Red lipstick, red underwear, red rage, red blood that we roll about in while his head is locked between my thighs.
I am lucky to be in love with someone who encourages me in the ways I need, and never calls me “sweet,” “delicious,” or “cute.” He knows I get enough of that from others.
It’s lucky, in a way, how much personal information is given out when the suggestion of being able to fuck a splatterpunk girl is given… I mean it’s lucky for me —not so much for them.
The rage that burns through me needs an outlet and the slow, agonising torture of men who tell me I can’t be myself, I can’t write horror, I can’t be everything they are is my satisfaction. It’s therapy. It’s research..
The warning is in the very words that I write, which so often go overlooked. I wouldn’t say every book is autobiographical, purely because I like to keep some bits private, such as how I am already writing my next novel while being fucked by him —whilst we are covered in entrails and fragments of skin and bone, the smell of regret lingering in the cloying air.
I wasn’t always like this. I was married to a man who was successful, powerful and emotionally vacant. My role was to keep him happy, whilst ignoring myself. I didn’t know myself during that time, and lost the passion to find out.
Then he came into my life and made me realise I am powerful, and I have never felt more glorious than during our first kill. It was surprisingly easy to smash apart my husband’s cranium. A golf club wasn’t very inventive —however, it was a start. Plus, it was what we had to hand in that moment of unadulterated passion, offering itself up from the golf bag, a reminder that he chose to go to the links instead of celebrating our wedding anniversary.
It’s funny the way life works out. I wasn’t looking for anything the night Alex contacted me, but he appeared at just the right time, and straightaway, I knew he would become a huge part of my very essence, his words altering my very DNA, tattooing themselves onto my skin.
Before I knew what was real, Alex was my everything. And there I was, elbow deep inside my husband’s grey matter with memories clinging to my fingertips. Alex knew I needed to learn how to do it for myself, so for this kill at least, he let it be a solo effort while he watched on. The smile that drove me wild playing on his lips, my haunted head screaming, filled with the ghosts of my past to focus with the enormity and direction I needed to continue.
I realised broken love was a prison, and Alex had given me the keys.
Before I knew what was happening, I was chopping things down before they had a chance to grow, the rage taking over, becoming more of me than I was. The best of me burning in the same way as a plane that had fallen from the sky, and just as dramatically. I was stuck in a limbo of my own making, but I wasn’t alone, not anymore, never again.
There was no real reason Mark ended up on our hit list. It was purely the wrong time, wrong place, but I knew I needed him as much as I needed Alex and as violently. The moment Mark told me I would be pretty if I smiled made me need to remove the flesh from his bones, to see how pretty his face would look with a scream of pain rushing across it.
Working my fingers between the flesh and muscle, I savoured the wet ripping sounds as I rubbed the exposed bone and examined the network of nerves, laying them bare to me. I was experiencing true intimacy for the first time as I probed deeper within the inner workings of Mark’s body, touching parts never before seen by another.
Breathless and lying on the floor that night, I told Alex I loved him for the first time, unsure what his reaction would be, yet also afraid to not say it. Knowing one day I would need more than he could give me. The thick life fluid upon my skin, the copper smell of death playing upon my body, creating hope within my vacant heart, that was my true soul mate, Alex, who understood this and let me be who I was born to become.
Wherever I went my resentful eyes saw what was being thought about me.
Seeing couples looking at each other with loving eyes, thinking about each other, pushed me harder toward Alex. We loved as hard as we killed.
Addiction was never going to be healthy —addiction to the fucking, the mess, the gore. It all became me. Every soul I tore out haunted my very nature. I became the pain I was trying to block out. Alex made me love and hate in the worst way.
***
Soon, I needed more. I needed to feel the same pain I was inflicting on my victims. Then I realised the person missing from my lust was Luke. He was my best friend whilst I questioned myself, whilst I needed a shoulder to cry on. Eventually, my strength became Luke’s weakness.
He reminded me that when I got too strong is also when I was most afraid, that I was hated when I was loved by another, and that I worked too hard when I saw success. He needed me under him in reality as well as by imagination.
Time passed, and once Luke realised neither would happen, his love turned to hate, mine into ambivalence. I was never the girl who needed to be saved from others. I was the one who needed to be saved from myself, and then cared for after. He never understood and assumed everything I wrote had more meaning, that I was crying out to be rid of the misery of my life and that he would be the one to do it.
It became harder to keep him around and the thought of losing him became easier as I understood that his absence would deliver the pain I craved in my very soul.
This one was different. It was intimate. I wanted to hold Luke in the same way one holds a pet at the end of illness, being put to sleep, feeling heartbroken but aware that it’s for the best.
Luke was so trusting, so innocent. In his life, he had never experienced the shadow of depreciation.
***
Not for the first time, I was thankful for the bottle of liquid morphine I had liberated from my mother’s medicine cabinet. I had used it alongside a bottle of wine to silence the voices within my head, their screams that I wasn’t enough fading as I drifted off into perfect dreamless sleep, with Alex holding my broken mind and restless body.
Luke sipped, and I watched the way his mouth moved as he spoke, the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. While he drank down the wine, I drank him in. As he grew weak, I grew strong, excited to get to the part of the night I had craved, like air rushing into my starved lungs.
Whilst he slipped into his last sleep, the final moments of mortality, I held him, stroking his hair, whispering the kind of false platitudes I had spent a lifetime hearing from others. “It’s not you, it’s me.” “I never wanted to hurt you.” “I love you.”
The hours passed, and the darkness of night began to break, streaking the sky in deep red and orange. I had never felt more in love with anyone than I did at that moment —Luke looked so perfect. The thin skin of his eyelids fluttered, and his mouth fixed into a confused, silent scream as he realised his arms and legs were bound. At that moment, Alex let himself into my home. He always knew when I needed space and when I needed support. Together, we dragged Luke towards the bathroom. Luke’s cries made me wish I had thought to gag him, a detail I would remember for my next kill. I forced his body into the porcelain bath that had always been my place of comfort and it felt like the right place for my best friend to die. As he lay begging for mercy, never taking his eyes off mine, acting as though Alex wasn’t there, I almost felt sorry for what I was doing.
I poured the lighting fluid over Luke, making sure to saturate every inch. His pleas became screams, brutal and gut-wrenching. Flicking the lit match onto him was my final act of love. Alex melted away into the background, and the only people in the world were Luke and me. His screams became rasps, his smooth skin became one with the fabric of his clothing, and his life became a memory.
I looked into Alex’s smiling face, and for the first time since the killing began, I recognised I was alone. Truly alone.
I hadn’t saved anyone, only destroyed myself. My rage had won.
I’m not stupid. Part of me had always known Alex wasn’t real, that he was born out of my fear, my hate, my need. I’m not sorry he showed up when he did. Now, he is gone, as I will soon be, once the pills and morphine take hold, giving me the final release I crave.
In death, I know Alex will be there to greet me, and to say, “You look so much better when you smile.”
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