Watching, Waiting: A SHORT Story

by Matt Shaw

  “You?” now there was definite panic in his voice. The gravity of his situation came crashing down upon him with a heavy weight that should never have been lifted from him in the first place. It wasn’t me who lifted it from him. I was the one campaigning for it to crush him. It was the courts who took it from him. The fucking courts. They’re there to protect us, help lock away the criminals and - yet - they fail us. People walk free when they shouldn’t. The innocent parties end up feeling in prison despite being able to walk the streets; a worry they’ll bump into the one who wronged them. It’s fucked up. It’s unfair. Unjust. Other people might get away with it but not Travis. Not Travis. He’s mine.

  “Say my name,” I ordered him. He stuttered. “Say it.” He slowly shook his head as tears started to roll down his cheeks. “Say my fucking name!”

  “I don’t remember it!” he shouted, interrupting me. I fell silent. I didn’t know what to say. He had forgotten my name? How could he? After what he had done… I felt a sickness brew within the pit of my gut. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry…” His apologies did nothing to stop the feeling in my gut, it just angered me that little bit more. It was the first time I had heard him utter an apology. Even in court, when he was standing before the Judge, he didn’t say it. And yet the Judge, that fucking old cunt, was still lenient with him.

  “Does this jog your memory?” I kicked the gym bag forward. Travis looked down and saw the contents within; a hammer, a hacksaw, a nail-gun, a carpet-knife to name but a few… He shook his head again. Not enough of a memory jogger for him? What about if I start pushing a scalpel up between his teeth and into his gums? What about then?

  “Will?”

  I froze. Kathy. How did she know I was here? I haven’t spoken to her since Wednesday morning. How could she know I was here? It’s not possible! It’s not fucking possible!

  I spun around. She was standing in the doorway. There was a look of confusion on her face. Her eyes darting between myself and Travis. A look of horror slowly crept across her pale complexion when she realised what was happened.

  “You can’t do this,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t try and stop me!” I reached into the gym bag and pulled the hammer out. “I need to do this.”

  “Do what? What are you doing? Who is this…” she looked at Travis again, “… boy? Who is this boy? What is going on?!” she asked. Her voice was shaking. She took another step closer to me. I raised the hammer up.

  “This is why I have been disappearing… This little cunt!” I pointed at Travis. “This fucking cunt ruined everything!” I shouted.

  “I’m sorry!” he shouted again. He wasn’t sorry though. He wasn’t sorry when he was let off the hook with a suspended sentence. He wasn’t sorry the very next day when he was laughing with his friends as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Of course he didn’t have a care in the world. If people knew him, they might have felt differently but - his age - he was too young to be named in the press. No one knew. Only me. Only I knew.

  “Please just come home with me. Whatever you’re doing,” Kathy said, “just leave it before you do anything stupid.”

  “No! I can’t! I need to do this!”

  Travis yelled, “Who are you even talking to?”

  I screamed at him, “Shut the fuck up!”

  He had gone up onto the motorway bridge with his friends. It was a sunny day. Cars were speeding underneath him. He had a brick in his hands and his friends dared him to toss it over the edge. Of course he did. The brick fell to the traffic below. It hit a car’s windscreen and smashed straight through it, killing the driver instantly when it hit them in the face. The car careered into the barrier before rolling. By the time the car came to a rest, the driver was dead and the passenger was in a critical condition.

  My eyes started to well up as I relived the experience through once more. I had been at home. It was morning and I had been getting ready for work. I was standing in the kitchen, eating a slice of toast and drinking my morning cup of tea before heading out to the office. The house phone rang at first not that I answered it. I never answer the house phone. Too many cold-callers trying to sell me unwanted wares. If someone knows me, they know to phone my mobile. The house phone stopped ringing and I thought nothing else of it. Seconds later my mobile started ringing too. It was Heidi, a friend of the family but one who very rarely calls me. I answered the phone only to hear her crying down the other end of it. She explained she’d been driving down the motorway following what she thought to be my wife’s car.

