Tag Archives: serialized fiction

Cheating – Part Four (of five)

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Part Three is here

As he opened it and began to flick it across the body and room, she realised that it wasn’t water. Moments later, he pulled matches from his pocket, lit one, then stuffed it back into the box, and as the packet went up, he tossed it onto the body. Bright yellow flames leapt toward the ceiling, and she stepped back, eyes narrowed.

She hesitated at the exit to the garden. What if they bumped into each other? She crouched down, staring at the front door, all-too-aware of the heat beginning to come from the house. She was about to step out when the front door opened and he came out, pulled his bike from where it stood, and pedalled speedily away, not once looking back.

She waited another minute, then ran to the car and drove away. She made it out of the housing estate, and to the nearby drive-through before she parked, and the shaking started. She sat staring up at the golden arches through a haze of tears. How could he? How could he after everything he had promised her? What else wasn’t he telling her? Should she get a Big Mac, or chicken burger?

 

That had been the start of it. They’d kept going out together, finding fat old businessmen to throw off bridges, and old ladies to tie up and torture, but she knew his heart wasn’t in it. She trailed him, more than once, and enough to know that his choices were always the same, young, attractive women. So she tried to make it work, finding equally hot girls for the two of them, but although he seemed to enjoy it more, still, he went out on his own.

Eventually, she confronted him.

“David, we need to talk.”

“’Kay, what’s up?”

She hesitated. Despite going over and over this in her head, she still didn’t believe she was actually saying it, still didn’t quite know how to.

“You’ve been killing, on your own, without me.”

He stared at her, mouth open and face reddening. She hadn’t needed proof, but at least he knew it was wrong.

“Why, David?”

She heard, and hated, the pleading in her voice.

“We had such fun. I’ve never made you kill in a particular way, I’ve never cramped your style, so why?”

He was looking at the floor now, his hands opening and closing. Her eyes were stinging, but there was no way she was going to cry, not now. Finally he looked up at her, and gave her that crooked grin, and she nearly threw her coffee at him.

“Don’t do that, don’t be an asshole.”

The grin went and he looked pissed all of a sudden. He sounded it too.

“We have to do everything together. I mean, everything. I go to watch the rugby, you have to come too. I go shopping, we have to make a day of it. I wanna chop someone up, suddenly it’s a road trip. I need my own space, sweetheart, I always have.”

Cheating – Part Three (of five)

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Part two is here

She shoved open the car door and stormed across the street to the front door. She raised her hand, and hesitated, just for a moment, which was when she heard the scream. She’d watched plenty of horror movies, she knew what a scream was supposed to sound like, but this was different. There was a whole new level in this, like the sound of a rabbit caught in a fox’s jaws. It was pathetic and monstrous at the same time, and she backed away from the door, then dropped to her knees, out of sight of the front window.

The hair on her neck had risen, and she had goose bumps all over. She scuttled sideways, looking for a side gate, and when she found it, she reached for the catch, and ever so slowly, opened it and went through. She was stood in a narrow gap that ran down the side of the house, no windows facing it and she stood, and took a deep breath.

Hold on a second, call the police. She thought about her man being dragged off, dumped in a squad car, and she shook her head. She didn’t know what had happened, but she needed to, before she called them. She walked quickly down the side of house, and round to the back.

Another scream cut into her. It was quiet, muffled by the double glazing, but she could hear the desperation, and the terror. She froze beside the patio doors, then peeked carefully in.

They were in the lounge, and all her worse fears were realised.

The woman was on her knees, blood streaming from deep cuts in her face and arms. He stood above her, cycling clips in place, a large plastic apron covering all but his shoes, and kitchen knife in hand. She clapped one hand over her mouth as the blade came down, cleaving through the softer part where the neck met the shoulder. The pretty woman went down, and he bent, and swung, and swung. She fell on her knees, retching, staring at the light hairs on the backs of her hands. Strange the details you noticed at times like these. Not that there had ever been ‘times like these’ before.

