“So, we’ve had a few bands in since you place,” the red head talks non-stop as we move. “But none as good as you. We’ve really missed you a lot, you know. Or at least I have.”
“Hmm,” I comment idly, barely listening now. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, we had this one guy with bongo drums which was as bad as it sounds I can assure you…”
Soon we’re outside the bar again and I get that weird sense of déjà vu. The last time I was here I was just about to go onto the cruise that changed my life. For the worse, yes, but also for the best if tomorrow goes well. I don’t know how to feel about it, it’s a strange sense of anticipation that fills me.
The red head fiddles in her pockets, looking for the keys and she slides it into the door quickly. Once it’s unlocked, she pushes on the door before falling backwards and clapping her palm onto her forehead.
“Oh my God,” she gushes. “I almost forgot to pick up toilet paper. I can’t start the day without getting some or I’ll never get time. Then it’ll end up a real mess in there and I’ll get complaints all day long.” She gives me an odd look, as if she’s weighing me up. “Will you go in there and hold the fort for me for like five minutes? I won’t be long I promise, I just need to head to that shop around the corner. You can pour yourself a drink.”
I take this as a sign. “Actually, I think I need to get going…” I call after her, but it’s too late, she’s gone.
I huff and push the door open. I can’t leave the bar unlocked and unattended, it might get broken in to. I’ll just wait inside for a few minutes, get one drink, then go when she gets back, get to the police station and get started…
“Stephen Jones,” a deep male voice booms making me jump. “Well, well, well, we meet again.”
“Huh?” I’m confused. “What? I’m sorry, I thought…” I don’t even know her name. “I thought there was no one here. I was told to come to be here so no one broke in…”
“By Katie?” A shadowy figure comes into the light. It’s someone tall, with dark hair and a scarred face. I can’t pick out anymore features than that because it’s still quite bleak in here. “The red-haired beauty who works here? Yeah, I know. I told her to say that. You see, me and her have gotten very close recently.”
“Close?” Of-course I know what he means by close, how could I not know. Me and her have been close too. Whoever this man is shagged Katie to get to me, or so it seems, and I need to work out why. I think I might possibly know, but then again, I don’t want my paranoia to dictate me either. It’s already ruined enough of my time in America. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Me and you need to have a little chat don’t you think? About your time on the Princess Cruise.”
Right. Of course. Just what I thought it was going to be about. “I…” I stammer, staggering backwards. “I don’t…” Do I deny that I saw anything? Do I pretend I never intended to tell anyone? Do I grow some balls and front it out? “I don’t know…”
“There’s no point in trying to convince me of anything, Stephen Jones. I already know that it was you who saw a little incident on the boat and now we need to make it right.”
“I… I won’t tell.” I try to edge my way back towards the door, but I quickly stagger back into another male body behind me. My heart hammers in my chest, a nauseous feeling overcomes me. I cannot believe that I’ve been duped. Katie tricked me into this mess and now I have no idea how I’m going to come out of it. “I didn’t even really see anything so I have nothing to say. Plus, the cops will probably blame me too because I didn’t do anything. Maybe I’ll get locked up too. Not that I’m going to say anything, or do anything. I just want to…” I feel like my tactic isn’t working. I need to try something else. “I will go back to New Zealand. You never have to see me again.”
“I won’t ever see you again.” I see a baseball bat being pulled out from behind the man’s back which confirms it. I’m in real trouble. I glance my eyes everywhere, trying to search for an escape but there isn’t any way out. Bodies surround me everywhere. This man isn’t giving me any chance to get away. He clearly doesn’t know what my skills are when it comes to fighting. Admittedly I have no fighting skills, but that might not be the case I suppose.
“Please,” I beg. “Please just let me go.”
“Don’t start begging.” The man with the baseball bat doesn’t look impressed. “It never suits people when they start begging just take it like a man, okay?”
“W… why not a gun?” The men move closer to me. The circle moves closer to me, I can feel the air squeezing out of my lungs. Any minute now I’ll pass out and make their job easy for them. “Wouldn’t that be cleaner?”
“Easier for you maybe,” the man laughs. “But more boring for us. Also, loud.” He shrugs in a blasé manner, making it obvious that this is something he does all the time. “Little Katie gave us this place out of the kindness of her heart. I don’t want to abuse that trust by getting her in trouble.”
