by Rick Wood
Shutter House
Rick Wood
Part I
DON’T MIND ME
1
No matter how many times she attempted to blink, her right eye would just not open.
Her left eye was fine. A dollop of blood had dribbled into it, but a succession of blinks had fought the blood away.
The blood in her right eye, however, had been there for so long now it was beginning to crust.
He couldn’t help but chuckle. She looked like a pirate on a budget. He wanted to make her say “yargh” and curl her finger into a hook, but he was barely able to get a word in amongst all the damn screaming.
Though the screaming wasn’t the most irritating thing about her. That would be how, amongst her colossal cascade of shrieks, a flicker of her saliva had landed on the sleeve of his Armani suit.
“Do stop shouting,” he instructed.
He did have an apron handy for when the fluids really started flying, but hadn’t thought to wear it quite yet – who’d have thought a bludgeon to her head and a few screams would damage his suit?
“Shut up!” he grunted at the shouting girl who had the audacity to not only spit upon the fine silk adorning his arm, but to ignore his instruction and continue to bang on with the same old stop please stop, and just let me go, and oh no please no I’ll do anything.
Because, well – she won’t do anything, will she? For example, she wouldn’t willingly die to be let go – therefore, she would not do anything.
Stupid, stupid girl.
“I said shut up!” he repeated, with added conviction.
Her screams stopped but some annoying, quiet, incessant pleading persisted.
“Please, I promise I won’t tell anyone, just let me go, please…”
I wonder if I could make it to Kensington for dinner, I do love their restaurants. I’d need to use the helicopter to get to London in time, mind…
“I won’t tell anyone, I won’t, please…”
My black slim fit silk Jacquard evening jacket would be perfect for that. I did prefer the blue one, but I do not like the idea of being seen in something that was on sale…
“I won’t, I won’t tell anyone…”
Although it would have gone so well with that checked shirt…
“Please, I won’t say anything!”
“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time,” he said, unable to believe that she was still bloody nagging. She was like an annoying little sister, constantly pulling on your sleeve, begging for you to do something with her.
At thirteen years old, he’d ripped his little sister’s ear lobe off and made her tell Mother and Father she got it stuck in her friend’s bike. Her friend got a jolly good rollicking from Father, but the little bitch never bothered him again.
“My parents… They have money…”
He snorted. An unpleasant laugh that even he himself felt a little repulsed by.
“I doubt it,” he said mockingly.
“I won’t tell–”
“Oh shut up, Sindy, you are getting rather tiresome.”
Where was that damn apron?
Normally he’d take a little longer, try to savour it – but, honestly, this girl was starting to get on his nerves. He liked the screams – that’s why he’d made sure that the shutters were sound proof – but nagging was the worst. He could take the odd aaaaaah, and holy fuck that hurts…
But just constantly going on and on and on and on?
No, thank you, M’am.
He found his apron resting against the leg of his Marylebone sold oak coffee table, on top of his forceps, vascular clamps and organ holders. He tutted at himself for the impudence.
“Of course,” he muttered.
He placed his apron over his head. Beneath the lettering Cambridge Alumni, it was transparent; that way he could still see his pristine suit beneath the splatters.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked.
He looked at her with purpose. He took her in, soaking up every little detail. Her blond hair had gone all bloody and scraggly from where he’d first hit her. Her eyes were still a little dozy, possibly from concussion, circling in and out, almost out of time with each other. Her rosy cheeks were flushed with red, her arms were shaking betwixt the rope, and by golly she hadn’t even seemed to have realised she was naked yet!
“Please… I’ll do anything…”
Again, he found amusement in her words.
She would do anything, though she probably wouldn’t do it willingly.
He scanned her, starting at her throat, dragging his eyes down her bare torso, past the hairy mound and down her scarred legs. Honestly, he felt a little disappointed.
She must just have dressed well. She wasn’t anywhere near as attractive as he expected her to be. Her breasts were petite pyramids, which he liked, but they were askew, poking in different directions. That may be just the way she was led, or maybe it was a childhood deformity, who knows? But her belly was so thin when she breathed inwards the outline of her ribs pressed against her skin like they were bursting to get out. There was no sensuous curve of the thigh; just two unshaped sticks in blemishes and scars from an adolescence of self-harm.
He sighed.
Wasn’t what he’d hoped for.
He glanced at his watch.
He could always make dinner, then pick up another girl afterwards.
“Right, Sindy,” he said, placing some plastic bags over his Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. “Time is escaping us, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to do this quicker than I had hoped.”
“Do what? What? What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”
The screaming started up again.
He rubbed his sinus. He could feel a migraine coming.
Maybe I could pick up some Ibuprofen or migraine tablets when we land.
