A Thousand Small Explosions Read online

  However, Number Nine took a different twist when, much to his consternation, it was the bathroom door that opened after the billiard ball dropped - she had not been asleep in the bedroom like he’d assumed. He jumped from the shadows and she saw him face on. She was too slow to prevent the wire from encircling her neck and he moved swiftly behind her to pull on it with force. She was still wearing her heels but their lack of grip against the tiled floor made her lose her footing and she slipped backwards to the floor, knocking Christopher off balance and taking him down with her.

  In the confusion, the wire became slack and she managed to slide her fingers under it allowing her to continue breathing. She’d also turned her head, found his thumb and sunk her teeth into it as far as they’d go.

  ‘Fuuuuuck!’ Christopher yelled from behind his mask and balaclava as the pain increased and for the briefest of moments, he considered releasing his tight grip. Instead, he pulled her head backwards and pounded it against the kitchen floor. By the time he heard her skull crack, her jaw had loosened just enough for him to pull his thumb from her mouth. He slammed her head twice more against the floor until the blood pooled in the grouting between tiles and he knew there was no coming back for her.

  Christopher hurried across the kitchen to the stainless steel sink, removed his glove and rinsed his wound under the soothing cold water. He took a tentative look at it; it wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought, but it was deep enough to require stitches. He held his fury at bay to wrap his thumb in a tea towel before taking two photographs of her with his Polaroid camera.

  Then he remained hovering over her body, before lifting his foot and slamming it down on her face so her nose crumbled like a soufflé. He began kicking her, incensed at her for having the audacity to fight back and he only stopped when her ribs were in too many pieces to break any further. Finally, he took a breadknife from the kitchen counter and stabbed her in both eyes, turning the blade around in identical clockwise motions in each to spoon out any remains and wipe them across her face. She did not deserve to lie on the mortician’s slab like the others - resembling someone who’d simply died peacefully in their sleep – so he’d seen to it that whoever identified her body would only remember her as the bloody patchwork of fragmented bones Christopher had created.

  He felt exhausted and badly wanted to just abandon the girl, return home and crawl into bed but there was much left to do. He found a tube of strong adhesive in a kitchen drawer and sealed the wound on his thumb, bandaging it with some gaffer tape until he could get home and dress it properly. After bleaching the sink free of any traces of his blood, he mopped the floor thoroughly of both of their bloods. He took two Polaroid pictures and stuffed her mouth with a cloth.

  Then he grabbed a rolling pin from a drawer and with much more force than necessary, smashed her teeth into tiny fragments. He then pulled the cloth containing her teeth from her throat, folded it up neatly and put it in his bag. He didn’t want anyone finding his DNA in her mouth.

  Suddenly his phone vibrated; it was Amy calling.

  ‘Hiya,’ she began, ‘what are you up to?’

  ‘Not much,’ Christopher lied, and held his phone between his cheek and his ear while he poured bleach into Number Nine’s mouth until it spilled from the sides. “That should destroy any lingering traces of me,” he thought.

  ‘You’re not having a wee are you? I can hear running water.’

  ‘No! I was just cleaning my teeth.’

  While he wanted to get off the phone and complete his clean-up operation, Christopher was vaguely aroused by talking to his girlfriend while staring at the gruesome remains of the woman he’d just murdered. It was as close as the two women could ever be without being in the same room.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it tonight, but are we still okay for tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Work’s been hellish.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds good.’

  ‘Are you alright, you sound preoccupied?’

  ‘I’m just tired, I just need a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Good because I’m not going to let you out of the bedroom all night when I see you. Until then!’

  Christopher hung up and scanned the room, satisfied with the success of his clean-up operation. But while he didn’t want to ever return to that botched job, he knew he’d have to go back in a few days to finish it off with his trademark.

  He swallowed a couple of painkillers he’d found in Number Nine’s handbag to relieve the pain in his thumb, then made his way back in the direction of his home by foot. After five minutes, he took a detour and walked up a quiet street of new-build four-storey flats. He checked to see that he’d not caught anyone’s attention and then went around the back and found the door to the ground floor apartment, which was still unlocked.

  The smell emanating from the room would’ve been overpowering to most, but malodorous scents, especially those of decomposing bodies, didn’t bother Christopher. He swivelled the torch to shine it in Number Seven’s face. Putrefaction had begun in her shoulders, head and neck, and on the right hand side of her torso. It had left her skin a blotchy dark green and her size six frame was now bloated by the accumulation of gas inside her, pushing out her belly and her tongue, and giving her eyes a bulbous appearance. Her veins had marbled, turning them browny black in colour and the skin on her arms and legs was blistering.

  Christopher removed the photograph he’d taken an hour and a half earlier of Number Nine and carefully positioned it on her chest. Once back outside, he removed an aerosol can from his backpack and in one swift manoeuvre, sprayed black paint over a stencil onto the pavement. He stood back to look at the effigy of a man carrying a child across water, and smiled to himself.

  It wouldn’t be long before Number Eight was found, he thought, because by now, everybody knew the calling card to look out for.

