Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  I returned my attention to the job at hand.

  “I have something for you, Tiddles.”

  What’s that?

  “A tasty treat. Would you like some?”

  I reached out to touch her, but she jumped quickly back.

  Whoa there mister; stay right where you are. I still don’t trust you… But that does look interesting. Is that what I think it is?

  “Ch, ch, ch… Yes it is.”

  I lowered myself until I was sitting on my haunches. I wobbled slightly. How much had I had to drink? Not that much – two or three bottles of beer. Oh, but what about the wine earlier, and didn’t I have a dram or two after dinner?

  I steadied myself on a wooden post. I had always liked a drink, but perhaps I was drinking a bit too much these days – bad for the blood pressure, and for the marriage. I laughed out loud. What marriage? We hadn’t had a marriage since… I touched my side. Was the scar actually throbbing?

  Tiddles moved cautiously towards the tempting gift in my outstretched hand. I started to back away, carefully, steadily into the kitchen. Tiddles quickened her pace in a bid to catch me up. Good. I backed off a bit further, but then stopped, the cat’s progress ending at the door.

  I’m not coming in there.

  This was one clever cat.

  I cast the next-door neighbour’s house a worried glance. I couldn’t get over the feeling that someone was watching me from behind those blackened windows. “Come on now, I don’t believe that,” I said hastily. “You can’t tell me you haven’t always wanted to get in here?”

  On more than one occasion Tiddles and her tail had appeared at the patio doors of my kitchen, scratching to get in. It was a door that Tiddles wasn’t allowed through, so of course, like with all cats, Tiddles wanted through it. Up until now, though, Tiddles had never been welcome; I am allergic to cats so I can’t have them in the house. Within minutes of being in such dwellings I begin to wheeze, and God help me if I touch my face after patting one of the little bastards: my eyes stream like an itchy river. Tiddles was being coy, though. Damn fucking right she wanted in.

  “Ch, ch, ch.” I said, rubbing my fingers together, stealing another glance at the next-door neighbour’s lifeless windows.

  Tiddles hesitated for a second, cast her worried tail one last pensive glare, and then in she trot.

  And just like that, our fates were sealed.

  *

  I had managed to lure the relatively unsuspecting Tiddles all the way to the end of the kitchen, through the door of the cellar and down the carpeted stairwell into the room below. The garden was Tiddles domain… this was mine. We were now in the confines of my multi-media cinema room.

  In the middle of the room lay a sheet of tarpaulin with a bowl of food perfectly placed in the centre. No expenses had been spared for Tiddles. The bowl was full of Princes Red Salmon – ASDA’s finest.

  Is that for me?

  “Oh yes, that’s for you.” Not so fucking clever now, are you Tiddles?

  Tiddles didn’t need telling twice; the salmon worked like a charm. The cat darted straight for the food, hunched her body down, sniffed it for a couple of seconds, and then proceeded to chomp, chomp, chomp on the fishy contents.

  This is good food… chomp, chomp… You know… chomp… for a second there, I have to admit I thought you were up to something tricksy… chomp… But after this all is forgiven in my books… chomp, chomp, chomp… This stuff’s good… Fish, mmmm… my favourite. You won’t find me scratching your car anymore, I’ll tell you that for one. Does this mean we’re friends now?

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  For a split second I found myself faltering. Was I actually going to do this? Was it a crime? What if a neighbour had seen me? This was a pedigree cat, after all. Could I get done for it? Could I go to prison? The thought of prison made my stomach ulcer burn all the harder. Maybe I should just let the cat finish the food, pick it up, and put it back outside. No one need know that any of this had happened. After all, as cats go, it’s not a bad cat really.

  What are you doing? Put the cat back outside.

  I flinched, standing back from the cat. The voice hadn’t come from Tiddles. I thought about this for a second and then smiled on realising what was happening here. “Nobody’s putting any cat back, thank you very much.” I leaned forward to clap the child’s pet. Tiddles flinched, arching her back, but she didn’t seem to be that concerned; the salmon was way too tasty for her to be bothered by my presence.

