ONE
I wake up, but you are not here. You are not here because you’re gone. You aren’t anywhere, Melissa. But still, I search for you. I expect you to be here with me, even though I know that will never be the case again.
My head is a mess from last night. It sloshes from the vodka, and I sit up slow-motion-slowly. My brain hammers against my skull. It’s like there’s a rave in there. I hate raves, or any electronic music, for that matter. My hand fumbles about the gap in the bed where you should be. It’s empty, and there is a Melissa-sized hole. I know there is, but I look for you anyway.
It has been eight months since you slept here, eight months since you slept anywhere that wasn’t permanent. Eight months is long, but it isn’t long enough for me. You should be here, and yet you’re not. It’s all my fault. I wasn’t here for you. There’s nothing I can do now, and no one I can tell. Hell, even if I did, I doubt anyone would believe me, and certainly, no one would understand. Nobody knows who I am, and now that you are gone, I am not sure I do either.
After thirty motionless minutes of staring at the ceiling, I get up from the bed, move to the window, and throw back the curtains. It is just after noon, and I think it is a Saturday. I say this because the neighbours are tearing ten shades of shit out of each other in the garden. Ah, June and Mike. The Wellingtons! The idyllic couple next door. Idyllic, so long as you don’t live near them. Idyllic, so long as you don’t hear them arguing every fucking weekend, out in the garden for all to see and hear.
Mike is a business executive, and Mike likes young interns. If I wasn’t so fucking miserable, I might kill him. Not because infidelity is a mortal sin, but because it would put a stop to their idiotic fucking rows. June knows what Mike does with the interns. Mike knows that June knows, and Mike is probably single-handedly keeping the local florist in business. And the apologies usually work.
Adultery in the Wellington’s house is solved by how well Mike grovels. I wish they could skip the arguing. It is like being in The Truman Show. And in my head, I’m stuck between the sixth and seventh levels of Dante’s Inferno. Never moving up or down. It is like watching the same Adam Sandler movie over and over every weekend. It never stops. It’s endearing at first, possibly mildly funny, but the show goes on . . . Mike and June continue to argue, and Mike continues to fuck the interns! Fucking Mike, not Fucking June!
I watch them bicker, and I go to shut the curtains, but not before June spots me in the window. Our eyes meet, and she shoots me a kindly smile. Now I’m stuck.
Move, dammit, Arthur.
Fuck, now she’s waving to me, so I wave back. Fucking June! I avert my gaze and look down at the windowsill, where I spot a large glass paperweight. I consider opening the window and throwing it at her head as hard as possible. It might hit her smack bang in the middle of the skull and end the ridiculous waving once and for all. But then you bought this in Lanzarote, Melissa. I can’t use it for murder, even if I wanted to. Goddammit, June, your husband has cheated on you for the nine thousandth time. Where is your self-respect, and why are you waving at the neighbour?
My hand, which had unconsciously wrapped itself around the paperweight, loosens and moves up in line with my shoulder. Once there, it begins to wave back. What am I doing? I need to move, to get out of this situation before I am invited around for dinner, where I’ll be forced to kill both of them to avoid being stuck in their awkward dinner table tug of war. Who’s more pathetic, Mike or June?
My hand breaks free from its wretched wave, and, short of a better plan, I draw both curtains to a close. Ta-da, I am gone. Problem solved. Free from June’s glare, I move into the bathroom and sit down to unload. I must have slept for a good twelve hours, and once again, I filled my once well-tuned body full of vodka and self-loathing, and the need for bodily functions is vast.
Once I am finally able to exit the bathroom, I move downstairs. The morning has already come and gone, so I slowly creak the front door open, spot the local paper on the mat, and stealthily bring it inside.
Having made a coffee, I sit in the living room and open the awful local gazette. I want to take a seat in the conservatory, but then I would have a direct line into the bickering next door. It wouldn’t be peaceful, and it wouldn’t be long until they spotted me and tried to rope me into being an arbiter. I lack impulse control, and despite my personal pity party, I might make a mess of them.
So, instead, I sit in the living room; it is precisely as you left it, Melissa—aside from the chaos. You wouldn’t like it; I don’t either, but for some reason, the mess is one of many things I’ve yet to address.
As I sit and attempt to read the paper, I feel it is essential to clarify something. The news, in general, is an abomination, local news even more so. I can only speculate that all reporters are born with a tail and horns. The news doesn’t want us informed. It wants us scared, persuaded, advertised to, sad, and lonely. The local paper is no exception, aside from the fact I’m confident a child writes every article. Given my hatred for the paper, it might seem odd that I sit in the house daily and read it. I mean, why? Well, the answer is simple. I live in a small Hampshire village and need to know what goes on. I have barely left the house since you went, Melissa. I have not been the same since you died. You left, and a part of me went too. It has been eight months… eight months, and I still don’t know what to do, how to move forward, or how to leave my den of inequity.
I think I might be improving. But it is hard to judge progress when it comes to self-loathing. And I get it. I know what everyone is thinking. Friends and family alike tell me that I am an eligible, middle-aged adult. My wife passed away last year, and that life moves on. But I am stuck in a rut. I know I should get up, get dressed, and get outside. Maybe I should start dating, hang out with my friends, find a new hobby, or even dare I say it, see a therapist. Right? That is what ordinary people do. There are, however, three inherent problems to this. I am not normal. I am afraid. I don’t see the fucking point.
There are almost eight billion people on this planet, and I’m sure most of us think that we are not normal. I get it. We all want to be unique, quirky, and interesting. The thing is, I am not sure I am unique; I am maybe slightly interesting, and day to day, I am as normal as cornflakes at breakfast. I even have a normal name, Arthur! Arthur was once a king of England; Arthur was a playwright and a creator of masterful detectives.
