Lady KillerBy Monika McGreal Viola
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The killing ritual was always the same — spot one and, overcome by hatred and disgust, dash to the bookcase for a tome thick enough, squint her eyes and slam the book against the wall. In this way, she killed it swiftly, more humanely, for both involved.
The removal of the splattered remains was what terrified her. After the book fell, and the creature’s legs and body were pressed flat against the wall, she couldn’t bring herself to remove the specimen: what if she scooped it up in a tissue and felt the outline of its fractured body? True, it was less than ideal to have her apartment encrusted with dead arachnids and leggy insects — but they were dead, mummified, relics. Relish seeing them, she did not, but she was satisfied in the knowledge that they could no longer quick-step into her path. The deceased creepy-crawlers were gruesome, but controlled.
She lived in a big city, as luck would have it, and insect-infested apartments were an everyday part of life. Rightly so, her collection — her décor -- inhibited her social life; she certainly didn’t have the freedom to invite friends or dates to her home. And also, there was the problem of the fallen books, a quandary to which she gave considerable thought. Although her apartment was lined with books — specifically those once belonging to her mother — these held much in the way of sentimental value and were not to be used in the sport of bug squelching. She began to purchase throwaway softcovers: cheap thrillers, Harlequin romances, hackneyed best sellers with wonderfully thick spines and filled with pages of useless chatter. These she stacked on their own separate shelf and, when one had served its lethal purpose, swept out the fire escape it went. She always checked first, of course, to ensure no unsuspecting pedestrian strolled below.
One day, while shopping for vegetables, she met a man. They had chanced upon the bin of cauliflower at the same moment, and he offered to hold her plastic bag open while she selected the vegetables of her choice. She was not one to be particular about her cauliflower, but the man appeared so magnanimous as he set down his own shopping basket to assist her, that she took her time with the little white clusters, hemming and hawing as he patiently offered his advice. As they waited on the checkout line, he asked if he might take her to a baseball game, and she accepted.
He took her to the baseball game. And then to dinner, to the farmer’s market on Sunday, and to the opening of the Museum of Furniture Design. She didn’t particularly like the Museum of Furniture Design; she felt it lacked variety. All the chairs seemed to have one leg, and all the tables seemed to be made of colored plastic. She preferred more traditional styles, like white wooden rocking chairs with woven-straw seats. But he explained to her the importance of the modern furniture movement, and she understood after that.
One night, after the movies, the man walked her home while he discussed the gruesome feature they had watched. She didn’t mind violence as a rule, but this particular film contained such a great deal of butchering, slaughtering, and scalping that she had constantly needed to avert her eyes. The hero — who, coincidentally, was also the killer — seemed to derive extreme satisfaction from his work of slicing and dicing people to bits. He smiled serenely, blissfully, as the blood splattered his face. She had been surprised to see the man gazing ardently at the screen, his eyes bulging wide and his lip twitching as he shoveled popcorn into his mouth. He explained to her how intriguing the camera work was and how it manipulated the viewer’s eye and urged her to focus on the camera angles as well. That made the film unique, he continued as they left the theater. That made sense, and she marveled at how the director had managed to capture a bug’s eye view of the world.
At her building, they lingered. He asked if she would invite him in for a cup of coffee. Fearful of what he might think of her and how she lived, she feigned exhaustion. He reminded her that caffeine was the very remedy for tiredness. She argued that she would prefer to tidy up first. He insisted that he didn’t mind. He would not be swayed, and she found herself without an excuse. Now knowing this to be their last date, she looked at him fondly and said she would invite him in for a cup of tea instead, for that was all she had.
Up the flight of stairs to her apartment. On the landing, she lingered. She traced her finger along the banister, dillydallying. She jiggled her key, opened her door, and turned on the light. He said nothing, instead walked straight in and nodded as he looked around, then settled himself on the couch.
Do you have Earl Grey, he asked her. She shook her head no. Only chamomile.
Get some Earl Grey, he said, blind to the dismembered bodies smeared on the walls around him.
