A Life To Waste

by Andrew Lennon

  “What the hell happened to Lisa? What was that guy talking about with all the blood? Exactly how much blood was there? Could it have been an animal? Could it have been one of the violent guys she likes to bring home? What happened? Is she, is she really dead?”

  All these thoughts came one after another, flooding Dave’s mind with terror, then worse thoughts came.

  “What if it was a serial killer? What if he came to my house instead of Lisa’s? What if he comes back?”

  Dave tried to block these thoughts out but it didn’t work. They kept flooding back into his mind, he carried on creating horrible bloody images in his head. How the hell could he stop these thoughts?

  “Beer” he said “I need beer.”

  Usually he would have text his mum to tell her to grab some for him on the way home, not this time though, he couldn’t wait till later, he needed beer now. So for the first time in years, for the first time since before the crash, he ran. He ran as fast as he could. He ran all the way to the shop. He grabbed a crate of 24 cans of Stella.

  HhHe usually drank Carling but Stella was stronger and he felt that he needed to get completely wasted to remove these thoughts so it was definitely Stella for the job. He didn’t usually drink spirits but he grabbed a bottle of Whiskey as well, just in case. He had stolen £50 from his mum’s drawer before he left so he even had a bit of change to grab some more smokes as well.

  Then with booze and smokes in hand, he ran again. Granted not very fast this time being loaded up with all those cans and a whiskey bottle. But he ran anyway, ran all the way back home shoved a load of cans in the fridge, opened one and downed it before even moving from the spot. Then grabbed another and returned to the couch. Oh yeah, he was getting shit faced tonight. That would purge these thoughts from his mind. He hoped.

  Chapter 8

  Dave was sat in front of TV, again. He wasn’t even sure what he was watching, he was more looking at the TV rather than actually watching it. He heard a noise come from somewhere else in the house, he couldn’t quite place where.

  He shouted “Mum! Was that you? What you broke this time?” then mumbled “clumsy bitch” to himself.

  There was no answer, but then he didn’t want or expect an answer, he was just shouting so his mum knew that he had heard her break something,

  BANG!!!

  “What the fuck?” Dave said.

  This wasn’t just something being dropped, what was that?

  “Mum! What the hell was that?”

  Again, no answer.

  “MUM!!!!”

  No answer.

  “ugh” Dave groaned and got up “Fine I’ll go see what’s up! You best not have broken anything mum or I swear to god!”

  He walked into the kitchen and had a look around, there was no one there, nothing wrong, everything looked fine. He went to the bathroom, again no one there and nothing wrong. He checked his room and then finally his mum’s bedroom, no one there. She wasn’t in.

  “What the hell was all that noise then? Hearing things now Dave” he said to himself “and now talking to yourself as well, losing your bloody mind.”

  Dave walked back to the living room and plonked himself back on the couch.

  BANG!!!!

  “Seriously what the hell is that?”

  He knew he had already checked everywhere and he knew he was the only person in the house. Still, he felt that he had to go and check everywhere again. He walked around all the rooms again, checking for anyone or any sign of something that could have made that noise. Again, nothing.

  He walked back to the living room, he started to feel like he was being watched, he carried on turning around to look behind him, he felt chills going down his spine. He was being watched, he was sure of it. He turned to look behind him again, nothing. He sat back on the couch.

  BANG!!!

  “Again!”

  He turned around, this time there was something behind him.

  “Oh shit! What the fuck!”

  There was a huge shadow behind the couch, he jumped up and turned around so he was stood facing the shadow, but there was no one else there. It wasn’t his shadow, was it a ghost? He was terrified. The shadow moved. Dave jumped in fright. The shadow had moved to the left side of the wall. Dave, paralysed with fear stood staring at the shadow. To the right he noticed movement. Another shadow had appeared on the right hand side of the wall. He looked behind him, no one there. Where were these shadows coming from? Who did they belong too? Dave’s fear was growing inside him, he felt himself shaking, he could feel sweat dripping down his forehead. Are these things monsters? Are they here to kill him?

  The two monsters stood stationary on the left and right sides of the wall. Dave stood stationary, almost like he was in a standoff with these two creatures. He noticed something else. Something starting to fall from the ceiling, it began to move down the wall. This wasn’t another shadow, it was something else, some form of liquid. It was red. It was thick. It was blood.

  “Oh shit, oh shit what the fuck is going on?” Dave said, his voice high pitched almost sounding like a small child.

  The shadows still didn’t move, still stood staring at him. He couldn’t see that they had any eyes but he knew that they did. He knew that they were watching him, staring through the black pits that were hidden in the huge black hole that shaped their body. Oh yes, they were definitely watching him. The blood continued to spill from the ceiling down the wall, it had reached the floor now, a puddle was starting to form at the bottom of the wall.

