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Description
I was stuck in peak-hour traffic when I decided to kill my boyfriend. I’d made many life decisions stuck in traffic, because sometimes wedged between the white SUV and the showy silver Porsche you just realise you’d make a wonderful anthropologist, but this was the first death decision.
I wouldn’t say I planned for it. Spontaneity is the spice of life, right? So no, I didn’t plan. I just drove. Didn’t look back. And as the road pulsed away below me, my fingers drummed the steering wheel. One, two, three, one, two, three.
I knew that when I got home my man would be lounging on the beaten armchair, possibly with beer in hand, probably asleep. He loved his armchair, mainly because it didn’t fit the both of us.
I also knew there were a couple of steak knives in the drawer.
One thing stuck out to me as I edged through the kitchen, my breath shaking to the drone of the television, the blade tucked beneath my shirt so it wouldn’t catch the light. It was the way he was lolled back in his chair, chin tilted skyward. Exposed. Afterward, it was the gobbets of spit in glistening tracks down his cheeks. They looked kind of cute. Red suited him.

I haven’t had a boyfriend since then. For some reason, God knows. It couldn’t be because I snap at everyone who so much as looks at me, or because I wear one rancid singlet several days in a row. Yeah, I haven’t had a boyfriend since him. Was never really one of those girls who went around foghorning for a mate. Plus, I never stay in one place for too long. I’m a busy lady.
My name is Cadhla. Yes, it’s Irish and yes, you’re probably pronouncing it wrong. It’s ‘ky-luh’. It means ‘beautiful’, which is either the most brilliant or the most clichéd thing ever, because I get called a lot of things and ‘beautiful’ isn’t one of them. My boyfriend used to call me that, back before I slit his throat, but there’s just something about a compliment coming out of the mouth of a snake. Doesn’t have the same ring to it.
For the record, no. The others were not ‘boyfriends’. They were toys, until their time came. Then they were just dead.
My latest is a handsome devil. Tall, dark, mysterious. All that sappy stuff. He does enjoy getting into my makeup box and trying to paint over his acne scars with foundation, but I prefer to overlook that.
He’s also a crazy driver.
I grab onto the dash as he swerves to avoid a bird landing on the dirt road. “Jesus, Alec! Could you not?”
He shoots me a sideways grin, flipping his fringe from his eyes. “Not what?”
“Oh gee, I don’t know.” I roll my eyes and slump back in my seat, trying to sprawl my body so he can’t see my knuckles whitening around the leather cushion. “Maybe not kill us?”
As he reaches out, possibly to prod me, the car begins to list to the right slightly. “You shouldn’t worry about stuff like that.”
I slap away his hand. “Keep your eyes on the road.” And maybe I shouldn’t be worrying, but you should. I’ve been giving him little hints here and there, hoping to spice things up when it finally does come to D-Day. Like shutting his hand in the fridge door at dinner, and ‘accidentally’ dropping the knife on his foot last week. Lucky he shut his eyes from the pain, cause I was grinning the whole way to the ER.
I snatch the sunglasses tucked between windscreen and dashboard and slam them onto my nose, trying to glare out the window. Alec snorts and stretches for my cheek. “Pumpkin. You know you’re safe with me, don’t you?”
Tugging at the ol’ heartstrings. Bastard. When I roll my eyes and glance at him, his round, bright face almost gives me pause.
He tells me that nobody will touch me again.
My heart lurches. Suddenly the fingers on my cheek are not gentle. They are worms. I jerk away so hard I almost hit my head on the window. “I told you not to talk about that.”
Alec sighs, grabbing the wheel again. The car jolts a little. “Look. I really think it’s time you got over it. It’s been years.”
I gag on my own saliva. “Are you thick?” A sick, cold fire sweeps down my shoulders. “How could you say that? Do you remember why I had to tell you about it in the first place?”
His lips thin. His eyes lock on the horizon. “Of course I remember.”
“Then you’ll know to shut up.”
