This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  When we are back on Monday, we sit on the sofa and watch television. I don’t usually like to subject myself to menial flashing images, but we are both so knackered there is nothing else to do.

  She moves toward me and places her head in the curve of my armpit. I don’t like to cuddle, but I allow it as a reward for how much better company she has been recently. She moans as I put an arm around her and squeeze, but a nice moan, a moan of oh this is really wonderful.

  And then the local news comes on.

  “Police are still hunting for the missing teenager who did not return home from school. It has been almost ten days since Mark Cunningham was last seen, and police are appealing for anyone who may have knowledge of his whereabouts.”

  They cut to a press conference with a woman and a man sat behind a desk. The man has his arm around the woman who sobs into a teddy bear. Weird, as Mark was way too old for a teddy bear.

  Maybe it was from when he was a little kid.

  Or maybe he was just some fucking nutjob who still played with teddies.

  “If you see Mark,” says the man, trying to be plain-faced and stern, more so than the weeping woman anyway. “Please, please, let the police know. We miss him so much, and we are desperate to have him back.”

  A journalist in the audience puts his hand up and asks, “If Mark is being held against his will, what message would you have for his captor?”

  The woman looks deep into the camera, as if her eyes are looking at me, piercing into me.

  “Please talk to him,” she says, breaking the stream of tears for just one moment. “Mark is a kind, gentle boy. Mark would never hurt anyone, and if you just spoke to Mark, just had a conversation, you would see that. And you would see that Mark does not deserve to be hurt.”

  I know what she’s doing.

  She’s using Mark’s name again and again as if to try to humanise him. To make his captor see him as a human.

  He was a means to an end, you red-faced wretch.

  And he’s already dead.

  I scoff, unintentionally, at the thought. Here she is desperately appealing, no idea that her boy’s body has already been digested in a farm pig’s gut.

  “He was last seen outside his school,” says the news reader, with the image now cutting to an aerial shot of the school, then cutting to CCTV of him walking away. “This is him walking away from his school, the last image before he disappeared.”

  I look at Flora, realising that she has said nothing throughout this entire report. She wasn’t that receptive to the sight of Mark in the boot, and I wonder if this may shatter the impenetrable pleasure that we have created for ourselves.

  I peer downwards, in an attempt to see her face.

  She doesn’t look back at me.

  Her face is an empty enigma.

  Whatever she’s thinking, she is keeping it to herself.

  I turn the television off.

  I remove her from the curve of my armpit, where her head was starting to get a bit heavy anyway, and I look at her.

  She doesn’t look back at me.

  And this better not ruin it.

  Everything is so perfect, everything is excellent, and if she dares let a little news report shatter the new life we have created for ourselves, I swear, I will gut her right here and now.

  “Look at me,” I say.

  She doesn’t.

  I grab her chin and turn her face toward me.

  “Why didn’t you look at me?”

  She doesn’t say anything. Then she does. She smiles and puts her hand gently on my wrist, which allows me to release the tight grip I have of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice so springy and kind. If honey could talk, it would sound like her.

  “Are you still mad at me for Mark?” I ask.

  She thinks about this, which at first annoys me, then I realise it’s good that she thinks about it. I want a real answer, an answer that will be genuine, not a forced, immediate reaction that would probably be a lie.

  “No,” she says. “I understand you need to do things like that.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugs. “Killing people. You need to do it. And that’s okay.”

  She’s right.

  And as soon as I realise it, the burning itch returns.

  I need to do it.

  And, suddenly, I need to do it again.

  I look at Flora’s throat. So delicate, so dainty. The human body is so easily wounded. You’d have thought the dominant species would be less easy to harm, but just a squeeze of that throat for a minute or so and that indestructible mass of skin and blood would be a vacant mess.

  I don’t want Flora to be the one, though. I want to keep her around. Our lives together are just too marvellous, too wonderful.

  Maybe I’ll go out.

  Before I’ve even considered it, the decision has been made.

  I will go out.

  I will quench my thirst and I will return, fully recharged and ready to continue our life of ecstasy.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “I’m going to go out for a bit,” I tell her. “I won’t be long.”

  “Okay.”

  “I will leave the shutters down.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  What?

  Don’t I trust you?

  I can’t imagine the last few days not being pleasurable for her too, and maybe I should trust her.

  But not yet.

  Not because she asked.

  But because it feels right that she should be left unguarded.

  “In time,” I tell her.

  I go to stand, and she stands and she grabs me and she pulls me close and she kisses me with a wide, aggressive mouth, waving her tongue around mine, and grabs my dick in one hand as she does it and I am so hard, so fucking hard.

  Then she pulls away.

  “Come back soon,” she tells me, and gives me that kinky little smile she has.

