by Matt Shaw
“Sorry that took a while,” she said, “I couldn’t get her back to sleep. She wanted to come down for a glass of water.”
“How did you stop her?”
“You said you wanted to talk. You wanted to get things straight between us so we could put all of this behind us and move on.”
“I meant what I said in the dining room,” he said.
Cathy didn’t move from the doorway. She was standing with, her arms folded in front of her, “The bit about no one wanting me because I’m a single mother of five children?” she asked.
Jeff shook his head, “The bit about us making a go of things as a couple. I’ll love your children as though they were my own. I’ll be a better father than your ex-husband could ever have been. I’ll provide everything. And I’ll love you.”
Cathy smirked as though everything from Jeff’s mouth had been both an insult and a poor joke. Jeff had noticed a change in her behaviour. She was standing there with a look of superiority on her face. Anyone looking in from the outside would have thought she was the one with the upper hand but Jeff knew that wasn’t the case. He was the one who had the upper hand. He was the one who was winning this and he was the one who had the cards to play. All else failed - he was the one with the sharp knife which had already been battle-tested.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, almost irritated.
Cathy didn’t answer him directly. “The medication wore off Cleo. I’m sure the other girls will stir soon too. There are two dead bodies in the dining room; my husband and your wife. Yet here you are thinking you can make everything better.”
“We can close the dining room door. We can tell them there was an accident in there, a leak or something, and they can’t go in there. Gives us time to sort it out. Bury the bodies ourselves; you have a nice garden.”
“Bury the bodies in the back garden? Because - you know - it’s a proven thing that serial killers get away with doing that. They’re never caught.” Her tone was laced with sarcasm. Gone was the scared woman, here to stay was the fighter.
Jeff felt uncomfortable.
“We’ll make it work.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’re talking in order to find a way,” Jeff pointed out. “What do you suggest?”
She shrugged, “We just wait.”
“Wait?”
Cathy nodded.
“Wait for what?”
Cathy smiled as blue flashing lights from somewhere outside, illuminated part of the living room. Jeff’s face changed to one of panic when he was hit with the sudden realisation Cathy hadn’t spent all that time getting her daughter to go back to sleep but rather she had spent it on a phone instead; calling for help. Jeff and Dawn had made sure the landlines were out but they hadn’t considered the mobiles.
Cathy turned and made a dash for the front door, in order to let the police in, but Jeff was right behind her - the knife firmly back in his hand. As he reached the hallway, he raised the knife in the air, ready to plunge it into Cathy’s back as she struggled with the lock on the front door.
A scream from the stairs startled them both but only Cathy turned to see who it was. Cleo again, no doubt sneaking from her bed to fetch the glass of water from the kitchen.
Cathy saw the scared look on her daughter’s face.
She saw the tip of the blade.
She felt the searing pain as it pierced her eyeball, slicing it in two as it continued past into her brain.
She heard a knock on the front door and another scream from her daughter.
She smelt a smell similar to burning toast as she dropped to her knees and fell face first onto the floor.
Another knock on the door.
Police calling from beyond.
The sound of the door being kicked open.
Cleo screaming.
A blackness closing in through the good eye.
A fuzzy image of Jeff running up the stairs.
Cleo running from him.
Gunshot.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Fuzzy image of someone falling down the stairs, falling close to where Cathy lay.
Blackness.
The sound of footsteps running in from the front.
The sound of a petrified daughter.
A barking dog.
A single thought running through her mind as everything else went numb: the children would grow up without parents.
~ FIN
