14th March
I am a cunt. No question of it.
Sitting across the table from my future wife in the open plan office we both work in, I return a feeble smile to her, knowing full well that she loves me so implicitly that in her eyes I am above suspicion. So deep is my cuntishness that my shame at deceiving her is completely buried under the revulsion of my growing knowledge of what she will be like in twenty years, maybe ten. She will be like the woman sitting next to her, Cathy Docherty, a vast middle-aged hen, bulging out of her several-sizes-too-small clothes, rocking back and forth and cackling obscenely at every vaguely smutty remark that’s passed. That’s what she’ll be like all right.
So why am I still engaged to her? The angry, cynical side of me says it’s defeatism: this dull-witted, over-made-up office girl is as good as a useless cunt like me will ever get. The softer, wiser side of me says it’s because she loves me, plain and simple, albeit in an old-fashioned way, whereas my glamourous, intelligent, beautiful, classy, witty, tasteful, talented and unbelievably dirty mistress probably does not. Now I come to think of it, what does that exceptional woman see in me?
15th March
It’s very unlike me to keep a diary, but recently I’ve felt the need to do so, not out of any urge to confess, I can assure you. No, it’s just that I’ve had this unaccountable feeling that sooner or later it’s going to be necessary for something. Actually, it’s done me good to write these few lines, just like they say in all those ‘new man’ magazines.
So, to continue from yesterday, my fiancée, Jenny McAlistair, is nattering away to Cathy Docherty all day about our wedding plans, and occasionally I look over and smile lovingly, as if I give a fuck. And just to confirm the cuntitude I referred to in yesterday’s entry: would you believe that I’m actually writing this venom while it’s happening?
So she’s yakking away about the limousine, the choice of psalms for the service and some tacky resort on Gran Canaria intended for our honeymoon, and all I can think about is the next time I see her, the sumptuous meal she’ll prepare for me and the mind-bendingly filthy sex we’ll have afterwards.
I think I’ll stop for today, in case my peroxide buttercup starts to suspect that I’m not working on the guest list after all.
16th March
What a night! Every one pales the last into insignificance.
Heinous twat that I am, Jenny thinks I’m at night school studying part-time for an MBA, that I’m taking care of our long-term future together. Christ, I make myself want to puke. Instead of diligently reading my economics and psychology, I was with Liz (that’s my mistress’s name) in her palatial flat, feeding on Brazilian sopa de camarao. She usually serves me a delicious, exotic meal, different and surprising every time, but only lets me eat a small portion, as she doesn’t want to spoil my firm athletic build. Not to mention that heavy meals tend to blunt the other appetite, and nothing, not even her unbelievable cooking must get in the way of what is to follow. We never have dessert: she despises those empty, sugary imitations of proper food as she calls them. ‘Not fit for warm-blooded mammals,’ she laughs and shows her magnificent pearly white teeth. And then she gives me a hungry look which is ever so slightly unsettling in its urgency, but the knowledge of what is to come quickly silences my doubts.
We always start with a massage. I was never very partial to them, but I’ve been converted, probably because she’s a doctor and understands the human body so well. I feel completely relaxed afterwards, as though every muscle in my body has given up trying and just wants to sleep. In fact, I’m so comfortable that I doze off, but then she rouses me with a good hard spanking.
And that’s when the fun begins.
23rd March
Of course it couldn’t last. My poor little calf has started to complain that I’ve been neglecting her. She asks me with her bovine eyes if I’m having second thoughts, and so I take out my wallet by way of reply and pull out two tickets to some sickening crooner she moistens over. Needless to say I am forgiven instantly and she doesn’t suspect that the hateful little stunt has been prepared a couple of weeks in advance for just such an emergency.
But it’s her own fault. If she was capable of loving me in any way except as a mother does her son, perhaps I wouldn’t have deceived her in the first place. ‘Motherly love,’ I can hear you say. ‘You could so a lot worse, you selfish shitbag!’ Well maybe so, but that kind of love can be cold and selfish too, and is it wrong of a person to long for some genuine warmth, for a little tenderness?
