Ghost Virus

Sophie was woken up by Mike’s snoring. He always snored, but he snored even louder and more elaborately when he had been drinking. Each exhalation started softly, like a motorboat puttering across a lake, but it would gradually grow into a harsh, rabid growl, and finish up with an off-key squeal.

She turned her head to look at the digital clock beside the bed. It was 3:41. Because of Mike’s snoring she never slept well, and she wondered if that was one of the reasons why she had been feeling so depressed lately.

She lay there for a while, while Mike snored on and on, with an occasional snuffle. The streetlights were shining through the gap in the curtains, so that a shadowy pattern of leaves was dancing on the ceiling. She couldn’t stop thinking about the blue velvet jacket, and the way that she had felt when she had tried it on. Bereaved, strangely, but furious, too.

She had left the jacket on the sofa in the living-room downstairs. Maybe if she went down and tried it on again, she would understand why it had made her feel so sad and so angry. The more she thought about it, the more she knew that she needed to do it. Anyway, she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, not with Mike snoring so loudly. She could try on the jacket and make herself a mug of warm chocolate Ovaltine and listen to Adele on her headphones.

She folded back the duvet and climbed out of bed. She was naked, but their maisonette was always warm, and neither she nor Mike ever wore anything at night. He was always so hot and sweaty, in any case, and she had to change the sheets at least twice a week because they smelled so sour, especially if they had been having sex. Not that they had been having sex very often – not for the past three or four months, anyway.

She felt her way across the darkened landing and down the stairs, and once she was in the living-room she closed the door behind her and switched on the table-lamp. There was just enough space in the living-room for a tan vinyl two-seater sofa, one armchair and a glass-topped coffee-table. A 55-inch television was mounted on the wall, and Sophie could see herself reflected in its black shiny screen as she crossed the room to pick up the jacket. She thought she looked like a ghost of herself, pale and out of focus.

Perhaps that’s what I’ve become, staying with Mike. Nothing more than a ghost.

She tried on the jacket, and this time, because she was naked, she could feel its wrinkled silk lining across her back, cool and slippery, but slightly clinging, too. She had to admit that it was still too tight for her across the bust, although she managed to fasten the middle button out of three. There was something about it that she hadn’t noticed when she had first tried it on – probably because there was lily-of the-valley air freshener in the Little Helpers shop to mask the smell of second-hand clothes and yellowing paperbacks. The velvet had a faintly bitter aroma to it, as if its last wearer had been standing close to a bonfire. She sniffed one sleeve and there was no doubt about it. It had absorbed the pungency of charred wood.

She closed her eyes. She could picture the smoke billowing across the owner’s garden, and hear the crackling of burning timber. Although she had no idea why, it made her feel both angry and pleased with herself.

There – you’ve got what you deserved. Did you really think that I was so weak that I wasn’t going to punish you?

She opened the living-room door and stepped out into the hallway. She didn’t care now if the light from the living-room shone upstairs and woke Mike up. It might make him annoyed, but even if he started shouting at her, so what? She preferred his shouting to his snoring – at least when he was shouting he was recognising that she existed.

She stood in front of the long wall mirror at the bottom of the stairs and admired herself. She thought the jacket gave her style, and sophistication, and a certain authority, too – the look of a woman who commanded attention whenever she walked into a room. Somehow it made her prettier, too. Mike had once called her ‘suet-pudding-face’ when they had been having one of their rows, but now her cheekbones seemed more angular. Perhaps it was only the subdued lighting in the hallway that lent her that look, but her jawline seemed stronger, too, and more clear-cut.

She held her breath and listened. She heard Mike snuffling again, and it sounded as if he had said something, but after a few seconds he continued snoring, although his snores no longer ended in that oboe-like squeal.

What makes you think you can treat me with such contempt, as if I’m nothing? Just because you’ve been paying the rent and you’ve lent me money, what makes you think that I don’t deserve to be loved, and respected, and given my freedom?

She stared at herself in the mirror for almost half a minute, only blinking twice. Her eyes still had that feline slant to them, but she thought they looked wider, and a much darker brown, as dark as polished mahogany; and there was an intensity in them which she had never seen before. Not just pride, although she could see pride as well – pride in her personality and pride in her appearance. Most of all she saw cold determination.

Nobody is ever going to trap me again. Nobody is ever going to grind me down, so that I have to live the same tedious life, day after day, afraid to express myself, afraid to disagree. This is where it ends.

