[Kryso]

Hi everyone. Here is a new book I started last week, called Lamb chops and Chainsaws; it’s a collection of short stories looking at the evil, darker-side of human nature and cruelty. It has some shocking, sometimes gross and disturbing sections, relating to how adults treat and abuse children, which makes them into the distorted adult murders they become. So it’s not for the weak hearted! I have written 5 short stories so far, and if there’s enough interest I will post more.

Please remember this manuscript is at its most basic stage, and is only the first - fast draft (so far about 23,000 words for 5 stories, out of the 20. I hope to make these 5 stories at least 30 – 35,000 words). I will re-write, change, flesh-out and adjust a lot of this material before I finally finish and send it to my publisher – so please keep that in mind.

Enjoy. And remember, some of this is a little unsettling!




Lamb Chops and Chainsaws
20 Disturbing Short Stories about the Darker Side of Human Nature

Book Synopsis

What are your neighbours really like once their front door slams shut? Are your children’s teachers’ sound-of-mind? What's the person who sits next to you on the subway really thinking? Has your partner got an evil, sinister side? Is a member of your family a murderer? These questions, and more, are answered in twenty short disturbing stories; tales about the darker side of human nature. Read about a wannabe serial killer who starts his reign of terror on the wrong footing. A Kindergarten teacher who has deep physiological problems that jeopardise the safety of the children. What does it really take to push someone that little bit too far and make them become a killer? Find out when a savage murder is committed simply over a frozen packet of lamb chops! Passers-by will never look the same again. How far can you be pushed? You could be next?

Table of Contents (So far...)

Sod’s Law 6 – 12
The story of a wannabe serial killer who’s not to clever when it comes to picking his victims.

Dirty Little Animals 13 – 21
What happens when a kindergarten teacher has reached the end of her tether, and children are her second worst nightmare, right after her father?

Shattered Childhood 22 – 26
A child’s life in Mexico changes forever when drug smugglers kills her parents. To retaliate she does something incomprehensible, even though she’s only nine.

The Last Straw 27 - 30
A seventy-three year old man is pushed too far, after fifty years of constant nagging. What’s the final straw? An argument about dinner; to have chicken or lamb chops!

No Conscience 31 - 35
A young man is deprived of his mother and sister. When he finds out why it drives him to become a murderer. Now with no conscience he sells his killing gift to the highest bidder.



Sod’s Law

"Since you've acted like this, I won't stop until I get my revenge on you."
-Judges 15:7





Here I slouch with darkness enveloping me. Eyes closed against the foreboding night. Body numb from stillness, my brain disconnected long ago and swimming on cosmic nothingness. I lie, like one of the un-dead; unmoving, un-stirring. Life having given up on me up long ago. What is there now left for me? What can I hope for from a world of hatred and unrelenting violence? A world were the young go hungry and the old uncared for. Where murder and death are as prevalent as the very air we breathe. Surely life once had a meaning - life once had a purpose? Have I always been like this? Am I only now becoming aware of it, the natural order of nature now taking hold?
Why can't I admit who I really am? Who I really portray once no one sees the outer me - once everyone has gone and the real me comes crawling out from the dark place I inhabit, while the pretend me socializes with other homo sapiens.
Why does everyone try and fit in to what other people expect of us? Why can't we be who we want to be? Why do we have to fit the parameters of other people’s ideas, other people’s degree of what is acceptable?
What would the world truly be like if every person acted and behaved the way they decided was how they wanted to be? How they themselves have decided, not their peers. Would the world as we know it exist any more? Would it slowly sink down lower into the quagmire than it already has? Or would beginning who we want to be release the world from many parameters, make for a better world - a world where no one has to pretend, no one doing anything unless they wish too. Would social order still stand? Would society as we know it still be upheld?
I contemplate these things as I lay awake, well past midnight on a raining English winter night, only three days away from the Winter Solstice. I can't hide who I am anymore. Do other killers think the way I do? Or am I an enigma? Do they believe what they are doing is wrong? Believe they are different? Or do they except what they have become and grasp it with both bloodied hands outstretched. Wanting to be held against the bosom of the nightmare they have unleashed.
I roll over onto my right side, peering out in to the drizzling rain that covers the window in a gloomy depressing mist. The sack coverings hanging limply and uneven over the chipped, flaky painted dry rot windows. The darkness outside was making the trees look like tall powerful sentinels, ready to stop me if I try to stray away from my house. Do I dare? f*** yes!
I sold everything I possess to come to England’s black dirty capital; London. I now own a small rundown three stories, old Victorian house, right on the outskirts of East London in an area called Barking and Dagenham, near the A13 around Chequers Lane, less than a mile from the mighty Thames. What a shitty sludge pit that is.
The house or more to the point - slum some would call it, even in this, the twenty-second century – on a rundown ugly district. It has an overrun garden that hasn't seen a lawnmower or even a pair of shears in more than a decade. An abandoned shed, with a deep pit below, more like a cellar really. A place I hide many of my things. And a back, over grown gate, that I can enter and leave by without alerting anyone to my presences, or what I might be carrying. The lane comes out next to an even dingier river than the Thames. Here I keep a small rowing boat.
I needed a new identity, so I created one. I went to a cemetery and found a grave stone with a male, around about my age that had died, possibly from illness or an accident. Either way it didn't matter to me, just his name did, I don't give a sh** about why or how he died. I copied down the name and details. Then I went along to the Birth and Death registry office. I gave the name, date of birth and so on, saying I had lost my certificate. The Birth and Death registers are not joined; she didn't know the man had been dead for over fourteen years. And with a smile I paid my eleven pounds and received my new identity. Then with the birth certificate I sent away for a drivers licence. My old identity had vanished, all burned in a metal drum. My old name is now just a distant memory of distant importance.
I have never been in trouble with the police, and my fingerprints have never been recorded. Something I will use to my advantage. I so hate wearing gloves, even when the needs dictate that I must. Just incase something does happen, and by chance my prints are needed for comparison. The chances are almost nonexistent. But then, things like that have been known to happen. No one means to get caught, that's why the prisons are so full. Luckily good ol' England hasn't got the Death Penalty, because what I intend to do will surely warrant it.
I came from Devon; a sleepy little monotonous village that most people don't even realize exists, on the southwest coastline of England. I hadn't been outside, during daylight hours for years. People had forgotten I was even there. I even arranged for rumours to spread that I had had a mild stroke, and half my face was sagging, and being to proud to venture outside. None bothered me. No one cared. People came, people went, and soon I was forgotten. Once again good old England was supporting me with my twice monthly Giro that's deposited directly into my bank. And the beauty of the internet, even food was delivered to my front door.
The times I did venture outside I disguised myself, making myself look much older than my thirty-one years. I am thin, but only five foot five inches in height. I wear old shoes, three sizes to big, with four pairs of thick soaks to make them fit my thin bony feet. Thick rubber gloves ready to be used. A black ski mask, rolled up on my head like a woollen hat, ready to be pulled down in to place. Brown contact lenses sit in the little plastic figure eight pot in the bathroom cabinet, ready to be positioned in place. Old dentures, filed down, making the teeth irregular, untraceable, incase the need for biting engulfs me. Light brown hair, that's always cut short by clippers, that I do myself. I am also covered in a light brown hair, when I allow it to grow. I shave every inch of my body, once a week. My eyes are celery green, like the colour of coke bottle glass.
I have a large selection of old clothes. I can look any age I so desire, I am an expert at deceit and disguise. Then again, in this day and age, who isn't? We are all hiding who we really are. No one, not even close love ones truly know the real us. They think they do, or more to the point, they would like to believe so. If only lovers realized what lies deep inside their partners’ hearts and dark soul.
My father is unknown to me, someone who caught my mother with her legs open. I have never known him - not even his name. Then again I don't think my mother even bothered to ask him what his name even was. My mother died only four years ago, from cancer of the lungs. I watched her died painfully, and slowly. The great woman I once knew and loved becoming a skeletal feeble figure before me. A woman who against all the odds managed to raise me into what I have become - a monster! Once she had passed away I sold everything and moved to great old London, once the centre of the world, now simply another grimy sprawling metropolis.
I now lay ready, dressed in old faded black clothes - clothes that can't be traced. A large over sized long black mole hair coat, one I've padded out with three jumpers below. I move around early in the mornings, I know every second hand shop in the area I live. I collect the tied up bags of donate clothes and carry them back to my small house. A perfect camouflage; other people’s clothes. If I'm lucky they hadn't washed them before dropping them off - very few ever do. They will collect many hairs and flakes of skin that falls upon my victims from these clothes, none will be mine.
A large old oil drum also sits ready in my over grown back yard, waiting to be filled with my blood soaked clothes, ready to wipe the evidence clean away. Cleansing by fire. None will see its light, because both houses on each side are abandoned. The estate agent thought I was mad buying a home in this run down section of the city. More abandoned houses in this one area than there are with people living in them. I once heard that the government had plans to resettle people and flatten the whole area, and start from scratch. That was supposed to happen over eight years ago. The slums still remain, the government still mention it from time to time, when there's nothing else on the agenda, or when the time for voting arrives. It is soon swiped back under the carpet once whoever is voted in. It's always the same.
It also goes without saying that I brought the house in my newly acquired name. Nothing will connect the real me to the abomination that will soon settle down here, engulfing this old damp house.
Do others like me pick their targets the way I do? Or do they seize any opportunity that passes by. Hopping not to be caught, hoping to be able to go out another night?
The aching in my stomach becomes more painful, similar to the pain when you need to wank; sperm building up, needing to be released. In fact I have got an erection, hard and pushing against my black jeans, excited at the prospect of death. I will masturbate before leaving tonight, and wash myself down. I don't want to get too excited and cum just as the victims life is seeping away. That would be very lax.
It has to be tonight. I have been planning for this night for months; every last detail in place. Every insignificant facture taken care of. A perfect plan. A perfect murder. I will become the most perfect serial killer England has ever seen. Even Jack the Ripper will be forgotten during my frenzied attacks. My mentor. My guide. My loving teacher. In the streets some might even cry: "Jack is back!"
My hands smoothes over the black case I will carry. Similar to the old fashioned cases doctors use to carry around with them. Some still do. But inside mine isn't tools and equipment meant to save life, but to take it way, in ways most couldn't even imagine or comprehend. That's the other beauty of the internet, everything is assessable, I have become quite proficient with a scalpel and saw.
My letter is ready to be posted. If I am to follow in Jack's footsteps, then I need to follow his every perfect move. I will be writing many letters.
I climb to my large booted feet, feeling strange with so many socks on; it feels like I'm walking on deep moss. I pull the large coat around me, my shaking hands doing up the big black plastic buttons. They don't shake from fear, but from anticipation, I have been dreaming of this night for more years than I care to remember. Of course, I don't suppose everything will go according to plan. Even Jack had to make a few attempts until he perfected his technique. It doesn't worry me to much; I will also have many more chances to become perfect.
I pull the back door too. No keys needed here, because the house looks identical to the abandoned ones besides it. I grip the handle of my black case firmly, my knuckles going white with the strength of my grasp. I trudge along between the tall uncut grass and disappear out the back gate. To a London that is unsuspecting. To a London that by this time tomorrow would have changed. Changed for the better? Who can say? But then, what I class as better isn't the choice of the majority.
"Jack is back!" they will be screaming, and will be printed boldly across all the newspapers. That one point I have made sure of, because as well as my letter going to Scotland Yard - like Jack's did - it will also arrive at the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Actually I believe it is now called New Scotland Yard, how appropriate, because I'm the New Jack.
It will be obvious the old Jack the Ripper is long gone. Many have tried to name him, none succeeded, all simple guess work. Some have compelling evidence and substantial new leads, but all just meaningless smoke. I will be the New Jack, a product of the 21st Century, created by man's need for violence, movies, television, video games, all guilty of breeding my imagination, my lust, my needs, my uniqueness.
Violence is now just another billion dollar product to be packaged and sold to the masses. Parents don't care, most don't even know. The computer game they buy for little Johnny must be safe, they wouldn't sell it else, wouldn't they? They ignore the fact it had the 18 sticker on it. A computer game; an 18? They mutter as they pick it up anyway. Unbeknown that little Johnny is running over pedestrians, and having to turn of the car wipers to remove the large volumes of blood. Johnny kills children, mothers and babies in prams. He runs over old people as if they were simply garbage cans. He has shootouts with the police, and fighting pimps and hookers, all in stark realism, making it difficult to tell its computer graphics and not reality. It’s just another game, another activity to keep them from getting under their parents feet. Who cares what the little f***ers are doing so long as mom can watch her soaps.
I have had years of violent video games, horror movies and descriptive books - books about crime scenes, now teaching criminals and killers about how to keep themselves from getting caught. About hair traces, blood smears, finger prints, saliva, all mapped out, explanations, ways to avoid detection. The killers guide books. I myself have many, underlined, studied and restudied; now memorised and useful. CSI - Crime Scene Investigation is a horde of invaluable information for the would be serial killer. All my collective information will go to good use, for my special needs, my particular wants, my cravings.
I have studied Jack for many years, he is now my passion. My lover you could say, in a nonsexual way. The one true killer of our time who was never apprehended. I will be like him, untouchable. I will become a living God. Mere mankind will become my playthings.
Each of my victims will be reminiscent of his original ones. All following the same patterns, reasons and wants.
I walk along the dark wet back lane that comes out onto another neglected area, all abandoned and boarded up, smashed with graffiti on. Once the proud homes of the new home owners, now the adolescents’ playground. In these buildings reside unprotected sex, drugs and violence. Little do people know that tonight something far worse is stalking the dirty London streets. A predator on the hunt.
My first victim is going about her night like all others, not realizing that soon the last breath will escape her shuddering body. For tonight I am playing at being God, I say who now lives or dies, in my hands are held their very being; because tonight the New Jack is back.

