Sweetpea

by C. J. Skuse

  But I gave in. Because I’m nice like that.

  ‘OK,’ I said, all out of argument, ‘let’s do it. Let’s make a baby together.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll stop taking my pill and we’ll go for it.’

  And that was all the encouragement he needed. We went to bed straight after we got back from Nando’s and didn’t see daylight again till breakfast. And even though he must have had multiple showers since he last saw Lana the Organ Grinder, all I kept thinking about was her microscopic vadge mites all over his dick. Ugh, God, her asshole germs as well. I hoped against hope that he’d scrubbed it as well as he could with that antibacterial soap I kept leaving out for him.

  Boy, did I make sacrifices.

  We did it again this morning. As soon as his eyes were open, he was nuzzling my neck and murmuring in my ear. Sadly, I couldn’t get my vagina going at all. He was suckling it and prodding it for all he was worth but there was more life in a dead gerbil.

  ‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘Put it in already.’

  ‘It is in. You’re not wet.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my fault. You’re not turning me on enough. Pass the lube.’ There wasn’t enough lube in the world to get that sucker going today. ‘Pass my phone.’ He grabbed it from the nightstand. ‘Give me five minutes. I’ll find that porn vid of the district nurse and the five black guys.’

  He rolled over onto his back and sighed, hands behind his head.

  And then I saw something online before I’d even clicked onto PornHub that immediately got things moving in the gusset vicinity. My phone screen bore a notification from the Gazette group’s news app:

  IS THERE A SERIAL KILLER LOOSE IN THE SOUTHWEST?

  And the article talked about Gavin White, but it linked it with three murders several weeks ago in London, all of which were strikingly similar. Men in parks stabbed and left to die. And how weird is this – two of the men were called Gavin!

  The other one was called Clive.

  My Park Man was being linked to an actual serial killer investigation involving Scotland fucking Yard! My little Park Man had made me NATIONALLY famous (sort of). And I throbbed. My nether regions actually throbbed.

  So, yes, BuzzFeed, you can put me down as being Sexually excited by deviant acts. But I have never, ever, EVER wet the bed or tortured a small animal. Unless you count how excited Tink was at Christmas when I ate all the After Eight mints then gave her just the empty packets.

  ‘I’m ready. Do it. Put it in.’

  Craig seemed to like the dominant me. I closed my eyes and we really went for it, banging the headboard and everything, which had never happened before – it was rarely troubled. At one point I heard something snap beneath the mattress – one of the slats. Bloody IKEA.

  At the last second, when he was jackhammering and repeating, ‘I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna cum,’ and I was yelling, ‘Well, fucking cum then!’ I ordered him to cum deep inside me. At once, he thrust into me hard and I clenched my legs tightly around his back and he roared out into the pillow. And you know that moment just before you know you’re gonna cum? You know you get an image flash through your mind which takes you ‘there’? For me at that moment, it was Gavin White. It was him inside me as he lay dying, dressed in his own blood, my hand around the scissors in his neck. It was him cumming inside me as he gasped and gargled and died. My hand on his silent, cold chest.

  ‘Fuckin hellllllll,’ Craig sighed, beaded in sweat.

  Our hot heads pressed together at the temple, it must have looked like such a meaningful moment. A couple in love. A couple trying for a baby. In reality, it was a couple in bed; one of them trying for a baby, the other one still on the Pill and thinking of a dying man.

  I didn’t often cum with Craig – normally I had to wait for him to go to the bathroom while I finished myself off with my Rampant Rabbit and a good long think about Tom Hardy in Mad Max – but today was different. Today was a brand-new day. When he came out of the bathroom, I went in and drained him out of me over an empty jam jar.

