Heartstopper (27 page)

So what was I doing all morning as I lay in my bed? Was I thinking, plotting, selecting, anticipating, remembering, letting my imagination run wild? Well, yes. All these things. I’m a very creative person, even if this is something that is rarely acknowledged and certainly never encouraged. People tend to pigeonhole you. They think they know you. They grow complacent with their perception of who they think you are. They don’t want that perception challenged or altered. They don’t want to know more.

The truth is they don’t know anything.

Take my aunt for example.

She thought she knew me.

She was wrong.

Have I mentioned I killed her?

Shame on me, although truthfully, I feel no shame. Not anymore. I did for many years. Too many years, I realize now. Oh, not for killing her. No way. She deserved what happened to her. No, the shame I’m talking about was the shame I carried with me while she was alive. God, how she used to terrorize me! How she loved to make me feel guilty! How ugly and worthless she made me feel! She was one of those people who truly deserves to die. And she was my first. My virgin kill, as it were.

I’ve already alluded to some of my experiences with my aunt: the time she took me to a neighbor’s birthday party and almost let me drown, the way she subsequently transferred the blame to me, the vacations she ruined, the swimming lessons she insisted I take, the waterskiing disaster, her taunts, that grating hyena-like laugh.
You big baby. Where are you, scaredy-cat? Come on, chicken liver.

You might have thought things would get better as I got older, but that would be underestimating my aunt’s eagerness to interfere, her ability to infiltrate and infect the minds of others. Even my own mother’s.

Nothing I did was ever good enough. My failures were magnified, my successes ignored. Every disappointment I suffered was good for a laugh. Who’s laughing now? I wonder.

I’ve replayed that afternoon so many times in my mind, I sometimes worry that I’ll tire of it, that one day the memory might grow stale, or that it might start skipping, like a defective CD, and I’ll inadvertently omit an important part, a small tidbit perhaps, but one meant to be savored. I don’t want to leave anything out. I don’t want to forget even the smallest detail of that day. That’s why I’ve chosen to create a permanent record. I’m carving these memories in stone, so to speak.

Tombstones.

Even though my aunt was my first kill, it remains my most satisfying. What is it they say about sex and love? That sex is always more fulfilling when love is involved? Does the same hold true of murder? And is hate as powerful as love? I think it is. In fact, I think it’s more powerful.

Certainly, killing Liana Martin was infinitely more rewarding than killing Candy Abbot.

Just as my next kill will be even more satisfying than doing away with Liana Martin.

There’s one kill in particular I’m looking forward to.

Her time is drawing near. Each day brings me one day closer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and if I’m going to get the most out of these recollections, I have to be accurate, I have to make sure I’m in the moment. There can be no outside distractions. I have to return to that hot and humid July day, almost three years ago. Almost three
years? God, it doesn’t seem possible. What is it they say? Time flies when you’re having fun?

So, okay. Here goes. I was alone in the house. Reading, enjoying the air-conditioning and the solitude. And suddenly there she was. Banging at the door, demanding to be let in. I ignored her, focusing all my attention on the book in my hands, and after a minute it got quiet, and I thought she’d gone away. I remember allowing myself a sly smile, but the smile quickly disappeared with the sound of a key turning in the lock. I heard the front door open and close, the sound of footsteps approaching.

“Oh. You’re home,” she said, clearly startled to see me. Her short, dark hair was frizzy with the humidity, and the underarms of her blue sundress were stained with little half-moons of perspiration.

“Yes,” I acknowledged with a nod.

“Why didn’t you answer the door when I knocked?”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“How could you not hear me?”

“How did you get in?”

She waved her key in front of my face. “Your mother thought I should have one. In case of an emergency.”

“Is there one?”

“Is there one what?”

“An emergency.”

“Don’t be smart,” she said, an expression I’ve always found faintly ridiculous. Why would you tell somebody not to be smart? Unless of course their smarts made you look stupid.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Your mother borrowed my good black heels, and I need them for tonight.”