  “Please! My mum and dad have money. If you want, I can get some for you!” Travis was starting to sound desperate. Pathetic. Did he think a few notes stolen from his father’s wallet would be enough to replace what I had lost? “Please!”

  “Are they proud of you?” I asked him. “Your mum and dad - are they proud of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really? Even after what you did? They’re still proud of you? You killed an innocent woman. My wife. Kathy. Her name was Kathy.”

  “I didn’t mean to. We were just playing around! It was an accident.” His eyes were streaming with tears now not that I felt any empathy for him. He was nothing to me. Less than nothing. If he were on fire, I wouldn’t have pissed on him. Unless, of course, I happened to urinate petrol. Fuel those flames.

  “What did mummy and daddy say when they found out?” I asked.

  “I was grounded.”

  “Grounded?” I couldn’t help but to laugh. “You killed my wife and you were grounded for it?”

  “We didn’t know she was dead at the time…”

  “Honey, please, don’t do this. You’re better than him. You’re better than this. You’re a good man,” Kathy was talking in the corner of my vision. I tried to block her out. I knew, if I listened, she’d had the power to talk me out of this. I don’t want to be talked out of it. I want to do this. I want to…

  I swung the hammer to Travis’ knee-cap. It connected with a satisfying clunk of metal on bone and he let out a loud scream of agony. I hope it did hurt, you son of a bitch.

  “Will! Please! Don’t do this!” Kathy yelled at me.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Travis kept saying again and again as he grimaced through the pain. Wasted words. I didn’t believe he was sorry. I remember his face. I remember the smug look when the Judge gave him that insult of a sentence. Why? Because of his age? Because he really bought into the whole ‘accident’ plea he went with? Fuck that. No. You don’t get to kill someone and walk away unscathed. Watching him, this little prick, over the last few weeks - since the end of the trial - and he had been getting on with life as though he didn’t have a care in the world. You don’t get to kill someone and carry on like that. It isn’t fair! I hit him again - both he and Kathy screamed.

  “Your phone has been ringing! Your phone! All day you have been ignoring calls! You need to pick-up your voicemail messages!” Kathy screamed at me.

  I remember the sound of Heidi’s voice. The sorrow. I remember. She explained how she got out of the car and ran over to help whilst other drivers - also stopped due to the wreckage - called for an ambulance service. By the time Heidi had got to the car, there were other helpers on hand. She leaned into the car and she told me, on the phone that morning, that she saw that my wife was dead. A little crack in her voice as she did so. She had told me my daughter was unconscious and taken away in the back of the ambulance. She told me to get to the hospital, before telling me which one. I remember hanging up the call and just standing there, in the kitchen, with a slice of toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. I was just staring out of the window at nothing in particular. Was she being serious? Was it a joke? It wouldn’t have been. Why would someone call to say that? I left my plate and mug on the side and hurried to the front door, desperate to get to the hospital to see for myself.

  “Please! No more!” Travis screamed out.

  I raised the hammer again.
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  “Will! You need to get your messages!”

  I froze.

  “I don’t need to listen to them!” I told her, still with the hammer high up in the air. “It’s just cold-callers. It’s always cold-callers. People phoning about an accident I never had, talking compensation… They’re just cold-callers!”

  “It’s your daughter! You need to listen to the messages!” There was a desperation in Kathy’s voice which made me sit up and pay attention.

  “She’s fine. She’s with her friends.”

  “Please just listen to your messages!”

  “Who the fuck are you talking to?” Travis screamed out again.

