HI HONEY, I’M HOME | Joe Young
“Hi Honey, I’m home” he shouts, hoping I’ll greet him at the door for our usual kiss. I say nothing, do nothing, but wait for him to find me. He enters the room and I smile at him, a half nervous and half angry smile. I quickly bridge the gap between us so he doesn’t realise anything is wrong. The kiss was perfunctory, not my usual happy greeting. I can’t fake it; I already have trouble keeping the smile going. I think he got that straight away as he slunk off and poured himself a drink. He sits down, his eyes briefly meeting mine.
I throw the ski mask into his lap. He shrinks back from it like it’s a tarantula.
"Where are they David?" I wait for denial or misdirection.
"Where are what?"
"The girls"
"Boarding school" His voice trembling as he wrings the ski mask in his hands.
"Not OUR girls. The others. The ones you’ve murdered" He looks me straight in the eyes: I see something there that I haven’t seen in the seventeen years that we have been together. I feel sick. The room starts spinning out of focus. I have to regain control. Can’t faint. Mustn’t. God only knows what he would do if I did but I assumed I’d be meeting up with the girls.
"You’re crazy"
"How dare you call me crazy" I grab the ski mask off him and whack him across the face with it. "I KNOW it’s you David.” He sits calmly, far too calm under the circumstances.
"Come on Rachel, it’s me, I could never…"
"Then what are you doing with this?" I throw the mask back at him. "The ski mask David, explain it to me, and while you’re at it you can explain the knife and the rope"
"What!"
"I found them, the knife and rope, under the spare wheel of the SUV.”
"I..."
He stares at the floor now. I’m angry, which is good. Not feeling so faint anymore, but my stomach is knotted and my throat is scorching through me. My heart beating fast, pumping all of the love I have ever had for this man out of it.
“When would it have been my turn? Or our daughters’?”
“I would never have”
“Never have what David? Murdered us?”
“Of course I would never murder you; I love you, all of you”
“I want the truth David, when would it have been our turn?”
“Never honey, I swear. I love you Rachel, please believe me”
He looked genuinely hurt by my questioning. My doubts and fears taking hold of me again, I fight it and regain my composure. “So how many is it David? Just the ones reported?”
“More” He said, and it hit me as a statement with no question Mark implied… A confession.
“Oh my god, I knew it” I sat, trembling. It’s one thing believing something is possible, but quite another actually having it confirmed. “Ok, right, so where are they? You may as well tell me, get it all out in the open so I know what we are dealing with”
“Here”
“What! In the cellar? Under the floor?”
“Not in the house, I haven’t gone all Gacy on you. They’re buried in the grounds” His voice is now flat, all emotion excised.
“Oh, please no. Not here, you evil bastard” No, that’s not entirely fair. He was never evil to me, never hurt me. He’s making up for it now. I still can’t quite believe he is capable of this. Christ, help me, I don’t know what to say. I think of the women he has killed, girls, women.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you honey”
“Why this of all things? An affair I could handle, but this? How many David, how many are there?”
“I don’t know”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You can’t just say ‘I don’t know’. How many women have you killed?”
“I don’t know ok!” He yelled.
“Don’t you dare shout at me you son of a bitch it’s not ‘ok’, it’s about a million miles from ‘ok’. You’ve murdered women, buried them in OUR grounds. All of the time carrying on like nothing is happening, all the time lying to me, to our daughters. Butchering people right under our noses, so don’t you dare shout”
“I’m sorry”
“Sorry? How sorry David? You couldn’t have cared less about them, about me. It’s bad enough you do it, but to do it on our doorstep?”
“I didn’t think…”
I’m angrier now. The thought of what this will do to Sara and Emily frightens me, I fight back tears and feel as if spikes are being hammered through my face. “I don’t understand this David. Why? Why murder? Was it for sex? Did you rape them?”
“No!” A brief spark of emotion, looking trapped.
“Then why? What for? Do you even know?”
“The first was an accident, a hiker. I gave her a lift, she wouldn’t get out of the car, said she’d call the Police, say I’d raped her if I didn’t give her money”
“So you killed her”
“No, well, yes, I didn’t mean to. I dragged her out of the car, she struggled, fell down the embankment, I think she broke her neck or something. It was an accident I swear” His tone hasn’t faltered, I don’t believe him.
“And the others? ‘Accidents’ too?”
