The Story Collection: Volume Two

by Matt Shaw

  It was obvious why they targeted me, though. If dad had paid once, to get one child back, he’d more than likely pay again to get the second back.

  Dad passed me a cup of lemonade. Never been so grateful to see a drink in my whole life. Ice-cold lemonade bubbling away in a tall glass.

  “Would you pay, son? If you were me? I’m not made of money...”

  As I took the glass out of his hand - I could see his skin was literally made of money. A collage made from different denominations of notes; tens, twenties and even fifties.

  “You can’t leave me here, dad.... please....” I begged. I took a swig from the glass. No lemonade. Just more stale air. Same repulsive taste. Fuck my imagination. Fuck my memories. If he is leaving me here, if this is to be - why can’t Death just come and get it over with?

  No.

  Don’t think that.

  Kayla laid down next to me in the box. Even more cramped now. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll pay. I’ll ask them too. I’ll tell them I want you for my twenty-first birthday. Wrapped up...”

  I started to cry again.

  Why is my mind being so cruel to me?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lying in a tight-fitting wooden box on the centre of the dinner table with mum, dad and Kayla sitting around me enjoying their dinner - I was pleased to hear Kayla telling mum and dad how much she missed me. Enjoying her steak, with chips, she even looked as though she’d been crying.

  Steak and chips.

  My favourite.

  Why’d they have to eat that when I’m not there? Mum knows it’s my favourite. I wonder, did she cook it because she was subconsciously thinking of me? I say subconsciously because, now, whilst eating her dinner, she’s half-watching the television in the far corner of the room.

  “Don’t forget you have four life-lines,” I heard the presenter say.

  “It’s Taphophobia,” said mum, speaking over Kayla.

  “What is?” asked dad. Dad spun around in his chair to see what mum was referring to.

  The question, on the television game-show, was asking for the name of the fear of being buried alive. Choices given were Arachnophobia, Vertigo, Taphophobia and Coulrophobia.

  “Are you listening to me?” Kayla asked - still championing my corner.

  “It’s Coulrophobia,” dad corrected mum.

  “No, that’s the fear of clowns. I’m sure it’s Taphophobia - although, it’s not always spelt like that.”

  I’m sure none of this is happening. I remember how mum and dad reacted to the news Kayla had been taken. It was nothing like this. They were crying. Even dad. First, and only, time I’d ever seen him cry. I remember hearing them both pacing at night, until Kayla was back with us. Muffled voices comforting each other through the thin walls in our large, country house. So why is my mind making me think they are behaving this way now? It’s almost as though I’m trying to prepare myself to die in here. Stopping me from building my hopes up.

  “I’d like to phone a friend,” said the unknown contestant on the television channel. In my mind he wore a black ski-mask to protect his identity from the cameras filming the show. Is he my kidnapper?

  Ringing....

  What’s that?

  A phone?

  I reached into my trouser pocket and wiggled my body around, as much as I could, until I freed a phone from the depths. How’d that get in there? One of the first things I did - when I woke up in here and after I had my initial panic - was to reach for my mobile phone. Missing along with my black, leather wallet.

  Not my phone - I don’t recognise it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is that Todd Swinson?” asked the voice down the other end of the phone.

  “Speaking,” I whispered.

  “The offer from the banker is two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” said the presenter. A different game-show on the television now, the host looking out of the camera, directly to where I lay in my box. “That’s a life changing amount of money,” the presenter continued. “What would you do with it?”

  From here, there’s nothing I can do with it. Nothing. I need five hundred thousand pounds. I looked beyond the presenter, on the screen, to see there were two boxes left, unopened, from the game-show. One had five hundred thousand pounds and the other had a pound. The banker’s offer was generous but two hundred and fifty wasn’t enough. If I risked it, I might have the five hundred thousand.... enough to pay off the kidnapper. Enough to go home. Two boxes. One decision.

  The box, on a small table next to the presenter - the one I got to go home with if I turned the banker down had the number twenty-one on it. The other box, with Kayla now standing behind it, had her age.

  “Would the banker let me swap boxes?” I said, softly, down the telephone - desperately trying to stay calm despite the soaring temperature of my own box fraying the last of my nerves.

  The presenter made out as though he were exchanging words with someone down the other end of another telephone before he came back to me.

  “He has agreed to a swap.”

  “I’d like to swap the boxes then, please....” my sister had, so far, been on my side. I only hoped the box, in front of her, was also on my side.

