Enemy
by John Davis
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Sitting in her white Kia Carnival in the primary school car park, Sally studied her reflection in the rearview mirror and hated what she saw. Wrinkles. So many goddamn wrinkles. Crow’s feet around her eyes. That saggy chin. She was only forty, for Christ’s sake. Her face shouldn’t look like this at forty. She fought the urge to rip the mirror off.
She watched the young mothers in their tight workout leggings greeting their kids at their cars, with their thick hair and unsaggy tits and unwrinkled faces.
See also: Fuckable.
She wanted to go up to each smiling, white-toothed one of them and say it’s coming for you, too, sweetheart. Just give it another ten years, and you’ll see.
The passenger side door swung open, and her eight-year-old daughter Tina bounced in. She slammed the door behind her. “Hey, Mum.”
Sally winced. “Tina, how many times have I told you? Don’t slam the door.”
“Sorry.”
Sighing, Sally started the car and backed slowly out of the parking space and into the street, watching the reverse camera. “How was school?”
Tina toyed with her beaded bracelet. “Good. Art class was fun. Jessica got a unicorn toy from K-Mart. She showed it to us for show-and-tell.”
Sally scoffed as she put the car into drive and lurched down the road. Show-and-tell. What a joke. She turned left at the end of the street. The sky was grey. Red and yellow elm leaves skittered across the dark macadam.
“Can I have a unicorn toy?” Tina asked.
Sally passed the old steel playground on the avenue, dark and incongruous under the elm trees like the hulking skeleton of a bizarre dinosaur. “What do you want something like that for? You’re a big girl now; you don’t need a unicorn toy.”
“Pleeease? I’ll be extra good.”
“You should be extra good anyway.” Sally sighed. “Fine.”
“Yay!”
As she drove home, Sally decided there couldn’t be any harm in getting her daughter one of those stupid toys. It was just that same old stubbornness talking, which she’d unfortunately inherited from her mother, that cold, crochety old bitch. Just thinking about her brought heat rushing to her face. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in almost a decade, but her presence lingered like a bitter ghost, spitting harsh words in her mind. Whatever. That old cow couldn’t do anything to her now.
At home, her husband Jeremy was sitting on the couch, their rottweiler Axel curled up on his lap. At the sight of Tina, Axel lifted his head with its perpetually sad expression and his tail thump-thump-thumped. Tina gave him a pat on his head and let him lick her face—a habit which Sally found disgusting—and scampered off to the kitchen to raid the pantry.
“Don’t eat too much before dinner,” Sally called.
“I won’t,” Tina garbled through a mouthful of cookies, spraying crumbs.
“Oh.” Jeremy glanced up from the TV, absentmindedly scratching Axel behind the ear. “Package arrived for you today.”
Sally felt a glow of excitement. “Where is it?”
“On the bed. Thought you’d want to open it there.”
She gave him a peck on the cheek. He could be a lazy lump sometimes, but he was sweet. “Thanks, babe.” She smelled something foul and scowled. “What’s that smell?”
Jeremy sniffed the air, frowned, and shook his head. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Mum.”
Sally followed her daughter’s voice. In the passageway, Tina was standing in front of a dark lump on the carpet. Anger rushed into Sally’s head. She marched back into the living room and yanked Axel off Jeremy’s lap by the collar.
“Oi,” Jeremy shouted from the couch. “Gentle with him.”
Ignoring him, Sally dragged the dog into the backyard and slammed the door in his sad face. She pointed at the dark lump as she marched towards the bedroom. “You better clean that up,” she shouted to Jeremy. “I’m sick of that fucking dog shitting in this house.”
Tina gasped. “You sweared, Mum.”
Sally stormed into the bedroom, closed the door, and leaned against it.
Damn, she thought. Get a grip, girlfriend. It’s just dog shit.
Laughing at herself, promising to give Axel extra food later, she went to the queen-sized bed.
There it sat, the parcel she’d been waiting for. It was thoughtfully wrapped in yarn with a charming little Thank You note attached. Sitting on the bed, Sally opened the parcel on her lap. Inside, nestled in protective bubble-wrap, was a small glass phial filled with scarlet liquid. With a brief glance at the closed door, she took it out, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
Inside the box, under where the phial had been, lay a brown card. She picked it up and inspected it. It contained instructions in bold typeface: Consume only in small doses once a day. Never exceed this in a 24-hour period. Any complications caused by improper use are the sole responsibility of the buyer.