  Please don’t hurt the cat.

  I carefully moved my hands along its fine fur until my fingers were safely secured around its collared neck. I smiled. I could feel the throbbing of the cat’s veins through the warmth of her jacket. It was blood that was pumping through this cat. I was holding one of God’s creations in my hands. It had taken millions of years to create this luxurious fur, to fashion those intricate veins. A miracle, that’s what this cat was.

  You don’t have the right.

  “Shut the fuck up. If I want to play with a child’s pussy then that’s my business.”

  My mind jolted. The words were coming from my mouth but they weren’t mine. I winced, almost withdrawing my hands.

  “Ahh, so that’s it, is it. There’s always something.”

  What?

  “A bit of a paedo, are we?”

  I shivered, tossing the words far from my mouth, but not far enough. Slowly, insidiously, they began to move, morphing and melting, until finally the fully formed figure of a man was standing before me.

  I shook my head. I’m not like that, I spat. I have many sins to my name but that’s not one of them. I would never damage another living soul. I’m not that kind of man.

  “Sure you’re not.”

  I felt dizzy. I didn’t know where the voices were coming from. I desperately looked towards the cat to see if the words were coming from her, but she was way too busy eating ASDA’s finest to be talking to me.

  Please don’t hurt the cat.

  Whose voice was that? Was it mine? I’m going mad. Where were the voices coming from?

  “You’re a bad, bad man.”

  I’m not a bad man, I hissed, but the words refused to materialise. My voice was imprisoned in my head, confined behind bars. I tried again: I’m a good man. I take my children to mass every Sunday. I would never hurt a child. I’m a good man. Or at least, I used to be.

  Nothing. Try as I might the words wouldn’t form. They were bound tight in my head, like a madman in a straight jacket. I struggled violently for a couple more seconds, but then abruptly stopped.

  Was he right? Was I a bad man? Had I changed that much? I used to be a good man, a good father, a good husband. Before that little bastard came into my life, I was a good man. Wasn’t I?

  “Paedophile.”

  I concentrated on the cat in a bid to drown the unwanted voices, but it had the opposite effect on me. My heart was suddenly racing, a serpent uncoiling in the depths of my soul. My God, I was getting a hard on.

  I’m not a bad man. None of this is my fault: my failing marriage, my drinking; these wrong fucking thoughts. None of this is my fault.

  The spectre gave me a derisive sneer.

  It’s not my fault. It’s his fault. It’s all his fault.

  My hands began to tighten around the cat’s neck. What’s this? In a flash the cat had come to its senses, her tail, though mute, screaming at the top of its lungs. The cat darted backwards, hissing and spitting, twisting and writhing to escape, but my grip was fast, my actions determined. The feline scratched and clawed at my hands, gouging out lines of skin, but I couldn’t feel a thing; a red mist had descended over my thoughts smothering them like a pillow.

  Click.

  What’s this?

  With the flick of a switch my perspective had changed. I was now seeing everything in third person. I could see someone strangling a cat, but it wasn’t me that I was looking at. It looked like me, but it wasn’t. I was a good person; I said my prayers a
t night; I went to church with my children. And no way would I ever hurt a child, let alone a cat. I tried my best to snap myself out of it. I had to concentrate. He was killing the cat. I had to help the cat.

  Leave the cat alone, I screamed, but nothing came out. And I was just about to try again when something ripped the words from my throat.

  My blood froze.

  It was him.

  He was blonde, about fifteen years old, dressed in a sky blue tracksuit. I could see a knife, that untouchable adolescent knife that he had used to test my guts with, and I could hear his drunken words sloshing around my head like Buckfast in a bottle: “And what… exactly… are ye gonnae dae about it, eh? Just what the fuck’re ye gonnae dae about it?” And that pathetic reply, society’s own words, echoing round and round my skull: “nothing, nothing, nothing”, growing stronger and angrier and more impotent with every passing second:

  Nothing. He is a minor.

