Money; old £50 notes, scrunched up twenties, maybe a moth-eaten tenner here or there.
It was all Cleo asked for every Christmas. Her reasoning was simple: money equals power. With money, you can buy things to torpefy the part of you that makes you give a shit about anybody else's feelings. You have no scruples about using that same money to buy those people's affection, making them give such a shit about you. And once they give a shit about you, all the while you not giving a shit about them, they're like clay in your hands.
If that's not power then what is?
And Cleo needed power. She needed it like a plant needs sunlight. She hadn't come straight of the womb like that, though; a power hungry bitch. It was something she had observed. Power makes the world go round. And once you're the one choosing which way it turns, it can't hit you.
Nothing can hit you.
"Isn't that right, Cleo?"
"What?" Cleo snarled, addressing her mother, Eleanor, who had just spoken. Cleo hadn't been listening to a thing she'd said.
"There's no need to take that snarky tone with me. I was saying it's thoughtful of your brother to get you the diary. Makes a change from the same old, same old-"
"Right. Yeah, whatever." Cleo interjected aloofly, lighting up a cigarette.
"Come on. Put that thing out. I really don't like it, you know that." Eleanor King murmured, tapping her own cigarette on the edge of the ash tray, Cleo rolling her eyes, sticking her tongue into her cheek. "Matilda's taking a while, isn't she?" Eleanor mused. "She said she'd gone to go and make the finishing touches to Dylan's present."
"She's so attentive." Said Dylan with a smile, Cleo sniggering at his comment. "What?" He snapped, Cleo sitting back in her seat with that very particular smirk. That just wait and see kind of smirk.
"Oh, nothing, Dylan. I'm just getting excited thinking about later. After the roast dinner." She said. "All those fucking fantastic games of Trivial Pursuit we'll get to play. Think of all the fun dad's missing out on. Mum's burnt roast potatoes. Her undercooked turkey. Oh, and who could forget the mushy broccoli? Bet he wishes he never left us all for-"
"Shut up, Cleo! It's Christmas, for Christ's sake! Why do you have to be like this?" Eleanor interrupted shrilly. "You know, if I really thought that was what this is all about, you being upset about your dad then maybe I wouldn't mind so much but-" She stopped dead, mid-sentence, head jerking up towards the ceiling. "Did you hear that?" She asked, like a presenter of one of those dreadful Ghost Hunter style shows where everyone shits themselves over the chirp of a distant bird.
"Hear what?" Cleo muttered, blowing the smoke out of her mouth and watching it whirl up like a miniature tornado. She hadn't heard anything.
Anything that mattered, anyway.
"Matilda!" Dylan exclaimed, springing to his feet and dashing out of the room. "She screamed!" He called over his shoulder, Eleanor darting after him, Cleo reluctantly following them both up the stairs. There, they found Matilda stood on the landing, stock-still.
"Oh...My God." Eleanor whispered, bringing two veiny hands to her mouth upon seeing what it was that had caused Matilda's "screaming".
The family German Shepherd, Dolly, pensile, suspended crudely from the ceiling beam by a noose fashioned out of fairy lights.
Damn, Cleo couldn't help but internally exclaim. Just a bit higher and Dolly would've been the perfect angel for the top of the Christmas tree that stood behind her, its own fairy lights fulgurating in the darkness. And it was that moment. Her mother running over to Dolly and attempting, with fingers quaking like somebody just struck by lightning, to dislodge the lights from around the creature's neck. Her brother Dylan screeching and dropping to his knees in front of the dead dog. That moment that caused Cleo's mind to flit back to her favourite topic of rumination. No, money alone doesn't give a person real power.
Knowledge is crucial too.
It's all very well having the world at your finger tips, but you've got to know how to spin it, to know how people work. Got to train like an amateur electrician, taking apart televisions, toasters, washing machines, seeing where one wire merges with another and which ones crackle when you hold them too close together. Know how to hurt somebody so badly that they never think of hurting you again. That's something, however, that you can't put on your Christmas list.
It's learnt.
You've got to read twitches in the face, movements of the hands, shufflings of the feet. And you've got to do all that with the same level of assiduity you'd employ whilst poring over the textbook of the subject you were least confident in, the night before the commencement of final exams. You've got to be able to define wrath with your back turned, happiness with closed eyes. Then, Cleo thought, gaze sweeping over her mother, then Matilda, her brother, and finally, the dog, you can do whatever the fuck you want.
"That stupid bitch." She sneered, scrutinising it. "I always tell her not to play with the lights. Ah, well. She'd drool all over the meat anyway and I'm not feeling rabies this Christmas." And then, she turned on her heel and began hopping back down the stairs.
"Wait, Cleo-" Her mum called after her but Cleo cut her short.
"Deck the halls with boughs of holly!" She trilled, "Fa la la la la la la la la.".
YOU ARE READING
Trust No Bitch: Part 3
Mystery / ThrillerYou think you know the story: 4 women, a dead friend, and an anonymous texter. But think again. It's about to get a whole lot messier, as 4 British university students are about to find out. Full of sex, drugs, and deceit, you've come to the wrong...
