Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  I grin like a jackass all the way through the tollbooth.

  The workday is long, but I’m full of energy when I return to my hotel room… a swanky room, paid for by the company. I spend some time on Skype with Hazel, but afterward I’m left lying in bed at ten o’clock with nothing to do.

  I’ve never enjoyed sitting around doing nothing. TV shows bore me. Books are even worse. I can’t just sit here. I’d head down to the gym but I’m still sore from yesterday’s workout. Or maybe that’s an excuse. Maybe I knew what I was going to do the second I left the Sunny Skies offices.

  I could call up some of the blokes from work to come out with me, but I don’t trust them to keep their mouths shut if they see me chatting up a woman. It creates other problems too. It’s not like I can pull them aside and say, Listen, man, I might randomly leave the club to follow this woman home.

  That’s why, once I’ve showered, sorted my hair, and changed into a fresh suit, I head out alone.

  I take a taxi to a club in the city centre.

  Even on a Monday night, there’s a line out front. The women are dolled-up, university students and older women wishing they were university students. A lot of the men look cheap and soft and self-loathing. They stand like girls with their arms crossed against the slight cold. Or else the bigger ones stand puffed-up, as if they can’t let their muscles speak for themselves.

  I feel pretty satisfied as I walk to the front of the line. “Jonesy.”

  The bouncer nods. He’s a boxer and a vending machine rolled into one. He knows I’ll slip him fifty later if he lets me in. We don’t exchange money now. That’s the way poor people do it. After my childhood, I refuse to act like a poor person.

  “Mr Smithson.” With a nod, he steps aside. “Have a good night.”

  I walk up the stairs and to the bar, sitting at the end of it.

  The club is built with the dance floor separated by a hallway from the bar section, so the music isn’t as loud. There’s a separate bar in the club area, which, combined with their policy of not allowing people to move drinks between the bar and the dance floor, keeps it quiet out here.

  People will be heaving and sweating on the dance floor. I prefer to sit quietly and nurse a whisky. Sometimes – most times – I’ll have a few drinks, make some small talk with whoever’s around, and then head back to the room.

  But then there are the times when my whole world will transform.

  The fun part is I never know what night is going to be the night.

  “Well, well, well, look who’s back,” the barmaid says, dancing over to me with a smirk.

  Yasmin’s probably around forty, a punky type, with one side of her head shaved and the rest of her hair flowing down to her shoulder. She’s got tattoos all over her neck and hands and even one on her face. I can see how some people might be attracted to her, but I see her as a friend. She’s been nice to me ever since I started working in Cardiff. “Still drinking whisky so you can pretend you’re James Bond?”

  I chuckle. “Pretty sure he drank Martinis, baby girl.”

  She shivers and throws me a look. I know she hates it when I call her baby girl. That’s what makes it fun. “Go fuck yourself, Wall Street.”

  “Get yourself something.”

  “I was going to.”

  I laugh as she grabs the bottle, flipping me the bird with her other hand. I reach for my wallet, and then stop mid-movement when somebody bumps into my shoulder. I turn, ready to tell them to mind where they’re going. It must be some drunk arsehole.

  But when I see the woman standing there, staring at me, I can tell it wasn’t an accident. She’s tall and thin and her hair is black. She’s got one of those hipster fringes, almost right down to her eyes. I reckon she’s about ten years older than me. She’s got that stylish older lady thing going on, and it really gets me fired up. There’s something about her eyes. Confident, sassy.

  I smile. “Excuse you.”

  “Excuse me? Do you think we’re blind, prick face?”

  “Prick face? Did you just call me prick face?”

  “It’s bloody freezing out there. And here comes Mr Important, cutting the line, acting like he shits gold. Just who do you think you are?”

  Maybe I’m a little twisted, but she couldn’t have made me more interested if she’d tried. She doesn’t care about me. She’s not trying to impress me. She’s one hundred per cent herself.

  “Well?” she snaps.

  “I’m the bloke who wants to buy you a drink.”

  She rolls her eyes and walks to the other end of the bar. Her black dress hugs her lithe body and it has little jewels on, like stars in a night sky. It’s captivating.

  “Getting a good look?” Yasmin jokes, sliding my whisky over to me.

  “You can’t tell me she’s not nice to look at.”

  “I wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Are you gonna pay or what?”

  I hand her my card. “Her next drink’s on me.”

  “Sure, Romeo, whatever you say.”

  I pick up my whisky and take a small sip. It settles hotly in my belly and immediately I feel my body getting a warm buzz. I won’t take another sip yet. I always pace myself. I’ve seen how pathetic men can be when they’re shitfaced. My old man was a right booze hound before he got ill.

  Yasmin walks over to the woman and they exchange a few words. A moment later, she returns to me, shaking her head. “She says she’d rather drink sewage water than let you buy her a drink.”

  “You’re joking. She really said that?”

  Yasmin smiles broadly, clearly enjoying herself. “I’m giving you the toned-down version.”

  I look over at the woman, raising my glass in a toast. She stares blankly at me for a few moments, and then places her handbag on the bar and roots around in it. She does this for a few seconds, and then brings her hand out, aiming her middle finger at me with an unapologetic smirk.

