the PICSOs on Facebook. Oh, I remember now – Halloween night. They were all witches and sexy pumpkins. I was a killer unicorn.
I miss that onesie. I don’t know whose blood they used for the onesies. Can’t remember whose blood I’d used.
It was like some mad genie had been let out of the bottle, like in Aladdin. And the magic was everywhere.
Over on Twitter, my name was still trending, as was #TheHuntForSweetpea – there had been some hastily cobbled together BBC documentary in the UK, all about the rise in female killers with moi as star attraction. The amateur psychologists were the best part as I read their tweets:
@johnnystaffs6382111231
This was a sensitive portrayal of a tough subject, handled well by the producers and writers. Actress playing Rinannon Lewis in the re-enactments was fenomenal [sic]. What an evil cow!
@MaryQuiteContrary291
I think love plays a significant role in her hate. Look at the murders that occur during the time she knows Craig is having the affair – her hit count goes up, significantly. And during her pregnancy where she says the baby is ‘telling her’ not to kill people – her bloodlust only intensifies.
@SamSmithIsTheyOK58
I agree. She killed the love she felt. For the boyfriend and for the baby. When she feels love, she feels hate because she knows it will be taken from her. I actually feel quite sorry for the lass. #SweetpeaForEver
@GrannyKnowsBest21905
Possibly around the time of the attack at Priory Gardens, love and hate became muddled in her mind. She lost the ability to feel either exclusively and struck at random because of it. It’s textbook.
@MamaCassHamSandwich @GrannyKnowsBest Rinanon didn’t strike at random – she made kill lists. But if you look at the genetics, brain damage, environment, you could see it coming. Her amygdala was damaged at 6. She was a powder keg waiting for a spark. Craig and Lana lit the spark.
@GillyTurner22
You’ve only got to look at her childhood to see where it all went wrong. Smashed over the head with a hammer, years of recovery, vigilante dad. It’s not rocket science. I think she’s amaaaaaaaazing. #IStandWithRhiannon
When I couldn’t take any more misspellings of my name, I switched to the #RhiannonHandwriting hashtag. I couldn’t find the clip on YouTube but apparently some posh handwriting expert had scrutinised my scribbles one morning on Up at the Crack. My stans laughed him off the face of the Earth.
‘Oh yah, you can see by the way the “s” curls up that she’s a psychopath.’
‘Mmm yah, that curl in the tail of her “y” indicates she was into necrophilia.’
‘If you look at the large bubble above the lower case “i”, this is a person who likes to disembowel people for shits and gigs. It’s absolutely textbook.’
Aside from chit-chatter by Twitter-twatters, there was the odd reaction GIF, the odd do-gooder trying to raise money for my victims’ kids, a selection of deepfakes of me with Myra Hindley’s hair, talking about how much I liked to chop off penises and sling ’em in my NutriBullet. Some had me down as Jill the Ripper, complete with stovepipe hat; others talked about the mental health crisis and how we shouldn’t judge.
There were rumours of boiled heads in saucepans (never did that), human pubic wigs kept in a shoebox (it was actually my Sylvanian hedgehogs), several penises in abandoned kettles (nope), a chair upholstered in human skin (Jim and Elaine’s leather Parker Knoll – some photographer had seen it in a skip outside their house) and even that I had once eaten a human pancreas (can’t say I’ve ever felt the need).
And there were interviews with EVERYONE. Jim and Elaine with Tink in her arms, the PICSOs, the WOMBATs. The taxi driver’s widow, the taxi driver’s darts team. Everyone at the Gazette, even my replacement Katie Drucker who didn’t even KNOW me but had found the compass gouges in my desktop saying ‘Linus Sixgill’s a Cunt’. I could hear them all now:
‘…I always thought she was a bit funny.’
‘…I never liked her.’
‘…Priory Gardens. That’s where it started.’
‘…her dad’s to blame, taking her to his vigilante parties.’
‘…she’ll be after her sister next, mark my words.’
‘…that poor taxi driver’s kiddies.’
‘…she came to my hen weekend and killed a fortune teller.’
‘…she chopped him up!’
‘…did she cut off his todger as well?’
‘…she’s sick. It’s that baby I feel sorry for.’
‘…I always thought her coffee tasted weird.’
I’m amazed Tink didn’t pipe up with a well-timed bark of derision.
They interviewed Jayde and Ryan Prosser too, in a little taverna in Malta. They told the press about the woman in Florence, how I’d nearly killed her, how disgusted they were that I’d been around their kids. I spent the whole interview watching for signs of Ty and Sansa.