Sally tucked the card back into the box and closed it. She looked at the phial. Two weeks ago, an ad popped up on her browser while she was searching for anti-aging creams. A woman purporting herself to be a sorceress (not a witch, thank you very much) claimed that her product could “revitalize the skin” and “bring a youthful shine.” Desperate to try anything at this point, encouraged by the product’s decent price—only $79.99 plus shipping—she’d decided to buy it, without telling Jeremy, of course.
She tucked the phial into her pocket and went to get Axel some dog food by way of apology. When she opened the back door, he rushed to his plastic bowl and wolfed down the putrid stuff. Whatever Axel was, at least he wasn’t a fussy eater.
That night, as Sally tucked Tina into bed, her daughter asked in a small voice, “Why don’t you like your wrinkles, Mum?”
Sally raised her eyebrows. “Who says I don’t like my wrinkles?”
“I heard you tell Dad.”
Sally paused to think about her answer. “Wrinkles remind people that they’re getting old, sweetie.”
“What’s wrong with getting old?”
“Well… it’s not nice to think about, you know?”
“I like your wrinkles, Mum.”
Her daughter’s response, the unabashed earnestness of it, the sheer innocence, left Sally momentarily breathless. That girl was full of surprises. Tears threatened, and she blinked them back. “Thank you, sweetie. That’s a very kind thing to say.”
“But you still want to get rid of them?”
“Well… yes.”
Tina rolled away from her, clutching her pink bunny teddy to her chest. “Night, Mum.” Her shoulders were hunched and stiff.
Sally hesitated. A distance seemed to form between them. Tina was clearly upset. Her hand hovered over her daughter’s shoulder under the comforter and retreated. Best to leave her be. Tina would forget about this little chat by morning. Kids were amazingly resilient. “Night, sweetie,” Sally said. She stepped out and gently closed the door.
In the kitchen, while Sally snuck a slice of cheese from the fridge, Jeremy stepped behind her, pressing his erection against her buttocks. Christ, he was big. His cock was throbbing against her ass like a heartbeat. His hands slid hungrily over her breasts as he whispered huskily into her ear.
“Come to bed.”
She squirmed out of his grasp, hoping to seem teasing but really just wanting him to stop touching her. She wasn’t in the mood tonight. Let him wait a little while. “Soon,” she said.
He patted her ass and sauntered off to bed, his erection visible inside his underwear.
Finishing off the cheese slice, she fetched a glass of water from the tap. As she sipped, she chanced to look at herself in the dark window over the sink. She followed the lines in her face, lingered over the sagging sacks of skin under her eyes, the flabby cheeks. She lifted her shirt and sneered at the stretch marks and the loose flesh of her stomach.
See also: Imperfect.
See also: Ugly.
She took the phial out of her pocket. The red liquid gleamed softly in the kitchen lights. The instructions had warned her not to take too much. But why shouldn’t she? There was no good reason not to. That little warning on the card was probably just a way for the manufacturer to cover her ass. Typical legalese stuff.
Sally yanked out the stopper, put the phial to her lips, and tipped her head back, swallowing half its contents in one gulp. It burned down her throat and she winced. It tasted like… well, she didn’t exactly know what it tasted like. Some combination of dishwashing liquid, rotten leaves, and iron. The liquid settled warmly in her stomach like liquor.
After gargling tap water to banish the taste from her mouth, Sally plugged the stopper back into the phial and headed off to bed, already feeling lighter, humming as she went.
As Sally and Tina walked across the sunlit K-Mart parking lot, Tina was already tearing at the packaging of her brand-new unicorn toy. It was early evening on Saturday. Weekend shoppers pushed rattling trolleys across the macadam towards their cars, a light breeze stirring the sprawling mat rushes and bottlebrush trees between the parking bays.
Sally kept thinking about the way some of the men—and even the women—had looked at her while they shopped. Several young guys stared with naked desire; one of them even nudged his male friend and jerked his thumb at her. That made her smile. But best of all were the jealous looks she got from young women with their boyfriends.
Her transformation was happening at an alarming rate. Already, only days after first ingesting the solution, her skin was smoother, her body tighter, her hair thicker. The stuff really was working. Best eighty bucks she ever spent.
In the car, Sally quickly scrolled through her Facebook messages on her phone while Tina unwrapped the toy, tearing cardboard and snapping plastic ties. “This is so cool.” Dumping the torn packaging in the footwell, she inspected the unicorn.
There was a small red button on its belly. Tina pressed it. A recorded neighing sound emanated from a miniature speaker.
The sound was like a needle piercing Sally’s brain. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Maybe don’t use it in the car, sweetie.”
