London Chronicle - Monday 19th December 2005
     A diary of murders by Jessica Jordan
     (Edited by Andrew Montgomery)
    
     It's funny how, when you dream, you can hear the sounds, see the pictures and experience all the emotion, without another single, solitary person knowing what's happening. That's how it was with Gabrielle and me.
            We existed in a watertight, soundproof cocoon that was only ever violated when we allowed it. We spent our days locked in a room, accompanied only by copious amounts of alcohol, intense obsession and a virgin sense of togetherness. While we talked, planned and made love, the others conducted research and got along without us - they were days and nights that had previously only ever existed in fiction.
            At first, I delayed the impending day, when Gabrielle would suggest we went on our first mission, but as time passed and I began to understand the reasons behind her cause, the benefits of such actions, I actually looked forward to it with nervous anticipation. According to the weather on the TV, we were in for some severe blizzards and freezing fog, it was the dawn of a New Year and a new era for me, and I had never been so happy. James Lister however, wasn't going to see much of 2003.
            It took us almost two hours to arrive at our destination and we were restricted time-wise. Eager to track our first victim down, we waited outside his squalid residence, warmed by the engine-heated blowers of our Vauxhall Senator and the conversation. Leif had joined us, a standby getaway driver if the need arose, and she was busy checking our armoury in the back seat as I glanced nervously up and down the frost sparkling street.
            I had no idea where we were. Our journey took us whizzing past headlight illuminated signs, boasting town and village names I didn't recognise, nor could I pronounce. From the little (deemed necessary) information I had been given, I gathered we were somewhere in the Northeast, between Scotland and the rest of the country, it was all I needed to know. It was an unsurprisingly run down area of whatever town it was we were in, cramped, ill-repaired link houses stretched out before us like two adjacent lines of dominos. Graffiti covered street lights blinking on and off, sent Morse code messages of desperation to clocked off council workers.  We were unobtrusively parked behind a battered transit van, outside Number two hundred and ninety seven of a street with no apparent name; I drummed impatient and trembling fingers on the clouded passenger window of the car.
            Gabrielle closed her hand over mine and put it to her lips, gently kissing the digits that were soon to be responsible for the death of our first 'denominator'. "Relax will you, everything's going to be fine."
            "I'm okay, I just wish he would--" My words hung in the tension-ridden air as Mr. James David Lister slammed a rotting, weather-beaten door across the road from us and stuffing dirty hands into his jacket pockets, stomped off angrily down the desolate street.
            Calmly, Gabrielle slipped the car into first and manoeuvred it almost silently away from the kerb and into pursuit of our intended. "Now stay calm," she said, pulling slowly alongside him, "I'm going to ask him to come for a little ride." And with a familiar buzz of an electric window, we were faced with the sight of a man not long for this world. "Excuse me?" she said politely, "I wonder if you could help us.?"
            James Lister turned angry, drug misted eyes on us, "What?"
            "I'm sorry to trouble you, but we're a little lost. Have you heard of The Hope and Anchor public house?" Gabrielle enquired.
            "Aye, it's me local, whaddabout it?"
            "Well we're supposed to be meeting some friends there and we've been driving around for almost half an hour now." She gave him her most seductive smile and opened the passenger door, illuminating our hopefully friendly faces and setting off the Bing-Bing of the warning alarm, "I don't suppose we could give you a lift there could we? Kill two birds with one stone so to speak?"
            He cast a suspicious, hatred-ridden glance over us all and then his warped mind visibly got the better of him. With a semi-toothless, leering grin (and an obviously empty pocket, bearing no change for a taxi; just the regulation scrumpled twenty pound note - that he had no doubt stolen from the purse of his long-suffering partner) he muttered something about how it would be "An 'onour." and jumped into the back seat next to Leif.
            My mind went into override and my heart into overdrive as I watched in the rear view mirror as Leif smashed an expert elbow into his nose and thrust the blade of a silver handled knife deftly into his left thigh, twisting it hard, without so much as a grimace. His muffled cry of pain rang in my ears as Gabrielle floored the accelerator and took us quickly to a disused warehouse loading bay and verbally instructed me of what to do next.
            "You have to kill him Jess, he's still alive and neither of us can finish it."
            Her voice sounded distant as I tried to concentrate on what she was saying and not notice how Leif had hear head in his lap, greedily lapping up the blood from his spurting wound.
            "Take this," she said, handing me a lethal-looking, hunting knife, "all you have to do is slit his throat, just beneath his Adam's apple. It's quick, clean and simple and he'll die almost instantly," she said looking sideways at me with a smile, "just in case you were harbouring a conscience."
             I forced a weak smile as adrenaline raced through my body and my chest tightened, I gripped the handle of the knife tightly, fearing it would slip from my sweating palm. I watched as Gabrielle casually climbed from the car with the indifference and speed of someone about to go for a leisurely browse around the sales, and saunter to my side to graciously open the door for me.
            Taking my hand, (whilst Leif bound and gagged our temporary prisoner, oblivious to his spluttering protests) she helped me from the car with a reassuring smile. "He's all yours kid," she said, kissing me softly on the lips and brushing a stray lock of hair from my eyes, "go do the world a favour."
            I'll never forget the look in my first victim's eyes as he was dragged from the car and placed on his knees before me. If he'd have been a man of God (and even though he wasn't, I'm sure he was praying to whomever he considered his saviour to be for his life) he would have just looked like he was begging forgiveness. Confusion, absolute terror and realisation reigned in eyes above the rag that Leif had bound around his face to prevent his screams from being heard. Realisation that, he was finally going to pay for all the wrong he'd done was the thing that shone the strongest as I walked around him, grabbing a handful of greasy hair and yanking his head back to look up at me.
            I battled with intense emotions of guilt, fear and a sense of atonement, of justice, however harsh it seemed to me, as I clamped his head between quaking knees. The thing I remember the most when I think back, was the glint of icy moonlight on the blade as I placed it to his skin. In that brief moment, a revealing light reflected all his sins and the retribution I was about to prevail upon him; you could say it balanced things out.
            As blood pounded in my ears and I swallowed hard, I saw a brief flash of evil hiding beneath the horror in his eyes, lurking behind the foreign dread he was experiencing now. It made it all the easier for me to smile down at him and say, "Goodbye James Lister and fucking good riddance! Your creator awaits, whoever he may be."  With a swift draw of the knife, I released a river of tainted blood and threw him face down into it, finally drowning him in his own depravity, it was the last thing he tasted before hurtling into an eternal world of darkness, metallic medicine of his own recipe.
    
