by Lee Hayton
He tossed himself back onto his bed, bouncing slightly from the force. He could just imagine the curl of Layla’s lip if he announced his thought sentiments boldly out loud to her. If she didn’t start to ridicule him to his face, she’d soon do it behind his back.
Gregory’s hands tightened into fists of frustration. He pounded at his knee, his thigh, trying to release his pent-up tension.
When the red glow of anger started to fade from his vision, Gregory stood up from the bed and wandered into his sister’s room. An invasion, even worse by a sibling than a parent. If she came home now to find him here, she’d never trust him again.
Still… Gregory was curious. At what she might be hiding here in plain sight. He bet his mom never bothered to step inside the door, anymore. Though, she’d happily castigate him when he fell behind in cleaning.
Almost everything Layla owned was handily stored on the floor. When he pulled open a few drawers, they held scant belongings. Mostly empty, except for the odd stray piece of underwear.
Under her pillow, he struck gold. A small case with rolling papers and a few stray shreds of herb. He crushed the remnants underneath his nose, breathing in the dark scent until he felt dizzy.
His tightly wound stomach grumbled, and he realized that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Running track in the afternoon was better on an empty stomach, but now it felt like it was eating itself.
Another cry from downstairs made him hesitant to venture down just yet. He poked and prodded some more among Layla’s things, thought he’d struck gold when he saw the silver glint of foil.
Condoms.
His lip curled into a moue of distaste, and he kicked an abandoned sundress over the top of them. Like he needed another reminder that his sister’s virginity was long gone.
For a moment, the world shimmered. Everything started to slip away, tilting to one side. Closing his eyes, Gregory bit the inside of his cheek, hard. The copper tang of warm blood filled his mouth and the spinning stabilized.
His mom was drinking again. She’s stopped abruptly, a few months ago. Perhaps realizing how her behavior affected her daughter. Perhaps just wanting a clear head for the first time in years.
Whatever. Her reasons were her own private business.
What mattered was she’d made a promise to Gregory that she wouldn’t start again. That she wouldn’t have it in the house. While he wiped her forehead while she sweated out every last remnant of the old booze in her system, she’d stayed clean. While her hands shook so badly she served up food they could eat without cutlery, she’d stayed clean.
Now Layla had taken off without telling anyone, and his mom had plugged the bottle right back in her mouth.
Layla’s fault, all of it.
He kicked aside the sundress and pulled one of the wrapped condoms closer. There was a badge on Layla’s side table, and he used it to prick through the foil. Straight through the rubber and out the other side.
A small thrill of satisfaction ran through his body. He did it again and again and again and again. Until he couldn’t find any more.
Leaving her room, he tossed the badge back on her dresser and walked downstairs. Steeling his smile for the next encounter with his old, drunk mom.
#
With the ease of slipping a worn slipper onto cold feet, Gregory watched his mom stumble back into drunkenness. It didn’t matter how many events he won, how much his report cards screamed in accolade—Iris Mancini had checked out of the building.
Layla barely bothered to come home anymore. When she did, tottering on her high heels in her own drug-induced haze, Gregory could barely get a word out of her. Some nights, when she shambled in through the back door, he could smell the stink of sex oozing out of her pores. Transcending even the waft of chemicals that she’d swallowed, inhaled, swilled, or snorted.
His disgust began to feel like a physical thing. Like a cloak he wore, layered over the top of his clothes. When a counselor at school suggested a meeting, Gregory gave him such a look of contempt he shrank down and slunk away.
One day, Gregory went through the house from top to bottom. His mother snored in comatose slumber on the couch. Every photograph of his father, every certificate, every reference. Gregory gathered them together and set fire to them out the back.
He didn’t want even the memory of his father to be tainted by the whores now living in his house.
#
“Can I talk to you?”
Gregory looked up, surprised. He hadn’t even realized that Layla was home. “Sure,” he said, drawing his eyebrows together in a frown.
“You know lots of people at high school,” Layla said.
Gregory felt a pit of anger ignite in his stomach. What did she want now? Help in setting her up so she could whore herself out further?
He suppressed his irritation and nodded in a straight answer to her query. Yes, he knew lots of people. Or, at least, knew of them.
“I need some help,” Layla said. Her voice, already whispering, dropped so low that Gregory had to strain forward to hear. “I have a difficult situation.”
As Gregory pondered what that statement might mean, he realized that he couldn’t smell alcohol or tobacco on Layla’s breath. Her clothes didn’t stink of any recreational chemicals. Her eyes, though red-rimmed, were clear and bright.
Having already made this observation the next words that Layla spoke didn’t come as the shock that they could have
“I’m pregnant.”
Gregory stared at her nonplussed. “I don’t know how anyone in high school can help you with that.”
Layla fidgeted, creasing the folds of her skirt between her hands. Instead of the slutty high heels, which she’d been wearing more and more frequently, her feet were sensibly tucked into white sneakers.
“There’s a girl there, Rachel McKinnon.”
Gregory shook his head, he hadn’t heard of her.
“She was in the same situation, and she found her way out of it.”
“An abortion?”
