This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  I pretend that she smiles, even though she doesn’t.

  But she doesn’t need to.

  Because in my mind she thanks me incessantly, and she wants to kiss me, but I tell her to wait, as it will be more special in the new house.

  “I will go get you some food,” I tell her. “And some water to wash down any sick left in your throat. And a mop for all of this.”

  I stop wiping her face and I stroke her hair instead, slowly, firmly.

  “Friday, Flora. Just wait until Friday. Then we can be happy, like we always wanted.”

  She closes her eyes and I have to turn away because, I swear, if I see her cry again my mood is going to change instantly.

  I kiss her forehead and I turn to leave.

  I pause at the bottom of the steps.

  I look at her.

  “I really want us to be happy,” I tell her. “I hope you do too.”

  And I leave to go get her some tea before I take Mark to the pigs at the farm. I empty the bag into a troth, and I go unnoticed once again.

  It’s almost getting too easy, you know.

  And, as the urge lifts back up from my stomach and settles into my mind, I realise that, soon, I will need to kill again.

  I HAVE TO

  I have to bide my time.

  I have to think clearly.

  I have to bear it.

  I have to forget about my mother’s dead eyes looking up at me, forget watching her car trickle over the pier while I did nothing.

  I did nothing.

  Nothing.

  I have to live with that.

  I have to survive, because she would want me to survive.

  Because right now, death’s looking pretty good. It’s never been far from my fate, I’ve always dabbled in depression, but never fully explored the passion.

  He says we are moving to a new house.

  Two days.

  Two days is all I have to endure being confined by a damn bicycle chain, to feel degraded and helpless and humiliated and pathetic.

  So pathetic.

  I am pathetic.

  I fucked my mum’s husband. I let him do things to me I thought were normal because I saw it in porn. I watched videos, wanting to see someone loving, wanting to see something that might tell me it wasn’t okay for him to just keep bending me over and shoving himself so far inside of me that I could feel him prodding, barging my insides, hurting me until he came, until I stopped bothering to beg for it to end anymore.

  Sex education opened my eyes.

  Sex education told me that those movies… they weren’t a clear representation.

  But for now, I have to accept them as a reality.

  I have to accept this as my reality.

  I have to make him think I love him. Make him think I appreciate all that he’s done, that confining me and making me piss myself is for my own benefit.

  Because that’s what his deluded mind believes.

  I have to make him think I’m safe to wander around this new house, that those shutters will confine me, make him think it’s okay.

  He told me the other day, during one of his nightly rambles, where he just sits and talks at me as if his sick words are something profound, that comfort is the most helpful characteristic of human beings.

  “Comfort breeds complacency, complacency breeds lethargy,” he told me. That the, “Oh I’m just out for ten minutes I don’t need to close the windows,” attitude is what prompts him to say, “Oh my, they have no idea what I can do in ten minutes.”

  But I do.

  I know exactly what he can do in ten minutes.

  He can strip me down from my waist, plunge himself into me like he was plunging a stingy shit down a toilet, and fuck me until I cry and convince myself it’s normal.

  I have to remind myself it’s not.

  I have to keep some humility.

  Someday this will be a story I tell, an anecdote I share.

  Someday this will be a memory of a time when I became triumphant.

  Someday, someday, someday…

  Someday will never come.

  I have to believe it will.

  I have to convince myself there is a purpose to my suffering, that watching my mum die and watching Mark get hacked to pieces and watching him think he’s doing this all for me; I have to believe that all of this, all of it, will eventually mould into something tangible, something I can use to divert his attention.

  I have to believe in fight or flight. Either I take an opportunity to run, the right opportunity, or I find a knife or an object and bludgeon him to death, stab him until he knows suffering like Mark and my mum did.

  Mark…

  Oh, god…

  I had to watch you…

  I had to watch you, Mark, watch you as any hope of life returning left…

  I can still see that bloody face, those eyes that dropped the way gravity pushed them, and pretend that they would reignite.

  Not anymore.

  Because he chopped you up and fed you to the pigs.

  It hurts to say it but I have to so I can conquer it, I have to acknowledge what he has done so I can achieve victory over it.

  I have to.

  I have to… what? What do I have to do?

  I have to do nothing.

  I have to accept death, welcome it like an enemy I have made amends with.

  I have to pretend there’s a god, so I can pretend I will be reunited with mum.

  But there is no god.

  There is nothing omnipotent and powerful that would allow this to be.

  So I have to be patient and wait for him to fall into his own trap.

  Comfort.

  Complacency.

  Lethargy.

  Even if it takes days, weeks, months, even years – these are the signs I look for. The signs I await. The characteristics he craves in others just as I do in him.

  So I will accept him fucking me, and I will pretend to love it like he thinks I do.

  So I will come to terms with his treatment of my mother, pretend he did it for us, pretend even though my insides twist and my throat lurches and my mind screams a million migraines – I must pretend.

  I can let it all go afterwards. I can confront it then.

