Red by Jo Cameron-Symes
Tomorrow, I shall paint my room red. At the moment, my bedroom is a drab beige colour. It wasn’t my original choice, it was my husband’s. He always preferred colours to be discrete and bland. I always preferred a sense of the dramatic in my decor. But now, he wasn’t here, he had left me all alone, so I could make these decisions for myself. The prospect excited me, I finally felt free.
I walked around the DIY store this afternoon unsure of what I was looking for. I found a paint chart and decided on the most vivid shade of crimson red with a hint of burgundy.
“Wow, that colour is quite something!” the shop assistant said. “Are you painting a chimney breast or something? It seems a bit strong for a feature wall!”
“I’m painting my bedroom in it,” I replied, sniffily.
“Wow! Ok, you must really like strong colours then! My husband would throw a fit if I decorated a room in that colour!”
“Poor you,” I replied. “I’m lucky enough now that I can decorate my house exactly the way I want to, without anyone moaning at me!”
“Divorced are you?” she asked me.
“Separated,” I replied, then took my paint and walked out of the store. I turned back to see if she was looking at me but she was busy talking to the next customer. I was all forgotten now. Good, I thought.
I sighed as I looked at our wedding photo on the mantelpiece. When did I last look that happy, was it really on my wedding day sixteen years ago? We had married young, in our early twenties. We were the first in our group of friends to get married, the others following a decade or so later. People said we were mad to get married at twenty two but we loved each other and Will’s parents were quite religious, so it made sense to us at the time. We managed through the scrape of our teeth to buy our first flat together - which we sold six years later to buy this house. Our ‘forever home,’ we called it.
The house was quiet now. So much quieter than it had been when Will was here. He couldn’t help but make a lot of noise. He was always whistling, clanging around in the kitchen or the garage. He was a big man, who used his physical bulk to get from place to place, taking anything in his way with him. He wasn’t violent though by any means. He’d been called a gentle giant more than once by his mother, though that wasn’t exactly true as she’d never seen him in a kitchen!
My best friend Michelle said that Will was far from a gentle giant! I’d confided in her recently that things were not going well between Will and I.
“That’s awful!” she said. “But you always look so happy together!”
“In public,” I replied. “Things just aren’t the same anymore.”
“Isn’t that normal, though? Long term relationships always have fallow times, don’t they?” she said sympathetically.
“I guess, but it seems more than that, it feels stale somehow and I don’t know what I can do to revive it,” I said, and wiped a tear that fell down my face.
“Oh, don’t cry, Rachel. It’ll all be alright, don’t worry,” she said, as she hugged me.
I decided to walk up to the bedroom. I had a flashback to yesterday, when I stood at the bedroom door and saw Will and Michelle in bed together. They were naked and asleep, entwined within one another. It was obvious what had happened. What had been happening, for God knows how long. I turned away, then walked calmly downstairs.
I went into the garage and found what I needed. A monkey wrench, I think it was called - something that Will regularly clanged around. I was icily calm and silently approached the sleeping pair. I decided to take Will down first, he was the strongest. It only took two blows to silence him, but that woke Michelle who started to scream hysterically so I acted fast then brought her down too, with several fast strikes to her skull.
There was an awful mess. Dark streaks of red covered the whole bedroom. I wrapped the bodies in bed sheets then waited till darkness and put them in the boot of my car. This was the hardest part especially with Will, as he was so heavy. I tied bricks with rope around the bodies and then drove out to the reservoir and dumped them there.
The clean up took forever. I would have to get a new bed and carpet. I would need to dump the stained furniture and carpet in the countryside somewhere, I couldn’t risk being caught on the cameras at the local tip.
I had already begun the social media sympathy drive on Facebook, saying Will and Michelle had run off together and I was now all alone. Hundreds of messages poured in expressing their sympathies.