Wanting to see any little faces. Ivy’s face. That’s whose face I wanted to see.
But she was nowhere.
I’d have killed for one picture of her but Claudia had managed to keep her out of the limelight. She was moving too – there was a FOR SALE sign up outside her house and she’d handed in her notice at the Gazette – some pap shot had emerged of her leaving the office holding a bouquet with a Sorry You’re Leaving! card on it. There was a rumour she was going to London.
Caro hadn’t gone to the press yet. Maybe she didn’t even know about me yet. Where did she think I’d gone that day in Rome? I hoped she didn’t know. I hoped she never would.
They hadn’t interviewed Seren either. She was always a flat hand and a carefully placed hood when the journalists came knocking at her door. As a surviving relative of a serial killer and the grass who’d set the police on my flaming arse, she was hot property and the media hounded her mercilessly, especially Guy Majors, that self-important hack with the Messiah complex.
So I had to stay, that’s all there was to it. If I wanted the sunshine – the stans, the adoration, the glory – I had to put up with the rain – hiding. Hiding from those who wanted me caught, raped, jailed, sectioned, dead or all of the above. Hiding from detectives like Nnedi Géricault whose constant proclamations that they were ‘closing in on an arrest’. Hiding from journalists like Guy Majors who was hounding my sister for interviews, trying to locate Claudia, striving to get the first glimpse of Ivy to see if she had three sixes on her head. All the more reason to have surgery as soon as possible and stay hidden forever.
Or to see if I could reach one of those machetes on the fireplace wall.
And eye up Tenoch’s jugular whenever he was close by.
The more I let the idea of killing him bud and blossom, the more it made sense. I would take down one of those machetes. I’d hide it under my pillow. I would wait until he was asleep, until the snoring started.
And then I would creep, creep, creep, into his room and slice off his head. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
There was one teeny tiny problem: a thirteen-stone bodybuilding cokehead called Paco.
Wednesday, 6 February – Hacienda Santuario
Mosquitoes
Cockroaches
Spiders
Rats
Paco
As far as I could gather, Paco had been Tenoch’s bodyguard from his cartel days and he had stuck around – dropping in to the Hacienda at any time of day, helping himself to whatever in the fridge, changing the channel on my radio or watching TV with his feet up on the furniture. He had the face and body of a Dream Boy but the personality of a rancid sanitary towel.
Paco did anything Tenoch told him to. And if something happened to Tenoch, like an English chick massacring him in the night, you could bet the house Paco would wreak a swift and terrible revenge on his assailant.
A tall, patronising gum-chewer, he had Popeye’s forearms, fingers loaded with rings and always kept a set of handcuffs visible on his belt loop. Every time he looked directly at me, it felt like he was reading my thoughts. It was unsettling, to say the least.
And I wasn’t the only one unsettled. Celestina would avoid him too whenever he was at the house early, which wasn’t often. If he came into the room, she would leave it, whether she had finished her cleaning work or not. And when she did find herself in the same space, he always smacked her arse and laughed as she scampered away.
I noticed one thing about Paco above all else: when Tenoch was around, Paco didn’t talk to me much. It was when he was away that the cat started to play. For example, the car ride to Cabo for my first surgery consultation:
‘Why not you sit in the front with me, chica?’
‘I prefer the back, thanks.’
‘You can play with my radio.’
‘I’m fine. Thanks.’
‘So you serial killer, eh?’
‘I used to be,’ I said.
‘Serial killer once, serial killer for life. They don’t stop.’
‘I did.’
‘How many you kill?’
‘Eighteen.’
He did the Robert De Niro mouth suggesting this was a pretty decent batting average. ‘How you kill?’
I stared him down in the rear-view mirror. ‘Stabbed. Mostly.’
‘Nice.’ He broke stare to look back at the road, draping his right arm around the passenger seat head rest to flex it out. ‘I lost count at fifty.’
‘Congrats.’
He laughed and lit up a cigar that stank like feet and burnt tyres. ‘You ever have pesadillas? You know, the nightmares?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘None of them play on your mind?’
‘No.’
He puffed on his cigar, which I thought was weird because he was such a health nut about his body. ‘Does anything play on your mind?’
‘Not really.’
I thought he was done with me but after a few miles he piped up again. ‘What about scary movies, Rhiannon?’
‘I don’t find them scary.’
