Charlotte Burnett is 24, dyslexic, and has previously been published in journals like The Write Launch and Coffin Bell Journal. She is currently studying for an Open Degree with the Open University, focusing on Psychology and Creative Writing.
Tonight
His fingers wrap around my wrist, his grip too painful to shake off and his voice…his voice…is something I’ve never heard before…not from him.
‘No, no, you can’t do this…it was all going to…it…it was…I was gonna make it work this time.’
I snatch my hand away, or try to, but his grip’s too strong.
‘Is this how it works out? We fuck them over? I can’t hurt Barney again …and you should be much too afraid to hurt Heather…but….’
‘But you can’t give me up either, that’s alright, I know away round that…you just have to trust me, Jennet. I know a way for you and Barnaby to finally be happy.’
I wince at the sound of my husband’s given-name, it’s my own fault for telling…but Anthony never could leave something alone when he found it funny. Yet the way he said it tonight, it wasn’t the mocking way he usually said that name. It was gentle, almost…loving, it was the way he used to say my name.
Why was everything so different now that we were so close to the end? I knew tonight would change things…either we’d finally tell them, or we’d end it, and go on with the lives we already had, such as they were.
I shouldn’t complain, Barney’s a good husband, a good father…I’m lucky, but…but he’s not Anthony. He isn’t…he isn’t the man I love, not anymore.
And that’s what this is all about really, that’s why Anthony’s been so cruel with me tonight. He knows we have to tell them, but he doesn’t think I have the nerve …well…I’ll show him.
I reach up to his face, and ignore the slight flicker of irritation there, as I cup his cheek.
‘It’ll all be okay, we just have to get through tonight, and everything will be better.’
He smiles then, a real smile, not the fake one he’d been flashing me all night.
‘You’re right…you’re always right. Come on let’s get these cookie…cupcakes through, they’re already starting to sag.’
***
Anthony struts into the room as if everyone in it belongs to him, leaving me to carry dessert in myself. He sits down, not in the chair closest to me…where he’d promised he’d sit, but the one next to my husband. They’re close enough to touch knees, if they’d wanted to.
‘Oh Jennet, those cakes look absolutely… lovely?’
Heather always could say the nicest things, but t I’ll just let her talk, after all I’m taking more from her tonight than just her shit.
‘Yes, lovely…almost as lovely as your ‘friendship’ with my husband…people don’t generally like you at all, do they Anthony?’
Anthony laughs.
‘More than they like you my Sweet, least I keep the friends I make. Do you know she’s lost…what was it dear…twelve friends within the last two months?’
‘Oh, I don’t think you of all people…dear…should be bringing up the subject of lost friends.’
Oh god, not another bizarrely specific fight…thank god for my own husband’s awkwardness.
‘So, Anthony…Jennet’s been so excited about this project, she’s barely been home. I imagine you must be vibrating on the spot.’
Oh God, let tonight end.
***
We’ve cleared away the dishes and Anthony even offered to help my husband with the washing up. Which left me alone in the dining room…with Heather. I’m not sure what I’d been preparing myself for, but it certainly wasn’t…for her to smile at me, for her to come over and sit by me, and for her to grab my hand between both of hers and squeeze…squeeze until it hurt.
‘I know what you’re doing with him. I want you to know that, before this night is over, I know what you’re doing.’
I’m not going to deny it.
‘If you know, then why do you stay?’
She lets go of my hand then and glares at me, but I’m not finished.
‘Why don’t you leave Heather, I’ve seen you and Anthony tonight …you don’t love each other…and I don’t know if you ever did. Why stay with a man who you can’t even respect enough not to humiliate in a stranger’s house?’
She throws back her head and laughs then, high and unnerving.
‘Well,’ she says, the giggle not quite gone from her voice. ‘I can ask you the same question, you clearly don’t love Barney… why stay with a man who you don’t respect enough to even pretend you’re not fucking your co-worker for?’
