The Vanilla killer

In the beginning

White pickett fences, red brick double story homes, green perfectly mowed lawns, children playing in the streets under the moonlight, streetlights that were barely needed, a beach front that stretched further than the eye could see, a warm sea breeze and sand sipping on my doorsteps in the early morning is how I would love to remember my hometown. A quick drive to the convenience store closest to the beach, for my morning coffee and bagels before a thirty minute drive to work is how I would love to remember everything but alas what we have known to be is not so...There is a furore where I live, or rather a great fear that has caused unexplainable panic, paranoia and traumatizing fear for all of the residents of Bath. My name is Claire I am a nurse, I am thirty seven years old married to Jack a firefighter, we live in the rural outskirts of Bath, we have been married for ten years with no children. Our marriage is an unhappy and unhealthy marriage if you ask me. I know fear, real fear where you truly fear for your life at every given moment, as I live with such a fear everyday. Jack is abusive and unfaithful "you are nothing but a pig Claire " he tells me often "you are thy epitome of filth" he told me once, and he beat me black and blue way too often " you make me do it" he would insist after and I always believed it, The fact that I believed his abuse was justified made him even more abusive and unfaithful " he is bedding the whole town " my neighbor Rosey with the bright pink hair rollers on her coarse red hair would tell me, her pale pink flabby skin hung loose and heavy on her tight pink dirty permanently stained trousers and white sleeveless vest. Rosey always made it a point to let me in on my husband's recent infidelity and uncontrollable promiscuity around rural Bath " he slept with Jennifer the hooker last night" she would tell me though she knew I would do nothing about it, no matter how hurtful and embarrassing it was at first to hear about Jack, I had recently forced myself to live with my humiliation because confronting Jack would result in a beating and further conflicts in our union, a fact that I was always sure that Rosey hoped for. I didn't like or dislike Rosey though I was convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that she really disliked me, Rosey for me was a minefield a really interesting person, a great interest. She was middle aged, a redneck, allegedly a former hooker herself though she had vile and bile for such women, obese and alert, I could never understand how she could afford to live in Bath despite being unemployed and living on disability benefits though I was unsure of her disability since she appeared perfectly fine to me, sans her behavior and loud mouth. I always found it strange how people like Rosey who didn't move around frequently in the area, who didn't go to all the hidden places of the town, seemed to know everything that happened to everybody at precisely that date and time of the occurrence of the incident, Rosey truly was well informed and socially advanced, she amazed me and I meant those words as not a compliment " it's all in the head Claire " she would say to me, when I asked her how she knew these things " you only need to look them in their face and squarely in their eyes" she said " if the mouth refuses to say some, interrogate the eyes, the picture they will paint can tell you a thousand words that a sound can't explain " she said, I always diagnosed her as barking mad, yet I found even more amusing and strange how she had a way to make her brother reclusive and quite Patrick speak by just looking at him" what are you looking at you fat w***e?" Patrick would yell at her, as he came back home from work " am looking at the f*****g moon" Rosey would retort " I am f*****g looking at you whatelse you lifeless,motionless and useless object" she would bark.