We drive the last few minutes in silence, then I stand behind him as he fiddles open the door to our apartment. The place has all the charm of an old child’s romper - cute but dusty, and several sizes too small. We try to like it though. The mould ‘adds character’. It adds a god-awful wet dog reek too, but nobody mentions that.
As he walks to the fridge to unload the groceries, I plonk a bag of potatoes by the knife block. A silver light snicks off one of the blades. My eyes catch. I really think it’s time you got over that. I glance over my shoulder at Alec, at his long fingers slotting the jam into place. Remember why I had to tell you in the first place? My breathing falters. Remember?
My fingers close around the handle of a huge steak knife. It whispers prettily as I slide it from the block. Shoes murmur on the tiles. Alec turns. “Hey, Cadhla…?” He looks up.
For a moment, I see his expression freeze. Then all I see is the wine bottle he’s holding as it comes flying towards my face.

“I know what you are.”
How ominous.
I mean, yeah, he’s pointing a gun at my forehead. But it’s wobbling.
“And what’s that, buddy-o?” I ask, jerking my head to toss the hair from my face. “America’s next top model? A very rare form of seal?”
“A murderer.”
Way to kill the mood.
We’re still in our apartment, and I’m trussed to a chair in the dining room. The television is droning on about terrorists and the broken fan is clicking away over my head. If I wrinkle my nose, I can feel the dried mask of blood where the bottle hit. “Say, Alec… what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t move!” Alec shuffles in a semi-circle before me like a crab, the gun stuck out in front of him. “I’ve called the police!” His face is flushed. Pretty bastard.
“Aw. You called the police.” I pout.
“Why’d you do it?” he half-shouts. “You tried to kill me!”
An image flares through my mind. His spindly hand down my top.
“You’re boring,” I say as offhandedly as I can. “You use up my foundation. And you’re a terrible driver.”
“Tell me the truth!” His voice rips up an octave.
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe psychopaths attract.”
“I’m not a psychopath!” He brandishes the gun in my face. “You’ve probably done this a thousand times! You’re probably on the run! I knew there was something wrong about you.” He grits his teeth. “But I’m not like you, you bitch. I don’t go around stabbing people ‘cause it’s fun!”
The chair creaks as I lean my shoulder-blades into the wood. His chest heaves in the fallen hush. Gently, I shake my head. “But you do, don’t you?” I snort. “You just don’t use a knife.”
Silence. His cheeks leak their colour. “Cadhla.”
I cock my head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Alec.”
You can see him working through it, see the little cogs clunking behind his temples. His lips open and close as if something has jammed. “I… I said I was sorry! Cadhla… it was one time.”
“It was one time with me. Why else do you think I chose you?” I make a noise deep in my chest and yank my arms as though to free them from the zip ties.
He shoves the gun against my head. “Shut up! Move and I’ll shoot you. I swear, I’ll do it!”
I sigh. Fucking wonderful.
“Alec, put the gun down,” I say as the trembling barrel teases my hair. “You’re going to hurt someone.”
“You already tried to kill me, you crazy bitch!” He jumps away from the chair, clutching the gun with both hands. “I’m trying to get better, okay? I’m done with all that. You don’t have to punish me.”
I spit. The white globule lands on his boot. For a moment, he stands there, staring. Then his hand moves, faster than sight. Something hard comes down across my cheek. My head whips to the side and I sway back in the chair, my shoulders thumping the wood. After a heartbeat of skeletal silence, I look up at him through the straggle of my hair. “People like you don’t get better. That’s why people like me destroy you.”
Alec is peering at his hand as if he can’t quite believe what it just did. I watch it quiver in mid-air as he turns it over. Then his mouth contorts as he clenches the hand into a fist, and he strides to the window. “Where are the damn cops?”
“Call them asking where they are and they’ll show up at the door,” I say. “That’s always how it works.”
He laughs. It spasms. “You are freaking crazy, aren’t you?”