But her daughter was too enamored with the toy to pay her any attention. Giggling, she pressed the button again. Neigh. Neigh. Neigh.
Sally’s skull pounded. Her hand squeezed the steering wheel, creaking the leather. “Tina, baby—”
Neigh. Neigh. Neigh.
Each repetition of the sound was a splinter in Sally’s mind. Her heart pounded.
Neigh. Neigh. Neigh.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Sally snatched the toy, stuck it out the open window, and hurled it down. It smashed on the ground.
The moment the toy smashed, Sally was overcome with remorse and shock. She’d never lost her temper with Tina like that before. She turned to her daughter. “Oh my god, babe. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Mummy didn’t mean it, okay?”
Tina’s lips trembled. Her chin quivered, and great big tears streamed down her reddening cheeks.
Sally held her face. “I’m sorry, sweetie.” She hugged her. Tina was stiff in her arms, hitching with sobs. “I don’t know what came over me.” She let go of Tina and opened the car door to inspect the damage.
The toy looked like it had exploded. Pieces of purple plastic lay scattered across the macadam. A triple-A battery gleamed in the sun. The unicorn’s severed head lay among the wreckage.
Two parking spaces away, an obese woman with her young son glared at her.
Sally closed the door. “Mummy’ll get you a new one, okay?”
They went back into K-Mart, Tina crying quietly the whole time, and bought another unicorn toy. People stared, but not the same way they’d stared before; gone were the admiring glances, replaced by furrowed brows and frowns. The young male shop assistant who’d helped them earlier gave Sally a strange look that said Didn’t you already get one of these?
They drove home in silence. Tina hugged her replacement unicorn to her chest.
She never once pressed the button.
When they got home, Sally rushed into the bathroom and gripped the sink. Trembling. She felt sick. In the medicine cabinet mirror, she stretched her cheek with her index finger. Still a few wrinkles there. Not perfect yet.
She took the phial from her pocket. This would fix it. This would make her feel better. She downed another quarter of it, leaving a few drops left in the bottom, and immediately felt relief wash over her.
Smiling, she left the bathroom.
By the second week since ingesting the anti-aging liquid, Sally’s transformation was all but complete. Jeremy even commented on it. I don’t know how you’re doing it, he’d said breathlessly after a rigorous love-making session, but I like it.
Her Facebook friends gushed over her updated profile picture. Some even suggested she was using photoshop. She liked the jealous remarks as much as the compliments.
Enjoying her reclaimed beauty and youthfulness, Sally decided to take a day off from her job at the chemist to go shopping. It’d been a while since she’d splashed out on anything. Before her transformation, she felt in her heart that she wasn’t worthy of nice things, but now she decided she deserved it. She bought a $200 pair of leather derby shoes and went home to try them on in the living room. With Tina at school and Jeremy at the car dealership, she had the house all to herself. The only thing missing was champagne. There was a glass of Dom Perignon in the kitchen.
As she strutted along the passageway towards the kitchen, something squished under her shoe.
With a sharp pang of anxiety, she looked down, already knowing what she would find.
Dog shit. Smeared across the carpet. She lifted her shoe and turned up the heel. It was crushed into the tread. Her new shoe, for Christ’s sake. Her body went from icy cold to stifling hot. Blood pounded in her head. She clenched her teeth so tightly that they creaked.
Behind her, Axel whined nervously.
She whirled. In the doorway to the kitchen, Axel just sat there, looking at her with those stupid fucking dog eyes, nothing going on back there, a dumb, useless animal whose only purpose was to shit on her fucking floor.
Trembling, she marched to the front door, yanked it open, and pointed outside. “Out!” Her voice rang off the walls.
The dog whined. His ears flattened against his head and his tail shrank between his legs.
“Out! Get the fuck out!”
A wary look in his canine eyes, Axel rose and scampered into the kitchen.
Sally chased him. She smelled the dog shit on the floor, the ripe, pungent odor crawling into her nostrils and seeping into her brain, feeding her rage.
Unable to escape through the back door, Axel cowered in the corner of the kitchen. His quivering infuriated her, and the next thing she knew she was kicking him, kicking him hard in the ribs, the stomach, the head, anywhere she could, the dog whimpering and his claws scrabbling uselessly across the linoleum as her kicks became stomps, cracking rib bones, and the more she stomped, the angrier she became, angry at this useless fucking animal for ruining her goddamn carpet and her new shoes, angry at him for making her do this.
She roared at him, punctuating her words with stomps. “I told you. Don’t… shit… on… my fucking… FLOOR!”
