This Is How You Die Read online

  “I’ve got your fucking hoodie!” he shouted to the window. He dropped his pants, exposed his backside, and then began rubbing the sleeve inside the exposed cleft, mumbling obscenities as he did so.

  I looked anxiously toward the open door and contemplated running right through it, hiding in the house and biding my time until an option for escape arose. But I would be running into an unfamiliar house, possibly right into a surprised mother, a crying baby, or an angry stepfather.

  Darren pulled his pants up, gave a quick look to the far side of the garden, and then hurried over to the fence that separated his house from his neighbor’s. I heard him mumbling incoherently as he scoured the far reaches of his neighbor’s garden, hoping to foul the hoodie further with canine excrement, I’m sure.

  I seized my opportunity and ran. I was over the fence in a desperate second, beyond the adjacent field as fast as my heavy heart and jittering legs would take me. I didn’t stop or look back until I was on the outskirts of town, safe in the knowledge that Darren, and his house, were a good half mile behind me.

  Despite my desperate escape I hadn’t been followed, and it was too dark for Darren to have seen more than a suspicious blur. In my breathless exertions, my heart retaining normalcy, my mind pondered on what might have been if I had ducked inside the house. I envisioned myself hiding in Darren’s room, surprising him on his return and butchering him with his parents, helpless and ignorant, sitting just feet away.

  The prospect of spilling his blood made me just as excited as it always had, but after being so close to him and his home, after I had been given an opportunity and an opening, my need had turned into a deep desperation.

  5

  I wasn’t sure what I had expected to learn from my first nightly escapade to Darren’s house, but I walked away with more than I had known before. I didn’t know what he did with his days or how he spent his nights, but I knew he had an overweight stepfather and a mother who was torn between the arguments of her son and her husband. There also seemed to be another child on the scene, suggesting that with a missing father, a nuisance adolescent son, and a needy baby, Darren’s mother had a tendency to be preoccupied when it came to her eldest son.

  The family also lacked a pet dog, a big plus if I decided to kill Darren in his home. I hate dogs. Their loyalty sickens me. Their dependency is deplorable, and their usefulness is limited. The lack of a dog is a plus in any home.

  I went on more nightly excursions to spy on Darren. More than once, I discovered he had stayed out late or had slept at a friend’s house, but I remained near the house, keeping a close watch on his mother and his stepfather. She fascinated me; there was something so sweet and soft in her eyes and so serene in her movements. But as soon as she opened her mouth, she changed into exactly the sort of woman I would expect her to be. She was the mother of a complete fucking idiot, after all.

  I thought more about how I was going to kill him. The modus operandi of The Butcher was simple: the deaths were savage, clinical, and personal. He typically killed from behind, unseen, strangling his victim or slitting their throat with a quick and decisive slash of a sharp razor. On two occasions, he had killed with a single strike driven through the heart, the first through his chest wall, crushing his ribs on the way; the second with a similarly precise strike through the back.

  I liked the idea of strangling Darren. I wanted to feel the life fade from his body, to drain every inch of oxygen from his veins and bathe in the warmth of his final breath, but he was stronger than me. He could easily overpower any attempts at asphyxiation.

  To make sure I could hit the heart with a clinical strike, should it come to that, I practiced on a dummy I found in a Dumpster outside the school, discarded during a training session held during evening hours. I tied it to the light-fixture in the office and practiced sneaking up behind and driving a kitchen knife through its heart.

  My uncle slept or drank his way through most of my studies, but not everything went over his balding head.

  “There’s a dummy in the office,” he said to me one morning.

  I had returned home from school to find him standing in the doorway to the living room with his hands on his hips. There was, as usual, a slight sway to his stance.

  I nodded in reply. The dummy had been there for two weeks and he had failed to notice it. He had been home when I brought it back. I even carried it past him, dragging it up the stairs while he sat just a few feet away, wallowing in low-budget beer and television.