  I remember walking into the hospital room, the news already broken that my wife was dead, and seeing Stephanie laying there with a tube poking from her mouth. A ventilator moving up and down. A slow beeping noise coming from another machine which was attached to her finger via a little clip. Her eyes were shut. Her face was bruised. I remember the doctor’s telling me what was happening to her, what was going in her body, but I didn’t pay attention. I just turned and ran from that room as fast as I could. I’d lost my wife. I couldn’t lose my daughter. It was days before I finally managed to go back in there to see her and - with the exception of her bruises turning yellow - nothing had changed.

  I reached into my pocket with my spare hand and withdrew my phone. On the screen it did show there were missed calls and new voicemails. I looked at Kathy, unsure of what to do. She looked at the phone and nodded; telling me to listen to them without saying the words once more. Shaking, I dialled 1-2-1 on the touchpad and lifted the phone to my ear.

  Travis was staring at me. Tears streaming from his red-raw eyes. Dribble trickling from the corner of his mouth. I turned my back on him. He didn’t get to see my face. He didn’t get to see the expression change on my face when I listened to the messages…

  My heart skipped a beat. It was the hospital. A female voice. Not one that I recognised. A concerned voice telling me that I needed to get in as Stephanie’s condition had changed. I dropped the phone and heard as it smashed against the hard floor. That familiar feeling of wanting to throw-up tickling both my guts and back of my throat. I retched noisily as I dropped to my knees.

  “What’s going on?” Travis wailed. “Please talk to me! Please…”

  I let out a scream. I’m not sure if it was rage or despair. Maybe a mixture of both?

  “Daddy?”

  My heart skipped a beat again. A heavy thud when it caught up with itself. No. Not her too. No. I turned, slowly. There - behind Travis - my daughter was standing with Kathy. Both of them looked so pale. No, not her too. I screamed again as I knew what it meant, my own scream causing the same from Travis. I jumped to my feet and lurched across to him, putting the cold metal of the hammer against the side of his face.

  “You did this! You did this, you cunt!” I screamed. Little droplets of spit spraying from my mouth onto his face. “You did this!”

  “It was an accident! I promise! I’m sorry! I never meant to hurt anyone!”

  “Fuck you! You did! You hurt me! You killed my wife and daughter! You hurt me!”

  “Daddy what’s going on?” Stephanie looked scared, as did Kathy. Kathy put her arm around her daughter and turned her away from what I was going to do. I tried to ignore them as I lifted the hammer high in the air above Travis’ thick skull. One hit and he’ll pay the price. A one way ticket straight to Hell…

  Kathy was looking back at me. A look of sorrow in her eyes at what I had become and what I was going through. A wish, perhaps, that she could put everything right again. I wish she could. I wish I could. But there’s no way. Not with him out there, living his life. Even if today has given him reason to feel the guilt. Even if he will carry it for the rest of his miserable life… It’s not fair that he gets to live and my family doesn’t. I need to do this.

  Kathy shook her head, “Please don’t,” she said. “You’re better than this.”

  I looked from her face to the back of my daughter’s head to the top of Travis’ head, up to the hammer in my hand poised ready for the fatal blow. My mind was being pulled in different directions. Tears streaming down my face now, and still streaming down his face as he looked up at me with eyes filled with sadness and regret. I yelled out again in frustration and tossed the hammer to the side. It bounced off the wall and clattered to the floor as I dropped back down to my knees with my head bent down towards the grimy floor. I screamed again as Travis continued to tell me how sorry he was. I didn’t want to hear it. Sorry didn’t bring my family back. Sorry didn’t make anything better. It was an accident. It was an accident. A stupid game. It went too far - that’s all he kept saying. Over and over again and again.

  I flinched as I felt a hand on my shoulder. Looking up and Kathy was standing in front of me, blocking my view of Travis. There was a look of relief in her eyes as she realised I’d tossed the hammer away.

  “He has to live with what he has done,” she told me. Words that didn’t reassure me or bring me any comfort. He had to live with the knowledge he had been responsible for the death of two people but I had to live without my daughter and wife. It would have been hard enough moving on with only one of them by my side but - to lose both? Travis was the lucky one. I’d take guilt over grief any day of the week. “He has to live with it,” she said again.