“Don’t say it like that… like I am lying. I never once lied to you” he said in a flat tone.
“No David, you didn’t lie once, you lived one. I want you to tell me how deep this goes, how many victims…”
“I don’t know, maybe sixty or so”
For a moment I almost collapse, staggering slightly, he doesn’t notice, and I regain composure. David is just sitting staring at his feet; every so often his eyes make a little darting action. His eyelids remain open as if he is scared to blink. I am scared to blink as well, if I blink is that all he needs? Is that enough for him to move, to grab the knife, to stab me? Maybe I should stab him. Oh my god, I can’t believe I just thought that. The knife scares me more now. I am holding something that he has used to take dozens of lives and I don’t want to hold it, but am scared to put it down, if I take my eyes off him long enough for him to move that’s all he’ll need. I think of Carla Williams, one of the girls on the news. She was gutted like a fish and he had built a fire in her stomach cavity.
I feel a wet slow trickle, like my nose is bleeding, but it is just snot from crying so much. Still he stares at his feet.
“Look at me, I said look at me you bastard”
He looks up, his eyes fixed, all I see is my reflection in the glassy depths of him, it’s like looking into the eyes of a dead fish.
“What do you expect me to say Rach’?”
“I don’t know what I want, I know I don’t want you looking at your shoes like a kid caught shoplifting!”
He stood up; I backed off, holding the knife up.
“Are you going to use that?” he said.
“I don’t know, but if you come much closer we’ll both find out”
He backs off.
I motioned toward the chair with the knife. David sat, and smiled.
“What the heck are you smiling at?”
“You look good with that knife in your hand… You love the power don’t you”
“David I…”
“Oh come on. It’s a great feeling to have control”
“I am just trying to keep you from killing me”
“Put the knife down, talk about this sensibly”
“No, the knife stays. You need to tell me what you reckon I should do”
“That’s simple enough, you put the knife down, you sit down, and we talk this over. Look, I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison…”
“What then? We should just play happy families and pretend you’re not a serial killer?”
“You could always just let me go”
“I can’t do that, what about the garden full of corpses you’ll be leaving behind, what am I supposed to do?”
“Give me time to leave the country, and then you can report me”
“You have daughters, how is it going to be for them knowing that their father is on the run?”
“I’ll need your help to get rid of the bodies. After that I’ll pack up and leave, the girls won’t need to know anything, they’ll just think I ran off”
“You’ve got this all figured out haven’t you? How long have you had that planned?”
“A while”
“Cold”
“Not cold, just practical. I have thought this stuff through. I worried that someone would find a body, which is why I started burying them here”
As far as damage limitation is concerned it’s better than nothing. I run through several scenarios in my head.
“If I help you… If, then how?”
“I think it’s better that you don’t know the details, but let’s just say I already have everything in place for me to disappear”
“So you could just do it, simply disappear like that?”
“I have never wanted to, but if I needed to sometime then I’ve covered my bases”
“If I do this David, I do it for the girls, and you have to stay gone, no contact at all, ever, not even if they try finding you”
“I promise, once I am out that door it’ll be like I don’t exist”
“You don’t exist to me anymore now anyway. I just want you gone. So when do we start?”
“Right away. I bought a van; I’ll bag the bodies and load them, take the van to the long stay car park at the airport and pay enough that I will be in a non-extradition country before anyone even notice anything”
“How soon can you get that done?”
“Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours”
“Ok, do it” I move aside, leaving a clear path between David and
the door. “I'll sort out your passport and pack a suitcase. Do you want the
money from the safe?”
“How much is there?”
“The emergency money, five grand. I think this qualifies as an emergency”
“I'll just take a couple of thousand”
“Take it all”
“Are you sure?”
“Everything else is for the girls”
I take the risk of putting the knife down on the coffee table. He watches me do it but makes no move to grab it. I force a smile at him as he gets up and heads toward me. Straight toward me. I back off, he sees the look on my face and changes course, and I see sadness there, in his eyes, like it's actually affecting him that I shied away from him. If I am honest about it, I feel sorry for him, I love him, always have. This monster isn't him, but is him at the same time, and what he has done is something I can't lie to myself about or live with.
“I'll be back as soon as possible” He says, grabbing his keys
and wallet from the table. I say nothing, moving farther away from him. He leaves the room, and then our home. From the window I see him drive away. I feel cold, physically chilled to the core, but emotionally I am a bag of nerves as I grab the phone and call the Police.
