Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  I was beginning to get angry. My sister was younger than me by a couple of years and lived on her own in more ways than one. She was the nicest person in the world, but unfortunately suffered from delusions. I didn’t want her upsetting mum anymore than she already was.

  “Marie, she’s going to be OK.”

  “No she’s not, not this time.”

  I put my hand on my forehead. I couldn’t be bothered with her anxiety attacks today.

  “I’ve seen the scans.”

  My hand froze. I moved my eyes to my mum. She was sitting in her chair looking at me.

  “Go on,” I said quietly.

  “I’ve seen the scans. Get her to the doctor now.”

  I had to choose my next words carefully.

  “You’re not a doctor. How would you… know what to look for?”

  I work with x-rays all the time. I know what happens to people with results like this. It’s the bone scan. It’s back. She has black dots all over her bones.”

  I cast my mum a desperate glance. I suddenly realised I was tapping the phone with my finger over and over again.

  “What’s wrong?” my mum whispered.

  I shook the question away. “Nothing, it’s OK, mum.”

  My finger continued to tap.

  “Get her to a Doctor, now.”

  “Hang on, hang on… I need time to think here… She has an appointment to see a specialist tomorrow about her kidney stones. I’ll bring it up with him then.”

  “Good. You see that you do.”

  “It’s going to be OK,” I said, my throat closing. “It’s going to be OK.” I was trying to convince myself, not my sister.

  My mum was beginning to look worried. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied, putting down the phone. “It’s just Marie being neurotic.” This seemed to appease her.

  “I worry about her. You should have seen her the other day. If only she would wear the clothes I bought her. She looked like a scarecrow. I worry about what will happen to her when I’m gone.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was trying to think.

  The room drifted into silence.

  “I spoke to Karen’s mum the other day. She’s a lovely woman. Not Australian at all.”

  I nodded in agreement, not really hearing her.

  “We decided that Michael and Depp would call me Grandma, and she would be called Granny.”

  “You already told me that.”

  More silence.

  “Pete?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to get to see them grow up.”

  “What?”

  “My boys.”

  “Rubbish. You have twenty years in you yet.”

  She smiled back at me, but she didn’t look convinced. For the first time since all this began I was unconvinced myself. The poor woman looked so frail, her hair shockingly white, her skin paper-thin. Perhaps she was a ghost. It had been just over two years since my dad had died. Both their lives had been hard, harder than most I think. Was her time up? Was God calling her back? She had been put on this earth to look after my dad, and now that he was gone God wanted her for someone else, for some other equally difficult task.

  When my dad was fifteen he won the school prize for history. As a reward he was given a book, a book that I still have today. The title of the book was: “St Mary, the life of a saint”. It was Ironic that the woman who would save him from a life of filth and mental depravity was of the same name as the eponymous book. Or was it? Everybody thinks that their mum is an angel. But this woman was – she was heaven sent. My dad’s two sisters were destined to have a life of misery, just like my dad’s parents had had before them. Then along came this woman to take all their worries away. They owed her a lot, and they knew it, at least I hope they did.

  “I’m going to stay as long as I have to, mum.”

  “No, you’re not. You have a family now.”

  “You’re my family. You’ve always been there for me, so now it’s my turn to be there for you. You need someone to look after you until you’re feeling better. We’ll talk to the Doctor tomorrow; see if he’s found anything more.”

  Black spots on the bones – that’s what he’s found.

  I picked up the controller and started to play the game. I didn’t want to think anymore.

  Chapter 11

  The Perfect Alibi

  I drove the car back towards the house, darting my head from side to side. What if someone had seen me? Someone could have seen me. I turned around to look at the back seat of the car. No, I had been careful, really careful. I was always careful.

  I wouldn’t be happy, though, not until I was back in the confines of my cinema room. All I had to do now was get into my house without anybody seeing me. Not a problem: we had a back lane, dark and hidden, locked away from the public’s prying eyes. I would just unlock the gate, drive into the lane and park the car outside the back garden.

  My heart was suddenly stabbing me like a maniac.

  What if someone had seen me? Despite the fact that no one had been around I still had that nagging feeling that someone knew what I was doing, that this time I was going to get caught.

  Why am I thinking like this? Come to think of it, I don’t even own a cinema room.

  I cast the tenebrous streets another paranoid glance.

  Stop worrying and concentrate on the road ahead. It’s not you that’s doing this after all – the perfect alibi.

  *

  I had learned two important things over the years. One, that dead bodies do indeed shit and piss themselves, and two, that they can make unexpected noises in the throws of death, noises that I find quite unsettling, actually. I had thought long and hard about both of these problems, and in the end had come up with some rather nifty solutions.

  Let’s take the defecation problem first. In short I needed some sort of plug to stop the clients from shitting themselves. After years of deliberation I had finally fallen upon the notion of a thin, woman’s vibrator for the anus. Add to this some masking tape and Bob’s your uncle, the perfect butt plug.

