by E. G. Scott
I knew I needed to be patient and wait long enough after my birthday to start haunting Paul and Rebecca. Let them ease into the comfort of thinking they’d gotten away with it and then start the show. At first it was devastating to watch them. My experiment didn’t go exactly as I expected.
They got closer. They appeared to band together. She didn’t punish him for cheating, and he didn’t become cold and distant for what she’d done to me. Watching them support each other made me sick. But without the lows of seeing them reconnect, I wouldn’t have had the highs of flipping the switch on them. And the thrill of reporting myself missing.
When everything was in place, I sent an anonymous email to the HR department of Launaria Pharmaceuticals expressing my concern for a certain employee. I made a call to the Stony Brook police about a missing friend. It was all so easy. Each pebble I skipped along the surface of their boring lives rippled into small chaos. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to their basic existence.
It was so easy taking things from Rebecca. First I took her job, then Duff, then the dove necklace she was wearing in every last photo of her and Paul that I could find on Facebook. Then her ring. I took them long enough to use them to be her, returning what I’d taken to put doubt and unease in her little by little. I took her sense of security at home by lurking in the shadows and shifting things around just slightly. Well, not so slightly. The hammers were a stroke of genius, and I had fun coming up with places to leave them. The bathtub with the blade was a favorite too; part of me thought maybe she’d off herself and cut my fun short, but she’s too selfish for that. Most important, I took her drugs. Sometimes I replaced them. I needed a way to control her capacity to think clearly and her motivation to act dangerously, as needed.
The beautiful part was there were so many things happening outside of what I was doing that made the chaos even more so. Paul didn’t waste any time finding a new sparkly someone. This I hadn’t counted on. It enraged me for a short while, but the value of Rebecca’s suspicion and subsequent fury was too delicious not to savor and use to fuel her borderline breakdown. Watching Rebecca obsessively track Paul provided some of the most rewarding moments. And I was able to stoke her suspicions so easily.
I had fun. I found that my new routines could be different every day while shadowing them. I discovered my criminal side and held up the pharmacy with Sasha’s gun when I needed drugs to control Rebecca. I worked out some unresolved rage when I checked into the Huntington Inn as Sasha, gun tote and all, and threw a private sex party with Sasha’s credit card. I had endless fun placing sex toys around the room and flipping the mattress while I puffed on Mark’s favorite cigar, to make sure his disgusting, smelly calling card was left behind.
I used pieces of info Paul had inadvertently told me over our year together. When I wanted to go to another town to be outside with him and feel like a real couple, he listed all of the places that we couldn’t go because they’d spent time there together or this place was significant to them because of whatever stupid sentimental reason. The little things all added up to a lot of important information. I took copious mental notes.
I loved every minute of leading her to the old spots of her and Paul’s happy life. Assuming her identity. Booking their honeymoon suite. Picking out the necklace and having it sent to Dana’s house. Leaving little bread crumbs of Paul’s double life scattered around, not sure which ones she would pick up and delighting in how many she did. For someone who was so medicated, she was a worthy opponent and played along better than I thought she would.
I almost felt sorry for her when I called her that night, pretending that I was a customer service rep at the credit card company. Her voice sounded so small and defeated and inebriated. She was so clearly impaired and I did wonder if I was punching below my weight with her. But any momentary doubt about my actions was gone when I remembered her bringing the hammer down on my skull.
Paul was lying left and right to Rebecca. He amplified everything I was doing to another level without knowing he was helping me. I liked that we were in step together in some realm. He didn’t see anything that was going on at home with his wife between visiting his new girlfriend and working on the house he’d tossed me into the basement of. It took me a little while to realize he was finishing the house as a kind of memorial to us. It was clear he was trying to reconcile his guilt about what Rebecca had done.
I had fun. I had purpose. I was getting back at all these people who had taken me for granted. As soon as I saw them sigh with any relief or find comfort in the other, I turned up the burner. And when Sasha’s body was found, things got really good. I had no idea how it was all going to end, but I knew it was going to be good.
fifty-six
REBECCA
THE EUPHELLIS TUBE in my trunk is wrapped five times in tinfoil acquired at the 7-Eleven closest to Mark’s house. Also purchased: three new boxes of Paul’s preferred brand of heat wraps, a box of straight-edge razors, and superglue. Following that, I went to Home Depot and purchased three pairs of the strongest nitrile-coated gloves I could find, in small, medium, and large for layering. I’m ready.
After Mark’s, I stashed my stolen bounty in my trunk overnight until I had the time to do what I needed to. I’ll retrieve it all tonight when Paul’s asleep. Knowing the Euphellis is so close brings up the darker days at work, the times I’ve conveniently pushed into the recesses with my increased pill intake.
Euphellis was a mouthful of a drug name when it came out, but it represented exactly what it promised: euphoria by way of skin. The idea behind the stuff started in the right place, providing a parenteral option for the dying in unimaginable phases of pain. Topical morphine, Dilaudid, and fentanyl being the most successful and effective drugs for people who aren’t able to swallow or have painful skin wounds, in particular. Euphellis was a triad of all three. It worked so well it took away not only the pain of the most-suffering patients but also their caregivers.