  For now, I will appreciate it.

  I will say thank you.

  Thank you for murder.

  Thank you for my torture.

  Thank you for showing me how much I love you.

  He doesn’t even love me, though, does he? He’s just infatuated. Obsession. It’s vulgar jealousy that I had Mark and he did not like it. He fucks my mum and he fucks his whores and he pretends that it’s okay, but my indiscretions are exactly that – indiscretions. Acts of malice.

  And I have to pretend that that’s okay.

  That that’s how it is.

  I have to love him.

  I have to appreciate him.

  I have to want him.

  Because that is how I escape. By creating the right moment that I can make my move.

  So I am patient.

  And I await his return.

  And I will pounce on him and ride him until he thinks I’ve seen the light.

  I have to, after all.

  As it is the only way I am going to survive.

  28

  The two days pass in peace. I only see Flora on the occasion I bring her food and empty the bucket I generously donated to her. My decision to remain unspoken during our brief interludes is a tough one, but I feel I have done enough pampering toward her.

  She needs to reciprocate.

  Reciprocate, or there is no need for me to bring her to this house and give her the freedom to wander.

  Reciprocate, or there is no longer a need for her to remain in my life, or in hers.

  So, on Friday, I allow the movers to come into the house and collect the few bits of furniture I will keep. Honestly, any items I take are going to be put in one of the many, many rooms I will probably never enter or even wander through.
There are seven floors with more rooms than I can count, and I just want them filled. All the rooms that mean anything will be getting brand new furnishings.

  Flora remains silent as the removal men work. She seems to have stopped her screaming and protesting. I don’t know if this is the surrender of hope on her part, or hope that I will resume my attention toward her.

  Honestly, if a man is willing to remove your buckets of excrement and still fuck you, you should jump at the opportunity.

  So, once Friday has been and gone and the evening has arrived, and the new house is ready, and it is time vacate this abode that seems miniscule in comparison, I saunter to the basement, and I pause.

  I wonder what state I will find her in.

  I wonder if she knows that this next interaction will determine her fate.

  I open the door slowly, allowing my silhouette to cast a shadow over the steps. I pause, wanting her to know this is different. This is not the routine of food delivery or wastage removal. This is the final test, the moment that means something. The time when the silence ends.

  My hands remain in my pockets and I take my time inquisitively descending into the basement. It is cold in here, and there is such little light. It is the kind of conditions that brings out who one truly is. Either you cave and you mellow into submission, or you stand up and embrace your realisations.

  Let’s see which it is.

  I stand at the bottom of the steps and watch her. I do not advance, do not move, just stand, and see what she does.

  She rises to her knees. She looks like she’s been crying, but she at least stops it for me. She looks different. No pitying herself, none at all – she is propped up, leaning toward me hopefully. Her face looks weak, but a different kind of weak – a sad weak, rather than a resentful one.

  It is the look of change.

  She is like a pet, greeting its owner eagerly as they return home.

  One of her hands strays from her body, reaches toward me, as if to grasp at me, but to find I am not in reach.

  “Gerry…” she says, and I hate it when she calls me that, but this time it’s okay. It feels comforting, almost. Like a warm embrace.

  She reaches out for me again and I step forward, just enough that her fingers can scrape my belt.

  “I’m sorry…” she whimpers, her voice a whisper, her body hunched in distraught apprehension. “I’m so sorry… you were right… I should be grateful… so grateful…”

  This could, of course, all be a trick. I am not good at reading people and lies often pass me by; hence why I hate deceit in a person. It is a deplorable characteristic, and I would wish a fate of immortal death upon the wretched being who would dare enter into a deceitful exchange.

  But this feels different.

  I am hopeful in a way I have not been since I placed her mother’s head in the sink and watched her drown.

  “Please, come back to me,” she begs. She is on her knees looking up at me and one hand is stroking hopefully down my chest and the other is resting gently on my erection. A naïve person would be fooled into thinking this is an unknowing placement of the hand.

  I know better.

  “You were so right, and I couldn’t see it. You did all this for me and I have been so, so ungrateful. Please take me to our new house, please let us start our true lives together, one where we can share a bed and a home and a…”

  A glint in her eye changes the mood. She can see the arousal in my face, I know it, and her hand presses firmer on my penis and fuck it’s been too long.

  “I want you,” she tells me, a sexy whisper, husky and full of craving. “I want you like I had you before.”

  She sits down and spreads her legs. Her skirt rides up to the top of her thigh and I know what’s under it.

  “Just like you like it.”

  She turns over and she lifts her backside into the air. She is unclean and with days old urine stains on her shins and she stinks abominably – but I am too fucking horny to give a shit.

  She even lifts her hair up, ready for me to grab it, which I do, and she gasps, excited, ready for me.

  I slide her underwear down and it’s tiny and it stinks and I touch her. She’s already wet. I slide right in and she grunts with a feminine pout on each masculine thrust.

