by Jack Probyn
‘It was given to me as a present.’
‘Present?’
‘They’re part of The Community too. They’re CandidCouple. They gave it to me for putting on a stellar performance – Steven’s words, not mine. I haven’t heard from them recently. They usually like to meet up once a month or so. You should try them. They taught me things I could never have imagined.’
A deep grin grew on Lester’s face and he gripped the glass in his hands tightly, testing its strength. ‘I can teach you even more.’
‘I wouldn’t have responded if it weren’t for your high score. I’m looking to learn a lot.’
‘It will only work if you’re a good learner.’
‘I’m fast too.’
‘Even better,’ Lester said. He finished off the rest of his drink and placed the glass on the carpet. ‘Do you have anywhere we can go?’
Jessica nodded. ‘My bedroom. I’ve kitted it out especially for tonight. It’s a rarity a Communion happens in my room. It’s usually at the other party’s. Somewhere better, with lots more room to play in.’
‘For my particular methods, we don’t need a lot of space.’
Jessica ascended the steep staircase, followed closely by Lester. They came to the landing and made a right turn. Lester took a quick glance at the other bedroom and the bathroom, which were visible through their open doors. He deemed it safe to proceed. There was no one there, and there was nothing immediately suspicious about the house either. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything suspicious about Jessica.
‘What about in your flatmate’s room?’ Lester asked, just as Jessica entered her own. ‘It looks bigger. Plus it feels naughtier.’
Jessica shook her head violently. All her flirtatious behaviour had disappeared like a random star in the night sky. ‘No. I couldn’t do that. Her room is off limits. She doesn’t even let me in during the day when she’s here, let alone when she’s not.’
‘Come on,’ Lester said, edging closer towards Jessica’s flatmate’s room. ‘She won’t know if we’re careful. We’ve got time to tidy up if we make a mess. Come on, Jess – it’ll make it more exciting. You get more points if you do it somewhere different to normal.’
‘Really?’ Jessica’s eyes widened.
‘Didn’t you know? You get an extra hundred for doing it somewhere other than your Designated Communion Area. That’s why they make you enter that information when you sign up.’
Jessica shook her head. ‘Those bastards. They didn’t tell me that. If I’d have known earlier, I could have got nearly a thousand extra points.’
Shrugging, Lester said, ‘Shame. You’d be nearer me on the leader board.’ He crossed the threshold into the flatmate’s room and peered inside. ‘Now you’ve got the opportunity to get an extra two hundred.’
‘Two hundred?’
‘I know the founder. I can work out a deal.’
‘Why don’t we go to yours? You’ve already got enough points.’
No, I don’t, he thought. In his mind, the gap between him and second position wasn’t large enough. It was just over three thousand, and that, Lester knew from experience, could be achieved in as little as five Communions. But that would require some depraved activities – the likes of which had only been committed by one person: him.
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ Lester started. ‘I’ve got a high score to maintain. The moment I let that slip, the moment I fall to second… third… fourth… I can’t let that happen.’
For a long moment, Jessica neither said nor did anything. She seemed to be stuck in an internal conflict. Lester knew the answer before she did. He knew that she’d concede defeat and agree to it. He knew that she wanted – no, needed – those extra points that he could get her. He knew that she strived to climb the leader board.
Becoming a member of The Community was like a drug. Once you’d got a small taste for it, you wanted it more and more. It became an obsession. An addiction. Except this one didn’t eat away at you and make you any less of a human being. If anything, it had the opposite effect. It built bonds between people, relationships. And Lester was the living, breathing version of that obsession.
‘Fuck it,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ll deal with her tomorrow. Right now, I want you.’
Jessica tore across the landing, grabbed Lester’s collar and threw him down on the bed. She slammed the door shut and crawled atop him. Lester was instantly hard, and he fought the urge to remove his trousers.
He didn’t want that old pleasure anymore. No, he was after something else. Something new. Something that, until recently, he’d never thought possible. The other night, with Steven and Jessica, he’d experienced a completely different level of sensation. He had been at one with their dead bodies – more than he could have ever said for someone living.