Unfortunately though, the concert isn’t for another three weeks and so I was obliged to think of something to gratify her emotional needs in the meantime. Of course, this means I’ll have to cancel with Liz tonight. She was going to make Trinidadian callaloo with crab followed by a surprise ‘dessert’ in front of the open fire. Fuck! And what delights await me instead? A plate of insipid glutinous slop at the Golden Dragon followed by a recently exhumed film about a prostitute with a heart of gold who is wooed by a handsome businessman who loves her for what she is.
Cunt!
24th March
God only knows how I made it through the evening. The conversation with Jenny over our miserable dinner was strained at best. When I say that, I mean it was strained for me, because she didn’t seem to mind at all. I drifted in and out of her monologue like a cancer patient shot full of morphine. She was yapping on about some celebrity game show on the TV, apparently finding limitless scope for conversation in it, and all I could think was: ‘Why is she telling me this?’
The despicable film afterwards seemed to go on forever. I saw to my horror that the soppy fantasy about a working girl swept off her feet by the strong but sensitive (and incidentally very wealthy) businessman had actually put her in the mood and I expected the worst when we got back to her flat. My evil forebodings were confirmed as she put on one of her Bryan Adams CD’s and brought out a bottle of vinegar masquerading as wine. ‘Stiff upper lip,’ I thought as I braced myself for a few minutes of timid sex on the PVC sofa. On the other hand, it occurred to me, what if I couldn’t get an erection? The thought filled me with dread. She might suspect I was having an affair; or worse still, she might make me go to a counsellor with her. But all my fears proved unfounded and events took an unexpected turn.
After about ten minutes of for her no doubt meaningful silence, she took my glass, put it on the smoked glass coffee table and kissed me. What followed caught me completely by surprise. I shrank back in horror and had to feign a coughing fit to hide the revulsion I felt, as much from myself as from her. Her lips were as cold and lifeless as a corpse’s. I quickly turned her away from me, hitched up her skirt and fucked her roughly from behind, so as not to have to kiss her again. This impromptu rape fantasy enactment enhanced my performance admirably and relieved the boredom of the evening to the point where I almost stopped regretting having gone out with her in the first place.
The upshot of this disgraceful episode is that Jenny is once again her contented cow-like self and I have a few weeks of credit on my cunt account.
30th March
The last few evenings with Liz have been a much-needed tonic for my body and soul. I’ve been going to her flat more or less straight from work, drained and deflated from the day at the bank, where for five long years I’ve produced nothing except hair loss and sleeplessness in the sorry cunts I lend money to, and I leave again by ten o’ clock with my mind awake and my body purring like the engine of an expensive German car.
There is one tiny cloud on the horizon, hardly worth the mention, and that’s that I’m getting a little tired of Liz’s massages, as they’re starting to hurt a bit. But even there I’m discovering new things about myself. Last night during the massage, for example, while she was kneading and pounding so hard it felt like she was inside my body, rubbing the raw muscle itself, I decided I’d had enough and wanted to get up. To my surprise, though, she put her hand on my neck, pushed me back down with uncanny force and continued the massage in silence. I was a little unnerved by this at first and felt something odd deep down in my belly, which I took for anxiety. A little later I realized it wasn’t that at all. I was actually turned on by her forcefulness, and when we had sex afterwards, the discovery of this slight masochistic tendency oddly enough emboldened me, and I did her much more vigorously than usual. I’d become so bold, in fact, that I did something I’d always dreamt of, but had never dared. When I was almost there, I withdrew and finished on her face. She seemed to enjoy this impudent little gesture almost as much as I did and spent the rest of the evening adorned by my pearls.
3rdApril
Jenny has been pestering me all day about the wedding arrangements. She does this over the phone sitting opposite me, would you believe? It goes together with everything else in her personality that she daren’t simply talk to me over the divider in case the boss passes and sees that she isn’t working. I despise her slavish mentality, yet neither do I have the balls to free myself and move in with Liz. What paradise that would be! Apart from the massages, of course, which get worse every time. In fact, I’ve been feeling sore all day from last night’s battering, but it’s worth the price my poor muscles have to pay.
