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2(1)(a)(i): wilful killing
When I turn my palms upward, a trail of Helene’s blood trickles over my wristbone. Such a light, wet tickle it almost itches. You, Eve—you watch it like you are jealous. Like you wish it was the tip of your tongue, or your spit, or your blood on my skin.
You’re right, I could have done this more cleanly. I didn’t have to pry her neck apart and stick my fingers down her windpipe. I just wanted to feel the convulsions. That abject intimacy… I’m sure you understand.
(I could give you convulsions too, Eve. I am not afraid of putting these hands where they don’t belong. Or where they do.)
Anyway, you just stand there. Drinking in the scene with pupils blown drug-wide but I know you are still thinking: what terrible things she does . Oh yes, what a terrible thing I am.
In truth I haven’t killed anybody this wilfully in a while. Not like you have. Not with either the expectation or the outcome of feeling anything except bored and tired of it.
It was nicer when murder felt like problem-solving. Simple, fun, rewarding.
Problem: I want the new season Alexander McQueen.
Solution: I shoot a guy in the head and get paid a lot of money.
I thought that maybe Helene was a problem with this kind of solution—but she is slumped dead on the done-for hotel carpet and it hasn’t set anything right. Revenge for trying to have me killed, I imagined—but my back aches even more after the tussle and I don’t think she ever repented. Revenge, I might secretly have thought, for making you into something like her when you were supposed to be like me. But was the problem ever really her?
2(1)(a)(iv): extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly
I still masturbate about you a lot, you know. And not just your amazing hair or the time you stuck a knife in me. I promise.
When I touch myself I think about damage. Shards of pleasure like bottles smashing, chilled champagne fizzing, the whole room wearing my every designer scent at once. I think about breaking and entering you, too. Sucking on your brush and putting my banana in your salt cellar. It’s okay, Eve, you can laugh at my bad dirty jokes. You can find me funny while you use me.
When I want to feel good, I think about killing your friends and getting you fired and wedging my foot into every cracked door of your marriage while I hold my breasts in rough hands and pinch my nipples hard. I picture your face when I stole your luggage in Berlin, and I laugh.
You are much harder to rob these days because you don’t seem to give a shit about anything or anyone.
When I want to feel like crap, I fuck myself slowly. One knuckle of one finger at first. Hardly there; too slippery and too shallow. I trail the softest fingers up the side of my body from thigh to ribcage. I close my eyes and try to taste my own breath while I imagine that your lips are hovering right above mine, smiling down because you love to see me underneath you smiling up.
Then I put my own hand around my throat and I squeeze so hard my pulse turns to throbbing kaleidoscopes on my retinas, and I pretend that hurting is still something that gets me off. That my own hands are the ones with the most power over my body. That you didn’t ruin me for no reason.
2(1)(a)(vii): unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement
You have something on your face, Eve—
I think it is regret.
I’ve been arrested before, so it’s no big deal. I do fine in prison, and someone always gets me out. That said, this wasn’t how I hoped the moment would go. I think now that you have done this, you realise it isn’t how you hoped either.
I imagine myself taking the last word. A quip about how if you wanted to see me in handcuffs all you had to do was ask. I have several pairs. Supple leather and fur that hold you tenderly or metal with bruising edges, circles uncharacteristically full of corners. Ropes you can use to touch a person all over at once. I could have taught you. It could have been better than this, Eve.
I don’t say any of this; just watch you watching them take me away.
I end up sitting between these two cops in the back seat of their stupid little car like I’m in an inside-out bacon sandwich. They even stink like pigs. The air conditioning is so cold they can’t be this sweaty for any reason but fear. Should have brought a wagon. A hood, maybe a sexy little straitjacket. Do me up like Hannibal Lecter. He always kept his sense of style about him.
All of it makes me think: did you even plan this, or were these little porkies just closest to the market when you decided to make the call?
The drive is boring and they won’t put any music on the radio, so I indulge in a little fantasy. I’ll tell you about it later. The techniques I’ll use on you.
Example: do you know what a hardpoint is, Eve? Not the military kind. Think about that man in Amsterdam—yet another pig, what is it about them?—and how I strung him from the ceiling. The hardpoint is the spot he hung from.
I could do you the same. Hook you up like meat for boning, cleave you crudely in two. Tenderise and devour. You said we would consume each other, but apparently that is a one way street now.
If I have to, I will hood you like a hostage so that all you can do is smell me, taste me, listen to me for once. I can take you somewhere rough. I know an empty warehouse with crossbeams you can really swing from. I have a toy perfect for your arsehole to really make you squeal.