  I thought about giving him a congratulatory clap or an exaggerated pat on the back, but nothing he was and nothing he did deserved a clap, facetiously or not. I also didn’t want to touch him. He had a leprous quality, a contagious disgust that infects those on the fringes of society and forces them to remain there.

  “What the fuck do you want with that?” he quizzed, lowering one eyebrow.

  I replied with an apathetic shrug.

  “You’ve been playing with it.” He squeezed his eyes together and emphasized the word like it was dirty, which indeed was how every word sounded in that cavernous vestibule of pestilence he called a mouth. “I saw the holes.”

  “In the chest,” I said with a bemused nod.

  He frowned, both his eyebrows lowered now. “Is that what you’re into?

  I stared at him for a moment, checking to see if he was being serious. “Yes,” I said, when I learned that he was. “I like to fuck dummies in the chest.”

  He raised an eyebrow, kept it raised during a silent stare that lasted for an interminable time. Then he shrugged casually, remembered he hadn’t had a drink for nearly ten minutes, and then wandered into the living room to find his bottle.

  The dummy wasn’t mentioned again and the following week I got rid of it. I knew where to strike, I knew the rough layout of the human body; the rest was down to experience.

  ——

  I kept close tabs on Darren and Barry at school and followed them home whenever I could. They caught me hanging around them more than once. They didn’t suspect anything, but they beat me up regardless.

  I discovered most of what I set out to discover. I knew when and where they usually hung out, and until what time. I knew who Darren’s girlfriend was: a blonde-haired, skinny eighteen-year-old degenerate from the local college. And I knew whom he slept with on the side. He may have only been sixteen, but he was popular with the girls, or whatever the correct term was for these over-fucked, under-educated masses of hormones and venereal diseases.

  A few months before the end of the year, the end of school for me and my classmates, I learned that Darren’s parents would be on holiday during the summer and he would have the house to himself for a couple weeks. He boasted about the parties he had planned, the booze he would drink, and the orgies he would host. It was the perfect time for me to strike. The Butcher mutilated his victims, methodically tearing them apart and then leaving them in sickening death throes to horrify those who bore witness. The process was something that needed time and seclusion to complete. My house was out of the question, as were the streets, but his house, with his parents away, was perfect.

  I prepared myself for that date. I even began working out, trying to increase my strength in preparation for any resistance and to retain the hope that I could, after all, strangle him. I also followed him on a daily basis, keeping track of every aspect of his life and that of his mother and stepfather.

  During the final week of school, I was given a chance to get closer to him. A pretty girl with a porcelain face approached me after class. She tilted her head slightly to one side, a suggestion of innocence and curiosity.

  Her name was Elizabeth Handle. She was intelligent and popular with both the delinquent students and the undereducated teachers. She had a glare of innocence to her radiant features, an almost angelic virginal aura, but there was nothing virginal about her. I was the only male in the class she hadn’t slept with—even a few of the teachers had traded STDs with her.

  It was only mi
dweek. The final day of school was a couple days away, but already the excitement that school was nearing its completion and education was over created a palpable tension in the air. This was a big step in their lives; for many, the end of school signals a huge step on the road to a university education or a successful career. In the case of my fellow pupils, however, it merely meant that the Whitegate unemployment queue would get bigger and the local prostitutes would have more competition.

  Excited pupils buzzed around the room like hyperactive flies, their varied conversations criss-crossing to weave a web of obscenity and incoherence.

  “Herman, right?” Elizabeth spoke softly, her voice barely audible over the teenage static that swamped around us.

  She had heard my name read out in registration every day for almost a decade and yet she was unsure when recalling it. I had been her science partner a number of times throughout the years, had spent the day in her proximity when teamed together to dress the school hall in preparation for a musical performance, and had, fairly recently, helped her with a math assignment under the instruction of a teacher who seemingly wanted me to do his job for him. She was playing the ignorant fool and at this rate she was on course for an Oscar.

  “Yeah.” I nodded with as much enthusiasm as I good manage.

  She produced some small slips of cardboard, stacked and tied together with a purple rubber band. “I’m having a party,” she explained, pulling out one of the slips and handing it to me. “You wanna come?”