By the time she was done, Sally was hot and trembling with exertion. She leaned against the sink, her body drenched in sweat, breathing heavily over the inert rottweiler. She felt elated. Blood and hair clung to her shoe.
Blinking through her sweat, she looked down at Axel.
He wasn’t moving. His tongue stuck out of his mouth.
Shaking, Sally knelt over him, trembling fingers hovering over his shattered body. Oh, God. What had she done?
“Axel?” She nudged him, but he made no response. She peeled back an eyelid. The eye stared out blankly. His chest was still.
Heart thudding dully in her chest, she let the eyelid fall and stood. She felt as if she’d just woken from a terrible nightmare, one in which she’d committed this unforgiveable act, only to find that the nightmare was real. She’d killed him. Jesus Christ, she’d killed him. She hadn’t meant to. She was just angry. Christ, what was happening to her? She paced the kitchen, raking her trembling fingers through her hair.
What do I do? She thought. What do I do? What do I do?
She could lie. Tell Jeremy a robber or a meth-head had come storming in and killed Axel. But then her DNA would be all over the dog, and even if investigators never got involved, there would always be a lingering shadow of doubt. It wouldn’t be overt, but she’d see it in the way her husband looked at her, in the cold silences over dinner.
She had to get rid of the body. That was the only thing to do.
Sally bent down, slid her arms under Axel, and lifted him. His head dangled grotesquely. She carried him out to the backyard, fetched the shovel from the toolshed, and dug a sizeable trench in the garden bed beside the rosebush. Then she laid Axel in the grave and filled it in, arranging leaves over the dirt to disguise it.
Inside, she called Jeremy’s work number, making her voice sound suitably upset as she informed him that Axel had escaped.
Afterwards, she found the one quarter-full phial of liquid and stood in the waning light of the backyard, looking at it. This evil stuff did this to her, made her this way. It had unleashed something inside her, something dark and awful and utterly unlike her.
She threw the phial as hard as she could. It caught the sunlight as it spiraled over the fence and vanished.
Stalking back to the house, she thought, Over. Finally over.
At the chemist, Sally stood behind the checkout counter, unable to concentrate. The words of customers rolled over her without registering. It’d been three days since the incident with Axel, and she couldn’t get it out of her head.
Her phone rang in her pocket. She checked the display screen.
It was her husband.
When she answered, the first words out of his mouth were, “I need to talk to you.”
There was a tension in his voice she didn’t like. Her heart pounded. “What’s happened?”
From across the chemist, her boss, a tall grey-haired woman with a severe mouth, made a throat-slitting sign at her and scowled. Sally held up her finger and mouthed one second.
“Come home,” Jeremy said.
“I can’t. I’m working.”
“Say you’re sick. It’s urgent.” His words sounded a little slurred.
“Can’t you just tell me what it is?”
“No. Come home. Now.”
Her boss strode over. “Sally—”
Sally laid the phone against her shoulder. “Oh my God, will you just fuck off?” She’d spoken louder than she meant to. Her boss gawked as if Sally had just slapped her. Several customers glanced at them, and the chemist went quiet.
Without apologizing, Sally turned away from her boss and spoke into the phone. “Tell me what it is first.”
But Jeremy had already hung up.
She stared at the phone in her hand. Then she snatched up her handbag. “Gotta go,” she said, and she strode through the sliding doors into the chill autumn afternoon.
Back at the house, Sally found Jeremy sitting at the dining room table, a half-empty beer in his hand, gazing at the wall.
His behavior was scaring her, and she didn’t like feeling scared. Feeling scared made her angry and defensive. “You gonna tell me what this is all about?” she asked.
“I found something in the garden today.”
Something cold and hard crawled through Sally’s chest. She fought the urge to vomit. “What?”
“Thought I’d do some gardening. Care to guess what I found?”
Sally was silent.
Jeremy looked at her. His face was drawn and his eyes were red-rimmed. He looked much older than his thirty-eight years. “What’s Axel doing in our garden, Sally?”
Sally shook her head.
Jeremy shrugged. “What’re you shaking your head for? What does that mean?”
“I don’t… I didn’t mean…”
“Didn’t mean what? What happened, Sally? Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes hardened. “You don’t know?“
“I just… lost control. I’m sick, Jeremy. I need help. Something’s wrong.”
Jeremy closed his eyes and shook his head. “Wait, wait.” He got up and moved towards her, swaying slightly. “You lost control? What are you talking about? Did you kill our dog?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He gazed imploringly at her. “What do you mean? I don’t understand. Did you kill him or not?”
She was tired of hiding it, tired of this whole conversation. “Yes.”
