by Tony Lee
“It’s not mine,” he said, looking at Danny. “I’m being set up. I didn’t even know this was here.”
“Then why did you text me, telling me to come here right now?” Danny asked.
“I didn’t text you!” Aashif exclaimed. “I took the battery out of my phone! Look – ” he paused as he pulled his phone out of his bag.
The battery and back cover were both back on.
“I don’t understand…” Aashif whispered.
“For the first time I agree with you,” Danny said, putting the phone away. “I don’t understand who you are anymore, Aashif. I’ve never really liked you, and you’ve always been a bit creepy around Sara, but she’s always stood up for you. But after the messages you sent her today… well!”
“Wait, messages?” Aashif shook his head. “She only got one at assembly.”
“Don’t play the fool!” Danny shouted, pulling his long, thin bag off his shoulder, unzipping it as he pulled out his hockey stick, hefting it with both hands. “I’ve seen the texts you’ve been sending her! They’re sick! You’re wrong in the head! Wanting to kiss her and threatening to break her arm when she texted back no! You want to know what a broken arm feels like?” He started to move forwards, swinging the stick back and forth as he did so. Aashif started to cry, backing against the wall.
“Please! Please! I didn’t do this, I swear!” he cried out. “I don’t know how this has happened! I’ll clear it up! I promise!”
But Danny wasn’t listening. He just came closer.
“You’re a sick, twisted little boy, Aashif. I think you need to change schools,” he said. “You need to be taught a lesson. And I’m just the person to do it.”
Aashif couldn’t remember how he managed to deflect the blow, or even how he managed to escape, but he ran as fast as he could from Danny, looking for someone – anyone – who could come to his aid. Eventually he almost bowled Mr Wallace over as he walked out of the staff room.
“Sir, D-Danny Martin is trying to kill me with his hockey stick,” he stammered. “I need to go home.”
Mr Wallace looked down at Aashif for a moment, but then he stopped, examining Aashif’s clothing.
“Is that blood on your arms?” he asked. Aashif looked down at his shirt to see there were red splatters on it. It must have been when he fell against the graffiti, or when he pulled the can out of his bag. He didn’t know how to answer, however, as both answers made him guilty of something.
“Where was this?” Mr Wallace demanded.
“Smokers’ alley.”
With that, Mr Wallace, with Aashif following, made his way to the back of the assembly hall. The bell had gone, and now there were students everywhere, running around. And when they saw Aashif, they stopped.
“It’s him!” one year seven said as Mr Wallace and Aashif approached. “He did it!”
“I did what?” Aashif replied, but as they turned the corner Aashif saw with a gut-wrenching turn that Danny Martin, his face battered and bleeding, was being tended to by the school nurse.
“We’ve called for an ambulance,” she said to Mr Wallace. “His arm’s been broken in two places and he has a severe concussion, among other bruises and cuts.”
“Who did this?” Mr Wallace looked back to Aashif. “Was this you?”
“Danny doesn’t know who did it,” one of the year sevens said. “He said he was fighting Aashif, but Aashif ran away and then someone hit him from behind.”
Aashif looked away from Danny. His stalker had possibly saved his life but, in the process, had beaten Danny badly. With the arm damaged, Danny might never be able to play sports properly again. Backing away, Aashif turned and ran from the back of the hall, tears running down his face. No matter what happened now, the stalker had won.
He ran into the staff toilets, knowing that this was one of the few doors in the school that had a lock on it. Turning it, he fell back against the wall, his chest rising and falling in shuddering gasps as he cried long and hard. After a while, he calmed down enough to stand on wobbly legs and walk over to the toilet where, falling to his knees, he was violently sick into it. Standing up, he flushed the toilet and walked over to the sink, rinsing his mouth out with water as he splashed more cold water onto his face. He hoped more than anything that this was a dream, that it would all end soon, but he knew that it wouldn’t. He was a prisoner in the toilet until someone found him. It’d probably be the police.
“My life is over,” he whispered to his reflection as he looked into the mirror. “It’ll never be the same again.”
What happened next was the last thing that Aashif could ever have expected. His reflection smiled.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” his reflection said, staying where it was as Aashif staggered back from the sink in fear. “It’s all going perfectly well so far.”
“You?” Aashif exclaimed. “You did this? How? I don’t understand!”
“Oh no,” the reflection shook its head. “I can’t take all the credit for this. A lot of it was because of you.”
And as if a light was suddenly switched on inside Aashif’s head, he understood everything.
It had all been his fault.
CHAPTER 5
Aashif reached into his bag, pulling out his phone.
“I remember now,” he said. And it was true, as in his mind he could see the first time he’d had the request. He’d deleted it…
And then he’d sent it to himself again. And again. Aashif even remembered sending Aashif Rahmed wet his bed last year through the network to the other computers. He was the only person who knew the secret, after all. But it was hard to recall, almost as if he half remembered a dream, or as if he was looking through someone else’s eyes.
“This wasn’t me,” he said. The reflection started to laugh.
“Don’t try to back off,” it said. “You’re remembering everything now.”
“Remembering isn’t the same as believing,” Aashif said. “I don’t know how you took the photo of me outside the chip shop.”
“Don’t you?” the reflection mocked. “Think harder.”
Aashif thought back to the conversation he’d had with Kyle, and what he had said as Aashif had walked off.
“I told you the camera wasn’t working on my phone! That’s why I used yours!”
“No!” Aashif opened his phone, staring at the camera images he had on it. There it was, the photo of Aashif on the bench, taken with his own phone.
“Such an easy thing to do, to email, print, and place in your locker.”