What is it that drives me? I ponder, as the cool night air brushes against my warm face. But it's not because of the mountains of thick clothes that I'm warm, blushed. But because of the prospect of what awaits me around the corner, across the small river and into my hunting ground.
I have studied this area for many months, watching, waiting. Many come and go, not realizing they are being watched, studied like animals in a cage. A cage of my making.
The First one is always special, or so the movies and video games depict it. A crossing over from one plain to another - one of domination, strength and conquest. A human soul is ebbing away because of your two hands, because of your will. Their last ounce of life draining out with their vital fluids, blood your own hands have brought forth.
My hand tightens on the handle of my black bag. A small stone or possibly a piece of trash makes me trip, I stumble but right myself within a few wobbly steps. My shoulder is jarred as my heavy bag is pulled back under control. The noise of all my implements rattling around arouses me once again. I pull at my jeans to make room for my growth. Now my face flushes even redder.
I come to a crossing, heading out from between derelict buildings, out under the harsh illumination of the street lights. I peer up and look at the old railway bridge, black and solid, built to last. Bright colourful images of seagulls are patch worked over its metal surface, trying to bring a semblance of beauty to something so serial.
I lower my head and stride purposefully across the narrow one-way street, up over the high pavement and straight down another even darker alleyway. My gloved hands reach for the brickwork, raking the black leather across the rough wall, feeling its age and strength. Large ugly bins fill half the alley, there stinking garbage spilling out over the metal rims. One large blue bin stands out, towering above the rest. That's me, I think to myself - large and full of sh** people don't want; but still bigger than all the other pitiful f***ing trash cans.
My feet feel strange, bouncing on so many pairs of thick socks. I find myself wondering if the previous owners of the socks had Athletes Foot, or some other kind of fungal disease. I snort out a mirthless laugh. With what I'm about to do, I should be more concerned if my intended victim had AIDS or some other illness that could effect a person who might get some of their blood in their mouth. Then again, nobody lives forever.
Even my mother died early. But she wasn't perfect. Once when she was drunk and on cocaine she even watched one of her numerous lovers make me suck him off when I was only ten. Even now I gag at the thought of his rancid unwashed c***. But even that paled into comparison to what two of her male friends done to me when I was eleven. I couldn't walk properly for weeks, but the bleeding eventually stopped, it hardly even bothers me anymore. Just every now and then a little bit of blood on the toilet paper. But after the first time, it became easier, even regular. I learned to turn myself off. I even imagined I was on a boat, and my rocking was really the water tipping me from side to side. She said it made her sad to see that happening to me, because she always watched, to make sure they left no bruises. And she reminded me that it helped to pay for the bills. And if I wanted those new ADIDAS trainers than I better just shut up and moan a little louder.
I kicked the black bin liners out my way, there contents spilling across the darkened passageway - other peoples crap; a look at their private lives. Fat women hiding chocolate wrappers inside other packages. Husbands hiding their mobile telephone bills that have their lovers numbers on. Teenagers hiding their semen covered tissues or unwanted ripped porn.
The bag was reassuringly heavy. How egger I am to reach inside and remove the long sleek blade that I spent hours honing to a razor-sharp point. How easy it will slice thought her pinkie scrubbed flesh, cutting through her tendons and muscles as easily as it parts her clothing. She didn't realize that when she dressed this morning I would be the one to remove most of it; leaving the rest to the minimum wage morgue attendants lackey.
The alleyway opened up, becoming a wide road. No cars whizzed past at this time of night. 3 A.M. in London’s dodgy districts are reserved for the half crazed or the mental lunatic, like me - if that's what I would be called, personally I think I'm much more. I don’t think names exist for people like me. Hopefully tomorrow the newspapers will have chosen a sufficient new one. Like I have already said, Jack's Back will be fine; I don't mind being named after a great creature like him.
I scurry across the four lane road, traffic light blink in the emptiness of the night, with no one around to pay any attention. A cat cries in the distance, possibly two have a standoff regarding the very trash bags I kicked about the alleyway. There piercing cries sounding like screaming children in pain. It ends with an almighty screech and the rattling of glass bottles as one pursues the other. A dog now barks, adding its symphony into the mix.
I speed up my pace, unconcerned about the noises around me, but simply eager to get to work. She should be leaving her job around about now. Oh the dilemmas of working at night. I scouted this area for weeks, picking the right location, the right surroundings making sure all would be perfect, no one or nothing would disturb my greatest hour - my turning into something far greater than a meagre man.
Once the right location had been picked I went about scouting the adjoining areas, looking for the right subject, my canvas to work on. I don't know her name, I have never been that close, or ploughed that deep. I watch her from a distance, as I said, never up close. I never use binoculars either, I want nothing to water down the moment I grasp my hands around her and pull her into the dark enclosed death space. She looks a little tall, muscled even, but I think it will turn me on more if she struggles. She works in a large warehouse, possibly a cleaner. Why she needs to be there at night, I'm unsure about. Possibly it is the best time, with no one getting under her feet. But luckily for me she is.
My hands start to sweat inside the gloves. Maybe I will remove them for a while, let them breathe. No, the rubber gloves beneath the woollen ones and the leather ones will be impossible to slip back on; and some of the talcum powder might even spill out. Never give the police one iota of evidence to work with.
I now jump the low brick wall that runs around the vast car park, which stops the cars just exiting anywhere. I pass the tall galvanised kitchen and bathroom warehouse on my left, and the Toyota car lot on my right. But no video cameras look in my direction; that had been the first thing I had checked for. I wasn't going to be an oblivious participant in some buildings video recorder. I don't want to create a snuff movie, because I want it all for myself. Call me rude, but I'm very selfish.
I keep to the tall red building that was once a fabric warehouse, now just another empty lot, like so many others. I now duck down under a colossal air-conditioning unit that is all rusty from misuse. I now head down around the side of the empty cavernous warehouse. No powerful halogen lights flare to life, tripped by my presence. Why should they, who would want to protect an empty building? And it's around the side of this very building that I have chosen to leave my mark, my first victim - my first love.
I catch my bag on a piece of rusty metal, perched against one wall. I pull it free, satisfied that it hasn't been torn. I'm starting to shake now, adrenaline coursing through my pumping veins, like fuel through a high performance jet engine.
There it is. My square derelict patch of concrete, that will support the body of my souls dark needs. It is to the left of the gap between the two tall buildings, galvanized steel soaring into the sky. A chain link fence surrounds the area, but this has large metal contains stacked around its circumference, providing cover and padding against the noise she is bound to make.
What had this area originally been for? I have no idea, or care. But it is perfect, as if being created for my personal needs and perverted wants.
I scamper across the clearing, unconcerned with being seen, because the containers are over twenty foot in height. I run because it is so close to the time I will release the inner me - the real me, the creature inside that we all nurture - a creature that slowly eats away at us all.
I wedge myself between the two large containers that have the only passable gap in the complete square, apart from the gap between the buildings that I entered from. Large green metal doors stand like sentinels, unmoving and uncaring.
I knee down and with a shaking hand un-pop my black doctors’ bag. The noise it makes is music to my ears. I swallow saliva. Almost time. I'm so aroused now; it’s throbbing like a living entity, having a mind of its own.
She will be walking past any minute now. Walking with the wide strut of a whore, legs slightly apart, because of all the action and lovers she takes. She looks the type. Just like my b**** mother.
I hear the tap tapping of her high heels, making a beautiful harmonic sound echo to my hidden location.
I now reach in and remove the long silver blade. So much love I have endowed upon it, it will repay that love now. But for some reason, this being my first, I want to touch her living flesh first, seize her from behind. Let her have that one millisecond were she realizes she’s about to die. And taking the knowledge with her that it’s a man that's about to do it. All women know they are targets; they all instinctively stay away from the dark alleys, the silent roads, where predators like me lay in waiting.
Her heels are almost deafening now.
Then a flash, as she moves past the gap where I am crouched hiding.
Sweet Mary, Jesus H. Christ, this is it.
I spring forwards while tucking the knife into my long coats pocket. Just once quick grasp, wrap my strong hand around her throat, thrust my hand between her long legs, feel her moist ****.
In a flash I am behind her. She doesn't hear, doesn't even know these are her last precious moments left of this ball of f***ing spinning dirt.
With all my strength I reach around her, grasping her long throat. My left hand forcing between her legs, fumbling crazily for her pussy.
Wait! What the f***?
My left hand is full, but not of panties and dress, but a soft sack of meat? My other hand closing over an Adams apple?
"What the f***?" came a deep powerful voice, not the sound that should be originating from a female, even one as tall and wide as this one.
I feel strong hands pull my arm away from the throat, and then the body spins around to confront its attacker.
"You little f***ing pervert. Try and grab my c*** will you? Well I've a got a real surprise for you!" Then all I saw was a hairy tattooed fist, with JACK wrote cross the knuckles coming straight at my face. What are the astronomical chances of that, I thought. God or possibly Satan is taking the piss out of me. Then there was nothing - unconsciousness.