“Hi Honey, I’m home” he shouts, hoping I’ll greet him at the door for our usual kiss. I say nothing, do nothing, but wait for him to find me. He enters the room and I smile at him, a half nervous and half angry smile. I quickly bridge the gap between us so he doesn’t realise anything is wrong. The kiss was perfunctory, not my usual happy greeting. I can’t fake it; I already have trouble keeping the smile going. I think he got that straight away as he slunk off and poured himself a drink. He sits down, his eyes briefly meeting mine.
I throw the ski mask into his lap. He shrinks back from it like it’s a tarantula.
"Where are they David?" I wait for denial or misdirection.
"Where are what?"
"The girls"
"Boarding school" His voice trembling as he wrings the ski mask in his hands.
"Not OUR girls. The others. The ones you’ve murdered" He looks me straight in the eyes: I see something there that I haven’t seen in the seventeen years that we have been together. I feel sick. The room starts spinning out of focus. I have to regain control. Can’t faint. Mustn’t. God only knows what he would do if I did but I assumed I’d be meeting up with the girls.
"You’re crazy"
"How dare you call me crazy" I grab the ski mask off him and whack him across the face with it. "I KNOW it’s you David.” He sits calmly, far too calm under the circumstances.
"Come on Rachel, it’s me, I could never…"
"Then what are you doing with this?" I throw the mask back at him. "The ski mask David, explain it to me, and while you’re at it you can explain the knife and the rope"
"What!"
"I found them, the knife and rope, under the spare wheel of the SUV.”
"I..."
He stares at the floor now. I’m angry, which is good. Not feeling so faint anymore, but my stomach is knotted and my throat is scorching through me. My heart beating fast, pumping all of the love I have ever had for this man out of it.
“When would it have been my turn? Or our daughters’?”
“I would never have”
“Never have what David? Murdered us?”
“Of course I would never murder you; I love you, all of you”
“I want the truth David, when would it have been our turn?”
“Never honey, I swear. I love you Rachel, please believe me”
He looked genuinely hurt by my questioning. My doubts and fears taking hold of me again, I fight it and regain my composure. “So how many is it David? Just the ones reported?”
“More” He said, and it hit me as a statement with no question Mark implied… A confession.
“Oh my god, I knew it” I sat, trembling. It’s one thing believing something is possible, but quite another actually having it confirmed. “Ok, right, so where are they? You may as well tell me, get it all out in the open so I know what we are dealing with”
“Here”
“What! In the cellar? Under the floor?”
“Not in the house, I haven’t gone all Gacy on you. They’re buried in the grounds” His voice is now flat, all emotion excised.
“Oh, please no. Not here, you evil bastard” No, that’s not entirely fair. He was never evil to me, never hurt me. He’s making up for it now. I still can’t quite believe he is capable of this. Christ, help me, I don’t know what to say. I think of the women he has killed, girls, women.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you honey”
“Why this of all things? An affair I could handle, but this? How many David, how many are there?”
“I don’t know”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You can’t just say ‘I don’t know’. How many women have you killed?”
“I don’t know ok!” He yelled.
“Don’t you dare shout at me you son of a bitch it’s not ‘ok’, it’s about a million miles from ‘ok’. You’ve murdered women, buried them in OUR grounds. All of the time carrying on like nothing is happening, all the time lying to me, to our daughters. Butchering people right under our noses, so don’t you dare shout”
“I’m sorry”
“Sorry? How sorry David? You couldn’t have cared less about them, about me. It’s bad enough you do it, but to do it on our doorstep?”
“I didn’t think…”
I’m angrier now. The thought of what this will do to Sara and Emily frightens me, I fight back tears and feel as if spikes are being hammered through my face. “I don’t understand this David. Why? Why murder? Was it for sex? Did you rape them?”
“No!” A brief spark of emotion, looking trapped.
“Then why? What for? Do you even know?”
“The first was an accident, a hiker. I gave her a lift, she wouldn’t get out of the car, said she’d call the Police, say I’d raped her if I didn’t give her money”
“So you killed her”
“No, well, yes, I didn’t mean to. I dragged her out of the car, she struggled, fell down the embankment, I think she broke her neck or something. It was an accident I swear” His tone hasn’t faltered, I don’t believe him.
“And the others? ‘Accidents’ too?”
“Don’t say it like that… like I am lying. I never once lied to you” he said in a flat tone.
