By Aidan Hass
Sure, we all know how awful it is to kill someone. Let’s be real and not lie to ourselves. If you resorted to this terrible path, either you had your own reasons or it would inevitably make your life easier.
Nineteen sixty-seven, the East End of London, no cell phones or security cameras stalk on every corner with the internet connection. The commotion on the streets of this section of London reflected the chaos inside the Crouches' apartment.
For someone who would kill her husband, Mrs. Lily Crouch looked peaceful and even reserved. She had no interest in life, nor did she chat passionately about anything. Maybe it was her husband, Pete, who killed her desire to live, I don’t know. The only way Mrs. Crouch excelled at was patience and after a 25-year marriage to a husband like hers, she needed it.
Mr. Peter, “Pete”, Crouch was the type of person who would get crazy over anything. He was a man prone to violence who beat poor Lily and their little girl repeatedly over the years. Lately, Mr. Crouch’s anger became more and more dangerous. And each time, there was more blood on their faces, more bruises to hide.
Little Molly Crouch was a quiet, nondescript child--exactly the kind that could fade into the background and not even be noticed.
We might never know why, on one wet August night, things in the Crouch household changed. But change they did.
On this particular night, Mr. Crouch came home drunk as usual and in his fit of rage he didn’t even bother to shut the door before beginning in on Lily. He grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the wall. Her nose bled, and the impact was so hard she chipped a tooth. Lily reflexively lashed out and landed a slight, barely audible slap on Pete’s cheek. Enraged at her audacity, that’s when he went for the paring knife on the coffee table.
Before he could get to it, Lily whispered “sorry” to an unnoticed, cowering-in-the-corner-of-the-room Molly, took her purse, and ran barefoot into the night. I don’t know if Pete would have stabbed Lily that night or not; he was known to use his “favorite move”, pointing the knife at her, him, or Molly to garner compliance, but it only takes once to kill.
Pete didn’t follow Lily into the cold night air, at least not yet. Maybe he assumed that she would be back Maybe he knew she had nowhere to go. She didn’t have any friends. Maybe he knew she was already sorry for what she had done. Maybe he just liked the chase.
Lily would describe later that out in the night--free of Pete, free of that house--she had the sudden urge to live. That as she breathed fresh, moist, cold air, she desperately wanted to get more air into her lungs. And that with each gulp she felt her thoughts become clearer and clearer.
Lily knew that going to the police would be like writing a suicide note. The officers would meet him and have a “talk” about changes to his behavior, his drinking. He’d play a role, whichever one would get him out of the frying pan: loyal son, trusty worker, or friend. And later, he’d beat her worse because she’d told someone about their “private affairs.” She knew that she’d be unconscious when he would lock her inside for weeks, maybe months.
With the fresh, moist, cold air in her lungs, Lily ran through the night. Fueled first by fear, then relief, and later by what she would later say was rage. She only slowed down to walk barefoot on the windy coast of Brighton. Feeding her burning lungs with the minerals from the sea. How many years ago did she see the sea? She looked at it and joy rushed through her body.
After all this time, she had landed in a village which she visited 25 years ago on her honeymoon. She had once been so happy in this village. Pete was good then. How ironic that Lily was now walking barefoot on a chilly night away from the man she had once run toward. Lily thought how newlywed, young Mrs. Crouch, had no idea 25 years later she would walk in this village again, to the very same house they rented, not with Pete but escaping the death from his hands.
Lily entered the house late at night. It was deserted; she quickly realized no one lived there. Terrified of staying there without permission and with the possibility of. Pete showing up any minute, Lily hid on the parlor floor, pulling the carpet over her like a blanket. She slept for what felt like a week, safe and warm, wrapped in the carpet like a dead body. She awoke deep into the night, at a time where she felt most at ease. That is until a funny twinge told her that Pete was looking for her and that he wasn’t far away.
#
When Molly and Pete found Lily, she looked starving and hypothermic, with a pale face. He straddled the uneven carpet, knife in hand, and unraveled from Lily’s body like a veil on a wedding night.
The next events happened quickly, it’s hard to know what caused what. But this time, the first hit came from Lily. She grabbed a silver candle-holder and struck him in the head scrambling just in time to escape Pete’s full body wight landing on her.
Pete, on the floor, writhed in pain, like it was spreading all over his body. Lily reflexively stretched out her hand to him but as she did her attempt at comfort was batted away by a shovel being offer to her by Molly
“Give me the shovel,” he demanded.
When Lily turned back, she saw her daughter standing before her with shaking hands.
“Give me the goddamned knife,” said Molly once again, rather determinedly.
“Give it to me,” he said as he rolled onto all fours. At that moment, Molly took the heavy shovel and hit it carefully on Pete’s head with a loud “BANG!!!” Pete didn’t faint, but fell rather stupidly on his back with his gaze pointed upward. With Pete now on his back and on the ground, Molly searched for and found the knife in his pocket easily.
“I will. I will kill you now. You will beg for death. You both. I’ll cut your necks. Soon as I’ll raise up,” Pete howled as he tried to stand up.
With those words, Lily snatched the knife from Molly’s hands and stabbed Pete in the stomach with surprising force and speed. The wound didn’t look severe, still it was bleeding, however lightly, with blood pooling in his shirt.
“What are you waiting for, you old pig? Come on, hit me again!” Lily screamed back at him as though possessed.
This time Lily closed her eyes and stabbed him one more time in his torso. Pete roared. Lily, afraid of the noise, instinctively put her hands over his lips, giving Pete the opportunity to bite her on her index finger. After the bite, Lily spat onto his face.
But Pete was somehow still alive and fighting. It was like Pete refused to go down, Molly picked up the shovel again and hit Pete one more time. There was a terrible, disgusting sound when his head hit the floor.
Both stared at Pete’s body, expecting him to die instantly. But the clock on the mantel ticked by and Pete was still alive.
They kept walking and waiting for him to die; the minutes were passing. Pete’s occasional moans were growing louder. There was a strange, stale, metallic smell of blood in the air. And then suddenly it grew quiet. Could years of torture really be over?
They hugged each other and started to laugh.
Lily twirled the cheap silver wedding ring on her left hand as she did whenever she was thinking. “Molly we aren’t free yet. The body?”
“Do you think anyone will miss him?”
“Not if we don’t report it.”
“Won’t people wonder what happened”
“That’s why we can’t go back.”
“What about his body, in here.”
“This body will be a completely different person than the loyal son, trusty worker, or friend everyone else knows. This body is a burglar we saw who came to this house to thieve and happened to die here.”
“So, we are just going to leave him like that? We should at least cover him, right?” Molly asked while pulling the carpet over Pete’s warm corpse.
Lily watched, bracing herself on the fireplace mantle as the adrenaline faded from her limbs and exhaustion set in. Her fingertips brushed a box of matches off its perch and the contents slipped across the floor. Lilly and Molly looked at each other and smiled.
In a few seconds, a terrible smell was all around the place. Lily, crying, gazed at the body one last time.
In case you don’t know, as Molly and Lily didn’t until one wet August evening, that a body never burns until the end.
Award-winning journalist Aidan Hass has been writing horror stories ever since she awoke from a coma at the age of five. Aidan was born into a Tatar family right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a nomad without a land, she traveled all across the world with five languages under her belt. Aidan enjoys a successful journalistic career by day.
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