“Do you have a date?”

“Actually, yes, I do.”

I laughed. “Poor guy.”

“You’re certainly one to talk,” she said, and although I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that—truth be told, I’m still not—I knew it was meant to be insulting. “What are you reading?” She grabbed the book out of my hands, roughly flipped through several pages. “Aren’t you a little old for comic books?”

“It’s a graphic novel.”

“It’s a glorified comic book. Honestly! At your age. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”

“Don’t you have to get ready for your date?”

She checked her watch. It was one of those Rolex knockoffs that don’t fool anybody. I mean, all you have to do is feel them to know they aren’t real. They don’t even look real, if you ask me. Kind of like fake boobs. She had those too. “I have lots of time.”

“Good. Because I think my mother might have been wearing those shoes when she went out.”

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure she was wearing those shoes.” Actually I was sure of no such thing. I rarely paid any attention to what shoes my mother might or might not have been wearing. I only said that to upset my aunt, and was gratified to see it had.

“Where did she go? When will she be back?”

“I have no idea. She didn’t say.”

“Those are expensive shoes. She better not be wearing them to go grocery shopping,” she railed.

I shrugged, returned to my book. Seconds later, my aunt was rushing up the stairs to my mother’s bedroom. I heard a closet door opening above my head, items being tossed carelessly to the floor.

“Found them,” my aunt announced angrily, appearing at my side seconds later, waving the shoes menacingly close to my head.

“Then you should be happy,” I said.

“Why did you tell me she was wearing them?”

“I said she
might
have been wearing them.”

“Now I’m all hot and flustered.” She said this as if it were my fault.

“Can I get you something to drink? A Coke or some juice?”

She plopped herself down on the sofa. “A Diet Coke.”

That was it. No please or thank-you. No “That would be nice.” I got up from my chair and went to the kitchen. “You know, they say Diet Coke isn’t good for you,” I called back. “Supposedly it alters your brain waves.”

“Then I guess you have nothing to worry about,” she said, then laughed that awful hyena-like laugh.

At that precise moment—2:22 in the afternoon exactly, according to the digital clock on the stove—I decided to kill her. Actually, I’d been thinking about it for months, maybe even years, planning what I would do if I ever got the opportunity, thinking of ways to dispatch her with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of pain. At least for her. I wanted her to suffer in death, as she had made me suffer in life.

“We don’t have any Diet Coke,” I lied, moving several cans to the back of the fridge. “How about a gin and tonic?”

Did I mention she was a heavy drinker?

“Now that’s a good idea,” she said, probably the nicest thing she’d said to me in years.

“Trust me,” I said, removing the bottle of tonic from the fridge and locating the gin in the cabinet below the sink, expertly combining the two.

There were always lots of pills around the house. I rifled through several kitchen drawers, found an old prescription bottle of Percodan, crushed the six remaining pills, then emptied them into her gin and tonic. Talk about altering your brain waves. Then I returned to the living room and handed her the drink.

“Took you long enough,” she said. Not “Thank you” or “You’re so kind.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, watching her down half the glass in one gulp.

“Not bad,” she pronounced, taking another sip, then leaning back, lapsing into silence, seemingly lost in thought. She took another sip, made a face, lowered the glass to the floor.

“Something wrong?”

“Tastes bitter.”

“Isn’t it supposed to?”

“You probably put in too much tonic.”

“I can add some more gin,” I offered helpfully.

She looked toward her almost empty glass, then jumped to her feet. “No, that’s all right. I should get going.”

“Why don’t you stay awhile?” I urged in my most conciliatory voice. “We don’t get much opportunity to talk these days.”

“You want to talk?” She seemed surprised, maybe even flattered.

“How are you managing these days?” I asked.

“How am I managing? What kind of question is that?”

“How’s your job at the bank?”

She made a clucking sound deep in her throat, her mouth folding into a frown. “It’s awful. If Al hadn’t been such an idiot about finances, I wouldn’t be in this position. Anyway, I better go and make myself beautiful.”