Not a terrible way to go if you are ready for it, but 50 percent of the casualties were completely healthy people seemingly with their whole lives before them.
The engineers in Launaria’s medical labs were either overly zealous because they’d inhaled or absorbed too much of their product, or grossly incompetent at their jobs for not fully testing all possible vulnerabilities of protective administering gear. The few survivors of Euphellis described it as being on Ecstasy while simultaneously orgasming in zero gravity. Not a bad sales handle. When it got out how powerful it was, trucks of the stuff started disappearing en route to medical facilities overnight.
It was an unmitigated disaster. A lot of people died, and quickly. It was a full rollout for the Euphellis trial, with the maximum number of trial patients and participating palliative and hospice care centers. Only a fraction of the recalled product ever made it back to Launaria.
What did make it back mysteriously disappeared from the recall warehouse before it was due to be investigated and ultimately destroyed. Mark saved the day by keeping the settlements down to a minimum, without the product to scrutinize. No doubt in my mind, he was able to come out the hero as a result of orchestrating the whole disappearing act. Launaria only had to pay out thirteen billion in settlements, versus the fifty-billion-dollar class-action payout speculated by NASDAQ and legal experts.
How he did it exactly, I don’t really know. But I spent enough time watching him and working alongside him doing damage control, so I knew he’d found a way to help himself in the shit storm. Five of my territories were affected and twelve people died. I didn’t know their names or whether they were ill or perfectly healthy. It was too hard to live in that part of my brain so I disengaged from the details. It was around that time that Paul lost his business and I started to self-medicate in earnest.
* * *
WHEN I WALK IN, allegedly from another day at the office, Paul appears to be hypnotized by the absent space where the missi
ng lion bookend used to live. I wonder if it had remained intact, we might have as well.
“Madoo?” The sound of his voice saying my nickname makes me shudder.
“Hi.” I wait for the inevitable question about the ceramic lion’s whereabouts. Our dog is curled up safe and sound at the foot of where Paul is standing, leading me to wonder how long he’s been in that spot.
“Come here.” He starts toward me with his arms open. Duff stirs, raises his head to investigate the disturbance, and retreats back to his sleeping posture. My heart starts to pound as I move to him. Every gesture he makes is a possible assault.
“I missed you. I feel like we haven’t seen each other for days.”
“I’m here.” I tense in the hug. He shows no signs of releasing me.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. Tomorrow I’ll explain everything.”
“Oh?” I try not to stomp on his feet and punch him hard. I fucking know what you’ve been up to.
“I have a surprise.” He is tentative with the word “surprise.” Like he is trying to make a horrible thing sound like something I want.
“Surprise? What for?”
“Tomorrow. All will be revealed.” He finally pulls back and searches my face. His smile is borderline laughing. He’s fucking with me.
“Tomorrow?” I pull away from him so that he doesn’t feel me shaking.
He just shakes his head. “Babe, you and me. Twenty years tomorrow.” His face is tired, but his eyes are excited and clear.
I’m in awe that he’s using our anniversary as a ruse, but I don’t know why I’m surprised. The degree of Paul’s cruelty seems boundless. I pull myself to attention and turn on the good-wife act fast. I put my hand on my forehead. “Oh my God. Of course. Things have been so crazy for the past few weeks, I almost forgot it was tomorrow.”
His face changes into something more serious. I worry I’ve upset him.
“Paul, what is it?”
“Nothing. I just really love you.” His ability to be so convincing is terrifying. My husband, the sociopath. My husband, the murderer. I wonder if he told Sasha that he loved her too before he shot her.
“Me too,” I force.
He sniffles back his feelings. “Listen, I need to go do some last-minute things for tomorrow. Are you going to be okay to do dinner without me?”
I try not to show the desperation of needing him to leave. There is a nagging faint voice between all of my hurt and anger that believes him. That he still loves me. But I know better. So much has happened that I can’t ignore. Every moment that passes I realize how little time I have left to prepare. He’s so confident now, he’s smiling and laughing about whatever horrible, humiliating thing he’s planned for tomorrow.
“Sure. Yes, absolutely. I have some planning of my own to do.”
He moves toward me and I flinch. Luckily he doesn’t notice and kisses me without question.
As he grabs his keys and heads for the door, I ask him without turning around, “Paul, do you know what happened to the other bookend?” Did somehow my shattering it cause all of this to happen?
“Honey. Confession time.” He clears his throat nervously. “I wanted to get the lion with the chip on his tail fixed for you as part of your present. But it got broken on the way to the place. I dropped it in the parking lot and it was too many pieces to glue back together without you noticing. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you for a while. I feel awful. I’m so sorry.”
I am furious. He lies so easily now, and I think about how good it would feel to throw the other lion at his head and worry about the consequences later. I stand my ground but swivel my head and smile at him warmly.
“Don’t worry, baby. It’s only a thing. A cheap knickknack. At least we still have the other one.” My fists are clenched so hard I think I feel my fingernails breaking open the skin on my palms.