  Flipped off by two women in the space of two minutes. It’s got to be some sort of record.

  I need to know her name. I need to know more about her. I need to know why she’s nearly forty but she’s at a bar alone, drinking alone, instead of in bed with her husband, instead of caring for her children.

  I need to possess her, to stand over her as she sleeps, to make her mine. To take it back, the pain and the regret. I need to fuck her brains out.

  It doesn’t normally happen this soon. But I can’t deny it.

  The game has started.

  6

  Before

  There were nine of them, all adults, and they were standing in a circle in the small dim room. A bulb hung from the ceiling and it was a naked bulb. It threw its light, but only dimly, and in the centre of the room there was a chair and on the chair sat a woman. The woman was frail and thin. She looked forty, but that was life’s cruelties working its dark magic on her; she was only twenty-seven. Her name was Constance.

  The room was called the Rainbow Room because it could be any colour. To the untrained eye it was a dull stony grey, but that was only if the observer was unfamiliar with Charles Maidstone’s conception of reality. Charles was a wealthy man, an academic, and the leader of this group.

  Everything was nothing; nothing was everything. Language was unreliable, as were perceptions.

  These were his tenets, and it never seemed to matter to Charles or his followers that they made no sense. The more confusing and indecipherable his babbling, the more they believed.

  They were morons, right down to their leader: stupid fucking morons.

  Charles was tired of academia so he had moved here, to this ignored part of England, to bring into reality what he had written extensively about. Nothing existed except for the narratives by which people lived. Religions, sciences, schooling, addictions, relationships, pleasure, pain, hope, work, sex… everything only existed within the constructs by which people lived. It was patently untrue, but honesty and dishonesty were tools of the system – or so he said – and thus evidence didn’t mat
ter.

  Charles had inherited a great deal of money from his family. These means, combined with a near-spiritual conviction this was the right thing to do, had led him to this countryside cul-de-sac. He had paid over asking price for most of the properties, and if a homeowner didn’t want to sell, he found ways to make them see reason.

  Here they were, the original settlers, and they were welcoming a new devotee to their cause.

  Constance wore no shoes. Her toenails were cracked and caked in mud. She looked around the room with a mixture of fascination and fear as the Comrades’ humming got louder and louder, timed purposefully with Charles’ footsteps across the room.

  He loomed over her. “What is your name?”

  His eyes peered from horn-rimmed glasses. He wore his beard wild and tangled. His hair fell in grey-brown sheets.

  “Constance. But people call me Connie—”

  Charles slapped her across the face with so much force she fell from the chair. The momentum caused the chair to collapse backward. As if by machine-driven reflex, one Comrade righted the chair and another righted the person. Constance wheezed and stared up at him, as if captivated by a flame, her eyes flickering with something reflected in this man, her master: this man who had found her on the street, fed her, fucked her, and brought her here.

  “What is your name?” Charles’ tone was unchanged.

  She knew what she had to say. They had rehearsed this. It was part of the ceremony. “Constance. But people call me—”

  He hit her. She fell. The chair fell.

  Everything was returned to its rightful place, as the Comrades hummed, and their humming got louder, and the room was filled with their humming and the light danced in their eyes and none of them wore shoes.

  Charles stepped back and held out his hand. Somebody tenderly laid the grip of the pistol against his palm. The world would’ve been a much better place if he’d put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Instead he let it sit there for a few seconds.

  “The gun is loaded,” he said.

  “The gun is loaded,” the chorus came.

  “And?”

  “And the gun is empty.”

  “And?”

  “And the gun is loaded and it is empty. The gun is a cat in a box, both living and dead.”

  “Yes.” Charles stepped forward and laid the barrel of the gun against Constance’s head. It must’ve been cold, or she must’ve been scared despite her previous conviction, because she shivered. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Constance moaned.

  “What do you wish me to do?” Charles said.

  “There is no do,” Constance whispered. “There is only say.”

  His beard twitched with the suggestion of a smile. “Fine. What do you want me to say?”

  “I have wasted my life. I have no purpose. I am a whore but it’s not my fault—”

  The Comrades chanted, “It’s not her fault, it’s not her fault.”

  “Society made me this way. I am different but society doesn’t care about differences, only narratives, and the narratives are bullshit anyway.”

  “Good,” Charles said. “Now do it, my dear. Do it and die. Or become one of us.”

  The woman’s hands trembled as she reached for the gun. She grabbed the barrel and opened her mouth and she put the barrel in her mouth.

  “Do it.” Her words were distorted around the metal of the gun. “Do it. Do it. Do it.”

  The humming reached a crescendo and then fell silent when he pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Cheering exploded in the small grey multi-coloured room. It sounded like one voice. The Comrades had practised this moment for hours and hours to achieve the right sound.

  “Good.” Charles smiled, letting the gun drop to the floor.

  “I’m… nothing?” Constance murmured.

  “Silly girl. You’re everything. Now, claim your prize.”

