"I don't want your goddamn food, Brian!" Michelle said. Brian was trying to force her to eat, but Michelle refused no matter what. It was already evening, and the tension between them had reached its peak. Brian was waiting for nightfall. Once it was dark, he would go to get rid of Theo's body—his plan was already set in his mind.
"If you don't want to eat, then don't, damn it!" he said, storming back into the house. The smell of the corpse was slowly creeping up from the basement, and Michelle's presence there was becoming unbearable.
Earlier that morning, after a heated argument between them, Brian had gone out shopping. He bought exact replacements for every item he had been forced to throw away on the day he killed Theo—the ones stained with blood. Curtains, a rug, the broken vase. The only thing he couldn't find was the chair, but that didn't matter much. The empty feeling in the house after those things were gone was now fixed—it looked just like before. In the back of his mind, he was also thinking about his daughter. He didn't know how Scarlett was doing with her.
"Hey, Scar! Everything okay?" he asked.
Scarlett hadn't been able to answer right away because Love was crying; she had only just picked up the phone.
"Yeah, yeah, she's just crying a little. I'll change her diaper. Nothing important," she replied.
"Do you know how to change it?" Brian asked again. Scarlett stayed silent for a moment, and in the background, he heard her saying, "Don't cry, sweetheart, I'm changing it right now."
"I know, I know. But I wanna ask you something—when will you be back, roughly?"
"I'll try to get there as soon as possible, don't worry."
The darker it got, the more Brian's tension grew. Deep down, a part of him didn't want the moment to come at all; he couldn't figure out what to do or what would happen. He had a plan in mind: to dump part of Theo at a construction site and the other part into the East River. But doing this would take a long time and at the same time be very dangerous. Beyond the risk of being caught, he had no warehouse or any other place to do it. He would have to do it in Michelle's house, which meant too much noise and blood everywhere. Again, he was sitting on the edge of the couch, his hands on his head, thinking. His time was running out. He had to move fast. Just as he was thinking, Theo's phone rang; the caller's name was Harry.
Brian immediately went down to the basement and showed Michelle the phone.
"Who's Harry?" Michelle was unresponsive and silent. Brian removed the tape from her mouth and asked again, but this time more harshly.
"WHO IS HARRY?" He said it strongly without raising his voice too much.
"I don't know, you dickhead! If I knew, I'd tell you, wouldn't I?!" Michelle replied. For some reason, she wasn't afraid of Brian. She thought Brian loved her, so she was sure he wouldn't hurt her. But she realized she was wrong when Brian slapped her hard.
"I SAID WHO?!" Brian asked again, this time raising his voice.
"I swear I don't know!" Michelle shouted back.
"I'm going to answer the phone and you're going to respond. If you say anything wrong or anything suspicious, I'll kill you!"
"You wouldn't fucking surprise me!" said Michelle and told Brian to put the phone to her ear.
"Hey?"
"Hey honey, what took you so long?" a woman's voice said. Michelle suddenly straightened up and asked, "Who the hell are you?"
"Who the hell are you? Ohhh… are you his mother, Irene?" said the woman's voice from the phone.
"What Irene? I'm Michelle, his girlfriend." The moment Michelle said that, the call ended. Michelle froze for a moment, realizing Theo had cheated on her.
"Ooops, look what have fucking got you," said Brian with a smile. Michelle was thinking about her dead lover's cheating.
"Open the messages with Harry!" Brian ordered. Maybe he enjoyed this, because she immediately opened them and started reading them out loud.
"Hey, u comin over?"
"Can't babe, Michelle still awake, 😢"
He also read the messages from other days, and at the same time Brian saw the nude photos they had sent each other. He deliberately showed them to Michelle, and he really enjoyed seeing her suffer from it.
"Aaaaaaahhhh!" Michelle screamed suddenly. "I'll fuck your corpse, you son of a bitch!" she shouted, looking at Theo's body, and then she started crying.