‘Oh no? What about IT? Weren’t you scared of the clown in the drain?’
‘Reminded me of my nan. Same shaped forehead.’
I didn’t mean it to be funny but he still laughed, long and heartily, puffing his thick smoke out into the car. I buzzed down my window.
That Ophelia song came on the radio. Paco turned it off.
‘You scared about your surgery?’
‘No. I’m not having much done.’
‘It will be fine, don’t worry, chica. I had some done there myself. They’re the best. It don’t hurt.’
‘I said I’m not scared.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, you will be. You will be.’
Paco liked to dig at me about what I was afraid of, all the time. Tenoch treated me like an equal; someone who moved in underworld circles like they did, but Paco couldn’t see it. To him I was a little girl – a chica, or worse still, niñita. When we stopped for gas on the way to the clinic, he even bought me a lollipop.
‘Thought you’d like something to suck on our journey, niñita.’ And he said it with a wink. A Fuck Wink? Or a Don’t Fuck With Me Wink?
Was he goading me? I thought. It seemed like it. Tenoch never did that – if anything, he always tried to calm me down, but I guess Paco was one of those men who liked women, especially ‘little girls’ to be scared of them. I’ve never understood why, but they do. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, even as a little girl, it’s that you must never show someone like that your fear. Cos the fucker will always use it to take you down.
The clinic itself was spotlessly clean, accented by azure glass partitions, pan-piped Coldplay and over-friendly staff who all looked like they’d gone through the laminator themselves and offered me cactus water every fifteen seconds.
The surgeon – a Mexican Clooney lookalike called Dr Aquiles Gonzales – came recommended by Tenoch, Trust Pilot and the many framed certificates dotted about his office. He was certified by the Mexican Board of Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery and his demeanour was cheery and welcoming but ruthlessly blunt. This immediately put me at ease.
Until he started talking about cutting my face open, that is.
‘So you say you want an image overhaul, a little freshening up, yes?’
‘Yes, that would be good.’
A 3D image of a woman’s body filled the screen – my body, the results of being measured and scanned.
‘So take a look at this,’ he said, adjusting the screen. ‘Here is you. What we have here are your current dimensions, OK? Face shape, jawline, ears, nose, mouth. Down to the shoulders, the breasts, arms, hands, abdomen, genital area, thighs, shins and feet. So you are overweight.’
Any remaining shred of self-esteem flew out the window. ‘Yes, that is a scientifically accurate observation, I guess.’
‘For your purposes, I would recommend liposuction to these areas here (thighs), brachioplasty here (tops of arms) and abd
ominoplasty (tummy tuck).’ He jiggled my saggy pooch without warning. ‘You were pregnant, yes?’
The dark clouds descended. ‘Yeah.’
‘We can get that pregnancy belly gone for you.’
The clouds parted. ‘Seriously?’
‘No problem at all.’ He typed something in again, probably adding a few more noughts to the overall total. ‘Now if we look at your face shape imperfections, I would suggest some otoplasty – we would pin back your ears slightly, because they do stick out.’
Turned out I did have a shred of self-esteem left but he’d just torn it off, chewed it up and spat it out on the carpet. He digitally pinned back my avatar’s ears and immediately, it didn’t look like my head anymore.
‘Wow, yeah, let’s do more of that shit.’
‘Some rhinoplasty will shave off the little hump you have here.’ He smoothed the bridge of my nose with the end of his pen. ‘This should soften things up and change your facial dynamic. The bone at the end – we will shave it down to give you a little turn-up. It will all be incremental – little changes, week by week, until you are transformed. You will look like a different girl.’
‘Good.’
He did the thing on the digital face and changed it with a quick tweak. Rhiannon Lewis had gone in the click of a mouse.
‘That’s fantastic. Is that it?’
‘No,’ he replied flatly. ‘I would also recommend bringing forward your hairline a quarter of an inch as well, removing these moles here and here,’ he said, pointing them out on my neck, ‘and your scars, of course. You mention in your form that you are interested in permanent eye colouration?’
‘Yeah, do you do that here?’
‘No.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘There are risks with any type of surgery and this type of surgery is still under-tested. I will not touch it yet. Everything else, I can pretty much tell you what to expect, what aftercare you will need, what painkillers et cetera. In my opinion, I would not take the risk with your eyes. Continue to use lenses. Your sight is too precious.’
‘That’s good advice,’ I said.
‘So, we will do a couple more consultations to firm up all the procedures you would like to have. Are you sure you would you like to proceed?’