I don't know how many minutes I was out for, but the pain in my face was almost as bad as the pain in my anus.
The attacker had now become the attacked.
Sods-f***ing-law.
Strong powerful arms held me down. One hand pushing my bleeding face against the cold concrete, the other was steadying the man above me, the man wearing a woman’s dress! A f***ing transvestite! I thought transvestites were peaceable, loving people? Trust me to attack the exception to the rule. I could feel his pelvic thrusts pushing himself deeper and deeper. Oh, the hurt. My pain filled tears washing the blood from my nose away.
I realized that my hands were tied with my very own blue nylon rope. My mouth tapped with my own silver duck tape.
"Think you can try and f***ing rape me, you little bastard?" came the deep voice in fits and burst as he f***ed me harder.
I closed my eyes against the pain, and was transported back to when I was eleven, and pretended I was on a boat, rocking from side to side.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream!
Then the last thing I felt was the explosion of his groin inside me, at the same instant my long sharp blade sail across my throat. With my last thought being, there are some sick f***ing people in this world!


Any feedback will be appreciated… More on the way if you want it?
Kryso



Copyrighted in the name of Glen Johnson 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

[Kryso]

Another Short Story from the Book!


Shattered Childhood

"I'll do to him as he has done to me; I'll pay that man back for what he did."

-Proverbs 24:29





Time meant nothing. She was being brushed on both sides as she pushed her way through the thong of moving people, as they were passing by in the haste called life.
Her features were Latin American in origin; slight natural browning of the skin, coppery in completion. Her hair was brushed back into a complicated style. She had long jet black curly hair; as was the norm for her country of origin: she normally let it hang lose, but today it would impede what she was about to accomplish.
Her country of origin was Mexico, and she now found herself in the cities capital, Mexico City, only one block from the Zocalo; the largest open space in any capital city the world over – even bigger than Red Square in Russia. The largest church in the western hemisphere loomed high over the buildings, only the Catholic Church in Vatican City was bigger.
She had a date with a rifle, a bullet with a man’s name on it.
The large bag swung at her side, carrying the implements of her trade.
She had rented a small apartment in the Distrito Federal, in an area just east of the Zocalo, called Netzahualcoyolt. The green and white beetle taxis ferried her around the city to get information and locations required for this hit.
Today; to blend in; she was donning all denim. Denim faded jeans, long dark blue denim coat that reached for the ground. An ocean blue cropped top that left nothing to the imagination. Everything she did had its reason. The top diverted their eyes away from her face. Even though she wore large rounded sunglasses, and a floppy hat that covered the top half of her features.
The day was warm, to warm for a long coat. But needs required she wore it. The people around her pushed and shoved, all trying to rally themselves in to a better view of the parade making its way through the crowded streets.
With a flash of denim she changed direction, now moving away from the claustrophobic environment.
Stalls had appeared all up and down the pavements and spilling onto the roads, hawking goods and food; piles of enchiladas, tacos, burritos, bowls of steaming arroz, and platters of pescado and fajitas. Hundreds filled the stalls small plastic seats, or ate standing, dripping green or red chilli sauce over their best clothes. Even if stall was filled to capacity, more would be trying to get in. Shopping trolleys full of chunks of ice and soda bottles would wobble past, with piles of limes and bags of salt ready to pour in the fizzy drinks.
Large metal wheeled containers would be parked up selling hotdogs only ten pesos for three, or ten pesos for a burger; twelve if you wanted a slice of pineapple in it.
Aluminium bottle lids littered the ground along with white polystyrene food trays and soiled napkins.
She was a loner by nature, even though her trade demanded it. But it was no lose to her to distance herself from her family. Those that were left.
The crowd thinned out. A few running past her hopping to still find a good position to see motorcade pass by.
Music blared from all directions.
She changed directions again, heading for a propped open doorway; a high-rise apartment building, with VIP’s restaurant below. She had done her research well; the building processed everything she required.
An old woman sat hunched over by the doorway, hand outstretched, and begging passer-by for any change to feed her family. She dropped twenty pesos golden coloured coin into the old blind woman’s hand as she passed.
No one questioned her at the door, as she leisurely strode past two adolescents, more interested in smoking that the frenzy around them. They only gave her scant attention, and that was around her busty chest level.
She walked confidently to the lift left of the entrance. Making it look like to anyone that was watching that she had done it a thousand times before.
The lift took its time to reach the lower lobby, as was the way with out dated and under maintenance mechanical services. She ignored an impulse to check her watch.
The lift finally creaked into its slot and the door jerked open. Three people stepped out past her, all ignored her, and they had no reason to do otherwise. She stepped passed them turning around swiftly to punch the top floors button. A woman was heading towards the lift and called for her to hold it. She ignored the request as if she hadn’t heard. The doors jerked shut. She gracefully rose heavenwards.
She once again engorged an impulse, this time it was to check her equipment. She raised her hand to rub her eyes below the glasses. Contacts irritated her eyes, but they were worth their weight in gold for completely changing characteristics.
The lift approached its destination, giving alarming creaks and grating noises at it did so. The door jerked open.
She now gave one quick look around, not to gain her bearings but to ascertain if anyone was moving about the top levels hallways. None were. At a fast pace she reached the roof door. She paid the plastic seal no heed, with one push it snapped open.
The cool breeze felt refreshing upon her face. She reached up and snatched the hat from her head. Moving quickly she headed towards her needed location. No one would be on the roofs on this side of the city; low risk area it was classed as. She knew the door would have been checked and a seal placed upon it. No other problems faced her. She knew their setup all to well.
With long strides she reached the lip of the small wall that surrounded the top of the fourteen story building. Kneeling down she placed the bag by her side. Opening it she removed its contents. A small mat she placed at the edge of the wall; to kneel upon. A scope and bullet cartridge. Then removing her coat she placed in beside her. On her back was a long automatic SR19, wrapped around her by its shoulder strap.
She lifted it above her head and placed it on the ground also. Quickly and with confidence she clipped the scope and bullet cartridge into place. One flick and the first bullet were chambered and ready.
Now she did check her watch. Ten minutes until the hit would be in location. She sat upon her mat and leant her back against the wall, rifle resting across her lap. Her mind then drifted back to a time when life was less complicated; a time when her family was everything she ever wanted or needed. Until they were taken away from her; making her who she was today.