After that night, the man began to visit every day. He often brought with him gifts, small tokens of his affection for her. He got her a fancy electric mixer because he said he knew how much she must love to cook. He got her a very expensive pair of Italian knives, which she considered particularly thoughtful; he had himself recommended new ones — it seemed her old ones were inadequate for cutting vegetables — and now, she didn’t have to go to the trouble of choosing them herself. What was wonderful about these gifts was how the man never seemed to need a particular reason to give them. He would arrive at her door with a box in tow, and how romantic it felt to receive gifts on a ‘just because’ basis.
After several months, however, she did begin to worry – as women will do, he chided – that the man was losing interest in her. Although he came to her apartment daily, she had yet to see where he lived. He told her he lived with roommates. She told him it would be nice to meet his roommates, or any of his friends and family. He assured her that she would be fully incorporated into his life.
We can discuss this again in another six months, he said. She marked this on the white desk calendar he had given her, excited to have set a date.
Then there was that one day he said to her,
You’ve got a spider crawling on the wall, mind if I kill it?
No, she said. With the beginnings of a smile on his face, he crept up to the arachnid and banged it with a signed copy of The Blind Assassin. He smashed it again, and again, squishing and twisting the bug into place. Satisfied, he removed a tissue from his coat, wiped the wall clean, examined the tissue, then put it back into his pocket. She stared at the wall. A slight stain was visible; however, it was a marked improvement over the rest of her apartment.
Missed a spot, he said, going to the kitchen. He returned with a roll of paper towels. With a fresh towel, he wiped another bug from the wall, this time one she had killed herself.
Darn thing won’t come off, he said and cleaned yet another section of the wall. This continued until the entire wall was devoid of the bugs she had slain over the years.
The next morning, the man brought over two cups of coffee and a can of paint, and coated the walls a sparkling white.
I left a stain yesterday, he said. She told him she understood. The day after that, he arrived with an exterminator’s gun.
What would you do if I weren’t here? He sprayed until no insect would dare scamper within a hundred meters of the apartment.
What a change! And what an odd sensation to find oneself freed. She often would sit on her couch and stare at the stark white walls. She thought about hanging some art — she had wanted to buy gold-gilded frames and hang reproductions of Giotto’s masterpieces. She loved the classic Italian paintings and had often envisioned traipsing around Florence, staying in pensiones that overlooked the Arno, secretly fancying herself a Miss Honeychurch. How disappointed she was to discover this view to be incorrect. Pre-Renaissance art was passé, he explained to her. The minimalist movement was en vogue at the present. Artwork on the walls would clutter her apartment. She was grateful to have someone like this man in her life, someone willing to tell her when she committed a faux pas.
Then there was also the day when she came home to find her mother’s books stacked in boxes — he had packed them all away. What’s this, she asked. He stood in front of her shelves, placing down navy blue books with a methodical thud. He hummed all the while, and the combination of the two sounds was not unlike the whirring of cicadas on a late spring afternoon.
You’re home early, he scolded. I have a gift for you.
She stared at her bookcases, stacked in alphabetical order.
But those are encyclopedias, she said.
Collector’s edition. He tweaked her nose as he passed by.
My mother’s books, she said. My mother’s books, she said again.
You silly goose, he sighed. After all the trouble I’ve taken to fix everything, he told her.
It would hurt his feelings not to accept such a gift. She supposed her bookcases had been a mess. She supposed she was lucky to have someone who noticed such things.
Still… sometimes… she was overcome by the prickly loneliness of her blindingly unadorned apartment. At night, when the distractions of the day slid away, she had taken to angling her desk lamp toward the wall like a spotlight. Then, she would wiggle her fingers in the path of the light, creating shadows along the walls. She took comfort in these shadowed shapes and soon, every night she fell asleep commanding the black silhouettes as they scampered across her room.
As time traipsed on, the man did more and more for her. No more tedious trips to the outdoor market on Saturdays or the farmers market on Sundays. She had discovered that, despite her earlier ambivalence, cooking seemed to be a passion of hers and thus devoted her time to perfecting the craft. He bought her several cookbooks, and she studied these in the mornings, then attempted to prepare something delicious in the evenings. She wasn’t successful, but he assured her that, with practice, she couldn’t help but improve.
