Your Midweek Update for 05/25/22

When I cut off all ties with my husband and left in the middle of the night, I did not expect to miss him so much. I’m typing this while another man sleeps in my bed – Ben, I know, but he gives good orgasms – and yet, all I can think about his James.

That’s not even what I was going to talk to you about this week. I was going to talk about the cashier who was found absolutely butchered in the back alley of a local convenience store. I mean someone had hacked away at his stomach until his ribcage was bare and his floating ribs were missing because someone accidentally nicked them with the knife and had to put them through the incinerator.

Next time, give me correct change and don’t argue with me when I politely ask you to double check your work.

But I’m not even in the mood to tell you about that because after I murdered the cashier, I called Ben, we had slightly exhausted sex, and as I lay awake after begrudgingly letting him sleep over, all I could think about was the dumpster in the alley.

I had initially wanted to throw the cashier’s body in the dumpster. Even if his body was discovered before trash collection took him away, he wouldn’t have been discovered the next day and identification wouldn’t have been so simple. I tried to drag him in by myself but his organs were splashing all over the place and I was just making a mess so I left him sitting against the dumpster. I am a strong woman but dead bodies are heavy – especially when they’ve been opened in the middle. It’s like trying to carry a full casserole dish with wax paper.

A kill like that would have been a lot easier with a partner. Sure, I could have called Casey but I realize that she’s only got a few more months of school before she’s potentially off on her own. It would only been one more month of school but between the kidnapping and the separation, she has a few grades to make up before she can graduate.

I’m very cognizant of the fact that this is around the age where I lose my children. And if, for whatever reason, she does leave, I will be well and truly alone. My parents are gone, my sister is in the wind, my husband has broken my heart and I will be alone.

I don’t know specifically what it was about this particular kill – beyond having to admit that I can’t deadlift a bowl of unset Jell-O over my shoulder – but it the loneliness struck me in a way it hasn’t for a while.

I miss my partner. I miss having a partner. Someone who has my back when I’m out doing the one thing that brings me joy. James was my partner in everything and I don’t know when or if I’ll ever find that with someone else.

Maybe I’ll ask Ben how he feels about carrying overcooked spaghetti and meatballs in a dollar store paper plate.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

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Your Midweek Update for 05/18/22

When I was seventeen, I murdered a man – a boy, really. I took a football cleat and I thrust it into the back of his head. I did it because I wanted to and for no other reason. Someone was always going to be my first; why not him?

The next day at school, I feigned shock and sorrow when they gathered us outside to announce to the student population that one of our own had been taken. It was a murder too brutal for any of his peers to be considered a subject so the police turned their attention upwards.

A few weeks after the boy’s death, they arrested the gym teacher, Mr. S. Apparently, Mr. S. had been sleeping with one of his students and it was no large leap to assume that he’d committed murder to keep his secrets hidden. I allowed Mr. S. to go to prison for my crimes because he was already a bad man and I wanted to continue killing.

Years later, I ran into someone I went to school with – whom time remembers as friends but I doubt we had spoken a word to one another. I learned from them that shortly after his imprisonment, Mr. S. committed suicide upon learning that the girl he’d raped was pregnant. That girl later gave birth to a baby boy whom she gave up for adoption.

When I was thirty, I ran into a young boy who looked familiar in a way I couldn’t place. Or rather, he ran into me. Stained one of my favourite skirts and honestly, if he were ten years older, I likely would have killed him for that. But I didn’t because even I have my lines I will never cross. But he was sweet and he apologized so how could I resist letting him live? His parents, on the other hand, are a couple I deeply regret letting seeing the sunrise.

They were rude and spoke in harsh words but any attempt at logic was met with force. We were in too public a place, I couldn’t kill them, but I wanted to. I imagined slicing their sternum open and peeling their skin like a banana until all their organs fell out.

I followed them for a few days before I followed them all the way to the airport and I lost my chance.

Sometimes I would wonder what happened to that little boy.

I was thinking about those two stories this week. In all likelihood, they have nothing to do with each other but there’s just the slightest chance that fate keeps people together – keeps bringing them back into your circle even when you don’t realize it.

Casey was essentially a gift from my husband but she is one of the best things to ever happen to me. And on top of that, she brought me closer to my sister and some closure with my mother. I never knew how much I was missing her until I met her.

Casey has a brother. A half-brother, actually. They share a mother. He had left home before she murdered their parents and had fleeting contact with him before that. She saw him on the local news the other day. He was running a centre for at-risk youth and was promoting his facility. At her insistence, we went to find him so she could see if her big brother was really all right.

I should blame her for keeping family secrets but I understand. Some stories are too painful to mention.

He was over the moon to find out his sister was alive. He’d heard of the death of their parents but hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral for reasons he didn’t have to mention. The two of them reconnected and while Casey has been omitting a lot of the details, she seems lighter. Talking with her big brother, even if she can’t be completely honest, has brought back an airiness to her walk.

I can’t believe she’s seventeen, nearly eighteen, now. The same age I was when first started. Her brother – Jonah – is about ten years older than her.

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the three stories are a coincidence. The child born in the scandal of my first kill. The young boy deserving of a better life. The young man in front of me trying to change the world he grew up in. They’re three completely different people.

But I can’t help but wonder.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

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Author Natasha Alterici Picks Favourites

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