She was nine as she moved from her location, drifting back towards her home. She hadn’t heard from her brothers. She had been hiding for over an hour. Boredom now prompted her to see what was transpiring back at their secret tree house, which had been built with left over salvage from their fathers’ carpentry business.
The area was eerily quiet, no sounds of her brothers fighting with their wooden swords; a precious gift that they took everywhere with them. They now lay untouched upon the dusty ground. She knew there and then that something was wrong. And the fact that one of the two wooden swords had blood upon its point!
She ran through the scant trees towards her home. Uneasiness gathering inside her. Her feet thumping upon the baked ground. Her small light blue dress flapping in the dry heat.
The hill rose before her, she ran up its steep side. The house came into view. Instantly she knew something was seriously wrong.
Adriana Barbosa Hugo, as was her given name; simply called Adrian by all who knew her; lived in Mexican state of Baja California Sur, bordering Texas. Her village was so small it had no name; it was simply referred to by the occupants as Pueblo de Todos; “Home of us All.”
The house was a small affair. One main room, a kitchen to one side opening up on the courtyard, keeping the cooking implements outside to limit vermin wanting to get into the house. Three small bedrooms, her parents, her two brothers and hers. All simply constructed out of what they could get their hands on. It leaked drastically during the rainy season when the water proof covering had been blown off by the strong winds.
Nothing was about. No chickens scratching at the ground. The two pigs were nowhere in sight. And their most valued possession; the cow; wasn’t in its pen beside the kitchen door.
As she approached she could hear nothing. No sounds emanating from the house. Her mother should be clattering pots and pans, readying dinner. Then she noticed the first signs that something had happened. One of the two pigs lay on the ground, a large wound through its stomach. Three dead chickens lay around it.
Adrian ran towards the kitchen door. It hung open, one hinge holding it in place. On the floor beside the small Comal, was her mother, laid face down, blood congealing around a large head wound; a single bullet hole in the back of the head. Her father lay next to her, a hammer in his hand; died trying to defend his family, two bullet holes in the chest.
Adrian’s head was spinning. At the age of nine she couldn’t comprehend what was happening. She latched onto an idea; her brothers, where were they? Hiding?
She called out, screaming their names. Nothing? She quickly ran around the rest of the small dwelling. Nothing? Outside she found the pens fence kicked down. The cow was too valuable to kill it had been taken with whoever had done this.
Her brothers were nowhere to be found.
She ran back to her mother and fathers sides. Sat staring down at them. No tears stung her eyes; she was completely devoid of any emotions. From that moment on she knew she would have no feelings for anyone or anything again. She had become an empty shell.
Darkness started to fall down around the small valley her house nestled in. She didn’t move, didn’t attempt to find something to eat. She sat motionless to morning, propped up against the hanging door. Sleep didn’t take her. Her eyes were locked onto the image of her parents butchered and lifeless bodies.
Her eyes stung from lack of blinking. She stood, moved across and placed a hand on each of her dead parents’ bodies, the only act of emotion she had shown or ever would show again.
Quickly she ran to her room. It had been ransacked. But there was nothing of value inside, merely a few items of children’s clothes and a small collection of broken toys. She placed a few simply things into her small bag and slung it over her small frail shoulder.
Then she moved to her parents’ room. She didn’t even stop to glance around, rather she moved swiftly to the bed, lifting the mattress on her fathers’ side and removed the small hand gun; a small battered .9mm Beretta. One of her fathers prizes possessions. He obviously was caught unawares and hadn’t had time to claim it from its location.
She knew how to load and chamber the bullets, her oldest brother had shown it to her one day when her parents were visiting the main market.
Adrian picked up the two spare cartridges. Fifteen bullets in each, not including the one that had been chambered.
Without a backwards glance she left the house, walking resolutely up the side of the steep hill on the left side of the small valley. She knew where her two brothers would be.
Adrian had heard her father talking to a neighbour from the next valley over. Apparently fourteen miles to the southeast a small rebel band was fighting a meaningless battle against one of the presidents’ four generals; General Rodriguez. The general had been ordered to lock down on drug smuggling along the countries northern boarder. A joint effort with the Mexican government and that of their friends the Americans; a struggling relationship that was always boarding major setbacks.
The small rebel band was aiding small time drug lords’ ship their narcotics into America. Small skirmishes were constantly being fought. The rebels were obviously short of money or members. Either attempting to raid her home for anything of value to sell, or otherwise trying to conscript her father, which obviously went tragically wrong.
Her two brothers were thirteen and sixteen; old enough to hold a gun and fight. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there, but one step at a time.
She stopped under a tall gangly tree, all its leaves stripped off from either an old forgotten drought or a particularly strong storm. But it offered enough cover to conceal her from the burning sun.
She took a long refreshing drink from the plastic bottle she had collected from the kitchen side. It was warm, but it quenched her thirst. Adrian didn’t feel like food but she knew her body needed it, so she slowly ate some dry concha and smelly cheese that she had snatched from the work surface at the same time.
That was the only and last time she stopped on her journey. It was nightfall before she came upon the first settlement of any kind.
Adrian knew no other house were meant to be in this area, it was classed at a no-mans land. Baja California Sur joined boarders with Texas, this was the unofficial gap in the middle, and neither country could or would claim it.
The settlement was not large by any standards, with its knocked up fence and small collection of huts in the middle, all gathered around a large burning fire. Only a few people could be seen wandering around at this time, just before sundown. Those that could be seen were sat huddled together, chatting before taking up their night time locations. All smoking and laughing, oblivious to any danger around them.
The smoke from their cigarettes floating up into the cooling evening air, reflecting from the remaining shafts of light that the lowering sun gave off.
Adrian sat under the cover of a bushy wild olive tree. She brushed her hair with her small delicate fingers, un-knotting the tangled mess. She removed the small bag from her back, pulling out its contents. Adrian then held the two remaining clips in her left hand, while holding the gun firmly in her right. She made her way down to the settlement.
The fence was just down the side of the hill, with a wiggle of her thin body she squeezed through a small un-repaired hole. Luckily there were no dogs, or if there was they were sleeping on the other side of the small collection of shabby huts.
The evening was now dark, a cold wind starting to blow from the east, cutting right through her thin blue – flowered patterned - dress.
The closest person to the fence was a supposed lookout. He had his back turned from the bitter wind, hunched down behind an old oil drum.
Adrian moved silently, slowly, until she was stood upon the other side of the drum. The man was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. Looking around Adrian saw a stick lying upon the ground, its end was sharpened, and obviously bored from his duties the lookout had spent sometime cutting away at the end of the stick, wood shavings littered the dusty ground around his feet.
Adrian put the clips and gun down and lifted the sharpened stick in both hands. One step around the drum and she could see what the man was concentrating on, a children’s book lay on his lap, as he was chuckling and looking through its pages. She recognized it as one of her own. She was it the right place.
With one more step she lifted the stick above her head and drove it home fast, straight through the sitting mans neck. Blood spurted from the wound as she ripped it free. Both his hands came up to swell the bleeding, but he couldn’t shout because it had pierced straight through his Adams apple. Mere seconds later he slowly leant over until he was resting upon the ground; dead, the crimson liquid still pouring from his open wound.
Adrian patted her small blood soaked hands over his body, finding a long double-sided knife. Besides him sat his machinegun. She left the machinegun where it was, it was too big and heavy for her to try and carry around; she hid it inside the old oil drum.
Picking up her belongings she continued onwards. There was a small clearing where the fire sat, with a few people gathered around it. They were now speaking in loud voices. The last thing they would be able to hear was her soft footsteps. They were over confident in they camp.
She ignored the four sat around the fire and crept around the side of the closest hut. There was only one door, but the hut was almost falling down, holes littered its sides. Looking through she could see movement, but the darkness inside hid the figures from her view. There was a light in the hut but the position she was in was obscured by something resting near the hole. She crept around to another side. Looking through she could see her two brothers, tied up and gagged.
There were two others in the hut, another young boy about eleven, twelve years old, and a man possibly thirty or so. The man was leaning over her youngest brother, but she didn’t have a clear view of what was happening. Only mumbling noises issued the hut, and the grunting of the man.
With the mans attention diverted she moved around to the entrance, luckily the clearing was off to one side; none sat beside the fire would see her enter the hut. With one quick movement she was inside. The man was shocked. At first not comprehending what was happening. Where had this young girl come from?
But before he could react Adrian moved swiftly forwards and pushed the double-sided knife clean through his throat. With nothing more than a croak and a wide-eyed look, the man tipped forward onto her brother.
Before her brothers could understand what was happening Adrian put her finger to her mouth. Even though both were gagged. Both were also in a state of shock. With all her strength she rolled the now dead man from of her brothers kicking body. Her brother was naked from the waste down. What had the man been doing? But then Adrian didn’t care, he was dead now.
She didn’t remove the binds from her brothers or the other wide eyed boy with them; rather she slipped back out of the hut, this time taking the hand held gun with her, held tightly in her small sweating palm.
Her small form moved across the clearing straight towards the four other men. Two had their backs to her, the other twos eyes opened wide, trying to figure out where this young girl had come from. Adrian used their surprise against them, as she had done twice before. Raising the gun in her small hand; needing both hands to do so; she shot once straight through the back of the closest mans head, it blossomed out like a crimson flower, covering the two men opposite.
The remaining three recovered from their shock and went for their weapons. She fired one shot into the chest of one of the men sat opposite; he fell gripping his wound, blood spraying outwards between his lased fingers.
Adrian now ran around in a circle, putting the fire at her back. The two remaining men were scurrying around for their rifles. One more shot rang out in the cold evening air. An explosion of blood rained outwards from another head wound, straight through his left ear. The final shot went through the last mans shoulder. He lay upon the ground soaking in his own blood, babbling like a wild animal. Adrian raised the gun, aimed and fired straight through his right eye.

Adrian sat with her back against the cold wall of the tall building. Her eyes didn’t swell up with tears. She no longer showed emotions that went the moment she had seen her murdered parents, and the actions she had taken afterwards.
She gave a quick glance at her watch; two minutes. Her reminiscing had taken precious time. She reprimanded herself for being lacks.
She now knelt upon the pad, looking down over the side of the tall building. Crowds filled all the sidewalks, like cattle they jostled for position. Mexico Cities Zocalo was filled to capacity. Ten’s of thousands cheering and waving flags.
Adrian raised the rifle into position. She left the lens cap on until the last moment; she didn’t want someone seeing the sun reflect of the glass. She rested her chin against the cold metal. Now she had to wait. A good assassin was a patient one.
Soon around the corner she was concentrating on, General Rodriguez would appear. In some round about way he was responsible for the death of her parents. Later she found out the General was working both sides of the game - trafficking drugs while clamping down on the other drug trafficking warlords, making a tidy profit in the process. The men that had killed her parents were his soldiers.
Adrian had been training herself for years for this moment. She had worked countless hits. Now she was going to start a reign of terror for the Mexican government, starting with Rodriguez. Within mere minutes he would reap the same fate as her parents, but not before he knew what the meaning of fear was, and every one of his aids and family lay dead by his side. She had enough bullets and skill to kill his wife and daughter before killing his three most trusted advisors who travels in the car behind. Adrian would not kill Rodriguez today. Let him live with the mystery of losing loved ones first. Once he knew what real sadness and pain was, then she would end his miserable life.

