Happy Valentines Day, Ed

Waking in a cramped wooden box in a shallow grave, I have to admit this is one of the worst first dates ever. 

It is not the absolute worst date - so that should tip you off my dating history is somewhat dark and hopeless. Still one has to believe in something and for me it’s que sera sera, what will be, will be, somewhere some time, I will meet that special someone.

But clearly, not this time around.

The signs started to mount up early into the date. When Mr Mystery Date opened the door it was apparent his profile photo was not so much the Gerard Butler lookalike I had been promised. He was more a dead ringer for Ed Sheeran.

I’d been expecting Beowulf and instead I get Ginger Spice. Not an immediate deal breaker, but certainly set me on edge. Unfortunately, not on edge enough to predict I would wake buried alive in a goddamn coffin.

I gave Ed the benefit of the doubt because he was a schoolteacher. I have a weakness for teachers. I put it down to nostalgic memories of an ill-judged affair with my fourth form English teacher pre-Me Too.

To be honest he looked a bit dismayed too, but I get that a lot.

“Can you ask me in?” I suggested as he surveyed me silently as if mentally totting up a score out of ten.

“I suppose I could but what is the question you really should be asking?”

Oh seriously?

Teachers. What was I thinking?

“Please may I come in?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“You most certainly may,” he replied and so I stepped over the threshold into his lair.

Nothing screamed psychopath immediately although there was a large portrait of a stern woman that I took to be his mother hung dead center in his living room. She glared down at us with a judgmental expression. A little bit off putting admittedly but the Ed Sheeran ginger locks watered down the Norman Bates vibe I might have detected otherwise.

With Mommy Dearest frowning at me from the portrait I didn’t hesitate to accept the glass of wine he offered and gulped it down. An awkward silence followed so I poured a second glass very quickly without asking. 

He frowned at my ill manners but it prompted him to pour a third glass once I’d downed my second. He held a hand to his ear awaiting my thanks.

Apparently swiping right despite the obvious loser bio was not thanks enough so I went full blown Jane Austen thanking him profusely for his kind hospitality and dashing cordiality. I’m pretty sure I even managed a simper.

I had thought I had hidden my sarcasm, but now, lying in this pine box, it occurs to me that perhaps I was a little more transparent than I realized.

Damn he must have roofied the wine and then had the audacity to demand a thank you. What a degenerate!

A buzzing sound echoes around the box. Just like Emily Dickinson, I heard a fly buzz when I died. But it is not the buzz of an insect, nor is it the sound of a funeral in my brain – it is my smart phone. The fact it still has signal means this must be a shallow grave. He didn’t look like he had the stamina to go the full six feet. I congratulate myself on upgrading my phone last week. The old model would have never had the battery life to last this long.

I click my watch to answer the call and his laughter fills my casket.

“So superior,” he says. “You acted as though you were too good for me, now you’re only good for the maggots.”

“I’m not dead yet,” I remind him as he cackles away.

“Only a matter of time,” he says. “Do you have anything else to say?”

What now? Goddammit! 

It eventually occurs to me he probably expects me to beg for my life.

“I could just call emergency services,” I tell him.

Phone signal goes both ways, loser. Although calling for help is not my Plan A.

“Good luck convincing them you’re not a prank caller in the time you have left,” he says. “You are a very disagreeable girl. Do you have anything to say to that?”

Nothing in my profile suggested that I was a creature of grace and decorum. I was the definition of WYSIWYG on the dating site. Profane tattoos and a bio that hinted at a history singing in angry folk punk bands.

He waits for the magic words.

“Do you want me to apologize?” I ask. He really is an ass hat. No question.

“You are a quite awful girl,” he tells me. “I would like to forgive you but you make it difficult with that attitude.”

“Forgive me?” I gape. “Here’s something you should know, you whiney little millennial. I don’t give up. I am very, very angry and rage is something that I wear well. I’m warning you I won’t be the first person to claw their way out of a grave and seek vengeance. Look it up on Quora.”

“Quora,” he snorted. “Not the best source for credible citations.”

Dear God, did he ever stop the arrogant teacher routine?

“I’m talking real people. Not Buffy the vampire slayer or Dean Winchester from Supernatural,” I tell him although he starts mumbling that he has no interest in my pop culture references. “Four people have done it, soon to be five in real life. I’m coming for you. You better be scared.”

