Blurred Lines: A box-set of reality bending supernatural fiction (Paranormal Tales from Wales Book 9)

by Michael Christopher Carter

I shake my head vigorously. “I can’t, Uma. I’ve got date night with my wife tonight.”

  It’s a low blow, but she seems unfazed.

  “It won’t take long, but I do want to speak with you in private. We won’t get another chance.” She stares at the floor for a moment before looking up straight into my eyes. “I’m leaving.”

  “Yes. I know. We had an assembly about it on Wednesday. You’re leaving at the end of term.”

  “No. Before that. I’m going today. But I have to talk to you before I go, Eliot. It’s important. I promise.”

  “We’ll see,” I say, non-committedly. The bell rings to end break. She nods in acceptance of my non-promise and scuttles uncharacteristically meekly from the room.

  As the day goes on, my concern grows. Lunch on a park bench with the Scotch Egg I’ve opted for today instead of a dry sandwich, gives me time to ponder.

  What does she mean, she’s leaving today? Why? My heart pounds. Her leaving at Christmas was a positive. A marriage cementing positive. But today? So soon? I don’t greet the news with the excitement I should.

  I do blame her for tempting me into unfaithfulness, but she saved me. She made me feel worthwhile; attractive, when in my marriage I was spiralling into emasculated depression. I need her.

  Even now, with all she’s put me through, it has been flattering. And oh so tempting. I don’t want her to go. Having her around is a necessary safety-net for my delicate ego.

  I half-heartedly remember date night. There are a few restaurants we have as our favourites. I know I’ve got to choose posh to be romantic. The local Tandoori isn’t going to cut it.

  Hanbury Manor is the obvious choice, and it’s our wedding venue. You can’t get more romantic than that. But when I phone, they’re unsurprisingly fully booked for tonight. I turn on the Armstrong charm, and they manage to squeeze us in later in the evening. They don’t usually, but I sound nice, apparently.

  So, it’s with dumfounded irritation that I read the text message that comes within five minutes.

  1 Text Message: Imogen: ‘Something has come up. Have to postpone date night x’

  Something’s come up? I thumb through my contacts and call her straight away, but there’s no answer and I don’t know what to say in a message.

  I lean against the bench to steady myself, head throbbing to my racing pulse. What’s she playing at? My half-dream imaginings flood my thoughts and she’s naked, Karl King kissing her naked chest, her moaning in ecstasy.

  I crush what is left of my Scotch Egg in my fist, and fling it to the ground. Storming back to school, I pity my afternoon classes.

  In the end, I internalise my wrath, and don’t even bother giving homework. Grabbing my briefcase and jacket, I stroll purposefully along the corridor and out of the school.

  I want to race to her work, follow her to whatever has ‘cropped up.’ Key fob in hand, I blip my car into life, but a familiar voice stops me in my tracks.

  “Eliot. You haven’t forgotten me, have you?” Uma purrs into my ear. My back stiffens.

  “Er, I had actually.”

  “Well un-forget. Now. Come on. Get in.” She gestures to her car. Hovering on my toes, I don’t want to get in. It feels like too much of a betrayal to Imogen. “Come on, Eliot. We won’t get another chance.”

  “Why? Why are you leaving today? I don’t believe you.”

  She sighs. “Get in the car, and I’ll tell you.”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ve got to get to Hanbury Manor for a date with my wife.” My throat constricts at the lie, and at the reason for it. I have to excuse myself from Uma and find out what Imogen is up to.

  But what if this is the last time I ever see Uma? I don’t want that. I try one last time to get out of it, but my heart’s not in it. When she drops her next bombshell, I have to obey.

  “I’ve got cancer.” Her eyes moisten behind the shield of her mellow lenses, and she lets out a little shudder leaving me in no doubt of the statement’s accuracy.

  Seeing my non-movement, she sighs a deep sigh and hisses at me in her East European accent, elongating the vowels, “Get in the farrcking car, Eliot Armstrong!”

  I blip my Mercedes locked again and step around to the passenger side of her larger one. I’ve been in it before, of course, when we were indulging our extramarital activities.