But today, Arthur is the third most common name for a boy: popular Arthur. I know there are worse names. I could have been named Keith or Theo, and I am thankful every day that I was not. But believe it or not, being called Arthur is the least of my problems. Because I am normal, and yet I am not. You see, this Arthur was married, has friends, and even held a job once. But he is also impulsive, volatile, angry, and maybe a little bit of a maniac, according to societal rules. The worst part about this is that I don’t feel like I am, but the sum of my life’s actions and deeds would say otherwise. Melissa used to tell me that I wasn’t crazy. Simply the world was. But now you are gone, Melissa. I am here alone; I am depressed, and I am scared. Who would have thought it, me afraid? How the mighty have fallen.
Now, I know what you are thinking, who calls themselves mighty? I mean, who am I? A self-aggrandising R and B star who adds Lion to their title? Or a rapper turned emo who names himself after a Tennessee gangster? No, I am not these things. I don’t need recognition or notoriety. The truth is far simpler than that. I have killed almost one hundred people, all evil and all deserving. They all died at my hands—or my knives, or a nearby blunt instrument. Most of them were very formidable. They evaded the law and escaped captivity or retribution. They hung out in the shadows, committing nefarious deeds . . . until I came along.
The news—that I don’t like—reports some things that are new in the world, but not all of them. And fiction fills our heads with so-called make-believe, but it all came from somewhere. Thousands of people run around this planet doing despicable deeds who seldom get caught and never make the news, and I suppose I am one of them. However, I put my homicidal prowess to good and practical use.
Serial killers are not fictional and glamorous. They are usually evil, despicable beings. And as for professional killers, they will exist as long as there is a demand and money to pay for them. Take it from someone who knows—I am an unprofessional assassin. Unprofessional in that I don’t work for anyone besides myself. My work is, in fact—or was—exceptional. It is not because I am on hiatus. It is not that I no longer have the longing or the impulse. But because I have been miserable, anxious, and depressed. I am not even a shadow of my former self. I’m sad and scared, and I can’t see the positive in doing anything right now, not even murder.
I know what most people would think. Okay, he’s heartbroken and depressed! But he is a murderer, an evil man; surely his lack of motivation is a good thing? I suppose, in a way, that is correct. But are we all that different from animals? I remember the London Riots. Dutiful doctors turned out and hurled chairs through windows before garrotting people with their stethoscopes. And austere accountants ripped off their shirts and beat people to death with abacuses, well, maybe not quite. But the truth is, if society and its rules fell, we would see a different side to most people. All I have done is work with what I’ve been given.
I have this deeply embedded violent anger that responds primarily to inequality. I deal with it the only way I see how, by eking out some form of justice. I get these violent impulses that rise up periodically, and if I don’t deal with them properly, they bubble out as an apoplectic, homicidal rage. If I don’t address the urge, then the simple act of someone cutting in the line of a queue—to be fair, it is a cardinal sin in Great Britain—or someone giving me the finger while I am driving might elicit their death.
I deal with my anger by taking it out on those who have sinned. I get annoyed and take out the World’s trash. It is a simple and effective solution.
Despite living in a sleepy Hampshire village on the outskirts of Winchester just off the M3, it still sees its share of maleficence. Bad things do happen here. We don’t see many professional hitmen or hitwomen—although hitwomen just sounds like something one shouldn’t do—but the occasional dirty deed goes unpunished. I know it sounds silly, Melissa, but I subscribed to the paper after you left. I’ve barely been able to go outside, but I still need to know what is happening in case I do. This is my town, and I still need to harbour the hope that I might one day feel better.
I have learned—from the paper—that a man is kidnapping local cats and stringing them up at home. I know it is a far cry from what I usually deal with, Melissa. But I have to work back up to this and regain my appetite. Plus, it might be cats today, but he will soon graduate. I have spent most of the last eight months in the house or floating lifelessly in the heated outdoor pool. And in all that time, he’s been stealing cats, taking them home and cutting them up while listening to Brahms. First, what did poor Brahms do to be associated with this lunatic? Imagine the movie? He’d turn over in his grave if he knew he was the soundtrack to cat vivisection. Second, they’re cats. I mean, what the actual fuck.
The saddest part about my funk is that I have figured it out. I know who you are, Jarrod Walker. I know that you live at 92 Cotteridge Drive, and I know that you are home alone every Thursday with Brahms on dismembering cats! I have even been bold on occasion and snuck out of the house, fuelled by vodka and tears. I’ve followed Jarrod to his house and loitered in the dark, thinking of all the ways I could kill him or, at the very least, offer up an apocalyptic scare. But in the end, I have just come home to the pool and floated in a body of water that is now, in all likelihood, mainly vodka, tears, and self-pity.
To top it all off, Mike and June have a cat, and the fucker is still alive! I don’t much care for cats—not enough to dissect them to classical music—but enough that I wouldn’t shed a tear if Timmy went missing. What is the point of having a cat killer in the village if they don’t have the decency to cull your neighbour’s cat?
The truth is, it has been fourteen days and eight months since you went, Melissa, and I am still talking to you. Not out loud. That really would be crazy. But I just can’t find my way back to the light or civilization.
It’s been fifteen days and eight months since I took a life. I would have stayed home that night if I had known you would leave. But I didn’t. Now you’re gone; worst of all, Melissa, I’m anxious and depressed. I have been since you went. You’re gone. I can’t do that which I love the most, and I don’t know what to do or who to tell.
