Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  Charles inhaled and blew smoke and the smoke rose and the smoke danced in the candlelight.

  “Who will raise the child?” he said.

  “Each of us shall raise the child,” the Comrades chanted.

  He stared at the woman who was giving birth to his daughter. “Who does the child belong to?”

  He needed her to know this more than anybody, for she had become silly in her pregnancy. Not being able to indulge in her beloved mind-altering chemicals had done bizarre things to her metaphysical make-up.

  “The child belongs to nobody,” they yelled. “A child cannot belong, for people are not meant to be cattle. And yet the child belongs to everybody, for a child must be raised to know it is not a servant.”

  Charles puffed on his pipe as he slipped a thumb through his belt loop. “It is the collective duty of everybody to eradicate the collective.”

  He returned to his corner and sat there smoking and fiddling with his pipe as Constance brought the child into the world. The louder she wailed, the louder became the wailing of the Comrades. This was because they were all birthing the child, not Constance alone. It was a fallacy to believe that, because she happened to live within the body that was the vessel for the child, she was solely responsible for its birthing.

  After much screaming and chanting, and agony on Constance’s part – there were no pain-reducing drugs, for they were part of a metanarrative which fooled people into believing life was painless – a baby’s cry filled the room.

  Charles rose and all was silent but for the wailing of the child.

  He walked across the room with his pipe clutched between his teeth and he accepted the baby from the arms of the nurse.

  “Let me hold her,” Constance said, quietly at first. Then her voice rose. She kicked, despite her exhaustion. “Let me hold my baby. Let me hold her! Let me hold my baby! Let me hold my fucking baby!”

  “Comrades,” Charles said, looking at his child’s mother with a lip-curling of repulsion. She needed to get a hold of herself. She’d promised to remember her place during the naming ceremony.

  “Let me hold my—”

  Somebody placed a hand over her ranting mouth, quieting her words. Interrupting the man who’d brought them here, the man who’d let them see the light, was not the right thing to do.

  “We shall name this child Millicent,” he went on. “And like the great activist Millicent Fawcett, she will go into the world and challenge the societal constructs the sheep accept without question. She will be the first of the true changers. She will grow and thrive in an environment without imprinting.”

  The Comrade with their hand over Constance’s mouth cursed as the raging mother bit down, desperate to be allowed to touch her daughter. From the way the child wailed, an impartial observer would be forgiven for believing little Millicent felt the same.

  “She will be the best of us,” Charles said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the baby’s face.

  Did Constance really cry out for her child, begging to fulfil the role she would spend the rest of her life neglecting?

  It’s impossible to know, and yet surely she must have felt something, some ember of maternal instinct in those moments after the birth, with her consciousness clean of the drugs Charles pumped endlessly into her.

  Surely she cared, if only once.

  Or perhaps she shit that little girl into the world without a second thought, shoving her into the arms of the nearest Comrade without even glancing at her.

  13

  Millicent

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie says to the waiter, proving that no matter how much wealth he accumulates, he’ll always be an impoverished self-conscious nobody at heart. He likes to parade around like a big shot, but he’s not fooling me. A truly wealthy man would never apologise to the help. He’s a scared little boy, shivering in the dark, desperate for Mummy to make everything okay.

  Ray ignores the hotel employee and directs his overlarge sweaty smile at our circle of fakers. “Stop saying sorry. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  What a sad lost lamb. He has no idea what to do. Here I am, dressed exactly the same as when we met last, with my hair and my make-up and my clothes purposefully identical, as though I’ve slipped from that night directly into this one.

  He stands there, fish-mouthing, as his wife places her hand on his arm and gives him a private look. I’ve never been looked at like that, with attention and care, with so much knowledge of the inner performance of my soul.

  Hazel is enthralling in the flesh, which bothers me. I don’t feel the itch to cut her as achingly as I did when she gleamed on my laptop screen. Now I feel a different urge, confusing and unwanted. She’s worked her hair into a puzzling weave, criss-crossing, and inlaid the pattern with fire-coloured gemstones to enhance her natural hair colour. Her dress is red. Her heels are red.

  It’s almost like she knows tonight is truly about blood.

  “Relax.” She giggles. I wonder if something lurks beneath the laugh or if she’s truly as facile as she seems. “See?” She gestures at the waiter, retreating with his dustpan and his champagne-soaked rag. “No harm done. I’ll get you another glass.”

  Ray’s hands make a wet meaty sound when he claps them together. He’s such a revolting pig. “Anyway, allow me to finally introduce my queen, my angel, my Millie.”

  When he places his hand on the small of my back, it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to rake my fingernails down his cheek. I can almost feel his flesh peeling off. I can see, smell, taste the blood. “It’s nice to meet you,” I say airily, fluttering my eyelashes.

  “Yeah.” Jamie rallies and offers me his hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  I take his hand and feel the strength of him, and, perversely, I am relieved he’s strong. I stamp down on the feeling. I shan’t allow myself to think such thoughts again. I have to stay true to my course.

  “The pleasure’s mine.” I hold on for a little longer than is necessary.

  He pulls away as though I’ve caused him pain. Perhaps I have. I was squeezing quite hard.

