Matt: A Matt Godfrey Short thriller Trilogy

by Ahmad Ardalan

  Any visit to Barcelona would not be complete without taking in the magic of Antoni Gaudi, a true visionary. The Catalan genius was born 1852, and his unique, distinctive style had left a mark not only on Barcelona but also on all modern architecture worldwide. He was influenced by nature and religion, and he poured all his emotions into his work. In that way, Matt felt somewhat like him, even though he was sure the world would not benefit from his passion as it had from Gaudi’s.

  Matt started his day with a visit to the jewel of the crown, Gaudi’s masterpiece, La Sagrada Família, a large Catholic church. It was influenced by a late gothic and art nouveau, and the façades were distinctive. Matt stood in front of The Nativity, a fairytale all its own. No matter how long he stared at it, he could not seem to take it all in. Angels, demons, apostils, Jesus, God, gargoyles, priests, men, and women: They were all there, and each and every one of them seemed to be alive. As Matt’s eyes scrolled across the portrait, they fixed on the women. He felt as if their eyes were speaking to him, and the more he stared at them, the more he felt their emotions. He began to hear voices, the voices of his victims. He covered his ears, but the voices only grew louder in his head. In the next moment, the eyes of the statues seemed to morph into the eyes of his victims. Unable to take it anymore, he ran away, knocking a Japanese tourist’s camera off its tripod in his quick exit.

  Matt spent the rest of the day at the flat. He hadn’t eaten a thing since morning, and that was only a small sandwich. Time seemed to be passing too slowly, and he was eager to go to El Classico, hoping a bit of soccer would take his mind off the odd happenings of the morning. The Gaudi exhibit had left him in an even worse mental state than before, and he needed something to take his mind off of it.

  The game did help somewhat. He had no trouble finding a scalper to sell him a ticket, and the loud crowd and the heated competition distracted Matt temporarily from his dark thoughts. It ended in a draw, two to two, but it was a thrilling battle. Barcelona scored two late goals to tie the game, and the home fans felt like they won it. They somehow came back from the dead, and he felt the same.

  By the time he went to bed that night, he was more at ease. His confidence came back gradually, and he felt he was ready. He would finish his bloody task the next day, and forty-eight hours from the time he closed his eyes, he would be back home, with the deed done.

  * * *

  Usually, on the day of the murder, Matt slept as much as he could, knowing he would have to endure a long night. It would start with bar-hopping, followed by a bit of necessarily socializing with the victim at home. After the murder, he always had a huge mess to clean up, sometimes worse than others, depending on the method he chose to accomplish his goal. He needed all the energy he could spare, and long hours of sleep were a bit of a requirement.

  He woke up several times during that siesta, but he managed to force himself back to sleep. The fifth time he awoke, he gave up. The clock showed two p.m.; he had slept for almost thirteen hours. Even a sleeping pill wouldn’t lull him back to sleep after that, for his body had had enough rest. By the time he got out of bed, he was as strong as a bull and fully alert.

  With a coffee in one hand and an iPad in the other, he went thoroughly over his plan, detail by detail. He would spend the evening at the bars in El Born, a rather gothic area of Barcelona. There were many places to choose from, and he’d browsed enough websites to discover that hordes of college students and tourists occupied that area every night of the year. Everyone in Barcelona believed in napping in the afternoons, so they had no problem partying through the night. Barcelona was never quiet, and Matt wouldn’t be quiet either.

  He had lunch at home, just a few cold cuts, cheese, and a can of beer. It was normal for him to eat light on the day of a killing, as he didn’t want a heavy meal to slow him down.

  When darkness fell, Matt took a shower, sprayed a bit of Azzaro on himself, cologne he hoped would make him more attractive to his victim, then slipped his gold digital watch on his arm. Lovely weather was expected, so he opted for dark blue jeans and a V-neck shirt. When he tried to find his shoes to finish off his ensemble, he was sorely disappointed; for the first time, Matt had forgotten to pack his precious Armanis. Those shoes meant a lot to him, as his beloved Lisa had bought them for him just weeks before her murder. They were shiny, white shoes, with blue and purple stripes on the sides, limited edition footwear. He wore them only during his murderous junkets, and he believed they were his lucky charm. The fact that he’d forgotten them was yet another bad omen for Barcelona. He had no option but to wear the same dark brown leather shoes he had worn on the trip.

