by Matt Shaw
I had killed Ben. I had killed the man I loved. I thought he was a monster, in the later stages of our relationship yet the real monster was living next door to us for all these years - hiding behind his good job, nice car and seemingly happy wife. I killed Ben. I killed one of the good ones? My eyes welled up. I killed one of the good ones? No. I couldn’t have. No. I stood up and darted down the hallway and out of the front door, slamming the door behind me. He’s not dead. He’s not. I know he’s not. I’m not a murderer.
“You are.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not.”
At my front door, I pulled the key from my pocket once more and let myself in - closing the door behind me.
“Ben?” I called out.
“I’m in here.”
His voice came from the dining room. See, I knew he wasn’t dead. I knew I hadn’t killed him. I knew it. I walked down the hallway with a sigh of relief. I past the blood splatter on the wall caused by Liam earlier, and let myself into the dining room.
“I thought I had hurt you!” I said.
“What? I’m fine!” said Ben. I crossed the room and sat on his lap before pulling his face close to mine, skin coming away from his face under my nails despite the lack of pressure. “What’s wrong?” he asked with no look of concern on his face.
“Nothing. I just missed you.”
“You were only next door for about ten minutes...”
The tears rolled down my cheek. I kissed his lips.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Let’s never argue again.”
“Fine by me,” he didn’t smile.
I kissed his lips again. He didn’t kiss mine back.
Cold lips.
I pulled away and looked at his face. Pale face. Cloudy eyes. His eyes. Liquid seeping from them. He’s crying. No. He’s not. His nose is running too. The same liquid also spilling from the corners of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I sat up, still on his lap, with disappointment flowing through my veins. “Just, for a moment... I thought....”
“Kiss me.”
“What?”
“Please.”
I wiped the liquid from his mouth and leaned forward for a kiss. I chose to ignore comments, from Liam, telling us to get a room. We did have a room. The dining room. This was our room. It will always be our room. What am I doing? I stopped kissing him and pulled my face away once more. What am I doing? This isn’t right. He’s not really here...
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. I wish you were,” I said. “I need you. I can’t cope with any of this anymore. You. Liam. Kelly. And anyone else who comes...If I hadn’t killed you...If I hadn’t...None of this would have happened. Everything would be as it was. Everything would be...”
“Ssh...” he pulled me close for another kiss. At least, that’s what I must have told myself. I don’t remember his hands gently pulling my face to his own and yet here I was...Kissing him again. A taste of slightly out of date ham lingering on my lips afterwards.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said. Like ‘sorry’ would help him forgive me. Of course it wouldn’t. I had murdered him.
“You haven’t killed me. If you had - we wouldn’t be here now...”
I’m so confused. I close my eyes and I can see him talking to me. I can see the kindness in his eyes - from when we first got married. I open my eyes I can see Kelly dead. I can see Liam dead. I can see Ben....
“Don’t think it,” he whispered. I kept my eyes closed and ran my fingers through his hair - ignoring the clumps which came out between my shaking fingers.
Keep my eyes shut.
He’s alive if my eyes are shut.
“What about me? Am I alive too?” asked Liam.
“Everyone is,” I said. I kept my eyes shut. Kelly was next door cooking a meal for Liam - patiently waiting for him to go home again. I tried to ignore Liam and continued to kiss my husband. The man I love. I’m just sorry we had to come so far for me to realise how much I actually do love him.
I just wish I could keep my eyes closed forever. I just wish I could stay in this place. No troubles. No stresses. But I can’t. I need to open them again. I need to finish what I started, once and for all. I need to dig the pond. I need to let Liam, Kelly and Ben rest.
I opened my eyes. There he was - dead once more. I leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. A final kiss this time. A goodbye kiss.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“Me too...” said Liam - his voice so...Real.
I span round and saw him stood up behind me. His face so bloody from the beating he sustained earlier. It didn’t kill him? Ben didn’t kill him? I noticed a frying pan in his right hand - raised high in the air. He brought it crashing down towards my face...
The next thing I knew - an old memory was playing out in my unconscious state; smacked to the forefront of my mind by the sheer force of the pan. I was watching the scene play out as though I were an invisible third person in the bedroom. Ben was lying on the bed, across the room, next to me. He was lying on his back - one arm down by his side with the other bent upwards so his hand was supporting his head.
I know this is just an old memory playing out but, even so, it’s nice to see him alive again even though I know what’s coming. I remember this conversation as though it were yesterday. It actually happened a few months ago - spoken about and then dropped as though it never took place; the pair of us uncomfortable in bringing it up again.