He lifted his axe, struggling under the surprise of its weight (usually he doesn’t use something so big so quick) and held it above his head. She tried scampering away, like a mouse searching for its hole, piteously leaving a silly flailing leg behind her. He enjoyed the snap of her ankle as the axe fell through, sticking into the wooden tile beneath.
Her scream was so loud it almost broke her voice, like three hoarse voices pulled together into one gargantuan scream.
Then again, do I want to be taking migraine tablets if I’m going to be drinking…
It took some muscle to get the axe back out of the floor, but he managed. He wiped a few lines of blood off its blade and onto his apron, grinning at the sight of the few remaining tendons helplessly clutching onto her wayward foot.
Ah, screw it, I’ll just get someone to go out and get some for me if I need it.
He lifted the axe up high, and this time brought it down upon her buttocks. Then he lifted it and smacked it into her back. He took particular pleasure in watching as her body spasmed, as her nervous system reacted to the fracture of her spinal cord.
He withdrew the axe one final time and took a few steps to her head. She was no longer struggling, and the screams had stopped; but there was still a croak, a wheezing outward breath, like something was deflating inside of a box that he just couldn’t find.
He brought the axe down on her neck and the wheezing stopped.
He checked his watch. A Breitling Chronomat 44, just like Father had worn.
Perfect, he had enough time to get starters.
He removed his apron, triggered the remote to raise the shutters, and took the lift down to his Mercedes.
Part II
HOW DARE HE?
2
Amber was not a stripper, as she kept reminding everyone; she simply worked behind the bar in a strip club.
Didn’t seem to make a damned bit of difference to the clients, mi
nd.
They would still raise their eyebrows at her, proposition her, calling her things like babe and sweet-cheeks as their eyes lingered on her breasts.
There was nothing more dismal than the day shift in the strip club. Of course, the night shift wasn’t much better; the crowds were bigger, which meant the quantity of gropes against her buttocks were more frequent. It seemed as if all of the wandering, lecherous eyes that stared at her saw no difference between the hard-working girls grinding the poles, and the poor barmaid simply trying to make it to closing time.
But the day shift – oh, boy. There were barely any clients – just a few men in suits at one table and an old man at another; which should make the shift more bearable, but just made the place more depressing. And at least the girls who worked at night would have a laugh with her, using humour to make everyone’s shift just that bit more bearable; the girls who worked the day shift barely granted their faces the luxury of a smile. Their drab appearance and poor tan lines and bloodshot eyes didn’t bother Amber – it was the lack of comaraderie that bugged her so much. They were the ones who would glare at her and resent her because they were doing the hard work and she wasn’t.
Yes, they were partaking in a far more strenuous occupation than Amber – but that was shown in the difference in their pay cheques. Whilst they could afford to rent the best flats, stroll around town in the most stylish clothes, and eat in the swankiest of restaurants – Amber could not. Her trek home would involve a stop at Aldi for a 99p cheese pizza, then taking it home and trying not to burn it as she made her sick mother tea – her sick mother for whom she was also a full-time carer.
The sick mother for whom she had dropped out of university for.
Unfortunately, the wages of a carer couldn’t cover the mortgage. And, honestly, her meagre wage at Syphy’s Strip Club didn’t do much to help either.
Even the name of the strip club perplexed her.
Syphy’s Strip Club.
Yes, the owner was called Syphy, but most clients wouldn’t know that – and all Amber could think, every time she scoffed at the sign on her way into work, was how close it was to Syphilis Strip Club.
Not that you’d point it out to Syphy, mind. Not that he wasn’t approachable – he was incredibly approachable, in fact. He just didn’t particularly look at your eyes and listen to what you had to say.
“Hey, doll,” said some guy at the bar who looked like he still lived in his parent’s attic, slamming his empty pint glass on the bar. “How’s about another beer, yeah?”
Doll?
She took a big, deep breath, decided it wasn’t the worse thing she’d been called, and let her deep breath go. She took his glass and poured his drink.
“That will be four seventy-five,” she requested, adorning the same wretched smile she forced to her unwilling face every damn day.
“If we call it an even ten would you show us a tit?”
She tried not to glare, willing the smile to stay on her face.
“That will be four seventy-five,” she repeated.
“Or if I give you twenty will you show us both of them?”
“That will be four seventy-five,” she repeated once more.
He handed over a five-pound note. As she went to take it, he held onto the other end. She looked at him, and he responded with a cheeky wink that made her feel like she was covered in grease. She pulled the fiver from his hand and turned to the till, where she jabbed the buttons and took out twenty-five pence change.
She held the change out, and he made sure to grab her hand and caress his slimy fingers down hers as he took the money.
She looked to the bouncer at the door. She could request some support.
But then again, what was the point?
The bouncer looked like a shrivelled old man approaching retirement. His face looked like the tip of her finger when she’d been in the bath for ages. If he actually took her side, he still couldn’t do much.