Enjoy... Kryso

Copyrighted in the name of Glen Johnson 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Wow Kryso! I didn't expect that ending for "Sod’s Law". Good work!

edit:

Just finished "Shattered Childhood" too. Very cool, I can't wait to read some more.

This post has been edited by Daughter of the Nine Moons: 20 February 2005 - 03:24 PM

[Kryso]

Thanks Dot. So here’s another just for you! Kryso…


The Last Straw


“Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.”

-Job 32:7



Knock… knock… knock…
The old rocking chair creaked as his weight carried it back and forth, back and forth. Accompanied by the knock, knocking sound as the back of the headrest tapped the mahogany bookshelf behind.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Old and weary his body completely relaxed into the ancient bulky rocking chair. His old wrinkled features were draw and tired. His eyes closed, with his glasses askew, and the left lens cracked. His large hands were the only sign of tension, as they clenched tightly to the armrests, so hard the bones seemed white through his parchment skin and brown liver spots.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
He let out a rattling breath, then a long weary sigh. The golden watch that he had been given only hours ago was also broken, the thick glass shattered into a million fragments.
Today was Jim Henry Lamberts fiftieth wedding anniversary: golden anniversary, hence the gold watch. He had brought her a simple golden bracelet. Today he had been married to Elizabeth Catharine Frank for fifty long years. Fifty years of constant nagging, bitching and complaining. Fifty long years of having constant earache because of her. Fifty long years of having her mumbling under her breath. Fifty long years of her always getting her own way. But not anymore. All that had been remedied; all the blood that was covering Jim’s big hands was testament to it being the end; the blood splatter patterns that splashed up his once white flannel vest and over his arms and dripping from his face and hair. Today he had been released. Today he was free for the first time in fifty-three years.
The silence was a blessing.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Strange what finally triggered the end to it all? A simple argument about what to have for there late dinner. Liz wanted chicken again. Always chicken with her. But Jim just wanted a change. Lamb chops were all he wanted; one little concession from her getting her own way all day. That’s not much to ask. Lamb not dam chicken again. He had even taken the frozen lamb chops out from the freezer and rested the plastic bag on the draining board. That’s why they were so hard when he started to beat her with the unopened packet. That’s why her body now lay dead on the kitchen floor after being pummelled repeatedly with the hard frozen lumps of meat.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
It had been a long day, family popping around; their six children and fourteen grandchildren. With Elizabeth talking by phone to their seventh child, the oldest, who lived in Perth, Australia and couldn’t make it over. She had talked on the dam phone for three hours! The hassle and fuss. Jim just wanted them all to go away. They eventually did.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
His mind is jumping now, trying to grasp anything to think about rather than what he has just done.
Children! He hates his offspring. They were always around, always wanted something. Grandchildren wanting new bikes or pocket money for new Pokemon Stickers or sweets and crisp. Their children needed help with mortgage or car repayments, even though they were old enough to look after themselves. Jim and Liz never had anyone to fall back on. Never had an endless pocket to dip into. What they had they had to scrimp and save for. Sacrifice for. They simply couldn’t pick up the phone and complain about life’s misfortunes and expect to be bailed out all the time.
“Kids today don’t know what real hardship is,” Jim mumbles. He raises a hand and pulls at his broken glasses and simply lets them fall down over his rounded stomach and land on the blood drenched burgundy carpet. Funny, he thinks, the blood is almost the same colour.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Jim was raised by hard parents, cruel even. But it taught him to respect them. Not all this nancy-pansy, not allowed to hit children of today. How did they expect children to learn respect? He remembered many long hard beatings. Once he had to be taken out of school for a week after his father had caught him smoking; he had been beaten black-and-blue. It wasn’t the fact that he had been caught smoking, but because he had pinched his fathers to do so. He never touched a cigarette again.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Liz had smoked; he couldn’t stand the smell of it. She filled the house with its stale smell and its yellowing effects. Everything stunk of it; everything. He went to bed smelling it on the pillows, sheets, on his arms and his hair. No amount of aftershave lotion could disguise the smell. Disgusting. Liz always had a fag in her mouth. Even talking with it in, sprinkling ash everywhere. He had given up buying new furniture because she had left burn marks on almost every conceivable surface. But that was fine, because it was her. But if he so much as put a cup down without a mat she would go ballistic at him. Hadn’t it been his retirement money that had brought the dam glass and mahogany coffee table? One rule for her, one for him; it had always been the same. But the rules had just changed.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
How he needed a holiday, he reasoned. This made him give a snort as a mirthless laugh. He remembers the last holiday they had had together, in the summer of 1955; exactly fifty years ago to the day - their first and only ever holiday aboard together. And the last holiday alone. Liz decided after the two day cruise to the tip of Spain, then a coach trip. She hated boats, and she swore you would never get her on a plane. “If God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings,” she always uses to say.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
The boat docked in Santander, and then by coach then travelled to Cantabria then to La Rioja, then onto Castile-Leon before getting to Madrid. Liz hated every minute of it. “Devils language,” she called it. “Why didn’t they speak properly?” she constantly enquired. “Lazy people,” she repeated over and over, because they couldn’t be bothered to learn English. They were suppose to travel down to Andalusia to Gibraltar, but Liz had cut the honeymoon short, saying she needed to be in England, the foreign rubbishy food was making her very ill. She didn’t mind smoking their cigarettes he noticed.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
After that she refused ever to go abroad again. The next holiday was 1962 when William, their first born son was six. They went to a traditional English seaside resort – Blackpool beach. And there they returned every other year for the next twenty years. Same small rundown hotel. Same section on the beach that they would lie on year after year. Jim had to look at the ugly tower every year, and wondered why they bothered to build it at all in 1891? Ever year he had to walk down the Promenade with his screaming children; which had a new addition every time they came back.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Forty-four years Jim had worked in the same place, for the same company – the government. The Department of Health and Social Services the DHSS had established its huge records centre at Longbenton near Newcastle just a week before his sixteenth birthday in 1948. Jim started as a general lackey; delivering papers, and running general errands. Each day he would walk the fifteen minutes from his home in Hawks Road to what is now Gateshead’s Interchange Bus Station and then ride the bus over the bridge across the River Tyne to the huge DHSS complex. Over his forty-four years there he slowly made his way to the very top; the directors table for the DHSS.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
He had met Liz in 1953 at the DHSS building; she had been a simple cleaner. He was now twenty-two and in charge of one administrations wing. They dated for two years before he popped the question. Once they were marriage she left her job to bear children, as was her proper position, as many back then thought. Either childbirth altered her hormones forever, or after the first child she just turned horrible on purpose, because when she returned from the hospital with William their life would never be the same again. The nagging really started then. Jim thought she was bad on their honeymoon. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, now married and with child she knew she had her claws sunk deep, and like a wounded animal pinned down by a predator Jim knew he was done for.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
He slowly looked down at his thick hands. Hands that have shuffled millions of folders full of paper; and eventually learned the very basics of computers. Now they were old and white, and covered in large brown ugly liver spots. And of course they were now covered in his wife’s drying blood. He picked at a bit that flecked and fluttered down onto his red sodden top; a top that was now getting hard from the congealing blood. He didn’t realise that little five foot two inches Liz had so much blood in her slender frame - her last surprise for him. His hand wandered over his thinning white hair, pushing his bangs away from his pale, emotionless, face.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Jim’s thoughts went to his younger and only sister, June, who had died of cancer. Jim told Liz that June would move in with them for the last year of her life, so Jim could look after her and her needs. Liz was having none of it. “Why on earth would you want her here? Her crippling body. Oh, and by the love of God, the smell. Who would be cleaning up the mess, the sh**? Not you. Me! No, she will not be staying under my roof!” And that had been the end of the conversation. June had died in an understaffed hospital, with lime green walls and the constant smell of urine. She had died and no nurse or doctor noticed for six hours. After that Jim’s confidence in the NHS had waned; he retired early.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Jim noticed the dark night had drawn in while he sat and mused. The curtains lay open. Luckily their house sat back from the road down a long narrow drive. A house he never wanted, but Liz knew a big house was needed to go with his big pay check. They even had two cars, a BMW and a Daimler, even though Liz couldn’t drive and he could only use one at once. He wish she never made him sell his 1965 Ford - Falcon – Coachella, six cylinder, automatic, with its beautiful Burgundy shell with metal and pearl, and beautiful chrome rims. Yes it had been a little worse for wear, but he could’ve - and wanted to – do it up. Its paint was still almost perfect, simply needing new upholstery.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Why had he always given in? Why did she always get her own way? Was it simply so he could have a peaceful life? Or was he weak - a wimp? Did she have him under her thumb? Or, so he thought, did have. Not any more.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
Jim was feeling weary. It had been such a long hard day. So much had happened. He simply wanted to rest his head, relax – sleep. He then realized if he went to bed, it would be the first night in fifty years where he would be alone. Liz wouldn’t be taking all the sheets, over half the bed. She might be small but at night she spread out like a spider in a web.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
He knew he should phone the police; let them now what he had done. Why he had done it. Funny thing is he wasn’t hungry any more. That had started the whole thing. But then again, what’s wrong with chicken? He actually likes chicken. He couldn’t cook personally, never had learned. He had been the bread-winner; Liz was the house keeper, the cook. Maybe, he decided, chicken was easy, and after a hard day of cleaning she only felt like cooking a small meal. Were lamb chops harder to cook? He had no idea.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Knock…
His hands unclenched from the armrests, and once again he looked at his wife’s drying blood. Blood he had spilled. Blood he had taken in anger and fifty years of built up pressure and grievance.
Back and forth. Knock…
Back and forth. Up…
Jim slowly and steady climbed from the rocking chair, and stood tall. He straightened his old tired back, making it crack like a line of dominos. Like an automaton he headed towards the kitchen. The sight was from a cheap horror movie; blood and gore. It dripped and congealed everywhere. Surely she didn’t have that much blood in her, he though again. He looked down at the battered and twisted small body of his dead, murdered, wife. A solitary tear ran down his left cheek and dripped of his stubby chin.
“My love… Dear… Look at you. Poor Liz,” he mumbled. And like slow moving tectonic plates Jim lowered to one knee and scooped his hands under his wife’s battered body, easily lifting her drained cadaver off the plastic tiled floor. Then slowly, like a funeral march, his eyes never leaving her battered crushed face, Jim headed to the stairs and to their bedroom.
He placed her on the toilet in the en-suite from their bedroom and proceeded to clean her with a flannel as best he could. But the more blood he removed the more damage became apparent. He dressed her in her flowery nightgown that he had ordered for her sixty-four birthday present, and carried her to her side of the bed. After tucking her in and pulling the sheets up around her dislocated jaw, Jim climbed into his side, not bothering to get undressed, and left all the sheets over Liz. Let her have them for one more night, he thought.
Jim lay awake until his eye lids could stay open no more. He fell asleep with his arms wrapped around his wife’s, cold thin body. He realized that it had been the first time he had been allowed to hug her all night in thirty years. When he did fall asleep he had a wide loving smile on his face.
“Night Liz my darling. Remember I love you,” he dreamily muttered in his sleep.