  Friday, 8 March

  1.Linus ‘Smack my face hard, preferably with a breeze block’ Sixgill

  2.Lana Rowntree – sales assistant and Spunkbucket Extraordinaire

  3.AJ – I now know what it stands for too. Absolute Judas

  Today I reached levels of annoyance I didn’t know existed within me. It got to the point where I physically had to remove myself from the office for fear of throwing my coffee mug through Ron’s window. It took three events to make me almost unutterably homicidal:

  1.Everyone’s phone was going off, even Eric the handyman’s. Little whistles, all bloody day, all over the office floor like dead firemen

  2.AJ has started making Daisy peanut-butter-and-banana toasties and sitting on the end of her desk for little chitchats. And he didn’t forget the sugar in her coffee (unlike my two Canderel, which he’s always forgetting)

  3.Linus has not only taken over the ‘Riot Lovers’ photo and article and made it his own, he has COPYRIGHTED the picture and it’s been shared – get this – over 135,000 times on social media. But that’s not all, oh, no. Today, that spineless little runt invited the ACTUAL Riot Lovers into the office and INTRODUCED them to the team!

  ‘Everyone, this is Sam and this is Delilah. A real-life Samson and Delilah! We finally tracked them down!’

  And everyone, like the great trunk of malignant tumours they are, applauded as the two biblically-named teenage sops stood there stooped and embarrassed – him with his skinny jeans and wallet chain; her with her hoody sleeves over her hands and Tippexed DMs, Linus’s hands on each of their backs like he was pulling their strings.

  I’ve never seen anything look less biblical in my life.

  Linus escorted them both into Ron’s office for coffee and cupcakes, courtesy of ‘their friends at the Gazette’. Guess who had to run out and buy the cakes? Guess who had no idea who the cupcakes were for? And guess who wasn’t allowed into Ron’s office to partake?

  I seethed at my desk, eyes fixed on Ron’s door until Jeff hobbled over with the darts scores for me to type up at which point I rose from my chair and walked.

  And I just kept walking.

  It was a fine day, but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have gone back for my coat. I eventually got to the park and sat down on a bench in a quiet area under some trees and just cried. I wished Tink was with me. She normally licked my face at times like these, when everything got too much, but she and Mrs Whittaker had gone out for the day. There was no one around to see or hear me. But then I’m fucking used to that. No one ever sees.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried properly, with tears and meaning. The noise that came out was strangled and squeaky; pure snot-driven anger. The missiles in my mind were directed at so many different things I couldn’t separate them out. It was work, it was Craig, it was the PICSOs and their constant Facebook updates about how charmed their lives were. It was Sam and Delilah. It was Seren’s amazing life in America. It was Mum and Dad. It was Derek Scudd.

  I wanted to murder the world. Nothing real was any good. And nothing living was worth living for. Everyone just needed to die.

  Maybe God or whoever it is up there on that cloud has been trying to tell me this since Priory Gardens – nothing good will ever happen to me. There’s been pockets of good – summers spent at Nanny and Granddad’s. School when Julia had left. When Craig and I first got together. Even the Gazette when I had just got the editorial assistant job and Linus Sixgill hadn’t joined.

  Nobody even noticed when I walked back in the office, wiping my eyes. Nobody even ASKED where I’d been. It’s all very well having tantrums but what’s the fucking point if nobody sees them?

  AJ talked to Lana for fifteen minutes this afternoon. He sat on the end of her desk and drank his whole coffee there.

  I thought about my Sabatier knife block. I visualised his taut, sinewy neck underneath that cleaver. If only he knew what I was ca
pable of. If only they all knew what this quiet little sweetpea could do.

  Saturday, 9 March

  1.People who leave pointless status updates on social media – e.g. I’ve just eaten some toast or Why has the Strike It Lucky theme been in my head all morning? or I feel like killing myself. You feel like killing yourself?! Try reading your updates. You make a burning monk want to top up on diesel

  2.People who call out across the street to one other like fishwives

  3.Creepy Ed Sheeran – he was hanging around the bus stop this morning with his jeans undone singing ‘Baby You’re a Firework’. Badly.

  This morning, Craig left his phone unguarded to take the bins out. There was a new picture in his photos – a selfie. Him and Lana in bed. My bed. Him nuzzling. Her giggling. Their cheeks pulsing with afterglow. I sent the picture to my phone. The gnawing feeling is back.