“Thank you kindly,” he said and re-joined his cocky mates. Even though his words were innocent, the way he said them felt loaded. Like he had the upper hand in a conflict she wasn’t aware of. Like he was satisfied that he had made her feel disgusting. He returned to his laughing mates and leered over Honey; a single mother in her early thirties grinding her crotch against the pole, her eyes dying as she came toward the end of a double shift.
Amber looked to her watch.
Twenty minutes to go.
All the things she could do in that twenty minutes…
She could watch an episode of Friends. She could make her mother tea. She could go outside and give money to the beggar who lived in the doorway of the boarded-up factory next door.
Yet, here she was, wasting her life.
Away from her mother, who was probably coughing up blood over her blanket, waiting for Amber to return and take care of her.
Instead, there she was, motionless and manic, working for minimum wage in a place that made her want to scream.
She looked at her watch again.
Nineteen minutes.
Jesus…
3
An early evening haze hung over the sky, projecting an image of Amber’s mood.
She glanced at her watch and forgot to look at the time. She couldn’t wait to wash that shift off.
Just as she began to contemplate the length of her walk home, a familiar Nissan Micra chugged down the road and stopped beside her with an unidentifiable rattling noise that she ignored.
She smiled at the sight of Luke winding down the window. She had two older brothers, but Luke was the one who had stuck around. Not that her other brother had done anything wrong by leaving for university. After all, if Luke had never been excluded from school then he would probably have gone to university as well, he had the intelligence for it – but, then again, the cannabis-dealing business had done him well.
She just wished Luke didn’t look so ill all the time. His skin clung to his bones, bags stuck beneath his eyes, and he always seemed to have a groggy, distant look etched across his face.
Nevertheless, he was her brother – and no amount of police or concerned boyfriends could ever make her steer clear of him.
“Hey,” he said, his voice weak and croaky.
“Hey, you.”
“Thought you might want a ride.”
“You are a saint!”
She bounced to the passenger seat. She had never been so grateful for a lift. He mustered a smile a little too wide and a little too long, then drove off.
“You should get another job,” he said. “I know a few friends that went to that place. Said it was gross.”
“Some friends, huh?” she teased.
He raised his eyebrows in response.
“I’d love to quit,” she told him. “It’s all I think about when I’m counting down the minutes, picturing the look on Syphy’s face as I tell him he’s a perve and he can shove it.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Amber ran her hands through her hair and wished it was that simple.
“You know why,” she told him.
“Because of mum?”
A solemn mood abruptly descended; the same mood that always entered a room at the same time as reality.
“She’d do the same for us,” she said.
“Would she?”
“Yes. Whatever you want to say about your upbringing, she gave us everything she could.”
“Yeah…” he grumbled.
There was another unspoken subject: their dad. He lived in America now – or, at least, that was the last she heard. They all, as a unit, decided to cut ties with him almost five years ago. However much you want your father in your life, sometimes you need to remove toxic influences for the sake of your own sanity.
“Do you have any idea when Gray’s coming back?”
“Oh, what, Mr Perfect?”
Ah, of course. Luke’s resentment toward Graham. Any time Gray was mentioned, this was the reaction Luke had. She unders
tood it, but at the same time, she didn’t; they had both made their choices, Gray had just made better ones.
“Yeah, isn’t his semester over now?”
“You know he’s just going to leave again after the summer, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“He’s applying to do teacher training. Which means another year away. Which means another year for us to deal with mum.”
“If she lasts that long.”
She regretted saying it as soon as the words passed her lips. For Luke’s credit, he didn’t let his face show how he felt.
But he didn’t speak either.
They just continued the journey in comfortable silence, both of them lost in thought about the many ways things could be better.
As they stopped at a set of traffic lights, Amber was grateful to Luke for starting a new conversation.
“Look at this dickhead,” he said, nodding at a car a few lanes over.
Amber saw the shiniest, slickest, smoothest ride she’d seen in a long time. A car that stuck out from every other car around it. She knew little about cars, but she didn’t need to – she only needed to look to see that this car was impressive.
“Some wanker has enough money to buy a Mercedes,” Luke ranted. “And we can’t even afford medical costs. And it’s a hatchback, too. How much do you think that cost?”
“I have no idea.”
“Neither do I, but I tell you what, I bet it was shit loads.”
“Probably.”
“That car probably cost more than what we earn, all together, in a decade. No, probably a life time.”
“Yeah.”
She continued to stare at the car. Something about it gave her chills. The windows were blacked out, but then again, aren’t they often blacked out on cars like that?
She wondered who was driving it. What they looked like. How they sounded. Whether they took care of their sick mother too.
The lights turned green and the Mercedes’ acceleration was so loud that all the heads at a nearby bus stop turned to look.