  I put the shutters down and I go to my car and I leave. Never mind that we have already fucked three times today – she has aroused me once more, and I feel fierce, and ready to fuck again.

  But I will kill instead.

  Honestly, you should try it. The thrills are almost the same. The pleasure of fucking and the pleasure of killing are like they are entwined, gracefully melded into the same set of senses, where you cannot have one kind of pleasure without the other.

  And I am ready to quell the urge.

  I am so, so ready.

  I COULD

  I could watch him leave from the window, but there is no window I can see out of. I would not even know what time of day it was if it weren’t for the 10 o’clock news.

  As soon as he leaves, I rush from room to room, searching for a window without a shutter. There are so many rooms it takes me more than half an hour to leap from one to another, a frantic panting the soundtrack to my desperation.

  There is no break in the fortress.

  No way out.

  There are no cracks in the walls, no weakness in the foundation, nothing.

  I truly am going to have to earn his trust.

  Let him feel so secure that he eventually allows me to wander in a house not bound by shutters.

  I could take a knife. Surprise him when he returns. Pounce on him and dig it into his neck.

  But there is too much risk.

  I could fail to take him by surprise.

  I could fail to put the knife in hard enough.

  I could lose all the trust I have already gained.

  I know I have no choice. The only way is to keep going, to keep letting him fuck me, to keep letting him degrade me and keep pretending that I love it.

  Three times in one day I have had to do this.

  I have had to scream like he wants me to, at the moments he wants me to, and beg him for more, just like he wants me to.

  I could stay numb. I could keep thinking it’s only temporary.

  I could also be here forever.


  And then it dawns on me.

  A thought that is all the more poisonous than the hundreds of thoughts constantly battering against my skull like drunk scorpions flushing out all hope…

  Someone’s going to die tonight.

  He needs to kill. He itches for it. He fucks me instead, but it’s never enough. He desires it, probably even more than he seems to desire me.

  I could call the police.

  I could see if there is a working phone.

  I could end up being recorded, or it could only dial him, or he could be alerted to a 999 call in some way.

  I could just accept it.

  And that is the most awful thought, the realisation that I am just going to have to live with the knowledge that, right now, someone innocent, like my Mark, like my mum, is losing their life.

  I fall to my knees and I cry.

  I must cry.

  I have to get it all out now, I have to release the emotions and the torment and the hurt and the pain and–

  What if he has cameras?

  What if he sees me cry?

  I don’t think there are cameras, but…

  I could be caught.

  And I can’t make any presumptions.

  Even when he’s not here the façade has to continue.

  I hate him.

  I hate him so, so much.

  I could wait until he’s asleep and he’s next to me and take that opportunity to kill him.

  I could also fail.

  I can’t just be hasty, I have to wait, have to see it through. Have to pretend that it was okay that he murdered Mark, that he chopped him up in front of me and fed him to pigs.

  I could try to wipe the image from my mind, but it’s not in chalk, it’s tattooed there – never leaving.

  The murder by a man who I tell I love and tell I want and cuddle up to like there is genuine affection.

  I could keep kissing the man who murdered my mother.

  I could keep screaming with pleasure as the man who drowned my mother in the kitchen sink drives his cock further inside me.

  I could ignore the pain, I could pretend I do like it, pretend I even love it, I could convince myself to enhance the performance.

  I could live a life full of trauma that I will never recover from.

  In fact, I will, I know.

  But not until I’m out of here.

  Not until I’ve survived.

  All the awful memories, the repeated, forceful fucking, the disgust with myself for letting the man who tortured those I loved even after they died…

  I pick up the phone that hangs in the kitchen, a landline attached to the wall. Out of curiosity, I put it to my ear to check for a dial tone.

  There is one.

  I press a button, and a message begins… “I am sorry, but outward calls are disabled from this device.”

  I drop it.

  I try not to cry.

  Please don’t cry, Flora, please don’t.

  I could get caught.

  I could undo all that I’ve had to endure already.

  I look up to the heavens, but I only see my wooden prison cell.

  I try the shutters again, but I give up on the second one.

  There’s no point.

  I am in here.

  Even if I escaped, he’d find me.

  I could bide my time.

  I could.

  I could… because I have no other choice.

  How will I even know when the time is right?

  I punch the wall. My fist hurts and it reddens but I don’t care, I punch it again. It’s firm and it’s painful but FUCK I need to feel something.

  I have turned my feelings off, killed my pride, my awareness, my tears, and I could keep doing that but–

  I rush to the bathroom.

  The squid lurches up through my throat and lands in the toilet bowl along with bile and blood and wine.

  He thinks he’s treating me. He thinks he’s done this for me. He thinks it’s what I want.

  I could convince myself of it too, as long as I forget my mum, forget…

  I can never forget my mum.

  But for now, she needs to be pushed aside.