So anyway, she’s been nagging me about not seeming very interested in our wedding plans. I could hear that she felt hurt and neglected, but when I tried to placate her with the excuse of the MBA taking up all my spare time and that it would be wasteful to give up now, she put down the phone and gave me a poisonous look over the divider. ‘Cathy said you’d make time if you were serious about the whole thing,’ she complained, and I could tell by her tone of voice that the nosy old bitch had said a lot more than that. I promised to finish the guest list and get the invitations out, just to get her off my back, but resolved more firmly than ever to spend my free time where my good qualities are appreciated.
6thApril
I staggered home last night at one in the morning, feeling as though I’d been pummelled by schemies from a council estate on the outskirts of hell, sore and weak all over, yet strangely unbruised. I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but mind-blowingly hot sex or not, I’m beginning to regret the whole affair with Liz. I think it’s time to terminate our little amour fou and go back to Jenny full-time with my tail between my legs.
If I could only pin it down to some sexual proclivity, and give the thing a name, I’d continue gladly, but as it is, the lack of any apparent motive for her perversion is starting to give me the creeps. She kneads and pounds me to the point of agony, but in an unemotional, clinical sort of way, seemingly without any pleasure. Until now, I’ve fobbed myself off with rationalizations like ‘she’s a doctor, and that’s what doctors are like, aren’t they?’ and ‘no doubt all this horrible pulverising will be good for me in the long run’, etc. But all that’s over now.
So last night, while we’re watching this very classy porn film that she’s procured from God knows where, she turns to me and asks whether I’d like to watch her have sex with another woman. I nearly blew my stack then and there, but I said, “I suppose so,“ trying not to seem too eager, in case she changed her mind. I don’t know why I did it, perhaps making a joke to ease my nervousness, but I suddenly blurted out, “What about my fiancée?”
I regretted it immediately, guessing she would be jealous, but as it happened she took the suggestion seriously. She asked me if I had a picture of her on me, and while I fished in my wallet for a small full-body shot that Jenny had planted there last Christmas, I warned her that there was no way she would ever agree to something like that, and if I so much as suggested it, she would call off the wedding without a second thought. I continued trying to dissuade her while she studied the picture with growing interest, but she wasn’t listening at all. After a while she announced in her medical voice, “Beautiful. Perfect figure. Excellent muscle tone.”
Funny how this had never occurred to me until she said it. People have been telling me for years what a wonderful couple we make (the irony!) and that we should be at the Olympics instead of a stuffy old bank office. So much for public opinion, though I had to admit that the image of the two women in my life kissing and fondling one another gave me an erection so hard it was almost painful. I was so aroused, in fact, that I was distracted from the battering of the massage for the first few minutes.
But then I blacked out.
7thApril
Tonight is the night!
I’d called in sick at work for the second day and was lying in bed recuperating. In fact, I’d only just started to feel myself again when Liz called and invited me over to meet a girlfriend of hers. It’s really going to happen!
But don’t think I’ve forgotten my resolve! No, as soon as the show is over and I’ve popped my cork, I’m going to break it off. Or the next day at the very latest.
Come to think of it, it’s odd that Jenny hasn’t been around, or even called. Normally, she’d have been here the moment she heard I wasn’t feeling well, fussing about and reproaching me for not having taken better care of myself.
Oh well, who gives a flying fuck?
8thApril
Now I’m really in trouble. The large glass of whisky I just drank has calmed me down enough to be able to write for a short time, though why I’m still doing it in this jam is beyond me.
When I arrived at Liz’s last night, dinner was already on the table, but the third corner of our love triangle wasn’t there yet. Unexpectedly as always, the dish was a humble haggis with neeps and tatties, though it tasted richer and spicier than any I had ever had. The whisky to go with it was as smooth as silk and after two or three glasses I felt myself nodding off.