“No David, you didn’t lie once, you lived one. I want you to tell me how deep this goes, how many victims…”
“I don’t know, maybe sixty or so”
For a moment I almost collapse, staggering slightly, he doesn’t notice, and I regain composure. David is just sitting staring at his feet; every so often his eyes make a little darting action. His eyelids remain open as if he is scared to blink. I am scared to blink as well, if I blink is that all he needs? Is that enough for him to move, to grab the knife, to stab me? Maybe I should stab him. Oh my god, I can’t believe I just thought that. The knife scares me more now. I am holding something that he has used to take dozens of lives and I don’t want to hold it, but am scared to put it down, if I take my eyes off him long enough for him to move that’s all he’ll need. I think of Carla Williams, one of the girls on the news. She was gutted like a fish and he had built a fire in her stomach cavity.
I feel a wet slow trickle, like my nose is bleeding, but it is just snot from crying so much. Still he stares at his feet.
“Look at me, I said look at me you bastard”
He looks up, his eyes fixed, all I see is my reflection in the glassy depths of him, it’s like looking into the eyes of a dead fish.
“What do you expect me to say Rach’?”
“I don’t know what I want, I know I don’t want you looking at your shoes like a kid caught shoplifting!”
He stood up; I backed off, holding the knife up.
“Are you going to use that?” he said.
“I don’t know, but if you come much closer we’ll both find out”
He backs off.
I motioned toward the chair with the knife. David sat, and smiled.
“What the heck are you smiling at?”
“You look good with that knife in your hand… You love the power don’t you”
“David I…”
“Oh come on. It’s a great feeling to have control”
“I am just trying to keep you from killing me”
“Put the knife down, talk about this sensibly”
“No, the knife stays. You need to tell me what you reckon I should do”
“That’s simple enough, you put the knife down, you sit down, and we talk this over. Look, I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison…”
“What then? We should just play happy families and pretend you’re not a serial killer?”
“You could always just let me go”
“I can’t do that, what about the garden full of corpses you’ll be leaving behind, what am I supposed to do?”
“Give me time to leave the country, and then you can report me”
“You have daughters, how is it going to be for them knowing that their father is on the run?”
“I’ll need your help to get rid of the bodies. After that I’ll pack up and leave, the girls won’t need to know anything, they’ll just think I ran off”
“You’ve got this all figured out haven’t you? How long have you had that planned?”
“A while”
“Cold”
“Not cold, just practical. I have thought this stuff through. I worried that someone would find a body, which is why I started burying them here”
As far as damage limitation is concerned it’s better than nothing. I run through several scenarios in my head.
“If I help you… If, then how?”
“I think it’s better that you don’t know the details, but let’s just say I already have everything in place for me to disappear”
“So you could just do it, simply disappear like that?”
“I have never wanted to, but if I needed to sometime then I’ve covered my bases”
“If I do this David, I do it for the girls, and you have to stay gone, no contact at all, ever, not even if they try finding you”
“I promise, once I am out that door it’ll be like I don’t exist”
“You don’t exist to me anymore now anyway. I just want you gone. So when do we start?”
“Right away. I bought a van; I’ll bag the bodies and load them, take the van to the long stay car park at the airport and pay enough that I will be in a non-extradition country before anyone even notice anything”
“How soon can you get that done?”
“Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours”
“Ok, do it” I move aside, leaving a clear path between David and
the door. “I'll sort out your passport and pack a suitcase. Do you want the
money from the safe?”
“How much is there?”
“The emergency money, five grand. I think this qualifies as an emergency”
“I'll just take a couple of thousand”
“Take it all”
“Are you sure?”
“Everything else is for the girls”
I take the risk of putting the knife down on the coffee table. He watches me do it but makes no move to grab it. I force a smile at him as he gets up and heads toward me. Straight toward me. I back off, he sees the look on my face and changes course, and I see sadness there, in his eyes, like it's actually affecting him that I shied away from him. If I am honest about it, I feel sorry for him, I love him, always have. This monster isn't him, but is him at the same time, and what he has done is something I can't lie to myself about or live with.
“I'll be back as soon as possible” He says, grabbing his keys
and wallet from the table. I say nothing, moving farther away from him. He leaves the room, and then our home. From the window I see him drive away. I feel cold, physically chilled to the core, but emotionally I am a bag of nerves as I grab the phone and call the Police.