by Zoe Caldwell
Rita still lives in the town where we grew up, she still drinks in the same bars, still dates the same loser guys. She has a job in retail and drinks her weekends away. She’s never had the ambition I have. She had a rough childhood too, but she’s not interested in changing her life. She’s not like me, and yet, in my lowest moment, I missed her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to be drowning my sorrows, having a laugh. I called Rita and told her my husband had died. I asked if I could come and stay with her for a few days. She agreed and I jumped on a train out of London feeling almost normal: a girl who had family to turn to in times of crisis.
When I got there, things were okay at first. I’d forgotten Rita’s smell: Daisy by Marc Jacobs mixed with apple shampoo. I’d forgotten the way she always wore baggy men’s jumpers around the house and plaited her hair in a side ponytail when she got home from work. I’d forgotten how she’d always sing in the shower or when she was cooking, and how nice and note-perfect her voice actually was. I’d forgotten the way she’d compulsively draw on things: receipts, bus tickets, flyers – doodling, like a graffiti artist. I liked reacquainting with these things, realising that somewhere within me was a reserve of details like this. Memories. Memories that didn’t cause pain. A neglected sense of familiarity.
I began to settle into Rita’s small flat, sleeping in her tiny spare room. I’d watch TV while Rita was out at work. I’d tidy her place, go to the supermarket. I went for walks around the local park, visited the cinema. I started to feel okay, like I was healing. I began appreciating sunny days, a good song on the radio, a nice lunch at the local pub. I even latched onto the storyline of a soap opera. I didn’t give too much thought to how long I’d been at Rita’s, I figured I’d be there for as long as it took to feel better, because that’s what family’s about, right? Supporting each other through the hard times.
But then one night, Rita came home late. She must have gone out after her shift.
I was curled up on the sofa, watching TV when I heard a man’s voice, loud, from outside. I thought it must be a dodgy neighbour and I wanted to look like no one was in, so I lowered the volume.
‘Let me come back, baby, please,’ the man begged.
‘I can’t, my cousin’s here,’ Rita replied, her voice heavy, slurring.
They’d clearly been out drinking.
‘Oh come on, who cares?’ he protested.
‘I can’t. Just leave it. Next time,’ Rita replied.
I felt like jumping up off the couch, opening the front door, telling them I didn’t mind, that they could do their own thing. I’d go for a walk for a bit. I felt bad for getting in the way, and yet I was also touched that Rita was being so considerate.
‘Come on, baby. Your cousin won’t care. She’s probably in bed,’ Rita’s man suggested.
I moved to get up and put my shoes on, when Rita spoke up again.
‘She won’t be in bed. She waits up for me. It’s fucking annoying,’ she said.
‘Why?’ her companion asked.
‘I don’t know. She’s just kind of desperate,’ Rita replied.
‘She can’t be that bad,’ the man insisted.
Rita laughed. ‘She is. If you met her, you’d understand,’ she joked.
‘Well I would, if you’d let me,’ the man teased.
Rita laughed again. ‘Seriously. She’s just weird. She’s a fucking drag. She always has been.’
‘I thought you said you guys used to hang out?’ the man commented.
Rita scoffed. ‘Yeah, only because she had no friends. No one else would hang out with her. My dad felt bad for her because her dad hated her and her mum topped herself. He’d give me twenty quid to hang out with her. I’d just take the money and get drunk,’ Rita explains.
‘Fuck!’ The guy laughed. ‘Why did you let her come back?’
‘Felt sorry for her.’
‘Well, it’s been ages. Get rid of her. I miss touching you. I miss being with you.’
I imagined him cuddling her, kissing her neck.
‘Move out of your dad’s then, and we can go to your place,’ Rita teased.
I pictured her joke-punching his chest. Him grinning. A kiss.
‘Or just get rid of your freak cousin,’ he suggested.
‘Don’t worry, I’m on it,’ Rita groaned.
I pointed the remote at the TV, turned it off and dashed upstairs to bed.
The next day, I was gone. I never spoke to Rita again. She never tried to contact me. She was probably relieved I disappeared, probably still is.