  Expecting a heart to heart right here in the car park, as she pushes the ignition button, I realise I’m being naïve.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just away from here. I’ll explain everything then.”

  It takes a while in the winter light to realise the roads are very familiar. This exact route, I’ve taken with Uma before. Knowing where we’re headed now, I wonder if I should object, but her devastating words echoing round my mind keep me silent.

  She pulls the car into the oh so familiar quiet lane, and then the always deserted lay-by, as if on pre-programmed rails. We don’t mention what we were doing the last time we pulled in here.

  Uma turns off the engine, frees her seatbelt and turns towards me. Removing her glasses, she pinches the bridge of her nose and reaches across to grab my hand, but it’s in a friendship, not flirtatious way.

  “So,” she says. “I’ve got cancer... again.”

  “Again?” She nods, a tear welling in her eye plops into her lap unheeded.

  “I’d just got over cervical cancer when I met you. I’d been clear for months. It was one of the reasons I moved here. Collin gave me a nice home. This car. Stability. But we never had what you and I had.”

  I feel like pulling my hand away, but it wouldn’t make any difference. We did have something, and being unkind to Uma now isn’t going to change that. And I’m flattered.

  “And Karl,” she adds, and as usual when I hear his name, it takes me a beat to realise she means Bruce. “There’s nothing going on with him. I wanted to tell you what I was going through, but you were avoiding me. I understand why, of course, but when I found out the cancer was back, I just wanted you.” She squeezes out a tear. “I wanted to be close to you again.”

  Coughing away her emotion, she continues, “When you walked in on us, I’d been crying and he was being a true gentleman comforting me. You weren’t! You’ve been a bastard.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I had no idea, obviously, and I was just trying to protect my marriage.” In saying, I immediately picture Imogen in uncompromising positions and the knot coils in my gut.

  Uma assumes my reaction is because of her. And perhaps it is in part, but it still seems unreal. Too hard to take in, and she looks so healthy, as she always has. I can’t believe she was so unwell when I met her. No wonder she wanted to grab life; grab me, by the balls!

  “So, that’s why I’m going. Tonight. I’ve got the plane tickets and everything. I thought, why am I giving the school six weeks of my life? And I had nothing to keep me here,” she adds pointedly.

  “I have to see my family. Collin could support me financially, but I’ve realised, I don’t really love him. If this is it, I can’t spend my time with someone I don’t love, can I?” I shake my head.

  “So that’s what I wanted to say. I’ve got the tickets, but I don’t have to use them.” I frown and pull my hand away.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I had a reason, I could stay here.” Her long, red fingernails are raking my chest, I want to stop her, but part of my anatomy has already raised its hand to be included as a reason. “I’m going to beat this, Eliot. I beat it before, and I’ll beat it again. And if I had the right man in my life, it would be that much easier.”

  Gulping down a wad of confused emotion in my throat, I’m a sitting duck for whatever she has in store.

  “But if you can’t see yourself with me,” her hand is on my face, guiding me towards her, “well, we can have a last goodbye, can’t we?” and her lips are on mine.

  Thoughts racing through my head. I should stop, but I can’t. I’ve never been able to. She’s
always had this power over me. Without knowing how, we’ve moved into the back seats and I’m tugging at her clothes.

  I don’t want to lose her. I won’t cope. Knowing this is our last chance; a romantic goodbye; and smarting from Imogen’s treatment of me the last couple of days, I let go of my inhibition and throw myself into the passion of the moment.

  Her breasts are in my mouth, the full nipples completing the round firmness of her magnificence. I gulp down emotion like an infant guzzling milk from its mother’s teat.

  My belt buckle unclips in her nimble grasp and soon I am in her mouth in tainted bliss: tainted by the sadness of Uma’s news. The thought makes me flag and instinctively, Uma slides up my chest and kisses me passionately again, our tongues probing one another’s mouths, searching for some sense in it all.

  Reaching down between her legs she finds me and pulls at me. My most sensitive area feels her moistness and in one caress I’m plunged expertly inside her.

  “Oh, Eliot. My darling. I love you,” and her mouth is on mine again. “Be with me, Eliot. Say you love me, and I’ll stay.”