  The presenter took the box, with the number twenty-one on it, and walked to where Kayla stood - on the screen - and exchanged it for the box she was guarding.

  “Good luck,” wished Kayla.

  “You have turned the banker’s offer of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds down. In a brave move you want to go for the full five hundred. You’ve already said, at the start of the show, you’d buy your freedom with the money. Now the question is, have you bought your freedom.... or have you sentenced yourself to death?”

  Music played, through the television, in a vague attempt to build even more tension up - not that it was needed on my part...

  “You’ve been a tremendous contestant and I really do wish you....the best of luck,” said the presenter. He pulled the small, red security tag from the box and lifted the lid. Music signaling, before I could even see the amount written on the lid, I had lost out on the big prize. The audience groaned with displeasure - obviously all wishing I were going to score the needed cash.

  “NO!” I screamed. More tears. “NO!” I lashed out, as best I could, and hit the lid of the coffin. First with my left hand and then with the right. I couldn’t see, in the blackness, whether my hands were doing any damage as I continually slammed them against the lid but I could feel that they were sustaining it. Each punch causing my hand to throb that little bit more. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “PLEASE, LET ME OUT OF HERE! PLEASE!”

  I can’t take much more.

  Is this what happens? You slip into a kind of madness before you suffocate?

  I don’t want to die.

  I’m not ready.

  “It’s okay,” whispered Kayla. She was next to me in my box again. Lying comfortably on her right side, her face resting in the palm of her right hand. A twinge of jealousy washed through me. I’d give anything to be able to roll into that position right now. Anything. “I heard dad talking about the money - how he needs to move things around but they should have it by morning.”

  It sounds like something dad would say.

  “Really?” I asked, immediately feeling myself calm a little.

  A little.

  Kayla nodded.

  “I want to come home now,” I said - a slight crack in my voice.

  “Try and stay calm,” she said. “I know it’s hard but you have to.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know. But you have to trust me.”

  I just tried that.

  Walked away with a pound.

  She did her best to give me a smile - no doubt it was meant to offer me some form of comfort. I wonder, when she was in that room.... I wonder whether I had been there for her - offering her the same sort of support. I wonder whether I was any better at comforting her than she, in my mind, is at comforti
ng me?

  I hope so.

  I was lying in a medium-sized pit on a sandy beach. It had taken Kayla and I ages to dig down deep enough for me to be able to jump down so it looked as though I was waist-deep in sand to anyone watching from a distance. Mum had occasionally helped with the digging but was always quick to give up so she could return to the shade of the umbrella we had brought with us, where she was happy to continue reading her book. I don’t blame her. It was hot. Real hot. One of the hottest days of the Summer Holiday, from what I remember.

  The air’s stale. I’m not sure if that’s part of the memory or a trace of reality which has slipped into my fragmented thought.

  “Can you bring me over a drink?” I called over to mum. I couldn’t go myself - stuck down in this hole whilst Kayla was busy filling it back in again with sand.

  Mum didn’t hear me - too engrossed in whatever romantic novel she was thumbing through this time.

  “Do you have any idea what happened last night?” asked Kayla as she shoveled more sand back down into the pit. I shook my head. “Anything at all? Something that might help you figure out where you are or who has you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I followed the contents of Kayla’s spade, fine pieces of sand, down to where she tipped them. Strange, a minute ago the sand was only knee high. Now it’s up to my arm-pits. I tried to wiggle around but was stuck fast.

  “What about your friends? Where’d they go?” she asked, tipping more sand to where I was buried.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Todd??!” a voice shouted my name from somewhere further down the beach. “Todd?!” It sounded as though it was coming from behind Kayla. I peered around her to see if I could see anyone... There, by the water and looking lost, my friends from last night. Still dressed in their going out clothes.

  I strained to hear what they were saying, “Where the fuck did he go?”

  “I don’t know, I thought he was with you guys...”

  “Jesus, Ben, I said watch him... I’ve never seen him so drunk...”

  I turned my attention back to Kayla. She had dropped the spade and was taking a nice long sip from a can of Coke. Cold condensation running down the can.

  “I must have lost them,” I said to her.

  She finished the drink and crunched the can up before setting it aside. My heart sank. No more cans near her - was kind of hoping she’d have saved me some.

  I tried to move in the sand but was stuck fast, “Can you get me out of here?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I wish I could...”