I snort and curl my tongue against my teeth. “I’m not crazy. I’m just pissed off at the world.”
Alec rips the curtains shut, casting the room in a hollow greenish light. “Bloody cops better get here soon.”
“Maybe my friends got them,” I say, tracing the toe of my boot around a crumb on the carpet.
I don’t look up, but I hear Alec’s sharp intake of breath and I feel the air shift as the gun clicks back towards my face.
“What friends?”
The question dangles for a moment. The fan whirs overhead, stumbling across that one broken point over and over and over.
I don’t have any friends. Being a serial killer sorta does that to a girl. But Bucko here wants to play. I kick back in the chair and tilt my head to one side. A slip of blonde hair falls across my eyes. “Well sure, pal.” My lips pucker in one corner. “How do you think I’ve got away with it all this time, huh?” Actually, I’ve got away with it through careful planning, frequent dye jobs and a lot of interstate travel. Easier than you’d think.
Alec’s eye is twitching. His head keeps jerking as if to face the window, but it never quite gets there. I give my arms another tug, unable to keep the grin from leaching through. “Go check outside, Alec.” Laugh. “Go see who’s watching you this time.”
His chest swells. “Liar! There’s no one else!” But that gun is still shaking.
I shrug, lower lip popped out. “Okay. It’s your head.” I have to clench my chest muscles to keep from snickering at his doe eyes. “How far away are the police again?”
Alec is craning his neck to see as far out the window as he can. Something in me twinges. Something I thought was lost. Something like pity. “Okay, you got me. There’s no one else. Stop before you break your neck.”
He purses his lips and presses his cheek against the glass. As he looks, the gun lowers some. I yank on the zip tie, squaring my shoulders, and my stomach lurches as the cold bond loosens. Alec’s head whips towards me and I try to flatten out my brow. He gives a sigh that sounds almost like a scream and stomps towards me, gun held out in one hand, head back. “Look. If I’d known what your ex did, and how it brought up the crap from your past, I’d never have touched you.” He throws his arms out to either side. “I’m not a bad guy, okay?”
I yank my arms apart.
Alec’s face goes slack as I shoot to my feet and punch the gun out of his hand. It clatters on the kitchen tiles and clacks against the far cupboards as I grab Alec’s hand and twist it behind his back. I bend low over him, growling into his ear. “Not all stories have a hero, pretty boy.”
He wrenches backwards, trying to buck me off, but I push him into the chair, frowning. The twinge is still there.
“See, here’s the thing, Alec.” I crouch until my eyes are level with his, my hands pressed down on his knees. “I know what you are.”

The police arrive unfashionably late.
He’s lying on his back when they find him, trussed up like a Christmas ham. They catch him muttering about how someone has told him to get better, though he won’t say from what. When they remove the last of the zip ties he sits up and rubs his reddened wrists. Been lying there for ages, he says. Belly thrown skyward, dry-piss shorts chafing his thighs when he tried to move. He doesn’t mention that, though.
They can’t get much more out of him, as he sits there rocking amongst the newspaper pages torn from one to eighty. Plucking tellingly at the crotch of his pants. One of them takes the note sticky-taped to his shirt.
He needs a comfy cell. Right, pumpkin?
They stand there for a while as the ambulance pulls up, cocking their heads from side to side as if they can’t quite work out what to do with him. The one with the note looks around the apartment and scratches at his chin.
If, at that moment, they’d knocked on the door of the neighbouring apartment, they’d have been answered by a woman wiping blood from her face, who’d say she’d been out for the past several hours. Hadn’t seen a thing. If they’d looked closely, they might’ve seen her half-packed suitcase on the windowsill. But they don’t get to that door for another few minutes.
As they handcuff the man and lead him out of the room, one of the police pauses and looks up at the fan. It’s swirling in its final death throes, tripping on that broken spot over and over, until it eventually stops. The policeman frowns for a moment, then tugs his cap over his brow and follows his comrades from the apartment.