Copyrighted in the name of Glen Johnson 2005

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Excellent again! I am most definately hooked!

[Kryso]

Thanks Dot... I will post another short story soon!

[Kryso]

Here’s another short story. Please ignore any spelling or grammar mistakes as it is at its most raw stage and needs a lot of work! Enjoy…


Dirty Little Animals

Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption!
Isaiah 1:4


Miss Mary Ann Heart hates the mornings, and what it represents - another day with them. Another day trying to pretend everything’s okay. Trying to smile at them. Trying to make out everything’s hunky-dory. But the problem is they see everything, understand every small movement you make, even if the adults have been ignoring the facts for years: children miss absolutely nothing - they see exactly what’s surfacing in her dark brown eyes; as if they are a mirror to her aching soul.
Mary loves the first few minutes after she wakes up, where everything is just one big soup of confusion; nothing makes sense, and in those precious few moments life is peaceful, happy - all the problems she’s had over the last forty-one years are yet to be hauled back onto her bony shoulders and weight her down for another depressing long drawn-out day. Another day when the small judgmental eyes of the little children rake over her when she first see them. Little blue, green and brown eyes, unblemished by the hateful world, looking straight through her, seeing everything, things even she misses in the mirror. Some of those little eyes might even understand!
Then it dawns on her that it's Monday! The worst day of the week, whoever termed the saying Monday Morning Blues understated it by a million fold. All weekend she dreads Mondays. How can a person relax, knowing they have to return again to the madness - the judging?
Mary rolls over onto her left side and peers at the clock: only 5:18 A.M., she still has almost two hours of waiting before she has to even move. The dreams had awoken her, she knows that now. They have been getting worse over the last few months. Sometimes she gets up and stands in the bath with the shower poring over her, trying to wash the images away, along with the sweat and chills the dreams bring. Sometimes she doesn't even realize that the heating element hasn't kicked in and she stands under the freezing water, penance for her miserable life. Penance for never speaking up, never going to another adult to inform them of what's really happening behind the closed door of a supposed sane home. Weren't families everything? Weren't they meant to protect and nurture, not stunt and destroy?
She counts the little red lines on the clocks numbers, trying to divert her mind from the day ahead, and what new problems it will inevitably bring. Funny, she notices, the number five has five lines that make it up. Fourteen altogether. The clock flutters and now reads 5:19; she now goes about recounting the lines. Thirteen, or fifteen if you count the two red dots. Mary lays there counting over and over, making up ways to distract her mind from the sort of day she always wakes up dreading - everyday.
She pictures herself standing in her classroom, that overlooks the asphalt playground and watching the parents drop the little bastards off. Their smiles, their laughter. That stops as soon as they see her. As if she’s some kind of beast and their eyes widen and remember that she’s their teacher, and they have to spend another day having to stare at Miss Heart - the heartless teacher. She’s like a black hole that sucks the joy from their oblivious little lives. They probably even try to explain that look to their parents, and are rebuffed. She can just hear the mother saying: "Don't be silly dear," or, "Now don't be nasty to Miss Heart. What would she think if she could hear you?"
She winces with pain, not realizing her nails were digging into her left thigh. She pulls back the thick sheet and stares at the blood under her nails, and then absentmindedly wipes it in her hair.
Oh for the days when she had nothing to worry about. The days when she would arrive at school as a student and not have to worry about a thing. But she can't remember ever judging her teachers like the way hers judge her. That was before it started happening - her life took on a different meaning then. Nothing would ever be the same again, not even now, decades later.
She can just picture it in her minds eye, little Sammy Francis whispering into David Petersons ear, looking at her all the while, gossiping, and spreading lies about her. So what if Sammy's only seven, she knows, they all do. She can hear their laughter at night while she tosses and turns in her fitful sleep.
So what if she’s forty-one and unmarried. She has never found the right man. Men are all the same anyway, just like her father. Too many hugs and kisses, always on the lips. Too many late night visits to check she’s alright, making sure she had everything she needed - at three o'clock when her mother was fast asleep. Who needed men: bastards, all of them. Once she even remembered trying to tell her mom. She had received the worst beating of her life in return for trying to get her moms understanding and confidence. It was never mentioned again. The visits even stopped for a few weeks, but they soon intensified, now he knew no one would believe her, not even her mother.
Mary Ann Heart, forty-one and single, only once having a boyfriend, but as soon as he tried anything apart from kissing, as soon as his hand started to roam, then she had broken off the relationship. They were all the same, all wanting the same thing. Animals, all of them, dirty little animals, just like all the boys in her class, who will all grow up just the same. Dirty animals all of them.
She remembered once when she had asked all the children in her class to paint a picture, most drew their families: mummy and daddy, with little Joe Bloggs holding one or both their hands. How f***ing naive. All conditioned to lie, she thought. They all know the truth; all know the picture should have had mummy in the garden, watering the plants, while daddy was up stairs with the children. "What a great father," her mom always use to say. "Always ready to look after Mary. A father in a million."
6:42 A.M. now fifteen lines, she counted, seventeen including the two red dots: red dots that represented her fathers lusting watery eyes, always looking like two poached eggs.
Mary now stood under the shower, her daily routine, one thing she still had left to hold onto. She stood under the powerful jet of water, pumice stone in hand, scrubbing her flesh, making it red raw. The water around her feet turned a watery crimson colour.
"Almost clean," she whispered over and over, her twisted mantra, blocking so many images from her mind. The sores weren't that painful, she had endured worse. But no matter how hard she washed she always felt dirty; even though her father had been dead six years from a supposed heart attack, she still felt his cold clammy hands all over her thin body. Luckily they didn't do an autopsy.
Mary stands stock still, body unmoving, eyes locked onto the glass, just staring at her pale reflection in the misted mirror. Her eyes are locked onto her unmoving irises. She had once heard that if you stare at your own reflection for long enough it would change, distort and another stranger’s face would be looking back at you. She had been doing this since she was eight, and never had another peered back out the glass, only her ugly reflection; a reflection only her father found beautiful, but then again most of the time he made her hold the pillow over her face.
She dressed in a long coffee coloured dress, a thick cotton brown top and flat featureless brown leather shoes. Her long jet black hair was tied in to a braid at the back, harsh silver clips holding it into place, along with two HB pencils pushed into the knot. She had seen this in a film, where a teacher had her hair in a bun, and had two pencils poked through it. She had been doing it since before she even became a teacher. Funny, not once had she ever pulled them out to use them. It's not until she gets home and once again looks in the mirror that she even remembers they are there.
Mary now sits on a chair facing her vanity unit, another larger triple mirror reflecting her image from different angles. She put the absolute minimal amount of makeup on that she needs to cover her pale white skin. She only wore that because a fellow teacher once asked her if she was ill. Cheeky bastard, another rude obnoxious man, like the rest of them. She now wore it so as not to give him another reason to ask her such personal questions. Two days later she needn't have worried, he was found dead in his car miles from anywhere out on the moorland. A pair of long scissors embedded in the back of his head, just where his spinal column joined to his skull. No one was ever arrested in connection. Funny thing was it wasn't a mugging; his wallet still lay on the passenger side seat next to his mobile, where he always left it, so it didn't stick in his ass as he drove.
Once again she gets lost in her own little word, a world she has built up around herself, a protection she says. Hiding her mother always said. What did she know? Blind is all she was. Uncaring and unloving. Blind to the monstrosity that her husband was. Always denying the obvious, even when some morning she would wake and find her husband curled up next to his daughter in her bed, having fallen asleep after ejaculating. But even that didn't register; just fell asleep putting his daughter to bed. Even though she was fast asleep by the time it came to him going to see her.
Mary’s head snapped back to the moment at hand. Her eyes refocused on her thin emancipated image in the dull mirror. Her hand was frozen inches from her face, lipstick having fallen to the vanity units top a long time beforehand. She slowly lowered her hand, leaving only her top lip done.
She had not talked to her mother since her father had died. She had driven her to the old people’s home, took out her cases from the boot, and left them and her mother on the homes doorstep, not even going in to check her into her new room. Mary didn't even look in the review mirror as she drove away. A few time her mother tried to phone her, tried to explain. She called out to Mary down the phone line, screaming for forgiveness. So the b**** had known what was happening? A few times the home had even called, saying her mother was ill. She simply changed her phone number and went ex-directory.
Breakfast time, her stomach reminded her.
Mary stood in one quick movement, she caught the wooden draw with her bony knee; perfume bottles rocked and fell, jewellery slid about, and then the mirror tipped forwards, shattering in to a million tiny pieces, exploding her belongs across the bedrooms uncovered dirty stained carpet.
She just stood, staring at the place the mirror once rested, oblivious to the glass around her feet, and perched in her hair. She stared at the blank wall and brushed one thin finger over her left eyebrow, then turned and headed downstairs for breakfast. Glass crunched underfoot.
To many unwashed dishes rested on the draining board, balancing them in complicated piles; a few having already fallen to the floor, having not bothered to clean them in months. Her eyes darted around until they came upon a Kellogg’s Cornflakes novelty bowl, which had days old milk set in the bottom. She filled it with Honey nut Loops and brushed cat sh** off the stool, sat and began eating the festering cereal, the milk having congealed and turned into yogurt, but she didn't notices as she spooned the yellow lumps into her half painted mouth.
"What would you like for breakfast darling?" Her father would ask; always happy in the morning, his secret safe one more day. At thirty-eight he was still having regular sex, even if it was with his own daughter.
