by John Larkin
And then I hear the creaking eighth step. He’s coming back up the stairs. He must have figured it out. I must have left a clue, like not closing a door or something? Maybe he’s put in security cameras and he’s got me in full colour skulking around the house and stalking up the stairs to my bedroom.
My door. It was only slightly ajar when I arrived and now it’s wide open. Creepo must have registered this at least at a subconscious level when he was standing there on the landing.
He stops on the landing again. He hasn’t gone into his bedroom. He hasn’t gone to the bathroom either. He’s standing in my doorway. I can’t see him but I can sense him. Just like that time he crept into my bedroom when I was asleep and his presence woke me up. I couldn’t see him then either but I knew that he was there.
I hear him close the door and for a moment I feel relieved. Then I realise that his presence is still here. He’s in my room. He’s closed the door behind himself. He’s playing with me. He knows I’m here. My heart is thumping so hard I feel as though I’m going to black out.
He clomps slowly over the floorboards until he’s standing beside the bed. His feet are just inches away from my face.
My face and chest compress even further. I feel the life being pressed out of me. I’m about to scream out but then it stops. He’s sat down on my bed, the disgusting pig. And although I can barely breathe, I’m so close to him that I can smell his boozy breath.
‘Where are you, you little bitch?’ he snarls and I actually piss myself. I can feel the urine burning my crotch and trickling down my legs beneath my jeans.
Then I realise that he’s not actually talking to me but asking himself a rhetorical question.
As if being trapped in a room with a sick, incestuous, murdering paedo isn’t bad enough, I’m stuck under the bed wearing steaming wet undies. And I can smell them. I can smell my own fear. Surely it’s just a matter of time before Creepo does too.
But he hasn’t finished his rant just yet.
‘I’m not going to jail because of you and your gutter whore of a mother!’
Charming.
But if he doesn’t know that I’m in here, why has he closed the door?
Just as abruptly as it happened, the pressure is released and I can breathe again. I take in some short, shallow breaths, relieved to have oxygen flowing through my lungs.
The floorboards near my bookshelves groan. He’s fiddling with something on one of them. Noah’s ark by the sound of it. He’s shaking it. Levering out the rubber stopper. He’s trying to steal my bit of money, the creep. Beat you to it, psycho!
The he moves across and opens one of my drawers. He struggles with it a bit and from that I can tell that it’s my top drawer. The one that is slightly warped. The one where I keep my pyjamas and undies.
Nothing in there for you, Creepo. No cash. No clues. Nothing but underwear. Sorry.
I hear him take a deep breath, like somebody sniffing a rockmelon in the supermarket. And then he walks over to the door. He doesn’t open it though. He’s obviously looking at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Why?
Then I hear him doing up his zipper. He obviously didn’t finish dressing properly, the idiot, and now he’s just noticed this in my mirror. But then he starts breathing deeply and there’s a strange sound, like he’s slapping himself across the face, the way I did this morning on the train to wake myself up. Only he’s slapping himself in time with his deep breathing.
Downstairs in the garage I hear the door slowly clunking open. Creepo obviously hasn’t heard it yet because he’s still breathing heavily and slapping himself in the face.
Serena’s back and Creepo’s giving himself a pep talk about finding me or something. He must be because as he’s doing his deep breathing, he’s calling out my name over and over again. He’s calling me some disgusting names too. But then, all of a sudden, he cries out like he’s seen a huge spider or something. And downstairs I can hear Serena struggling into the kitchen with bags of groceries.
‘Tony.’
‘Oh shit!’ He’s heard her now.
‘Tony.’
‘Hang on,’ he calls back, then mutters, ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
He quickly stuffs whatever it was that he took back into my drawer.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
The eighth step creaks.
I hear him fumbling as he does his zip up again. Or is it down? I can’t keep track.
‘Tony?’
‘In here.’
The door swings open.
‘Hi.’ He sounds guilty.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I was just seeing if I could find any clues where she might have gone.’
‘Why was the door closed?’
‘Because I was looking behind it.’
‘Why?’
Serena sounds suspicious and I’m not surprised. She comes home and finds him hanging around my undies drawer. That’s just dodge on so many levels.
My face and chest are compressed as he sits down on the bed again. If Serena plonks herself down next to him I’ll burst.
‘Can you give me a hand with the groceries?’
‘Before you went out, did you go out the back?’
‘No. I went through the garage.’
‘No, before that. This morning. Did you hang any clothes out or something?’
‘I haven’t been out the back. Why, Tony?’
‘Because when I got up, the back door was unlocked.’
I can feel my blood draining away.
‘Maybe you didn’t lock it last night.’
‘No way. I definitely locked it. I don’t want her creeping in here in the middle of the night and sticking a carving knife in my neck.’
‘Tony.’
‘Like mother, like daughter.’
‘Are we going to ten-thirty mass?’
Please, please, please, please. Please, God, make them go to church.
‘No way!’
You suck.
‘There’s something going on around here. Look at this piggybank of hers.’ The pressure is released as he stands up again.