     Tomorrow: Murder Number two: Robert McCallister
    

Chapter Ten

            Once I had recovered from the shock of committing my first murder (which only really took the duration of the journey back to The Sanctuary dear reader), I began to feel a strange euphoria and by the time we arrived home, I was experiencing an alien feeling of macabre satisfaction. We were greeted by an exuberant crowd and welcoming smiles. I was lead like a hero, into the great dining room, where a party in my honour was in full swing.
            After I had killed James Lister, Gabrielle had walked me back to the car. Placing a comforting arm around my shoulders, she told me to wait inside whilst she and Leif disposed of the body. I knew by the satisfied glint in her eyes when she returned, that they had done much more than that, but I said nothing, not sure I was ready for that particular revelation.
            Now as I sat next to her at the head of the table, Gabrielle stood as Leif walked around - the heart of our victim dangling morosely in a raised hand - dripping blood into the chalice-like goblets eagerly held aloft by my sisters, in a morbid toast. "Let us drink tonight ladies to our first 'redressing of the balance'." She raised hers in salute as I filled my own with wine and smiling down at me, placed a hand on top of my head, "and to Jessie, our redeemer."
            "To Jessie." they chorused, the dull chink of heavy goblets meeting in celebration, drowned out by the cheers. I tried in vain to ignore the growing sense of belonging that had started to pervade my being as I smiled at the women who had irrevocably changed my life.