  CHAPTER 23

  BETHANY

  The man standing behind the open door to the farmhouse was not Kevin, her Match, but they shared a likeness, thought Bethany.

  He was probably in his mid-twenties and looked a little older than Kevin, and he too was startlingly handsome and sported blond hair, but it was darker and straighter than Kevin’s. His blue eyes sparkled in the same way Kevin’s had in photos but this person had a more angular nose and thinner lips. He looked apprehensive, much more so than her.

  Nevertheless, Bethany remained cautious. She kept a safe distance between herself and the stranger, her car door remained unlocked and she kept the keys in her hand in case she needed to beat a hasty retreat.

  Bethany cleared her throat. ‘Who are you, because you’re not the man I’ve spent the last seven months talking to?’ she began.

  He stared at her with a mixture of curiosity, fascination and fear. His mouth opened and closed several times as he struggled to formulate a sentence. She recognised from the way his chest quickly rose and fell that something was troubling him and that she had the upper hand. He was no threat to her, she decided.

  ‘Can I at least come in from the sun?’ Bethany continued, momentarily forgetting she was asking to enter the home of a complete stranger. The man nodded and moved to one side, so she made her way through the porch and into the cool, air-conditioned lounge.

  As the door behind her swung shut, Bethany noticed a wall of framed family photographs above a piano. They looked like your average, normal unit and it gave her a little reassurance that she’d not just invited herself into a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In one picture was a middle-aged man with a woman and two teenage boys, one of whom was standing uncomfortably in front of Bethany but a little older now. The other was a youthful looking Kevin.

  ‘Are you Kevin’s brother?’ Bethany asked, and the man nodded. ‘Mark,’ he mumbled.

  ‘So where is he then?’

  ‘He’s gone into town,’ Mark replied softly. ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back.’ He struggled to maintain eye contact and kept looking behind her, shuffling from foot to foot.

&nb
sp; ‘I don’t think you’re telling the truth, Mark. Do you know who I am? Because if you do, then you’ll also know just how far I’ve travelled to be here to meet your brother. And I’m not leaving here until he’s had the guts to talk to me face to face. I don’t care if he has a wife or a girlfriend, I deserve to know the truth from him. And I’m not going to leave until I get it.’

  Mark was baffled as to know what to say next, but he didn’t have to say anything.

  ‘It’s okay Mark,’ came Kevin’s voice from a doorway behind Bethany. She turned her head quickly to face her DNA Match, and her mouth fell open at his appearance.

  ‘Hi Bethany. Not quite what you were expecting, am I?’ he asked.

  CHAPTER 24

  NICK

  The mid-day traffic was at a standstill and frustrated drivers were blasting their horns when Nick and Sally arrived at Birmingham’s Colmore Circus.

  An accident in the Queensway tunnels had reduced four traffic lanes down to one, and there were ceaseless drilling and thumping sounds coming from construction workers erecting a new multi-storey building on the concrete ashes of a recently demolished office block.

  Nick raised his head to look at their destination and spotted the name emblazoned in red and black lettering across two third-floor windows – One-2-One Physio. With his advertising and marketing hat on, he mentally ripped apart the dated choice of font and graphic.

  ‘Why am I doing this?’ he asked Sally, again.

  ‘Because I need to know if there’s any spark between my fiancé and the man he’s been Matched with.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Nick argued. ‘I’m a heterosexual man who is not physically attracted to men. First off, there will be no spark, and secondly, in the fucking remotest chance possible there might be, how can one even measure or quantify what a spark is?’

  ‘You told me the night when we first met in the bar, you knew there and then that we’d end up getting married,’ she replied. ‘You said that you felt your heart flutter. Now for my own peace of mind, I need you to meet this guy to find out if you feel anything like that with him. Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering.’

  ‘No babe, you will spend the rest of your life wondering. I will spend it wondering why on earth I’ve apparently been Matched with a guy when it’s a woman I’m head over heels in love with.’

  ‘There’s no ‘apparently’ about it, Nick. It’s science and science is based on fact, whether you believe it or not.’

  Nick rolled his eyes then took Sally’s cheeks in his hands and kissed her on the lips. But while outwardly he gave the appearance of not caring to meet his Match, inside, Nick had a growing curiosity about the man he supposedly shared a link with.

  ‘Well let’s get this over with,’ he sighed.

  ‘I’ll be in the Costa over the road when you’re done.’

  Nick gave her a half-hearted smile, pressed the buzzer on the door, and once it opened, made his way up three flights of stairs to the reception desk.

  ‘Hi,’ he smiled nervously at the young receptionist with a tattoo of a rose on her hand. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Alexander at 2.30.’

  ‘David Smith?’ she asked after glancing at the schedule on her computer screen, and Nick nodded, pleased he’d changed his name. If Alexander had also requested the details of his Match Your DNA pairing, Nick didn’t want to forewarn him they were about to come face to face. ‘You need some physio on your neck and shoulder, is that right?’ the receptionist continued.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, just fill out this form and Alex will be with you in a few minutes.’

  Nick sank into an armchair and began to complete a brief questionnaire about his bogus ailment. Along with his name, he’d also made up the whiplash he’d received in a recent non-existent car accident.