I have no family. No one. Not one person. It’s strange how that makes you feel. I’m alone. Truly alone. Sometimes I feel liberated. There’s no one to impress. No pressure. No expectations. I have no relatives asking why I haven’t settled down yet. No birthdays to remember. No taxing family gatherings to attend. I’m free of all that and I’m free to be me. People think family is everything. Families give them a sense of identity and belonging, but with that comes limitations. Consciously or subconsciously, people define themselves based on what their relatives have achieved. They aspire to similar ideals. They frame their dreams within the framework of their family’s dreams, but when you have no one, you can be anything.
I left Rita’s and arrived back in London with a mission to reinvent myself. I changed my name. Revamped my looks. Got a fancy new haircut. Got Botox, lip fillers, implants. Bought a shit ton of new clothes. I sold Gerard’s old house and bought a flat in Mayfair. Hung out with new people. Got a job at Couture. The part of me that had been craving support went cold. It simply froze over. I was empty, alone, held back by nothing.
Yet even though it’s freeing, in a way, not to have family or anyone to disappoint, the flip side is that there’s no reason not to be terrible. I sometimes wonder if I’d have snapped the way I did if Rita had loved me. Despite everything I’ve been through – my mum’s suicide, the abuse I endured as a child, Martin, Gerard – I think I might still have been able to draw a line under things and move on, if Rita had just loved me. But when I realised that no one did and no one cares, then there was no point trying to be good anymore. I had nothing to lose.
I tried to date, like a normal twenty-something, but that didn’t work out. There’s something off about you when you’ve been abused, when you’re damaged, broken. You’re different. Men can sniff the pain in you like dogs. I’d put my makeup on, wear my nicest dresses, go on dates and try to be on my best behaviour but they never bought it. They could see the cracks in my eyes, the holes in my soul, the emptiness waiting to be filled. Men aren’t knights in shining armour – that’s fairy-tale bullshit. They’re not looking for someone to save. Men like simple girls. Off-the-shelf girls. Ready to go. Easy company. Decent hearts. They’re not there to heal you or rescue you. I thought my looks would help. A bat of my lashes will make a man do a favour for me, but it won’t make a good guy fall for me. My pretty face isn’t valuable enough currency to make up for the scars. The men I dated picked up on the trauma, the voids, the hurt, and they didn’t want it in their lives. They didn’t want it in their homes. They didn’t want its legacy in their children.
I tried not to let it hurt me, but it did. I realised I could never move on from my past. Every man who fucked me and disappeared reminded me of home. I’d lie in bed, texting some idiot, wondering if he’d want to see me again, and I’d get ignored, unmatched, ghosted, and I’d think of my dad. I’d think about the way he used to creep into my room, use me, and then creep out again like it was nothing. I’d think of Rita, laughing about what a drag I was. And I’d feel pain. Pure pain. Pain, pain, pain. Pain no amount of money could take away. Why had I had to end up like this? Broken beyond repair. Irredeemable. Every man an incarnation of my dad. Why had fate decided I was trash, the kind of girl who could be used and discarded? And why couldn’t I recover from it? I wanted to. I tried different tactics. I tried not drinking on dates, suggesting wholesome things to do, dating men I met through friends, men I’d heard were decent. I
tried holding out, not having sex, and it made no difference. It always amounted to the same. It was like the moment the men were inside me there was no pretence anymore. They could just sense I was nothing. A void. They always left when they had their fill. I’ve stopped trying now. I don’t look for love. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. I like what I’ve always known. I like to be dominated. I like to be hurt. I like to be used. I like to be slapped. Choked. Abused. That’s sex to me. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
With each rejection, I felt more and more broken inside, but I didn’t think about killing. I had no intention of killing again. It’s not like I ever set out to be a killer; I’d just crossed paths with a few unsavoury men and survival instinct had kicked in. I never imagined I’d prowl the streets as a murderess, but somehow that’s what happened. At first, I dedicated myself to my role at Couture, determined to rise from features writer to assistant editor. At the weekends, I partied, networking and schmoozing. But then one Saturday night, things took a strange turn. I’d been at a club with friends, but I ducked out in the early hours when I couldn’t stand the rubbish music and sticky floors any longer. I was walking home when I spotted a stacked dark guy in his twenties trying to chat up a girl who was slumped, close to passing out, down a side street next to a club. He sounded stone cold sober. His tone was too measured, too determined, too forceful for me to walk away. He offered to walk the girl home, but I knew he had other intentions. He took her by the hand and led her deeper down the side street. Curious, I followed, watching as he pulled the girl out of sight, towards a CCTV blind spot near some wheelie bins. Hardly walking her home. I lingered in the shadows and looked on as he groped the girl’s slumping body through her cheap dress, his hands roaming under her biker jacket, before he reached down to his fly, unzipped it, and got his cock out. He pushed the girl onto her knees and began stroking his dick in front of her drooping face. He grabbed her hair, yanked her head up and was about to shove his cock into her mouth when a switch flicked inside me and rage coursed through my veins, injustice swelled in my heart, and I stepped forward.