  “Tell him how we met.” Ray nudges my shoulder in that annoying manner of his. Everything about him is simply too much. He reminds me of a man I slaughtered once, three or four kills back, a hobo pervert singing and swaggering along the waterside. He was begging to be pushed in. “You won’t believe this, Jamie.”

  “You tell it, dear. You make it much more interesting than I ever could.”

  Ray grins, hearing precisely what he wanted. It’s stunning how quickly men like Ray will accept what they see and hear. They never stop to dream that the army of kneelers circling them have agendas of their own. They live in a world where everybody wears a mask except them, and, because they are maskless, they assume we must be the same.

  I am not the same as you, Raymond Evans-Leigh.

  “Ah, here she comes,” Ray says loudly when Hazel returns to our circle. The four of us move away from the toilets, toward the centre of the function hall. The band is assembling on the stage. The so-called fun will begin soon. “I was telling Jamie how Millie and me met. You’ll wanna hear this, dear.”

  Not dear, you idiot. Deer.

  “I was at a café, right. You know the trendy one on blah-blah-blah, and the blah-blah, and then she blah-blah and I said blah.”

  I can’t stand listening to him prattle on. He laughs and smiles and I do the same, in all the right places, but mostly I watch Jamie.

  It’s like there are two realities. One is the surface of the water, where Ray and Hazel float, and the other is the deep dark underside. That’s where Jamie and I dwell, stealing glances at each other as we say and do the conventional things.

  Ray makes it sound wonderful and romantic.

  All I did was order a coffee and purposefully spill it on him as I walked by, and then I glittered and fluttered and said I was oh-so-sorry, and before I could even get the apology out of my painted lips, he was calling me swee
theart and ogling my breasts.

  “And we’ve been inseparable ever since!” Ray guffaws. “How’s that for love at first sight?”

  “Love, my Hercules?” I look at him with a devotee’s smile. Father would be proud. Maybe he is proud, looking down… no, up, he’d be looking up at me. “Isn’t it a little soon for that?”

  “Hercules?” Hazel says, and then takes another sip of champagne. That’s the fifth sip since we met. Her glass is almost empty.

  I despise intemperance. When people drink and smoke and inject, they get the confidence to do things they’d never dream of sober. They can detach from themselves and perform all manner of cruelties, no matter how innocent the child is, no matter how desperate for love, for attention, for something real. Get anybody drunk enough and they’ll paint depraved images on a little girl’s naked body.

  I haven’t touched a single drop. I simply change glasses when Ray isn’t looking.

  “It’s what I call him,” I gush, placing my hand on his arm. “Because he’s so strong. He’s like Hercules. Except I think Ray might be a little stronger.”

  Ray cackles and Jamie forces laughter through clenched teeth, but Hazel only takes yet another sip. Her eyes remain on me the whole while.

  She thinks she knows what’s going on here. She sees me as yet another gold digger. I’m sure Ray has had his helping of those over the years, and it’s only natural Hazel would brand me the same. It makes no difference to me. She doesn’t know who, or what, I really am. And Ray is far too intoxicated, both on my words and his indulgences, to care about the opinion of his employee’s wife.

  “Jamie,” I say. “I hear you’re a real up-and-comer in the company. I think Ray even said you were his heir.”

  “I do my best.” He stares at me with rage shimmering across his clean-shaven jaws. The little lad really has made quite the effort this evening.

  “You’re being modest. Ray absolutely sings your praises.”

  You-bitch you-bitch you-bitch, his eyes roar, and inside I prance like a naïve child. This is the most fun I’ve had in years. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. I could kill every man in this room and walk out an innocent woman if I wanted to.

  “I work hard.” He grinds his teeth. I don’t think he knows he’s doing it.

  “Don’t be a dickhead.” Ray chuckles. “You’re much more than a hard worker. You’re my right-hand man. You’re my executioner. You’re the only person at the company who doesn’t skive off every chance they get.”

  Hazel gleams at this praise, as though it was directed at her and not her husband. I refuse to believe she’s as happy as she seems. Doesn’t she know what her husband truly is? What would she do if I showed her?

  They exchange another look. They keep doing that, side-eyeing each other. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were in love.

  “Darling,” I say. “Do you think it’d be rude if I gave them a business card?”

  Ray’s eyes become vacant. He doesn’t care about my freelance writing career. He doesn’t care about anything I say or do if it doesn’t involve flagellating myself at the altar of his ego. “Course not.” He scans the hall for another glass of champagne. The sot.

  I reach into my small clutch handbag and take out two cards. I look down to make sure I give the correct card to the correct person.

  One reads: Millicent Maidstone, Freelancer Writer: Quality Prose Every Time. There’s a phone number and an email.

  The other bears my address – the address of my rented Bristol accommodation – with a couple of sentences written in neat calligraphy beneath: Meet me here on Monday at 1PM. If you’re late, I’ll tell your wife how you like to rape women and sniff their hair.

  I hand Hazel’s over first and, as she’s busy reading it, I quickly give Jamie his.

