‘Safe word?’ he says.
‘You always need a safe word, boatman. Safety is paramount.’
He smiles and says, ‘Be gentle with me, Molly.’
I take the paracord from my pocket and loop it around the bed posts and tie knots around his wrists in the formation I’ve practised thirty times before. They’re loose and comfortable, the kind of thing you find in a Bondage for Beginners kit. Until, that is, you pull on them.
‘We can’t tell anyone about this,’ I say, pushing my index finger to my lips and then dragging it across my lip, sliding my finger inside my mouth for a moment.
‘Not a soul,’ says Scott, trying to see me through the robe cord blindfold.
He is aroused.
I am aroused.
I take an ice cube from his whisky glass and run it down his chest and his navel, and then up to his neck and over his Adam’s apple. I drag it across his lips and then I place it gently inside his mouth.
I remove a new pair of lace panties – paid for with cash – from the Ziploc bag inside my pocket, and I drag them lightly over his face and over his thighs, and then over his groin. He moans and starts to squirm. The paracord hand-ties tighten around his wrists. It’s standard 550 paracord. It can hold five hundred and fifty pounds of weight. I’d say Scott weighs two hundred and twenty.
I push the panties across his lips and then I ball them up and push them inside his mouth.
He groans with anticipation.
I zip up my hazmat costume and pull the Nixon mask over my face and then I take my four-inch fixed-blade NYC-legal knife from my pocket.
And I drag the blade firmly across his throat.
Chapter 37
Scott tenses up on the bed.
It’s a horrible scene.
He is writhing, his eyes still covered, the panties still bunched in his mouth. The bed is red. Gurgling noises. The towels are red. I pick up a pillow and hold it to his neck and face. To stifle the noises, but also to give him some privacy in his final moments, some dignity. It takes minutes, just as it did with KT. It would be better if these things took seconds the way they do in movies, but in truth it’s an ordeal for all concerned.
The amount of blood is considerable but I make an effort not to get too much on my costume or hands. After five minutes he is still, no pulse, but there’s so much blood soaking into the towels, pooling on the sheets, that I have to arch my body to avoid it.
When it’s over I step back and check the peephole. Nobody coming. In a hotel like this the rooms are extremely well soundproofed. This isn’t a converted late-nineteenth-century building, it’s purpose-built. Not a soul heard his muffled noises, his screams of help and please and Violet and mommy.
I check the time on the alarm clock and I’m two minutes ahead of schedule. I check the hall is clear and then I leave, careful to place the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. The room is fully paid for three days. With any luck, he’ll be discovered when I’m already safely back in my flat in Camden living my same old predictable life.
You don’t need a keycard to take a hotel lift down, only up. I press the button and the relief is overwhelming when the lift arrives and is empty. Some blood-splatter on my hazmat suit but it looks like red paint. It looks like I applied it. I ride down to the third floor and then it stops. My breathing quickens. A woman in a tiger-print mini-skirt steps in, her face painted to look like it’s been ripped open, a zip revealing the fake flesh below.
‘Oh, I love your outfit,’ she says, staring forwards as the doors close. ‘Point Break? So practical as well, with the cold and all.’
We arrive at the ground floor.
‘Happy Halloween,’ I say in my best New Jersey accent.
And then I’m out on the street. I walk away from the hotel, west, back towards the Broadway Luxe cinema, and the exhilaration is grotesque. I am leaving that scene. Him. There. His wrists tied to the bed so firmly that his circulation would be cut off if he still had any.
I cross Sixth and walk on.
A mob of five zombies lift their arms in front of them and stagger towards me.
I go two blocks the wrong way then double back to the side street and the dumpster. Three minutes to make sure nobody followed me. Then I climb up inside and crouch down on the nest of boxes. I carefully remove my hazmat outfit and load it into a black garbage bag, and then place that into another bag full of food waste. I nestle the bag inside a bag under a dozen other identical bags. I collect my Scream outfit and put it back on. Then I use the boxes to help me climb back up to the window ledge, constantly vigilant for lovers sneaking down here to make out or men needing to relieve themselves. I check through the dirty, frosted glass to make sure the third stall is unoccupied. And then I push the window up gently and heave myself, my boot getting purchase on the lip of a line of bricks, and I step down on to the toilet seat. Quietly. I screw the window tight again with my multi-tool and then I remove my blue gloves and stow them inside my pocket. I considered cutting them into small pieces with the scissors on my multi-tool and flushing them down the toilet, but there’s a risk it’d block. So I stow them and flush and open the door.