  And I am so sorry I have to neglect you. I am so sorry I have to keep having sex with him, keep letting the hands that took your life rub themselves all over my sixteen-year-old body, to put themselves inside of me and around my neck as his sweaty face heaves over me, as if I would actually be turned on by what he did to you.

  Mum, I’m sorry.

  I know you’d want me to survive, but not like this.

  Not like this.

  I could give up.

  But I won’t.

  Because you would not let me.

  I could love you, mum, but for now, I can’t.

  I could love him, and for now, I must.

  And it makes me sick again.

  So I wait for him to return.

  Wait so I can rush up to him and fuck him like he wants me to.

  Knowing that I could not survive another day of this.

  But knowing that I will.

  I could bury you, mum, but I have nothing to bury.

  Please don’t be disappointed in me.

  I could never let a man touch me again after this.

  But first, I have to endure.

  I could endure.

  I could.

  But I don’t know for how much longer.

  Soon, he will return, and he will put the hands he’d used to kill on my breasts, squeezing them, rubbing those hands all over my skin, touching me in every place he shouldn’t.

  He’ll rip my clothes off knowing he will buy me new ones.

  And I will forget about you, mum.

  Because it’s the only way.

  I could hate myself forever.

  I could love him for now.

  And I could not do a single thing to change the mess that I could have avoided had I just said no the first time it ever happened.

  So I sit here, and I wait. For the performance to resume. For the trauma to get even worse.

  And I could do nothing else, even if I wanted to.

  30

  I drive through town with my phone connected to Bluetooth. A Collection – Josh Groban plays, and he’s quite the singer, this chap. I recall watching him in Ally McBeal, back when that was big and I would watch Calista Flockhart, caught somewhere between arousal and confusion that someone that thin could actually exist. I hear she married Harrison Ford, and I wonder how he didn’t crush her.

  I’m already bored. I have barely begun my cruise until I find myself fed up of constantly looking upwards for CCTV. Even if I venture into a domain where CCTV isn’t prevalent, my car will be sighted going into that domain.

  This necessitates the requirement for me to seek someone out in a dimly lit part of the world where I know I will not be tracked and people will dwell that will not be missed.

  This is, of course, the street where you will find the hookers.

  Not the hookers I have previously become accustomed to, I might add.

  See, there are two varieties of hookers.

  There are hookers that prefer to be called escorts. They cost hundreds, even thousands, and concentrate less on just the carnal act of fucking, and more on the fantasy with which you wish to involve the carnal act of fucking. When you phone they will ask your requirements, and there will be an element of conversation beforehand. They will be beautiful, but of all beautiful body types. There really is any sort you wish, and they always ensure they are clean every few weeks.

  Then there are the whores. The ones who hang around the streets, occasionally give money to a pimp or suck their dick for protection as they jack themselves up on heroin, hang around on street corners in fishnets looking fucked to the eyeballs, waiting for some punter to pay them a handful of cash to do something said punter could probably do to themselves with far better execution.

  Escorts, you see, would be missed. They would have family, a high-
class, lavish lifestyle, and would ensure that someone knows where they are going and with which client at all times.

  Whores, no one could care less. If they disappeared off the street, the only person to notice would be the other homeless vagabonds who wouldn’t have to compete any more for what they find in their dumpster.

  And it is just that type of wench I see at the end of this street.

  I park my car and kill the lights. I dislike parking my Mercedes in this street, but I will not be leaving it unattended for long.

  I wait to see if there is a pimp attached to this woman, or if there are friends working this street with her.

  There is not.

  And she can barely stand up straight. She has a cigarette in one hand that misses her mouth and tinges her face, of which she does not seem to feel.

  I hang on for forty-five minutes, watching her having conversations with no one, stumbling around the same spot, and continually hiking her menial leather skirt up every time it rides down her ripped fishnets – and not ripped fishnets in that stylish way some women wear them nowadays; that style really gets me, I like it. They are ripped because they are barely still intact. They look like string around a turkey, pressed against her thighs like barbed wire, her skin bursting through the cracks like Play Doh squeezing through a tube.

  Enough waiting.

  I step out, look up and down the street, and check that my car is locked three times. She can hear my footsteps from the classy tap of my shoes – that sound made with the most perfect of heels.

  She spots me and uses a fence to steady herself. She puts out her cigarette and turns to me and I find smoking deplorable, especially when you can barely afford to eat.

  “Hey, honey,” she says, slurring, stumbling, her eyes widening then wandering away and closing then opening again.

  “Really,” I say, “this is rather abysmal, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Huh, wassat, honey?”

  She looks at me in the way that stupid people do – you know when they’ve said something they think is really profound but is unimaginably uneducated, and they just stare, wide-eyed, expecting you to engage with them just because you happen to be in the same street or mode of transport.