  I go harder and harder and she grunts for me, grunts in a way she never used to, and maybe this whole ordeal has changed her, maybe she does feel differently, maybe she has had an epiphany and she realises how much she likes being treated like a dirty little whore, so I treat her like one, and I grab her hair harder and it only makes her scream more and more and more and I turn her over.

  For the first time, I want to see her face as she cums.

  I fuck her harder and harder and I put my hand around her throat and at first she is hesitant, she thinks I’m going to hurt her, but I’m not really, it’s just for show, and she smiles this smile with a sexy half slant and I go in deeper and deeper still until I can’t contain myself anymore and I explode inside of her, grabbing her hair and yanking her head back as I do and she does.

  She screams, but in the way I want her to scream.

  And it finishes.

  And I lie there.

  And I look at her.

  Her eyes seem bigger somehow. Her face is spacious.

  She leans up and she kisses me on the lips. Softly. Like this is something romantic, and she sees that I don’t want that, and she pulls away.

  “Is this okay?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “Sure,” I say, feeling better about it now she’s asked.

  She kisses me again and I don’t kiss back, but at least it makes her happy. If that’s what she wants.

  Her mother was the same.

  Always wanting to kiss me in that moment after where you both remain still and reflect on what you’ve just done. But, unlike her mother, she doesn’t insist on talking. She allows the moment to just be, and we share it together, until I know all of my dick has emptied into her and I pull it out and I stand and I do up my belt.

  I look down at her.

  She looks up at me.

  “I’ll get you some clothes.”

  “Please can you get my flowery dress,” she says. “I know you like me in my flowery dress.”

  Fuck.

  What a change.

  This is the version of Flora I can deal with.

  Always wanting to appease me.

  I rush upstairs, fetch her dress, and she takes it, then asks if she can have a shower first. I allow it, and then we get in my car, her flowery dress perfectly outlining her body that is not such a pubescent body anymore. She has curves that accentuate her slim outline now. She has breasts, albeit small, petite ones – but I wouldn’t want them any bigger.

  She places her hand on mine as I put the car in gear.

  Then she retracts it and looks out the window.

  “Is it far?” she asks. “I am so excited to see it.”

  You’ll love it, Flora.

  You’ll just love it.

  It’s a modern classic, just like you.

  Just like my Flora.

  29

  The next few days pass by like a dream; one of those dreams you are positive is real but just can’t be, as the dream is too damn good.

  Flora loves the new house. She says it and I can see it in her face, the awe with which she looks around, the way she marvels at the architecture and the magnificence of the modern interior of downstairs and the classic interior of upstairs, the way that the coffee maker just dispenses her coffee and the wine she can help herself to in the fridge.

  And not just any wine, either. Not the prosecco she’d get for a few quid from a supermarket or the own-brand value wine Lisa used to stock in the fridge. I’m talking real wine. I’m talking less Thunderbird Classic Pinot Grigio, I’m talking more Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru imported especially from Burgundy. Less Rose Zinfandel, more J.S. Terrantz Maderia, made in Portugal in the exact same year Thomas Jefferson began
his second term.

  Not that I give a fuck about Thomas Jefferson, I just want to highlight to you how old this wine is.

  And some people say a wine ageing doesn’t actually make any difference.

  I would say that those people don’t have the money to buy properly aged wine.

  On Saturday we fuck in the kitchen over the counter, she screams with manic pleasure on every thrust, and she begs me to cum and I politely oblige her.

  On Sunday we stain the sofa in the living room and I have it replaced almost instantly afterwards. I look down at her as I fuck her in missionary – yes, missionary, but not boring missionary as I strangle her and it makes her cum even harder.

  And on Monday my dick aches as we fuck in the hallway and the bathroom and on the first set of stairs. The stairs I enjoy in particular as my thrusts are so impressive that we start on the bottom step and end on the top.

  She begs me for more but I have to let my dick rest. It’s aching too much to even piss at this point, and I love how rampant, how enthusiastic she has become.

  Honestly, it makes me wish I’d killed her mother sooner.

  If this is the life we can live…

  We never make a meal. We order the best takeaway and, on Monday evening, I even grace her with a meal out. She offers to cook for me to say thank you for everything, but I decline – she will never have to cook again. Not with me.

  That is not the life I will subject her to.

  No more fortitude, no more prison service, no more repressed embellished femininity. She can unleash her womanly side and then I can fuck that side then we can eat the most expensive food and throw away the leftovers.

  We go to Carluccio’s on the Monday evening – although, it is no longer Carluccio’s. It has already been taken over by someone else and the name has changed. The same waiters and waitresses, just no fat prick coming out and saying hello.

  Yes, I know I said I liked him, but that was until he almost ruined the homage I had presented to Lisa. There was a right time to reveal the truth, and it was now, not then, and he deserves to be pig’s shit.

  We both order the squid to start and go onto the roasted pork belly to finish. I insist she tries the crème brûlée for dessert and I have the profiteroles. She gets custard on her nose and I wipe it off and she giggles, and I see those freckles again.