She pushed herself up, wiping her chin with her hand, and turned, reluctantly, back to the window.

Each time the knife came up, droplets of blood flicked off and splashed across the patio door. She jerked back every time the soft thuds announced a new spatter. Soon, she was watching through a red haze, the glass covered.

The body was a mess. He dropped the knife atop the body, shrugged off his apron onto the pile, then peeled off surgeons gloves and let them fall with the rest. He had done this before. The thought made her lip curl, and her hands clench into fists. He made a careful, but swift inspection of his clothes, and stepped out of the room. He returned a few moments later with a bottle of water.

Cheating – Part Two (of five)

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Part One is here

 

It had been good for a year, maybe eighteen months, actually, before she spotted it. Just the slightest trace of lipstick hiding on his shirt, where they tucked into his trousers. He wasn’t even kissing them. She didn’t say anything the first time, didn’t know what to say. But when it happened again, she resolved to solve it, and find some way to keep their love alive, because it was love now. She had fallen. Her day began and ended with him, and everything she was, he kept safe.

A week later, he said he was going out with the boys, for beers after work. He was smart in so many ways, but considering he had never done this, in the year or so they had been together, it was a particularly clumsy excuse. It was a lazy excuse and that was the first time she felt the anger.

She arrived at his work, a little before five, and sat in her car, parked opposite the industrial park. Just like clockwork, bang on five, he came walking out pushing his bike, his trousers held in at the ankles with those daft little things you weren’t allowed to wear until you were at least seventy. She had brought him some lycra shorts, what everyone who rode was wearing nowadays, but he’d insisted that only show-offs and desperate wannabes wore lycra to cycle to work.

Now he pushed the bike, and swung his leg over, pedalling hard as he joined the traffic. She pulled away and fell in behind him. He wasn’t going home.

A mile or so down the road, and deep in a housing estate, he pulled up and she stopped, parking then ducking down to peer over the steering wheel. He approached a house, pulling off his cycling helmet and smoothing his hair, and knocked on the door. It was opened by a nervous looking woman, young and undeniably pretty, with long dark hair, and they talked quietly for a moment. Then the woman smiled, and opened the door wider. David stepped through the door and into another woman’s house.

Her hands was gripping the steering wheel, the knuckles white, and she banged her forehead gently against it, each thump accompanied by a word.

“fucking, asshole, fucking, fucker, how, could, he.”

She got this far, through gritted teeth, then the tears came and she curled up on the seat, trying to wrap herself up. Perhaps if she was small, it wouldn’t hurt so much. She lay like that for a few minutes, until the tears began to slow, then she abruptly sat up, punching the steering wheel so her hand hurt. Screw this. He would answer, they would both answer.

Cheating – Part One (of five)

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It felt like standing in the snow as it fell to earth, wet, heavy drops raining down. She tipped her head back, revelling, then stuck her tongue out and caught some on her tongue. It tasted rich, and she gagged slightly, then swallowed it down and opened her mouth wider. She had tasted blood before, of course she had, but never like this, never as it sprayed from the dying body of her boyfriend.

Getting him up there had been the toughest thing, the pulleys and ropes so obvious, she couldn’t believe he hadn’t spotted them. Then again, the knife in her hand had done a pretty good job of distracting him. She was glad he’d spun at the last minute, it had meant she could stick the garden fork through his face, and stare into his eyes as the blood streamed out.

He was perforated now. She’d lost control for a moment, stabbing and stabbing until the weight of the fork had dragged her arms to the ground and she’d stood, panting, in the rain. She had recovered now, though, and looked up through the dwindling flood. His eyes were fluttering, he was close to an unconsciousness from which he would never wake up. She wanted to cheer, and wave the fork above her head, her heart racing. Her chest was heavy, and tears stung in her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry. She didn’t want his last thought to be that she was upset by his death, for the tears were of relief, and joy.