Description
I was stuck in peak-hour traffic when I decided to kill my boyfriend. I’d made many life decisions stuck in traffic, because sometimes wedged between the white SUV and the showy silver Porsche you just realise you’d make a wonderful anthropologist, but this was the first death decision.
I wouldn’t say I planned for it. Spontaneity is the spice of life, right? So no, I didn’t plan. I just drove. Didn’t look back. And as the road pulsed away below me, my fingers drummed the steering wheel. One, two, three, one, two, three.
I knew that when I got home my man would be lounging on the beaten armchair, possibly with beer in hand, probably asleep. He loved his armchair, mainly because it didn’t fit the both of us.
I also knew there were a couple of steak knives in the drawer.
One thing stuck out to me as I edged through the kitchen, my breath shaking to the drone of the television, the blade tucked beneath my shirt so it wouldn’t catch the light. It was the way he was lolled back in his chair, chin tilted skyward. Exposed. Afterward, it was the gobbets of spit in glistening tracks down his cheeks. They looked kind of cute. Red suited him.

I haven’t had a boyfriend since then. For some reason, God knows. It couldn’t be because I snap at everyone who so much as looks at me, or because I wear one rancid singlet several days in a row. Yeah, I haven’t had a boyfriend since him. Was never really one of those girls who went around foghorning for a mate. Plus, I never stay in one place for too long. I’m a busy lady.
My name is Cadhla. Yes, it’s Irish and yes, you’re probably pronouncing it wrong. It’s ‘ky-luh’. It means ‘beautiful’, which is either the most brilliant or the most clichéd thing ever, because I get called a lot of things and ‘beautiful’ isn’t one of them. My boyfriend used to call me that, back before I slit his throat, but there’s just something about a compliment coming out of the mouth of a snake. Doesn’t have the same ring to it.
For the record, no. The others were not ‘boyfriends’. They were toys, until their time came. Then they were just dead.
My latest is a handsome devil. Tall, dark, mysterious. All that sappy stuff. He does enjoy getting into my makeup box and trying to paint over his acne scars with foundation, but I prefer to overlook that.
He’s also a crazy driver.
I grab onto the dash as he swerves to avoid a bird landing on the dirt road. “Jesus, Alec! Could you not?”
He shoots me a sideways grin, flipping his fringe from his eyes. “Not what?”
“Oh gee, I don’t know.” I roll my eyes and slump back in my seat, trying to sprawl my body so he can’t see my knuckles whitening around the leather cushion. “Maybe not kill us?”
As he reaches out, possibly to prod me, the car begins to list to the right slightly. “You shouldn’t worry about stuff like that.”
I slap away his hand. “Keep your eyes on the road.” And maybe I shouldn’t be worrying, but you should. I’ve been giving him little hints here and there, hoping to spice things up when it finally does come to D-Day. Like shutting his hand in the fridge door at dinner, and ‘accidentally’ dropping the knife on his foot last week. Lucky he shut his eyes from the pain, cause I was grinning the whole way to the ER.
I snatch the sunglasses tucked between windscreen and dashboard and slam them onto my nose, trying to glare out the window. Alec snorts and stretches for my cheek. “Pumpkin. You know you’re safe with me, don’t you?”
Tugging at the ol’ heartstrings. Bastard. When I roll my eyes and glance at him, his round, bright face almost gives me pause.
He tells me that nobody will touch me again.
My heart lurches. Suddenly the fingers on my cheek are not gentle. They are worms. I jerk away so hard I almost hit my head on the window. “I told you not to talk about that.”
Alec sighs, grabbing the wheel again. The car jolts a little. “Look. I really think it’s time you got over it. It’s been years.”
I gag on my own saliva. “Are you thick?” A sick, cold fire sweeps down my shoulders. “How could you say that? Do you remember why I had to tell you about it in the first place?”
His lips thin. His eyes lock on the horizon. “Of course I remember.”
“Then you’ll know to shut up.”