Aashif shook his head at his reflection’s words, but deep down he knew they were true. He’d decided himself at the time that only his key could open his locker. He’d been right.
“What about Sara? The texts?” he asked.
“Have a look for yourself.” The reflection grinned. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”
Aashif looked down at the list of messages between him and Sara. The message sent during assembly was there. And other, worse ones, the same ones that Danny had said he’d sent.
“Danny.” Aashif shook his head. “You did that.”
“No, it was you. I just helped you along. Sprayed the wall for you, helped you come back after you ran from him and attack him from behind, then use his own hockey stick to do to him what he wanted to do to you.”
“He wanted to do that because of what you did!” Aashif screamed at the mirror now. “You did this!”
The reflection considered this. “Yeah, pretty much,” it said.
“But you’re just a reflection,” Aashif said, leaning close, gaining control of himself for the moment. “You can’t do anything to me.”
“Really?” The reflection reached towards him quickly, the arm coming through the glass of the mirror and grabbing Aashif around the neck, pulling him back into the mirror, slamming his forehead against the glass, smashing it. Then, with a downward move, the reflection slammed Aashif’s face into the sink itself, letting go and sending Aashif sprawling to
the floor.
As Aashif lay stunned, feeling his blood trickle down his face, he could hear people outside, students and teachers who had heard the noise from inside the toilet and were now trying to open the door. But he was too busy watching the reflection climbing through the broken mirror, stepping onto the floor and, after stretching its muscles, pulling Aashif up by his shirt.
“I think it’s time that I took over driving full time,” the reflection said as it slammed Aashif against the wall. “You don’t mind do you?”
Aashif was tired, terrified and in tears. There was no way he could win. The mirror version of himself had played him from the start. Even if he did get out, he’d be arrested, expelled, and Sara would never speak to him again.
Sara.
The thought of what his reflection would do to her if it escaped was enough to bring Aashif back to the moment. Whether or not he really loved Sara wasn’t important. What was important was that he had to save her from this thing. Reaching up with both arms he grabbed his reflection around the neck, squeezing tight.
“You can’t have her!” he screamed as he pushed his reflection to the floor. “I won’t let you!”
The banging on the door was louder now but Aashif didn’t care as he squeezed even tighter. His reflection was looking up at him in fear now, as if realising for the first time that it could lose.
“I win,” Aashif said, choking the last of the life out of the reflection. “I finally beat you.”
There was a crash as one of the assembly benches was used as a battering ram, splintering the lock as the door was smashed open at last. And, as the teachers lowered the bench down, Mr Wallace ran into the toilet, kneeling down beside Aashif.
The mirror was broken, the sink had a smear of blood on it. Aashif’s clothes were torn and his face was bloodied and battered.
And Aashif was finally at peace, with a hint of a smile left on his now dead lips.
CHAPTER 6
They said that the cause of death was Aashif slipping while in the toilet and smashing his head against the sink as he fell; that he was in a very unstable state of mind; that he had major anger issues; and that the threats that he’d made to Sara, the attack on Danny and the smashing of the mirror had all built up a pressure in his head that simply popped when he smashed it into the ceramics. As far as everyone was concerned, Aashif Rahmed had finally shown his true colours, and there were more than a few people in the school who weren’t sorry that he was no longer around.
Sara wasn’t one of them, however. Even though it was her boyfriend in hospital, even though it was her one-time best friend who’d done all this, she still couldn’t believe that Aashif was the person that he’d become in the last few days. She’d seen his eyes when he spoke about the stalker. He’d really believed that someone was after him.
And so, in the weeks that followed the strange death of Aashif Rahmed, Sara started to look into all the things that he’d said. She asked people if they’d seen anything strange, she even went to see his parents, but the last thing they wanted to do was speak to her.
In the end, she broke into Aashif’s email account one day in the library. And reading through both his inbox and the trash folder, Sara saw for the first time the Facebook requests, the refusals and the emails that had arrived into Aashif’s inbox on the day of his death. Someone had definitely been contacting him, but they all seemed to come from his own account. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe Aashif had serious mental problems. Maybe she didn’t know him at all. But she didn’t have time to think about this any more as in the right-hand corner of the screen a small box suddenly popped up.
‘Iknowyoursecret’ would like to be your friend. YES / NO?
There was no picture, no information. Sara clicked the NO button and started to close up the email. It was probably best to leave Aashif’s memory as it was.
‘Iknowyoursecret’ would like to be your friend. YES / NO / MESSAGE?
It was probably someone who’d been trying to get hold of Aashif for ages. Sara opened the message box and typed ‘I’m not Aashif. Aashif died last month.’ Pressing send, she closed the account and the browser window.
I know he’s dead, Sara. I don’t want to be his friend.
Sara stared at the monitor in shock. She’d closed the browser. There was no way that this could have been sent, unless…
Unless it was meant for her. Which meant that someone knew that she had hacked Aashif’s email.
Who are you? she typed, hitting return and looking around the library. It didn’t take long for the answer to pop up on her screen.
I’m you, Sara. I’ve always been you.
Sara rose from her chair in fear and ran from the library as, behind her, every other monitor screen in the room flashed up the message Sara 4 Aashif…
THE END
Stalker ISBN 978-1-78464-216-7
Text © Tony Lee 2014
Complete work © Badger Publishing Limited 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Tony Lee to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Publisher: Susan Ross
Senior Editor: Danny Pearson
Publishing Assistant: Claire Morgan
Copyeditor: Cheryl Lanyon
Designer: Bigtop Design Ltd
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