  I paused, wondering if she was joking. She had never invited me to anything before. Despite being classmates since the birth of our educational lives, I had never been invited to any of her birthday parties and didn’t even know where she lived.

  I checked the invitation. It looked genuine enough. Her name was embossed in italic golden letters at the top with a line of glitter running through. The words booze and no parents appeared below, suffixed with as many exclamation marks as the small slip would allow.

  She was waiting with a patient smile. It was a look that I couldn’t see through. She may have had ulterior motives, but despite her ignorance and naïveté, she was intelligent and experienced enough to hide it. Attractive teenage girls didn’t get what they wanted from the male role models in their lives without being able to hide disdain or trickery behind benevolent smiles.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She grinned and turned away, handing out more invitations as the crowd of vociferous pupils dispersed into the hallways. I caught a few looking at me perplexedly, no doubt wondering why I had been invited and possibly retracting their intentions because of my invite, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t one for parties or social gatherings, but there was a good chance that Darren would be attending and I doubted that even he would bully me at someone else’s house during someone else’s party.

  I bought new clothes for the occasion. The invite declared smart-casual, so I picked out a new pair of jeans and a striped shirt. I intended to look my best and to do what my dad had done so well, to fit in with the masses, to become one of them. I used my father’s aftershave, shaved what little bum-fluff had been clinging to my chin, and set out for the walk to Elizabeth’s house with a leather jacket draped over my shoulders.

  I arrived on time, to the minute. The house sat in a new-build subdivision on the edge of town. Rows and rows of four-bedroom houses, all with their own sizable lawns, garages, and driveways. A few of them, including Elizabeth’s, also had conservatories at the back. The shimmering panes of glass glimmered with the reflected incandescence of the street lights.

  I followed a train of guests into the house, slotting into the rear behind a pair of giggling blondes who reeked of perfume and hairspray. Music beat a pulsating rhythm from the house, the open door allowing the repetitive echoes of drum beats and bass throbs into the night air. A dam of bodies had wedged itself in the doorway as newcomers met with early arrivals and created a melee of conversation and activity. When this wedge departed into the house and the train shifted forward, the girls increased their volume, compensating for the encroaching music.

  They talked incessantly about boys—who was going to be there, who they were going to kiss, who they were going to fuck. A high-pitched, excited giggle accompanied every mention of something sexual, but despite their wanton promiscuity, they changed their tones with immediate effect when entering the house and encountering a small Labrador puppy sitting with an expectant grin in the hallway.

  The puppy already had a few admirers gathering around it, crouching down and mumbling cutesy noises. The addition of the two girls created a crowd. I slipped by them all unseen, glad for the distraction, and headed into the kitchen.

  A few guys were already in there, one gave me a friendly nod as I entered, the others paid me no heed. I swung the jacket from my shoulder and carefully hung it over the back of a chair.

  The kitchen was immaculate and looked new. The surfaces still shone with an untouched gleam. The knobs and handles on the many drawers and cupboards were unburdened by a single chip or piece of ingrained dirt or grime, as was the oven door, which offered a reflection of perfect clarity. No pictures on the walls, nothing but sheer and blinding whiteness. No chintzy magnets or Post-it notes attached to the large fridge.

  In the center of a small oak breakfast table, a large punch bowl glimmered with a red liquid, on which bobbed a few slices of orange. A boy who I had seen around school took a ladle from the table and spooned some of the sugary booze into a cup before heading back out of the kitchen, through an open door, into a short hallway, and into the noisy living room beyond.

  The counters were painted black with lines and lines of beer bottles. Beer, to me, is comparable to a product of the human digestive system because it tastes like piss and smells like a fart. But drinking beer is an acceptable norm for a teenage boy, and I wanted to come across as being as normal and inconspicuous as possible.

  I took one of the bottles and popped the cap with a multi-tool contraption I found beside the alcoholic stack. The crimped metallic cap bounced off the edge of the marbled kitchen surface and scuttled to the floor.