  Nothing. He has stabbed me.

  What am I going to do?

  Nothing.

  All at once I was falling from the ceiling, the cat’s screams clawing at my ears. I focussed my eyes until I was staring into the face of the animal, but all I could see was that monster. My grip tightened, my teeth grinding. “Fuck!” The cat’s claws had managed to break through my defences, the pain reaching my brain. “I’ll show you what I’m going to do, you little bastard. I’ll show you what I’m going to fucking well do.”

  Grind…

  Crack…

  Rip…

  All was quiet in the house.

  Not a sound, not even a mouse.

  Chapter 6

  The Morning After

  I lay in my bed with my eyes closed. At first I could see nothing, a blank canvas, but then a bird appeared, no it was several birds, chirping away; then I heard the wind in the trees and I could see them swaying gracefully back and forth, rustling outside my bedroom window. Was it sunny? It might be sunny. Light was penetrating through my eyelids, so I painted a verdant summer’s day upon the retinal backdrop. Right at the back of the picture I could hear the Doppler effects of distant traffic. I painted these sounds as black streaks across the canvas.

  Michael stirred in the next room. I opened my eyes. Karen must have decided to let him sleep on, before going down stairs. Depp was still at his sleep over. Good. That meant I could have a lie in. God, I didn’t half need to sleep. Before we’d had Depp I could remember people telling us that looking after kids was a full time job, a game changer. All I can say is… they weren’t bloody wrong. One was hard enough, but two? Karen had decided not to work anymore but still she looked far more tired than me at the end of the day; the monkeys were a handful, to say the least.

  Without thinking another thought I rolled over and sat up in bed. The blinds were closed, but they were crap, a cold autumnal sun seeping through the cracks like water. I took in a deep breath. How was my mind today? Had I had enough sleep? I did a little test. I tried to remember the names of some famous actors.

  I couldn’t remember any of them.

  I had read an article somewhere that said that all new dads loose their memory recall to one degree or another. Parts of the brain that they once used take a back seat and the fathering instinct takes over. One of the casualties of this change is short-term memory.

  I laughed sardonically. I had just remembered that I had to give a presentation at work in two weeks’ time, basically to save my job. I was a programmer for the NHS, stuck on a dying project, with a manager who was about to head off to Australia. Unfortunately it had come down to me to convince the board of directors that the project would be OK without him.

  That was a laugh. How was I going to do that when I couldn’t even remember the name of the guy from Bladerunner?

  Things had been made a whole lot worse lately by Depp and Michael being ill at the same time. It was an utter nightmare. I can still remember standing over Michael at three o’clock in the morning thinking to myself: “Why the fuck am I here? Why the hell have I thrown my life and career away on these kids? I could kill Karen for getting me into this.” And then I had thought something terrible like: I’d probably be better off without the lot of them.

  Of course this was just a moment of sleep deprivation, a moment of madness. In the morning, when I awoke, I had remembered how I’d felt the night before, and I was ashamed. How the hell could I think such a thing? In saying that, it’s easy to see how someone could kill a baby at such moments. The only surprising thing is… it doesn’t happen more often.

  Anyway, last night wasn’t the children’s fault. I had decided to stay up and drown my sorrows.

  My stomach burned on remembering why – the neds. I tried to touch the spot where I thought the pain to be emanating from. I did this reluctantly. It didn’t hurt that much to press, but once you did press it the pain just kept on building, like a mild tap to the ging gangs. The tender spot was difficult to find, but I managed it. I refrained from pressing too hard. It was lying there like a dying sun just beneath the ribs.

  “Who am I going to talk to, dad? I can’t talk to Karen. Tell me what I have to do here?”

  Talk to your mum. She’s on your side.

  I smiled, but the smile tasted bitter. Was it really him speaking to me? I didn’t dwell too long on the answer to that question. It comforted me to think that it was him.