I woke up at eleven o’ clock the next morning from a horrible nightmare of huge komodo dragons slobbering over my helpless body and breathing hot vile-smelling fumes into my face. I saw the clock and called out for Liz, leaping out of bed in a panic at the same time. But that was the trouble: I didn’t so much leap as fall out of bed. My muscles were like jelly and every square inch of my body ached maddeningly. I lay on the floor for half an hour before I could summon the strength to drag myself back into bed. The effort exhausted me and I fell asleep again immediately. When I woke about two hours later I felt stronger, but I didn’t make the mistake of exerting myself so suddenly again. I inched my way up to a sitting position as slowly as I could, carefully put on some clothes and then dropped to my hands and knees on the floor.
Fully awake now, I finally began to perceive the danger I was in and what a blind, brainless cunt I had been. ‘Bravo!’ I told myself. ‘Women like Liz are always queuing up to satisfy every whim and fantasy of men such as yourself. And what do they want in return? Why, nothing, of course! Except perhaps some stimulating conversation about the benefits of variable rate mortgages and the pleasure of my admittedly handsome frame.’ For fuck’s sake! The woman’s a psychopath, and for the second time I’ve come willingly and allowed her to mash me to a pulp, to what fucked-up ends God only knows. And as if that weren’t enough of an alarm call, this time she had drugged me as well.
All this went through my mind as I crept towards the door. I was too preoccupied with the problem of how I was going to make it down four flights of stairs to anticipate that the door might be locked. When this indeed transpired, I fell onto the floor and cried like a girl, calling out for Jenny between my sobs.
8thApril, 4 o’clock
A lot has happened since last writing, in my head at least, because my body is still imprisoned in this flat. In the few hours since waking up this afternoon, I’ve found out who Liz is and, a few months too late to save myself, who I am too. I know with painful certainty what I should and shouldn’t have done. Terrifyingly, I know what’s going to happen to me unless I gather all my resources and think quickly.
After I picked myself up, soggy and wretched from blubbing, I spent twenty minutes looking in vain for the phone. Right enough, she’d always called me from her mobile, and so I clung to the hope that she might have forgotten to take it with her. While looking for the phone, a number of insights overcame me at once, as they usually do. Looking around her huge flat it suddenly struck me that the reason it seemed so big was that there is nothing in it. Of course, there are a few essentials: a dining table, some chairs and a sofa, an iron bedstead, a television, but I’d often had an odd feeling that these were only used when I was there. Even the bed has a cold, unlived-in feel to it, and the television, I know for a fact, is put away when not in use. I forgot to mention that there is no décor or personal effects: no paintings, no photos, none of the knick-knacks that women are usually so fond of. Unsurprisingly, only the kitchen is brim-full with cooking implements.
For all her sophistication, there’s something eerily primitive about her behaviour sometimes. I always found it vaguely unnerving that she would leave her mouth open when eating and swallow almost without chewing. In a way this eccentricity just added to her appeal, a classy bitch who eats like a bricklayer, but all this now reinforced my belief that she was a psychopath and that in some unpredictable but horrible way she was going to kill me.
At precisely the same moment this idea became a certainty in my mind, I realized she was going to kill Jenny too. There was something unnaturally intense about the way she looked at that picture of her and then withdrew into herself. To my amazement, the thought filled me with horror, almost as much as the fear for my own life. I can hear what you’re thinking: ‘Oh how beautiful! He does love his fiancée after all.’ But you might as well forget it. Whatever feeble, dithering love I had for Jenny fizzled out about a week after I met her. It’s just that I didn’t see why she should have to pay for my fuck-up as well.