Or we could do it somewhere normal—just somewhere with a rig and a bed. You can rent these places on Airbnb.
2(1)(a)(viii): taking of hostages
You kidnapped Helene’s kid? Eve, you are so bold.
Kidnapping is so hard. Children are so annoying, and somehow even the adults always turn into babies when it happens to them. Your boss is an exception, but I bet Carolyn acted an arrogant fifty from the day she was born.
2(1)(b)(xxi): committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment
“I don’t believe you.” I want to, Eve, but how can I?
You came all this way to be with me? You don’t know what that is.
You don’t look sorry, just angry. There is blood under your fingernails still, where you made it gush out of Gunn’s eye sockets—and fuck you for reminding me that there is nobody quite like you, quite like us.
You don’t do things by halves, not the things you care about—so don’t make me.
“Please, Villanelle.”
Oh, but you are stepping forward now and bending your knees. Lowering yourself to kneel. The wind whips your hair like snakes and I’m frozen by the sight of it. Always with the temptation, Eve. Since the very beginning of time.
“Will you give me everything I want this time?” I ask, just to hear you lie.
“Yes.” You say it fast, almost before I’m finished speaking. “Yes.” You’re doing that mournful thing with you eyes, making the rings of black and brown seem like ripples on deep glassy pools. Maybe you are still capable of pleading. Maybe you’ve just gotten better at faking it.
“You have promised me that before,” I have to remind you. “I delivered; you didn’t.”
“I’ll– well what do you want? I’ll give it to you right here right now if I can. Because the only way this ends is with both of us, together.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay.”
You go to stand up.
“No. Stay down.”
And you do it! You sink your knees back into the dirt, and let me loom over you like the dark clouds loom over our heads. Full of something heavy and unpredictable. I knelt for you, tried to be good for you, and you threw it all back in my face. The open slap of disregard that hurt much more than the stab of communion.
I take a few steps back, take my eyes off you so that I can say what I have to: “I can’t just forgive you, Eve. I think you will need to really grovel.”
I watch you process this. Refusal bitten back by doubt, rage by resignation by determination.
You put your hands down and crawl until your fingers touch the toes of my boots. Eyes down, you mumble: “please.”
This is better, but you aren’t broken yet. It’s only fair that I should get to do the breaking—an eye for an eye, never mind that we left none for Gunn.
I kick one foot ever so slightly. “Kiss them.”
You glance up at this. Checking. Am I serious? Oh yes, Eve, I am deadly serious.
You understand. You obey.
Two hikers come up the path nattering about the crumbling state of the weather and stop in alarm when they see us.
“We’re fine,” I assure them—closing down the questions asked by their slack jaws.
You pause. I kick. You resume.
“You can stay and watch if you like. She is such an exhibitionist.”
They shake their heads, smiling nervously. You can’t see them, but I can see the tension it adds to your body, knowing they’re there.
“S’posed to be a storm,” says the woman of the pair. “Our map says there’s a bothy not too far ahead. That’s like a little—”
“I know what it is,” I snap. These people, their presence in our scene no longer amuses me. They do not like my tone so I become polite again: “Maybe we’ll catch up to you.”
It works. “Cool, see you there!” they wave and waddle on past us. I feel it when your mouth leaves my shoe as you try to lift your eyes, to glimpse them before they disappear over the rise. As annoying as they are, I think it might be nice to spend the night. All of us together in the stupid bothy, knowing you tongued my filthy boots.
2(1)(b)(xviii): employing asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices
The kitchen staff are down.
I’d love to stay and listen to you pretend to know the first thing about romance, but I’ll have to hurry if I’m going to kill all twelve of them before you choke on your flimsy disguise and follow me down, blowing our cover because you need their blood on your hands more than you need either of us to breathe.
2(1)(b)(xii): declaring that no quarter will be given
It’s Carolyn in the end, I’m sure of it. Less merciful than you, and much less forgiving than me. Quite Russian of her to leave no way out but death.
You and I each half-expected to die here, so in total it’s wholly unsurprising. Disappointing, sure. My upper back is not having a good week.
Overboard. Hurry, Eve—it’s safer in the water. Yes, even in the Thames. On deck it’s a matter of seconds before the sniper detonates our skulls like melons, but whoever’s behind the scope has little hope if we’re under.
It’s cold and it’s murky and opening my eyes only burns them. I feel you flailing nearby and reach out blindly for your hand. Eve, get off me or we will both drown. Hold your breath as long as you can—now hold it a bit longer. No swallowing the water. Surrender is not an option, so kick like I know you can.