  My mind can’t cope. As she writhes up and down and back and fore, orgasmic pleasure erupting with every surge, I’m not best placed to be making life choices.

  “I can’t. I won’t leave Imogen. It wouldn’t be fair. She’s done nothing wrong.”

  “We can be like we were before. Like we are right now!” She squeezes me in an exquisite embrace, but holds me off just enough to remain in control.

  “Imogen might find out. She’s already suspicious, and we haven’t done anything for ages.” I groan in pleasure. I couldn’t be further inside her. We’ve become one writhing, ardent beast. Sweat pouring from my head and down Uma’s neck and breasts, making them shine in a way I never want to forget.

  Leaning in, she kisses me, her tongue caressing the back of my skull from my mouth as I climax in a consuming roar. She’s said something that doesn’t make sense. In that moment of ecstasy it sounded like one thing, but it couldn’t have been.

  “What? What did you say?” Smiling, a tinge of cunning colours her pretty face.

  “I said,” she stage-whispers, “she already knows!”

  I’m immediately flaccid. Imogen isn’t having an affair. She just can’t face me. Or she is, because of me.

  “How,” I demand. She smiles again, like this is all going to plan.

  “We had a little meeting. I told her all about us.”

  I’m faint. I can’t breathe.

  “She doesn’t excite you the way I do, Eliot. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “This isn’t happening, Uma. No way. I’ll deny it. I’ll tell her you’re crazy. I’ve already insinuated as much. This is the last you will ever see of me. I’ll make her believe me.”

  She’s laughing.

  “What’s the matter with you!?”

  “She won’t. I met her yesterday.”

  So that’s why Imogen showered. She didn’t want me to smell Uma’s perfume and work out she doesn’t trust me.

  “You’re wrong! It was after she got back from meeting you she suggested date night!”

  “She didn’t know then. She didn’t want to believe me. But I said I’d prove it. And now she knows.”

  I sit up, still slightly inside her, it’s a struggle.

  “What do you mean?” She’s laughing again. “Tell me!” I’m shaking her shoulders. “Tell me!”

  “You’re hurting me. Eliot, stop. You’re hurting me!”

  My grip loosens faintly and I ask once more in as calm a voice as I can, “Tell me.”

  “I told her about this place: this lay-by.”

  My heart drops to the floor and my manhood shrivels to the size of a mushroom. “What?”

  “I told her we used to come here, and that we would be here tonight. If she wanted proof, she could come see for herself!”

  “No!” I screech, gripping her shoulders ferociously. I have to be free of her. Looking down, our intimacy suddenly repulses me. I shove with all my might. “Get off me!”

  I shove her from my lap. I just want her away. I can’t bear her touch.

  Winded, she slithers over the leather armrest in the centre console between the seats, sweat lubricating her movement like an oiled wheel. Scowling, I can see she’s upset, but then, suddenly, her expression changes.

  Eyes bursting with fear; her forehead creases, flattening sculpted eyebrows into unaccustomed paleness.

  She falls in slow-motion. Abject terror burns in her face as she recognises the odd angle she’s plummeting. Pain in her eyes tells me something’s wrong.

  Plunging to the foot well, her shoulder catches on the steering wheel twisting her again, her head thwacking the pedals with a soft yet sickening sound.

  Legs in the air pile her full curvaceous weight down on her neck. Retching, I expect her to scream in agony but she doesn’t.

  She makes no sound at all.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Uma? Uma, are you okay?” the gravity of what has happened jolts me into action. As I lunge over the seat, I know as soon as I see the glassy look in her eye. She’s dead.

  Gasping with shock. “Uma! No! No! Noooo!”

  Not wanting to move her in case there’s a chance, I rummage in my trousers for my phone. It must have fallen out in all the strenuous activity because I can’t find it.

  Breathing hard, I’m sure it’s not an ambulance I need. There’s no doubt, she’s dead, and I killed her.

  Rubbing at the window to clear my view through the fog on the glass. I’m sure she was bluffing. I can see no sign of Imogen, and if she’d witnessed us, she’d have dragged my sorry ass out of the car and cut my dick off.