He laughs which is the spur I need to kick upward and dig my way out with my fingernails, spitting dirt every inch of the way.

I do not want his forgiveness and no matter how he hard he begs he will not receive benevolent mercy from my end either.

#

Muddy faced, my hair caked into dreadlocks, still spitting stones from between my teeth I find my way back to his house. He has already invited me in tonight, so I take it that invitation still stands and kick the door open.

He screams, a high-pitched cry of fright and disbelief as I stand before him. Blood dripping from my fingernails – the ones that are left anyway. Wood splinters sticking out of my arms.

I am here to extract revenge. It’s not like I didn’t warn him.

He whimpers. He begs me to not hurt him. He says there are other girls. He can give me their locations.

“How long have they been there?” I ask and he stares at me in confusion.

“Are they alive?” I spell it out for him. 

Is there any rush? No, it seems not when he admits the last one he buried alive was a month ago.

“There’s one in the cellar,” he adds as if this is a bargaining chip. 

Oh bless, he’s mistaken me for the kind of girl that will put revenge on hold to rescue someone else. It’s quite flattering but I have no empathy. Sorry, universal sisterhood, goldilocks chained in the cellar will just have to wait until I get through with Ed.

He starts to cry that his mother used to lock him in the dark cellar when he was small. She locked him in cupboards. She once buried him in a box. When he sees me yawn, he actually howls in despair.

“Is the one in the cellar alive?” I ask.

He nods.

“How come?” I ask. “You buried me so quick I wasn’t even dead. How is it you’re keeping a spare down there.”

“She wasn’t like you,” he says. “She was polite, nice. Clean.”

“I started out the night pretty clean,” I point out.

“What are you going to do?” he asks. “Call the police? Are you going to h-h-hurt me?”

Am I the type of girl to make fun of a stutter? You betcha.

“Hey, Ed,” I say. He murmurs his name is George. “Did Mommy Dearest ever read you that kids book There’s a M-M-M-Monster at the end of this Book?”

I do a passable Grover impression as a hint but he looks at me blankly.

“Yoda?” He asks.

“No,” I snap. “Sesame Street, there’s a monster at the end of this book. You know it?”

“I know I am the monster at the end of this evening,” he says sadly.

I smile, it is a wide smile to allow him to see my enlarged incisors, gleaming white. He turns pale and points.

“It is I who am the monster at the end of your story,” I tell him. “You should have swiped left, Eddy.”

“Georgie,” he stutters.

He is a pathetic psychopath molded by monsters to become a monster. He is cruel but he lacks the strength to go the distance. He offers no resistance as I bite into his jugular and his death is somewhat quicker than I intended. I meant to eat him alive but he tasted funny like all psychopaths do. Faint undertones of dog poo. A little fishy this one too.

I head down to the cellar next to meet Miss Congeniality. The fresh-faced girl that pleased him so much he kept her alive and above ground. She’s chained up down there and hearing the screams and clatters from upstairs she is plainly terrified, begging for her life rather than preparing for a fight. I guess those are the kind of instincts that got her into this predicament in the first place.

“Those screams were his,” I tell her. “It’s all over for him.”

And she weeps! Not just with tears of relief when she thinks it’s over and I am her rescuer. She weeps tears for her persecutor. She tells me he was misunderstood. He took quite good treatment of her while she was here. Considering.

“Well,” I tell her. “I have to say that was not exactly my experience.”

Stockholm syndrome? Another nice girl brought up to make guys like George feel like they are not the problem. Her parents probably took pride in her deference. They left her ill equipped for the evil in this world.

She is a beauty and she thanks me without being prompted murmuring a quick prayer of thanks as if some heavenly power had made the effort to intervene.

A little too soon for that.

Her innocence gives her flesh a taste very much like ripe strawberries at the start of summer. I do not hesitate to eat her because I am indeed monstrous and all that digging myself out of a shallow grave left me hungry for something sweet.

Definitely not the best first date ever, but desert has redeemed the evening. 

Cheers, I say making a toast. To George. To monsters. To innocence defiled. I guess we were all there once. For me it’s been too long to remember back when I too might have exuded the flavor of wild strawberries. Oh, how dark and sordid my dating history is. Yet some day my prince will come. I might be a cold undead killer but at heart, I am truly a romantic.