The Last Chapter
If you’re reading this, then I’m dead.
Such an odd thing to imagine, though I am full of imagination.
I always have been. Even as a curious child, I was always making up scenarios in my room while my mother sang downstairs in the kitchen.
I don’t think she was very happy—she never showed any particular affection for me, one way or the other—but she did love to sing.
Maybe in another life, when she wasn’t weighed down by two children and a functioning-alcoholic husband, she would’ve written down those songs and plucked them out on a worn guitar before a darkened audience.
Who can know. All we knew was that she didn’t want us or what life had dealt to her.
So I vowed—as I pretended the dolls I wasn’t supposed to play with, because they were porcelain and precious, were a happy family—that I’d be different.
I didn’t need a no-good man. I didn’t need the burden of children.
I didn’t need to sing my dreams in a dreary kitchen on a sunny afternoon; I could make them come true.
And I did. I studied and I wrote and I wrote some more, and when I was sure I had something worth showing to someone, I did. I went after the career I wanted like it was a mission. I was good at it, everyone told me.
Murder.
I could come up with perfect plot after perfect plot. I was never blocked. I never ran out of ideas. There was always someone else to kill.
How did I do it? That’s what I got asked so many times that I’d change my answer just to keep myself from going insane.
It was simple, really. All it took were hours and hours and hours of study and determination. But the thing no one ever knew was that each plot was real. Each murder was something I wanted to do in real life. I’d find my victim, plot out their death, and then execute it on the page.
It gave it a certain urgency, you see?
My first victim was my father. I killed him in a vat of beer in a distillery, which I got a certain delight in planning.
Then I killed off my sister, cousins, the teacher who told me I wouldn’t ever make it, the girls who snubbed me in ballet class.
I waited to kill off my mother. I wanted to savor that one, but eventually, I killed her too.
Everyone always remarked on how my victims were so ordinary. How they were rarely men. How the talent I had was making the reader understand why so many suspects would want that ordinary person dead as dust. What they never figured out was that the enmity was real.
Humanity is mostly stupid, I’ve found. It makes it so much easier to get up to no good.
I spent years this way. I was happy, I think.
I didn’t want for anything or anyone, and the passing slights of life—bad reviews, the occasional disgruntled email from a family member who thought they recognized themselves—I could brush those off and tuck them away.
I had other worlds to go to, after all. Other ways to use my time.
Before him.
Isn’t it so like a man to ruin everything?
When did we first meet?
I remember it like it was yesterday. A hotel basement in New York for a writers’ conference.
I was being honored, and he was the up-and-coming author my publisher just had to introduce me to!
I’d read his first novel and admired it.
It had a robust masculinity I found appealing. He was appealing in real life, too.
I knew from the beginning he had a wandering eye. I knew from the beginning he’d be trouble. But I was helpless. I fell so fast it felt slippery.
Do you fall harder when the first time you fall in love is in your forties? It would be worth studying. Probably not enough subjects, though. Regardless, he opened something up in me and made me feel wild. Out of control.
I didn’t like it. I tried to quit him, but I was helpless. I was helpless, I told myself to explain away my behavior. My jealousy. Of his time. Of his interests. Even of his books because they took him away from me.
For twenty years, we went on like that. Always on for me, on and off for him. I knew I was a convenience. I doubted that he truly cared about me. How could he when there was always someone new to take his eyes away from me? Or when he’d triage my messages and take days to return them?
I’m ashamed to say, I accepted it. I took what crumbs he threw my way, and I lapped them up like cream. I was a cat purring in his lap.
And when, after so many years, he flirted with that girl in front of me, something in me broke. She was new and shiny and so naive, I don’t think she even understood what he was thinking.
I swooped in to rescue her. I made it clear to him that he wasn’t allowed to touch her. Not on my watch. But I could’ve murdered her right then. For being appealing. For being what I couldn’t be—young, trusting, whole.
And then he went ahead and slept with her anyway. That stupid girl.
Somehow, I could forgive him—it was the way he was—but her? No.
No. Especially when he told me he was leaving me for her. And then—and then—she spurned him. The love of my life wasn’t good enough for her? She thought she could do better?
The arrogance. It was everywhere on her. In her writing. In her careless treatment of those around her. If you’re wondering why I’ve done this, don’t look at me. Look at her.
That was the end of me and him. Even after she didn’t want him, he didn’t want me. He said it could never be the same.
I died that day. I knew, then, what drowning felt like. The lack of oxygen, the loss of consciousness. Even my hands hurt, like arthritis had appeared overnight in my joints.
I tried everything I knew how to do to get past it. I killed him in my next novel. But it wasn’t enough. This time, it didn’t satiate the need. Instead, all I could think was—more. I needed more.
It hurt my writing. I found myself rehashing his murder on the page.
My books became predictable. Lackluster.
My sales, too. I saw it all happen, but I didn’t know what to do.
I only knew I couldn’t write about her. That if I set a plan in motion with her at the center, it wouldn’t be sufficient. I’d have to go through with it.
And then a curious thing happened.
Life began to imitate art.
He went on a promotional tour with her in Italy.
And it turned out I wasn’t the only person she’d wronged.
Someone else wanted her dead, and my love died in her stead.
I think the plan began in earnest then. And the book she wrote about it!
My darling was made a figure of fun. His murder was laughed off as merely an unfortunate incident!
The gall of that girl.
She had to die. But first, she had to suffer. She made it so easy.
She had so many enemies. There were so many potential suspects. It was simple to find the conspirators I needed. That stupid oaf with his thick neck and his black T-shirts. The owner of the resort. Our editor, albeit unwittingly. And that gullible young man our editor sent to help me fix my books!
He thought it was all a game. Silly boy.
I considered killing them all, but I didn’t want to be too greedy.
I had to be careful. I planned for every contingency, just as I always did.
And then there was the secret that was burning a hole in my life. Cancer. Six to ten months to live. Another stone in my shoe.
But no matter. It gave me the courage to go ahead. If I was caught—through no error of my own!—I wouldn’t spend one minute in jail. I’d be another body that would lie at her feet.
My plan was perfect, every detail accounted for.
There is no accounting for men, though. The baby writer chickened out. Another man was arrogant and thought he could blackmail me.
Things were slipping out of my control.
Perhaps I am slipping.
It didn’t help to have my love’s brother in attendance. Every glimpse of him across the room was a reminder. I thought his presence would ensure I’d go through with it. Instead, it distracted me. Made me careless.
And now, I won’t even know if my plan worked because as I finish this and tuck it into an email to send, she’s still alive. As she might write—of course she is! She was put on this earth to vex me.
But I am stalling. I know what I need to do, and it’s a bit gruesome. Finish this. Then loop the rope over the fan in the ceiling, then over my neck, and one, two, three …
If you’re reading this, just know.
I leapt with joy.
Finis.