Marrow

I pick up the gun and hold it to my temple. Then I move it to my mouth. If I kill myself, there will be less people dead. But, will that be a good thing? Is what I am doing good or bad? Can you label something like killing a person in the way they killed? What would the American public think of me? If I were caught, I’d be put on death row. My trial would be quick, because I would, of course, plead guilty. There would be no appeals, no drawn out life in prison. When I slammed Vola Fields’s unsuspecting head into the side of the dresser, I had not planned on killing again. It was an automatic response based on what she was doing to Little Mo. And even when I stalked, and eventually burned, Lyndee Anthony alive, I had not taken joy. Yet, here I am: plotting, planning, and looking forward to watching the life drain from Leroy’s body.

Margo the Murderess. It has a nice ring to it.

I don’t want to hurt people, I don’t have an innate need to, but they must be punished. That’s what I do, or what I tell myself I do. I punish. I feel responsible for it. An eye for an eye. A beating for a beating. A burn for a burn. I have a conscience. It is different from the conscience of the average person, but at least it’s there. It is there, isn’t it? Yes, I feel remorse, I feel love, and guilt, and hurt. That counts for something in the study of the broken human brain. And I study my differences, hold them against the rest of the world, and then, very quietly, with my insides quivering like raw egg, against the psychopaths, sociopaths, murderers. I read every piece of information I can get my hands on. I want to know why I feel it’s all right to do what I do, and how it became me so easily. But there is no one to speak to, no one who would understand. So I read. I contextualize.

At seven forty-five, I lift myself from the floor, dusting off my pants and allowing the blood to flow back into my stiff limbs. Three cans of Red Bull stand straight up, like sentries, on the windowsill. I take them with me as I make my way back to the garage to prepare.

The window slides open without squeak or protest. My moves are rehearsed. I climb in the way I climbed in last time, taking precaution not to disturb anything. The kitchen light is on, a bag of waffles on the counter, thawed through. Leroy’s glass is on the table, drained of the juice, the pitcher empty beside it. I can smell his weed as I walk through the kitchen and enter the living room. The ghost of a smell, clinging to his clothes, I imagine.

I find him upstairs, lying on his back on the floor. I step over his body, pulling the plastic cuffs from my back pocket. His chest is rising and falling in time to his labored breaths. Leroy Ashley is sleeping deeply. I have to heave his body to the side, something I never would have been capable of in my old body. I smile to myself as I lift his wrists, placing one then the other behind his back. Now, my muscles strain and burn as I flip him over. I am barely winded, barely afraid. I hum the tune of “Werewolf Heart” as I work.

WHEN LEROY WAKES UP, he does so with remarkable noise. He’s all grunts and moaning as he rises from his drug-induced sleep—ground Ambien and a handful of generic sleeping pills I tossed into his breakfast cocktail. I watch raptly, hungry for his reaction. I feel like a child, eager to see if my experiment with a comb and light bulb has generated a charge. Leroy lies still for the moment, gagged with one of his own sweat-stained T-shirts, and spread eagle on the bed, his limbs secured to the posts with flexicuffs. He looks like a pitiful human sacrifice, one that the gods would find inadequate. The ache in my shoulders and back brag dully, after dragging two hundred and fifty pounds of Leroy Ashley across the room and onto the bed. Even now, as I gaze down at his body, which is trembling in shock, the small half-smile on my lips, I feel euphoric. I succeeded. I have brought another criminal to my version of the electric chair. I sigh contentedly and lift my arms above my head in a stretch, while Leroy begins to fight against his gag.

It looks like he’s choking, but I don’t care. I let him struggle, his head rocking from side to side. His penis hangs limply between his legs, a shriveled mushroom of a thing. The sight of it revolts me. How can something that looks so harmless ruin the lives of so many women? I bring my hand down and touch his ankle to alert him to my presence. It’s vile, touching him. I immediately feel the need to scour my skin with hot water. His eyes, which are two black marbles, search the room for me. When he sees me, he yells something around his gag and yanks at the flexi-cuffs until bright welts appear on his wrists. I laugh.

“Hello,” I say. “You took a very long nap.”

He can’t see my face. He tilts his head this way and that while I hide momentarily in the shadows, buying a few more seconds until my big reveal. Leroy struggles, his solid belly jiggling in the dim light. I walk my fingers up his leg, and he watches me with wide-eyed terror. When I reach the junction of his thick, sweaty thighs, I grab his penis; I grab it hard, squeezing it in my fist, digging in my nails. His eyes flare open, and he screams in pain.

“What?!” I say in mock surprise. “You don’t like it when someone roughs up your junk? I thought you were into that sort of thing.” With tears of pain pooling down his cheeks, he stills to look at me. Really look at me.

I step out of the shadows, stand where he can see me. Leroy looks genuinely surprised. He doesn’t recognize my face—I was too careful for that—but he recognizes my womanhood. He heard my voice, perhaps didn’t believe it, but here I am, standing five feet six inches tall. A woman who drugged him, tied him to his own bed, and is now hurting him. He roars.

“What? You think you’re the only one who stalks people?”

His nostrils flare in response. I am enjoying this. Though I don’t have time to dwell on the worry of why. I am standing in this rapist’s house, towering over his trembling body, and all I can feel is … power. I have the power. I am the power. Margo the Murderess.

“How many women have you raped?” I ask. He narrows his eyes, and I see the full extent of his hatred. He hates women, I think. Women with brown hair.

“How many?”

When he makes no move to answer me, I pull out my knife and run it along his shin.

“What? Did your mommy do you wrong? Is that what turned you into a filthy pig? Was she a brunette, Leroy?”

Still nothing.

“My mommy did me wrong, too,” I say with false cheerfulness. “I guess that’s why we’re both here!”

I set the knife down and pick up the pink lighter instead, which I had placed on his nightstand after hauling his heavy ass onto the bed. I have been reading the old Seattle Times; I’ve scrolled back ten years, searching the archives for rape stories. What I found was Leroy Ashley. His ability to get away with the crime, but he still left marks, followed patterns. The police couldn’t find him because he wasn’t in the system. He remained undetected, unseen. A true and accomplished stalker.