‘Noah. It’s kind of cute with the giraffe and the kangaroos.’
‘It’s empty,’ says Creepo, giving it a shake.
‘It can’t be. I checked it yesterday. All her money was still there.’
‘It’s not now. Look.’
I can hear Serena levering out the rubber stopper.
‘Did you take it?’ asks Creepo.
‘Me!’ pleads Serena. ‘Why would I take her bit of money?’
‘Because I didn’t.’
‘Well, neither did I.’ Serena sounds seriously pissed.
‘Don’t get all narky. I was just asking because I know I didn’t take it. And if you didn’t either then it can mean only one thing. She’s . . .’
‘. . . been here.’ Serena finishes the sentence for him.
‘And look. That house brick of a book that she’s always got her nose in. That’s gone too. We better have a look around to see if there’s anything else missing,’ orders Creepo. ‘Check the gnome. She might’ve nicked the key.’
‘What about the safe?’
‘What about it?’
Of course. The safe. He’s probably got my passport and our cash locked in his safe.
‘You’d better check it.’
‘I will, but she doesn’t know the combination. Hell, you don’t know the combination.’
He’s right of course. I wouldn’t have a clue what the combin- ation . . . But then something buried deep in my mind registers and for the first time in ages, and despite the fact that my face is wedged up against the bottom of my bed and I’m wearing piss-soaked clothes, I smi
le. Because that’s just where you’re wrong, Mr Paedo! I do know the combination. I only heard it once but it’s not a number I could forget.
Thank you, Serena. I wouldn’t have even thought of the safe. Now I know that if I ever get out of here without being shot in the head, defiled and dismembered, I’ll be taking more than my measly two hundred dollars with me.
If they don’t go out today it’s going to be an uncomfortable night, wedged under my bed like one of my rubber stoppers beneath the door. Unbearable even, especially in wet undies. I have to hang tough, though. Just for one night. Because in the morning, Creepo will head off to work and Serena will go for her regular ritual – coffee with the girls. Then I’ll be free. Free of their psycho little world. I’ll never have to come back here again. Except maybe with a can of petrol and a match.
I’m in the clear. And then just when I’m positive that I can get out of this, I suddenly remember that I’ve left my backpack and sleeping bag outside next to the bins. And Sunday night is collection night.
GOD! THAT MUST HAVE BEEN TERRIFYING. MY HANDS ARE SWEATING just listening to it. So how come Tony didn’t see your backpack and that when he put the bins out?
He didn’t put them out. That was my job. One of them, anyway. Obviously they hadn’t adjusted to the new routine of not having me around. But I fretted about it all night, thinking that he might get up at any time and go and do it. Then he’d know that I was there. When I heard him snoring through the wall I actually considered creeping out of the house, but if I did that I wouldn’t get my passport and any cash that Creepo might have stashed away in his safe.
So how did you know the combination?
Because Creepo makes a house brick look like Einstein. I was lying on my bed reading one day. It was the weekend, a while before he started walking in on me when I was in the shower. It was Saturday afternoon, I think, and Creepo came up the stairs whistling. But he wasn’t whistling a song, he was whistling the Pizza Hut tune. You know the old one before they changed it – nine four eight one, double one, double one, Pizza Hut delivery.
Why?
Because Saturday was pay day. Scam day, or whatever you want to call it and he was cashed up. He was happy. Loaded.
So why was he whistling the Pizza Hut tune?
I didn’t work it out until later. My mind just locked it away. The thing was, he always closed their bedroom door when he was putting things in his safe – in case me or Serena were around. But I suppose he didn’t see that I was in my bedroom, and when he came back out he was actually singing the words to the Pizza Hut song but with a slight variation.
Which was?
Nine four eight one, double one, double one. Tony’s cash delivery.
You’re joking? The safe’s combination was the Pizza Hut delivery number?
Well, I didn’t know that when I was lying under the bed – not at first, anyway. But then when Serena mentioned that he should check the safe I remembered him singing that stupid song and it clicked.
So you had an uncomfortable night?
That’s putting it mildly. I desperately tried to hold on but I had to pee a couple more times during the night, which was just revolting. I was worried they might smell me. I tried to pinch myself to stay awake, scared that I might have a nightmare and call out. But after spending the past nights in the church, then the dunes, and now wedged under my old bed, I was almost delirious with exhaustion. In the end I couldn’t hang on any longer and fell asleep.
In the morning, when Serena went for coffee with the girls, things got really disgusting.
IMAGINE WALKING THROUGH A GRAVEYARD AT NIGHT AND HEARING all these bells tinkling away. Only the tinkling isn’t coming from the church but from below the ground. From the graves. How freaky would that be? Someone actually used to have that job.