Like a chain of dominoes, one thought had toppled onto the next and my thoughts became lucid. People leave traces of their habits all around them, like a credit record, and so I intuitively staggered into the kitchen, sensing that, as that was where she left the biggest tracks, whatever I needed would surely be there. I found myself staring at a worn patch in one corner of the polished wooden floor, and in a flash of insight, I realized that that was where she slept. I went over to look in the cupboards next to that spot and sure enough, there were her bedside things: an alarm clock, paper tissues, hairpins and her mobile phone. With trembling hands, I turned on the phone and dialed 999, but when a woman answered and asked me which service I wanted, I hesitated. It was in the belief that I was doing something meaningful for the first time in my life that I hung up and dialed Jenny’s work number instead. She answered with her hateful ‘customer service’ voice and it was only then that I realized I had no idea what I was going to say.
“Jenny, it’s me.”
“Oh,” she replied.
“I’ve got something terribly important to tell you,” I dithered, realizing that warning her about Liz, and by implication that I was having an affair, was harder than I had thought. This was supposed to be the easy part.
“Have you now?”
There was nothing else for it but to be honest. She would never believe the rest otherwise.
“I’ve been having an affair.”
“I know. Was there anything else?”
This threw me completely. “How do you know?” I asked stupidly.
“Your girlfriend told me herself,” she began, more heatedly now. “She’d only just found out that you were engaged. She looked me up to apologise and assure me that she’d have nothing more to do with you. Decent of her, I thought.”
“But she’s lying,” I gasped incredulously.
“And why would she lie?”
The mobile phone started to beep, indicating that the battery was almost flat. This galvanised me into action.
“Jenny, Liz isn’t what she seems. You’re in…”
“I can’t believe it,” she yelled. “You get caught with another woman and you’re trying to worm your way out of it by blaming her. You might as well stop now, Peter. It’s over between us. I’m calling off the engagement.”
I was too stunned to react. With hindsight, I suppose she was expecting me to beg her not to go, because after a few seconds of silence she started to shriek.
“You bastard! Could you be less interested?”
“Listen, Jenny, there’s no time. Stay away from Liz. I…”
“You’re too late with all this,” she said. “Well, something lost, something gained.”
She paused, obviously dredging her tiny vocabulary for some suitably cutting last word. She found it while I was struggling to understand what she had meant by that last remark.
“By the way, Liz and me are going to the concert you bought tickets for. And then afterwards…”
The battery went dead. Perhaps it was because I was in shock, but the only feeling I registered at that moment, oddly enough, was relief that I wouldn’t have to go to that vile concert after all.
9thApril
This is the last entry I’ll ever write.
I won’t bore you with my feeble survival reflexes after the conversation with Jenny yesterday. Suffice it to say I couldn’t find the cable for the phone and I was too weak even to open a window, too ashamed to break one and call for help. With the little strength I had left, I did manage to make two small preparations for Liz’s return, one without the remotest chance of succeeding, the other, possibly. The first was a carving knife, which I held tightly until she got back, like a child who clutches a blunt pocket knife to protect him from monsters in the dark. The second I think I’ll leave until later, as among the many things I’ve discovered over the past few days, I’ve found out why I’m writing this diary, and I feel it is my duty to save a little something for the end of what, pathetically, is to be my life’s work.
As I predicted, Liz got back from work shortly after five. The banker inside me knew this from her occupation and spending habits. Consultants such as her work regular office hours and don’t have to run errands after work, so I was waiting for her in the hall, clutching the knife behind my back, but barely able to stand.
She stopped in the doorway and stared at me expressionlessly. My own thoughts were confused, trying to come to terms with the fact that I expected at any moment to be murdered by my mistress, but Liz seemed perfectly composed. I was just beginning to believe that I’d imagined the whole thing, when suddenly she rushed at me. I cringed and brought the knife from behind my back, feebly holding it over my head, but before I knew it, she had grabbed the wrist holding the knife and was dragging me across the floor into the bedroom. ‘No foreplay tonight, then,’ I thought, strangely, as she hauled me onto my ostensible deathbed and confiscated my weapon without resistance. She left the room and came back empty-handed. This was a good sign, I hoped: I had given token resistance and yet she clearly felt no need to subdue me. The hope began to grow again that this was all just another of her kinky games, and sure enough, she sat on the edge of the bed, unzipped my trousers and began to masturbate me without a word of explanation or apology. A little later, and more courageous still, I asked in what I hoped was a convincingly jocular tone whether she still intended to kill me. Before replying, she hitched up her skirt, spread her legs a little and began to rub herself in time with me.
