Ruth Writes

She squints her eyes and leans forward, her nose nearly pressing against the glass of the picture frame. It’s really there. A teeny, tiny camera. In Uma Thurman’s innocent eye. She will hand it to him, in the three months they’ve been together and considering all the crime shows she watches, she did not see this coming. An unsuspecting, miniscule camera inserted into a framed Pulp Fiction movie poster directly across from the king-sized bed. Why couldn’t men like him use this kind of genius for good? Why did he have to use his incredible skills to film the women he sleeps with who haven’t got a clue? This is the twenty-first century, just ask for consent. It’s so easy.

Clips of the grainy video of the two of them together that she found on his laptop shudder through her mind and her whole body starts to tremble as a fire ignites in the base of her stomach. She wants to roar. She wants to scream. She wants to yell. The fire grows inside of her and leaks into her veins, flooding her system and bubbling up her throat. If she roars or screams or yells, will she breathe fire like a blood-thirsty dragon? Her hands curl into fists and, fuelled by her enraged fire, she punches the poster. The glass smashes and the splintered fragments litter the carpet. Like a frenzied animal, she claws at the poster, ripping it to shreds and exposing the small black dot of a camera behind it.

‘I’m going to take you down, you twisted little man,’ she spits, yanking the camera out of the wall. She shoves it into her pocket and pats the back of her hand across her sweating forehead. When she turns around, he is there, standing in the doorway, blocking her exit. His hands are raised in front of him, palms facing her. His face is pathetically apologetic. The fire has made its way to her head and it’s burning her brain. Her eyes are clouding with a thick smoke.

‘Let’s talk about this, babe,’ he says in a tone so patronising the smoking fire bellows in her stomach, echoing through her. Talk about it? There wouldn’t be a problem if he’d thought to talk about things in the first place. She storms across the room and stops short in front of him when he doesn’t move.

‘Get out of my way,’ she growls. He puts his hands on her shoulders. Stupid move. Play with fire and you get burned.

‘I said,’ she says, dangerously quiet, and then, letting some of the fire escape, ‘GET OUT OF MY WAY!’

With all of her strength, she shoves him to the side. His head whacks the doorframe and a sickening crack echoes through the room. His body drops to the floor like a puppet whose strings have been suddenly cut. She freezes, the fire extinguishing as quickly as it had ignited. Murdering him is certainly one way to take him down.