  Stephanie appeared by her side. She was smiling at me. I’d miss the smile. “I love you,” she told me. I wept. I can’t remember the last time I heard her say the words to me. Since hitting the teenage years, she seemed to say it less and less. It wasn’t cool to say it anymore. When she did say it, it was because I had asked her to which wasn’t the same. To hear it now, though. The final time I’d hear the words. As her body grew cold and rotted, the sound of her voice would grow distant until I could no longer recall it, despite my best efforts to keep it fresh. The same with the dulcet tones of my wife.

  “I love you too,” I told her.

  “What?” Travis said from behind them. A reminder that he was there. What kind of cruel world lets him go unpunished for what he has done? He is unpunished and I am forced to suffer for the rest of my days. The rage built up within me once more as I pushed my wife and daughter to one side. I reached into my pocket and yanked out my brown leather wallet. I opened it up and removed a small photograph from within; a picture of my family - me, my wife and our daughter. It had been taken at one of those studio days where you go and have a selection of professional pictures taken. Once done, you’re lead through to another room where you see the images on a computer screen. It is then the job of the sales person to sell you as many of the photos as possible. Unfortunately, for me, my wife liked them all and we ended up spending far more than originally intended. Now, with them gone, I wish I had purchased another session too. So wrapped up in our lives, we take things for granted and never seemed to have the time for photos. Only when it is too late do we regret this.

  I put the picture on Travis’ lap so that the smiling images captured within were facing him.

  “Will, that’s me. My wife Kathy and my daughter. I want you to keep this picture with you at all times,” I told him. My voice was strict and harsh to ensure he knew I wasn’t joking. “I want you to keep it with you and remember the people you killed and the lives you ruined. You keep this fucking picture in your wallet and you never forget. You do that and I might let you live…”

  “I’ll do it. Yes! Please! Anything! I don’t want to die.”

  “Neither did my family and yet that didn’t keep them alive…”

  “Dad what are you doing?” Stephanie asked. I ignored her voice.

  “I keep telling you, it was an accident. We were having a laugh. We didn’t think…”

  “You keep that picture on you at all times,” I continued. “You remember this situation. You keep in mind how close you came to dying… You… You make your mother and father proud because, I bet, at the moment they’re ashamed of you
. They might not say it to your face but trust me they are. Their son. Their precious son, the murderer. The foolish murderer. You make them proud, you never forget this moment or…” I backed away and reached down into the gym bag removing the sharp scalpel, “… I can kill you now.”

  “Will!” Kathy shouted at me as I pressed the blade against his apple’s apple. He swallowed hard and held his breath, expecting to feel the cold steel slice through his skin, spilling his blood.

  I moved the knife away.

  “I won’t forget, I promise…”

  “And the picture?”

  “I’ll keep it on me. I’ll make my mum and dad proud. I’ll be a better person. Please. I don’t want to die. I really am sorry…” finally said with a tone in his voice which made me believe him. Was it the look on my face that broke him or the fear for his own life? It doesn’t matter. I’ll take it. It’s as good as it’s going to get for me. I can’t keep repeating myself over and over again. What needed to be said, has been. My family are waiting for me.

  I lifted the scalpel to my throat and gritted my teeth before I dug the blade into the side of my neck and dragged it across the front of my throat. Pain. Searing pain. Blood spray. Travis screaming. Kathy screaming. A gargle. Wobbly legs. Travis splattered in red. Could have been his. On my knees. Scalpel, bloodied, dropped to the floor. Slumped to the side. Pain subsided. Tired. Floor around my head pooling in red. Kathy and Stephanie standing by the warehouse doorway. Travis still screaming for someone to help. There’s no one. Focus blurring. A man standing with my wife and child. A smile.

  It is me.

  Blackness.

  00:58

  T H E E N D