Mary would sit numbly still, mumble something incoherent. She got the same breakfast everyday even if she asked for it or not. Her mother going all-out to provide a variety on the breakfast table, letting her decide. Over compensation for what she knew she could have stopped, now making up for it with a lavish breakfast. Smiling father with his hand on her knee under the table, and mother scurrying around the kitchen, deciding to stay busy rather than speak up.
Glass fell from her hair, landing on her spoon as she lifted it to her mouth. She didn't notice as blood dribbled down her chin along with the normal saliva.
In the background the television blared, the morning news filling the small stinking kitchen with noise. It stayed on 24/7 regardless of the time of day or night. A companion - a welcoming sound in the silence of the old house. Her friend even. But as always she ignored the droning coming from the news presenters, rattling on about some cataclysm happening somewhere in the world. Didn't charity start at home? Her father always said. What did the presenters know about real suffering, real pain. The sort of pain where it’s hard to sit down on your schools wooden chair because your father had had a little bit more energy had been a little bit rougher than normal.
In a flash she stood from her seat, making it tip backwards, leaving the bowl on the grime covered table, inches away from her dead cat. Her other cat seemed oblivious to its dead partner as is jumped up and lapped the yellow milk from the bowl, its orange eyes fixed on her, awaiting any erratic movement.
Mary took four steps then turned on the spot, as if a blind person and her whole house was simply measured by how many footsteps it was to the large clock in the hallway, how many steps to the full sink, how many to the front door.
Slowly, like an automaton she pulled her long black coat up over her fragile shoulders, then simply letting gravity take its course as the material relaxed over her frame, hanging like a coat on a clothes hanger.
One, two, three, four steps to the front door. It’s not locked, it never is, no one could hurt her more than her own father already has.
Her hand stretched out of its own accord and grasped the Toyota keys. The door slammed shut behind her.
Mary sat in her small blue car, the engine turning over, her hands placid in her lap. The electric garage door still locked in place. A few minutes and it would be all over, she mused. Suffocation - gassed. But no, in boxes all around the garage was her fathers’ old belongings. She had never looked through them, never feeling the need to want too. They just sat there going mouldy, with rats and mice having made their home inside the stacked boxes.
Click... The large peeling door starts to grind upwards, letting the day’s dull rays spill inside. More rain, more greyness. Good old England. Just as she pulled out it started to hammer down with rain, as if Mother Nature was picking up her emotional vibes, mirroring her sullen, distance mood.
The reminiscing - daydreaming was becoming worse, most of her waking and sleeping day consumed with images of her father, and his cold wet hands.
Slowly she wedged the gear into place and crept the car out the garage, not bothering to flick the switch to lower the metal door again. Hopefully someone would empty the contents for her, do her a great favour.
The roads are always busy, always crammed pack full of parents dropping their kids off. People leaving for work. Strangers going about their daily monotonous life. A circle was all it was - get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, eat, sh**, and go to bed. Then it all starts again. Life’s f***ing circle. Surely if God existed, apart from doing something about the suffering children and wars and disease, he would have had more of a purpose for his fleshly creations? Or was God really a satanic bastard, and he created this world to be one huge living hell. Maybe, she reasons, she had already lived a normal life, had died, and this was hell?
She tried to get onto the duel carriageway A404, from her home area of Stanmore in Northwest London, to Wembley were she worked.
She sat in her cold car, the heating having packed up years ago, waiting behind a large white van, which seemed to have a driver who had his hand resting continuously on the horn. Mary inched the car along, her complete forward view taken up by a large pair of double doors.
Somewhere around her a car had its music system pumping the bass, the hollow sound of the vibration being the only noticeable resonance. No words carried on the air, just tuneless bass rattling her car windows.
Large heavy greasy rain drops started to splatter on her dirty windshield. Small rivulets were now coursing down her windows, the pattering echoing loudly throughout her cold metal shell of a car. She turned on the wipers, what good they would do, simply making one huge wet smear and simply spreading the water out and not removing it.
She remembered the time her father would always let her sit up front, because she was a big girl, he always said. And big girls sat in the front with the adult driver. None of the drivers around could see what his hands were doing, because they were below the window line.
A fly buzzed around the confines of the car, then landing on Mary's forehead. She made no move to swot it, or flick it away. There it rested, simply cleaning itself.
Once again her eyes glazed over, the cars outside becoming simply fuzzy objects, blurs in her vision. The droning of the rain on the metal roof; pattering on the windshield. A loud horn awoke her from the abyss that is her only salvation.
She pulled hard on the old handbrake and wedge the gear in place, pulling the car forwards three car lengths to close the small gap, that the driver behind thought was a mile.
Before long the monotonous drive brought her to the school she had been working at for twenty years; twenty long years. It was the first and only job she has ever had, straight from collage. She decided to work with children. Children were uncomplicated, un-judgemental. How wrong she was, she mused. Little bastards, always asking what's wrong? Why the tears?
Oh, they knew, they just liked f***ing with her mind - mind games. All the same, all of them. The little dirty boys, soon to be violent, fearful men. Soon be fathers hurting their children. Dirty. All dirty!
She pulled along the street where one side had houses with larger, greener gardens, and space for four cars on the raked gravel driveways. On the other side of the wide clean street sat her place of work, nestled between a dentist’s surgery and a private abortions clinic. She always mused how they got away with planning permission to convert the old building into a place where they got rid of unwanted children, when they was a school right next to it? Of course there was no outward sign of what happened there; no huge advertisement for legal wholesale murder, she thought - no big red sign with a fetus being dropped into a dustbin.
Mary waited while Mr. Homontous - the Deputy Head teacher - tried to reverse his ancient twenty year battered and rusty old Ford into his small space. She just stared. He had been doing this everyday for as long as Mary knew him. Everyday he would slowly climb out of his yellow car and stand by the boot, checking to see if somehow the space had changed size over night. It hadn't in twenty years, but you never know! To the left was a tall windowless wall; to the right was Miss Heart’s space, backing onto another wall, with a curb stopping the bumpers from touching the red brick wall. Most teachers drove into the space because they needed to remove things from their boots. Mr Homontous was the only teacher who reversed in.
Mr. Homontous looked up, arched his shoulders, like he always did, and gave Miss Heart a cold wave - like he always did. Twenty years and she had never uttered a whole sentence to him. He looked too much like her father as far as she was concerned. Suddenly Mr. Homontous features did warped into that of her fathers. Dirty animal. Dirty f***ing animal. You will never hurt me again, she thought. His eyes looking over her body, deciding what to do to her tonight. Something new maybe? Something painful?
But this time she decided to do something. She climbed from her own car, walking towards him. This wasn't normal behaviour from Miss. Heart, so Mr. Homontous just stood his ground, waiting to see what transpired. But as quick as a flash Mary hopped in his car, without bothering to close the door, and rammed the gear into reverse and wheel spun it, let go of the clutch and let it shoot violently backwards in to the parking space.
Mr. Homontous didn't have time to react, no time to move. He was mowed down by his old yellow hatchback Ford. His old legs got caught on either side of the left rear wheel; the bumper shattering his shins, folding him backwards after he bounced off the solid glass. His head his the curb with bone crushing force, and he was dead before the wheel even ran up between his twisted legs, over his crotch and popping his intestines, and cracking all his old brittle ribs. The back wheel came to a stop with the skull wedge firmly between concrete curb and black rubber tire.
Without so much of a battered eyelid, Mary closed the door, locked it, and tossed the keys down under the car, coming to a skidding stop by Mr. Homontous’s hand, with a pool of sticky burgundy blood pooling around them.
Mary then casually returned to her own Toyota and parked next to the yellow Ford, hiding the twisted crushed body from view.
No one had witnessed the murder, because the teachers’ parking was behind the main office, and no other teachers had yet arrived. And what with the walls, no one would see his burst body until Mary removed her car. And with what she had planned she would never use her car again. It was the last time the children’s judgmental eyes would rest on her.
She carried her floppy brown leather briefcase out of force of habit. She wouldn't need it today, or ever again.
Mary casually walked around the dull red brick building, with it chunky white wooden window frames and small panes of glass. It looked more like a prison than a primary school, only the colourful cut-out paper images in the windows gave any hint to what happened inside. Twenty-one years she had been here, longer than if she had been convicted of murder in the first degree. She would have at least been eligible for parole at fifteen years.
The wide front double doors stood open, her classroom was the first on the right, overlooking the large front playground where the children had to walk through to get to the school. But not yet, she always arrived early, have a little bit of calm before the storm. Only Derek the janitor wandered around at this time of the morning. And of course Mr. Homontous, but he would not be dragging his old feet around these corridors again.
Derek shuffled past down the main hallway, dirty mop in callused hands, smearing brown water over the greasy tiled floor. Muttering to himself about some injustice from life; his hunchback being a constant reason for being called names by the dirty children. Quasimodo was their favourite. He disappeared around the corner, hallway now simply a pool of brackish water. He was possibly hoping one of the little bastards would slip and break an arm or collarbone. Derek meandered around the corner, disappearing into his broom cupboard to have another quick roly before Mr. Homontous arrived.
Besides Miss. Heart gave him the willies, the way she looked at him, as if seeing every bad thing he had ever done, ever thought. Besides his back was aching today, something bad was going to happen; he could just feel it in his twisted bones. Besides, what was she doing here, today of all days?
Mary let the door swing back in place as she wandered over to her large wooden desk. She flopped down into the wooden seat, and just sat staring out the large front window. All around her happy little pictures drawn by them. Smiling, playing, having fun. All lies.