  I leaned over the bed, picked up my mobile and started to dial. I would need to be quiet, though. I didn’t want to disturb Michael.

  When I call my mum I usually get a deep sigh on the other end of the line. If I don’t then things are going OK, but more often than not these days it’s a sigh.

  “Mary Murphy speaking.”

  “Hello, just me.”

  Deep Sigh.

  “How are things, mum?”

  “OK, I suppose.” This is how she usually begins. Things aren’t OK, and I’m about to find out why. “I’m worried.”

  I returned the sigh. “What about?”

  “The pain. It’s driving me to distraction. It’s right across my chest, Pete. It’s so very painful.”

  “Mum, it’s probably Gallstones. Someone at work said she’d had them, that the pain was unbearable.”

  “Look, I’ve been thinking about when I go.”

  “Och mum, before you start I’ve had a hellish week. I’m about to be left alone at work, and I have to give a presentation. I’m going to be completely out of my depth.” I paused to think. Was this really the reason why I was feeling down? Perhaps it was yesterday, but it wasn’t anymore. Surely she would react better to my news than Karen had done. She was my mum after all; I told her everything.

  “I’m worried about what’s going to happen when I’m gone. About what’s going to happen to your sister?”

  “Look, don’t you worry about Marie.”

  “It’s just that… when I’m gone she’ll have no one.”

  “Don’t you worry; I’ll look after Marie.”

  “But what about Karen and the boys; they’re your responsibility now.”

  “Mum, it’s not like she’s a burden; it’s not like she’ll end up living with us. I’ll just be her friend.” Easier said than done, I thought. My sister stayed in Dumfries and I stayed in Glasgow. Perhaps she could move closer.

  “It was the same for your gran. Your gran, your dad’s mum, asked your aunt Teresa to look after your dad when she was gone. She told her she would.”

  “I’ll look after Marie, don’t you worry. But could I ask one favour of you. I’m not trying to be morbid here, but could you write down everything we need to know when you do go. Not that you’re going anywhere, but it would be good to know that kind of thing – just in case.”

  “You mean the funeral arrangements?”

  “No, no…”

  “I could write a will.”

  “God, mum, what am I going to do with all that stuff when you do go?”

  “Well, there are certain things I’d want you to keep: your dad’
s champagne flutes, for one.”

  “I’ll keep them. And I’ll keep the statue of our lady as well – the Flower Madonna.”

  “Your sister won’t care for any of it.”

  I suddenly had an idea. I didn’t want to upset her, but it was such a good idea that I couldn’t keep it to myself.

  “Mum, we could sell it all on eBay.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You know… eBay. I could sell it all on the Internet. You would be surprised at how easily it would sell. They buy any old rubbish on there. And then I could give the money to Marie.”

  “You know Robert the taxi driver mentioned the other day how much Marie is like your dad. He was hilarious just like her, and he didn’t even know it.”

  An army of tears were on the horizon. I was about to say something else but I stopped myself. I didn’t want my mum to know that I was about to cry. All I managed to say was “I know, I know.”

  “Well, he’s brought his sisters back together.”

  “Really?”

  “They’ve been calling each other constantly. I called Teresa to tell her how ill Cecilia had been. I told her that she carried the picture of your dad about the house with her everywhere.”

  Up until now my dad’s sisters hadn’t spoken in thirty years. They’d had an argument one night and that was that, at least supposedly until now.

  “You know, he wanted so much for them to get back together.”

  The soldiers were back. It’s strange how I didn’t even need to recognise consciously that I missed him. It was an inbuilt mechanism. “Good,” I replied, the tears marching towards me. “I think he’s gone, mum.”

  “No, he’ll be there when you need him.”

  “I sometimes think he’s with me, but not like he used to be. Perhaps he’s spending all his time with his sisters just now.” My voice was barely holding it together. I had to change the subject.

  “Could you just sit down sometime and write out what we need to know when you’re gone.”