  His cheeks turn the colour of bone as he looks down. He glances up, his jaws pulsing, his temples pulsing. I know his insides are doing the same, throbbing and twisting and torturing. I know he’s thinking about the violent things he’d like to do to me. But he can’t, and that’s what makes it so energising. The poor lost boy is forced to slip it into his inside pocket and plaster a pretender’s smile to his face.

  “I love your name,” Hazel says. “Millicent Maidstone. Very Victorian.”

  “See, I thought Marvel.” Ray snatches a glass of champagne from a passing server. “You know, how the names always start with the same letters. Like Peter Parker. Um, Bruce Banner? There’s more, but you get the point.”

  Of course the drunkard can’t remember. I don’t care about him though. I care about Jamie. He can’t stop looking at me. This is much, much better than I dreamed it.

  14

  Jamie

  I walk toward the electronics shop with Millicent’s business card in my hand. I’ve never hit a woman, but this bitch is making it pretty damn tempting. Rape women and sniff their hair.

  What a ridiculous thing to say. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life.

  She completely ruined my weekend. After her little show at Ray’s party, I was forced to smile and banter with her the whole night. I wanted to neck as much champagne as I could get down me, but then I might let my true feelings out.

  She was kissy-kissy with Hazel as the jazz band played, the two of them dancing and laughing together. “I know she’s with him for his money,” Hazel said on the journey home, her head falling onto my shoulder. “But I like her. Gold diggers can be good people too, right?”

  Maybe gold diggers can, but I’m not sure about lunatics with a fetish for blood.

  I pause outside the shop. It sells DVD players, which is insane. I wonder if they sell steam engines too. I can’t see an entrance to a flat. I wonder if this is another one of her tricks.

  I’m wasting my lunch break in this grimy part of town. A light rain falls and I can feel a bunch of kids across the street eyeing me up. One of them is pulling wheelies as another takes a massive drag on a joint.

  A man pokes his head out the door. “You all right?”

  “Looking for a flat, mate.” Hazel tells me I sound more working class when I talk to people like this – beer belly, sleeve tattoo, cigarette tucked behind his ear. “I was given this address.”

  “Ah, yeah. I thought you meant flatmate for a second. It’s round the side. Look.”

  He points to an alleyway. It reeks of piss.

  “Millicent lives up there?”

  “Yeah, moved in a couple of weeks ago. I don’t use the flat anymore. Moved in with my missus. Nice little earner, actually.”

  “All right, cheers.”

  I walk past an overflowing bin and find a metal staircase. The door’s paint is cracking. I knock and immediately she calls out to me.

  “Come in, Jamie,” she sings, as though we’re best pals.

  I walk through the small bare flat. It’s clean but there are no personal touches. It reminds me of my first year uni accommodation.

  I find her in the living room, sat on a tatty armchair in a black suit, looking weirdly sleek and stylish contrasted with the cheap surroundings. She crosses her legs and smiles at me. “It was so nice of you to come.”

  “What do you want?” I bark. “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me? You were at my dad’s care home, weren’t you? I saw you.”

  She tilts her head, looking at me like I’m mental. I throw her crumpled-up business card at her. It lands in her lap, but she stays completely still, staring.

  “Talk, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I know what you like to do, Jamie Smithson. I know you like to sneak into women’s houses at night. I know you’ve done it at least twice, and I know deviant behaviour of that sort is addictive, and a man like you, a poor lost little lamb like you, you wouldn’t be able to resist doing it again and again. So, in summation, I know you’ve done it far more than twice.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She giggles. It’s eerie, such a girlish sound coming from her sharp face.
“How many of them have you raped? How many of them have you hurt? How many have you tied to the bed and forced to call you Daddy?”

  “None,” I snap.

  “Oh, that’s right, you’d prefer for them to call you son, right?”

  Pacing over to her, I clench my fists and glare, but she doesn’t move. If I wanted to, I could dismantle her in two seconds flat. Doesn’t she know that? “People have hobbies. I like to ski. This isn’t any different. I don’t hurt women. I…” I trail off, shaking my head. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  “Oh, but you do. I’ve got photos of you meeting with women who don’t look very much like your wife. I’ve got videos of you sneaking into Lacy Emberson’s bungalow, and out. I’ve got you, Jamie Smithson, by the short and curlies, as the saying goes.”

  “Listen, you psycho. If you even think about showing those photos to anybody, I’ll kill you. Do you understand? I will execute you. I’ve got stuff to lose right now, but if you took my wife, my job, my house away from me… just know that, all right? Know who you’re messing with.”

  She stares as though I haven’t spoken. There’s nothing behind her eyes. She’s like a shark or a lizard. She doesn’t look human. “Do you think your fascination with home invasion has something to do with your mother abandoning you when you were ten?”

  I take a step back. There’s something uncomfortable about being so close to her. “How do you know about that?”

  “That sounds like a question. I’d prefer an answer.”

  “What do you want? Money? Do you want money?”

  “It would make sense.” She drums her fingernails against the arm of the chair. They’re painted the same black as her hair, and her eyes are framed in dark make-up. It annoys me how attractive I find her. “Mummy walks out, and poor ickle Jamie is oh-so-upset he doesn’t get to suckle on her ripe tits anymore—”

  “I’m warning you—”