This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  “No, Flora, I honestly do not. Please elaborate.”

  She turns and looks at me and never has she appeared more like a petulant teenager.

  “Mum,” she says, and it takes me a moment, and I realise she is still referring to the incident from the previous afternoon. I thought we were done with that, and I find it quite irritating, but I must remember that she is different and she may not quite have come down off the adrenaline yet.

  “What of it?” I ask.

  “What you did to her,” she says, then corrects herself: “What we did to her.”

  Ah, yes.

  This is what I hoped for.

  By involving her she now feels partially responsible. She has not said anything to anyone today, which means she cannot claim she was coerced, considering she has not admitted what we did – (one thing that I should praise her for, and I make a mental note to do so) – and she also feels responsible. She was there, she helped, did as I instructed. Most likely out of fear, yes, but at no point did she run and with the lawyers I can afford they would batter that point right into a jury.

  “You did well today,” I say, as a sudden burst rather than a well-articulated sentence, and I regret the way my desperation to offer her some positive reinforcement has skewed my ability to form semantics.

  I try again, this time slower.

  “I mean, aside from drawing unneeded attention to yourself with your foolish yet oddly admirable shenanigans, you did well. You said nothing, and you showed that I can trust you. And that’s real progress, really it is.”

  I put my hand on her leg and she flinches and I do not like that she flinches.

  Before I can say anything about it, a sudden smell wafts over me, like rotting, and I wonder what on earth is wrong with my car. I must remember to get a new air freshener and just as I think this thought the petrol light comes on and beeps at me with three assertive electronic noises.

  There is a petrol station ahead, and so I pull in. It is empty and I pull into the first bay, kill the engine, and turn to Flora, reaching my hand across and putting it in her hair. She tries to move out of my reach, so I grab her hair and force her to be still. Once she cooperates, I stroke her hair instead.

  See, I can be affectionate.

  “What would you like for tea tonight?” I ask. “Anything, I will get it.”

  She frowns at me.

  “Sooner or later you need to stop this attitude, Flora.”

  “You really don’t get why I’m upset, do you?”

  “I have been wondering.”

  “You really can’t understand any part of human emotion, can you?”

  I sigh. “I struggle to comprehend some aspects of human nature, but that is only because my intellect is far more advanced. I do try, Flora, but if you are feeling a certain way you need to spell it out for me so I can understand.”

  She shakes her head. The tears are back.

  Those bloody tears.

  What purpose do they serve? And why do they keep reoccurring?

  “Flora, this needs to stop,” I say. “Your behaviour has been most erratic.”

  “Are you going to kill me too?” she asks, a sudden change of tone.

  “Why, what would make you think that?”

  “Because you said you would.”

  “Only if you spoil things for us, Flora.”

  “What if this is not what I want? What if I didn’t want to… What if I…”

  She struggles to end the sentence and she cries again.

  “How would some wine sound?”

  She wants to say something, I can see it, her face is too tense, but something stops her. Fear, maybe. Awareness of how impatient I am growing.

  I step out the car. I need a moment.

  I fill the tank with petrol and decide that she can choose the wine. That would be a nice thing for her, would it not?

  And so I tell her this, to no gratitude in return, and we walk into the store. I pick up some bread, the most expensive loaf they have, though expensive would be a farfetched way to describe anything in here.

  I take her to the wine section and she doesn’t pick one, so I pick one for her.

  We take the items to the counter, and the acne-ridden teenager bags them for us.

  “Take these to the car,” I say, thinking some responsibility may make her feel valued. “Put them in the boot for me.”

  And, as I take out my wallet, she does as I ask.

  She walks to the car as I hand over my credit card.

  She goes to the boot, presses down the button, and opens it.

  And that is the point I remember.

  And the reason to that odorous whiff becomes so pertinently clear my hand freezes over the pin-pad.

  Mark is still in the boot.

  24

  Mark.

  Fucking Mark.

  Fucking fucking Mark.

  She opens the boot and she can’t move and I can’t get to her quick enough. I batter in my pin number, ignoring the offer of a receipt, and rush to the car.

  She is just turning to run as I grab her wrist and pull her close, so close that no one will notice my restraining her.

  The boot is open and Mark’s eyes stare up at me. His face is pale and discoloured and some kind of bloody foam seems to have come from his nose and his mouth. He smells like something fierce, something I cannot quite articulate into a succinct set of words for you, my dear voyeur, to quite comprehend. If you have never been near a dead body after a few days then you cannot quite understand the smells it contains, and it surprises me that this odour did not alert me more as I drove.

  Now, it is immense. The boot seems to have contained it, and now the smell is unleashed. I look around to see if anyone has noticed.

  No one seems to. One guy holds his nose but looks around helplessly for the source. I look up and the CCTV is on the other side of the car, pointing into the petrol station, and there is one by the shop front but not one that seems to be in any way directed at this car.