‘Get the fuck off her,’ I hissed, expecting him to be so shocked at being caught that he’d spring away from the girl and scarper, but he didn’t even flinch. Instead, his cold eyes met mine and a slow smirk spread over his lips.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ he snarled.
He looked me up and down, leering. ‘You could join in if you want?’
I stood there, speechless as he pushed his dick into the drunk girl’s mouth, holding her limp head in his hands.
I took a step forward. ‘You fucking creep. Get away from her.’
His eyes darkened. He let the girl go and she wilted instantly to the ground. But then he turned and lunged towards me, throwing me up against the wall.
‘I said, what are you going to do about it?’ he spat, holding me against the bricks, his hand cupped tightly around my throat. The same hand that had been wrapped around his dick.
I tried to push him off, but he was too strong. I was struggling to breathe. He smiled as I scrabbled to break free. Then he shoved his hands between my legs and squeezed my crotch. Bad move. I reached into my coat pocket, thinking I’d find my keys, hoping I could gash him with them, but instead, my hand wound around a long, pointed nail file, and my heart leapt. I gripped it tightly and in one swift motion plunged it into his neck, piercing his thick, bulging jugular. His eyes widened with shock as blood began pouring from his neck. It spurted onto my face. Warm and fresh. Shock replaced the anger in his eyes as he attempted to pull the nail file free and defend himself, only to find me twisting it. Killing viciously like this, turning my weapon, feeling his blood drip down my face was so much more intense than the quick, impulsive ways I’d killed Martin and Gerard. It was so much better. It was wilder, hotter, more thrilling. He tried to push me away, but he was disintegrating before my eyes. He fell to his knees. I watched, as though in slow motion, taking in each second as blood pumped out of him. Soaking his crisp cotton shirt and jeans. Filling his hands. I gasped as he stared into my eyes, helplessly, his whole being falling into submission, the fight in his eyes disappearing. Drifting. Dissolving. My own eyes misting with tears at the beauty of it.
He collapsed and it took me a few moments to come back to reality and look beyond his wasted, blood-drenched body towards the girl, who was lying, passed out by a bag of rubbish, oblivious to the world and the rapist dying next to her. I tiptoed over him and pulled the nail file from his neck. I put it into a discarded wrapper I found on top of the bin and shoved it in my pocket, before tearing off my blood-spattered coat and top, spitting on the edges and wiping the blood from my face, soaking up spatters on my leather skirt. I lifted the girl off the ground. She couldn’t keep her head up; she didn’t have a clue what was going on. I asked her to give me her jacket, but she didn’t respond so I pulled it off her. I slipped it on, zipping it up over my bra. The girl was slightly bigger than me, but her jacket fit fine. Then I slipped my arm through hers and led her through a series of shadowy backstreets, before emerging onto a main road, where I flagged down a taxi. Handing the girl a couple of twenties, I bundled her in, hoping she got home safe. Then I ducked back into the darkness and weaved my way back to my flat, dropping the nail file into a gutter along the way. When I got home, I burnt my clothes.
