Miss Neale's Fee by Dora Cardinal

Their arrangement with Kahler was that he would leave an hour before Stu arrived and return only when Sue texted him that Stu was gone. A bad compromise Sue and Stu had forced on him after his freakout last week. He had seemed to Stu to be channelling Haubstadt's ghost that night. The three of them had tried experimenting with cucking, at Kahler's request, and Stu and Sue had been on shrooms trying to collect themselves enough to fuck, and the idea that had seemed so hot to Kahler minutes ago - Sue with another man - he now hated. He had to beg the two of them not to call the cops on him after he calmed down.

But this bad compromise had its perks for Kahler. He loved the idea of being a martyr and making a noble sacrifice for his wife's happiness. It was an opportunity to feel good about feeling resentful. He would privately bitch to a trusted friend or 2 but carefully control his every feeling when Sue or Stu were around, as though there was some glory in never resisting.

Their marriage was set up to fail. As soon as they and everyone they knew got the COVID vaccine they had played musical chairs with their relationships and roommates, rushing into new arrangements to put as abrupt and complete an end as possible to the old ones that lockdown had made so monotonous. Too few years later, in NBP-25 lockdown, these new arrangements were showing themselves to be just as poorly-considered and untenable. Everyone they knew was once again stuck living and sleeping with people who made them miserable.

Sue was worried about how Stu would be after that bad trip. She didn't want to have to coerce another fuck out of him. As soon as Kahler was out the door Sue started putting makeup on, planning something that would look especially pathetic after a few careful tears. She felt like shit for doing this but there was no other way to make sure Stu didn't leave her. Crossing from the bathroom to her bedroom, Sue paused to look through the closed door, imagine the familiar balcony rail, picture herself jumping. Image of her body broken after the 5-story fall. She had resigned herself to taking comfort in how familiar her intrusive thoughts were - it was the closest thing she got most days to a break from her hypercritical internal running commentary on how awful every single thing she did was. So she obsessed about that future, imagining her loved ones grieving. Maybe some of her friends who hadn't talked to each other in ages would reconnect and bond over this. And they would all move on eventually.

The second Stu took his shoes off and closed the door behind him she broke down, wailing, telling him how much she truly wanted to kill herself. He started crying too. For the first time since he was 7, not that Sue knew. Even with her cock up his ass a few minutes later he kept sobbing here and there.

Now, the last time Sue thought about Sylmar was a few weeks ago. She saw Sylmar had updated her profile pic. She waited till 12 people had reacted and then just liked it - she wasn't sure how Sylmar felt about her and didn't want to make her uncomfortable by being overly friendly, but didn't want to burn bridges either. Sue had enough going on to keep herself busy but still, she remembered Sylmar now and then and she missed her. But whenever she thought about Sylmar and wondered how she was doing, she remembered she was still living with Todd. She couldn't reach out to her yet, not while Todd was such an influence. She was sure Todd had turned Sylmar against her and she worried he might take any contact between her and Sylmar as a threat and strike back, taking away even more of Sue's friends. Urge to run out the backdoor and jump. Sue caught herself and remembered it wasn't healthy to let Todd in her head. He didn't deserve her energy. She set a 5-minute timer on her phone and did a mindfulness exercise to reroute her thoughts.

Todd Hadnot's new knife came in the mail the next day. To celebrate he locked himself in the bathroom with a half pint of Beam and sat naked in the bathtub, slicing the calluses off his toes and fingers and taking a pull after each digit was shaved down. It was very troubling to him - as a man, he took pride in his work calluses, but he couldn't help hating the way they made his skin feel. His callused hands rubbing against each other squeaked silently and painfully to him as if they were covered in cornstarch. And he wouldn't consider a pumice stone, ever. That's for girls. Even a kitchen knife would be too dainty. So he bought himself this nice switchblade as a treat and paid $5 extra to have the knife's name, HAUBSTADT, engraved on the blade.

When Sylmar clocked out of her work-from-home job and left her room, Todd's door was closed and his knife was in their bathroom sink, covered in drying bloodstains and translucent chunks of dead skin. She flipped the tap on and ran back to her room for a mask and gloves before cleaning the knife. She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually seen Todd, or talked to him at all except to get his half of rent. For all she knew Todd had been sucked into some pandemic denier cult online, but she preferred to belive he was just preoccupied and easily distracted.

Sylmar tossed a burrito in the microwave, turned the coffee machine back on to reheat the rest of the pot, and pulled out her phone. A new message from Kahler Schoeneck, 20 min ago:

hey are you up at all?

yeah hey, what's up?

god... I just heard abt something rly fucked up

with Sue and Stu I need to talk to someone abt

is that ok?

sure, what happened?

are they back together??

YEAH

its so fucked up like

she manipulated him into coming over again

while I wasnt home and just broke down crying

saying shed k word herself if they couldnt fuck

anymore

like what do you do with that? what am I supposed

to do? I'm rly fucking worried for Stu if he can't get

away from her and she cant get her shit together

ughhhhh fuck that

I'm so sorry idk what you can do that's so much

always here if you need to talk abt it tho, it's cool

tysm

like how does this even keep happening you know?

its so fucking sad. I thought Stu finally figured it out

after the last time and now I just dont know

how does this end? when one of them d words?

Sylmar didn't know what she could say in reply, so she turned the screen off and set her phone down somewhere. She took the burrito and a mug of now-lukewarm coffee back to her room and opened her laptop. Kahler had said just what she'd been thinking, but she didn't know how to say it in a way Facebook wouldn't flag as a cry for help or a death threat. So instead of talking about how Sue had to die to save Stu, Sylmar had been spending the last month researching the murder-for-hire business and coming up with a plan.