  The kitchen had cleared. The music from the living room had switched to another track, something equally repetitive and annoying, and someone had turned up the volume. I hastily drank the beer—my face scrunching in disgust when the sulfured taste of a defecating hop lingered on my tongue—before grabbing another and walking toward the wall of noise.

  The giddy girls I had followed into the house had progressed toward the kitchen, the sounds of their excitement drowning out the music. I sighed inwardly, looked and failed to find an escape route—my only options being to advance toward them or to leave via a back door—and chose to remain standing, praying they wouldn’t come my way.

  They stopped in the hallway, thrusting their irritating tedium on whichever unfortunate person they encountered there.

  “You’ve invited everyone to this!” one of the giddy duo declared excitedly.

  I heard Elizabeth’s voice in reply, partially drowned out by the music. There was an element of pride and feigned modesty to her tone. I edged forward, closer to the door and closer to them.

  “This is so amazing,” the second sycophant chimed.

  I watched them through a reflection in a large mirror in the hallway, their jingling, twitching forms fully exposed before my voyeuristic eyes as I stood, out of sight, drinking my fart-scented beer.

  “Everyone’s here!” the first exclaimed, peering into the living room, unseen in the mirrored reflection.

  The second giddy girl, hugging Elizabeth like she was a long lost sister, added, “She even invited Herman.”

  I stopped in my tracks, the bottle pressed to my lips.

  After some awkward laughter, Elizabeth purred like a proud cat and made a show of looking around. “Have you seen him?” she wondered.

  They shook their heads, following Elizabeth’s darting eyes.

  “Ah, I hope he comes,” she exclaimed. “I ha
ve a few surprises set up for him.”

  More laughter, a friendly shove.

  A previously unseen frumpy blonde appeared like a tubby pantomime villain, drifting out of an alcove and into the expansive hallway. “Ah Lizzie, tell ’em, you should totally tell ’em,” she declared with a giddy sense of glee.

  A small chorus of pleas erupted before Elizabeth hushed them with a wave of her hand. “Well,” she said, her tone rife with the pride of attention. “I’m going to come on to him, pretend I’m drunk and desperate for a fuck. I might even tell him I’ve always fancied him.” She laughed at this; her friends echoed her sentiments. “I’ll take him upstairs, to my parents’ room. I’ll tell him to get comfortable and then slip into the ensuite while he does.” More laughter, which cut through my boiling veins like a knife through hot butter. “You all wait inside there for me.” She lowered her voice as she reached the climax of the story and her friends dipped their heads to listen above the sound of the music. I found myself inching closer to the door, my ears strained.

  “… wait in there with the camera and a few of the guys,” she said. “He’ll get naked, his puny little cock desperate for its first fuck. Then we burst in on him and get him on camera. The guys can hold him down if need be, then …” A nonchalant break in her story—I imagined her shrugging with a carefree attitude as she left the rest of my fate unplanned. “I don’t know. We’ll probably drag him outside, write pervert, or some shit like that, on his chest, and leave him butt naked in the middle of the street.”

  The laughter that followed was hysterical. I ducked out of the doorway, stood by the counter drinking what was left of my beer. The sour taste no longer bothered me as it rolled over my tongue and rushed down my throat.

  “Come on,” I heard Elizabeth say, her words shaking with excitement. “Let’s find him.”

  I put the empty beer bottle down on the counter and quickly scanned the hallway mirror to see that Elizabeth and her friends had gone into the living room.

  Even before I knew of her plan, she’d had very little chance of coaxing me into her parents’ bedroom, and an even smaller chance of convincing me to strip naked and wait for her while she wandered into the bathroom. She was pretty, but I didn’t want to sleep with her. The act of creating such an intimate connection with anyone, let alone a tramp who had traded saliva and other bodily fluids with Darren Henderson, was anathema to me. Once she, and more specifically, her drunken male friends, discovered I wasn’t as pliable and desperate as they suspected, there was a good chance the night would turn violent.