We drive the last few minutes in silence, then I stand behind him as he fiddles open the door to our apartment. The place has all the charm of an old child’s romper - cute but dusty, and several sizes too small. We try to like it though. The mould ‘adds character’. It adds a god-awful wet dog reek too, but nobody mentions that.
As he walks to the fridge to unload the groceries, I plonk a bag of potatoes by the knife block. A silver light snicks off one of the blades. My eyes catch. I really think it’s time you got over that. I glance over my shoulder at Alec, at his long fingers slotting the jam into place. Remember why I had to tell you in the first place? My breathing falters. Remember?
My fingers close around the handle of a huge steak knife. It whispers prettily as I slide it from the block. Shoes murmur on the tiles. Alec turns. “Hey, Cadhla…?” He looks up.
For a moment, I see his expression freeze. Then all I see is the wine bottle he’s holding as it comes flying towards my face.

“I know what you are.”
How ominous.
I mean, yeah, he’s pointing a gun at my forehead. But it’s wobbling.
“And what’s that, buddy-o?” I ask, jerking my head to toss the hair from my face. “America’s next top model? A very rare form of seal?”
“A murderer.”
Way to kill the mood.
We’re still in our apartment, and I’m trussed to a chair in the dining room. The television is droning on about terrorists and the broken fan is clicking away over my head. If I wrinkle my nose, I can feel the dried mask of blood where the bottle hit. “Say, Alec… what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t move!” Alec shuffles in a semi-circle before me like a crab, the gun stuck out in front of him. “I’ve called the police!” His face is flushed. Pretty bastard.
“Aw. You called the police.” I pout.
“Why’d you do it?” he half-shouts. “You tried to kill me!”
An image flares through my mind. His spindly hand down my top.
“You’re boring,” I say as offhandedly as I can. “You use up my foundation. And you’re a terrible driver.”
“Tell me the truth!” His voice rips up an octave.
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe psychopaths attract.”
“I’m not a psychopath!” He brandishes the gun in my face. “You’ve probably done this a thousand times! You’re probably on the run! I knew there was something wrong about you.” He grits his teeth. “But I’m not like you, you bitch. I don’t go around stabbing people ‘cause it’s fun!”
The chair creaks as I lean my shoulder-blades into the wood. His chest heaves in the fallen hush. Gently, I shake my head. “But you do, don’t you?” I snort. “You just don’t use a knife.”
Silence. His cheeks leak their colour. “Cadhla.”
I cock my head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Alec.”
You can see him working through it, see the little cogs clunking behind his temples. His lips open and close as if something has jammed. “I… I said I was sorry! Cadhla… it was one time.”
“It was one time with me. Why else do you think I chose you?” I make a noise deep in my chest and yank my arms as though to free them from the zip ties.
He shoves the gun against my head. “Shut up! Move and I’ll shoot you. I swear, I’ll do it!”
I sigh. Fucking wonderful.
“Alec, put the gun down,” I say as the trembling barrel teases my hair. “You’re going to hurt someone.”
“You already tried to kill me, you crazy bitch!” He jumps away from the chair, clutching the gun with both hands. “I’m trying to get better, okay? I’m done with all that. You don’t have to punish me.”
I spit. The white globule lands on his boot. For a moment, he stands there, staring. Then his hand moves, faster than sight. Something hard comes down across my cheek. My head whips to the side and I sway back in the chair, my shoulders thumping the wood. After a heartbeat of skeletal silence, I look up at him through the straggle of my hair. “People like you don’t get better. That’s why people like me destroy you.”
Alec is peering at his hand as if he can’t quite believe what it just did. I watch it quiver in mid-air as he turns it over. Then his mouth contorts as he clenches the hand into a fist, and he strides to the window. “Where are the damn cops?”
“Call them asking where they are and they’ll show up at the door,” I say. “That’s always how it works.”
He laughs. It spasms. “You are freaking crazy, aren’t you?”