“No,” she said at last. “I’m going to eat you.”
Relief rushed over me like the Forth tide, and I felt a prize fool for having constructed this elaborate horror fantasy in my head. Too many films, I suppose. But just as I felt the preliminary twitch in my testicles, I remembered the conversation with Jenny.
“Why did you lie to Jenny about me?”
There was no reply.
“And why are you going to that horrible concert with her? That’s not like you at all.”
She stopped and looked me steadfastly in the eye, as she always did on the rare occasions she looked at me at all.
“To answer your first question: to allow us to continue our relationship without interference. To answer the second: because she asked me to. I could hardly refuse her, could I?”
I came before she had finished the sentence. Was the threesome still in with a chance? I hardly dared consider it.
Liz wiped her hands on the sheets and gave me the old ‘hungry’ look again as she straightened her clothes.
I had no reason to disbelieve her. Everything she said had such a clinical matter-of-factness to it that you wondered if she was even capable of lying. I calculated excuses for her bizarre behaviour with the speed of a computer. ‘She drugged me’ became ‘I was exhausted after a stressful month (what with work, the wedding and the affair) and I’d drunk more of that whisky than I thought’; ‘she kept me prisoner here’ became ‘she absent-mindedly locked the door when she left for work’; ‘she crippled me with some kind of satanic massage’ became, absurdly, ‘I must be coming down with something’.
With what? Ebola?
Most men will never know the extent and the consequences of the ill-considered decisions they make in order to get a ride, but I do. Let that be my epitaph. Amen.
So anyway, the hungry look had never been hungrier, but I felt completely equal to the challenge, despite the weakness of my ravaged body. That was the thing with Liz: her uncanny ability to take our sexual adventures a step further every time made it impossible to refuse. Normally it was her who led the way, but this time she seemed to be taking the passive role. She just kept on looking at me as if saying, ‘I’m ready for you to take the reigns, big man. Do whatever you want to me. I am a vessel waiting to be filled.’
Under normal circumstances, this would have turned me on beyond measure, but I suppose the enormous relief I felt at not being killed, together with the masterly hand job, made me relaxed and sleepy. Just before I nodded off, she said something that struck me on account of its oddness.
‘It’s time to fulfill your part of the bargain’.
I woke the next morning from the dream of the komodo dragons again, only this time they were biting me and tearing my flesh. It had been one of those horribly vivid dreams, but unaccompanied by the usual relief of waking. I felt like shit in some unaccountable way, but didn’t think too much of it at first: it had become such a habit lately. It was only when I tried to stretch, couldn’t, and was split in two by a bolt of pain such as I had never known that I began to be frightened. I threw off the covers and promptly passed out at the sight that met my eyes: my legs below the knees were nothing more than sticks wrapped in bloody bandages.
Liz had sliced off my beautiful, muscular footballer’s calves.
There’s no point burdening you with the waves of despair, self-pity, self-loathing, bitterness, hatred and self-pity again I went through after I came to, but for the sake of the records I’ll include a brief account of what happened between then and now.
At some point I snapped out of it with the realization that much as I might want to die, such a fate was a luxury, compared to what awaited me if I didn’t preempt it. There was no telling how much of my muscle tissue she planned to remove yet.