They would be arriving soon. Soon the little bastards would be sat silently, waiting for her to speak, all the while judging her, whispering about her and her father. Dirty little animals, all of them. The little girls with their horrid little giggles, battering their eyelashes at the boys. The boys with their hands under the table, playing with themselves. Animals. All dirty little animals.
Today she would do the world a favour and remove thirty-eight little bastards from it. Stop them from growing into rapists, serial killers and whores. She would be remembered for sticking up for the down trodden. The helpless. The child that couldn't stop her father from hurting her. She would also save them from a lifetime of hurt, pain and tears.
Besides her was a large Calor gas heater, considering the heating went four months ago, and the council had yet to fix it. They were meant to fix it last Saturday, but never did. Just another sheet of paper waiting on a desk to be moved twenty feet to another; that's all it took to get it passed. But like all good councils, time was something that meant nothing to them.
But everything happened for a reason, she thought, as she turned the knob to release the gas, letting it slowly fill the large high ceiling room. She had planned it just right. The gas would be strong, but not too strong. She would let the room fill while she made the children wait in the hallway, then lead them in, and boom, bye bye dirty little animals.
Mary turned it on full, and then left the room, closing the door tight, after using tape to hold the metal door ball back, so the metal on metal - as it opened - wouldn’t set the fire a spark. She wanted the privilege of doing that with her own hand.
The silence in the hallway echoed the sound of her leather shoes, as she headed towards the toilet. Just one last look at her tired refection. One last chance to stare at the mirror at her appearance to see if another looked back. But no one had for thirty-three years, since the abused little eight year old stood for hours, contemplating death. Thinking about ways to tell her teachers. Tell someone else, who, unlike her mother, would believe her.
But back then there was no ChildLine, no 0800 1111. No listening ear. All that awaited you in the class room was the birch if you talked out of turn about your parents. More than likely to get a caning than a listening – sympathetic - ear. No Social Services would come knocking at you door simply because the neighbours heard a muffled scream for help from small lungs. No aid when it looked like you body was covered in bruises. Back then if you had a bruise, it's because your parents thought you deserved it. Who were the teachers to disagree?
Her shoes squeaked on the now dry, smeared, floor.
Mary now used her key to open the teachers’ toilet. No use using the children’s one, because they are so small if she sat down her knees would pass her head. Besides the little bastards talked about her in there, probably graphitized the walls with her name. She had never been in the children’s toilets, but that doesn't means I'm not right, she thought.
She now stood in the pristine toilet. As least the janitor done this one right, mainly because he knew he would get away with everything else apart from the teachers toilets.
The mirror gleamed as she stared at her unmoving reflection. Unmoving and uncaring. Soon people would know the truth. Would know why she done what she has. Why she took so many little - just starting-out - lives. The real truth will rear its ugly head. But the person who needed punishing will never come to justice. But it would smear his perfect name. The man who gave so much too so many. The man who gave so much out to others in charity, but never gave anything to those of his own home, apart from a lifetime of pain.
The long explanatory note lay on her kitchen table, besides the dead cat. In it, it explained the years of physical and mental abuse. The world would know the truth - and the truth will set her free.
Only Mary’s image stared back at her. No other strange face, only the stranger she had grown to know. She never truly knew the person who reflected in front of her. That person died inside at the age of eight.
Using a tissue she wiped the lipstick of her top lip, dropping the soiled paper into the sink. Then in one swift jerk her thin arm shoot out, fist clenched smacking the mirror with phenomenal force - the force of an insane woman. Years of built up sadness, depression and hurt. The mirror shattered in to a million glittering splinters, cascading down around her, tinkering on the tiled floor. The fragments seemed to move through the air in slow motion, like a piece of slow motion photography. Mary’s eye never left the spot on the wall where they had been reflected in the mirror, which now rained down around her.
The door flew open, with Derek standing under the thick doorframe. His eyes wide at the damage before him. I'm not cleaning that up, expression on his old haggard face.
Miss. Heart hadn't moved a muscle.
"Are ya okay Miss. Heart?" Derek enquired. Even with the scene before him he didn't really want to step into the ladies toilet while a female was in there, especially one as strange as her, who knows what she would say.
"I asked if you were alright, Miss. Heart." Still no reactions. She seemed to be transfixed on a spot on the now naked wall.
"Miss. Heart," he said, as he took a step in and placed a winkled old hand on her bony shoulder, trying to get some response. But what happened next he wouldn't have expected.
Mary spun around as quickly as a mongoose and her arm flashed out in a large semi circle.
Derek’s eyes widened in pain. His arms went limp down next to his side. His eyes rolled back slowly in his head, and then his head slowly tipped back along to mimic them. The piece of glass that was clenched in her right hand had severed his head so violently, that as his head lulled backwards part of his yellow spinal cord could be seen as the blood gushed from the wide open slash. With a thud Derek’s body collapsed backwards, landing on the shattered fragmented glass.
Without so much as a twitch, Mary dropped the bloody sliver of mirror and calmly stepped over the twitching body. Blood pooled around his body, as she stepped over him, out the door. Methodically she locked the door behind her and slowly walked back up the hallway towards her classroom, sticky crimson footprints were being left in her wake.
Silence echoed around her as she walked like a droid back down past all the coat and bag hooks that stretched the length of the hall down both sides. Hooks that should be starting to fill up with colourful Barbie bags and Action Man rucksacks. Along with thick coats and small animal looking umbrellas, with small pools of water that use to send Derek half crazy - but not anymore. Nothing would upset Derek now, except the maggots.
Still she walked purposefully towards her classroom, ignoring the obvious. Where were the dirty little animals? They should be running around, screaming, laughing and playing. Parents dropping them off, making sure their bags are hung properly, using the handle and not just forcing them on the hook, tearing the new bag. There were no other teachers around socializing with the parents, ruffling the hair of the children.
Mary never chatted with the parents. She was paid to teach the children, not pretend to be interested in what the families had done on the weekend. So what if they had been up to see Uncle Sid from Manchester. Or visited Grandmother up at ViewVale Retirement Home. Who gave a sh** - not her. Did they ever ask what she had done? No! They didn't want to know that she had sat on the kitchen table, facing away from the television for sixteen hours on Saturday, not eating or drinking. Unmoving and uncaring. Ignoring the neighbour as he hammered on his wall, putting up more f***ing shelves. Or the sound of Mr. Ling mowing his God-dam lawn again. Who needed to mow the grass three times a week? He done it to annoy her, she was sure of it. But he wouldn't be using his mower anytime soon, not after the pound of sugar she had poured into the tank.
Mary now stood outside her empty classroom that had no children waiting to get in. No noise, no hustle 'n' bustle of anxious kids waiting to start another day. And the silence that washed over them as she approached. The small staring eyes. The judging starts then. The whispering and the mind games.
Mary stood like an ancient Greek statue, with only her eyes moving, trying to comprehend everything. Her hand holding firmly to the doors handle, a vice grip. There were only three people in the whole school, and two of them weren't breathing anymore.
Blood dribbled from her brown top, splattering the dull floor.
Time seemed to stand still, as comprehension caught up with her. It was only Sunday! She had got up as if it was Monday morning, oblivious to the day, due to her nightmare. Her mind completely bent on her father, hate taking over her thought process. The streets were so busy because the cars were heading towards the large car boot sale. And Mr. Homontous was known to come in on Sundays. And Derek worked anytime he could so long as he didn’t have to be around the children who called him names.
Now their two bodies littered the school property and she still had almost twenty-four hours before the little animals arrived. But she would wait. Waiting was something she was good at. If she could sit for sixteen hours at the kitchen table, then she could do it for twenty-four at her desk here.
She would turn off the gas, opened the windows, and ready it all again tomorrow morning when the little bastards arrived.
But as she leant against the push plate, the small piece of tape came unstuck, and the metal ball raked across the metal door lock. The small blue spark hissed to life. The hair on Mary’s head flew forward as the small blue flame became an immense engulfing tsunami of red flames; sucking the breath from her lungs, before returning it with searing pain. The red fingers of flames raced over her complete body, sending up her clothes, hair and skin in a ball of toxic burning smoke, which then blew her chard body backwards down the corridor, leaving her steaming crisp body on the red blood smear floor.
The last image to materialize before her eyes was that of her fathers round smiling face and yellow teeth, as if saying, see you soon, daughter.

Outside a passer-by, who was dropping her fourteen year old daughter off at the abortion clinic, said the explosion rocked the truck up onto two wheels, shattering the side windows. She screeched the BMW X5 to a halt. Her young daughter screaming in panic and fear.
The driver looked across as the flames arched out the once pristine white school windows, now balls of flames melting the paint and blackening the wood and cracking the red bricks.
The woman tried to calm her screaming daughter, placing a bloody, glass shredded hand on her quivering shoulder.
Then another sound brought her from her dazed stupor. A body was racing out the double burning doorways, flames licking from her burnt tattered clothes and curling blackened skin. With the words, “DIRTY f***ing LITTLE ANIMALS… WHY FATHER? WHY?” Then nothing as her twisted body fell dead to the asphalt playground, pieces of tiles and glass tinkering down around her, with burning embers dancing of the light wet breeze.


Copyrighted in the name of Glen Johnson 2005

This post has been edited by Kryso: 27 February 2005 - 04:49 PM

[Kryso]

Wanna read more?

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Yes please! I didn't realise you posted Dirty Little Animals

I read now

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Wow Kryso! That was a brutal story. Kind of reminds me of Clive Barker. Keep up the good work!

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Hi Kryso, will we get to read any more?