One afternoon, while laying out the ingredients for a sponge cake, she saw a spider crawling on the outside screen of the kitchen window. When was the last time she had met anything like it? From inside her white-walled apartment, she felt an unfamiliar longing. She didn’t like this creature; she knew this to be true by her shuddered cringe. But the fear came from within her, belonged to her. Unclasping the screen at the bottom of the window, she pushed it open half an inch or so. She trembled as the spider slowly made its way through the opening… then returned to her ingredients.
Later that night, the man worked in the living room, installing his latest gift. As he meticulously fastened a one-legged chair to the floor, she heard him curse. She wiped her floury hands on the paisley apron he had bought her earlier in the week.
Stand back, he said. There’s a spider in the house, and I don’t want you upsetting yourself.
He bent down with his face close to the floor, attempting to keep his prey in sight as it crawled in and out of the light flung on the wall by the table lamp. His back was arched high, and his knees stuck out as he crouched. His legs jerked ever so slightly — she never before had noticed how spindly he was. His hair spiked out in all different directions, casting varying peaks of shadow on the walls. His knobby elbows jutted back, ready to spring down in attack. It was his face, however, that fascinated her. Lips curled and twitching and eyebrows arched down, he frowned so fiercely she could barely recognize his features. He looked misshapen, deformed, hideous even, and not unlike…
Overwhelmed with hatred and disgust, she dashed to the bookcase for a tome thick enough. She picked up an encyclopedia, volume ABC. Squinting her eyes, she slammed the book hard against the wall, squishing the man flat. She opened her eyes. She banged again with the book. She did this again, and again, squishing and twisting him into place until he was pressed flat upon the wall. Finally, she stopped, letting the book fall to the floor as she took a deep breath.
She knew the stain would ruin her new white walls. But, truth be told, she had missed the old spots.
The removal of the splattered remains was what terrified her. After the book fell, and the creature’s legs and body were pressed flat against the wall, she couldn’t bring herself to remove the specimen: what if she scooped it up in a tissue and felt the outline of its fractured body? True, it was less than ideal to have her apartment encrusted with dead arachnids and leggy insects — but they were dead, mummified, relics. Relish seeing them, she did not, but she was satisfied in the knowledge that they could no longer quick-step into her path. The deceased creepy-crawlers were gruesome, but controlled.
She lived in a big city, as luck would have it, and insect-infested apartments were an everyday part of life. Rightly so, her collection — her décor -- inhibited her social life; she certainly didn’t have the freedom to invite friends or dates to her home. And also, there was the problem of the fallen books, a quandary to which she gave considerable thought. Although her apartment was lined with books — specifically those once belonging to her mother — these held much in the way of sentimental value and were not to be used in the sport of bug squelching. She began to purchase throwaway softcovers: cheap thrillers, Harlequin romances, hackneyed best sellers with wonderfully thick spines and filled with pages of useless chatter. These she stacked on their own separate shelf and, when one had served its lethal purpose, swept out the fire escape it went. She always checked first, of course, to ensure no unsuspecting pedestrian strolled below.
One day, while shopping for vegetables, she met a man. They had chanced upon the bin of cauliflower at the same moment, and he offered to hold her plastic bag open while she selected the vegetables of her choice. She was not one to be particular about her cauliflower, but the man appeared so magnanimous as he set down his own shopping basket to assist her, that she took her time with the little white clusters, hemming and hawing as he patiently offered his advice. As they waited on the checkout line, he asked if he might take her to a baseball game, and she accepted.
He took her to the baseball game. And then to dinner, to the farmer’s market on Sunday, and to the opening of the Museum of Furniture Design. She didn’t particularly like the Museum of Furniture Design; she felt it lacked variety. All the chairs seemed to have one leg, and all the tables seemed to be made of colored plastic. She preferred more traditional styles, like white wooden rocking chairs with woven-straw seats. But he explained to her the importance of the modern furniture movement, and she understood after that.