The man I killed turned out to be called Ahmed Iqbal, a call centre worker from Croydon. His mother claimed he was ‘a kind, good-natured, loyal son’. As if. His death was yet another unsolved stabbing on London’s streets. His family buried him at their local graveyard. He rotted in the ground, forgotten, a pest eliminated. It felt good. I couldn’t deny it. It felt like the score was being evened. Me versus the world. Me versus men, versus abusers, finally getting justice. I felt better than I’d felt for a long time. Calmer. I felt justified in what I’d done. I’d saved a girl from rape. I’d removed a predator from the streets. I wasn’t just a damaged victim anymore; I was a vigilante, of sorts. I was making the world a better place. And underneath all the logic, all the justification, all the words, I couldn’t deny that I simply got off on the raw, visceral, electrifying thrill of watching the life drain out of that low-life creep. I craved the power surge I got from killing. I craved the vivid, shimmering adrenaline rush, the smug swell of satisfaction and warm afterglow of accomplishment that comes with getting away with it. I tried to ignore my desires, but they were like an itch I had to scratch, I couldn’t keep pretending they weren’t there. Eventually, I gave in. I went hunting.
It wasn’t like I was going to kill just anyone though. I’m not a total monster. I figured I’d kill people who deserved it. I’d prey on predators. Wipe out men like Martin, Gerard and Ahmed, men who all had one thing in common: a predilection for abusing women. I decided I’d stand up for the vulnerable. Girls like me. I’d kill abusers. Predators. People who prey on the weak. I wouldn’t just expose them in a newspaper like I’d dreamt of doing years ago, I’d wipe them off the face of the earth. I’d be performing a public service, satisfying my own bloodlust, while making the world a better place, one kill at a time.
I decided to start with paedophiles, figuring they’d be easy targets. Plus, the idea of killing paedophile scum excited me the most. I joined Chat World, an online chat room. That’s when I posed as eleven-year-old Emily and met @justaguy78 – the paedo I knifed to death in Hull. Watching him bleed to death, relishing in his pain and confusion, and knowing it was the total opposite of the excitement and gratification he’d been expecting was incredible. There was something so satisfying and empowering about causing someone so depraved to die and then slipping quietly away, knowing I was free and that victims had been spared, while his wretched soul had been condemned.
I got into murder after that, I can’t deny it. I bought my garage, amassed a collection of knives and tools and weapons. I began skipping nights out to stay home and trawl the net, looking for my next victim. I browsed chat rooms, message boards o
n the dark web and forums on fetish sites looking for targets: someone who gave me a buzz, someone who felt right. When I heard about sugar daddy Edmond Wyatt in a sex-worker forum, I knew he was the one. It would be a more daring kill than my last few since he wasn’t just a pervert, he was violent too. I knew I’d have to play it right if it was going to work. The danger was greater, but that only made it all the more exciting.
When I managed to pull that kill off, I really got into my stride. I wanted to take down someone even more threatening, someone even more toxic. I browsed and scrolled, until I found Kevin Symes. He made my heart beat faster as I swiped right on Tinder. There was something truly nasty-looking about him. Something that set me on edge. We got chatting and eventually swapped numbers. I entered his number into the search bar on Facebook and found his profile. Got his surname. Googled it. I found out that he was a rapist and a wife beater. Only recently out of prison for having battered his ex-wife, breaking her jaw, stabbing her with a corkscrew in the neck and raping her. We got talking about our favourite films and he invited me over to watch Reservoir Dogs. He lived in a shitty flat in a run-down block in Elephant and Castle. It was dirty, sleazy, dingy. Just a mattress on the floor and a bench press, but I pretended not to be repulsed. I asked him where his TV was and he laughed in my face, a cold, sneering laugh. He told me it was too late for that, there would be no movie-watching. He pushed me onto the mattress, crawled on top of me. I pretended to be overwhelmed, frightened, but I reached into my pocket, pulled out a can of pepper spray and doused his eyes with it. He flailed around, unable to see, punching the air, trying to get me. But I knew I had the upper hand. I retrieved a syringe from my pocket, rammed it into his neck and pressed on the plunger, injecting him with a high dose of ketamine. He passed out instantly. He was heavy, really heavy, but I managed to haul his body onto a chair and bind him to it with cable ties and rope.
