“Definitely dead,” Minnie muttered to herself, pulling off her sweatshirt and making it into a ball. Carelessly, she threw it across the basement floor and kicked off her blood-sodden shoes.
She left the child behind to make the phone call and hurried up the wooden steps leading to the main house.
It was huge and very grand. She marvelled at the lavishly decorated interior as she padded through the warm, high-ceilinged corridors and leisurely mused the colourful array of family photographs mounted on the walls. She slung the canvas travel bag that she had left by the front door over her shoulder and headed off up the wide staircase towards the pristine marble bathroom.
Minnie showered, scrubbing the blood stains out of her skin and massaging sweet-smelling shampoo into her choppy blonde hair. The warm water sloshing down against her back felt like heaven. She could’ve stood there forever.
But alas, as always, Minnie had shit to do.
With a wistful sigh, the woman clambered out of the shower stall and helped herself to a thick, fluffy towel from the cupboard. She towelled herself dry, then used it to parcel up her old, bloody clothes.
A few moments later, Minnie was plodding back downstairs, dressed in clean clothes and already feeling nostalgic for the rusty taste of blood on the tip of her tongue.
It had not always been in her nature to enjoy the kill. There was a time, long ago, when violence and brutality were barely even words in her vocabulary.
But then, violence and brutality became essential.
And then, after some time, it became a treat.
Flo, her youngest daughter, was sitting at an antique dining table in the kitchen, casually swinging her skinny legs as she chomped on a bowl of brightly coloured cereal and watched YouTube videos on her iPad.
Minnie dumped the bloody parcel of clothes on the floor and wandered over to the kitchen cupboards. She browsed their contents, noticing the vast amount of crisps, sweets, chocolates, and biscuits.
“Must’ve had grandkids,” Flo commented, not looking up from her iPad.
“Took the words out of my mouth,” Minnie replied cheerfully as she helped herself to a bag of sugary doughnuts.
They heard the click of the front door then. Minnie felt her body tense as she pricked her ears to listen to it swing open. Images of flashing blue lights and cop cars sprang to mind and made fear boil in the pit of her stomach.
“Nachos,” called a low, familiar voice. Instantly, Minnie relaxed.
Nachos was the code word.
If no one said nachos, it was time to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible.
“Kitchen,” Minnie called back, licking sugar from the soft cake. She leaned against the kitchen counter and glanced at a small, free-standing calendar propped up on the side. Apart from the messy scrawl of a dentist and a hairdresser appointment, the whole thing was blank. Poor old bat, hoarding treats for selfish grandkids that probably never even gave her a second thought.
“We’re home,” called Ronnie in a sing-songy voice, a bright grin lighting up his handsome face. He tossed his head, thick brown shag of hair constantly sliding into his piercing blue eyes. “Who wants chicken?” he chimed, dumping three large KFC carrier bags on the top of the dining table.
“Me, I’m fucking starving,” said Flo, pushing away the vibrantly coloured bowl of cereal with a look of revulsion. Just as she reached a small arm to one of the bags, the carrier was snatched out of her reach by her older brother.
“Lloyd!” she groaned, furrowing her brown as she folded her little arms across her chest. “Come on, man.”
“Come on, man,” mimicked Lloyd, his piggy eyes already undressing the bucket of fried chicken in his hands. “Buyer’s rights, little sister,” he informed Flo solemnly.
Flo scoffed and rolled her eyes, “better go downstairs and give it to Grandma then.”
Stella, the next oldest, laughed shrilly as she sat down and tucked her knees up beneath her chin as she had always had a habit of doing. “I highly doubt she needs a fucking chicken bucket where she’s going.”
Lloyd was already stuffing his face with a chicken thigh, the juices dribbling down his fat, spotty chin as he frantically chomped. Zach, the eldest sibling, glared at his younger brother in revulsion and smacked him hard across the back of the head.
“Christ, you eat like an animal,” he said scathingly, as he sat down at the table beside him, “it’s enough to put anyone off their dinner.”
Flo smirked, “he doesn’t even need to be eating to put you off your dinner.”
“Shut up, you little bitch,” growled Lloyd.
“What you gonna do, squash me with your fat arse?”
As the children bickered in their usual merry way over dinner, Ronnie and Minnie were both in the kitchen, entwined in a deep, warm embrace. She nestled her head against his shoulder, inhaling the warmth of his body and the hard muscle on his chest as if it were a drug. He twirled a strand of her damp hair around his finger and felt the perfect curve of her hip.
“After dinner, you better take the boys and get rid of the body,” said Minnie, “I’ll have a little snoop. Make double sure we aren’t going to have any surprise visitors popping around unexpectedly…”
Ronnie pulled away and glanced around at the huge, open-plan kitchen. “It seems likely,” he said grimly, “maybe it’d be better if we head off tonight. Get a hotel.”
Over the years, Minnie and Ronnie had developed razor-sharp skills of inference. They could sniff out situations like a pair of trained police dogs.
Houses like these; expensive, pristinely clean and tidy, but full of framed photos and child-paraphernalia always belonged to rich old people with huge families. Like a widower whose friends with all the neighbours and has a constant stream of snot-nosed grandkids visiting most days.
Exactly the kind of house where sticking around for too long was as good an idea as drinking a gallon of milk on a hot day.
Minnie
