Page 13 of Hide In The House

‘Good. You can leave now,’ I say, gesturing to the door.

‘What about you?’ she asks me before moving.

‘I need to clean the fingerprints off the knife and put it down beside the body at the bottom of the stairs,’ I reply. ‘Once I’ve done that, I can leave too.’

‘I want to watch you clean the fingerprints off,’ comes the curt reply. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you to do a good job, it’s just that I’ll be paranoid if I don’t see it.’

‘No problem,’ I say before picking up a kitchen towel and cleaning the handle of the blade, being careful not to get any blood on it, though if I do, I’ll just take the towel with me and dispose of it elsewhere.

‘Happy?’ I say once I’ve given the handle a good clean, and the woman nods, though happiness is an emotion she will likely be unable to experience for a long time after this.

‘Okay, time to go,’ I say, and this time, she does as I say. But just before she leaves, she pauses.

‘Wait, shouldn’t we swap numbers or something? In case we need to talk or make a plan or-’

‘-I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘I didn’t even get your name.’

‘And I didn’t get yours,’ I reply with a shrug.

She gets the message. The less we know about each other, the better. With that, she makes her exit, doing what she needs to do. Now I just need to do my thing, and this will all be over.

Carrying the knife, I walk back into the hallway and approach the contorted corpse at the foot of the stairs. I place the murder weapon down beside one of the woman’s splayed hands before taking a step back.

‘I would like to think that you didn’t deserve this,’ I say out loud as if the body can hear me. ‘But we both know it wouldn’t be true.’

I look up the stairs then, in the direction of where the man’s body lies.

‘The same goes for you too.’

With that, I turn and leave the house of horrors behind.

8

With the backpack full of stolen goods slung over my shoulder, I walk down the busy street in the centre of town. I pass plenty of people as I go, but not a single one of them knows where I have come from and what I have seen. To everybody here, I look just as unremarkable as they do, and that is fine by me. I can only hope the other woman who was a witness to the two deaths back in that house is doing just as good a job at blending back in with society as I am.

I keep walking past the rows of shops, cafes and bakeries until I reach the bus stop. There, I wait alongside six other people until the bus comes into view, chugging its way down the road and leaving a plume of black smoke from its exhaust in its wake.

I calmly allow everyone else at the bus stop to board the vehicle before I do because I’m trying not to rush. Panicked, hurried movements won’t help me here. I just need to keep blending in and be utterly forgettable.

I show the driver my return ticket, then go to find a seat, opting for one in the middle of the bus by a window. Once I’m settled, I clutch my backpack tightly, aware that everything that has occurred today is irrelevant as long as I keep these possessions safe.

As the other passengers mind their own business, I try to mind my own, though it’s difficult when a baby starts crying near the front. I watch as the baby’s mother does her best to soothe her distressed child, and the series of funny faces she pulls successfully gets the baby to calm. Soon, the baby is giggling, and the mother looks happy. I guess she is one of the good parents that I have heard exist in the world. I have no doubt my own mother wasn’t as good with me when I was that age, or any age since then. She did pull her fair share of funny faces, though most of them were in response to me saying something that she didn’t like.

With the baby quiet again, the journey can continue in peace, and I stare out of the window as we leave the busier parts of town behind and head out into some less savoury places. We’re not in the suburbs here like I was when I broke into that house and stole the items in my backpack. Instead, we are in a more industrial part of town now, full of council flats, warehouses and various graffiti-clad concrete spaces that have fallen into neglect due to a lack of use. There are more weeds out on these streets than people right now, which begs the question: why would anybody want to travel out here? But a quick look at the people on this bus would tell you that these are all individuals who are down on their luck, limited by a lack of funds, and simply existing as best they can in this ever-expensive world.

I fit right in with them, as does the person I am on my way to see.

The bus makes a couple of stops, and a few people get off, including the mother and her baby. As the bus moves on, I stare out of the window at the woman pushing the pram, and it looks like her baby has started crying again. I can’t hear those cries now though, but I hope they are nothing that a few more funny faces can’t sort out.

Focusing on the road ahead, I soon see my own stop come into view, so I press the button to alert the driver that I wish to disembark here before getting up out of my seat.

With my backpack slung over my shoulder, I step off the bus and get a closer look at the weary buildings around here, as well as the weary weeds that seem to spring up from every crack in the concrete. Letting out a deep sigh before starting to walk, I think about how this environment is a world away from that house that I broke into this morning. There are no fashionable front doors, neatly trimmed lawns or cool cars here. Yet despite that, given what that house now holds, I would much rather be here than there.

I keep walking until I reach a two-storey building that is just as grey and grim as the rest of the buildings around here. A couple of people are standing outside, one of them a man who draws on a cigarette, the other a woman with scraggly hair who looks at me with wild eyes, like she either thinks I’m crazy or knows that I can see that she is.

I regard both of them with a simple nod before stepping past them and pushing the door to the building open.