Chapter 5 #2
‘Actually, I think it’s a bit sick,’ Nico responded, yanking up his coat and turning towards the door of the restaurant. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Sorry. Early start. I’ll see you tomorrow, Oscar,’ he said as he practically sprinted out of the door to escape me.
I didn’t even need to glance at Chlo to know her eyes were filled with complete disappointment. I could imagine Oscar’s were too, especially since I’d probably demolished his chances of getting laid tonight.
I really shouldn’t have launched into a lecture about serial killers, but it was all I’d been able to think about for the last two years.
Every podcast, documentary, and book I’d consumed had been hooked around an obsession with what makes a serial killer tick, although the BBC Panorama special on the TellTale Killer had been bitterly disappointing.
‘What the hell was that, Ruth?’ Chlo demanded as I took another sip of my third – no, fourth – margarita, still feeling quite out of place with such an extravagant glass in the dark and dingy smoking area that also had the aroma of fresh-yet-also-stale piss.
How did they manage that concoction, I wondered to myself as Chlo continued her diatribe.
‘Why are you getting so mad?’ I asked indifferently after she paused for breath for a second. ‘I didn’t think he’d be so sensitive about it.’
‘You know, murder isn’t exactly prime first-date conversation material, Ruth.’
‘So, what is first-date conversation material?’ I asked, genuinely curious, I thought Google and Buzzfeed had me covered.
Ben and I never really had a first date; we just sort of ended up in each other’s beds after seeing each other in a bar every week for a year, and then never left.
Dating was not something that I was particularly skilled at.
I had my sexual awakening to a Roman foot soldier with a chiselled jawline in a children’s book about the crucifixion and no man could ever really compare to that particular specimen ever since.
Perhaps Nico’s nose and jawline weren’t far off, though.
‘Oh, I don’t know – boring stuff, like dehumidifiers, credit scores, quality bedding, your favourite type of pasta. All the mundane adult shit. But it’s universally agreed, Ruth: you don’t bring up serial killers.’
‘Well, good to know,’ I replied, being a bit facetious and also starting to feel a little bit sozzled. ‘But Nico could have been a fan for all we knew. We could have geeked out about the Long Island Killer together.’
His loss.
‘Oh my God, Ruth,’ Chlo said, incensed. She cupped her hands around her mouth, then dragged them down her taut neck as if trying to massage all of the frustration out of her facial muscles.
‘Look, I really didn’t want to tell you this before, as I thought that maybe then you wouldn’t come, but Nico’s aunt was also killed… two years ago.’
‘Oh,’ I stuttered, feeling the embarrassment and shame begin to rush to redden my cheeks.
‘Yeah, I, stupidly, thought it might have been a good idea for you to meet Nico and that the topic would come up naturally and, I don’t know, you would talk about it or connect or something; it’s not like you’ll go to a therapist or a counsellor or anything.’
She said that last bit quite dejectedly, as if she was finally giving up on the beaten and broken Toyota Aygo she’d treasured since her sixteenth birthday.
‘I’m sorry,’ were only the words I could muster, and I truly was, but I knew Chlo had heard way too many apologies from me over the past few years; I knew a part of her was fed up of trying.
I couldn’t say I blamed her either. Chlo was a good friend, far better than I deserved.
She had always looked out for me, and even before I lost Greta, I hadn’t treated her as well as I ought to have.
People have limits, I realised, and the dial in Chlo’s brain on how she felt about me had clearly swung to the red.
‘Look, Oscar and I are heading to another bar. You’re welcome to join us,’ Chlo said with a half-defeated sigh, gesturing in that peculiar way she did with her hands when she didn’t know what to do with them.
‘No, no, I’m good,’ I murmured, not wanting to further sabotage both of their nights. ‘I should probably head home anyway; I have work tomorrow.’
‘All right. But call a cab. Don’t walk or take the Tube – that would be dumb.
Wouldn’t it, Ruth?’ That felt like a parent cautioning her child not to cannonball full of ice cream into the shallow end of the pool.
Her tone was a little condescending, especially in the way she called me ‘Ruth’ and not ‘Ruthie’, but I knew she meant well, she was just mad.
I nodded while at the same time tilting my head back to drain the last dregs of my margarita.
Chlo was still too annoyed to give me one of her big, warm hugs goodbye, so she strolled back into the bar where Oscar was already holding her coat for her.
I could feel the scorching heat of his evil glare as well as the ice-cold chill of his balls from several metres away.
