I reached over and knocked the razor blade into the sink. I was trembling. God, I looked like a mess. Sweat and spit, hair matted, clumped, clinging to my face. I know he thought I was sexy. Only he could think I looked sexy. Only to a mind, perverted and loathsome, could I look sexy. I was a tube of lipstick smeared to its base. I was a swan plucked of its feathers. I was used. And the man who made his fortunes using, abusing, the likes of me, my brother – that man was there, in the other room, just beyond the bathroom door.
I wished my heart would stop beating so fast. It was running hard, in my head, in my chest. I felt like a church steeple and the bells were sounding off inside me. For the moment that’s all I could hear – not the running water in the sink, not the pounding beat of the party just outside, but the bells. Nothing but the bells. I asked myself what they were calling for. Was it a call to judgement? Was it the sound of Sunday mass? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. I’d never been to church.
Listening there, a little deeper, past the noise and the high-pitched ringing in my ears now drowning out every other sensation, I could hear the voice of my brother. His last words. I remembered his hands weakly holding my own. They were cold. When he spoke, he reminisced. I suppose that’s what happens when you know you’re going to die: you reminisce. He was young, so he talked about us, our childhood, but it was hard for him to talk so I’d pick up the threads. What we had was good. But it was… it was… it was over. He told me that he loved me, and I tried telling him I loved him too but the words wouldn’t come out right over the tears and the pain. It was cancer that’d taken him. Next to him on his death bed was the letter declaring his denial of coverage, along with an automated apology, signed and approved by the same man there, in the other room, just beyond the bathroom door.
I heard him then. He wanted to go again. I took a wet rag, stuck it between my legs, and wiped myself clean. Another towel was used for my face, for my hair. I tossed the dirty things across the room into a half full hamper, and caught a glimpse of something that made me stop. It was a family portrait. There he was, smiling, pleasantly plump and immaculately bent into human form. His wife was plain, very unlike myself or the other girls at the party. She was a sad, but stoic figure. There was a weight on her shoulders that he didn’t seem to share. There were also two boys in the photo. They looked pleased, but bored. I thought to feel sorry for them, or, rather, I thought that I should feel sorry. Maybe I might have once, for a moment, but then the moment would pass, and life would go on – for some of us.
He called for me again. I told him I’d be just a moment. He whined like a puppy dog. I replied that I’d fuck him dead. That seemed to placate him.
I took the razor blade into my outreaching fingers. The bells must have stopped; fate had been decided. And with a sort of a waltz, I stepped out into the dark malaise, into the den of the damned to deliver judgement – my judgement. He was there, on the edge of the bed, with a hand around himself. His other hand was busy holding his phone in front of his pale, gleaming, pasty face. He wasn’t even looking at me. I didn’t bother hiding the razor. I straddled up behind him on the bed, putting my tits against his back, my legs around his lap, and felt his sickly warmth on my skin. And then I reached out and cut his throat. He never struggled. Not for the next thirty or so seconds that he still breathed did he writhe or shout. His blood gushed, and gushed, and then, it was over. He died there, in my arms, and I didn’t know what to think, but my heart was absolutely calm.
It only took a few minutes to clean myself up from the blood, and another few moments to dig into my handbag for my other dress and a wig. I put myself together and had another look at what I’d done. I waited for some feeling of regret, or shame. As I stood there, looking, searching, and rubbing my tummy through my satin dress, I knew that the satisfaction (if I didn’t feel it then) would be felt, and more, soon enough. He that had taken had also given.
I took my handbag and slipped out into the party outside the bedroom and disappeared into the miasma as just another whore.

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Pub: 21 Jan 2025 00:08 UTC

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