One night, after the movies, the man walked her home while he discussed the gruesome feature they had watched. She didn’t mind violence as a rule, but this particular film contained such a great deal of butchering, slaughtering, and scalping that she had constantly needed to avert her eyes. The hero — who, coincidentally, was also the killer — seemed to derive extreme satisfaction from his work of slicing and dicing people to bits. He smiled serenely, blissfully, as the blood splattered his face. She had been surprised to see the man gazing ardently at the screen, his eyes bulging wide and his lip twitching as he shoveled popcorn into his mouth. He explained to her how intriguing the camera work was and how it manipulated the viewer’s eye and urged her to focus on the camera angles as well. That made the film unique, he continued as they left the theater. That made sense, and she marveled at how the director had managed to capture a bug’s eye view of the world.
At her building, they lingered. He asked if she would invite him in for a cup of coffee. Fearful of what he might think of her and how she lived, she feigned exhaustion. He reminded her that caffeine was the very remedy for tiredness. She argued that she would prefer to tidy up first. He insisted that he didn’t mind. He would not be swayed, and she found herself without an excuse. Now knowing this to be their last date, she looked at him fondly and said she would invite him in for a cup of tea instead, for that was all she had.
Up the flight of stairs to her apartment. On the landing, she lingered. She traced her finger along the banister, dillydallying. She jiggled her key, opened her door, and turned on the light. He said nothing, instead walked straight in and nodded as he looked around, then settled himself on the couch.
Do you have Earl Grey, he asked her. She shook her head no. Only chamomile.
Get some Earl Grey, he said, blind to the dismembered bodies smeared on the walls around him.
After that night, the man began to visit every day. He often brought with him gifts, small tokens of his affection for her. He got her a fancy electric mixer because he said he knew how much she must love to cook. He got her a very expensive pair of Italian knives, which she considered particularly thoughtful; he had himself recommended new ones — it seemed her old ones were inadequate for cutting vegetables — and now, she didn’t have to go to the trouble of choosing them herself. What was wonderful about these gifts was how the man never seemed to need a particular reason to give them. He would arrive at her door with a box in tow, and how romantic it felt to receive gifts on a ‘just because’ basis.
After several months, however, she did begin to worry – as women will do, he chided – that the man was losing interest in her. Although he came to her apartment daily, she had yet to see where he lived. He told her he lived with roommates. She told him it would be nice to meet his roommates, or any of his friends and family. He assured her that she would be fully incorporated into his life.
We can discuss this again in another six months, he said. She marked this on the white desk calendar he had given her, excited to have set a date.
Then there was that one day he said to her,
You’ve got a spider crawling on the wall, mind if I kill it?
No, she said. With the beginnings of a smile on his face, he crept up to the arachnid and banged it with a signed copy of The Blind Assassin. He smashed it again, and again, squishing and twisting the bug into place. Satisfied, he removed a tissue from his coat, wiped the wall clean, examined the tissue, then put it back into his pocket. She stared at the wall. A slight stain was visible; however, it was a marked improvement over the rest of her apartment.
Missed a spot, he said, going to the kitchen. He returned with a roll of paper towels. With a fresh towel, he wiped another bug from the wall, this time one she had killed herself.
Darn thing won’t come off, he said and cleaned yet another section of the wall. This continued until the entire wall was devoid of the bugs she had slain over the years.
The next morning, the man brought over two cups of coffee and a can of paint, and coated the walls a sparkling white.
I left a stain yesterday, he said. She told him she understood. The day after that, he arrived with an exterminator’s gun.
What would you do if I weren’t here? He sprayed until no insect would dare scamper within a hundred meters of the apartment.
What a change! And what an odd sensation to find oneself freed. She often would sit on her couch and stare at the stark white walls. She thought about hanging some art — she had wanted to buy gold-gilded frames and hang reproductions of Giotto’s masterpieces. She loved the classic Italian paintings and had often envisioned traipsing around Florence, staying in pensiones that overlooked the Arno, secretly fancying herself a Miss Honeychurch. How disappointed she was to discover this view to be incorrect. Pre-Renaissance art was passé, he explained to her. The minimalist movement was en vogue at the present. Artwork on the walls would clutter her apartment. She was grateful to have someone like this man in her life, someone willing to tell her when she committed a faux pas.