During the bubonic plague – the Black Death – they used to bury the dead really quickly in an effort to stop the spread of disease. Sometimes they buried them too quickly. The story goes that grave robbers dug up this rich guy to see if he had any jewellery or cash stashed on him. They got a bit of a shock when they prised opened the coffin lid and found scratch marks on the inside and the guy gagging for breath. Rather than bury him again to cover up their crime, they brought it to the grave keeper’s notice before disappearing into the night. When the media got wind of the story there was mass hysteria. People only calmed down when the government announced that in future plague victims would be buried with a bell. Even with this back- up method, the whole thing was pretty disturbing for everyone.
This is how I feel when I wake up. It’s dark, I can barely breathe and there’s something heavy pressing against my chest and face. For a split second I panic and think that Creepo has murdered me and buried me out in the forest, only he’s been a bit too hasty on the whole burial thing. My kingdom for a bell.
Then I hear stirring in the next room and it dawns on me where I am. Creepo’s alarm has woken me and he’s in there fumbling around in the dark getting ready for work.
As my eyes adjust, I slowly become aware that the first essence of dawn is stealing into the room.
The first day of the rest of my life. People say that to try to coax themselves off their lazy arses and get out there and do something. But it really is the first day for me. When Serena goes out I’ll get into Creepo’s safe (I hope to God that he hasn’t changed the combination) and get my passport and take a bit of cash to tide me over. After that I’ll hole up somewhere for a while, catch up on some sleep and then when I’m rested I’ll find myself a school. Start getting ready for uni, Médecins Sans Frontières, the vaccine for the eye-eating African worm.
Creepo goes into the bathroom, unleashing the sort of fart that, if anyone had struck a match in his vicinity, would have sent him hurtling into orbit.
‘Tony,’ admonishes Serena from her bed, as used to this morning ritual as he is.
‘Better out than in,’ he replies.
‘Not for me.’
‘Stop complaining or I’ll come in there and give you a Dutch oven.’
‘Don’t be so gross.’
Creepo laughs and closes the door.
‘Love you,’ she calls after him.
There’s no response.
And that’s the thing that shocks me most in all of this. Serena knows that he’s a sick, twisted, arm-breaking, murdering paedo, and yet she still loves the psycho. Actually loves him. Go figure. Maybe when you fall in love you go a bit warped. Your mind partially shuts down. I’ll have to watch out for that. Luckily I’ve never been in love. Or at least, no one’s ever loved me.
When Creepo emerges from the bathroom, for a horrible moment I think he’s going to come back in here, do something with my undies drawer, but he just calls out to Serena to enjoy her coffee with the girls and that he’ll see her around six.
Ten minutes later I hear the garage door clunk open, the guttural growl from the beast as it’s stirred into life, and then finally he’s gone, the beast purring down the street in the early morning sunlight. I’m especially scared at this point because he’ll notice all the other bins and remember that it’s collection day. The truck came in the early hours, clanking down the street like two tanks mating. Hopefully a few of the bins will have their lids flipped open so that even if he does notice them he’ll see that it’s too late.
It takes a couple of minutes before I can relax. He’s not coming back. He’s gone for the day. I’m safe.
I expect Serena to roll over for another three or four-hour snooze but instead she’s in there mumbling on the phone. And she’s not happy.
‘Couldn’t you get it serviced some other time?’ I hear her say as she wanders across the landing and into the bathroom. ‘You know Monday’s our day. I need servicing too. Do you think about that? Tony’s not interested in me any more. Too obsessed with . . .’ she trails of
f. I don’t know what she’s going on about but it seems to me that she’s got serious issues with Creepo – and yet didn’t she just tell him that she loves him?
‘No, I can’t say.’ I can hardly hear her now because, and this is really gross, she’s doing a wee as she’s talking on the phone. And she’s backed up too. It sounds like Niagara Falls in the rainy season. Serena must have a bladder the size of a basketball.
‘I could come and get you, if you want.’ She’s at the sink now, washing her hands.
‘Yeah, really. I don’t see why I should miss out on my coffee with the girls just because of your stupid car.’ She laughs when she says this, though I don’t really understand what’s so funny about having coffee with the girls.
‘Fine. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’
She flushes the toilet, goes back into the bedroom and throws on some clothes and five minutes later the garage door is clunking open again.
When I can no longer hear Serena’s paddock basher, I heave myself out of my coffin. Some of my muscles have seized up, my butt’s raw and my back and neck ache like I’ve been stretched across a rack. I yawn and stretch and try to pump some blood back into the sorer bits. I can hardly believe my luck. I’m cramped up like a ninety-year-old with arthritis, but I had expected to be stuck under the bed for another few hours. Was prepared for it, in fact. Serena is not exactly a morning person. I can’t imagine what she’s up to. Despite what she said on the phone, it’s far too early for coffee. None of the shopping centres will be open yet.
I grab a fresh pair of underpants, making sure that I dig down to an old pair buried deep in my drawer. The pair on the top – obviously the pair Creepo had out – have a gooey stain on them. Eeerrrkkk! If Serena ever goes through my undies drawer she’ll think it was me. I pick up the pair of stained undies like it’s a rabid rat and quickly run into the bathroom and flush them down the toilet.