“I’d need mom’s signature before the clinic in town would even think of seeing me. Rachel knew someone who got around it.”
Gregory frowned again, his face a mask of confusion. “No, they wouldn’t. You just need to ring them and ask.”
“And pay them with what? I need her permission to charge it up on her insurance.”
Gregory laughed. The sound was so bitter and hostile that Layla flinched back away from it. “Have you seen Mom lately?”
He jutted his chin forward and shoved his face uncomfortably close to hers. “You really think that she kept up the payments on the medical insurance?”
Layla tried to nod but burst into tears instead. She grabbed Gregory’s T-shirt and her hands and bunched together in her fists. Soon, her wet face was pressed against his chest.
Awkwardly, he placed his arms around her shaking shoulders. It had been so long since he’d touched her, that the movement felt cumbersome and out of place.
“I need to do something,” she sobbed. “If I leave it much longer I won’t have any choice.”
“But you have cleaned yourself up,” Gregory pointed out. “If you’re not keeping the baby, why did you bother to get sober?”
“So that I could get it sorted out.” Layla raised her hand to her mouth to nibble at her fingernails. “I can’t have a baby.”
“How much would an abortion cost?”
Layla shook her head, not because she didn’t know but because the amount overwhelmed her. “It would be thousands,” she said. “I’ve been trying for weeks, and the most I could put together was a couple of hundred.”
She opened her eyes and blinked rapidly, staring straight at him. “What about you? Do you have money?”
Her voice was full of hope, her face open. When he shook his head her expression crumpled again in dismay.
The old affection he’d once felt for her flared up again in his chest. Gregory stroked her thin blonde here back from her face an
d curled his hand down around her chin.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I promise.”
She nodded, her face relaxing into relief. This time when her tears flowed, it seemed due to happiness and a weight gone from her shoulders.
#
In the end, it wasn’t hard for Gregory to get Layla liquored up. A week after she dissolved into tears, wailing with sadness about her pregnancy, he walked into a room with a bottle of gin.
“For the baby,” he explained, as though that meant anything.
Layla’s face had just lit up, and she’d nodded. She took the proffered bottle and kept drinking until it was mostly gone.
Most of Gregory new about terminating pregnancies were from old wives’ tales, or dire warnings whispered with solemn faces in church. Gin and a hot bath seemed popular, though word on the street named it ineffective. Gin and a tumble down the stairs seemed more certain to bring about a result.
How much of that choice was down to belief in the method, and how much was down to cruelty and revenge, Gregory didn’t want to explore. After all, he’d paid for the gin out of his own pocket. The least his sister could do was trust that he had her best interests at heart.
It would make sense for her to tumble down the stairs inside their own home. Except, Gregory couldn’t be certain how much his mother would see if they tried it there. The steps down from the back stoop were concrete, surely the best for miscarriages, but at half a yard tall there was little chance that would be effective.
Around the corner and down the Street was a row of shops. A butcher, a hairdresser, a newsagent who also sold lottery tickets. Around the back of the butchers, there was a long flight of stairs leading down to a basement storeroom. There were handrails, but it was also conceivable that a drunk girl might take a tumble.
And Layla was very, very drunk.
No matter how much practice she’d had in the last six months, a full bottle left her reeling and stumbling. Even on the short walk, late at night, Gregory was scared Steph someone would see her and offered to help.
He swung her arm around the back of his neck, grabbed her by the waist and held her by the hand. With a lot of lifting and shoving of his hip, he managed to walk her safely there.
Not that he’d told her the plan yet.
“What are we doing?” Layla asked. Her words ran together so badly it took a more than a minute to figure out what she’d said.
“Second part of the plan,” he said brightly. “One quick shove, a bit of pain, and then the baby will be a distant memory.”
Her face jerked in surprise at the word pain. Gregory could feel her trying to pull away to safety. He gritted his teeth with irritation. The cheek of her. First, asking him for help, no matter how inappropriately. Then, when he actually did something to help her, she tried to back away.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. It was bad enough Gregory had his mom drunk around the house all the time. Having Layla drunk was an extra layer of burden. To have the care of both of them and a screaming baby meant Gregory would have nothing left for himself.
He’d already given them his father. There was nothing left they could take.
“Don’t worry,” Gregory said. He tried to make his voice cajoling, but even to his ears, it sounded sleazy. “I promise you, you’ll barely feel a thing.”
“No,” she shouted. She managed to get her arm back from around Gregory’s shoulder and withdrew until her back smacked straight into the side of the butcher’s shop.
The door was metal. Under the impact of Layla’s full weight, it rattled and clanged. The back alley picked up the noise and echoed it into a siren call.
Gregory felt his heart beat speed up, felt his stomach churn with anxiety in the first threat of panic. He grabbed her hand and pulled her roughly to him. Layla staggered forward, falling to one knee. She opened her mouth and gave a cry.
In the still night air, the sound carried. As a one-off, no one would really hear. A woman might look up from ironing, a kid might turn his head in the middle of playing. But unless a second cry followed the first, no one would care, no one would remember.
When Layla opened her mouth to call out again, Gregory grabbed the back of her head and slammed his knee into her face. Instead of calling out, she gurgled. Her body jerked. Layla’s eyes spread wide with panic.