  Although he was thirty-two, Matt didn’t have any problem fitting in with the younger generation. He was a bit of a baby-face and looked much more youthful than his actual age, so he didn’t have any problem mingling with younger women at the bars. He always introduced himself as a journalist, and most seemed naïvely intrigued by that, especially when he regaled them with tales of covering dangerous stories in Africa. There was one make-believe story he particularly loved to share, a fib about being kidnapped by a vicious tribe of headhunters while covering a story about doctors in tribal areas. That story always drew their attention, and the climax was the well-rehearsed bit about how the violent natives had a change of heart when one of them was suddenly stricken ill and was cured by the doctor. “They dragged me along for hours through the African jungles,” he lied, “in heavy rain, my clothes torn to shreds and the rest of me covered in mud. I was sure they were going to kill me, maybe even sacrifice me with their practice of black magic.” Once he gained his victim’s full attention and plied her with enough alcohol to loosen her up, he would invite her over to his place.

  Nadine, a Moroccan tourist, was just like the ladies before. He easily charmed her, and she was eager to learn more about him. They walked for ten minutes, then grabbed a cab just off the marina, near the Christopher Columbus monument.

  Nadine was a curvy woman, with long, black hair and wide, dark eyes. Her skin was naturally tan, and she was a fine-looking woman who would have made some lucky man a proper trophy wife someday. Matt was happy she wouldn’t get the chance, for the happiness of others in such a cruel world sickened him, and that was the fuel that kept him going on his murderous rampage. He was so encumbered by misery that it was all he desired for anyone. Matt’s happily-ever-after had been ripped away from him, and he didn’t feel anyone else deserved theirs.

  At his flat, Matt and Nadine drank a bit more. It wasn’t long before Nadine began having a very good time. She was enjoying herself, dancing wildly, and she was all over him. That was the sign Matt needed, and he mixed the pill into her last drink, until it was completely dissolved. Despite the two loud noises that occurred within a minute outside, most likely just drunk teenagers throwing beer bottles, the poor girl was out, exactly four minutes since she gulped down her ill-fated drink.

  With a creepy look on his face, Matt calmly changed his clothes, He had conflicting ideas of how he might end this one’s life. He considered slicing her, cutting her wrists and leaving her to bleed to death, but he also was intrigued by the idea of injecting her with poison, so she would die slowly, from the inside.

  Since he was in no hurry and knew she would be out for quite some time, he poured himself another glass of whiskey. He glanced over at Nadine, who was on the sofa, dead asleep. He took an ice cube out of his whiskey and moved it across her thigh; other than slight goose bumps that formed on her tan flesh, she didn’t even flinch, for she didn’t feel a thing. “How should I kill you, Nadine?” Matt asked. “Would you prefer to bleed to death or die quietly, without so much of a mess?”

  As soon as the last word left his lips, he caught sight of the two throw pillows on the gaudy sofa. One was medium sized, a white and red attempt at bringing some life to the ancient piece of furniture. Looking at it, Matt decided Nadine’s swan song would be suffocation. He almost laughed at the irony of something as soft and harmless as a pillow, a
n item meant for comfort and beauty, being used as a fatal weapon. He had never done that before, but Barcelona had already consisted of many firsts for him, and he saw no reason to break that trend.

  He turned out the lights and turned off the TV, then opened a window. Everything else was quiet, so quiet that he could hear the sound of his excitedly beating heart. He heard it in his head, pounding away like that of a wolf staring at a helpless rabbit. The only other sound in the room was the rhythmic breathing, a low murmur coming from Nadine.

  Matt lifted the red and white pillow and moved it toward her slumbering face. As soon as the fabric touched the tip of her nose, as soon as he was about to press down, biting his tongue and closing his eyes, he suddenly saw himself as a child.