  ‘David?’ a deep but friendly voice with an accent came from behind. Nick turned to find a smiling Alexander standing behind him in a doorway.

  ‘Y-yes,’ Nick stammered.

  ‘I’m Alex,’ he began and held out his hand to shake Nick’s. ‘Come in and let’s take a look at you.’

  Nick followed him into a room and sat on a physiotherapy bed as Alex placed himself on a fold-up chair opposite.

  ‘So tell me about the pain and what caused it,’ Alex continued.

  As Nick began, he hoped Alex wasn’t going to ask him to go into any further detail about the accident as that was as far as he’d rehearsed his lie. Instead, Alex ran through more general questions about Nick’s health, work and posture habits while Nick tried his best not to stare at the man he’d been Matched with.

  ‘Right, if you want to take your t-shirt off for me and sit on the bed,’ Alex continued, and squirted sanitiser from a bottle into his hands. Nick suddenly felt scrawny and embarrassed compared to Alex, whose deep white V-neck T-shirt hinted at a broad chest.

  ‘I’m just going to feel around your neck and shoulders for a moment,’ Alex explained and stood behind his patient.

  “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” Nick thought to himself, bracing himself for Alex’s touch, hoping his nipples wouldn’t stand to attention or that his dick wouldn’t twitch, before reminding himself that when he was drunk, he often embraced his male friends and it’d never sparked a sexual reaction before. He closed his eyes until Alex’s hands made contact with his shoulders and then… nothing. All he felt were Alex’s fingers poking around, digging into knots, manipulating his neck into different positions and requesting him to tilt it in various directions.

  Nick lay face down upon the bed at Alex’s request, and put his head through a hole while Alex’s hands made his way down his patient’s spine, aligning certain vertebrae with an audible crack where necessary. Despite the occasional moment of discomfort, Nick felt relaxed enough to make small talk.

  ‘Where are you from? Australia?’

  ‘No, New Zealand, although it’s a pretty easy mistake to make.’

  ‘How long have you been over here?’

  ‘About twenty months or so, although my Visa’s running out and my old man’s not doing so good so I’m heading home soon.’

  ‘Oh, sorry to hear that. Are you moving back for good?’

  ‘That’s the idea, we’re just in the process of sorting out my girlfriend’s permit to work in New Zealand. She’s a Brit.’

  “He has a girlfriend, he’s not gay,” thought Nick, reassured that they were in the same boat. The same, straight, firmly heterosexual, boat.

  As Alex continued to manipulate and manoeuvre his way around his patient’s shoulders and neck, they made small talk about work and where they socialised, learning that they occasionally frequented the same bars, but with little else in common. Alex was the sporty type, playing amateur rugby most weekends or spending time away with his girlfriend fell walking or rock climbing. The closest Nick came to exercise was running for a bus when he’d overslept.

  ‘Right mate, that should just about do you for today,’ said Alex. ‘You were a bit knotted but it wasn’t too bad back there. Give it another week and if the symptoms persist, make another appointment to come and see me.’

  ‘Great, thank you,’ replied Nick, throwing on his T-shirt and jacket. As he got to his feet a little light-headed, he spotted Sally from the window, three floors below in the coffee shop, checking her phone. He smiled to himself, reassured that the person he was destined to spend the rest of his life with was sitting on the opposite side of the road, not standing in the same room as him.

  After shaking hands, Nick made his way towards the reception desk. He held his phone up to the machine scanner to pay and smiled to himself, realising how foolish he’d been for even worrying about what the ramifications might be of meeting his Match. This was proof, he told himself, that the DNA tests were a con.

  He glanced towards the treatment room just as Alex turned his head. Suddenly as their eyes made contact, Nick felt himself take a sharp, involuntarily gasp of breath. His heart began to beat wildly
and he could feel his pupils widen. His stomach felt like it was about to turn over, and by the look of sudden bewilderment on Alex’s face, he was feeling exactly the same thing.

  ‘Here’s your receipt,’ the receptionist smiled, breaking Nick free from the spell before he hurried down the stairs and out of the building.

  He stood on the pavement for a moment, leaning against the wall of the building and hoping the gentle summer breeze might cool down his flushed face. “What the hell was that?” he asked himself.

  His sharp, shallow breaths gradually became deeper until his heartbeat began to self-regulate and he made his way towards Sally.

  ‘Well? How was it?’ she asked anxiously as he sat himself down on a stool beside her.

  ‘Yeah, fine, but he’s not my type,’ Nick replied, and forced himself to laugh.

  ‘So I’m not about to lose my fiancé to a man?’

  He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was trying to make it appear she was joking, but her question was genuine.

  ‘Did you honestly think that might be the case?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe a little. Yes’

  ‘Of course not,’ he replied, comforting her with a peck to the side of her head. As she stretched her arms out and wrapped them tightly around him, Nick’s eyes glanced across the road and up three storeys to the clinic where he’d left his heart.

  CHAPTER 25

  ELLIE

  “There must be something wrong with him,” Ellie pondered as she read another of her Match Tim’s text messages.