  I remember the first time using one of these; I didn’t know if it was going to work that well. The apprehension, oh the sheer buzz of it. I can remember thinking that I would have liked to have tested it out before hand, but no way was I prepared to try it on myself – although, I did toy with the idea for a while. No, I was just going to have to test it out on the job; I was just going to have to suck it and see.

  All I can say is – best fucking idea I’ve ever had.

  OK, so that took care of all that shit, but what about the piss? That was a much more slippery proposition. How do you stop someone from pissing themselves? I could always use a nappy, which would take care of the shit as well. But wouldn’t it just make a mockery of what I was attempting to do here? It didn’t sit right with me. No, I would need to think of something else.

  In the end I settled for a clamp.

  I remember cringing on coming up with the idea, but I had reminded myself that I wasn’t doing this for fun. The more pain the better. I had to teach these little bastards a lesson before their ends actually came – part of the deal.

  I had a tool that I thought would do the job nicely: a set of mole grips. For those non aficionados amongst you, mole grips are a set of pliers that clamp shut tightly. I had tested them out on a banana to make sure that they would work, and the results had been more than satisfactory. I wouldn’t need to clamp the whole penis, just the foreskin. That would do the trick.

  So my first couple of problems were solved. All I had to do now was stop the client from screaming, or talking for that matter. I had decided that I didn’t even want to hear them speak; the words that came from their mouths offended me, each word an offence to the English mother tongue, each syllable an oratory dagger straight to the civilised brain. Their grammar was a sign of their ignorance, and their ignorance fucking appalled me.

  Luckily for me someone
had already invented such an implement. I had seen it in a magazine once, so all I needed to do was purchase it from Anne Summers or somewhere like that. It was a rubber ball with a strap for placing over the mouth.

  To be entirely sure of no vocal leakage, I would first place a piece of cloth into their mouths. I laughed on finding the perfect garment for the job. Of course, a veritable tribute to the sacrifice Tiddles had made for the greater good. I had taken the towel that I had used to mop up Tiddles’ piss and shit with – not a good experience – and cut it into small pieces, just big enough to fit behind a bondage ball; nothing too big, just enough to strangle the vocal chords.

  On cutting up the towel I was almost sick. I could still smell the stale piss, and there was even a streak of shit on it. I don’t like shit. Who does? I made sure that each of the small sections had a good measure of both.

  I would still need the obligatory piss catcher, just in case the plug and clamp technique failed; and of course we had to think of the ladies – can’t fit a clamp to them now, can we. The plastic tarpaulin had been somewhat useless in the end, but it was all I had to work with at the time. I needed something better.

  I have to admit I laughed when I finally decided upon the perfect item for the job – a child’s paddling pool. Let the piss and shit try and escape from that, I mused merrily.

  All of these items I had bought on the net with a stolen credit card, and had subsequently delivered to an anonymous PO Box. No way would anyone ever trace them back to me.

  In short, I had thought of everything. I had even worked out where to put the clients after they were dead. Murderers usually make the mistake of trying to dispose of the body by burying it in their garden or throwing it in the sea, all cut up into manageable sized chunks. Are they fucking mad? Well, one thing was for sure, I wasn’t. I had the perfect way to get rid of a body, and the perfect alibi.

  This is insane.

  What?

  You’re insane.

  I shook my head at the incongruous thought. Where had that little gem come from? Was it a qualm? I’d never had any qualms before, so why start now? But in saying that, what was this feeling in the pit of my stomach, squirming away like a parasitic worm? Was it fear, fear of getting caught? God, I would die if I had to go to prison, because we all know what inmates do to child killers. And no matter which way I tried to dress this up, these little monsters were still juveniles in the eyes of the law. They’d castrate me with a blunt spoon, to say the least.

  Why am I thinking like this?

  These aren’t my thoughts.

  Fuck it. Back to work.

  *

  The client was still out for the count. I had managed to get him down into my cinema room, but it had been a struggle; they didn’t call him the mighty Rambo for nothing. It was about three in the morning. I had waited behind my garden wall until I was sure that everybody had gone to bed. Thankfully he didn’t wake up; the fat bastard didn’t even stir.

  My only problem was the moon. It was shining down upon us, illuminating the garden like a floodlit football pitch. The garden was shaped in such a way that the neighbours couldn’t really see into it. After some initial hesitation I decided to make a run for it.

  I had a lot of work to do before I could let Rambo go for a paddle in the pool. I had to gag him for starters. Shaking with anticipation, I took a piece of the cat rag, stuck it in his mouth and attached the bondage ball. I was careful to make sure that he was still breathing through his nose. The ball had been a little too tight to get in, so I had to take the rag back out and cut it into even smaller pieces. This time it fitted perfectly – high fives all round.

  The paddling pool was sitting in the centre of the room with a chair in the middle of it, but I had a couple of things to do before I could let him go for a play. I stripped off his clothes and turned the fat bastard over in preparation for the plug and clamp technique.

  I held the gizmo up before me for a second and admired its slender beauty, its aqualine symmetry. It was a work of art, this device, a stroke of genius. And then I shoved it up his arse. I was surprised at how easily the vibrator disappeared, right up to the rim; he didn’t even stir. I on the other hand couldn’t help clenching my own cheeks – a moment of weakness.