“By God, why? Why, Sally?”
“I don’t know. I got angry, ok? People get angry.”
He stared at her, his face ashen. “I can’t believe it.” His arms dropped to his sides, defeated. “I can’t fucking believe it. This can’t be happening.” His body seemed to deflate like a leaking bag, and suddenly she despised him, despised his weakness. All over a stupid dog, for Christ’s sake.
“Look,” Sally said, “if we’re done here, I gotta go back to work. That’s if I haven’t lost my fucking job over this bullshit.” She whirled and started striding out of the kitchen.
Jeremy lunged and grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her elbow. “No. We’re gonna sort this out.”
Sally yanked her arm, fighting to break his grip. “Let go of me.”
“We need to talk about this—”
She spat in his face.
Jeremy let her go and recoiled, wiping spit from his eyes. “Ew, what the fuck!“
“Don’t you fucking touch me.”
Jeremy stormed out of the kitchen. From their bedroom, she heard the wardrobe doors sliding and coat hangers rattling. A zipper snarled. When she looked in their bedroom, he was tearing clothes out of the inbuilt wardrobe and stuffing them into a red travel bag.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting the fuck out of this house.”
“What, that’s it? You’re just gonna leave?”
He didn’t answer. Just kept stuffing clothes in the bag. Jeans. T-shirts. Jackets. Socks.
“What about our daughter?” Sally asked.
He zipped up the bag, dragged it off the bed, and hauled it towards the door.
Sally blocked the doorway. “What about Tina?”
“Move, Sally.”
“What about Tina?”
He shoved her. Sally fell back against the wall, crunching the plaster, and sat. Lugging the travel bag, Jeremy stepped over her and strode into the kitchen.
Sally stormed after him, blood roaring in her brain, aware of her own irrational behavior yet unable to stop it. “Oh, no. No, you’re not gonna take her. You’re not gonna take my daughter from me.”
In the kitchen, Jeremy snatched the car keys off the counter. “Don’t come near me, Sally.” He turned his back on her as he crossed the dining room.
She ran for the knife block, tearing the carving knife out so violently that she knocked the rest onto the floor. She ran and drove the blade into his back, between the shoulder blades, sinking it up to the handle.
Jeremy made a strangled sound. When she tore the blade out, he buckled at the knees, dropping the carry bag. He hobbled towards the living room.
Sally plunged the knife into his side. He spun to face her, blood soaking his shirt and burning in scarlet patches on the grey linoleum, his eyes full of pain and fear.
Stepping forward, she rammed the blade into his stomach. Once. Twice. On the third, he grabbed the blade, but she tore it out, lacerating his fingers, and drove it into his sternum. Finally, she stabbed him in the neck, just below the larynx, the sharpened steel sliding easily through the flesh.
He coughed once, speckling the front of her white uniform shirt with red, and collapsed, dark blood pulsing from the slot-like puncture in his throat and pooling across the floor. His chest hitched, eyes swimming in his head, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound, blood seeping between his sliced fingers. His mouth moved, but no words came out.
Sally stood there a moment, knife in her hand, staring down at him, both horrified and fascinated by what she’d done. The blood from his neck was so dark it was almost black. It stank. Dropping the knife, the blade clamoring on the floor, she grabbed her car keys, rushed to the carport, and drove away, tires squealing.
Tina’s art class was in full swing when Sally flew through the door, blood on her shirt.
“Oh,” Miss Green said from the front of the classroom. “Hello, Sally.”
The other children stared at her as Sally went to Tina. “Hey, sweetie.” Her eyes were manic.
“Mum?” Tina looked around at her classmates, cheeks coloring with embarrassment. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re going on a trip.”
“A trip?”
“Yeah, a trip. A mother-daughter trip. Come on.” She grabbed Tina’s hand and dragged her out of the classroom, ignoring whatever Mrs. Green was saying to her. She dragged her daughter out to the parking lot, bundled her into the Kia, and sped away.
As the Kia roared onto the highway, Tina asked in a frightened voice, “Where are we going, Mummy?”
Hunching over the steering wheel, Sally stared through the windscreen. “Somewhere fun.” She looked at Tina. “Just you and me.” She returned her gaze to the windscreen, eyes flickering in her head, seeming to look everywhere except at the road. “Just you and me.”
Along the sides of the highway, the elm trees screamed in vivid reds and yellows, like the branches were all on fire.
Want another gripping story by John Davis? Read “It Hungers” in Horrific Scribes September 2025 and “About a Girl” in Horrific Scribes March 2026.