There were odd streaks and splashes of blood on the wall too. I’d tried removing them with bleach but thought that I may as well cover them up completely with a new coat of red paint. I used a screwdriver to prise open the lid. It revealed a small lake of dark, deep, crimson red, like the colour of the blood that had pooled on the mattress.
I walked around the DIY store this afternoon unsure of what I was looking for. I found a paint chart and decided on the most vivid shade of crimson red with a hint of burgundy.
“Wow, that colour is quite something!” the shop assistant said. “Are you painting a chimney breast or something? It seems a bit strong for a feature wall!”
“I’m painting my bedroom in it,” I replied, sniffily.
“Wow! Ok, you must really like strong colours then! My husband would throw a fit if I decorated a room in that colour!”
“Poor you,” I replied. “I’m lucky enough now that I can decorate my house exactly the way I want to, without anyone moaning at me!”
“Divorced are you?” she asked me.
“Separated,” I replied, then took my paint and walked out of the store. I turned back to see if she was looking at me but she was busy talking to the next customer. I was all forgotten now. Good, I thought.
I sighed as I looked at our wedding photo on the mantelpiece. When did I last look that happy, was it really on my wedding day sixteen years ago? We had married young, in our early twenties. We were the first in our group of friends to get married, the others following a decade or so later. People said we were mad to get married at twenty two but we loved each other and Will’s parents were quite religious, so it made sense to us at the time. We managed through the scrape of our teeth to buy our first flat together - which we sold six years later to buy this house. Our ‘forever home,’ we called it.
The house was quiet now. So much quieter than it had been when Will was here. He couldn’t help but make a lot of noise. He was always whistling, clanging around in the kitchen or the garage. He was a big man, who used his physical bulk to get from place to place, taking anything in his way with him. He wasn’t violent though by any means. He’d been called a gentle giant more than once by his mother, though that wasn’t exactly true as she’d never seen him in a kitchen!
My best friend Michelle said that Will was far from a gentle giant! I’d confided in her recently that things were not going well between Will and I.
“That’s awful!” she said. “But you always look so happy together!”
“In public,” I replied. “Things just aren’t the same anymore.”
“Isn’t that normal, though? Long term relationships always have fallow times, don’t they?” she said sympathetically.
“I guess, but it seems more than that, it feels stale somehow and I don’t know what I can do to revive it,” I said, and wiped a tear that fell down my face.
“Oh, don’t cry, Rachel. It’ll all be alright, don’t worry,” she said, as she hugged me.
I decided to walk up to the bedroom. I had a flashback to yesterday, when I stood at the bedroom door and saw Will and Michelle in bed together. They were naked and asleep, entwined within one another. It was obvious what had happened. What had been happening, for God knows how long. I turned away, then walked calmly downstairs.
I went into the garage and found what I needed. A monkey wrench, I think it was called - something that Will regularly clanged around. I was icily calm and silently approached the sleeping pair. I decided to take Will down first, he was the strongest. It only took two blows to silence him, but that woke Michelle who started to scream hysterically so I acted fast then brought her down too, with several fast strikes to her skull.
There was an awful mess. Dark streaks of red covered the whole bedroom. I wrapped the bodies in bed sheets then waited till darkness and put them in the boot of my car. This was the hardest part especially with Will, as he was so heavy. I tied bricks with rope around the bodies and then drove out to the reservoir and dumped them there.
The clean up took forever. I would have to get a new bed and carpet. I would need to dump the stained furniture and carpet in the countryside somewhere, I couldn’t risk being caught on the cameras at the local tip.
I had already begun the social media sympathy drive on Facebook, saying Will and Michelle had run off together and I was now all alone. Hundreds of messages poured in expressing their sympathies.
There were odd streaks and splashes of blood on the wall too. I’d tried removing them with bleach but thought that I may as well cover them up completely with a new coat of red paint. I used a screwdriver to prise open the lid. It revealed a small lake of dark, deep, crimson red, like the colour of the blood that had pooled on the mattress.
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