It was now or never. I cut the phone wire and crawled around to the back door which was ajar. Was this a trick, did she know I was here? There was only one answer. I crept beneath the window frames and through the door.
She had her back to me and was wearing her dressing gown. I pulled it out and the silence was momentarily shattered by a shriek of distraught as I pounced on her and gagged her. I had been clever enough to cover my tracks by wearing gloves. I tied her hands behind her back and saw that she was horrified by the large white section I could see within her eyes.
I paced the room wondering how to proceed. After a few minutes I pulled out my gun and held it pressed hard on her temple and told her “If you shout I’ll kill you!” I un-gagged her and the silence was suspended for several more minutes. The air was tense before I broke it with a question which had been clawing at my brain since I was ten, “Why did you do it?”
She stared at me before whispering “Do what?”
I kicked her in the stomach hard “didn’t you think I’d find you one day?”
She didn’t reply so I kicked her harder still. Then she spluttered her words out. “Don’t be so pathetic young man. If you are talking about what I think you are, forget it, it was twenty-five years ago.”
“Fifteen years of unanswered questions is what I’ve lived with and now I want answers! I want the whole story.” I ordered her just before I kicked her for the third and final time.
She replied “OK but it’s cheerless.”
“I don’t care, I want to know.”
“We had been working together for many years as I suppose you have already been informed. She was always the favorite, Liz this, Liz that. I accused her of sleeping with him, the boss of course. She must have told him because I was sacked and she was promoted. Fancy that, sleeping with the boss just to get promoted whilst your old best friend was on the dole. How do you think I felt? the envy, the jealously. So I did it. I waited until she came home and I killed her; stabbed her straight in the heart. How was I to know she had just had a child a child who would later grow up and attack me? I fled, left the country and only returned here last year. A new name, a new identity and now you show up!”
I re-gagged her, lay her face down and spoke with my evil voice “well guess what? I’m going to kill you, not quick and painless like my mother’s death but slow and painful, very painful!”
As I rolled her over her eyes were closed. I kneeled beside her and pressed the point of my knife onto the centre of her chest. It pierced with difficulty because it was blunt. But when it did it felt good. She tensed up with pain. I left her lying there for a bit blood oozing out of her chest, moaning in pain, before I reengaged with kicking and beating her.
“This is for fifteen years of unanswered questions, pain and misery. Well it’s your own fault. You should have known I’d find you.” I shouted at her.
I remember lighting up and smoking a cigarette and then extinguishing it on her hand! I felt like all my anger was coming out. I sat there drinking her whisky. Now feeling a bit tipsy I fell beside her my knife in my hand, shaking, thinking, crying how come she was in such pain yet I felt I was in more pain than her? Then I did it. I struck her in the centre of her heart just like she had to my mother twenty-five years ago. She lay there expressionless, motionless, like a lost soul.
I looked at her lying there. What had I just done I thought to myself as several beads of cold sweat clasped to my forehead.
I knew I needed to carry on with my plan before it was too late. I took the oil lamp from the side table and smashed it on the floor before setting the oil alight with my cigarette lighter. I crouched there as the room around me set ablaze “should I stay or go.” It was now or never. I had already singed my coat and tracksuit bottoms in the fire. I fled.
Through the door, round the front, over the wall and down the path. I jumped into my car and turned the key. I felt all weak as though I had forgotten how to drive. I knew I couldn’t worry. I drove off and around the lane until I came to a drive entrance. I turned to my right and saw a house burning to the ground. Had I done that? Was it my entire fault? I had no time to wait. I pulled my passport and flight tickets from my bag placed them upon my knee and sped off into the distance thinking about my future. I wasn’t going to return here ever, ever again.
By James Whitmore
