‘Don’t worry, Lara, I’m used to it. I’ll guide you through the journey.’ Ugh. Journey. It’s not a journey unless you’re going from physical place A to physical place B. Which I guess he is, in a way.
He chooses to use a spot on his arm, underneath a tattoo of what looks suspiciously like a dream catcher. I guess be grateful it’s not a Chinese symbol? Matches are produced, and he lights two, holding them against the sole of my left foot. The sensation is hot but not painful – clearly a sign that I’m in need of a proper pedicure. Then he applies the liquid.
‘Lie down,’ he instructs. ‘Wait a few minutes and breathe.’ I gaze up at the night sky, watching him burn his own skin out of the corner of one eye. I hear him exhale and he lies down next to me. ‘If you need to be sick, just tell me and I’ll roll you over. Good thing there’s a lake.’ Then he laughs for what seems like an age, before falling silent. We stay there in the dark, and wait. I don’t know how long we’re lying there like that. I feel warmth creeping over me, a sense of comfort seeping through my body, as though I’m being embraced by my surroundings, held by the wind.
‘I feel it,’ I whisper, and turn towards him. Andrew has his eyes closed and he’s moaning softly. I decide I don’t want to move. I don’t want to stop the connection I feel to everything around me. The constant chatter in my head goes silent and only my heartbeat can be heard. I wonder if Andrew can hear it too. Slow and steady. Pulsing through my skin. I feel an animal brush past my fingers and look down. It’s his hand, linking with mine. Solidarity. A kind of kinship. And it feels nice.
NO.
I roll over and use the power of our entwined hands to push him into the water. His body is limp from relaxation and I barely have to apply force, which is handy because I feel woozy as hell. As he moves through the air, his body uncurling, our eyes lock onto each other and he comes out of his reverie for a second. His face twists into surprise and his mouth opens wide as if he’s about to cry out. But it isn’t enough. The wine and the frog juice have done their work and he falls head first into the pond. I sit up on the deck and kick my foot into the water, pushing his head down as I hold onto the edge of the wood to apply pressure. I can see my toenails glint in the moonlight. Though his own feet kick for a brief moment, there’s remarkably little splashing before he goes limp and the water becomes calm again. I don’t know how long it takes but it feels like I’m watching it from a distance so I bend over and stare down at the body in the water, looking for any sign of life. It’s probably not advisable to commit murder whilst under the influence of an untested amphibian drug. Sloppy really. But you work with what you have in this life.
When I’m sure he isn’t going to burst out of the water, as is law in most horror movies, I lean into the pond and run my hand around his neck. I splash my face and then I stand up, put my shoes back on, pull a towel out of my bag and wipe down the deck, leaving the bottle and one vial of the serum. The rest of the detritus goes into a plastic bag. I grab his phone, which I’d seen him unlock with his code being his birthday （even hippies have iPhones）， and delete our most recent messages. I’d been careful not to be specific about our plans over text, but he’d mentioned our meet-up and I don’t want any questions. I survey the scene, as Andrew floats behind me, using the torch device on my phone and I’m satisfied it all looks good. It looks accidental. It looks tragic but not suspicious, the perfect balance.
I take my mug back to the kitchen, clumsily wash and dry it and put it back in the cupboard. Then I slip out of the centre, pull my hoodie over my head and walk purposefully towards the main road where an Uber is waiting for me. I stop for a second on the road and look round, with an eerie feeling that someone is behind me. But the drugs are making me sense things which might not be there, and I shake the feeling off. The car weaves through the quiet back streets before it hits the main roads full of Saturday-night revellers out in force, the figures spinning and blurring as we go. The whole way back, I breathe deeply out of the window to steady myself, and twist the beads on the necklace I’d removed from Andrew’s neck as he lay in the water. Another keepsake, I suppose. It was an affectation really, something taken from movies about serial killers. But they were mainly lonely men doing it for sexual kicks and I am doing this with an end in mind. And not one that ends with my mugshot flashed across a Channel 5 show about sexy murderers.
I get out of the cab a good ten minutes away from my flat and dump the bag with the towels and gloves in a bin. I pause and hold my breath for a second, feeling like I can’t get enough air in my lungs, before deciding that I’d allow myself the rest of the walk back to feel sad. For precisely nine minutes I let tears stream down my face, and endure the regret which floods my thoughts. As I turn the key in my door, I rub my eyes with my sleeve and shake my head. Enough. A glass of wine and two episodes of Golden Girls later, I feel as if the drug has subsided enough for me to be able to sleep. The regret I’d felt on my walk home passes through my system in a considerately hasty fashion, and my last thought before I sleep is not about my sweet cousin, now face down in a muddy pond. As I tuck the bottom of the duvet under my feet and prop a pillow under one thigh at a very specific angle in order to get comfy, my second to last thought is that I’d take myself out for a nice brunch the next day. I drop off deciding whether I’d follow that with a pedicure, just to get rid of any frog paste remnants. Self-care is the latest consumerist trend pushed at women wrapped up as empowerment. But that doesn’t mean it’s not nice. And after all, it’s important to look after yourself after a hard week at work.