Beth twitched her neck slightly to the left. It was a quick, involuntary movement that made her look much like a startled pigeon. Her mouth was agape, with her lower jaw held slightly to the left, like a jewelry box that wouldn’t shut properly. She stood in front of her bathroom mirror, her jet black hair undone, eyes red, and naked. The steam from the hot shower was slowly fogging up the mirror. She kept splashing water on it to get a clearer view.
“Susan is such a bitch!”, she kept murmuring under her breath.
“A wise-ass, know-it-all!” “She can fool everyone with her schoolgirl hair, fake smile and slutty little skirts. But she ain’t fooling me!”
“She’s such a bitch! Attention seeker! Opportunist! She’ll do anything to please her superiors. I’ve had my fill watching from my seat while the others shower her with praise, the fake bitch!”.
She spat hard on the mirror.
Beth was an introvert. She rarely mingled with her colleagues at the office, and even when she did, it was mostly through nods and raises of the eyebrow rather than words. She always felt anxious in groups, around people and at conversations directed towards her. Her desk was directly behind Susan and she could always see the back of her well plaited hair. She would often notice how Susan maintained a perfect posture throughout the day, and would try to sit upright when she did; only to find herself slouching a minute after. She never understood why Susan used so much perfume when she already smelled nice. Beth didn’t have a particular reason to hate Susan as much as she did. It was an involuntary hatred that made her stiff whenever she saw Susan, be it her walking into the office, talking with her colleagues, or simply working at her table. At times she found herself faced with a curious wonderment as to why she disliked the very existence of the woman. She tried to convince herself that the hatred was probably because Susan was better than her in many ways.
Susan was everything that Beth was not. Her being the ‘Employee of the Month’ consecutively for the six months since she had joined the Company hadn’t stopped her from being the most liked person among her colleagues. She was the most popular among them, but without the air of a college cheerleader. She was a natural leader, but without any desire to project herself. Her neatly plaited hair with short bangs, the angelic face that was too kind and forgiving, the frock dresses that reached just below her knees and the stockings that reached just above, and the knitted overalls she wore, together gave her the aura of one of those perfect Catholic wife characters one would see in movies. Susan’s eye reached every nook and corner of the office. She radiated happiness when someone was happy, laughed out loud at another person’s joke even when it wasn’t very funny, shed an involuntary tear when yet another’s pet died, and would blush and walk away timidly if she overheard someone crack an indecent joke. Susan was one of those people who was selfless to a fault. But she had a minor flaw, a black dot on an otherwise perfectly white sheet that she tried hard to hide with the only fake smiles and words she ever smiled and spoke in her rigorously religious life. She hated Beth!
She thought that Beth was shabby, which she was.
She believed that Beth was an alcoholic, which she was. Oftentimes, she could almost get a faint whiff of stale rum from Beth’s breath, which she immediately repelled with the pocket perfume from her purse.
If you were to ask Susan, Beth was an invisible woman. No one bothered to talk to her in the office. It was as if she hadn’t existed in their eyes. The groups in which they stood together acknowledged Susan alone, and ignored Beth as if she were a ghost. Beth’s tired attempts at bringing out a limerick or a joke would almost always be cut off by Susan. While Susan considered this as a kindness that she was showing her weird colleague whom she was sure would become the laughingstock if she uttered what she had in her mind; Beth saw Susan as someone who overshadowed her constantly. She stood tall and dark over the limp frame that was Beth, basking in all the attention and love, at least a part of which was rightfully hers for all she cared.
It is always difficult to comprehend the hate someone has for another which would cause them to kill the latter. Neither was the decision to kill Susan an easy one. Planning the process of killing Susan felt easier to Beth than deciding to do it. That is precisely why she had so easily managed to duplicate a key to Susan’s apartment, leave the office early on the day, and hide under her bed. Nothing but a weird anxiety and excitement played in Beth’s mind when she heard Susan enter the apartment. The surgical blade she had secured from a shady chemist was sharp enough, as evident from the deep wound on her left arm, which she inflicted on herself as a kind of practice for cutting tissue with a scalpel. The careful footsteps that she took walking behind Susan as she undressed herself and headed for the bath, surprised Beth. Beth felt that she was almost walking alongside Susan and still Susan hadn’t noticed her. She thought with a sad smile on her face that being unnoticeable had finally paid off. Blood sprayed directly along the right line that the scalpel created on Susan’s neck. Beth remembered thinking that it was not how she had imagined the scene to be. She had pictured a more uniform flow of blood down the neck rather than the random spurts, gushes and sprays or the slight pop when she cut through the windpipe.
“Susan Bethany Myers” read the police report the next day, “was found dead in her apartment with a scalpel in her right hand, a deep incision on her left arm and a slit throat. The victim is believed to have made the incision on her arm with the scalpel before proceeding to slit her own throat.”
No one at the office understood why the lovely Susan had killed herself.
Many of them hopelessly wondered about the kind of trauma that such a clear headed person as Susan would have gone through to kill herself.
Yet a few others pointed out the importance of mental health and opening up about problems in life.
Very few understood the seemingly simple words like dual persona that Susan’s psychiatrist shared with them, as the police brought her in for a session at the office.
No one had heard of a woman named Beth.