Sophie went back through the living-room to the small kitchenette, switching on the fluorescent lights. The dishes from last night’s Indian takeaway were still soaking in the sink, with a greasy orange film on the surface of the water. She had intended to wash them up before she went to work in the morning. Mike wouldn’t do them, even though he didn’t have to leave for the office until 9:15.

She opened the second drawer down in the kitchen cabinet. This is where they kept the tongs and the slotted spoons and the potato-peeler, as well as the cooking knives. She took out a wooden-handled carving knife, as well as two smaller knives.

Her heart was beating hard, but she felt mentally calm and completely focused, unlike the white-skinned ghost of herself that she had seen in the television screen. She knew exactly what she was going to do and how she was going to do it, and she also knew that nothing in the world was going to change her mind.

She left the lights on and quietly climbed the stairs. On the landing, she paused to make sure that Mike was still snoring. He had drunk three cans of Peroni before they had gone to bed, and who knows how much he had drunk in the pub with his friends after work.

She eased open the bedroom door and crept inside. As quietly as she could, she laid the three knives down on the bedside table, next to the digital clock, and then she went across to the fitted wardrobe. Mike’s ties were hanging on the back of the door, and she picked out two of them. One was his favourite: the Tooting & Mitcham Darts Club tie. The other was the flowery tie she had bought him for his birthday, which he had never worn. He had said that he didn’t want to look like a screaming gay.

She sat down on the bed next to him, so close that she could smell the stale alcohol on his breath. He stirred, and snorted, but still he didn’t open his eyes. She eased up his right arm until his hairy wrist was resting against one of the rails of the brass headboard. Then, quickly and deftly, she looped the darts club tie around it and fastened it in a constrictor knot. His armpit smelled so foetid that she had to hold her breath while she tightened it.

After she had secured his right wrist, she went around the bed and tied up his left wrist. Then she folded down the pale green polycotton bedspread as far as his knees and wedged it deep underneath the mattress on both sides of the bed, so that he wouldn’t be able to kick.

When she was ready, she stood looking down at him. He was still snoring, but somewhere in his subconscious he must have been aware that his movement had become restricted, because his breathing became shallower and quicker, and he started to twist his body from side to side. Sophie guessed that, as drunk as he was, it wouldn’t be long before he woke up.

She picked up one of the two smaller knives from the bedside table. It was a paring knife, with a blade only about three inches long, but very sharp. She sat down close to him and positioned the point above his right eyelid, until it was almost touching it.

Look at you, helpless now. Why did I ever think that I loved you, you selfish uncaring pig? I gave you everything – my devotion, my body, my money – and how did you treat me in return? Like some kind of slave. I don’t think you even recognised that I was a real person, with my own feelings and my own ambitions. God, you’re ugly. Ugly in spirit, ugly in appearance. Just ugly.

She gripped the handle of the paring knife as tightly as she could and stabbed him through his eyelid. Blood and optic fluid burst out onto his cheek, and he opened his other eye in shock.

‘Aaah!’ he screamed out. He tried to reach down to pull the knife out, but all he succeeded in doing was tugging the constrictor knot even tighter. ‘Aaaah! My eye! My fucking eye! What’s happening? Sophie, my eye! Something’s stuck in my eye! Jesus Christ, Sophie! Sophie, what’s happening? I can’t move my arms! Sophie, help me! What’s going on? Sophie, there’s something stuck in my eye and I can’t fucking open it! It hurts, Sophie! Jesus!’

Sophie said nothing but sat beside him watching him struggle. She left the knife-blade sticking in his eyelid, so that he couldn’t open it, and even if he had been able to, she had pushed the point right into the optic nerve at the back of his eye, and blinded him.

Although he was pinned by the tightly tucked-in bedspread, he tried to hump himself up and down and wrench his arms free, staring at Sophie with his bulging left eye, but all she did was stare back at him calmly as if she were thinking about something else altogether, like what she was going to wear to the shop today.

‘Sophie!’ he screamed. ‘Sophie, what have you done to me? Get this thing out of my eye! Please, Sophie! Get this fucking thing out of my eye! Sophie!’

Eventually Sophie stood up and walked around to the other side of the bed. She sat down again, and picked up the second small knife. She reached across and gripped Mike’s right ear, digging her sharply pointed thumbnail into the lobe, so that he couldn’t move his head. Then she held the knife over his left eye, as close as she had held the first one. Mike roared and struggled, but she gripped his ear even tighter.