  “This is what happened next door” Dave thought “this is what happened, these things came and took Lisa and now they’ve come for me!”

  The puddle continued to grow, the blood started to creep along the floor towards Dave. He stepped backward trying to distance himself from it. He kept stepping back until he reached the wall. The blood kept coming, splitting into different routes, looking like fingers from a growing hand reaching out for him, it kept coming. The shadows started moving in, closing in on the room, they weren’t just covering one wall now, they were surrounded the whole room. Darkness was growing all around Dave. The only thing he could see was the black giants surrounding him and the red blood hand reaching for him across the floor. They were coming to take him.

  He screamed “NOOOOOOO!!!!”

  Dave sat up, he was still on the couch. He had fallen asleep drunk again. The TV was still on, he looked around. There were empty Stella cans all over the floor and an empty whiskey bottle next to him on the couch, which presumably Dave had been sleeping on.

  It had been a dream, well a nightmare.

  “Thank god” Dave sighed in relief.

  He was pretty shaken up, it must have been all the thoughts about Lisa next door playing on his mind. Drinking to forget about the scenes next door didn’t work as well as he had planned. In fact it looked like it made it a hell of a lot worse.

  That was only the first nightmare, the next night he had another nightmare. Then the next night, then the next. It came to the point that he was getting too scared to sleep. Lisa’s body still hadn’t turned up, which meant who ever or what ever had been the cause of the house next door being covered in blood still hadn’t been found. This didn’t help with Dave’s dreams, what if it came back? What if his dreams actually came true? They felt real enough to him, he was overwhelmed with fear. He tried staying awake, he started drinking coffee when he felt tired. It didn’t work, he still fell asleep, even during short naps, just closing his eyes for a couple of minutes. The dreams came rushing back into his mind and he would wake up screaming again. The lack of sleep was starting to make him feel ill.

  He decided that enough was enough. Regardless of what had happened next door, he was a grown man and he couldn’t be making himself sick through fear of sleep. He decided he would go to the doctors and see if there was something they could give him. Something which could help him sleep throughout the night without waking every ten minutes. He had heard that sometimes if you took slee
ping pills that you could sleep without dreaming at all, he had also heard that sometimes they could amplify the dreams. It didn’t matter, his dreams couldn’t get any worse than they already were. He had to do something, he called the doctors to book an appointment.

  Chapter 9

  “Take a seat” Doctor Spring said “so what seems to be the problem?”

  Dave shuffled in his seat. He was looking everywhere in the room, at his feet, at the pictures on the walls, at the doctors computer. He looked everywhere except at Doctor Spring. He would make quick glances towards the docs face but he would quickly look away when accidental eye contact was made. He was biting his nails, then messing with his hair, then he would go back to biting his nails while frantically looking everywhere in the room again. He was a complete mess, sleep deprivation had really started to take its toll on him.

  “Well, you see, the thing is, I erm”

  Dave’s voice was quick and jittery, it almost sounded like he was on some kind of drug like speed or ecstasy.

  “the thing is, erm, I’m struggling to sleep, I, erm, I need some, you know, some sleeping pills, you know so I can sleep.”

  Doctor Spring sat back and looked at Dave, his initial thoughts were that Dave had been taking some form of drugs, all Dave’s mannerisms seemed to suggest that. But his pupils were not dilated, and although he was jittery, he didn’t show any other signs of drug addiction, besides the nervousness. The doctor suspected that maybe Dave likes to drink a lot and added to this sleep deprivation were symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.

  “Can I ask, have you been taking any recreational drugs?”

  “No” Dave answered without hesitation.

  The only drug he had now a days was weed and he hadn’t smoked anything in over a week. He hadn’t touched any drink either, he had thought about it. He thought that booze and weed might have helped him sleep but he felt too ill to touch either. He had been feeling too ill from the lack of sleep.

  “Ok and how much do you drink?”

  “Not much, just a few cans every other night” This time Dave lied.

  He knew were this was leading and he didn’t want to be signed up to some alcoholic twelve step programme, he just wanted something to help him sleep. If he wanted to deal with any alcohol or drug problems he would do that in his own time when he wasn’t so tired.

  “Listen Doc the thing is, I erm, the problem is, erm, I have been having these dreams”

  Dave proceeded in his jittery nervous voice to explain his dreams to the doctor. He told him about the police coming to the house, he told him that there was a murder investigation ongoing in relation to his next door neighbour. He told him how he was too scared to sleep and the longer it went on the worse it got, the very brief spells of sleep he did have were filled with even worse nightmares because he had built them up himself by trying not to sleep. It was a vicious cycle and he couldn’t see any way of stopping it.

  “So you see doc, that’s, that’s why I need those, erm, those sleeping pills, so I can have a kip and erm, I can start getting over all these crazy thoughts and nightmares, I just need erm, just one full nights sleep. You know, even with nightmares, at least if its, you know more than ten minutes, that’ll fix me right up you know.”