  I want no part of this.

  I sat back on my honkers. Where had the voice come from? This didn’t feel right. I slowly returned to the job at hand, but I felt unsettled for some odd reason. Something was wrong here. Something was different.

  I forced myself to get a grip. I had to concentrate on the next task: the clamping of the foreskin.

  “Fuck me,” I moaned. What’s this? The little bastard was only circumcised! Well that’s that then. “Give me a fucking break for once. I’m doing this for you, after all.” I glared at the mole grips, the temptation to throw them across the room screaming in my face.

  Calm down. Think.

  I reluctantly dragged my attention back to Rambo’s penis.

  Think.

  For the first time ever plan A had failed – unprecedented. OK, I’m going to have to hurt him. Nobody said this was going to be a picnic in the park. He deserves all he gets; it’s not as though he’ll ever get to use it again.

  Thankfully he wasn’t that well endowed, which made the whole process less squeamish, at least for me. I placed the shaft of his tiny pecker in the mouth of the mole grips and in one fluid motion clamped down hard.

  Ooohhhh that had to hurt! I quickly raised my eyes to his face, wincing at the prospect of a pained reaction.

  Nothing.

  He didn’t even flinch.

  Was he alive?

  I quickly jumped to my feet and listened to his chest. I could feel a faint heart beat, and I was sure there was a ghost of a breath haunting his lips. Thank God. I didn’t want him checking out on me too early, not after all the trouble I had gone to.

  Blood appeared from his clamped penis, dripping onto the floor. I’ll have to be careful not to slip on that, I thought to myself. I dragged the body towards the paddling pool. It could cause me a nasty injury.

  You won’t get away with this.

  I loosened the clients previously bound hands, blanking the incongruous voice from my head. I pulled him into position and set about binding him, this time to a chair. I had bought some masking tape and climbing rope especially for the task.

  Did you hear me? You won’t get away with this.

  “I already have, my friend. I already have.”

  *

  It took the client an hour or so to wake up. At first I had tried to bring him round with some cold water, but he refused to stir. In the end I decided to be patient, granting me an excellent opportunity to have a couple of games of Call of Duty.

  I was now on my second game. Some 12-year-old had killed me with his knife and I was determined to blow his fucking brains out for it. I glanced at the client to see if he was still comatose. I flinched. He was fully awake, looking right back at me. I slowly put the controller down, slightly spooked by the bound kid’s behaviour. He didn’t look frightened. He looked quite calm.

  The client attempted to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was a muffle and a choke. And then… BANG! A bomb exploded in his lap. Rambo recoiled, almost toppling himself over. I scampered backwards away from him, a burst of nervous laughter escaping my lips. He was suddenly trying to scream and it only took me a couple of seconds to realise why. His stare was firmly fixed on his John Thomas – just like the clamp.

  I backed away from him, my mind in a fugue. Everything felt like a dream, like an out of body experience. And just like in a dream, there were no consequences to my actions here. It wasn’t me doing this. I was positive that I was going to get away with it.

  How am I going to get away with it?

  “Oh, you’re not. I am. That’s the beauty of it.”

  A wave of fear rushed through my body as the kid bucked in his chair. For a second he looked like he was going to get loose. And if he got loose
then he’d kill me for sure. He might not have managed it six months ago, but he’d sure as hell finish the job this time.

  Without thinking another thought I grabbed my XBOX 360 controller and ran across the room towards him. I raised the gadget high into the air, paused for a split second and then let loose with all my wrath. I brought the controller down hard onto the fucker’s face. Again and again I struck him on the side of his head to the backdrop of some child blowing me away with his shotgun: nothing’s perfect, nothing.

  I stopped and stood back, instantly in shock. I was bleeding. It was my own blood. This was wrong. I wasn’t meant to bleed. On thinking this I reached out my hand and grabbed one of his fingers. I didn’t even know I was planning on doing this. I was angry, out of control. I reached down and picked up a pair of rose clippers. You won’t be needing this again, I said, placing the jaws of the cutters around his fat, little finger.

  He stopped struggling and stared at his hand.

  No!

  Yes.

  And just like that… I snipped the finger from his hand.

  I took in a deep breath as a sudden shot of blood splattered against my chest. My heart was about to explode with excitement. I threw down the cutters and quickly placed my hands around his neck. A strange, sexual feeling accompanied my actions.

  Leave him alone!

  “Do you remember me?” I said to Rambo, his eyes bleeding into confusion. “I’ll ask you one more time: do you fucking well remember me, you evil little cunt?” Nothing, just a look of fear mixed with sweat and confusion. He didn’t know who I was. Well one thing was for sure, he’d never forget me again.

  I closed my eyes, yet another wave of excitement rushing through my body. It was then that I realised I had a hard on; I actually had an erection. I tightened my fingers around his neck all the harder. The boy attempted to scream but nothing came out. I tightened my fingers, choking him to the point where he was turning purple. He tried to buck in his chair, but I had my knee on his thigh so he was going nowhere.