Chapter One
There were perhaps a dozen very specific things that Lee had concluded she could do reasonably well in her lifetime thus far.
She could tell the gender of a cat just by looking at its face, for instance, and perhaps, more impressively, she could recite the alphabet backwards in under thirty seconds.
Lee Holmes, whilst modest, was also not above deeming herself quite the talented chef, which was to say that after watching an online tutorial about how to boil pasta, she was able to throw spaghetti at a wall in order to assess if it was cooked.
In the dingy grunge of her apartment that she shared with her girlfriend, she did exactly that.
In many ways, she perceived her relationship with Morgan not completely dissimilar to the strands of spaghetti, now clinging to the marble tiles behind the stovetop of her dimly lit kitchen.
After five years together to the day—five years of throwing things out there and seeing what worked for the two of them, and what didn't—Lee could not only deem herself a worthy girlfriend, but a worthy life partner simultaneously.
Her long red hair, freshly wet from having showered post-workout, was wrapped in a navy-blue towel in order to avoid dripping any excess water into the tomato sauce that she was now sampling with the wooden spoon from the countertop.
Said countertop was no stranger to the ins and outs of her relationship with Morgan Finch, which loosely translated into that it had seen its fair share of intimate activity.
Alas, even without the sexual antics, much like everything in their apartment, it was old, and desperate for renovation.
She tried, in a somewhat non-committal fashion, not to make another comparison in her head to her relationship with Morgan—initially comparing her girlfriend to spaghetti, and now an old countertop in desperate need of some TLC.
If she were to strip everything back to the most basic fundamentals of where they were now as a couple, she could say she was content.
Alas, content was a comfy seat in a movie theatre.
Content was a warm beach accompanied by a cool breeze.
Lee Holmes wanted not the calm, but the storm. She wanted spice.
Her intrusive thoughts subdued for just a moment, replaced instead with an internally memorized list of ingredients, reminding her to add a key component to her spaghetti bolognese—a sprinkle of pepper.
When all that was left to do was allow for it to simmer, she peered through the glass in the oven to check on the garlic bread before diverting her attention to her watch.
Morgan was currently at work, and if previous timings were to be considered routine, which they were, she had approximately ten minutes to get ready, or, at the very least, dry her hair, and attempt to throw a strand of spaghetti at the proverbial wall of their relationship in order to spice things up.
Lee picked up her half-empty glass of wine as she padded out of the kitchen and towards the bedroom.
Having fumbled through her closet earlier whilst considerably more sober, she had laid out the perfect dress for tonight upon the bed.
A smile twitched at her lips at the thought of surprising Morgan tonight with a little red number that she had purchased only a week prior.
Her girlfriend, gullible as ever, was currently under the impression that she, Lee Holmes, would completely disregard their five-year anniversary like chewing gum beneath a table and stay at her friend, Natalie's, instead.
Her girlfriend’s trustworthy nature was by no means a hindrance, because in less than ten minutes, Morgan Finch would traipse into their shack of an apartment and see a freshly prepared candlelit dinner instead. Except, she wouldn't, if Lee didn't put her wine down and get dressed.
A book neither she nor Morgan particularly cared for had evolved, or perhaps, devolved, into a makeshift coaster for her glass over the last few months, and today was no different as she placed it atop the ring-stained cover whilst she shuffled out of her dinosaur pajamas that she was typically accustomed to wearing within the apartment, in favor of the red dress.
Once it sat somewhat comfortably on her semi-muscular frame, highlighting the curve of her hips and the sharpness of her collarbones, she grabbed her favorite perfume from the somewhat rustic chest of drawers that she shared with Morgan due to a sheer lack of space and sprayed precisely three times. Never more, never less.
On the third spray, a thud echoed through the walls of her apartment, and Lee Holmes, with her love of murder podcasts, did what any sensible person would do in that situation, she surmised. She took a deep breath, and awaited death.
When death was seemingly not coming to her, she decided to potentially go to it.
She wondered at that moment what the etiquette was for situations like this.
Victims didn’t often pick their wine glass up, for instance, and take it with them to their own execution.
Except, Lee Holmes wasn’t your ordinary victim, and for that reason, she lifted her glass from the ring-stained book and reminded herself that she was still wearing her standard navy-blue towel across her wet hair.
Surprisingly, her first thought at that moment was how embarrassed she would feel dying in such attire, and yet, the thought formed no semblance of hesitation as she made her way out of the bedroom and skillfully weaved her way through the obstacle course that was their hallway, avoiding all of Morgan’s potted plants in the process.
A noise that could only be described as a hissing cat coming from the living room urged her forward at a more immediate pace. Such a sound might not have been too out of the ordinary in other circumstances, except, neither she nor Morgan had a cat.
When she entered the room in question, the wine glass that Lee Holmes was wielding fell to the floor as the knife her girlfriend was wielding, or rather, the handle of a knife, as that was all she could see, was plunged into the stomach of a fifty-something-year-old man before her eyes.
The space that she once had deemed too cramped to host company in was now being occupied by three, and said company was being murdered.
Lee Holmes couldn’t gasp, couldn’t blink, couldn’t do much of anything, for that matter, her own body stuck firmly in place, as if the floorboards had become rapidly drying cement around her.