The world spins violently around me, I can barely see anymore. I blink frantically, trying to regain my vision but fear has it now. The man steps forward and lifts the bat above his head. I flinch which only makes him laugh. He’s toying with me, playing with my emotions, like a tiger with a mouse.
“Okay, I… I’ve learned my lesson… I won’t… I won’t…”
But I don’t get to finish my sentence, because then a bat slams down on the side of my head leaving me with a blinding, red hot pain. It burns down my neck, down my back, to my knees. My legs shake, I can feel myself falling to the ground. It’s almost as if the bat has rid me of a lot of my brain function and I can’t cope anymore.
Then I fell a kick at the back of my leg, sending me the rest of the way down. I’m helpless, tumbling like a blade of grass. There isn’t even enough of me to fight back. I might not stand a chance but I can’t even do it. My arms slowly move upwards to protect my face but it’s too late. They’re already beating me on every part of my body, trying to leave none of it unscathed. If I survive this then every inch of my body will likely hurt forever more. I won’t be the same person anymore.
But I don’t think I’m going to survive this.
The blackness is coming for me, I can feel it. It’s like a circle around me trying to claim me. There’s a part of me that wants to claw and cling to life, to hold on to what I’ve worked so hard for. I want that life, the one that I was just working towards, the one I was just about to get…
Police today, interview tomorrow.
Maybe that’s not going to happen now. Maybe nothing is going to happen now. Maybe it’s time to just give in to the blackness.
Chapter Eleven - Tia
The day starts just like any other. I have no idea that my world as I know it is about to come to an end. I’ve been trying my hardest to work out where I’m going next with my life and packing up my belongings along the way so at least I’m making progress to moving on with my life. I know that I need to get away from my family, that must have been evident since the damn day that I set foot back into my home, I just need to decide where I want to go. Yes, start up money isn’t a barrier, but that’s not all that I need to think about. When I go, I want it to be right. I sure as hell don’t want to be back here in a few months time with my tail between my legs, needing to start again.
As I pad down the stairs to grab myself some breakfast I try to gear myself up. I do this every morning at the moment, I’m trying to brave the moment when I’ll actually tell Mom that I’m leaving. I want to do it, I want her to know that she’s driven me away, but I keep stopping myself at the last moment. The second I say those words it all becomes real and I guess I don’t want that to happen until I’m sure of where my next move will be. I keep thinking that maybe I should move near Diana, Helen, or Alexa, just so I have someone I know around me, but I’m not too sure. I don’t know what I want.
“Morning,” Mom calls out brightly, as if she can’t see the inner turmoil snaking through me. “You
look tired today.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I grumble back while taking a seat at the dining table. My head shakes in shock as her greeting words. “Good morning to you, too.”
She places the newspaper on the table, one I’m sure she’s only pretending to read, and she examines me more closely. Her eyes rake over my body as if she’s picking up all of my insecurities one by one. I almost want to fold my arms across my chest to hide myself but I know there’s no point. That’ll only make her worse.
“You know, you could always come to a spa with me today,” she muses thoughtfully, probably assuming that she’s being helpful. “My masseuse is a very nice man. Handsome too.” She sends me a wink as if we’re girlfriends rather than mother and daughter. It makes me feel sick that she can just act so normally when she knows that I know the truth about her and Dad. Isn’t she embarrassed at all? “I’m sure he’ll be able to fix you up and put a smile on your face.”
I roll my eyes and push myself into a standing position. Then I move my way over to the coffee pot. I need some caffeine if I’m going to get through this without losing my freaking mind. “Yeah, we’ll see, Mom. I don’t know much about that.”
The liquid pours into the mug and I focus on that sound rather than the drivel coming out of Mom’s mouth. If she honestly thinks I’m going to go on a girly day out with her then she’s got another thing coming. Once it’s full, I press the mug to my lip and allow the delicious heat to sear through my throat. Then I move back to my seat, grabbing the newspaper as I go. Maybe if I put it up in front of my face, she’ll take the hint that I really don’t want to talk to her.
“…so I think it’ll be good for the both of us to spend some time together, don’t you?”
“Hmmm,” I murmur while flicking open the pages. She continues to talk but I pay no attention. My eyes simply scan the words as if I’m drinking them in. I’m not really reading anything, until…
“Oh my God.” My heart stops dead in my chest, sickness rises up into my throat, I have to gulp to keep it all inside. “Holy fuck.”