Slowly, the ‘me’ on the bed woke up peacefully from what must have been a nice dream. A faint smile on my face as I rolled over to look at my husband. I noticed he was not only awake but staring at the ceiling - lost in his own little world.
“How long have you been awake for?” I asked.
“Haven’t slept,” he replied.
“At all?”
He didn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking...” he sat up in bed. The duvet slipped from his body revealing his toned six-pack. Seeing him, like this, in this memory makes me realise just how much I miss him. How big a mistake I had made in my over-reaction with the frying pan.
I wish I could change that.
Make another go of it. The two of us. We were happy once. I’m sure we could be happy again.
“What is it?” I asked. I sat up by his side and looked at him even though he still refused to look me in the eye.
“I want a divorce...” he said.
I didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say. I knew we were having troubles but...We could sort it. We can sort it. I know we can.
“Did you hear me?” he asked after a few more minutes of silence.
I nodded - still unsure of what to do or say. I remember not knowing what to say to him. Even now, watching the conversation back, I’m stuck as to what to say. At the time - after a considerable amount of silence and then tears, we agreed to give it another go. Agreed to try and make things work out. A trial.
“Do you have anything you’d like to add?” he asked. He turned to look at me - the first time since I opened my eyes from the dream. “Your nose...”
“What about it?” I asked. No longer was I an invisible third person in the room. I was in the bed next to him - the memory interrupted. I put my hand up to my nose and pressed the back of my hand against it. Wet. I pulled it away and was shocked at the amount of blood.
* * * * *
“Open your eyes...” said Liam. His voice still full of anger and hatred.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” asked Liam.
Slowly I opened my eyes. For what it was worth. Hard to focus. My face hurts. My head pounds. My eyesight is fuzzy. I blinked my eyes a couple of times - desperate to regain some of the focus. Eventually the room clears in my vision.
I was sitting at the dining room table opposite Ben. Blood streaming from my nose. I gently touched the tip of my nose and flinched f
rom the pain. I think he broke it. Kelly was sat on a third chair. Liam had cut her neck so deeply, her head looked to be hanging on by a few threads at best. How much effort had he gone to kill her?
Liam slapped me in the face forcing me to turn to look at him. He was stood next to me. His face looked bruised but I have a feeling I had come off worse. The frying pan was no longer in his hand. In it’s place - a large kitchen knife. The same knife he used on Kelly? The blade looks clean. Must be a new one. I doubt he would have gone to the effort of washing it.
“Well this is a turn up for the books, isn’t it?” he said. “What happened here?”
“You killed your wife?”
“Hey! No! I asked you first!” he shouted. “Besides, you killed her.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You killed your husband first. At least a couple of days before killing my wife going by the state of him. Then you killed my wife because she made the shocking discovery and then you tried to kill me. Hit me with a frying pan...You must have really got a lucky hit on Ben’s temple to kill him like that by the way. Well done you. Anyway, I wrestled with you and...Well, you know the rest.”
“That’s not what happened!”
“Yes it is! You just don’t remember because you’re confused. Probably the trauma you suffered from being hit with the frying pan which, by the way, really hurts, doesn’t it?”
“No. I only killed Ben...”
“Okay, I know that and you know that...But everyone else...Yeah...I’m the victim here. Funny thing - it needn’t have had to pan out like this...Pan...Frying pan? Pan? See what I did there?” I went to get up but he simply raised the knife towards me, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you...” I sat back down and he lowered the blade. “I liked you. When I kissed you, I actually meant it. The feelings in that kiss...They were real. We could have run away together...But, no...You had to try and kill me like you killed your husband. At least I only killed my wife! What’s wrong with you? First him and then me? It was only a kiss! A fucking kiss! My neighbour’s a fucking mass-murderer?!” He pulled up the fourth chair and sat down, “Why did you kill your husband?”
I looked at Ben. Tears welling up in my eyes again. Ben; one of the good ones. I don’t know why I killed him. I really don’t. Ever since I did it I’ve been trying to think of a reason - a real reason but...Nothing. It just happened.
“I don’t know,” I stuttered. “Why did you kill your wife?”
Liam looked at Kelly and smiled, “Simple...Listen...”
The room fell silent.
“What?” I asked.
“Ssh. Listen.”
Silence.
“You hear it?” he asked.
“What? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. Lovely, isn’t it...”
“You’re crazy,” I wept.
