New Girls Epilogue

Part Twelve
Emily Coulter sat shivering on the cold bathroom floor, eyes red from crying, holding her thirteen year old daughter Karen in her arms. Karen comforted her mother as she wept and wailed, whispering reassurances to comfort her.

“It’s okay mama, be strong. Be brave.”

Karen gently tapped her mother’s cheeks. She ran her hand through her daughter’s silky brown hair, and forced a pained smile. The bathroom tap was still running, and cold water overflowed from it onto the floor, soaking the bottom of her dress. There were loud bangs on the bathroom door.

“Open the door bloody woman! You’re going to pay for what you did to my daughter!” A loud male voice yelled from outside. The man pulled and twisted at the door handle as the two on the other side closed their eyes in terror and prayed. The man stopped and crouched down beside a blonde little girl, looking deeply into her blue eyes.

“Tell daddy what the wicked woman did to you,” He smiled.

“She slapped me and told me I was a shame on her,” whined the little blonde girl, “it really hurt.”

“Why the fuck would she have done that?”

“I think it’s because I called her fat. And I said Karen was a bitch.”

He patted her on the head.

“You were just putting them in their place, honey.”

“I know,” she said, “but I didn’t expect it to hurt that much.”

The man frowned.

“However much it hurt baby, it’s gonna hurt tenfold for the stupid woman. I’ll skin her and hang her remains to dry out on the lawn!”

She replied to her daddy with a satisfied smile. He stood up again, and instead of banging violently, he knocked on the door gently three times.

“Come out NOW, Emily. Do what I say. Or you will regret it.”

Emily carried Karen to the bathtub and seated her inside, drawing the curtain. She trembled and whimpered as she put a finger to her lips, signalling her daughter to remain quiet. Karen protested slightly, but sat back down when her mother shook her head.

Then, Emily took light steps towards the door and stretched her hand out, ready to open herself up to the world of terror on the other side. The outline of a man’s head and shoulders could be seen through the small misty window near the top of the door. He stood still and silent, waiting.

She snatched an electric razor from the window ledge before she finally turned the door handle. Pulling it open slowly, she lunged at him with the blade. It scraped the side of his face and he grunted, grabbing hold of her arm. She screamed as he threw her onto the ground, her head smashing against a wooden cabinet. He straddled her and ripped her dress open, exposing her bare chest, and folded his belt. Then he lashed her as she writhed in agony, the painful hits like knives slashing her face and chest.

The man suddenly felt a searing pain in his right arm. He roared in pain as he looked down to see Karen, with her teeth sunken deep in his forearm. The blonde girl laughed as she watched on the couch with a can of soda.

He stood up and grabbed Karen by the neck, as Emily immediately scrambled to her feet and begged him to stop, pulling on his clothes and arms, but he ignored her cries.

“Why do you defend your mother, little bitch born out of wedlock? You wouldn’t like her so much if you caught her fucking another man on your couch, sweat and piss and cum dripping all over it, his cock shoving in and out of her saggy cunt, would you now? Think about what I had to go through! You don’t deserve to be alive!”

“I’m sorry Richard,” wailed Emily, “just please, don’t hurt her!”

He dropped the girl and she folded into a crumpled heap on the ground. She looked at her mother with misty green eyes. As they crawled over to each other, they wrapped into a tight embrace. The man took his precious little girl by the hand and led her out of the room.

Epilogue
“…yup, that’s all I remember from the day she died.” Posie’s leukaemia had progressed into its final stages, and her voice had become weak and croaky. But her mood remained lively.

“You just sat there and watched?” Marty held a pained expression, appalled by the confession he had just heard. “I can’t believe you. I really can’t.”

“It’s true,” she shrugged, forcing a smile. “They say at the end of your life you don’t regret what you did, but what you didn’t do. I can say now that’s true. I wanted to see them suffer more. But I got impatient too quickly.

I appreciate you coming to visit me, I’ve wanted to enjoy these childhood memories with someone for a long time, but nobody would understand the joy in my ranting until you came along.”

He cocked his head to one side, in utter dismay and horror.

“Impatient?”

“Marty,” she choked with a cough, “do you know what DNP is?”

He shook his head.

“It’s this yellow, powdery stuff. Women used to use it as a diet pill before they banned it.”

“What about it?”

“Without sounding too technical, it’s what they call an ionophore.”

Marty shook his head again – he’d never paid much attention in science class.

“That basically means, dumbass, that if you eat it, it stops your body making energy from your food. Hence why it’s such an effective way of losing weight.”

“Oh right.”

“But you know with diet pills, there’s always a catch. Where’s the energy from your food gonna go instead? It can’t just disappear into thin air!” She smiled as her eyes widened in mad glee. “It comes out of you as heat. Burns, Marty, BURNS!”

She growled the word, her voice fading into a gargle. Marty stared in horror as she began to laugh, at first a deep sound which stirred from within her, and gradually increased in pitch.