Brian stood up, took a couple of steps back, and sat down on the stairs leading to the basement. They were just staring at each other, saying nothing.
"If you could go back, would you leave us again?" Brian asked. He was very tense while asking, and deep down he wished Michelle would be regretful.
"Brian, I cried every day for leaving you, I cursed myself every day. Every day I wondered, if I came back, would you forgive me? But then I realized our story was over. What made me regretful was guilt, not love. Leaving Love without a mother tore me apart. That's why I chose to stay."
Brian was thinking. He kept staring into Michelle's eyes, cursing her inside his head. Because the woman in front of him had put him in situations he wouldn't even bother explaining. He had even become a killer—what more could happen?
"Why don't I feel regret for killing Theo?" Brian asked from where he was sitting. He had broken eye contact with Michelle and was looking down at the floor.
"W-what?" Michelle asked. "You're not regretful?"
"I'm not, not at all."
Scarlett, while taking care of Love, was experiencing one of the happiest moments of her recent life—maybe the happiest in the last ten years. The eight-month-old girl had really warmed up to her; they had spent a full day laughing and having fun together. At first, Love had been a little shy and cranky. But later, with Scarlett's warm attitude, playing with her, making her laugh, the two had a very joyful day. But it was already 10 PM, and even if Scarlett didn't have anything important to do tomorrow, she was worried about Brian being so late. After the experience she had today, her own words from the other day finally made sense: "The part of me I lost is you two," which she had said while high. It was as if the lover she had lost ten years ago and the baby in her belly had completely returned in different bodies and with different feelings. The lover she was talking about this time was more loving, away from drugs, and knew what he was doing. The unborn baby in her belly was now eight months old, having fun with her and bringing back the feeling of being a mother she had lost ten years ago.
Brian was still thinking hard, unable to figure out a plan, unable to decide how to get rid of the body. He went down to the basement and first carried Michelle, then Theo, into the living room. How was he going to get Theo's rug-wrapped body and tied-up Michelle into the car? There weren't many people on the streets, but what if the police stopped him, or someone saw and called the cops?
He removed the tape from Michelle's mouth and said, "In a minute, your hands and feet will be untied, and we'll go outside. You'll get into the car first, and then I'll come out like I'm Theo, carrying the rug somewhere. Got it?"
"You'll get caught, you sick son of a bitch," Michelle snapped.
"You're going to make sure I don't get caught. We'll handle this together. For Love," said Brian.
"Fuck off. Do you really think after all this I can live with you? Or let Love live with you? You're a goddamn killer, Brian, and when I get out of these ropes, I'll either kill you myself or watch you go to prison." Michelle looked very serious. She wasn't afraid; she knew for sure Brian wouldn't kill her.
Brian leaned over her and slapped her again, then grabbed her by the back of the neck with his right hand and pulled her face close to his. He locked his eyes on hers. "Do you think I don't want to kill you? Since the moment you left, I've hated you. I've dreamed of killing you. I used to be someone who enjoyed life, who was happy. YOU FUCKED UP MY LIFE AND NOW YOU'RE ACTING LIKE I'M THE ONLY ONE TO BLAME." He slapped her again, harder this time. Michelle had backed up and was looking at Brian in shock. He stood up, took the picture from the wall, and smashed it repeatedly on the kitchen counter while shouting "Aaah!" with each hit until it was in pieces. Then he stopped, both his trembling hands on the kitchen counter.
"She ain't left me no more choice. I've tried. I've tried for what's best. Bu-bu-but she's every reason why I'm like this." Then he turned his eyes to Michelle. "Yo-you… you've made me a pervert, a stalker, a goddamn killer. You don't get to get away with it that easily. You're gonna die, Michelle. Even if it means I lose every goodness within me, you're gonna fucking die." Brian was saying all this inside his head. He didn't break eye contact with Michelle, searching for ways to carry out his plan in his mind.