Seeing her expression of fear—her bleeding mouth on the same level as his throbbing penis, Gregory felt his love and anger twist into an entirely different emotion. A mix of lust, rage, fear, shock, all the feelings he usually suppressed beneath his skin.
Layla whimpered, and that desperate sound was enough to tip him over the edge.
Gregory grabbed her around the throat, pressing his thumbs hard into her windpipe. Layla writhed and twisted, trying to turn away. But she was drunk and weak. Gregory was amped up on adrenaline and powerful. He squeezed until she stopped fighting. Squeezed until her tongue poked, swollen and pink, from her mouth. He squeezed until the artery under his fingers stopped pumping.
As the full weight of what he’d just done hit him, Gregory forced his fingers apart. Layla’s body slumped at his feet. The muscles in his hand ached from the force he’d used to strangle her.
He rubbed them against his trouser legs, as though murder was a layer of dust or slime he could simply wipe away. Even though he kept staring hard at Layla, she didn’t rouse herself.
She was dead. Gone beyond the point of resuscitation.
As Gregory’s mind filled with horror, the panic of self-interest took over and directed his movements.
His new plan was no different. Toss Layla down the concrete steps. Instead of the miscarriage of a fetus, it would be the miscarriage of a teenage girl.
Layla’s body had trebled in weight. Her thin frame piling on the pounds. Gregory grunted as he dragged her the few yards to the top of the stairs.
One solid push from the sole of his foot into her backside and gravity carried her down, out of the way.
He stood there as the moon rose to cast its glassy light upon the alley. Gregory didn’t know how much time passed. Suddenly, a sensor light flooded the street with yellow light. Startled, he backed up a few steps then ran away.
#
Gregory hid inside his room that night. In the morning, he made up an excuse to stay home from school that his mother barely listened to before nodding in agreement. All the better to sit alone, anxiety ridden stomach churning, and wallow in guilt and fear over what he had done.
The afternoon light was fading into some seat when a sharp knock came at the door. The house had so few visitors, Gregory felt sure he knew who it was before his mom answered. Sure enough, he was right. It was one time he wouldn’t have minded being wrong.
He crept to the head of the stairs as his mother queried the two officers. Fear and worry edged out the sound of drunkenness from his mother’s voice. The male officer told her to sit down, and she collapsed into a pool of tears.
With his pulse beating thready and quick, Gregory forced his quivering legs downstairs. Drawing himself up to his full height, he nodded gravely at the two policemen.
“Is it Layla?”
His mom flapped her hands, and he sat beside her on the sofa. The dutiful son.
“I’m sorry to say that we found your sister—”
“She’s dead, Greg,” his mother interrupted. “She fell down the stairs behind some shop. Broke her neck and split her head right open.”
Gregory looked from one officer to the other, trying to gauge their facial expression. Were they sparing his mother’s feelings or did they really not understand his sister had been strangled, not broken her neck?
The men’s faces war identical expressions of pity. Neither one of them wanted to be here. Whatever else they knew, this visit was truly just a courtesy call to a victim’s family.
“Was she drunk?” Gregory asked, not even needing to try to inject a waver in his voice. He shifted his eyes away to the side, as though embarrassed.
“She was young, but Layla had a drinking problem. I thought I’d have more time to make her seek help.”
“It’s all my fault,” his mother screamed. “If only I hadn’t been so weak after Marvin died.”
Gregory slung his arm around his mother’s shoulders. He kept his gaze level on the closest policeman’s face. “That was my father. He died a few years ago, in a car accident. We hadn’t really recovered, and now…”
He trailed off and bent his head so the officers wouldn’t see the curl of a smile on his lips. Neither one of them had any idea. He could play them all night long.
By the time his mother’s whaling had transformed into the snore of a drunken stupor, Gregory began to believe he’d got away with it. Lying in bed, his eyes wide open to stare at the slithering patterns of moonlight on his ceiling, he started to feel he could do anything.
The world was powerless to stop him.
#
Iris Mancini had given up drinking again for Layla’s funeral. Her hands trembled even when her shoulders didn’t shake from crying. Her grief was palpable, weighing her down until she stooped.
Gregory sat beside her. A comfort and strength. The many people who attended the church service—all too busy to lend a hand when it counted—gave appreciative glances.
What a good boy. How lucky Iris was to have that son at home.
The police had returned once, a query about Layla’s pregnancy. At her tender age, the man implanting that lucky sperm might have committed a crime.
Gregory had fielded the invasive call. As he hung his head in reddening shame, he answered their blunt questions. He talked about the boys his sister saw, confirmed they were all about her age.
He was stunned when they left, no further queries. Stunned that an autopsy could reveal Layla’s pregnancy, but not the damage from his thumbs, his hands.
“Look at them,” his mother said. Venom dripped from her tone.
Gregory turned to her in surprise. So far in the service, she’d smiled and greeted everyone like a long-lost friend. Accepting their apathetic condolences as though their words went some way to heal her loss.
She swiveled her head to survey the attendees from beneath lowered lashes. “Most of them just came here to gawk.”