  I close the boot, thankful that this slip up has not cost me more dearly than the perturbed look on Flora’s face.

  She tries to pull herself from my grip so I grip tighter, tight enough that her wrist turns purple. She is crying again, but at least she is now being quiet about it. She stares at me in a way she has never stared before, like she sees someone other than me, like I am not the person she has known and fucked behind her mother’s back.

  “Please, let me go,” she whimpers.

  “You don’t want to go,” I tell her.

  “I’ll scream.”

  “You’ll scream?” I can’t help but grin. “Go ahead. You’ll be a non-discreetly petulant teenager who doesn’t like that they’ve been suspended from school, and I will see it as a case of distrust and ensure that you suffer the same fate as Mark.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I am not doing anything to you.”

  If anything, it is Mark I have done something to.

  “Please, just let me go.”

  She tries to pull her arm away again but I can see her hand has gone numb and she can do little to remove herself from my grasp.

  I look over my shoulder and the teenager at the checkout inside the station is staring. I smile and nod and hope that he minds his own fucking business.

  “I did this for you,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “He made you cry. I saw it.”

  “You were spying on me?”

  “Oh, please. The way you were flaunting Mark about, did you really expect not to incite any jealousy? I presumed that was the purpose to your incessant texting.”

  “I was texting because he was a boy I liked. And you were married to my mum, and if anything had reason to prompt jealousy, it was that.”

  She has a point.

  “But he hurt you. He upset you.”

  “Because he’s gay!”

  “Well, I did not know that at the time. Did I?”

  She
tries to pull her arm away again, so I tighten.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she lies. “I won’t. Please, I’ll just run, and we never have to see each other again.”

  Now that hurts.

  I feel my heart shatter and splinter into too many pieces for her to ever be able to put together again.

  It is in this moment, in this extraordinary claim, that I realise: Flora does not want the same things as I do.

  All these things I’ve done for her have been for nothing.

  She’s an ungrateful wretch and a cow and a fiend and I have gone to all this trouble for us to have a great life, and she has gone and blown it all in one little sentence.

  She never wants to see me again.

  I repeat it to myself over and over, and each time it stings just that little bit more.

  But I am ready to give her one more chance.

  It will be on my terms. And it will not be as she wishes.

  “Get in the car,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says, though it lacks conviction and it’s so pathetic it barely registers.

  “Get in the car or I will gut you.”

  She finally complies and I walk to the door with her, opening it and seeing her in. I do not remove my eyes from her as I take myself to the driver’s side.

  We resume the silence we had at the beginning of the car journey, but this silence is different. It is more morbid, more sinister. It is the silence of heartache, of pain, of dreading the sad future that is to befall us.

  I can’t believe that it has come to this, that I must force upon her the doting characteristics that she should so willingly have already given.

  When we arrive home, I take my car inside the garage and kill the engine and neither of us move. We just sit there, caught in the midst of whatever hurt has been caused.

  Why, dear voyeur, do you assume that I feel nothing?

  Is it because you see me as dissimilar to you, or that I have killed three people to date?

  Never forget, I am not dissimilar to you. In fact, I am you – just the version of you where you are not contained by the conditioning society has instilled on you since birth.

  You are put into school and told how to think, what to do, and taught to know right from wrong even though right and wrong do not exist. A lion killing its prey is not seen as wrong, yet a human doing it is?

  Come off it.

  We are animals, all of us.

  We can domesticize ourselves as much as we think, but our animalistic urges will not be contained.

  We want to kill.

  We want to hunt.

  We want to fuck.

  And that is all we are.

  I get out of the car and retrieve a large bicycle chain that I used during my bike phase several years ago. I thought I could conform to society’s standards and expectations by finding a way to push my urge into exercise.

  See, I was like you once – trying to direct my impulses into something considered the norm.

  I take the padlock off Lisa’s bike that she still claims to use – sorry, claimed to use – and I walk to the passenger side, open the car door, and look at Flora looking back at me.

  “Get out,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head.

  “I said get out,” I repeat, dumbfounded by her insolence.

  “Please…”

  Oh, this again.

  I grab her arm and I drag her out. After ensuring I have locked the car, I pull her into the house and through the living room. She puts up a small fight, trying to pull her arm away and pulling on my grip, but I only tighten it and this only hurts her more.

  I kick open the door to the basement.

  “No, please, no!”

  She resists too much and I can’t get her in.

  I throw the bicycle chain and padlock down the stairs and use my now spare hand to grab the back her hair and, with all my strength, I drag her down the steps. She pulls and ends up falling and batting her knees on each of the steps on the way down.

  I throw her to the floor and mount her so my head is over her feet before she can resume her fight.

  She struggles and kicks and thrashes but I manage to pin on ankle down, put the chain around it as tightly as I can manage, and use the padlock to lock it into place.