I sit back and look at her then, really look at her. Heather’s a small woman, with a jagged little pixie cut framing her face. She’s much prettier than me, in every way, but there’s a certain upwards quirk to her mouth, a cruel twist at the corner, that is distinctly ugly.
‘You don’t know anything about my marriage.’ I begin to say, but like always Heather knows better.
‘And you don’t know anything about mine… what? Did you really think he’d let me go, in exchange for a few cheap fucks with you? Oh Jenny, you really don’t know anything, do you? You see honey, I’ve been here before…at this table, eating theses cakes …it never changes, none of you ever change…he never lets you change.’
She laughs then, her neck lolling against the back of her chair and I just sit there. Sit there and let her laugh at me until she’s manic. That’s when my husband’s scream hits us, which only makes the mad woman laugh all the harder.
***
‘Barnaby, I hope we’ve made tonight pleasant for you.’
Look I don’t want to be mean, god knows people have turned their noses up at…well…me, often enough that…I don’t want to do that to someone else…but, Jennet’s friends are weird. Bad enough “Anthony” somehow knows my given name, but he says it like he’s getting…aroused with each syllable.
‘Oh Yeah, very pleasant. It’s just nice to know Jenny works with such…nice people, she really didn’t use to like her job, but then you came along and it was like it was a whole new place for her. Better you know…sorry I’m rambling…Jenny says I do that.’
I look away from him, down at my hands in the soapy water…no, not mine, ours. When I wasn’t looking Anthony slipped his has hands over mine, entwining our fingers in the water. Okay this is weird…it isn’t just me this time…this is weird.
‘I know you don’t know me Barnaby, but I know you…I know what she put you through, and I’m here to make it stop.’
I yank my hands back, or try to but he’s holding them too tight and squeezing them so hard now that… my wedding ring presses into his palm, hard enough to leave a mark. And then it’s not, because he’s twisted it off my finger and thrown it into the sink.
‘Hey!’
I try and catch it, but my ring vanishes down the drain before I can, and the mad man laughs. Throws his head back in a show of such manic mirth that I think I’m gonna be sick, and then he’s tugging me forward and I’m much too weak to even try to pull back. He’s taller than me, so my fat round head fits snuggly under his chin as he sways us back and forth.
Okay…okay…I need…to do something…but everything feels so slow now…and I can hardly keep my eyes open anymore. Anthony takes that moment to whisper, almost lovingly, into my ear.
‘I hope you’re enjoying tonight Barnaby, I wanted to make up for last time.’
Last time? What last time? This is the first time we’ve ever met, if he should be apologising for anything it should be whatever’s happening right now.
‘You see I was just a puppy, following in the wave of your wife’s cunt.’
I finely manage to jerk away at that.
‘What…my wife…you and Jennet…no…no…you’re nuts, you’re nothing but nuts.’
‘I’m sorry I have to do this, but you see it’s the only way. Don’t worry though pet, I’ll wake you up for the heavy lifting…you can even take your shirt off this time, if you like.’
The man’s drunk…. he’s mad…he’s…he’s …and then there’s a knife in his hand and all I can see is my own blood, and all I can think is… let Jenny be safe …this time round… and then the world goes black.
***
This is how it goes…every time…Jennet and I hear the scream and we get up from the table, we run towards it but we’re too late, or so we think. When we find Anthony standing over Barnaby, a knife in his hand and that sneer…that sneer I’ve come to know so well, plastered across his handsome face, she screams…but I don’t anymore.
That’s all Anthony is to me these day, handsome, nice to look at … but nothing else. It was different the first time, I was still in love with him then…I still wanted him to stay with me…I can’t say I want that anymore.
Jennet is screaming, screaming at Anthony, at me …I think in the end she just screams to scream. But I don’t…I don’t make a sound, I just slide to my knees beside Barnaby’s still twitching body. He’s not dead, not really…my husband knows his craft, and if he’d actually wanted him dead…there wouldn’t even be a body to find.