  * * *

  Little Matt was alone in the hall, and he had been watching his louse of a father for over half an hour. The minute his father blacked out from intoxication, he walked closer to the sofa and stood beside the unconscious brute. “Can you hear me now, Daddy? Where is your belt now?”

  There was no answer, for not even a nuclear bomb could have awakened the man from his alcohol-induced blackout.

  Matt hurried back to his bedroom, grabbed his white pillow, and ran back to his father’s side. He pressed the pillow as hard as he could against the man’s gruff face, putting all his weight into it, using every ounce of his strength. After a few minutes, he let go. At twelve years of age, Matt saved himself and his mother, but it came at a high cost. It turned him into a killer.

  * * *

  Suddenly jolted back to the present, Matt looked back at Nadine. He was sweating and breathing heavily, and the pillow was on the floor. The suppressed horror of his past had come back, a tragic memory spawned by what would have been a cruel repetition of his past.

  Nadine was still breathing quietly, and he left her that way. He no longer had the desire to kill her, though he wasn’t really sure why. He placed the pillow under her head and covered her with a blanket. Then, knowing she would be out for at least a few hours, he took the bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes out on the balcony, hungry for a bit of fresh air.

  With every sip from the bottle, Matt remembered each lash his father gave him. He could almost physically feel the pain and hear the smack of the cold, unforgiving leather against his skin, a sting that seemed to hurt all the way down to his bones. Matt began rubbing his hands and his thighs to try to calm himself, but nothing helped, and his whole body began to shake and tremble.

  He remembered his mother crying, her bruised face, her black eyes, and blood on her lips. He recalled her putting ice on her wounds, trying to reduce the swelling so no one would know. Then Matt remembered something else: the smile on his face after he killed his father. He slept till morning that night, a more peaceful sleep than he’d had in most of his young years. Beyond that, he couldn’t recall at all. Either the shock or the suffering had suppressed those memories, but that was a question for those in the medical field.

  The booze eventually calmed some of his trembling, and he began to think more deeply. He pondered his actions of the last few years, his eternal hate for the living. He was now sure of one thing: The transformation he’d gone through after his wife’s death had been building up ever since childhood. His father was the cause, and his wife’s death was just a trigger. He lingered there, on the balcony, deep in thought, until his eyes grew heavy and he fell fast asleep.

  The next morning, Nadine woke him up. He was startled at first, and he needed a few seconds to recover the events of the night before. When he did, he acted normal. She asked what had happened, and he told her the truth: “I guess you had too much to drink and passed out. I came out here and must have had too much whiskey, because I passed out too.” He conveniently left out the bit about her almost losing her life to a bloodthirsty maniac.

  When she offered to make coffee, Matt told her he needed to sleep, and he asked her to go. Offended, the girl snatched up her bag and stormed out. He never saw her again, and Nadine never knew how lucky she was.

  * * *

  Matt stayed in bed for the rest of the day. He cursed his father again and again, and he wished the man was still alive, just so he could make him suffer. I would cut him into pieces, he seethed. He didn’t deserve to die peacefully. A monster like him deserves to suffer, to hurt. He thought of other monsters, abusive beasts who hurt their children and their wives without so much as a second thought.

  After hours of thinking, Matt reached a conclusion. “It’s time for a change,” he said. He had killed enough women, and it was time for him to turn the page, to do something more meaningful. He set his sights on a new kind of target, on monsters like the one he had killed so long ago.

  Men Must Die

  Matt returned home from Barcelona earlier than he planned, for he canceled his return train ticket to Madrid. Since he had committed no crimes in Barcelona, left no blood trail, it was safe enough to book a flight from that point of departure, without the need for an alternate route to cover his tracks.

  The flight was only two hours long, but it felt more like a year. His father’s image never left his mind; he must have seen himself suffocating the life out of his dad at least a hundred times during his commute. Twice, one of the flight attendants came to check on him, for he was unconsciously cursing in a loud voice, “Damn you, Father! Damn you to Hell!”

  “Sir, are you all right?” the stewardess asked. “Sir?”

  “I-I’m fine,” he stuttered, looking around at the startled and disapproving faces of the other passengers. One lady was covering her little boy’s ears and shaking her head.

