Deranged + down bad: a non-ethical, non-monogamy short story

Valium prescriptions, non-ethical, non-monogamy, an attachment crisis and an opportune Hinge match. What could go wrong?

FYI: this story is due to appear in Scary Boots Zine Issue 2, which you can pre-order here.

Ellen once told me that she’d had a dream that I’d killed Laura. Looking at me in the eyes, as if I really was capable of murder, she’d recounted the details of this little night terror: I’d grasped Laura’s tiny frame in my hands and shaken her wildly, like she was a doll. But she wasn’t a doll, she was a 26-year-old girl, so I’d literally just shaken the life out of her.

“Vivid,” I’d said. “Who knew you had any imagination?”

But it wasn’t really so far-fetched. I’d often told Ellen - explicitly, on multiple occasions and with such palpable rage that I’d had to bite the insides of my cheeks to calm down - that if I ever happened upon Laura I would beat the fucking shit out of her. I’d said it the morning Ellen came clean, after she'd spent an afternoon sloppily smiling at her phone before hastily “going out to meet a friend”. I’d said it the first time Ellen didn’t come home. I’d said it after receiving WhatsApp messages from Ellen, gingerly saying that they’d slept together again, after I’d literally begged her to call it off.

I fantasised about it too. Not shaking Laura, no. But I frequently thought about smacking her. Sometimes, it was a clean swipe with the back of my hand. Other times, I was smooshing her face under my palm, forcing her head into her neck with all of my strength. In every scenario, I was laughing. And I mean, that’s all pretty weird in itself. But it gets weirder when you realise that I didn’t even really know what Laura looked like.

See, I’d pleaded with Ellen, all doe eyes and low-slung top, to see what I was up against. What I got in return was a furtive flash of a picture showing a wan girl smizing in a floral tea dress, sat on the grass with the sun lighting up her face.

So far, so twee,” I’d thought.

But I didn’t get much chance to gloat over my opponent’s failings. Any time I asked to see the picture again, Ellen resorted to her weapon of choice; looking at me blankly, not just as if I hadn’t said anything, but as if I wasn’t standing right in front of her. For whatever reason, I needed to hold this picture of Laura in my head - to feel reassured that this wouldn’t last, that finally it would end.

I resorted to desperate social media reconnaissance. During each of Ellen’s unexplained absences, I combed through followers and likes to find a trace of Laura. Eventually, I dug up a seldom-used Twitter, which didn’t contain the hallowed tea dress pic. Instead, it only served to incense me more as I combed through half-esoteric, half-insane shitposts and the occasional sappy retweet about the joys of being in someone’s presence, or whatever, which I just fucking knew was referring to Ellen. (If ever I stumbled across one of these reposts, I’d message Ellen a deranged screed about how I’d fucking had it and how she couldn’t !!!! fucking !!! treat me !!! like this!!!)

If it sounds unhinged, that’s because it was. Bearing in mind, I’d literally just been prescribed valium because I was stomping around powered by this livid, amorphous rage that made me tremble and completely subsumed my need to eat or sleep. Instead, what this rage wanted was slammed doors, 2am night walks with just the scraggly neighbourhood foxes as company, and me locking myself in the bathroom to turn on the shower and cry. My mother said I seemed “strung out”.

But, one day, things changed. On my seemingly never-ending quest to track down Laura’s social media accounts, I finally found her. Turns out, she’d changed her IG handle from something obscure and art hoe-esque to her actual name and made her account public. But before we get into it, let’s get something obvious out of the way. The fact she’d even had an art hoe-esque handle to begin with tells you everything: she was decidedly not twee and she was certainly not the girl in the dress who I’d been day-dreaming of smacking the shit out of.

The real Laura was all cowboy boots and true noughties charity shop finds, messy hair and nicotine-stained teeth. She was a Goldsmiths grad and a feral, anaemic party girl. And I knew her: we’d matched on Hinge a year ago. Suddenly, I had my in – a desire for confrontation enabled by convenience economy dating apps.