Sylmar had only met Lloyd twice, but they talked online a lot. He seemed to never leave the house even when it had been safe, living only online, getting friends, roommates, and gig workers across several apps to do his shopping and deliver his food. One night he got too high on some research chemical (its name was an alphanumeric string so impressively random that Sylmar threw an exclamation point at the end and started using it as a password) and he accidentally told her about this guy Catesby he knew, the agent for a hitwoman who called herself "Miss Neale". It took 3 weeks for her to convince Lloyd to put her in touch with Catesby, and after that they were never as close as they used to be.

What little info Sylmar could find about Miss Neale's reputation excited her, and she was sure she would be perfect. Miss Neale was a professional who prided herself on ensuring this messy work was always done cleanly and quickly. Perfect because Sue's death needed to be as painless as possible, so that it would be as painless as possible for Stu.

Kahler's message echoing her most private obsession was a sign that it was finally time. Sylmar cashed out her 401k to pay Miss Neale's fee. She hoped Stu would understand it was what had to be done. A few days after making the payment as Catesby had instructed, she woke up and found a handful of texts waiting for her. She barely talked to anyone these days and couldn't remember the last time she'd had notifications to wake up to. On every app, a funeral procession of memorial posts from people who'd barely known Sue. Nobody knew why Sue was dead. Sylmar recognized that she would be alone with her secret for the rest of her life, and she went back to sleep to avoid thinking about that.

The night Sue died, she had Stu come over again. While they took each other's clothes off, she said, 

"Baby, I wanna try something new tonight. Let's pretend we're on a private jet over the ocean."

"What?"

Stu's fingers paused their caressing and lifted from her skin a little. She started to worry about rejection. Image of her body mangled after the 5-story fall.

"What do you mean?", he said, a little softer, bringing his fingers back down to glide over her back and arms.

"I mean like - okay. A private jet. A really fancy one. And you're the pilot. I want you to fuck me this time. You have the jet on autopilot, you have me bent over the co-pilot's chair and you're fucking pounding me. You lean away from me here and there to just barely touch the controls, make course adjustments. I'm getting myself off in sync with you. When I'm about to cum, I feel it building, I want you to take over manual control and take us into a deep dive, I want the G forces to throw me against the wall and my ass'll sting from how fast your cock slips back out of me and we'll finish on our own, you'll be holding onto the controls with your left hand so you don't get slammed into the wall with me... the plane will just skim the water and then you'l pull us back up to cruising altitude, you'll get lube and cum and shit all over the handles... kelp will hang off the wings like strings of cum..."

"Sure... that sounds hot. We can try that."

He pulled her panties off, tossed them into a corner, put on a very serious face and said,

"Please fasten your seatbelt, and ensure that your tray table is in the upright locked position."

It was when he started making those motorboat noises with his mouth that Sue admitted to herself Stu didn't get what she wanted him to do. She stopped pretending to enjoy it and said,

"Sweetie, no, stop. Not like that."

He stopped thrusting, bent over, moving his hands from her hips to her shoulders, and said,

"What's wrong?"

"That's not what an airplane sounds like. Have you ever flown? It's just a steady hum, like Nnnnnnnnn - and a private jet is even quieter. I imagine. It's a smooth ride. I want you to talk to me, please."

He pulled out abruptly, leaving her with a burning rawness in her asshole, and took a step back. Sue's fear of rejection took over again. Image of the late Sue Schoeneck, limbs splayed and bent at reflex angles, facedown and pulped after the 5-story fall. A news headline that strangers would share on social media and that other strangers would criticize for how it referred to her. Her name spoken over Zoom for TDOR. Image of Stu broken up crying and vulnerable again. Oh - Stu was talking to her...

"... and I am TRYING, I PROMISE, but you - jesus christ Sue, did you just start listening now? You know I hate it when you tune me out like that, I'm TRYING to tell you what's going on and what I'm feeling and it's like you don't even care? DO I FUCKING EXIST TO YOU SUE? DO YOU REALIZE I'M A WHOLE FUCKING PERSON JUST LIKE YOU? THAT THERE IS A WHOLE WORLD OF PEOPLE OUT HERE AND NOT JUST YOUR INTERNAL FUCKING MONOLOGUE? DO - "

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!!! Don't FUCKING yell at me!! You KNOW that's a trigger you FUCKING asshole!"

Sue pushed Stu aside to get to the pile of clothes and dress back up.

"I'm going to the corner store," she said, pointedly staring a foot to the left of his head as she put her dress back on. "You need to be gone by the time I get back, cuz I am texting Kahler to say he can come home now."

Sue wished she was dead. Why did she bother with Stu? With men? They never understood. Why did she bother with life? She knew she didn't deserve to live, didn't deserve second third fourth chances from everyone. And they didn't deserve what she put them through. Image of herself, straddling the balcony rail, ready to tip over. Feeling of gravity taking hold. She imagined the bliss of knowing she had overcome her instinctive will to live. The satisfaction of knowing her death was imminent, and guaranteed by immutable physical laws.

She farted and felt something dribble out and run down her inner thigh. Then Miss Neale, sitting in the back of an SUV parked a few blocks back, shot Sue Schoeneck in the head and was out of town by the time Kahler, driving home, found Sue's body.

Dora Cardinal lives in Milwaukee, WI. This is her first published work. She also plays laptop and voice in the band Ballstomper. She can be found on Twitter @sylansylpo.