  Once Matt became aware of his actions, he managed to stay quiet throughout the trip. He became cold as ice outside, but inside, he was a volcano on the verge of its biggest eruption.

  Back home, he knew there was no way he would sleep through the night, for he was boiling with anger and would never be able to rest. He quickly changed his clothes, got on his bike, and rode as fast as he could, talking to himself as he pedaled. “I will kill you all, every one of you!” he raged, squeezing the handlebars with a strangler’s grip. “You won’t lay your filthy hands on a child again, not if I can do something about it!”

  By the time he got home, he had it all planned. He would start by looking for child abuse cases reported within the last five years. If the abusers, the perpetrators, were still alive and free as a bird, he would clip their wings. He was sure he would find blogs, places where kids felt safe to talk about their nightmares. Matt was brilliant when it came to using the Internet, even to find obscure things, and he had plenty of money if he needed to hire more competent hackers or computer geeks to help him. I’ll start tomorrow, he thought with a grim smile curling up the corners of his mouth, and I’ll get my hands on one of those bastards within a fortnight.

  He lay in bed, crying for an hour, but those tears soon changed to laughter. He wasn’t even sure why he had been crying, whether because of his memories of the horrendous childhood abuse he’d suffered, his mother’s hurt and heartbreak, or the death of his lovely wife. Nevertheless, he was completely aware of where the laughter came from. He remembered the joy of killing his father, the satisfaction he felt after taking the lives of his twelve lady victims, the glee that came from knowing how heartbroken and shocked their loved ones would be. At that point, Matt became aware of just how sick he was. One minute, he was killing people to spread misery, and in the next, he became a superhero, of sorts, a mercenary out to kill abusers, granting freedom and peace to the helpless. “I’m just…crazy,” he said, and then he laughed himself to sleep.

  * * *

  Matt was amazed at all the personal information people so willingly shared on the Internet. If he Googled or clicked on any name, within hours, he had a good feeling about who the person really was. He knew what they liked and hated, from music, to food, to politics; their favorite colors and clothes; and all about their lifestyle, right down to their daily routines, where they worked, who they
were in love with, and what coffee shops they visited. They were sitting ducks for any predators, scammers, and a whole throng of con artists. As much as people enjoyed social media, they easily forgot the dark side of so much exposure. What was most terrifying was that it was spreading like a virus, and everyone who could type, from age five to age ninety, was spilling their secrets all over cyberspace, none the wiser.

  Thus, it was much easier to search the net for abused kids and wives than Matt originally anticipated. He only had to choose the right keywords: abused kids, drunk father, bruised woman, foster kids, wife-beater, and child-beater. Then he could dig deeper into blogs, posts, and comments, and he had all the information he needed.

  Matt spent a total of eight consecutive hours searching, until he came upon Daniel, a ten-year-old in Cardiff. The boy’s blog spoke of his alcoholic parents, and a post from two weeks prior captured Matt’s attention immediately: “Why does my father drink alcohol when it tastes so yucky? Why doesn’t he just have cola or juice like other dads, something nice and sweet? Why does he hate me and my mother so much? I always clean my room and do my homework, so why does he beat me every night? He knows I love him. Why does he do that? My mother cooks the best food in the world, so why does he hit her? She is sweet and pretty, like an angel. She even has a nice voice. Why does my mother have bandages on her face? Why are her eyes swollen shut? I miss seeing her beautiful eyes like before. My name is Daniel Reed, and I hate alcohol.”

  Matt had his ways, and he had no trouble tracking the IP to Cardiff, down to the exact address. He then tracked the name and managed to identify all the family members, thanks to social media. The Reed family consisted of three people: poor Daniel and his mother Karen and the evil father, Ben. It was quick enough work to locate their townhouse on Google maps. Based on what Matt saw from the satellite view, it seemed to be a nice home in a quiet little community.

  He began looking at all the photos and information he had. It would be a new mission, a new kind of task, and he needed lots of time to get to know the place. He wanted to escape without being noticed, for there were other monsters that needed to be killed after Ben. This time, he would kill the monster in his very own home, and that was a dynamic Matt was not used to.