I snort and curl my tongue against my teeth. “I’m not crazy. I’m just pissed off at the world.”
Alec rips the curtains shut, casting the room in a hollow greenish light. “Bloody cops better get here soon.”
“Maybe my friends got them,” I say, tracing the toe of my boot around a crumb on the carpet.
I don’t look up, but I hear Alec’s sharp intake of breath and I feel the air shift as the gun clicks back towards my face.
“What friends?”
The question dangles for a moment. The fan whirs overhead, stumbling across that one broken point over and over and over.
I don’t have any friends. Being a serial killer sorta does that to a girl. But Bucko here wants to play. I kick back in the chair and tilt my head to one side. A slip of blonde hair falls across my eyes. “Well sure, pal.” My lips pucker in one corner. “How do you think I’ve got away with it all this time, huh?” Actually, I’ve got away with it through careful planning, frequent dye jobs and a lot of interstate travel. Easier than you’d think.
Alec’s eye is twitching. His head keeps jerking as if to face the window, but it never quite gets there. I give my arms another tug, unable to keep the grin from leaching through. “Go check outside, Alec.” Laugh. “Go see who’s watching you this time.”
His chest swells. “Liar! There’s no one else!” But that gun is still shaking.
I shrug, lower lip popped out. “Okay. It’s your head.” I have to clench my chest muscles to keep from snickering at his doe eyes. “How far away are the police again?”
Alec is craning his neck to see as far out the window as he can. Something in me twinges. Something I thought was lost. Something like pity. “Okay, you got me. There’s no one else. Stop before you break your neck.”
He purses his lips and presses his cheek against the glass. As he looks, the gun lowers some. I yank on the zip tie, squaring my shoulders, and my stomach lurches as the cold bond loosens. Alec’s head whips towards me and I try to flatten out my brow. He gives a sigh that sounds almost like a scream and stomps towards me, gun held out in one hand, head back. “Look. If I’d known what your ex did, and how it brought up the crap from your past, I’d never have touched you.” He throws his arms out to either side. “I’m not a bad guy, okay?”
I yank my arms apart.
Alec’s face goes slack as I shoot to my feet and punch the gun out of his hand. It clatters on the kitchen tiles and clacks against the far cupboards as I grab Alec’s hand and twist it behind his back. I bend low over him, growling into his ear. “Not all stories have a hero, pretty boy.”
He wrenches backwards, trying to buck me off, but I push him into the chair, frowning. The twinge is still there.
“See, here’s the thing, Alec.” I crouch until my eyes are level with his, my hands pressed down on his knees. “I know what you are.”

The police arrive unfashionably late.
He’s lying on his back when they find him, trussed up like a Christmas ham. They catch him muttering about how someone has told him to get better, though he won’t say from what. When they remove the last of the zip ties he sits up and rubs his reddened wrists. Been lying there for ages, he says. Belly thrown skyward, dry-piss shorts chafing his thighs when he tried to move. He doesn’t mention that, though.
They can’t get much more out of him, as he sits there rocking amongst the newspaper pages torn from one to eighty. Plucking tellingly at the crotch of his pants. One of them takes the note sticky-taped to his shirt.
He needs a comfy cell. Right, pumpkin?
They stand there for a while as the ambulance pulls up, cocking their heads from side to side as if they can’t quite work out what to do with him. The one with the note looks around the apartment and scratches at his chin.
If, at that moment, they’d knocked on the door of the neighbouring apartment, they’d have been answered by a woman wiping blood from her face, who’d say she’d been out for the past several hours. Hadn’t seen a thing. If they’d looked closely, they might’ve seen her half-packed suitcase on the windowsill. But they don’t get to that door for another few minutes.
As they handcuff the man and lead him out of the room, one of the police pauses and looks up at the fan. It’s swirling in its final death throes, tripping on that broken spot over and over, until it eventually stops. The policeman frowns for a moment, then tugs his cap over his brow and follows his comrades from the apartment.