When she could finally gulp, three minutes, or three hours later, she wasn’t sure, acknowledging the saliva as it travelled down her throat, she attempted to form a sentence. “What…what the fuck, is this?”
Not her finest moment, she deduced.
“Baby, wait,” Morgan begged, as if Lee was making any indication to leave, or do anything for that matter, which she wasn’t.
“I can explain, I swear. I wasn’t even going to kill this one at our apartment.
” Morgan retracted the knife without warning, almost casually, as the unknown gentleman sank to the floor, kneeling at first, before toppling like a large, bleeding domino.
It was as if the lifeless body before her spurred her own body on in that moment, her eyes darting behind her, towards the hallway where she had once stood. The hallway, more importantly, that led towards the front door.
She could make it. She had to make it. After all, she was far closer to the door than Morgan was.
Without hesitation, grabbing a shard of glass from the floor as a weapon, she attempted to make a run for it.
Her towel fell loose from her hair, discarded to the floor with the wine, the glass, and the blood, as her legs did all they could in order to push forward.
They pushed forward until they couldn’t.
They pushed forward until a hand wrapped itself around her wrist, pulling her closer to their own body. Morgan.
Lee Holmes opened her mouth to scream, and yet, only a shrill shriek came out; a pathetic bird-like cry. “Kill this one? What do you mean by this one?” she cried, her tears escaping her now as her girlfriend maintained the grip upon her wrist. “You’ve done this before?”
Morgan reduced her grip ever so slightly, staring directly into Lee’s amber eyes with her own expanded pupils.
Animalistic. “I’m not going to hurt you," she said, rather quietly, ignoring the question entirely.
"I would never hurt you.” As if to prove her point, she let go of Lee entirely, taking a step back.
A silent indication that her girlfriend was free to leave if she so wished.
“Honey, it’s our anniversary.”
Lee wasn’t sure why, from a handful of potential statements, this was the one that fell from her lips, as if on a traditional day, normality involved sacrificing a body and howling at the moon, but God forbid they do it on their anniversary.
Morgan flattened her short brown hair, coating it with a thin sheen of blood to match Lee’s dress, and it struck her in that moment that this was the closest they had come to wearing coordinated outfits, like a hellish prom on steroids.
“I know, baby. I thought you were at Natalie’s.
This is a lovely surprise. The food smells amazing.
Garlic bread, is it? You know I’m a sucker for garlic bread. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Lee Holmes surmised that she could be furious later, because at present time, the dead body in her apartment seemed like the most pressing issue.
Perhaps equally tied with the fact that the garlic bread in the oven was now likely four steps past crispy and one step away from burning their apartment down.
“Let me go and turn the oven off. Afterwards, we can figure out what we do with…this,” she said, vaguely, gesturing towards the body.
She placed the shard of glass down upon the arm of the couch beside her and wiped the tears from her eyes, allowing no time to dwell on the situation that had unfolded before her. Dwelling meant leaving the blood to soak further into the floorboards.
As she padded out of the living room and towards the kitchen in order to turn the oven off, her mind pondered over that thought.
Perhaps leaving the blood to pool into the floorboards and seep into the downstairs neighbours ceiling was for the best. Perhaps having her girlfriend arrested was the only logical conclusion to this night and thinking anything otherwise was nothing short of insanity.
Fire crisis averted, Lee turned out the kitchen light as she left; a trivial act for a less than trivial situation, and, whilst walking to the bedroom, realized the gravity of what had just unfolded, the shock finally setting in.
She had seen bodies in movies, television shows, heard all the gory details in her murder podcasts, and yet, not a single one of them could prepare her for the true weight of it all—the scent of copper from the blood, the way his eyes rolled back in his head with nothing behind them, as if the light inside him had been extinguished like the illumination from the kitchen.
Now in her bedroom, where a dress once sat upon the bed, there sat her phone in its place, instead. Her hand extended to wrap her fingers around it, whilst her thumb hovered over the number nine digit. Three numbers, that was all she needed to type. Three. Little. Numbers.
A notification pulled her out of her train of thought, the familiar ding making her body jump, as if even the slightest noise was enough to spook her now. It was her Spotify, alerting her to the latest installment in her favorite murder podcast Best Served Cold.
The newly uploaded episode, aptly titled “At Your Disposal” felt almost hauntingly appropriate.
Lee didn’t believe in fate, and she wasn’t going to start now.
After all, fate would have to be the murderous type in order to sway her decision in a way that suddenly meant she was truly considering helping her girlfriend dispose of a body.
Whilst she could try to tell herself that her mind was not going there, she couldn’t deny that her thumb was no longer hovering over the number nine digit. Hell, she was even tempted to call Natalie instead and ask if she really was available.
Feeling defeated, she sighed, relishing the feeling of ten minutes ago when her only problems involved the unattractive towel around her head, and getting her hair dry, as she swiped down on her phone and opened Best Served Cold.
Lee Holmes had asked for a storm, and she had, instead, been met with a tornado.
She cracked her neck, rolled back her shoulders, and prepared herself for what would likely be the most strenuous, taxing night of her life, which, in turn, was likely to be followed by prison.
“At least I look good in a jumpsuit,” she stated aloud into the empty space, shrugging to herself, as she extinguished the light in the bedroom and pressed play on her podcast.