Page 44 of Dirty Tricks

“One more thing,” I say, drawing back from him and turning again to the wall of tools. This time, I take down the large secateurs used for trimming the smaller branches off trees.

I kneel in front of my father, unzipping him and dragging out his cock.

It’s so tiny, I laugh, unable to comprehend how he turned it into another weapon to hurt me with.

It’s so tiny, the large gardening tool is overkill, but it does the job.

One snip and his penis tumbles onto the rug, seeming to grow smaller with every passing second.

I have my fingers as trophies. I have no need for another.

With relish, I smash the tiny organ to a pulp with the hammer, giggling and laying my head against Xanders chest, letting him scoop me into his arms when I grow tired.

We stay there, resting, letting the warmth of our bodies feed into each other until we’re both ready to move again.

As I pull away, I plant a kiss on the side of his cheek, then my mouth seeks his fat lips, licking them in a tease, entwining my fingers in his hair as he responds in kind.

“Do you want to bring the car closer?” Xander asks when the kiss ends, dangling the keys for me to grab. “I’ll get him ready to drag into the seat.”

And we stand, my arms refusing to let go of him though my head tells me I should, that each second we linger is another second where we might be caught.

But he doesn’t hurry me along. His hand gently cradles my head, letting me dictate the pace. And the moment I’m ready, I pull away, clearing my throat. “I’ll toot the horn when I’m close. The door release is the button under the light switch.”

My mind is too light as we load my father’s corpse into the car boot. I stretch my arms over my head, trying to relax the stiff muscles. “I’m going to feel that tomorrow.”

“Good,” Xander says, hauling me to his side. “And I hope every time you have a muscle twinge, you re-experience all the joy of tonight.”

And there is so much joy. I never want the night to end.

We drive into the hills again, finding the same spot as before and adding the new body to our existing tally.

Xander stamps on the dry soil. With Christchurch’s average rainfall half that of the other main cities, the clay is always rock hard. “A grave will take a long time to dig. Maybe six or seven hours and that’s with it being shallow.”

“How much longer will the chainsaw last?”

He checks the battery gauge. “It’s sitting just under sixty percent.”

“Then I’ll strip their clothes off and you start cutting. We can leave chunks of them out for the animals to pick over or toss them into the harbour and let the fish have at it.”

He shrugs and I’m grateful the moon is high overhead as he gives me a deliciously shy smile. “I vote for the fish. They deserve a treat. Birds get all the roadkill so it’s only fair to let them have something.”

Sunrise is teasing the horizon before we finish, the last thing tossed from the cliffs being the heads. All except one. Xander insists on keeping hold of my dad, the cracked and beaten remnants easily manipulated into a reusable shopping bag.

Even though we need to go, even though we should clean ourselves up and get our alibis straight on the off-chance—the faint, faint, faint off-chance—that we won’t be arrested and thrown in jail, we linger, standing arm and arm, looking out to sea.

Finally, when the sun’s making the world a brighter place, I sigh, and we turn back to the bloodstained vehicle, ready to drive back into the real world.

CHAPTERFOURTEEN

XANDER

The alarm wakesme bright and early on Monday morning. I grab a coffee and drink it over the sink in my mother’s flat, chugging it back with no regard for taste.

Yesterday is a blur of anxiety and fulfilment. The wonderment of being able to touch Lexa, of feeling the return of my love, fills me to the brim.

I couldn’t bring myself to worry as we snuck into her room at Kingswood using the crawlspace, not wanting to have the card reader record her arrival. Or while we stood in the shower, indulging our dirty thoughts while we washed each other clean.

When I drove the car out to an old farm where an estate tussle has kept the land barren for years, only the lawyers winning, I’d felt the heat of the law breathing down my neck. At any moment, I expected a hand to clamp onto my shoulder. For a voice to say, “Well, well, well. What do we have here, then?”

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