Sam West - Home Intruder

“And if we refuse?” Jaz asked, keeping her gaze lowered.

“I think you know the answer to that.” He made a cutting motion across his neck. “Bye-bye Ed.”

“I’m in. Let me at the bitch,” Linda said.

“The fighting spirit. That’s what I like to hear.”

Bring it on, you cunts .

Jason had handed them both a knife each from the kitchen drawer. They were roughly the same size and meant for chopping vegetables, not killing people. Jaz stared blankly down at hers, turning it over slowly in her hand.

“This is to the death, ladies, winner takes all. Are you ready?”

Without warning Linda lunged for her, the knife slashing into the air, missing her nose by millimetres. The torn top and bra had been discarded, and her large breasts swung heavily with the sudden movement. Jaz easily ducked to one side. Linda was older, fatter, and had suffered a blow to the head. She almost pitied her.

Almost.

Linda lunged for her again and this time Jaz grabbed her wrist and twisted the knife out of her hand. When it clattered to the floor, Jaz kicked it away. She grabbed the surprised woman and spun her round, pushing her down, face first onto the table.

“Please don’t make me do this,” she said to Jason, whilst holding the struggling woman’s face on the table like her husband had done before her.

“I’m not making you, you have a choice, remember?”

A choice. Some fucking choice.

The kindest thing she could think to do was to fist her hair and bring her face crashing down onto the table-top. Unlike when her husband did it, Linda didn’t pass out. Instead she crashed to the floor in an ungainly heap and Jaz kneeled next to her.

Linda moaned and struggled to sit up. Without thinking too deeply, Jaz yanked back the woman’s head, exposing her throat. The knife cut easily through the skin, opening up a deep gash from ear to ear.

The look in Linda’s eyes was one of sheer surprise. She made funny gurgling sounds and uselessly clutched the gaping wound. It took a second or two for the blood to spill through the slit, but when it did, boy, did it flow. It pulsed in thick waves, bubbling in places, and poured over her breasts. A red river instantly soaked her jeans and pooled at her knees. With a final gurgle that might have started out as a scream, Linda fell forwards, flat on her face.

Shakily, Jaz got to her feet.

Dead. She’s dead.

She expected to feel terror. Or remorse. Or at least something. But no. She glanced over at her husband, gratified to see the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Still alive. Where there’s life, there’s hope….

Shame the same couldn’t be said for Linda.

“You’re a tough one, aren’t you? I never thought you had it in you, I must say.”

Neither did she. And the last thing she should do right now was let him see that.

She began to sob. They weren’t crocodile tears, not as such, they were born of the evil she had witnessed and partaken in that evening. Yet her heart was as hard as stone. There was no fear in them, just duplicitous, female guile.

“Don’t waste your tears on Linda, she doesn’t deserve them.” Jaz hugged her chest and tried to make herself look as small as possible. “So it is on with the game, sweet Jazmine. You must now make another choice. Would you rather slice off your own breasts or your husband’s cock?”

“I would rather…” Her words trailed away into sobbing.

She noticed that the knife he had been holding was dumped on the worktop behind him. That left only the gun to deal with.

“Yes?”

“I would rather…”

With a war cry she covered the short distance between them, knife outstretched. The element of surprise was completely on her side when she rammed him. The knife drove home, just above the waistband of his jeans. He made an oomph sound when the air left his body in a rush, and she grabbed the hand holding the gun, bashing it hard against the metal extractor fan above the cooker.

The gun fired, a dull thump that broke the sound barrier and made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She repeated the action and the gun dropped from his splayed fingers.

Without a second’s hesitation, she dragged the knife upwards with all her strength and he fell to the floor. Jaz clung on in a deadly embrace, going down with him, twisting the knife some more as they fell.

He landed on his back with Jaz straddling him. Jaz looked down at him, and at herself. She was soaked in blood, and probably not just Jason’s who was rapidly bleeding out over the kitchen floor.

“Why?” she asked, watching in fascination the way the blood frothed in his mouth when he gasped for air.

He mouthed something, but no sound came out. She leaned in closer.

“Speak up, cunt. I can’t hear you.”

“Because…” he whispered.

She leaned in closer still.

“Because I can.”

His body went slack beneath her.

“Ed,” she gasped, clambering off him, stepping over Linda’s body to get to him. “Ed?” His face was cold to the touch and there was no pulse at his neck. “No! God, please, no.”

Her hands fluttered uselessly over his body, before settling on the bullet wound in his side. She was kneeling in his blood but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything.

“Wake up, wake up,” she cried over and over, cradling his head in her bloody lap.

She felt hands on her back and she flinched.

“He’s dead. I’m sorry.”

Jaz howled in pain and Boko held onto her as she rocked her dead husband’s body.

“Don’t do that, honey, it isn’t nice.”

Ed let go of the cat’s tail. “Aw, Mummy.”

Jaz put down her paintbrush and reached for her son who was crawling after the cat on the kitchen floor.

“How would you like your tail pulled? Huh? Huh?”

The little boy squirmed and giggled. Jaz laughed too, but it was underpinned with the constant sadness that she carried with her always.

He’s not Ed’s. He’s his.

She had hoped and prayed that it wasn’t to be so, but alas, this little boy was the living proof.

He has his father’s eyes, she thought, and shuddered.

“Mummy, can I play in the garden?”

“Sure sweetie, just don’t go past the back-gate, okay?”

“Kay, Mummy.”

Ed hurtled out the back door into the brilliant sunshine. She stood watching him through the kitchen window as she rinsed her brushes in the sink. Memoires of that night were beginning to fade. Not completely of course, but if there was one thing Jaz had learned from the whole sorry experience was that she was a fighter. Since then, she had sold the house on Dallam Avenue and bought another, smaller house in Treeve.

It had just felt right. Ed had been brought up here, and now little Ed was going to be too. Like the kind old guy from the pasty shop had said, she was able to carve out a pretty decent living here as an artist. Life was good.

Apart from the nightmares. Over the past three years she had tried to piece together the psychological mystery that was Jason Jacks; the sadistic serial killer that liked to torture couples. Unloved and unwanted as a child, he had been in and out of care-homes and foster-homes, suffering God–knows-what at the hands of strangers. Maybe that was why he was so obsessed with ‘testing love.’

Whatever. The obsession had eaten her up and almost destroyed her. She knew that it was time to stop. Time to move on with her life.

What’s Ed doing now?

The little boy was crouched down at the far end of the garden by the wall. He was holding something in his hand, although she couldn’t see what as he had his back to her. When he turned in profile, she gasped. In his little hands he held a sparrow. The poor thing must have been half eaten by a cat or something, and had managed to escape. Its wings were fluttering and its body convulsed.