  What to do? If I call someone; an ambulance, or the police, what good will it do? It won’t bring her back, but it will cause a lot of trouble for me, and Imogen, and Jess.

  The plan has already formed. As set in stone as Moses’ tablets. My mind is taking a while to express what I know I’m going to do.

  As far as anyone knows, Uma has left school today, never to return. My esteemed colleagues seem to know about it, they all wanted me to talk to her. She’s even got plane tickets.

  So if she doesn’t show up on Monday, no-one will be surprised. Mr Taylor isn’t expecting her back either, she made that clear. The truth won’t help anyone. And she was happy to drop plans to see her family if I’d said I loved her...

  I hold my head in my hands. “I did love you, Uma. Of course I did. I’m so, so sorry. I’d never mean to hurt you.” I stroke her oddly protruding leg as it sticks into the back from her broken posture in the front.

  “But it won’t do any good telling anyone, will it? And maybe it’ll save you a lot of suffering. All that chemo, and pain. You don’t have to have any of that now.”

  And now my plan is set. My mind willingly accepts it as the best option and starts me into action.

  Firstly, I have to move her. Just enough to be able to drive. It’s not far to our house, and to Chadwell Springs golf course, and the quarry.

  No-one will find her if her car falls in there. It will be under millions of gallons of water soon. And even if by some miracle, she was found, what are they going to think? A terminally ill women couldn’t face cancer again and took her own life. It makes perfect sense—a lot more sense than her having been killed.

  And so what that she’s naked. It adds to the hypothesis. Lots of people would get naked to do that, I’m sure.

  Hauling my sweat sodden clothes over my clammy skin, I fix my belt and step out of the car. When I open the driver’s door, I shrink at the horrific sight of my beautiful Uma, lying in that awful position.

  It takes a huge effort to dislodge her from beneath the steering wheel. Yanking under her arms doesn’t work. But from that position, I notice the rake adjustment of the steering column. Moving it in and out slackens the grip it has on Uma’s shoulders and she’s free at last.

  With her head flopped lifelessly on my lap, I l
ean forward and kiss her cold forehead. “Bye bye, my love. Sorry for this.”

  I’ll have to place her behind the wheel before I push her into the Chadwell chasm, but for now she’ll have to go somewhere else. I don’t want to put her in the boot, but if someone saw me before I made it, it would be difficult to explain.

  Dragging her under the arms, her heels scraping the ground, I pop the boot and lug her into it. Kissing my fingers, I touch them to her lips. “Sorry,” I mumble again.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It’s simple, but my brain has seized up; its gears grinding to push on and function. I have to do this, and I have to act fast.

  Slapping myself in the face, “Come on, Eliot. The worst is over. You can do this,” I coach. My hands are trembling. Bringing them up to my eyes for closer scrutiny, a wail of despair warbles in my throat.

  “How? How can I do this?” I wrestle with coming clean. Calling the police, explaining it was an accident. It’s what I deserve, but it’s not what Imogen and Jess deserve. Uma’s family are far away, and they know she’s not got long; didn’t have long. They’ll just think she changed her mind about coming to see them. That’s if they were even expecting her.

  I feel that Uma is willing me on. That this is somehow what she wanted. I know, deep within, I’m deluded, but I have to hold on if I’m to keep from tumbling into an abyss.

  “It’s simple,” I reiterate to Uma. “I’ll drive you through the town to home, and under cover of darkness, I’ll take you to the quarry.” My hands are shaking so hard now, the plan is in danger of proving impossible.

  “When we get there, I’m going to have to move you, I’m afraid. It’s important you look like you drove off the edge. No-one can find you in the boot, can they? That won’t do.”

  We’re laughing together now. We’ll get through this.

  “Then I’ll push you over, or maybe pop your little foot on the accelerator and stick the gear stick in drive, and away you’ll go.” I pat the boot lid. “Yes. That’ll work, won’t it?”

  My legs struggle to transport me the short distance back to the driver’s door and I use the handle to aid me in. Sat behind the wheel, I can barely reach out to the ‘start’ button to turn on the engine.