Jessica pulled her dress up and slammed her body down on his crotch, which made Lester groan in pain.
‘I thought you were the masochist?’ he said through struggled breath.
‘I was, but now I want to flip sides.’
‘You can’t.’
Jessica hefted herself from him, wandered out of the room and returned a few seconds later. She held a whip and handcuffs in her hands.
‘I’m going to do to you what Steven and Jessica Arnholt did to me.’
There it was. Those names again. The ones he didn’t want to hear. The ones that made him suspicious. The ones that incited paranoia every time he heard someone else mention them.
Jessica removed her dress, placing the whip and handcuffs on the bed. Lester propped himself up on his forearms and looked beside him to the bedside table. There was nothing there he could use as a weapon. Deciding on a better plan, he undressed himself, flinging his clothes to the floor, and hopped off, naked from the waist down.
‘What are you doing?’ Jessica asked.
Lester pretended to lunge for the whip on the bed with his left arm. He anticipated Jessica’s reaction – she reached for it just as quickly – and, using his right hand, punched her in the jaw. She yelped and collapsed to the ground. Her hand flew to her mouth. Within seconds, it was bloody.
‘What are you—?’
Lester punched her in the face again, this time with the left. Her head recoiled and smashed on the floor. Lester straddled her, pinning her to the ground. She clawed at him as she began to choke on her own blood.
Lester punched her one final time, almost incapacitating her. Jessica’s eyes rolled back in her head as it lolled from side to side. Then Lester gripped her throat in his hands. It felt small, thin, narrow, like a rolling pin. He applied his body weight onto her neck and squeezed simultaneously. She gasped and wheezed for air, clawing at his face, trying to force him to stop.
Her efforts were futile. Lester was hungry, The Nasties were on their way, and he had no intention of giving up. Nothing could stop him now.
Nothing.
He grinned at her as the life gradually left her body.
‘It’s all a part of it,’ he said, dribbling with excitement. ‘Think of the points.’
Jessica gasped but nothing came out. More blood and phlegm rolled down her throat and she coughed it back up.
Lester increased the pressure, and then, within a few minutes of struggling and fighting back, Jessica Mann was dead.
And now she was his to play with for the next eight hours, until her flatmate came home.
He picked her body from the carpet and slumped it onto the bed.
‘Oh, Jessica,’ he said. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to this.’
CHAPTER 20
PLAYING BY THE RULES
Lester delicately closed the door behind him so as not to disturb the still silence and tranquillity of the street. He wiped his fingerprints free from the handle using his sleeve and wandered to the edge of the front porch. In the distance, the hubbub of city life reminded him that he was invisible. A mask amongst millions. Just another ordinary individual going about his life without any interference, cloaked by anonymity in the e
arly hours of the morning. There was no reason to suspect him of anything. Unless… unless he’d made a noise during Communion. Unless somebody heard him defiling Jessica Mann’s body.
No, that was a ridiculous thought. It was impossible. He’d been quiet. He’d made sure Jessica didn’t even have the chance to scream before he beat her to death. Everything was fine, he convinced himself. But it wasn’t over yet. He still needed to get home.
Lester pulled his flat cap lower over his face and meandered along the pavement cautiously, keeping his head down and his eyes focused on the slits in the pavement in front of him. As he swayed his arms through the air, he realised something. His hands were still covered in Jessica Mann’s blood. Keeping one by his side, and the other by his face, making it look like he was rubbing his nose or scratching his cheek, he licked the blood clean. The taste was delicious. Metallic. Tangy. Sweet, like Jessica’s perfume had been.
Jessica Mann had been good fun and a good ride. But she was nothing compared to Jessica Arnholt. There was still something missing. Something he couldn’t quite place. He had even smashed a few of Mann’s teeth out and removed her tongue to make the blowjob more satisfying. But it hadn’t worked. Maybe it was him. Maybe he was the one at fault. Something psychological, something in his brain that was prohibiting him from enjoying himself as much. Maybe he was trying to encapsulate the experience too perfectly. Maybe next time he would need to relax more, worry less and be more carefree about it all. Maybe he needed to let The Nasties completely consume him.
