Page 8 of Hide In The House

‘Stop it!’ the mistress cries as she gets off the bed, but Maggie must push her back down onto it because I hear the mattress creak above my head.

This is what he was warning her about. Maggie gets aggressive when drunk. Now she has something to really be mad about; how bad could this get?

Before I can dare take the tiniest of breaths from my tightly pursed lips, I get an idea of how bad this really is.

‘You’ve been drinking. You need to calm down,’ the man says, no doubt whilst nursing his sore cheek that was just struck so loudly.

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ Maggie replies, but her voice is now much quieter and for some reason, that feels more disconcerting.

‘What’s that?’ the mistress suddenly cries, and I realise something must have been revealed that I am unable to see.

‘What do you think it is?’ Maggie replies calmly. ‘It’s a knife.

A knife?

‘Why have you got a knife?’ the man cries.

‘Because I took it from the kitchen at work,’ Maggie replies. ‘I took it before I came here to catch you two.’

‘Don’t hurt me, please!’ the mistress begs as my fingernails dig into the carpet beneath me, my entire body rigid with fear as I listen to this awful exchange.

‘Don’t worry, you’re not first,’ Maggie says simply. ‘He is.’

Before anybody can do anything else, and before I can even close my eyes or cover my eyes, it happens.

Maggie stabs her husband.

I know that because I see his bloodstained body fall onto the carpet, right beside where I hide.

6

For a brief second, I think that he is dead. But then I see his eyes open. They are wide and bloodshot, but that’s not the worst thing.

The worst thing is that they are looking right at me.

As his eyes go wide as he registers my presence here, I feel like closing mine and pretending like none of this is happening. But I don’t do that because it would be futile.

I am caught up in this, and it is not over yet.

It’s only about to get worse.

He can see me under this bed. He knows I’m here. I’ve been caught. All he has to do is say something. Comment on what he has seen. Give away my position. Then I’ll be pulled from under this bed and be another person who is at risk of the drunk, angry Maggie and the blood-soaked knife she now wields.

But before he can do any of that...

‘No!’ the mistress cries before I see the most awful thing.

I see the knife going into the man’s body, again and again and again.

Maggie is stabbing him repeatedly, clearly intent on finishing what she started, and because of that, her poor, defenceless victim is no longer able to tell anybody about the intruder under the bed. All he can do is take his final, dreadful last gasps of breath before he succumbs to the inevitable.

His eyes are still open, and they are still looking at me, but there is no light behind them now.

He’s gone.

Maggie has killed her husband.

Now there are only three of us in this room.