Somehow I managed to crawl through to the kitchen, but this time she had remembered to take her mobile phone with her. While looking for it I came across a pile of letters that were addressed and ready to be sent. Here was my last chance of salvation. If I could just open one of them without tearing it, slip my diary in with a note attached to pass in on to the police urgently and reseal it, I might yet survive. Everything about Liz told me that she didn’t concern herself with details in the slightest, except in matters culinary of course. That last thought filled me with a horrifying vision: I suddenly saw her sitting in her spacious office, removing a strand of flesh from her teeth with a toothpick. Involuntarily, I crawled over to the fridge, opened the door and fell backwards, retching. I quickly collected myself. There was no reason why that huge, plump steak marinating in chili and lime juice should be anything other than prime beef, but once more against my will, I reached forward and prodded it. I was starving from two days without food and it was so tender and appetizing that the temptation to pop it under the grill and devour it was almost irresistible, but a sudden shooting pain where my left calf used to be triggered a reflex that made me slam the door shut again. I remembered that I had a big bag of fudge in my briefcase, and the thought of wolfing the whole lot down gave me an odd sense of satisfaction that I had no time to investigate. I crawled back into the bedroom as quickly as I could to eat my meal, and afterwards, I was now firmly resolved, to write the last entry in the little book whose purpose had so suddenly been revealed.
When I finished the toffees I felt a bit sick, but otherwise clear-headed again. I realized that the scheme of sending my diary to the police via a third party was doomed to fail. It would take a day at least to get there. I imagined a thick-necked, middle-aged constable reading the first sentence and then putting it into the ‘pending’ folder of an old fashioned filing cabinet before returning to the business of his tea and a Chelsea bun and forgetting it forever. Even if he did read it all, why should he interpret it as a cry for help anyway? He would be holding a work of art, the greatest and only oeuvre of Peter McNally, intermediate sales representative for a leading financial institution, not some shoddy text message with hideous spelling. That might represent a valid cry for help, but not my magnum opus.
And then I remembered Jenny.
Who would have thought it? Timid, Catholic, recently-crawled-out-of-the-schemes and on-her-way-up Jenny was a big fucking dyke after all. Of course I didn’t really believe she was a lesbian, but that she was even capable of curiosity about such things would have been surprising enough. What would her ex-army bully of a father say if he knew? Or her evil, social-climbing mother?
Frankly, I can’t stand lesbians, even day-tripping sightseers like Jenny, with all their manipulative, passive-aggressive hatred of men, but you’d be wrong to suppose that I forgot my responsibilities to you as a result of this knowledge, Jenny, because I think now is the right time to reveal who this work is dedicated to. I realised some time ago that from beginning to end this diary has been my secret dialogue with you, starting off as a mere guiltily self-conscious urge to confess and ending here as a mature act of revenge.
Damn! I’ve gone and let it slip. I was going to wax lyrical a bit longer yet, but I might as well come out with my sinister purpose now, so here goes.
In about ten minutes I’m going to start on the bottle of whisky Liz left on the floor a few nights ago, tempting her dinner to self-marinade, no doubt. When I’m about half way through that, I imagine the Dutch courage will have deserted me and the despair phase will have begun, allowing me to take the packet of codeine I had bought for the pain while I still had the use of my legs. But before I do all that, I’ll have finished my diary, put it in an envelope addressed to you and placed that inside another envelope intended for one of Liz’s colleagues with a note urging him to forward it to you as a matter of utmost urgency, in person if possible.
So you see, Jenny, my miserable life hasn’t amounted to much, but I’ve been given a rare opportunity to go out in style and with an uncommon act of heroism to boot, since as it turned out, I hold your life in my hands. There is no way you will survive your acquaintanceship with Liz, because she is a reptile who preys on slow-witted mammals like us who are easily lured into her trap by their petty appetites. But I have chosen to give you the gift of your life, asking nothing in return.
Well, almost nothing, because whether you decide to hand this diary over to the police as evidence to support your charge, and in so doing disgrace yourself with your family, your colleagues, your friends and the whole narrow minded community we live in, or whether you choose instead to ignore it and find yourself on a plate within the month, I will have done my duty and my death will not have been in vain.
Even before I start on the whisky, I feel strangely calm. Perhaps it’s because I’m finishing something significant for the first time in my life, but perhaps it’s because I’ve made an important discovery about myself since starting to write this.
I am not a cunt.
Edinburgh, Abbey National offices, December 2003
Leave a Reply