'Why did you take such a time to come?'
'I had to put my affairs in order. Otherwise there would have been chaos. When I was gone.'
'You're leaving?'
He looked into her, the muscles of his face ruffled by anticipation.
'I hope so.'
'Where to?'
Still she didn't guess what had brought him to the house, his affairs neatened, his wife unknowingly asked forgiveness of as she slept, all channels of escape closed, all contradictions laid to rest.
Still she didn't guess he'd come to die.
'I'm reduced by you, J. Reduced to nothing. And there is nowhere for me to go. Do you follow?'
'No.'
'I cannot live without you,' he said. The cliché was unpardonable. Could he not have found a better way to say it? She almost laughed, it was so trite.
But he hadn't finished.
'— and I certainly can't live with you.' Abruptly, the tone changed. 'Because you revolt me, woman, your whole being disgusts me.'
'So?' she asked, softly.
'So...' He was tender again and she began to understand. '... kill me.'
It was grotesque. The glittering eyes were steady on her.
'It's what I want,' he said. 'Believe me, It's all I want in the world. Kill me, however you please. I'll go without resistance, without complaint.'
She remembered the old joke. Masochist to Sadist: Hurt me! For God's sake, hurt me! Sadist to Masochist: No.
'And if I refuse?' she said.
'You can't refuse. I'm loathsome.'
'But I don't hate you, Titus.'
'You should. I'm weak. I'm useless to you. I taught you nothing.'
'You taught me a great deal. I can control myself now.'
'Lyndon's death was controlled, was it?'
'Certainly.'
'It looked a little excessive to me.'
'He got everything he deserved.'
'Give me what I deserve, then, in my turn. I've locked you up. I've rejected you when you needed me. Punish me for it.'
'I survived.'
'J!'
Even in this extremity he couldn't call her by her full name.
'Please to God. Please to God. I need only this one thing from you. Do it out of whatever motive you have in you. Compassion, or contempt, or love. But do it, please do it.'
'No,' she said.
He crossed the room suddenly, and slapped her, very hard.
'Lyndon said you were a whore. He was right; you are. Gutter slut, nothing better.'
He walked away, turned, walked back, hit her again, faster, harder, and again, six or seven times, backwards and forwards.
Then he stopped, panting.
'You want money?' Bargains now. Blows, then bargains. She was seeing him twisted through tears of shock, which she was unable to prevent.
'Do you want money?' he said again.
'What do you think?'
He didn't hear her sarcasm, and began to scatter notes around her feet, dozens and dozens of them, like offerings around the Statue of the Virgin.
'Anything you want,' he said, 'Jacqueline.'
In her belly she felt something close to pain as the urge to kill him found birth, but she resisted it. It was playing into his hands, becoming the instrument of his will: powerless. Usage again; that's all she ever got. She had been bred like a cow, to give a certain supply. Of care to husbands, of milk to babies, of death to old men. And, like a cow, she was expected to be compliant with every demand made of her, when ever the call came. Well, not this time.
She went to the door.
'Where are you going?'
She reached for the key. 'Your death is your own business, not mine,' she said.
He ran at her before she could unlock the door, and the blow — in its force, in its malice — was totally unexpected.
'Bitch!' he shrieked, a hail of blows coming fast upon the first.
In her stomach, the thing that wanted to kill grew a little larger.
He had his fingers tangled in her hair, and pulled her back into the room, shouting obscenities at her, an endless stream of them, as though he'd opened a dam full of sewer-water on her. This was just another way for him to get what he wanted she told herself, if you succumb to this you've lost: he's just manipulating you. Still the words came: the same dirty words that had been thrown at generations of unsubmissive women. Whore; heretic; cunt; bitch; monster.
Yes, she was that.
Yes, she thought: monster I am.
The thought made it easy. She turned. He knew what she intended even before she looked at him. He dropped his hands from her head. Her anger was already in her throat coming out of her — crossing the air between them.
Monster he calls me: monster I am.
I do this for myself, not for him. Never for him. For myself!
He gasped as her will touched him, and the glittering eyes stopped glittering for a moment, the will to die became the will to survive, all too late of course, and he roared. She heard answering shouts, steps, threats on the stairs. They would be in the room in a matter of moments.
'You are an animal,' she said.
'No,' he said, certain even now that his place was in command.
'You don't exist,' she said, advancing on him. 'They'll never find the part that was Titus. Titus is gone. The rest is just —'
The pain was terrible. It stopped even a voice coming out from him. Or was that her again, changing his throat, his palate, his very head? She was unlocking the plates of his skull, and reorganizing him.
No, he wanted to say, this isn't the subtle ritual I had planned. I wanted to die folded into you, I wanted to go with my mouth clamped to yours, cooling in you as I died. This is not the way I want it.
No. No. No.
They were at the door, the men who'd kept her here, beating on it. She had no fear of them, of course, except that they might spoil her handiwork before the final touches were added to it.
Someone was hurling themselves at the door now. Wood splintered: the door was flung open. The two men were both armed. They pointed their weapons at her, steady-handed.
'Mr Pettifer?' said the younger man. In the corner of the room, under the table, Pettifer's eyes shone.
'Mr Pettifer?' he said again, forgetting the woman. Pettifer shook his snouted head. Don't come any closer, please, he thought.
The man crouched down and stared under the table at the disgusting beast that was squatting there; bloody from its transformation, but alive. She had killed his nerves: he felt no pain. He just survived, his hands knotted into paws, his legs scooped up around his back, knees broken so he had the look of a four-legged crab, his brain exposed, his eyes lidless, lower jaw broken and swept up over his top jaw like a bulldog, ears torn off, spine