She stepped until she was underneath his dick, then rammed the fork up once more. She was rewarded with a faint moan, and his entire body jerked. When she looked back at his face, his eyes were sightless, face slack. He was gone.

With a sigh, she dropped the fork, the clatter loud in the silence of the house, and stripped. When her clothes lay in a pile beneath his body, she walked slowly to the shower, and enjoyed the scalding water, stripping away his blood, and the last six years.

They had started so well. He had been a gentleman, a real one, not like ‘twat-face’ before him. No one had found ‘twat-face’ yet, not that she’d spotted in the papers. That made her proud.

But David, the corpse now swinging gently from the lounge ceiling, had been decent. He held open doors, he listened when she spoke to him. He even wanted to help out when she had problems at work. He could be a bit suffocating, but it was worth it. She felt good about herself, and that alone was worth the entrance fee, not to mention the amazing sex, and he could cook! She should have known, really, when he put that first butternut squash and wet garlic risotto on the table with a flourish, that it was too good to be true.

The Book – Sarah part 5

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As the front door slammed, her fatigue fell away and she grabbed the book. Running into the bedroom and shrugging off her jacket and bag, she threw herself onto the bed and hastily dug through until she came to their first meeting. She would, she realised, need a bunch of book marks, it would take far too long to wade through it every time she was looking for a particular section.

If only there was a contents page. The book wriggled in her hands and she dropped it to the bed, squeaking as she jumped away. She watched it. It didn’t move. She reached out tentatively and picked it up. It fell open in her hands at the front and she saw, just behind the mysterious front page, a contents page. It was massively detailed and ran to a few pages, and she grinned as she ran her finger down the entries.

2341. Sarah meets Daniel at work

2342. Cheese sandwich and Fanta in the park

2343. Traffic jam

2344. Sarah masturbates whilst thinking about Daniel.

She slammed the book shut, face burning red. Then she giggled. It was a good scene. She turned to chapter 2341, and read it slowly, savouring the awkwardness in their conversation, then the gentle flirting that made her tingle. She barely noticed as the night closed in, revising the words over and over so she was sure to get them right.

When hunger finally lured her from the bed, she nipped into the kitchen and made a sandwich, chunks of fridge-hard butter tearing holes in the bread. Then she was back, plumping up the pillows and turning back a few pages until she came to the beginning of the day. Apparently, she wore her heels tomorrow, and she dug through her wardrobe to find them, placing them next to her work clothes. She lost track of time, falling asleep with the half-eaten sandwich on the bed next to her, and her face resting gently on the soft paper of the book.

She woke early, stunned at how bouncy she felt for sleeping sat up with her face squished flat. A quick shower and she was back on the bed, a last minute revision cementing every moment of the day.

It went like clockwork, even the shitty customer bitching about having to give three forms of ID barely scratching the surface. Finally, after a day that lasted longer than the ending of Return of the King, he stepped through the door.  Her feet were hammering against the footrest and her hands shaking as he approached the window.

“Hello, um, Satinder?”

She giggled.

“Oh, goodness, I’m sorry, sir. My name is Sarah. Satinder is on her break so I’m just filling in. What can I help you with today?”

She’d hated drama at school, and sucked at it too, but now she was reading the script like a pro. She wondered if it was obvious. She caught herself about to mouth his words along with him.

“Actually, I need to open an account, please?”

His voice sounded just how she’d imagined, deep and warm and caring, and she found herself smiling, a huge grin that showed her teeth. It was too much, oh, god, he was gonna think she was a weirdo. She closed her mouth, squeezing her lips together, then remembered her lines.

“Oh, OK, great! We can’t do that at the counter, but if you’d like to wait a few minutes, I’ll be out and we can go into the office.”