‘Don’t do it, Soph! Please, I’m begging you! Don’t do it!’

He screwed his eyelid shut, but not because he wanted to. It was an involuntary response, to protect his eye. Sophie took a deep breath and stabbed him so hard that she felt the point of the knife jar against the bone of his eye-socket. Again, optic fluid bulged out from under his lashes and dribbled in glutinous blood-streaked teardrops down his cheek.

Mike screamed again, although it was more of a howl of utter despair. Sophie said nothing, but let go of his ear and sat watching him as he shook his head from side to side, with knife-handles sticking out of each eye.

‘Soph, for the love of God! Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!’

Sophie didn’t answer him, but picked up the carving knife and stood up. She didn’t really feel like Sophie at all. She knew that she was Sophie, but would Sophie have done anything like this – and would Sophie have enjoyed it so much? Because stabbing Mike in the eyes had made her feel excited, and strong, and triumphant. At last she was getting her own back for every time that he had insulted her, or slapped her, or simply ignored her when she had asked him a question. And blinding him – this was more than winning an argument. Now he would never be able to treat her with such contempt, ever again.

He stopped begging her to call for an ambulance, because he had obviously realised that she wasn’t going to do it. Instead, he started to cry, and his crying was high-pitched and pathetic.

‘Oh, shut up!’ Sophie snapped at him. ‘You’re not a child!’

That was exactly what he had said to her, the last time he had slapped her.

She leaned over and laid her hand flat on his stomach. He jerked, as if her hand were red-hot.

‘What are you doing? What are you doing to me, Soph? For Christ’s sake, what are you doing?’

He wasn’t fat, but his stomach bulged slightly because he drank so much. It was covered with a fan of black hair which she had once thought was sexy, but which she now found vaguely repulsive. She bent her wrist downwards so that the carving knife was pointing two inches below his breast-bone. She wondered how deeply she would need to cut, but then she thought: You know how deeply. You’ve done this before. An inch is enough.

He started crying again, but then she pierced his skin with a soft popping sound and started to cut into the fatty tissue and the muscle underneath. As she slowly sliced downwards, his crying rose into a hideous warbling shriek, like a parody of some tragic Wagnerian opera.

‘No! Soph! No, Sophie! Aaaahhh! Stop! No!’

But Sophie carried on cutting through the layers of his abdominal wall until his small intestines came swelling out, and then his large intestines. She cut as far down as his pubic hair, and then stopped, and laid the knife back on the bedside table. She was aware that Mike was still pleading with her, but she closed her ears to it. She didn’t care if he was in pain. However much he pleaded, what she was doing to him was irrevocable.

She plunged both of her hands into the warm slippery coils of his small intestines. It was difficult to hold onto them, because they were as soft and flaccid as freshly boiled cannelloni, and her carving knife had nicked them in places, so the sour stench that rose out of them made her retch. But she dragged them out, pulling them across the side of the bed until they were hanging down onto the carpet.

She stood up. She remained calm, but her stomach kept clenching and unclenching with nausea. She went across the landing to the bathroom, tugged on the light, and turned on the taps in the basin to wash the blood off her hands. As she did so, she stared at her reflection in the mirror and thought: You look extraordinary. You’re almost beautiful. But you don’t look like me. Who are you?

She was still staring at herself when she became aware that Mike was still whimpering and pleading for her to save him. She could hardly believe it. She had blinded him and disembowelled him – shouldn’t he be dead by now?

She dried her hands and went back into the bedroom.

‘Soph,’ Mike croaked at her, and she could actually see his lungs inflating and deflating like two pink balloons. ‘I love you, Soph. Help me.’

‘Help you?’ said Sophie, in disbelief. ‘Help you?’

She picked up the sticky-handled carving knife again and went around to the opposite side of the bed. She knelt on the mattress and screamed into his face, ‘Help you! After the way you’ve treated me? Help you?’

She stabbed him in his open mouth. The carving knife split his tongue in half and the blade became jammed in between his lower front teeth, so that she was unable to pull it out.

She climbed off the bed and stood back, panting.

If all the arrogant uncaring men in the world knew that this would be their punishment for mistreating the women in their lives, wouldn’t life be different?

She went to the window and drew the curtains. It was still dark outside, and it had started to rain.

On the bed, Mike gave one last cackle as his lungs collapsed.