Then there was also the day when she came home to find her mother’s books stacked in boxes — he had packed them all away. What’s this, she asked. He stood in front of her shelves, placing down navy blue books with a methodical thud. He hummed all the while, and the combination of the two sounds was not unlike the whirring of cicadas on a late spring afternoon.
You’re home early, he scolded. I have a gift for you.
She stared at her bookcases, stacked in alphabetical order.
But those are encyclopedias, she said.
Collector’s edition. He tweaked her nose as he passed by.
My mother’s books, she said. My mother’s books, she said again.
You silly goose, he sighed. After all the trouble I’ve taken to fix everything, he told her.
It would hurt his feelings not to accept such a gift. She supposed her bookcases had been a mess. She supposed she was lucky to have someone who noticed such things.
Still… sometimes… she was overcome by the prickly loneliness of her blindingly unadorned apartment. At night, when the distractions of the day slid away, she had taken to angling her desk lamp toward the wall like a spotlight. Then, she would wiggle her fingers in the path of the light, creating shadows along the walls. She took comfort in these shadowed shapes and soon, every night she fell asleep commanding the black silhouettes as they scampered across her room.
As time traipsed on, the man did more and more for her. No more tedious trips to the outdoor market on Saturdays or the farmers market on Sundays. She had discovered that, despite her earlier ambivalence, cooking seemed to be a passion of hers and thus devoted her time to perfecting the craft. He bought her several cookbooks, and she studied these in the mornings, then attempted to prepare something delicious in the evenings. She wasn’t successful, but he assured her that, with practice, she couldn’t help but improve.
One afternoon, while laying out the ingredients for a sponge cake, she saw a spider crawling on the outside screen of the kitchen window. When was the last time she had met anything like it? From inside her white-walled apartment, she felt an unfamiliar longing. She didn’t like this creature; she knew this to be true by her shuddered cringe. But the fear came from within her, belonged to her. Unclasping the screen at the bottom of the window, she pushed it open half an inch or so. She trembled as the spider slowly made its way through the opening… then returned to her ingredients.
Later that night, the man worked in the living room, installing his latest gift. As he meticulously fastened a one-legged chair to the floor, she heard him curse. She wiped her floury hands on the paisley apron he had bought her earlier in the week.
Stand back, he said. There’s a spider in the house, and I don’t want you upsetting yourself.
He bent down with his face close to the floor, attempting to keep his prey in sight as it crawled in and out of the light flung on the wall by the table lamp. His back was arched high, and his knees stuck out as he crouched. His legs jerked ever so slightly — she never before had noticed how spindly he was. His hair spiked out in all different directions, casting varying peaks of shadow on the walls. His knobby elbows jutted back, ready to spring down in attack. It was his face, however, that fascinated her. Lips curled and twitching and eyebrows arched down, he frowned so fiercely she could barely recognize his features. He looked misshapen, deformed, hideous even, and not unlike…
Overwhelmed with hatred and disgust, she dashed to the bookcase for a tome thick enough. She picked up an encyclopedia, volume ABC. Squinting her eyes, she slammed the book hard against the wall, squishing the man flat. She opened her eyes. She banged again with the book. She did this again, and again, squishing and twisting him into place until he was pressed flat upon the wall. Finally, she stopped, letting the book fall to the floor as she took a deep breath.
She knew the stain would ruin her new white walls. But, truth be told, she had missed the old spots.
Monika McGreal Viola works as a high school English teacher and technical writer in Washington, DC. She holds an undergraduate degree in Middle East Studies from Brown, and master's degrees in Fiction Writing and Anglo-Irish Literature from Johns Hopkins and Trinity College, Dublin, respectively. Her fiction has been featured in Icarus Literary Magazine, the PennUnion, Common Ties, and is forthcoming in Thirteen Ways, and her poetry has been shortlisted for the Fish Anthology Poetry Prize.