‘Chlo,’ I called after her before she begrudgingly turned her gaze to meet mine. ‘I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to mess things up, I promise.’
She gestured lightly for Oscar to move on ahead without her, then approached me and reached for my hand, her fingers loosely encircling my palm.
‘I love you, Ruthie. I really do. I love you so much, but I think it’s time for you to move on from this.’ She steeled herself before saying her name. ‘Do you think Greta would want this kind of life for you?’
I instinctively pulled my hand away, shoving it deep into my pocket. ‘This isn’t about Greta,’ I muttered as defiantly as I could.
Chlo gave me a lukewarm smile; having known her for over fifteen years, I knew this was the kind of smile that said she finally understood just how much of a lost cause I really was.
‘Ruthie,’ she said softly, ‘I loved her too but for you, everything since her death has been about Greta. You need to come back to… to the rest of your life and…’
She thought about stopping herself from continuing, maybe she was trying to work out how to say this in the least painful way.
‘You need to stop living in the night she died.’
Ouch.
I knew I should have gone home, but I waited until Oscar and Chlo were out of sight before slipping back to the bar and ordering another margarita.
I drank this one even faster than the first four, then decided that one more would be enough to blur my grief and pain into something minuscule, lost in the glazed, hazy blur of a ferociously spinning room, and to dull the sharp, jagged edges of the memories that had been sitting rather snugly in my head for the past two years.
Maybe Chlo was right. I knew other people who had lost friends in tragic circumstances; they all seemed able to quiet the pain and move on with their lives.
So why couldn’t I? Why was I stuck in this stage of my life, like it would never end?
Why was I trying to imitate a serial killer, hoping it would somehow get justice for Greta? Who does that?
I suppose I could chalk my rather heinous acts up to the sheer weight of guilt I felt, but only now was I coming to the awful realisation that maybe I was actually a terrible person.
Awful people mutilate dead bodies; awful people think about telling children that Santa wants to eat Rudloph; awful people push away the people closest to them and end up alone.
I mean, I had to admit it: I was pretty awful.
The more I’d thought about it over the past two years, the more I realised I’d always felt somewhat disconnected – from everyone, really – and, quite frankly, Greta had been my only true tether to other people besides, occasionally, my husband.
It was always Greta coaxing me to parties, dragging me into university societies, or persuading me to see the film I’d been talking about.
Sure, there was Chlo, but she was only ever there because of Greta.
Now it felt like we were two bits of wholemeal bread trying to make a sandwich without any kind of filling.
I could feel my stomach begin to churn and my head start to feel dizzy as the alcohol got to work, casually shutting down my neural communication pathways like it was flicking switches inside my mind.
I wasn’t about to embarrass myself by throwing myself at people or dancing wildly at the disco.
No, I’d just drink until I felt on the edge of a blackout – but keep just enough facilities to be able to call a cab and make it home.
So, propping myself up at the world’s stickiest bar, I scrolled through the various DarkCell forums that I had saved on my phone, as I did every night.
My thumb kept sticking against the screen as I saw CerealKillerCornflakes, having just logged on after a few hours offline, spam through his various harangues to me, most of them ending with ‘I told you so’.
He was one of my online ‘friends’. And by friends, I mean some basement-dwelling, vitamin D-deficient cretin on the other side of the world that I communicated with on DarkCell. (Let it be known, I absolutely include myself in the basement cretin category.)
My motor skills were faltering as I attempted foolishly to navigate across my phone screen.
I could see missed call after missed call, but I couldn’t focus my eyes for long enough to see who it was from.
Instead, I kept reading the photo of the decrypted note that the killer had left with Greta’s heart:
I feel this existence as a cruel jest,
a monotonous rhythm so fleeting and void.
Yet she might have known more sunlight to ripple on her skin.
As I carved the heart from its broken, freed shell,
a tremble stirred within me,
so strange and unwelcome.
Perhaps remorse; which I must deem weakness.
Things so divine feel no such thing as remorse.
Some nights I’d feel so awful, with nowhere to turn, just desperate for some kind of non-judgemental outlet.
More often than I’d like to admit, I ended up DMing the Domino’s Pizza account on Instagram, unloading my various woes into the empty void, just to have some kind of outlet, my own personal form of prayer.
Reading the killer’s words again brought back the question I asked myself every single day.
I messaged the Domino’s account once again, ignoring the tens of unanswered messages I’d already sent them over the past year.
Why did he pick Greta?