Your Midweek Update for 05/18/22

When I was seventeen, I murdered a man – a boy, really. I took a football cleat and I thrust it into the back of his head. I did it because I wanted to and for no other reason. Someone was always going to be my first; why not him?

The next day at school, I feigned shock and sorrow when they gathered us outside to announce to the student population that one of our own had been taken. It was a murder too brutal for any of his peers to be considered a subject so the police turned their attention upwards.

A few weeks after the boy’s death, they arrested the gym teacher, Mr. S. Apparently, Mr. S. had been sleeping with one of his students and it was no large leap to assume that he’d committed murder to keep his secrets hidden. I allowed Mr. S. to go to prison for my crimes because he was already a bad man and I wanted to continue killing.

Years later, I ran into someone I went to school with – whom time remembers as friends but I doubt we had spoken a word to one another. I learned from them that shortly after his imprisonment, Mr. S. committed suicide upon learning that the girl he’d raped was pregnant. That girl later gave birth to a baby boy whom she gave up for adoption.

When I was thirty, I ran into a young boy who looked familiar in a way I couldn’t place. Or rather, he ran into me. Stained one of my favourite skirts and honestly, if he were ten years older, I likely would have killed him for that. But I didn’t because even I have my lines I will never cross. But he was sweet and he apologized so how could I resist letting him live? His parents, on the other hand, are a couple I deeply regret letting seeing the sunrise.

They were rude and spoke in harsh words but any attempt at logic was met with force. We were in too public a place, I couldn’t kill them, but I wanted to. I imagined slicing their sternum open and peeling their skin like a banana until all their organs fell out.

I followed them for a few days before I followed them all the way to the airport and I lost my chance.

Sometimes I would wonder what happened to that little boy.

I was thinking about those two stories this week. In all likelihood, they have nothing to do with each other but there’s just the slightest chance that fate keeps people together – keeps bringing them back into your circle even when you don’t realize it.

Casey was essentially a gift from my husband but she is one of the best things to ever happen to me. And on top of that, she brought me closer to my sister and some closure with my mother. I never knew how much I was missing her until I met her.

Casey has a brother. A half-brother, actually. They share a mother. He had left home before she murdered their parents and had fleeting contact with him before that. She saw him on the local news the other day. He was running a centre for at-risk youth and was promoting his facility. At her insistence, we went to find him so she could see if her big brother was really all right.

I should blame her for keeping family secrets but I understand. Some stories are too painful to mention.

He was over the moon to find out his sister was alive. He’d heard of the death of their parents but hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral for reasons he didn’t have to mention. The two of them reconnected and while Casey has been omitting a lot of the details, she seems lighter. Talking with her big brother, even if she can’t be completely honest, has brought back an airiness to her walk.

I can’t believe she’s seventeen, nearly eighteen, now. The same age I was when first started. Her brother – Jonah – is about ten years older than her.

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the three stories are a coincidence. The child born in the scandal of my first kill. The young boy deserving of a better life. The young man in front of me trying to change the world he grew up in. They’re three completely different people.

But I can’t help but wonder.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

Excerpt of Dublin Ink by Sienna Blake

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Your Midweek Update for 04/27/22

Is time blindness a symptom of COVID? I woke up yesterday and was absolutely certain that it was Saturday. I realized in time for work but then I was absolutely certain, again, that it was Thursday. If you would have told me it was Tuesday, I would have fought you on it.

I don’t understand how the mind works and why it occasionally decides to stop working. It’s not as though anything unusual has happene

…

I realized as I was typing just how wrong that statement was going to be. Again, I know something is wrong because I forgot that stress can affect sleep and lack of sleep causes memory loss.

See, I know science things. Usually only science things that pertain to murder but also non-murder science things.

I know why I’ve been tired and erratic lately – and you all do, too. I’m just a little tired of being…tired. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back in time to the way it was before I knew the truth.

Not even to before the love of my life fell in love with someone else. I think if I could live in blissful ignorance forever, I would. It’s incredibly selfish of me to ask him to fide his feelings but I would make that request over and over again if it meant I could think about it without throwing someone off a ledge with tears in my eyes. I wouldn’t be forgetting the days if my life hadn’t been completely upended.

I know you’ve heard me bitch about all this before but you may be surprised to learn this heartbreak doesn’t go away over night. I was certainly shocked. Most of my break ups ended in murder. How was I to know?

Casey, for the most part, is enjoying this new town – this anonymity. She still so young and excited about murder. She’s building her own routines, making her own mistakes and cleaning them up herself. For the most part. I did have to flush a toe down a Starbucks toilet but all’s well that ends well. She’s coming into her own and I’m so proud of her. I just feel like I’m not at 100% so how can I enjoy it?

I want to be happy for her – I am happy for her – but I just don’t… feel it.

What am I supposed to do?

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

Your Midweek Update for 04/20/22

I’m perpetually amazed at the lengths of my own patience. Or, rather, I’m amazed at how much bullshit I’ll put up with before I finally rid the world of another idiot.

You would think I had learned my lesson about killing people I’m even remotely connected to – especially in the workplace – but some people are too dumb to live, even if their office is two away from mine. I know committing murder when I’m still in my three-month probation period is not the best idea I’ve ever had but neither is calling Ben at 1am and having sex in the back of his truck. We’re making all sorts of bad decisions this week.

I still haven’t murdered Ben, in case any of you were wondering whether or not I’ve become emotionally attached to my new pet. It would have been so easy to kill him a thousand times. When I was riding his cock, I could have slit his throat; but then I got distracted thinking about whether continuing to fuck him while he was bleeding out would be considered necrophilia.

