Sweetpea: The most unique and gripping thriller of 2017. C.J. Skuse

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СКАЧАТЬ stroked it upwards. Well, upwards and towards the bus station. ‘All yours,’ he said.

      ‘Mmm,’ I said, ‘lucky old me.’

      The temptation to laugh was so strong but I choked it down and made it look as though I was starting to wriggle out of my knickers under my skirt. All keen.

      ‘Can you get on all fours?’ he panted.

      ‘Like a dog?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘’Cos I wanna fuck you like a dog.’

      I grew breathless. ‘But the ground’s hard.’

      ‘So’s my dick. Get down. Go on, don’t tease.’

      ‘I’ll suck you off but no more,’ I said.

      ‘That’s a start,’ he said, eyes lighting up. I crouched down and took his little warm Samurai in my grip.

      ‘Shall I finger myself as I’m sucking it?’ I asked, heart in my throat.

      ‘Fuck, yeah! Dirty bitch!’ he chuckled, growing harder and more veiny.

      He waited for it – for my lips on his bell-end. I pulled on his dick as though about to milk it.

      ‘Knew you were a dirty bitch.’

      I saw Craig’s face on his as I held the cock steady and, reaching into my pocket, I closed my fingers around the handle of the steak knife. Bringing it out slowly while stroking him into full submission, I waited until his eyes had closed and his chin tilted to the sky in ecstasy before I hacked down hard on it and started carving through the gristly meat. He screamed and swore and beat at my head with his fists but my grip was tight and I sawed at it through slipping, bloody fingers until I had yanked his penis from its roots and pushed him backwards into the murky green water. His forlorn manhood dropped to the cold canal towpath with a bloody slap.

      The splash was loud and he was still screaming but, despite all the hullaballoo, no one was coming to either of our rescues.

      ‘Aaaaaaarrrgghhh! Aaaaarrrrrrgghh!’ he went, splashing around like a child at its first swimming class.

      A little curl of steam rose up from the penis, lying dejectedly on the towpath. I found a spare dog poo bag in my coat and picked the severed member up, then ran towards the footbridge, my heart still banging like a bastard on a jail-cell wall. I lost my breath completely as I reached the top and looked down over the water.

      ‘Fucking… sick… bitch!’ he gargled, flopping about.

      He kept splashing, sinking under the murky water, then bobbing up again and spluttering. The last thing he must have seen in this world was my face, on the bridge, smiling in the moonlight.

      Thanks to my cruel improvisation, I was feeling something I hadn’t felt for a long time. That same feeling you get when you’re a kid and you spy an adventure playground. Or when you poke your foot out of the bed on Christmas morning and feel your full stocking hanging there. It radiates out from a deeply exciting inner squiggle until your whole body feels electric all over. The best feeling in the world. It’s an exquisite privilege to watch someone die, knowing you caused it. Almost worth getting dolled up for.

Monday, 1 January

       1. Teen boy and girl in the park who kicked their black Labrador that time

       2. Derek Scudd

       3. Wesley Parsons

       4. The guy with Tourette’s who sits in the Paddy Power doorway, shouting about spacecrafts and the time he got fisted by a priest

       5. Craig and Lana. To save on bullets, I’m putting them both together here – one shot, right through both skulls

       6. The man in the blue Qashqai who pulled out of Marsh Road and beeped when I didn’t walk fast enough. 'Stupid slow bitch,' that’s what he’d said. All the way round the block I was picturing his suited body hanging by its neck – wriggling and twitching and me standing beneath him, just watching

      Did a BuzzFeed quiz this morning – How Psychopathic Are You? Turns out – very. I scored 82 per cent. They even accompanied my results with a picture of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. Don’t know how I feel about that.

      The quiz had been right about one thing, though.

       Do you try to evade responsibility?

      Well, yes, yes, I do. Remorse-wise, the canal incident has left little impression. I haven’t killed anyone for three years and I thought that when it happened again I’d feel bad, like an alcoholic taking a sip of whiskey. But, no, nothing. I had a blissful night’s sleep. Didn’t wake up at all and, for once, no bad dream either. This morning I feel balanced. Almost sane, for once.

      *

      Craig and I spent the first day of the New Year in front of the TV, eating pizza, the blue Quality Streets and watching ‘80s movies – Pretty in Pink, The Outsiders and that one where Demi Moore has a pink apartment and goes nuts at the end. He is an exceptional liar, I’ll give him that. I know he saw Lana today, under the pretence of ‘meeting Gary and Nigel down Wetherspoon’s’. He was vay convincing, to the untrained eye.

      Sadly, my eye is hyper-trained – like an Olympic sprinter when it comes to rooting out bullshit.

      We’d planned to do so much this week – stuff we never got round to do when we’re both at work: power-spraying the bird shit on the balcony, sorting out boxes for the mythical car-boot-sale-we’re-never-going-to-do, and Craig was going to clear out the mountain of rubbish and offcuts of wood from the back of his van and then paint the bathroom. We had one day left before we both went back to work and we’d done precious little. Craig had made a start on the wall above the toilet on Christmas Eve – a little surprise for me for when I got home from work, to keep me sweet before he mentioned he’d invited the boys around again to watch Boxing Day football on Sky. But when I’d seen the colour, I did not like the colour.

      ‘Mineral Mist, I said!’

      ‘I got Mineral Mist, see?’ He held up the tin. It said Morning Mist.

      I took Tink for a walk at lunch as Craig was playing Streetfighter and making bacon sandwiches and the smell was making me dribble (I’m trying not to have bread because ass). I like looking in people’s gardens on our walks. I miss having a garden. There were all sorts of Christmas debris strewn about the pavements. Smashed baubles. Strings of tinsel. Half-chewed sweets. A carrier bag blew across the road out of somebody’s bin and Tink had a conniption, probably waking up half the country. Of all the things in this world my dog hated the most, sneezes, spaniels and rogue carrier bags flying at her as if from nowhere were definitely the Top Three.

      Tried teaching her Shake a Paw again, the one trick she won’t do under any circumstances – still nothing.

      Craig sorted out all his unwanted Blu-rays for the car-bootsale-we’re-never- СКАЧАТЬ