“That day, I managed to get hold of some online without anyone knowing. Got it delivered to my house. They really ought to stop selling that shit you know, it’s the reason little anorexic girls are dropping dead, but hey, can’t hold back a free market.

I couldn’t wait to try it out, the side effects sounded too exciting. Old saggy tits needed to lose a few pounds anyway, those rolls spilling out under her armpits were grossing me out.

That night I slipped some into her dinner, just a little at first – to be subtle. When I realised it was pretty much tasteless, I just dumped the load in there! Dumb bitch probably thought it was salt!”

A lump in his throat began to grow again.

“I used far more than the average dose needed to kill a person, but perhaps not enough for a quick death. Then, I stood at the foot of her bed and watched her throughout the night, writhing in pain as she slowly burned to death from the inside. Sweet baby Jesus, the screams!

I didn’t know it would actually kill her, I was only fourteen at the time, but when daddy found her dead as a doornail in the morning, I started to panic. I just showed him the bottle and told him she’d overdosed. He seemed a bit stressed out, but he didn’t question it any more.”

“So let me get this straight… you killed your own mother and just kept it to yourself for all these years?”

She sighed and shrugged nonchalantly. He didn’t have any idea what to say to this psycho bitch anymore. He tried not to show it, but every word she spoke terrified him more than all the screamers in every horror movie he’d ever seen put together.

Marty wondered if there were more people like her out there, lurking disguised in society as just another one of us.

“She didn’t really commit suicide, did she? Neither of them did.”

“Bravo, you’ve finally worked it out!” She clapped like a child. “Took you long enough. You wanna hear what happened to your darling sweetheart, lover boy? I took her up there myself, to the top of that car park. I told her I just wanted to talk. We were alone, and I reminded her she was a rotting scum of a bastard whose only purpose was to suffer for my entertainment and serve me when I needed it.

Now I only had a few months to live, I couldn’t just see her outlive me happily ever after! I cried for days when I found I was going to die. If anything gave me comfort in my last days, it was seeing her go by my hand. Shame it had to be so soon.”

He felt the tears welling up again as the memories of Karen, his Rosie, returned. But he refused to let them out in front of her murderer. He resisted an urge to strangle her to death right there and then, to crush all her brittle bones as she did to innocent Karen Williams, and leave her bleeding and suffocated to the same agonizing death.

“What else did you say to her?”

“Not much more, really. I didn’t want to waste my time. She cursed and screamed and clawed at me like an animal, but in the end I shoved her off the edge and watched her fall to her death under the stars. It was a pretty satisfying end to her wretched, pointless life.

Heard she was still twitching in the morning when they found her splattered across some guy’s Mercedes. Now I kinda feel bad for the poor guy, apparently it was a new car.

I found that piece of paper the day I killed her. Wasn’t sure whose number it was, but I reckoned it must’ve been her sugar daddy, the one giving her gifts and all that. So I texted you, and you replied!

Oh, it was good fun messing with you that night. I was planning to fuck you that night, would’ve been a good way to spite her. Might’ve left daddy to deal with you after. Too bad you were too chicken to stick it in, couldn’t break mommy’s curfew, could you?”

“Alright,” said Marty, standing up. “I’ve heard enough.”

“Heard enough, have you? Truth too hard for you to handle?”

Marty looked down at her and smiled, watching her confused expression as he walked around her bed to the foot, and stood still. She squinted as she saw him reach into his pocket, then she went pale for a second as he fished out a digital voice recorder and held it up in front of her, his arm outstretched.

“More than enough.”

Then, she burst out laughing again.

“You were recording me? Alright, I killed some bitches, and I liked it. What are you gonna to me, send me to jail? I’ll be a goner by the time you even get that to the police station!”

“You’re just like I was,” he smiled, “another kid with a big mouth. This was way too easy. Posie, you don’t happen to have a bank account, do you?”

“No… I don’t…” A panicked realisation swept over her. She had been stupid.

“I was wondering how a fourteen year old could get their hands on something like DNP.”

He stifled a laugh.

“Stop! Give that to me! Give it here! It was me, I killed them! He didn’t do anything!” She pulled against the tubing and wires holding her firmly to the bed and machines around her. He pressed the ‘stop recording’ button.

“Gathering gems for a losing case is pretty hard, you know. But it’s the least I could do for all the shit Karen and Emily had to go through. She had her family, her identity and her life taken from her you piece of crap!

You thought he'd been acquitted, but no, that was a lie I'm afraid. It was, part of the investigation. It's still going strong.

I hadn’t expected for you to make it so much easier – I was wondering what you called me here for – expected nothing more than some bullshit and chit-chat. But the holes in your testimony are gonna be the end of him. Well, enjoy your stay here. It’s a pretty decent way to go if you ask me.”

“You’re not gonna get him! You don't have enough evidence! They’ll never find him guilty, never, NO!”

As he walked out of the room and down the length of the hospital, the howling screams of a dying girl behind him conjured up no sympathy in his heart.