  So I’ve made a decision and luckily, the universe seems to be in favour of it. He’s away tonight watching Athletico Someone play Inter Someone Else at Wembley (I was barely listening – I just heard the words ‘crashing at Nige’s’ and praised the Lord I didn’t have to have another tedious baby-making session to look forward to after Match of the Day). Also, my mum and dad’s neighbour, Henry Cripps, has gone down to Cornwall for the weekend with ‘Anne from his bridge club’ who is ‘just a friend, nothing more’.

  So I’m going to murder Julia tonight.

  I hadn’t planned on doing it yet but what with everything that’s happened this week, something’s gotta give and there’s only so many bowls of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes I can eat. It’s not fun for me any more, going over there and feeding her and threatening her to keep quiet. The ‘my friend is watching your kids’ bullshit has worked so far but I just want her gone now. Beside which, I am itching to christen my knives. They are vibrating with anticipation; I can feel it. Gonna drop Tink off at Klepto Whittaker’s then I’ll catch you on the flip side…

  *

  DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD

  It’s precisely 11.17 p.m. and I’ve just got back. It’s been a funny day. Almost like old times. Except this time it was me doling out the threats and gratuitous violence and her sitting there taking it like a bitch.

  She’d tried to gnaw through her restraints again when I first got there. That cost her another finger. Also – my new knives are the bee’s, the wasp’s and the ladybird’s knees. Ruthlessly efficient. Mercilessly sharp. They hardly needed me at all.

  I threw her a handful of Smarties – all the blue ones, the last of my Christmas selection box. She scrabbled round the carpet and gobbled them down without even chewing.

  ‘I’m done with you,’ I said. ‘You’re leaving tonight.’

  ‘Going home? Really?’ she cried. She believed me. She thanked me, strangely. I wouldn’t thank me if I’d been locked in a back bedroom for over three months and had three of my ten fingers severed.

  ‘Come on. It’s dark enough now. I’ll drop you back.’

  I said we’d take Henry’s car in the garage. She still had her hands and feet tied as I marched her down the stairs and through the side door into the garage. I flicked on the light.

  ‘I really won’t go to the police,’ she said. ‘I mean that. I’ll make something up. I’ll protect you. Will you call off your friend? The one who’s been watching my kids?’

  ‘There isn’t anyone watching your kids. I lied.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I lied to keep you compliant.’

  That’s when I killed her. I knew I couldn’t kill her indoors because I couldn’t afford to get any more blood on the carpet when I didn’t know how to use the carpet steamer properly. The plastic tarp was down under Henry’s Triumph Herald, and it seemed as good a place as any. So I did it there.

  It was the smallest of my Sabatiers but my God did it do the job. With one clean action it cut straight through the centre of her neck, no messing. Well, there was mess but most of it went on the tarp, thankfully. Have you ever tried to get blood out of a concrete floor? Nightmare! She turned and clung on to me as I stabbed her front on, her filthy hands clinging to my forearms as I drove the paring knife into her neck, then out, then her breastbone, then out, then the middle of her chest. Then out. There was so much blood. I grabbed her hair for better purchase and pushed her to the ground so as not to get blood on my clothes. I stood over her – my eleven-year-old self clinging on to my back as we bent over, watching her dying breaths, staring her out for the last time, eyes to evil eyes.

  ‘Still want to be my best friend?’ Those were the last words she heard.

  I think that’s what I like about death – its utter obedience. You kill something, it dies. You ask the question with your knife and the person responds, undoubtedly, every time. No excuses, no second chances, no refunds. It does as it’s fucking told. That’s a very beautiful thing.

  I didn’t bury her in the woods at the back of Mum and Dad’s house – that would have been the easy option, yes, but I had other plans. She needed to be found. All the way to the quarry Beatz FM played the best of Prince so I had a good old sing-along. The sunset was pied, the air was mild and the breeze on my face from the open window of Henry’s Triumph Stag was sensual to the point of hysteria. My former bully growing ever colder on the back seat, eleven-year-old me sitting in the passenger’s seat beside me, singing along to ‘Let’s Go Crazy’.

