SIXTY

Feeling damp and uncomfortable, Stephanie awoke sometime in early morning, lying in a foetal position, huddled into her herself on the floor at the foot of the bed. She shivered, uncomfortable inside her own skin, and realized she had come on as she slept.

There had been a dream but she couldn’t remember much of it besides the fading and ill-recollected notion of someone standing alone within a wide, flat field of small green crops. And she had come awake saying, ‘No, no, no, no I did not . . .’ But another vague and surreal dream was the last of her worries now.

She quickly became aware of how weak she felt from hunger, her stomach burning and cramping; all she had eaten in three days was half of a sloppy burger Knacker had brought her. At least Fergal had given her water after he’d returned to the house following a sortie to find polyfene. Whether he was successful or not she had no idea. But he didn’t kill her when he returned, so maybe his pursuit of a roll of plastic in which to encase her body had failed. Instead of delivering a violent death he had brought her water. Tap water collected in a dusty plastic measuring jug he must have rooted out of the kitchen cupboards.

Stephanie drank all of the water within minutes of Fergal’s departure from the room, about a pint’s worth, and she had urinated into the saucepan sometime later, not long before she fell asleep while curled around the shard of broken, mirrored glass. A waft of her own waste hung around the foot of the bed as she fell away from the world and into an exhausted, wretched sleep.

After waking, during the hours she’d had to sit alone and reflect, she had fashioned a knife handle out of a single stocking that had once belonged to Margaret, and which she had been able to reach in the centre of the bed. She made the handle by repeatedly wrapping the flimsy hosiery, from toe to rubbery hold-up top, around the shard so that she wouldn’t cut her hand on the edges of the long fragment of glass when she found an opportunity to stab Fergal.

She had thought of using the glass spike on Fergal when he brought the water, but he had stayed clear of her and not lingered. Just put the jug on the floor and said, ‘Yum, yum.’ Then checked the cuff around the strut of the bedframe and left the room without another word. She had needed him closer.

Next time he came inside she would have to cut him, and before she fell asleep she had made considerable efforts to recall what she had been taught during her GCSEs, about where the major arteries were inside a human body. She needed to find one under his pasty flesh where it was exposed at throat or wrist. She doubted she could wield a fatal blow with a piece of mirror, and it would probably snap within the resistance of his dirty brown parka if she missed his flesh, but she wanted him hurt before he killed her. That idea was not only a source of comfort but now her sole purpose. The idea, uncomfortably, functioned as a source of excitement, as if the new aspect to her character that she’d discovered downstairs, and while Knacker was kicked around the floor, was trying to take hold of her again.

After his beating there had been no further sighting of Knacker, or even any sound of him on the first floor. A small mercy. She imagined him writhing around broken bones in a bed at the top of the house. Or perhaps Fergal had finished him off and buried him in the garden. No matter the length of their shared criminal history, she could not imagine them repairing their bond after such an attack. The duration and ferocity of the violence would have been a deal breaker between even the most devoted brothers. And the most awful aspect of all, lingering from the confrontation, was Fergal spitting onto his insensible mate as Knacker lay semi-conscious, half inside the ruined wardrobe. They were worse than rabid animals.

Perhaps Knacker had even been left bleeding on the kitchen floor of the ground floor flat, something she would only wish upon her worst enemy. So in her cold and discomfort she hoped that Knacker was in there, down there, and being investigated right now by the occupants before he joined them in a darkness that would never end for him. But then, if she were forced to endure an eternity inside this house after her murder, as a semi-aware presence, she realized her suffering would be greater if Knacker was inside the blackness with her; he might be able to torment her as Bennet still made his victims suffer.

She clenched her eyes and her fists and her mind to shut out any recall of the previous night, and what death inside this building seemed to suggest as a continuance of self, or a part of self.

Stop it, stop it, stop it . . .

She held the shard of glass tighter and did not return to sleep. Instead she sat alone in the darkness and listened to the other women of the house. Her neighbour sobbed against the wall for hours. A door on the first floor opened and closed several times; what she assumed was the bathroom door. Feet moved up and down the corridor outside. Steps of the distant stairwell creaked.

Around the curtains she watched dawn arrive incrementally in a variety of colours: indigo, blue, silver, white, before settling for grey. Rain pattered against the window to wake the world. With a trickling sound the radiator came on and warmed the room. This usually happened around six.

So was this to be her last day? She seemed to have been living on borrowed time for days, before her end came in this wet city, inside a half derelict house upon a mostly forgotten street.

It’s how so many must die.

When thirst and hunger made her moan, she decided she’d had enough. It was time. That time. Time to speed things up, to force a resolution, a conclusion. To get this over with.

I will not spend another night inside this house.

I will not spend another night inside this house.

I will not spend another night inside this house.

She moved the shard of broken mirror and held it close to the small of her back. Moved the glass about in her fingers to gain the best purchase for a thrust.

Aim for an eye.

That was asking a lot for someone who had never stabbed anything before. Maybe the bigger target of a cheek would be better. The glass would snap on impact but the point was sharp and should leave a mark that would be permanent. A scar on the awful face of a demented killer would be her final act and her legacy. But it was better than just dying in this evil place.

Maybe that’s what death mostly was: misery, exhaustion, despair, and just getting used to the idea through a series of steps towards the inevitable end. Who had the luxury of going at home in bed, surrounded by loved ones, satisfied their life had been fulfilling and had fulfilled some purpose? Since when did death have any regard for personal development or time? Maybe there was no such thing as time anyway.

Her thoughts seem to grow too vast for her skull and they made her feel tired, sluggish.

You can sleep when you’re dead.

Or can you?

A brief notion of taking her own life from the wrist made her shudder and she shut the thought out. No, she didn’t think suicide would be possible. Not yet. But after another couple of days of this she might be more comfortable with the idea.

I’m not going out like that.

Dispassionately and uncharacteristically, as if some dark and insidious reptile was coiled inside her mind and hissing advice, she decided it was better to be killed after inflicting a terrible wound on her murderer. And if she died angry and vengeful, perhaps she would remain as such, and not as a victim who lingered between these horrid walls forever.

Not long now.

The first visitor to enter her room was a surprise.