Every word sounded loaded with innuendo, and she gulped, grabbed for her pen, and succeeded only in knocking it onto the floor. She dived beneath the desk, her cheeks turning bright red, then picked up the pen and appeared above the counter. He was still standing at the window, watching her with what could have been amusement, but could just have easily been tolerance. She stared at him, wide eyed like a rabbit in headlights, then snapped off a quick, ‘I’ll be out in a minute’, and rushed into the back. She leaned against the wall, fanning herself with some savings brochures and taking deep breaths. The book had said nothing about the pen dropping, nothing. Did it matter? Maybe it was too inconsequential for it to be written down. But it contained plenty of others things that didn’t matter at all. Oh god, would it change things?

She could feel her breathing getting quicker and she closed her eyes, speaking in firm tones.

“Just calm down. You dropped a pen, it means nothing. You’re going to go out and speak to him and you’ll say the right things and everything will be fine.”

She opened her eyes again. Satinder was watching her, one eyebrow raised and a look of mild concern on her face.

“Hey, you, ahh, ok, boss?”

“Uh, hi Sat, yeah, I’m good, just, you know, I really want to get this account?”

With a bright smile, she fled the backroom and went out into the branch, finding him leaning against the wall, all smoky smile and dark, promising eyes. Taking one last deep breath, she went over, seeing the words on the page as she spoke them. They headed into the office and things went as planned, the lines tripping easily off her tongue, which wasn’t surprising, cos she’d said them in the first place, or would, or was… Thinking about it made her head hurt, so she focused instead on the gorgeous man in front of her.

They’d signed the paperwork, and she knew more about his financial history than two people sharing what was clearly a mutual attraction should, when she stumbled over her words. It was a simple line, a teeny bit flirty, but she thought about it first, and it came out not at all flirty and quite a lot stalkery. She could tell by the way his face twisted a little and the sideways look her threw at her. She laughed, waving it away, and returned to the script. Only, it didn’t work, because the next sentence was a response to what he should have said in reply to the fluffed line.

As soon as she’d said it, she felt her face begin to burn, and the safety net began to unravel, falling to the circus floor and leaving her clinging by her fingertips to the trapeze. God, what if it went wrong, what if this was it, her only chance and it went wrong? She stammered, actually spluttering, then caught herself and slipped into bank manager mode, breathing easier as she found the platform. By the time she finished the post-account spiel, she felt like she’d climbed down the ladder and stood on the floor of the big top, waiting for the crowd to burst into applause.

But they remained in their seats, hands in their laps. He thanked her, shook her hand, and left, the promised smile nowhere to be seen.

The Book – Sarah part 4

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The sun was coming up outside as she read the last page and wiped her eyes. She died in bed, surrounded by her husband, and children and grand children, and happy, so happy. The children she had never wanted had filled her heart as she read about them growing up, becoming people, and she was so glad that she changed her mind. The man she would soon call her husband had helped. He was lovely; charming, kind and thoughtful and completely in love with her. He also wanted kids, badly, which, it turned out, was fine with her.

It was a good book. Not bestseller, and probably a little long-winded to start with, but if you liked your romances soppy, it had a great ending.

She placed the book carefully on the sofa and staggered to the shower, wondering just how the hell she was supposed to get through a day at work. The hot water helped, as did the coffee and Weetabix, and when she climbed into the car, she felt at least halfway human. Sat in traffic, she replayed parts of her future life. Her stomach was crowded with butterflies. She would meet him next week, and she knew exactly when, and exactly how, and was still excited. Why would she not have read it? It was wonderful, having a million things to look forward to.

The day went in a blur. The sense of deja-vu wasn’t too strong and she was glad she’d skipped the boring bits. Doing a transfer was dull enough, but doing it after having read it already was close to torture. She got out by five and climbed, stiff-limbed, back into her Corsa and pulled out into the traffic. She wanted to read it again, to savour the best bits, and she re-watched scenes in her head, one eye on the road as she crawled along. Every time she thought of a good bit, she found herself bouncing up and down in her seat, a smile on her lips. Dammit, why was the traffic so bloody slow?