“You already
are
beautiful,” I told her, almost gagging on the words.

She smiled, patted her frizzy hair. “Why, thank you. That was very sweet.” She leaned over to kiss my forehead, stumbled slightly. “Oh,” she said, touching the side of her head with the shoes in her hand.

“Something wrong?”

“I just got a little dizzy all of a sudden.”

“Maybe you should sit down.”

“No. I’ll be fine.” She took several steps toward the door, then stopped, her body swaying.

“Maybe I should drive you,” I volunteered.

“Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly fine. I just stood up too fast, that’s all.” She reached for the door handle, missed it by several inches.

I was right behind her. “Okay, look. I’m supposed to be meeting somebody in half an hour.” Another lie. I wasn’t meeting anyone. “You can give me a lift as far as your place.”

She neither agreed nor offered any protest as I reached across her and opened the front door, then guided her toward her dark green Buick. True to form, she sloughed my hand from her elbow and rebuffed my attempt to open her car door. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just trying to help.”

“You can help by keeping quiet.”

So the drive back to her house was silent. The only sound was the increasingly ragged sound of her breathing. I kept a close eye on both my aunt and the road. One of the reasons I chose to accompany her was to make sure that no innocent people were mowed down along the way. It was my aunt’s demise I sought. No one else’s.

Of course, that was then. This, as they say, is now.

Anyway, by the time she pulled into the driveway of her small, two-story, wood-framed house with its bright red door and chipped white paint, she was wobbly, and she seemed almost grateful when I offered to accompany her inside. She even let me carry her shoes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she kept saying. Then, more accusingly: “There must have been something off with that gin.”

The front door opened directly into the living room. The furniture was that ultramodern crap, all sharp angles and strange shapes. Mostly red. She loved red. “I think you
should lie down for a while,” I said as we walked through the tiny dining area to the steep staircase beside the kitchen at the back. Upstairs were two small bedrooms and one bathroom. I assumed I’d find what I needed in at least one of those rooms. If not, there was always the kitchen.

“Just a second,” I said as we reached the top of the stairs.

“What?” Her look was as accusatory as her voice.

“This,” I said simply. Then I pushed her with all my might.

It happened so fast it was almost a blur. I’ve had to learn to slow the fall down, as if I were pressing a slow-motion button in my head, so that I can truly enjoy the sight of her as she flew backward through the air, her feet swooping up toward her head as her arms shot out from her sides like wings, her back crashing against the thin red carpet that ran up the middle of the hard wooden stairs, her body bouncing between the steps and the wall as she continued falling until she reached the bottom, landing with both her hands flung above her head, her legs splayed indelicately, exposing the white panties beneath her blue linen sundress.

She was moaning and semiconscious when I reached her side. Blood was pouring from her left ear and her eyes were rolling back and forth in their sockets. I couldn’t be sure whether she was about to black out or come to, so I knew I had to work fast. I quickly removed her beige sandals and replaced one of them with one of her black, high-heeled shoes. “Shouldn’t wear such high heels,” I scolded. “Don’t you know they’re killers?”

I hurled her other shoe against the wall and watched it leave a scuff mark in the white paint before bouncing down several steps, eventually landing five steps short of the floor. Then I raced back up the stairs and put her sandals in her closet. That’s when I found what else I was looking for.

A large plastic bag.

It was wrapped around a pair of black silk pants, pants
she’d recently gotten back from the cleaners and had probably intended to wear on her date that night. I tore the bag from the hanger, careful to make sure there were no telltale pieces of plastic left lying about, then carried the bag down the stairs to where my aunt lay. Her eyes were closed as I lifted her head into my arms, then began carefully slipping the bag over her head.

Her eyes suddenly opened wide. “What are you …?” she managed to sputter before I got the bag fully over her nose and mouth. In her already weakened and precarious state, she was no match for me. I think she was probably dying anyway, but I couldn’t take the chance that she might linger until her date arrived and managed to get her to the hospital in time to save her life. And ruin mine.