A Murder House

A Murder House

At first, Ethan didn’t hear the screaming.

The day had been ordinary. Work was uncomplicated - The Guildhall Theatre’s production of A Doll’s House had run without interference - and he was already acclimatising to life on Victoria Street. The ritualistic politeness of the neighbours, the squirrels patrolling the front lawns, the quiet of the road. He had feared it could be boring for a first-time buyer, more his parents’ taste than his own, but he revelled in the peace. The freedom.

Courtesy of his stewarding job, Ethan was familiar with screams.

Teenage girls were the loudest - shrieking like they’d snapped a femur when their favourite boy band skulked on stage. Three years he’d been a steward, and he still couldn’t tell the difference between someone breaking a leg and a 5SOS fan.

It was at the Guildhall where Ethan met Rosie. She frequented the theatre, sometimes with her parents, sometimes with a girlfriend, and wore pearls around her neck and flowers in her hair. Ethan was drawn to her. Something about her commanded attention, more so than the actors onstage. It took Ethan months to pluck up the courage and invite her out for coffee. She was beautiful. Classy. Well-known. He was notorious only for a permanent crease in his shirt. 

But Ethan had been wrong. Rosie was a woman who knew what she wanted, and for some reason, she wanted him. A few eyelash-flutters later and they were progressing from cappuccinos in the theatre café to canapes in bars that Ethan could not afford. His financial concerns were dismissed by a wave of Rosie’s credit card. When he asked how could repay her, she simply placed her hand on his thigh and ordered another drink. 

When Ethan realised that the screaming was coming from the house, he started running. He slipped through the front gate and approached the front door. By the time he pulled it open, the screaming had stopped.

“Rosie?” 

The door was unlocked. Rosie had requested a key as soon as he bought it, which surprised him. The house her parents owned an hour away was just as Ethan had expected, pristine and enormous. Ethan’s one-bedroom cottage, nestled in the most unexciting neighbourhood of the county, was blatantly inferior to her childhood home.

 She said it was his independence that she envied. His strong mind. He got her a key cut especially.

Ethan paused in the doorway. His face was sticky. Summer was slinking into autumn, and the hallway was dark apart from a strip of artificial light spilling out beneath the kitchen door. The house was silent.

 Ethan reached for the umbrella on the hat stand. He wasn’t a big guy, as Rosie had started pointing out, but he had grown up around horses. Endless hours of shovelling manure and pushing wheelbarrows had given him an impressive natural strength. If he swung the umbrella downwards with the right amount of gusto, it should be enough to knock someone out.

Ethan readied himself. He’d seen onstage how stories like this escalated. Robbers become murderers with a panicked wave of a kitchen knife. He took a breath.

Rosie was not on the floor with blood oozing from her head. She was not trapped in a headlock with a man holding a gun to her temple, demanding all of Ethan’s money. Instead, she was on the counter by the oven, clasping her knees to her chest, her face whiter than a summertime cloud.

As Ethan emerged, the umbrella aloft, Rosie’s eyes remained transfixed. A haunted look contaminated her face. Slowly, she raised her finger and jabbed it towards the corner of the kitchen.

“Rat,” she whispered.

Ethan had seen rats in the stables. Huge brown creatures, which hid amongst the hay and ate the horses’ feed. The yard dog was supposed to hunt them, but preferred rolling in dung to killing rodents. 

Rosie was sucking at the air, her lips tight. Ethan lowered the umbrella as he approached her.

“Christ, Rosie. I thought you were being held hostage.” He placed an arm around her waist.

“I am,” she snapped, wriggling free and gesturing again towards the vacant corner of the kitchen. “It came out from the cupboard and tried to bite me.” She dragged her eyes away to search Ethan’s face, disgusted. “A rat. In your kitchen.”

Ethan felt his ears go red.

Rosie hated everything to do with animals. Apparently for her tenth birthday, her father had bought her a Pomeranian: an accessory of a dog, which needed shampooing every other day and would only go outside in the rain if accompanied by someone wielding an umbrella. Rosie had allowed it in her life for a strenuous two weeks before demanding her father return it and buy her theatre tickets instead. She’d said that the way it walked annoyed her, its paws being so small.

“I’ve never seen one here,” Ethan said.

The estate agent had called the house a ‘modern delight’. Though Ethan considered this a compliment you might give a milkshake or popstar rather than residential accommodation, he had agreed, and made an offer for the property the same day. An address where Ethan Brown was free to do whatever he pleased. There had been a piano included with the house, and though it was out of tune, he had promised himself he would learn to play before the year was out.