  The roads were busy but moving on the way up to the quarry before the country lanes grew smaller and quieter and thicker with foliage and gnarled trees, wide enough for the one-way lorries but unwelcome for pedestrians or dog-walkers. It was a steep, winding track lit only by my headlights and, by the time I’d got to the top and drove into the main car park, Prince had belted out most of his back catalogue and the DJ had moved on to 90s classics. I turned the radio off and heaved her out of the back seat by her underarms. There was no ceremony at the top. No eulogising. I did what had to be done and then I kicked the heavy bulk of her over the ridge.

  And then I listened to the susurration of her heavy body as it careered down the incline, the skittering of the loose stones as it gathered speed; the loud CRACK, the wet splat. The euphonious spring insects clicking in the grass and the rolling of the rocks. Until the last rock stilled and there was nothing. I stood at the top of the gaping pit and inhaled the night air, allowing it to fill my lungs. And I finally let it go. Stunning.

  OK, BuzzFeed, you got me there. Hands in the air. I enjoyed myself tonight.

  Sunday, 10 March

  Me, Craig and Tink were invited down to Craig’s parents, Jim and Elaine’s, for Sunday lunch. It was the usual – a stroll along the sea front, then roast beef and all the trimmings, followed by tea on the lawn, admiring the new collection of garden centre plants they’d just planted. Bonus rounds this afternoon were an awkward talk with Jim about his model boats and an inane half an hour with Elaine mewing on about her latest purchase on QVC (the woman’s obsessed with it) and her last WI coffee morning. I was stupid enough to ask once if she wanted me to talk to the group about my novel or my journalism career.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s the right target audience really,’ she said.

  No, because they’d rather listen to some bloke called Keith drone on about his doorknob collection or watch some biddy called Jean demonstrate how to make dollies out of fucking wicker.

  They’re both retired now. They used to live in town but two years ago they bought this bright yellow house right on the coast. It always reminds me of a giant wedge of lemon meringue pie. Jim has a small property portfolio of houses and flats in the area which he co-manages with an old friend of his called Bernie but for the most part they’re just blah people. There’s nothing to dislike about them per se – Jim could bore for his country while Elaine is so neurotic she is one cracked egg away from a nervous breakdown – but all in all, Sundays with them are never greatly enjoyable. They’re churchgoers too and neither of them swears which means I can’t either so I’ve been sculpted into a vers
ion of me called Lovely Girlfriend while in their company. And Lovely Girlfriend never swears or farts or accidentally offers an opinion. Even when they are blatantly wrong, you don’t argue with Jim and Elaine. It’s all part of The Act.

  I’ll have the last laugh though, of course. When they find out their beloved son has been fucking a serial killer, they’ll have two strokes apiece.

  We had a large lamb roast dinner – each portion could probably have fed a family of five – then we all fell asleep in the lounge watching Roger Moore keep the British end up. Unbeknown to us, Tink was demolishing the leftover lamb joint on the counter before throwing it all up again over Jim’s hostas.

  I dreamed about being at school. At the swimming gala. Winning the butterfly when I was fourteen. A big fat gold medal and no Julia. I slept right through the Antiques Roadshow. Didn’t even find out how much that Queen Anne cabinet went for.

  Monday, 11 March

  1.People who tag you in Facebook posts/add you to groups – e.g. ‘Imelda’s Hen Weekend – The Toppan’s Masseeeeeve!!!’ – so now I have to join in with all their planning and scrapbooking ideas. Woe, thy name is me

  If I was ever in any doubt that my night work afforded me some kind of nepenthe to cure the humdrummity of my life, that Monday morning ended that doubt. I was in a very good mood.

  No nightmares all weekend and this morning they found Julia’s body first thing – the quarry foreman tipped off the police. Ron announced it in the meeting.

  I did my best shocked and appalled faces, but inside, it was champagne bubbles. Daisy cried for Julia’s kids, then for her own. I was amazed to learn Daisy even had kids. Her hips were so narrow a kidney bean would have trouble sliding out of there, let alone an eight-pounder.