We’re not going to talk about the orgasm I had while thinking about necrophilia. I don’t think we’re quite there yet in our relationship.

Although congratulations, dear readers, you are officially the longest and healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in.

Back to the idiot at work I probably shouldn’t have killed.

The work I’m doing is very simple and barely requires the necessity to come into work but the company insists on it. It’s mostly calling people and coordinating donations and then filing those sponsors in the system. Not exactly a skill-heavy position – which was good for me because skill-less positions tend to not look as closing at people’s fake IDs – and yet some people still manage to screw it up.

This working for the company for years and yet she managed to lose thousands of dollars without any repercussions. She hasn’t been stealing it, mind you, a little thievery I can forgive, she genuinely screwed up so much data entry that she lost track of over $5600 that is just floating around the internet somewhere.

Being an inherently good person, I went to talk to her first, but it quickly became clear that she had no idea what I was talking about. And that is when I realized that skill-less jobs should still include the ability to count to ten without using your toes.

She had to go.

I reported her error to her supervisor and when he called her in for a meeting, I followed her home, suffocated her with a plastic bag, packed as many of her belongings as I could fit into her car, and drove both of them out of town. She is currently wanted for fraud and they will likely never find her body at the bottom of the river in the next town over.

It was a clean enough kill; I’m just having flashbacks of all the times I’ve killed a coworker and it’s gone horribly wrong. Especially since I had to involve myself further in order to make the cover story work. But I mean, who would report someone for fraud and THEN kill them? It makes no sense.

At least I’m hoping that’s what the detective thinks – especially since her case is being treated as a person of interest rather than a homicide.

Like I said, not a lot of amazing decisions being made this week but we’re persevering.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

Your Midweek Update for 04/13/22

I didn’t go to my mother's funeral. Instead, I went to work like I always do, and I decapitated a cyclist on my way home. Well actually, his head didn’t come all the way off. A lot of the surrounding muscle and tissue tore but it didn’t quite sever the spine. So he was flopping about kind of like a bobblehead doll until their heart stopped beating. It all took way too long. This is what I get for using cheap garroting wire. I forgot my own when I took off with Casey so I’ve adapted one out of piano wire but it just doesn’t work as well. It’s not that I’ve gotten weaker, it’s that I have insufficient tools.

If one of you makes a comment about “a shoddy craftsman”, I will find where you live and I will use my insufficient tool very slowly.

Is that scary or dirty?

Regardless, the day the world said goodbye to my mother, I tried to keep it as normal as possible and only briefly stumbled. Of course it couldn’t be perfect, that would be asking too much. But it was fine. It was normal. Frankly, I don’t have the energy for more than “normal” lately. If anything remotely exciting happens, I may snap.

I’m just tired, dear readers. I don’t think I realized how tired I am until I sat down to write. I feel like I’m slowly unravelling, leaking out at the edges but not enough to be noticed until its too late. I suppose that’s exactly what’s happening.

Everything is coming apart and I don’t know what to do about it.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe

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Your Midweek Update for 04/06/22

The things I have done to avoid writing this Update, dear readers. I worked overtime, I stayed out late and went on a killing spree – I’m now wanted in three counties even if they don’t know it’s me – I took Casey out for a girls’ weekend, spent way more money than I meant to, drank about as much as I meant to.

It was like I knew the end was coming and I was trying to fill as much of my time as possible with the things I love. I garroted a man on a subway platform, stole his coffee and walked onto the approaching train like nothing had happened. I’ve never felt sexier or more powerful in my entire life. And I could do that because I’d done my research and cased the platform over the last few weeks, found the blind spots, found the regulars who would be noticed if they went missing. I picked a business man who clearly wasn’t used to taking the train to work. His shoes were definitely not made for public transportation. He was so quite when he died. I almost wasn’t sure he’d completely succumbed but there’s no mistaking the weight of a dead man in your arms.

Normally, I wouldn’t have put so much work into the premeditation unless it was a special project but without James to have my back, I need to be careful. I’ve grown so complacent that in his absence, I’ve had to rebuild the muscle – the instinct – to protect only myself. And Casey. But she’s more self-sufficient that James and the kids so I rarely worry about her these days. Maybe I should worry about her more.

Or maybe I shouldn’t be a mother. I never wanted to give birth and I am so grateful that is no longer something I need to worry about. But the children who came into my care were no less my children. I’ve said as much a thousand times. The closest people in your life don’t have to be related by blood – in my case, hardly any of them are. At this point, I think it’s just my sister whom I haven’t heard from in months, I don’t even know if she’s alive or if she’s safe. I probably would have heard on the news if she’d been arrested again but other than that, I don’t know how or where she is. I don’t know how I’m going to get word to her.

Mother is dead.

James called because even if I didn’t tell him where I went, he always finds me. Apparently he was the closest thing to a relative that they could get a hold of so they told him. The doctors said something vague about heart failure – which I find hilarious because it’s well documented that my mother never had a heart – and assured him that she barely suffered. And now I have a choice: I can go to the funeral on Friday, undoing all of the work I’ve done to leave my life behind, or I can stay here and I can leave my mother to rot in peace knowing she got the last word.

She named James as the executor of her will. Not her daughter, her son-in-law. There’s knowing my mother didn’t care about or trust me and there’s finding out that the husband you’ve been separated from for two months is responsible for carrying out your mother’s final wishes.

She barely liked James, always said that his profession was beneath me, and yet he gets this distinguished honor? I don’t even know why I want it.

I think I wanted to know that somewhere, deep down, she loved her daughters – despite everything she did to us over the years. But now I know the truth. And I don’t know what to do. I guess I have two days to decide how I’m going to bid my mother farewell.

It’s over.

As always, dear readers,

Stay Safe 

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