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“You should have listened to your dog. He’s got far better instincts than you do.”
The dog barks again and leaps on me. I didnotexpect that from a golden retriever. I shake him off and grab the gun from the back of my pants. I shoot a nearby lamp, and the shattering glass sends the dog running out the still open front door. It would have been easier to shoot him, but Aidan loves that dog.
By this point, Eliza is running up the stairs—just like the dumb horror movie victim. I pull the gloves from my jacket pocket and slip them on.
All this dumb bitch had to do was not hurt the kid. All she had to do was give him a safe place to live and maybe just maybe he could grow up semi-normal, but the evil rot in her is the same as my stepmother’s. There is no saving her, and only one way to get Aidan out of her care.
“I’m calling the police!” she says from behind the locked bedroom door when I bang on it.
“With what? A tin can and string?” She never got her phone out of her bag.
“I have a landline, you piece of shit!”
“No you don’t.”
She’s dead quiet.
“H-how do you know that?”
“What difference does it make at this point?” I kick in the door.
“You’re not my neighbor.”
I laugh. “Wow, that’s probably the most clearly obvious thing I’ve ever heard a person say out loud. Congratulations.”
She grabs a lamp and swings it at me. She gets me in the shoulder, but I’ve already grabbed her and pushed her against the wall.
There is a part of me that knows deep down I don’t have to do this. I can make a different choice. Surely the threat of me now is big enough that I could make sure she never raises a hand to Aidan again, but she’d call the police. I wouldn’t be able to get close to the house again. They’d find my bugs. Too many things could go wrong.
Besides, it’s too late now. When I look into her eyes I see my stepmother, and there is only one way that story ever ends.
“You don’t have to do this. Do you want money? Take whatever you want. I don’t care. It’s all insured.”
But I only barely hear the words, and their meanings certainly don’t register in time for my rational sanity to come back online.
A moment later she’s grabbed a cigarette out of a nearby ash tray and presses the burning ember against the side of my neck. And with that one small act, any chance of mercy is gone.
“Not this time, Linda,” I say.
“Who’s Linda?” They are the last words she says before my hand crushes her windpipe.
The body slides to the ground, and I give her lifeless corpse a kick and then back away. Who the fuck even smokes anymore? I look down to find my hands shaking. This never happens to me, well, not since the very first time. I squeeze my eyes shut and put my hands over my ears, blocking out Linda’s shouts and the sound of the switch slicing through the air... my dog whimpering...
My ears ring, and the room gets very loud with a long tone before I readjust to the silence of the room. It’s only then that I finally hear the dryer down the hallway. I jump at the sound of the dog barking again, but then he sees Eliza. He blinks and looks at the body and then looks at me and back at the body again.
He’s thinking as hard as I’ve ever seen any dog think—as though he’s trying to decide if she’s worth mourning.
“She kicked you a couple of times, too,” I say.
He just whimpers and slinks out of the room and back down the stairs as though he actually understood those words. I flush the cigarette butt down the toilet in the attached bathroom and follow the dog downstairs. I shut the front door so he can’t get out again and put food and water in his dish.
He eyes me warily, but nothing can keep him from his food bowl for long. Then I go through the house and remove all the listening devices.
I’m still shaky when I get back out to the car, but I start it up and pull away. Once I’m well outside the neighborhood I use a burner phone to tip off the police about the murder then toss the phone out the window. I couldn’t let Aidan come home to that. I just hope they find a delicate way to get him to his Uncle Martin’s house. There’s no reason he needs to go to another funeral right now.
When I get back to the house, I find Mina in our dungeon room, staring at the wall.
“What is this?” she asks. She hasn’t yet noticed my clearly shattering mental state, and I’m glad for the brief reprieve.