  I was back in the box.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I think I prefer it in here, my little box, compared to being trapped in the sand in just another broken memory. On the beach, I felt so close to freedom. So close to being out of this nightmare, yet I still couldn’t get free. It felt more torturous to be trapped there with the sense of freedom to be had at any given moment compared to stuck in here where everything seems so hopeless.

  “You should try and remain hopeful,” said Kayla, from where she laid next to me.

  I shook my head.

  “What’s the point of kidding myself? No one is coming.”

  “Mum and dad are coming.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “They are. They wouldn’t just leave you in here. You know they wouldn’t.”

  “You’re dad’s favourite...”

  “Doesn’t come into it. Both of his flesh and blood. Do you really think he’d leave any of us in here? What’s he done to make you think he hates you so much?”

  He was never there for me.

  Business first.

  Kayla second.

  Me - never.

  “They’re coming,” Kayla repeated. “Just hang in there.”

  Nothing else to do but hang in there.

  “Ssh...listen...can you hear?” she suddenly said.

  I tried not to move. Just listened. Footsteps. Voices. Can’t make out whose voices but definitely voices. There’s someone in the room. So consumed by my memories and imagined conversations with Kayla that I had failed to hear the door open.

  “MUM?! DAD?! I’M DOWN HERE! PLEASE! LET ME OUT OF HERE! IT’S HARD TO BREATHE!”

  I stopped and waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  Couldn’t even hear anyone out there now.

  Had I missed whoever it was? Had they left already, whilst I was shouting?

  A single footstep.

  No.

  They’re still up there.

  “HELLO?!”

  I waited for a response again.

  Come on.

  Anything.

  Even if it’s someone telling me to quiet down.

  Suddenly I felt something thump against either side of the box, down by my feet. A split second later and a strange sensation as though I had been lifted to a forty-five degree angle; my feet higher than my head. A thump on either side of the box, next to my head, and I felt my body level out again.

  Muffled voices.

  Not mum and dad.

  “HELLO?! PLEASE! PLEASE LET ME OUT OF HERE! WHATEVER YOU WANT, I’LL GET IT FOR YOU!”

  My body rocked back and forth as I was, I presume, walked to another part of the room. My cries for help, and to be let out, ignored - to the best of my knowledge - although it was hard to hear what was being said.

  I stopped rocking.

  Have we stopped?

  I haven’t felt as though I’ve been put down again.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! HELLO?! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!”

  Can they hear me?

  My body suddenly lifted itself from where it laid on the box. I felt as though I were weightless. The weirdest of sensa.....

  I slammed back down onto the back of the box. The wind knocked from me. My hand banging so hard against the wood I got an instant headache.

  What the fuck was all that about?

  Kayla turned to me, from the darkness, and whispered, “Stay calm, they’re coming....”

  “When?” I asked.

  I didn’t hear a response from her. Instead I heard the strange sound of something hitting the lid of the box. As though thousands of small stones were raining over me at once.

  What is that?!

  “HELLO! PLEASE! I’M ALIVE IN HERE!”

  “Mum and dad coming for you, I promise.” Kayla repeated. “Don’t waste your breath...”

  “What is that noise?” I asked her.

  “Dirt. Whoever is up there...they’re filling the hole...”

  “No...no...” I started to cry. The familiar, unwelcome, feeling of panic washing over me once more. “I don’t want them to...please...make them stop...please...”

  “I wish I could,” whispered Kayla’s voice from the darkness.

  “I’m scared,” I told her. My legs...arms...everything shaking.

  “Everything will be okay.”

  “How did you survive what you went through? I can’t do this...”

  “You can do this. You have to do this. What else is there to do down here?”

  Die.

  I don’t want to die yet.

  I want to see my mummy.

  “PLEAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs - my voice cracking through my tears of worry and stress.

  The sound of the dirt spilling over the lid was getting softer. Can only presume that’s because the dirt is so high now. The strain of it causing the lid of my wooden box to creak. What if it comes through?

  “It won’t,” Kayla promised.

  But what if?

  She didn’t answer me.

  “I think they’ve gone,” I whispered.

  I waited, in the darkness - hoping to hear something. Anything. Even if they were the ones who put me down here - buried me - I’d rather they were nearby.

  Better than being left alone.

  “You’re not alone,” said Kayla. “I’m not going anywhere.”
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br />   “Promise?”