Lester made a left turn at the end of the street. Twenty yards away, approaching him with its lights beaming across the road, was a police car, illuminated in fluorescent yellow and white by the street lamps on the pavement. At the sight of the vehicle, Lester panicked. His foot caught on a disjointed pavement slab and he tripped, his body flopping onto the concrete, skin tearing away from his palms. He let out a little groan and hoped the patrol vehicle hadn’t seen him.
But then the driver pulled the car to a stop and rolled down the window.
‘You all right there, mate?’ the driver asked.
On the passenger side of the car a uniformed officer exited the vehicle and started towards him. Lester’s pulse quickened. He picked himself up and then brushed himself off, keeping his back to the police officer.
‘You had a little too much to drink tonight there, mate?’ the officer asked, hovering a few feet from him.
Lester readjusted his hat, pulling it further over his eyes. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, standoffish.
‘Where you headed?’ the officer asked.
‘Home.’
The officer took a step forward and Lester froze. In his pocket, he held the blade he’d used to dissect Jessica’s body, another memento, along with the others secreted in his coat. He gripped the weapon tightly and readied himself to plunge it under the officer’s armpit. He didn’t want it to come to that, but he was physically strong enough to be able to inflict such damage. He just needed to catch the officer unawares. And be able to deal with the other one.
‘You going to be all right? You didn’t twist your ankle or anything?’ The officer took another step forward, and Lester inched his hand out of his pocket.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, starting away. ‘Thanks though, Officer. I feel a lot safer when you’re around.’
Lester hurried out of there. That had been a close one. There was no knowing how much of his face the officer had seen. He just hoped it wasn’t enough for him to be able to identify him.
Lester sped home on foot. It took him half an hour to complete the two-mile journey. And as he walked, he darted his gaze left and right, searching for any signs that the police car was suspiciously following him.
There was nothing, save for his own paranoia wracking his nerves.
Once he was home, Lester locked the door behind him and headed straight upstairs. The window in the bathroom was locked. He undressed and then jumped into the shower. He enjoyed the cold water streaming over his muscles. They flexed as the shock set in, and then he relaxed. Torrents of water travelled down his face and into his mouth. He panted heavily. The sin was releasing from his body. Thin streaks of blood mixed in the water that pooled by the drain, swirling as it waited to descend the plug.
He stood there for five minutes, allowing himself to be cleansed. After he’d finished, he climbed out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist and carried his soiled clothes to his bedroom. Throwing them on the floor, with his other hand, he reached inside his trouser pocket and removed a plastic freezer bag.
Blood smeared the walls of the bag. He moved to the chest of drawers in the corner of the room. Resting atop them was a large empty jar. Lester opened it, decanted the contents of the freezer bag inside the jar and discarded the bag to the bin by his feet. Staring back at him was Jessica Mann’s severed tongue and fingers. It had been an old ritual from when he was a child. He couldn’t recall exactly how old he was when he’d first killed, but he knew it was early in his development. It had started with birds and rats that he’d trapped in the garden, slowly growing more severe as the size of the animals increased. And eventually he’d started receiving sexual gratification from it. The sensation had reached new heights when he’d slaughtered Whiskers, the family cat. Growing up, he’d hated the way the cat had hissed at him and clawed him for no reason, drawing blood at the slightest scratch. So he decided to seek revenge and remove its tongue and paws. That way there was no chance the animal would be able intimidate or hurt him again. And there was the same parallel with Jessica Arnholt. He had removed her tongue too. Now she wouldn’t be able to harm him with her words again – those fateful words that had invoked fear within him and awakened The Nasties after she’d let slip that they were going to kill him. Now both Jessica Mann and Jessica Arnholt had been silenced for eternity. They could never speak out about their injuries. And they could never reveal his identity.