  I find another padlock Lisa used to lock a drawer containing what she called our important papers. I tie the other side of the chain around a large metal radiator and use the padlock to secure it. I always thought it was ridiculous to include a radiator in your basement, but it has finally served its purpose.

  I stand back and admire my work and she is laying there, tugging on the chain to no avail, trying to wriggle her ankle out of it to find it doesn’t even move.

  And, eventually, she stops.

  Looks up at me.

  So weak and so vulnerable.

  And, honestly, despite the sadness of my having to do this, the sight arouses me. Flora chained up and submissive, ready for me to dominate her.

  I walk over to her and crouch beside her, take hold of her chin and pull her head closer to mine.

  I go to kiss her and she bites my lip and pulls away.

  I taste blood.

  Honestly, I know I should be angry, but it only turns me on more.

  I place my hand on her leg and run it up her thigh and she bats it away.

  I try to mount her and she struggles out of my grasp.

  “Leave me alone!”

  Now this is not what I expected.

  “Don’t touch me! I don’t ever want to be near you again!”

  Oh, Flora, if your wish to runaway hurt, then it was nothing compared to this hurt now.

  Which makes it even more important that I persist.

  Because I know you feel it when I’m inside of you, I know you do, and I know you will stop saying all these hurtful things when you feel it again.

  But, just as I grab hold of her hair and begin to turn her over, I am distracted by a loud knock on the front door.

  Flora screams out an almighty scream, screeching and shrieking and pounding against my eardrums with such ferocity that it gives me a headache.

  I grab a towel or a cloth or whatever it is and tie it around her mouth to muffle the sound.

  Now her arms… What of her arms…

  I search for a rope, but I cannot find any.

  She wriggles out of the towel/cloth.

  The knock comes again.

  I guess I’ll just have to rely on the security of the basement’s sound proofing. Whoever it is, I will keep them on the front porch, or in the kitchen should it be necessary, the room furthest away from the basement, and the room with knives that I can use to dispose of whoever it is should they grow suspicious.

  She continues to scream as I go up the stairs. I do not leave a light on for her as she does not deserve it.

  I close the door and listen. Her screams are only mildly audible. I should be fine.

  Hopefully.

  Those knocks repeat again.

  I walk through the living room and peer out of the window.

  I see them.

  My mind goes to a bad place, but I remind myself that I shouldn’t jump to assumptions.

  There could be any reason why a police car is parked on my drive.

  25

  My first instinct is to glance at the knives in the kitchen and decide whether to get one and hide it or just keep it in arm’s reach.

  Then I remember, these are police.

  They are trained to deal with untrained assailants with knives. They have tasers, pepper sprays, asps, and there are two of them who have been in far more fights than I’ve ever been in.

  And, even if I did manage to overpower them in some miraculous occurrence, what then?

  Killing a police officer is different.

  Kill a kid, their parents will cry.

  Kill an officer, every other officer will be after you. And they will not treat you well when you get arrested, and when they get you back t
o the station, there will be a few eyes looking the other way…

  No.

  I am just going to rely on my cunning and my wit to outsmart them.

  And, failing that, the most expensive lawyers money can buy.

  I put my hand on the door handle, ready my mind, and open it. I feign surprise.

  “Officers,” I say. “Is everything okay?”

  “Good morning Mr Brittle, we are here about your wife,” one of them says, and I sigh a huge sigh of relief.

  I have not been caught. Of course, I haven’t. I was careful, methodical, smart. I outwit an evidence hunter with ease. Forgetting about the dead body in the boot of my car aside, I am not an idiot.

  Besides, that body was different – I was so distracted by the disposal of Lisa I forgot about Mark. It will not happen again.

  “May we come in?” the officer asks, and I notice they are both carrying their hats, and they have stretched, solemn faces.

  “Yes,” I say, and usher them in. I guide them to the kitchen where I pause, and listen to see if Flora can be heard.

  As it is, she cannot.

  “We have some news,” says the officer who hasn’t spoken yet. “Maybe it would be best to be sat down?”

  I don’t really wish to sit down but I do not want to seem difficult, so I take a seat at the kitchen counter.

  “We have found what we believe to be your wife’s body,” he says, and I open my mouth with shock.

  “We believe she may have taken her own life,” says the other, so sad, and I look sad whilst on the inside I am jumping for joy.

  They think it’s suicide.

  How stupefyingly wonderfully marvellous.

  “How?” I ask, stretching out the vowel sound.

  “She drove her car into her lake and drowned.”

  “Are you sure it was suicide? She would never hurt herself!”

  “We still have to receive the report from the coroner, but there are no obvious lacerations that suggest an attack.”

  I banged her head, didn’t I?

  Will they find that?

  Then again, she could have banged her head as the car went into the lake. I think I may be clear on that one.

  “Well…” I really wish they would go now, but I need to maintain the performance. I put my hand to my chin and stare off into the distance. I think about attempting to conjure tears, but I know I would fail to do so.