He was dripping with sweat. The beads of moisture trickled down onto her body and mingled with her blood. He rose up off of his knees and stared at the knife in his hand. He placed it carefully on the cluttered kitchen counter, the metallic clink echoing in the sudden silence of the small flat. He turned back to look at her. Sally’s eyes were bloodshot and held a blank stare. The blood was a dark black-red colour and pooling around her blonde hair, staining the cheap carpet a gruesome shade. He had always thought blood was bright red. Like strawberries. A childish thought that felt absurdly out of place now.
He hadn’t planned on killing her, just scaring her. A jolt, a fright to finally shut down the constant stream of venom she spewed. But after she spat those disingenuous words at him, the dam inside him had burst. “You’re pathetic, Charlie. Always will be.” That was it. The final, brutal jab. She was always belittling him, chipping away at the last vestiges of his self-worth, making him feel less than a man. Criticising him for his burgeoning waistline, his childish friends, never earning enough money and always creeping up on him when he was on his phone.
Her blonde hair was turning a sickening brown from the blood that was oozing from her neck. “Didn’t hit a vein,” he observed, a detached clinical note in his voice. Her face was paper white, the sharp angles of her cheekbones suddenly prominent. He didn’t feel anything. Not one single emotion. No remorse, no fear, just a hollow emptiness. He thought this must be what psychopaths feel—nothing. And that’s why they do it. Again and again. A shiver, not of fear, but of morbid curiosity, ran down his spine. He wondered if this was the irreversible end of his life.
Charlie went to sit heavily on the worn floral couch, the springs groaning under his weight. He rested his head in his hands, the faint scent of lavender potpourri doing little to calm the storm raging in his mind. His thoughts drifted back to the events that had brought him to this point, the slow, agonising unravelling of their toxic relationship.
Earlier that night, the tension had been a low hum in the background, as constant as the buzzing fluorescent light in the kitchen. He had been mindlessly watching some inane reality show, chewing on a stick of purple bubblegum, the sickly sweet flavour a small comfort. Then Sally had walked into the room, her face a mask of perpetual dissatisfaction, and demanded the remote. As usual, she was in a bad mood, the kind that turned her words into poisoned darts. She snatched the remote from his hand and started flicking through the channels with aggressive, jerky movements. Flick. Flick. Flick. He caught fleeting glimpses of saccharine moments – people in mid-hug, garish fireworks exploding in the night sky, families laughing at a picnic, then a jarring image of a sculpted bodybuilder running along a sun-drenched highway. She paused on that one, a cruel smile playing on her lips. “If only you had a body like that, Charlie. And look, he’s actually OUTSIDE,” she emphasised the word with a venomous edge. “Somewhere foreign to you.”
“Sally!” Charlie shouted, the bubblegum losing its sweetness. “What are you even looking for?”
She glared at him, her eyes hard and unforgiving. “Just give me a minute.” She retorted, aiming the remote at him like a weapon, a silent threat. “No respect. None whatsoever.”
Charlie breathed out a long, ragged sigh and pushed himself up from the couch, his joints protesting with a soft crackle. He went towards the kitchen, needing the physical act of getting a glass of water to ground him.
He knew their relationship was a festering wound. It had been rocky even before his best friend Ryan had been shot dead with Charlie’s gun, a tragedy that had cast a long, dark shadow over their already strained existence. Charlie was not a good judge of character. He had naively thought Ryan, with his easy charm and exuberant energy, would be a good influence, someone to pull him out of his rut. He had been wrong, terribly wrong. Ryan’s impulsiveness had cost him his life, and Charlie was forever bound to that event by the weapon he owned.
Sally and Charlie used to be the life of the party, two vibrant souls lost in a haze of music and cheap thrills. But then Charlie’s health had taken a turn, forcing him into a quieter, more sedentary existence. That, coupled with Sally’s escalating alcohol dependence that transformed her into a bitter, venomous version of her former self, had irrevocably changed them. They were now two desperately unhappy and utterly incompatible addicts, clinging to a semblance of a quiet life in a cramped, barely affordable flat, their resentments simmering beneath the surface like a dormant volcano. Tonight, that volcano had finally erupted.
He stared at his reflection in the darkened window above the sink, a distorted, sweat-streaked image of a man he barely recognized. A killer. The word echoed in the sudden silence of the flat, a heavy, suffocating weight.
Then a low rumble started beneath his feet, a subtle vibration that resonated deep within his bones. At first, he dismissed it as the distant rumble of a truck, a common sound in their dilapidated neighbourhood. But it grew steadily, morphing into a guttural growl that seemed to emanate from the very core of the earth. The cheap framed pictures on the wall rattled. The single bare lightbulb in the kitchen swung violently.
Panic, a sensation he hadn’t felt in the immediate aftermath of Sally’s death, clawed at his throat. This wasn’t a truck. The floor began to heave, a sickening undulation that sent him stumbling. The roar intensified, a cacophony of grinding earth and splintering wood. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, coating Sally’s still form in a fine white dust. The small flat became a violent, bucking beast.
Charlie scrambled to his feet, his mind a whirlwind of terror. The building groaned and shrieked, as if in its death throes. He grabbed onto the edge of the kitchen counter, his knuckles white against the cheap laminate. The knife, still lying where he’d placed it, slid off and clattered to the floor.
Then, as abruptly as it began, the violent shaking subsided. The deafening roar receded into a series of unsettling creaks and groans as the building settled. Dust hung heavy in the air, a thick, suffocating shroud. Outside, a new chorus of sounds erupted – the terrified screams of neighbours, the wail of distant sirens, the ominous crunch of collapsing structures.
He looked down at Sally, half-buried in debris, a grotesque tableau illuminated by the slivers of light filtering through cracks in the walls. The earthquake. It had come out of nowhere, a brutal, indiscriminate force. A perverse thought flickered through his mind: had Mother Nature just erased his violent act?
Driven by a primal instinct for survival, Charlie stumbled towards the front door, now warped and jammed in its frame. He kicked at it frantically, the flimsy wood splintering. Finally, with a groan, it gave way, revealing a scene of utter chaos. Buildings had crumbled, the street was a mangled mess of brick and twisted metal, and people were emerging from the wreckage, their faces etched with fear and disbelief.
He slipped out into the pandemonium, another anonymous figure amidst the unfolding disaster. No one paid him any mind, their own survival instincts overriding any curiosity about a dishevelled man covered in dust. He walked aimlessly, the adrenaline coursing through his veins masking the lingering hollowness inside.
Now that he had a taste for blood, would Charlie kill again?