Lester grabbed a bottle of disinfectant from inside the drawer and wiped his thumbprint clean from the glass until he saw his distorted reflection staring back at him. Then he dressed himself and headed downstairs to the kitchen to burn his camomile candle. The sun was creeping over the horizon, which meant it was nearly time for breakfast. There was a full day ahead of him, and he didn’t feel like sleeping; the euphoria of the past six hours – two hours shorter than he would have liked – was all the energy he needed to keep him awake for the rest of the day.
As the time reached 6 a.m., the alarm on his phone vibrated. He stopped it and called S. It was the earliest that S would be awake, and if there was one thing Lester knew about the man he adored – yet had never met – it was that he did not like to be woken up before his prearranged time.
‘Another one?’ S asked, answering almost as soon as the phone had begun to ring.
‘Yes,’ Lester said. He was dressed in jogging bottoms and T-shirt. To an outsider, he looked like a normal person – someone who had a normal job, with a normal life – and that was just the pretence Lester wanted to maintain.
‘Send me the proof.’
‘Check your messages.’ Lester had videoed and photographed his time with Jessica Mann. He had sent them to S on the way home. ‘They should already be in there. But it doesn’t have quite the same production value as Steven Arnholt’s camera.’
There was a moment’s pause as S confirmed receipt of the files. He breathed heavily through the phone, and as Lester waited, he opened his laptop, logged onto The Community and checked the leader board.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Lester said.
‘What?’ S replied. His breathing was heavy, almost aroused.
‘You know exactly what. Second place. The gap. It’s five hundred points. How? Overnight?’ Lester’s breathing increased as rage began to scorch his body.
‘He’s catching you up.’
‘Bullshit. In one day? Impossible.’
‘Twenty-four hours is a long time.’
&
nbsp; Lester was shaking his head in disbelief as he spoke. ‘If he was playing by the rules, he would have to Communion with twenty people in twenty-four hours…’ Lester hesitated. ‘But he’s not playing by the rules, is he?’
There was another pause. Lester bit his lip in anger.
‘Don’t ignore me,’ Lester hissed.
‘He came to me. He wanted to know how to improve. What was I to do? You two are front runners to become part of the separate league. If he’s getting the better of you already, then you need to up your game.’
Lester stared at the screen.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I will.’
CHAPTER 21
TROPHIES
For the second time in the space of three days, Jake donned a forensic oversuit. This time it was an even tighter fit, and the material chafed his wrists, ankles and neck. He and the rest of Major Investigation had received a call early morning, alerting them of a murder less than a mile from Stratford Central Station.
‘What’ve we got?’ Jake asked, waiting outside the house in the middle of the street. Drew, Garrison and Liam all struggled to fit their suits over their shoes and bodies. The street had been cordoned off and a perimeter set up around the block.
Poojah, the pathologist, exited the house and wandered across to them. ‘Similar to Monday’s. Female, IC1, mid-twenties.’
‘Name?’ Liam asked as he pulled the zip up to his chin.
‘Housemate identified her as Jessica Mann. Driver’s licence confirms that. Her NHS card says she’s a trainee nurse,’ Poojah explained.
‘Jessica…’ Jake repeated. ‘Too much of a coincidence?’
Liam scoffed. ‘I’ve been in this job too long to know there are no such things as coincidences.’
‘She was pretty too,’ Poojah said.
‘Was?’
Poojah didn’t respond.
‘Think you might need another sick bag, Jake,’ Drew said to a chorus of chuckles coming from Liam and Poojah.
Beside them, Garrison was the final one to suit himself up. The four of them – Liam, Drew, Jake and Garrison – followed Poojah into the house. Scene of crime officers swarmed the downstairs area like flies, zooming from one corner to another with total disregard for the new arrivals. Several of the SOCOs were in the middle of taking photographs of the living room, dining room and kitchen at the end of the corridor. Jake climbed the stairs and felt the air temperature drop. There was a frostiness in the atmosphere, worsened by the absolute silence, and Jake sensed every one of them was preparing themselves – physically and mentally – for what they were about to see.