  He reached into his pocket and brought out the glass pipe, and he lit it, and he took a long inhale and handed it to her. Her hand snatched out eagerly, betraying her need. She took a large hit.

  Oblivion fell. And, for a sweet moment, she really did believe the walls were a rainbow.

  7

  Millicent

  This place is truly repulsive.

  The bar was probably shiny proud silver once, glittering when it was freshly made. Now it is a patchwork of stains and stickiness. The façade remains – it is still, technically speaking, silver-coloured – but it doesn’t glitter as it must have in the beginning. The music is far too loud, even from here. People constantly walk back and forth between the entrance and dance floor and the smoking area and the toilets.

  What a pathetic waste of life, I try to tell myself, as I watch a group of young women flutter by, laughing, carefree, confident in the knowledge they have each other and always will – for tonight, at least, and that might as well be forever. Yes, how sad, what a useless mass of unspent energy. And yet there is, truthfully, a part of me that longs for such a connection.

  I repress a sigh and offer a cattle smile to the barmaid. She smiles back, and then leans forward with a secretive glint in her eyes. I despise myself for being able to read her expression, but I’ve forced myself to pay very, very close attention to the quirks of people’s faces.

  If I am to imitate them, I must know them better than myself.

  “He’s still trying to come to terms with what you said,” she says, and then makes an homicide-inducing little laughing noise. “That was top quality.”

  I toss my head. “Some men think they can do whatever they want. I think it’s our duty to put them in their place, don’t you?”

  “Oh, definitely,” the barmaid says, before wandering off to serve somebody else.

  Definitely, really?

  Perhaps she’d like to grip the blade next time I go hunting. She’d faint at the first sight of blood. Maybe I’ll shove a rag of her own in her face and see how tough she is then.

  Still, it’s tumbling together as I knew it would. Jamie isn’t the sort of man who deals with rejection well. I try not to let any nervousness erode this moment, but I can’t deny there’s an ember of it within, trying to spread and become something more.

  He is, after all, the man I may die for.

  When I put him in the dirt, I don’t intend to do it in the dark. I’ve done too many of my important deeds without the aid of the light. When the police discover what I’ve done, they’ll want to take me someplace murkier than a park at 1am. I’ll do what is necessary, as I’ve done my entire life.

  I would rather slit my wrists and hang myself than lie entombed within cold metal bars.

  Another gaggle of women passes me, with the obligatory vulturine men trailing after them. “Come on,” a woman caterwauls, waving her hands like she’s having a fit. “I love this song.”

  “Taylor Swift,” one man says, and I picture what it would be like to drive a screwdriver into his overly groomed beard. “Why’s it always gotta be Taylor Swift?”

  Shut up, you foolish nothing, you non-entity.

  Sometimes I wish it was culturally acceptable to spit in people’s faces. Fucking pathetic weasel, trailing after them like a dog for scraps.

  I take a sip of my diet Coke. There’s no alcohol in it, but one can drink Coke at a bar without looking conspicuous.

  I envision smashing my glass across Jamie’s clean-shaven cheek as he walks over to me. “I think we got off to a bad start.” He takes the seat next to mine. “I’m Jamie.”

  “Okay, Jamie.” I keep my voice mostly cold, but let in a little flirtatiousness, enough to let him hope. “Now I know your name. That really has made my day much better.”

  “Aren’t you going to return the favour… your name?”

  I look down as though I’m shy, which isn’t entirely an act. Looking him in the face is difficult. He has something of his father in his eyes, even if they’re not the same colour. There’
s something there: the intent.

  I can tell he likes the shyness. He thinks he’s making progress.

  “Millicent.” I sound like the most chaste choir girl in the village. “But everybody calls me Millie. Are you here to piss me off even more? I should warn you, I’m not in the mood for arseholes.”

  “Bad day?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe a drink’ll help, eh?”

  I gesture to my glass. “I have a drink.”

  “A real drink.” He adjusts his shiny cufflink. I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose, to draw my eye to this statement of wealth. Should I give him that much credit? “I’ve been watching you since you came in. There’s no alcohol in that.”

  I giggle. “Okay, creep.”

  Oh, look at me, such a delicate little flower. Do come and pick me, kind sir.

  “Hey, I’m just looking out for you. Sitting at a bar with a non-alcoholic beverage. That’s, like, a crime.”

  Like-like-like. What is this modern fascination with saying the word like? A man shouldn’t have to punctuate his sentences with that word, over and over and over. He should get a lash across his back every time he says it, to cure him of the habit. I’d happily wield the whip.

  “Am I striking out here?” he says.

  “I didn’t realise we were playing a game.”

  Which is a lie. It’s just not the game he thinks.

  He chuckles, looking closely at me. It’s unnerving and I wish he’d stop. I don’t like the way it’s making me feel, the things it’s making me remember. His eyes are truly, unashamedly, unequivocally captivating. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman like you, Millie.”

  I roll my eyes, oh-so-precious, even if he’s right. He has no idea how special I am. But he will. “If I let you buy me a drink, will you promise not to use any more cheesy pickup lines?”

  “What line? I meant it.”