He looks relieved. I muster the calmest, most loving voice I can conjure amid my rage. “Paul?”
“Yes, love?”
“If you are heading to the store, don’t worry about stocking up on any more heat wraps. I picked up a bunch for you on the way home. I saw that you were running low.”
Instinctively he touches his arm. “You are the greatest.”
His car is barely out of the driveway before the ceramic lion hits the back of the fireplace and breaks into a thousand pieces.
Any remaining doubts I had are gone. Every part of me tells me that tomorrow is the day.
* * *
PAUL’S BEEN ASLEEP for hours. He got home at midnight and rolled into bed next to me and was snoring within minutes. I waited in the dark, obsessing about what was going to happen tomorrow and wondering why I hadn’t just run away when I’d had the chance. But I never really had a chance. The money was gone. My addiction had gotten too unmanageable. I didn’t have the strength to confront the mess my life has become. I keep coming back to the only thing left to do. Protect myself.
It is three A.M. and I’ve been in the downstairs bathroom wearing three layers of nitrile-dipped gloves and saturating the wraps. I have the window open and a fan running and a mask on my face. I’m surprised at how woozy I feel even with all the precautions, but I shouldn’t be, given how lethally potent the cream is. I need to work quickly. I carefully tear open the plastic on the heat wrap, unfold, saturate, refold, place it back in the plastic, and Krazy-Glue the opening shut. I repeat this three times for each wrap and seal the top of the box that I’ve carefully sliced open with the letter opener. Once I’ve finished, I put the Euphellis tube, the gloves, mask, and glue in a plastic bag and wrap it many times over and put that in another bag. For the time being, I’ll have to hide it. On my way to the closet, I deposit the letter opener and the box of wraps in my purse hanging on the back of the kitchen chair.
I push back to the deepest recesses of the closet, where the zipped wardrobe containing my winter coats is hanging. I unzip the plastic casing and place the paraphernalia in the sleeve of a down coat and zip the bag. I’m walloped with a wave of dizziness and sink to my knees in the dark closet between the snow boots and an upright vacuum. It is a tight space but there is enough that I can fit comfortably and rest my head against the wall. The bottoms of the coats are resting on my head. I am engulfed in a feeling of familiar safety becoming danger. I close my eyes and am transported.
I’m back in the closet hiding. I can hear him yelling. My mother is crying hard. Something hits the wall and shatters. A door is opened and slammed shut. The walls shake. My father growls. My mother yells louder, this time pleading, “No, no, no. How could you? What’s wrong with you?!”
“You make me like this. This is your fault. You push me and push me and push me.” I barely recognize his voice; he sounds like an animal.
She screams back, “I wish you would just go away and leave us alone. Rebecca is the only good thing you’ve ever done, and you can’t even be a father to her. You are worthless.” I’ve heard this fight a hundred times before. I prepare for a long night in the closet.
“You wish that I would go away? This is MY house, I just let you live here. You would have nothing if it wasn’t for me!”
My mother starts laughing.
“Stop laughing at me, you bitch!”
She continues. I don’t understand why she is laughing. Nothing is funny.
“Stop laughing!”
A click. A bang. A thud. This is different. I strain to hear my mother.
“You should have stopped laughing,” he says.
I sit in the darkness of the closet as still and silently as possible while shaking violently. There are no other sounds from my parents’ room for a very long time. I think I hear my father breathing, but I can’t tell for sure over the sound of my own hyperventilating.
At some point I hear the creaking of the floorboards, the flick of a lighter, and the sound of g
lass coming into contact with a surface. My father calls to my mother once, then twice. She doesn’t respond.
He lets out a sound that is part groan, part sigh. And a click followed by another explosion rips through the night.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I emerge. My pillow is clutched to my chest. I creep into their bedroom and see my mother lying on the floor. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open. When I put my hand on her arm, she doesn’t move. I don’t see the blood until I kneel beside her. And it soaks into my nightgown. I whisper in her ear, “Mom? Time to wake up, sleepyhead.” She doesn’t move at the sound of my voice. I push her again and nothing happens. I don’t know what is wrong with her, but I know she’s not sleeping.
I hear my father before I see him. He is trying to say my name but making gurgling sounds instead. Blood is coming out of the sides of his mouth and I start to cry because he looks so scary.
He reaches his arm in my direction. It is shaking hard, and drops of blood are falling onto the carpet below. My eyes go to his other hand, which is covering the side of his face, blood seeping out around his fingers. His eyes are wild and I’m scared to get any closer to him but can see his desperation for me to do so. He’s opening and closing his outstretched hand, and I move in his direction, my pillow still safely covering my chest and throat. I put my hand in his. “Help,” escapes his lips in a strangled whisper. “Phone.”
I start to move to the phone on their dresser when I see the Smith & Wesson lying nearby. A moment of clarity dawns. He did this. I pivot from the direction of the dresser and back toward him, and his eyes widen and he shakes his head back in the direction I was headed.
I look at my mother’s unmoving body and feel an emotion so new to me that it feels as if I am boiling from the inside out. The decision is made before I can fully understand what I’m going to do.