Rosie screamed again. A tiny flurry of greyish pink emerged from a crack under the kitchen sink that Ethan had not noticed until now. Rosie continued screaming until it retreated back into the hole.

“See!” she yelled as Ethan crouched down to inspect the hiding place. And then, resentment clinging to each word, “what in God’s name are you laughing at?” 

“That’s not a rat,” Ethan said. “It’s a mouse. Probably from the boy next door.”

Dexter introduced himself a few days after Ethan moved in. He wore thick glasses that were too big for his face and he was as polite as eight-year-olds come. He also took an unwarranted liking to Ethan. 

“The theatre!” he said, as if he’d just been told Ethan worked on a different planet. “I’ve never been.” 

Dexter invited Ethan to come and see his collection of pets, but Ethan politely declined, explaining that he had boring adult things to do like sort the insurance and unblock the drain pipes. That was the first and final conversation he’d had with Dexter, though he saw him through the living room window as he traipsed to school with his mother, a dolphin backpack bobbing with each step. 

Rosie looked as though she might implode. Her limbs were pinned to her body, and her face was purplish from the strain. “Just get rid of it,” she said.

Ethan considered his options. He could use a small lump of cheese to compel the mouse out of its hiding place, but it could take hours for the mouse to cooperate. He would have to flush it out. Warning Rosie to stay silent, he gently kicked the cupboard above the sink. He didn’t like the idea of scaring it too much. It couldn’t have a very fruitful life in Dexter’s bedroom, trapped behind glass. How had it managed to break free?

Ethan kicked harder. Sure enough, with a terrified squeak, out it scurried. He swooped down, his fingers outstretched, when something jabbed him between the shoulder blades. 

“If you touch that vermin I’ll never go near you again!” 

In a moment of desperation, the mouse hurtled towards the back garden, arriving at the glass double-doors. Determined, it hoisted itself up onto its back legs, sniffing for a way out. Two pink paws, like tiny human hands, fumbled in front of its tummy as it searched.

“It’s harmless,” Ethan said. 

“It’s disgusting.” Rosie shifted on the counter. “Kill it.”

“Kill it?” 

Ethan had never killed anything in his life. When he was younger, he’d watched a mosquito come and bite him on the shin. His mother had told him to slap it, crushing every fibre in its tiny, blood-sucking body, but Ethan had refused, intrigued by the way it throbbed as it drank. 

He scratched his head. “It’s the boy’s pet, Rose. I’ll just take it back over.”

The kitchen was still.

“Kill it,” Rosie repeated. “Now.”

She said it in the same way she said a lot of things. Don’t wear that t-shirt. Stop riding horses. We’re not going to your parent’s anniversary dinner. 

Daring, but unnegotiable.

Rosie refused to move while Ethan went to the shed. A garden spade lay waiting in the corner, a more effective murder weapon than an umbrella. He peeped over the garden fence to see if Dexter or his parents were there, but the house seemed empty.

  “This is ludicrous,” Ethan said as he returned to the kitchen.  

 The mouse looked up at him and he felt his arms go heavy. What a crime scene he would create. Tiny guts pasted onto the floor. The easy eruption of its innocent heart. Its harmless skull, smashed in an exaggerated crunch. 

Rosie didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. 

The mouse let out a tiny squeak. How could he take the life of something so innocent? 

“For God’s sake, Ethan,” Rosie hissed. “Are you seriously too pathetic to take some responsibility - even though you’re sharing your house with a monster?” 

She slammed her hand on the counter. The noise made Ethan remember all the times she’d hit him.

She clicked her fingers in front of his face. “When will you wake up?” 

He remembered the nights he’d been alone in bed, while Rosie stayed out visiting ‘a friend’. 

She grabbed his arm, nails sinking into flesh. “End this. Or I’ll make sure you regret it.” 

And that’s when Ethan knew. 

He was about to become a killer. 

He closed his eyes and thought of the Guildhall matinee. Of Nora, a nineteenth-century literary heroine whose great achievement was getting out. Nora had the courage to say goodbye. She knew that she had to create a different ending. An unexpected one.

Ethan imagined Dexter’s face as he was reunited with the mouse. Maybe Ethan would get a little companion of his own.

As the spade came down, Rosie didn’t even scream.