‘Isn’t this…isn’t this what you wanted…now none of us have to leave.’
He’s laughing again, but this time I don’t even bother to look up, instead I take the other man’s round head into my lap, and smooth his dark hair away from his eyes. His breathing is shallow and slow, and I think if this where anywhere else, he’d be dead. He smiles at me, that soft quick quirk of the mouth that I’ve come to know so well over the years.
He’s older than Anthony, mid-way through his forties while the rest of us are barely through our thirties. His hair was completely black the first time we sat down to this dinner, but it’s greyed since then. If I were a stupid woman I might have even hoped it was because time was really passing…but I’m not that stupid girl anymore. I know the world I live in now, and it’s my husband’s…everything bends to his will, even the man he’s going to kill. If Barney’s hair is beginning to grey, it’s only because Anthony wills it.
‘You bastard, you bastard…you…you think I’ll just let you…’
There’s a knife in Jennet’s hand when she lunges at Anthony this time…hmm…that’s new. She slices his arm and he laughs and back hands her across the face. She doesn’t fall, but stumbles back slamming against the wall and sinking down to the floor. She’s a stupid woman, a blond, bland shell of the ditz that first crossed my husband’s path; he doesn’t even want to fuck her anymore.
He’s walking over to us now, kneeling next to Barnaby and me, smiling down like we’re the most precious things in the world to him, and maybe we are… after everything… after the first night…when the three of us had to bury Jennet’s body.
Maybe this time he’ll let her live, but I doubt it, he always gets so upset if Barnaby dies before Jennet. That’s not how it’s supposed to go, and he always did have a wicked temper when things didn’t go his way.
***
Shall we play a game?
I have a good game for you tonight, it’s called who’ll die first…I play it every night I’m here, I have to find something to entertain me while we run out the clock.
The Game goes like this, four people sitting round a dinner table and two of them are fucking…and it’s not the married couple. The first time I played I got it wrong, the first time I ate this dinner I thought I loved the blond sitting next to me…well, no one gets it right first time.
I’m told I don’t love like other people…mostly by my wife. I don’t love people, I love how I can play with them…how I can twist them and turn them into…into something else. That’s okay, most people do that anyway.
The first time we sat down here, I thought I loved Jennet…but it wasn’t real. I saw that the first time I let the knife pierce her skin, and slice her neck into two pretty pieces. I didn’t love her. It took me three times round the table to learn that, and another five to realise what this really was…this whole farce of a night.
It was mine, it was my game, I’d just been playing it wrong…playing it as if I was like the rest of them, as if I didn’t know the rules either…but that’s not true, that’s never been true. I can make them different you know…I can change the table, what we eat…even what we wear. I can make them thinner, fatter, sleep, awake…aroused. I can do anything and the other players, well, they just have to take it.
It always starts like this, it always starts with me and her in the kitchen…with the cupcakes she thinks she made. It was cookies the first time, she’d thought I liked that…but I never do.
She knew what was happening…my wife…not that tart I almost left her for…knew almost the first time it happened, I could see it in her eyes…but he didn’t…he never does.
This is how it goes, Jennet throws herself at me and actually manages to cut me this time…nice job…and I throw her against the wall, where’s she stunned and slips down it like a puppet with no strings. I turn to Heather then…the man in her lap isn’t dead, I won’t let him die…not this time.
Heather thinks I don’t know what they did last time, while they were hiding in that closet, but I know… I don’t get not to know, that’s how the game works. I had to watch.
I can make them do anything, I can make her watch, as I bring him forward. He should be passed out from the blood, but that doesn’t get to happen in my game, he surges forward at the crook of my finger, practically shoving my wife aside as he throws himself at me.
And that’s where tonight’s game ends, Jennet on the floor, Heather picking herself up and Barnaby and I locked in each other’s embrace. Maybe not the way it should have ended…not the way the others would have wanted it, but then, we’ll always have next time for that.
We’ll always have next time.