  Doctor Spring could see that Dave was genuinely desperate to sleep. He had read in the paper about the investigation for the missing local girl so he knew that Dave wasn’t making the story up. He gave Dave a lecture as to how these sleeping pills are addictive and usually not recommended. In the end he decided to give Dave a prescription for the pills. He explained that he would only issue one weeks worth of pills due to the risk of addiction.

  Doctor Spring said “So let’s see how you do with them, any problems then come back and see me.”

  “I, I will do.” Dave said, genuinely thankful “thanks, thank you!”

  Dave grabbed his prescription from the chemist inside the doctors office then went straight home. He washed two pills down with a glass of water and went to lie on his bed.

  “oh god I hope these work” he thought “I hope they don’t make these dreams worse though, oh actually I don’t even care about them anymore, I just hope they make me sleep.”

  After half an hour of these repeated thoughts, Dave fell asleep.

  Chapter 10

  “Go on Dave you can do it!” Phil shouted.

  Dave looked over to see his coach cheering him on, he looked at the runners either side of him. They looked nervous.

  “On your marks”

  Dave walked to his starting point, he had a quick glance at the crowd, he saw his mum and dad. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, he tried reading their lips, he still couldn’t make it out, he just assumed it was “good luck”. He didn’t need luck, he had this in the bag, he had been training harder for this race than any other. This was the big one, this is the one that Phil said would set him up for life, this one had all the big scouts watching, he just needed to win this race and he would be set. He recognised a couple of the guys he was racing, he had raced them earlier in the year and destroyed them. He knew they didn’t stand a chance, especially with all the additional training that he had been doing.

  “Get set”

  He crouched down waiting for his moment, waiting for that all important “bang”, that one moment that would set him free. He was ready, he knew the second he heard it that he would be sprinting down that track faster than he ever had before, he was going to be running like The Flash, he was going to run so fast that people would get whip lash turning their head to see him flying past them. This was the moment he had been waiting for, for so long. This was his time, this would be the point that all the training would pay off. This was his defining moment.

  BANG!

  He was off, he was sprinting down the track like a cheetah chasing its prey. He was running faster than he had ever run in his life. He knew there was no chance anyone was catching him.

  “This is it!” he thought “I’m winning! I’m going to win, I’m going to the Olympics!”

  As he was hurtling down the track Dave looked at the crowd, Coach Phil was standing next to his mum and dad, they looked like they were moving in slow motion, all three of them looked the happiest they had ever been. Phil’s face was shining, he had a smile from ear to ear. Dave’s parents were hugging each other jumping up and down for joy, he could hear them now.

  “Go on Son! You’re winning! You’re doing it!”

  Dave looked straight ahead to the fast approaching finish line. Claire was standing at the finish line calling his name.

  “Come on Dave! Nearly there! You’re going to win! Go Dave go!”

  He started to run even faster, he could feel the wind blowing against his face, his cheeks flapping like an astronaut feeling the G-Force from a rocket launch. He was the fastest man alive, he was going to be famous. He crossed the finish line and ran straight into Claire’s arms, he picked her up and cheered for joy.

  “I did it! I won!”

  He rubbed his nose against hers, he tilted his head to the side to kiss her. He woke up.

  “Uh what?” Dave sat up confused. “it was a dream” he sighed.

  He looked around the room, he could see daylight peering through the window, that meant he slept all through the night.

  “Brilliant! Those sleeping pills worked a treat!” He said to himself “and I feel bloody brilliant after that sleep!”

  Dave hopped out of bed and walked to the bedroom door, for the first time in as long as he could remember he had woken up happy. He walked with a spring in his step, he was borderline skipping he felt so good.

  He opened his bedroom door, his jaw dropped. His face twisted in shock, he looked down to see that he was standing in blood. He looked back up, the room was red, the walls were painted with blood.

  He screamed “Mum!”

  Chapter 11

  Dave ran through the house looking for his mum. He could feel his feet sinking into the blood that had been soa
ked into the carpet. Everywhere he looked he could see red, it was all over the walls, all over the furniture, all over every door. What the hell happened, how could he have slept through all this? The place was trashed, how could he not hear a thing last night?

  He ran to his mum’s room, it was empty. All that remained was the aftermath of what ever happened last night. Her TV was on the floor, broken. What little personal items she had were scattered around the room. Her bed was red, it had what looked to be a puddle of blood in the middle of it, so much that the bed and sunken a little bit in the centre. Dave left his mum’s room to check everywhere else in the house. She was nowhere to be seen. Whatever or whoever had made all this mess had taken her with it. Or what was left of her, how could she even still be alive in she had lost so much blood? Dave dropped to his knees, struggling to breath in a state of shock and fear. He was shaking, he vomited on the floor, then he began to cry.