“Technically, we’re both crazy. Must be something in the water around here or something. Anyway, you’re crazier than me! You were kissing your dead husband. You know how wrong that is? I still find Kelly attractive, even now, but I couldn’t kiss her. That’s sick. Did you know, this morning, she gave birth to a maggot? Don’t ask me how I know this but...Yeah...That was gross. And to think, if it happened a few minutes later. Anyway If you must know why I killed her, I mean if you really must know, I lost my job yesterday, for doing something stupid, which is why I was in a bit of a funny mood when you came over...Kelly stormed out of the house because she was angry at me. By the time she came home, I was hoping she would have calmed down a bit but she kept going on and on and on...Worrying about mortgage payments, bills...Worrying about this and that...Shouting at me for being so stupid...I snapped. Just one of those things you have very little control over, you know what I’m saying?”
“You know exactly what he’s saying,” Ben didn’t say.
“The weird thing is, I don’t regret it,” he said.
I worried, at first, that we were cut of the same cloth but we’re not. I do regret what I’ve done. I regret it all. Everything. If I hadn’t killed Ben everything would have played out differently. With us at least. Liam could have still killed his wife but - chances are we wouldn’t have been involved in it too.
“Anyway, that’s enough chit chat...I actually have a busy schedule today.” He stood up and raised the knife towards my chest.
“We could run away together,” I offered out of desperation.
“How could I trust you?” he asked. “Look what you did to Ben. No, this is the only way now...Before you...You know...Die...I want you to know this, though. I won’t tell people you killed my wife. I won’t even tell them you killed your husband. I’ll keep it a secret for as long as I possibly can. Hopefully even take it to my grave...”
“You won’t get away with it. Neither of us will.”
“You definitely won’t. I might and ‘might’ is good enough for me.”
“You won’t. You won’t get away with it. We stand more chance if we teamed up...”
“No, I don’t think so. Besides, I’m onto a good start, honey, seeing as I’ve already dug the pond...”
He thrust the knife forward.
~ FIN
Author’s notes for ‘Romance is Dead’
Thank you, again, for taking the time to read my work. Even if you only skipped through to this section of the book - I don’t mind. I’m just grateful you’re here.
I won’t lie; this book wasn’t as much fun to write, for me, as other titles have been. Writing, entirely, from the mindset of a woman was trickier than my usual because...Well, I don’t understand women. Anyway, that’s me being perfectly honest with you. I hope I managed to make her convincing for you!
This book was actually brought about my a dark music video I saw on the Internet a few months ago. Someone posted it to me because, apparently, I look like the lead singer - Tom Petty. The music video was ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’. If you haven’t seen it go and Google it for it really is quite delicious. Hmmm. Just read that back - how camp did I sound? Seriously. You’d think I’d rewrite it to make myself sound a little more manly but, truth be told, my delete key is broken on my keyboard.
Anyway, the music video brought back memories I had of a story I wrote years and years (and years) ago dealing with necrophilia. Previously unreleased, and long since abandoned, it awoke an urge to rewrite the story into what you’ve just read. Admittedly, in my mind, I was going to make it a lot darker and sicker than it actually turned out. Originally I had planned for Naomi to end up sleeping with a now-dead Liam but maintaining eye contact with the still-dead Ben. I had her riding Liam because Ben was so far gone it made it impossible to carry the act out with me. Well, not entirely impossible but definitely disgusting. I even planned for a maggot to crawl from the tip of his penis.
The reason I didn’t take it there was because it didn’t really work with the rest of the story. Naomi wasn’t ‘mad’ enough to want to do that and I couldn’t think of any reason, on Earth, why someone would stoop so low as to bang a corpse - especially the corpse of a neighbour whilst looking at the dead, rotting body of her husband. I mean, we all love a threesome fantasy but that’s taking it a little too far. Even for me.
I discussed, in length, the idea with various trusted people (my cat and my Bearded Dragon, Larry) and decided it was better off left out...Besides, whilst writing the story - another twist was presented to me in that Liam wasn’t actually dead. Trust me, that came as a surprise to me. One minute I knew the direction I was writing in and then suddenly the character popped up and threw a curveball at me. One, I’m pleased to say, I enjoyed immensely. So much so, in fact, that the original ending was ditched in favour of Liam being the main ‘bad dude’. I sent both versions off to BETA readers and the general feedback was the ‘Liam ending’ was better.
Who knows, maybe one day I’ll release a book called ‘Alternates’ which contains all the various different endings to my works.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story and,
don’t forget, you can always swing by my author page on Facebook (matt shaw publications) and catch up with new work, find older stuff or just chat! It’ll be nice to see some new faces over there!
As always, take care.
Matt Shaw