“Tia!” Mom has the indecency to sound shocked by my curse word, as if that’s the worse thing that happens in this house. “What was that for?”
“Oh, my God.” I ignore her, pushing back my chair and moving away from my coffee mug as I forget all about it. The words in front of my eyes swim and dance, grabbing my attention much more fiercely than anything else. “I have to go.”
I bolt back up the stairs before Mom can say anything else, taking them two at a time as my heart pounds boiling hot blood right through my body. My brain buzzes as if I have a large bee inside there, clouding up my thoughts, I don’t know what the hell to do anymore. This is… it’s just too much.
Once I’ve flopped back onto my bed and I stretch my body out, I pull the paper back out and I find the article once more. It’s still there, it hasn’t vanished into thin air as if I’ve imagined it, which I half expected it to do. But nope, it’s still there.
‘Stephen Jones, small time musician, found dead in local bar.’
No, it just can’t be. This can’t be possible. I reach across to the night stand and I grab Stephen’s pick which I roll between my fingers as I read. Maybe we only spent one night together and maybe he ditched me at the end of it, but I still feel like we shared something special. I still feel like we had some sort of connection that I really enjoyed. Now he’s just… gone. Dead. Vanished.
‘Barmaid of the Crown, Katie Miller, found the beaten body of Stephen Jones and was the one to contact the police. “I don’t know what happened,” she told us. “I locked up the night before and no one was in the bar, then the following morning I unlocked it to find him.”. She did not know Jones, but had seen him play at the Crown a few weeks before. “He seemed troubled, like he knew that he was in trouble.”’
I scrunch the paper between my fingers, growing angry with each passing word. Stephen certainly didn’t seem troubled to me. When we met, he seemed happy as anything, and that gig he played was absolutely amazing. There was no way he knew that he was in trouble. The only strange thing to happen was that he vanished in the middle of the night after we had sex and I didn’t seem him for the rest of the time that I was aboard, but that doesn’t mean anything… does it?
Not able to solely believe the words written in the paper, I click onto the Internet to try and find out more. Everyone knows that online journalists are much quicker than traditional ones, so I’m sure that if there’s any more information to be found, it will be online.
Nope, nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is madness!
After fifteen very frustrated minutes, the only info I can find is what I already know. I guess Stephen Jones just wasn’t an important enough person to warrant more news than that which is sad. He had a whole life, and he was murdered, and no one seems to care. Except me… and his family in New Zealand of course.
With a deep and sorrowful sigh, I fold the paper up and I tuck it away. I can’t look at the words anymore, they’re crushing me, making me feel ill. I didn’t have much with Stephen Jones, but with the shitty way that my life has been going recently this is just another thing that brings my mood even lower. It crushes me and makes me want to weep pathetically.
I can’t stay here, I think with a hot determination. Even more than before. I have to get away. There cannot be any more excuses. No tears, no sadness, just action.
I push myself off the bed and glance around my room. I don’t have much packed up because I didn’t want it to be obvious what I was doing, but I have the essentials. I have all I need even if I don’t have all that I want. I can just take all of that and leave right now. I can go and never look back. I can say goodbye to my murderous father, my pathetic mother and I can just become me… whoever the hell I am.
With that one thought in mind I stand up and move over to my wardrobe. I ignore all of my fancier clothes and go for some comfortable sweat pants instead. I don’t know how I know it with such clarity, but I just know that I need to get out the country if I want to really escape this… at least for the time being. Moving to another state won’t be far enough I need to be somewhere so far away that all of this is a distant memory.
Once I’m dressed I flick my laptop back open and I head towards the airline website. I figure I’ll pick somewhere on a whim, whatever flight is leaving today. I just need to get out before I succumb to the sobs and I spend another week on my bed crying. If I let the sadness of Stephen’s death to get the better of me then I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can escape. Maybe I didn’t know Stephen well, but I don’t think he’d want me to cave to depression.
I grip tightly to the pick as I run my eyes over the available flights, waiting for inspiration to hit, and soon it does. There’s one flight that stands out, that grabs my attention without me even trying. The only seat available is in economy class which isn’t what I’m used to and won’t be pleasant, but there’s something about it that still feels right. It’s a country that’s calling out to me, drawing me in.
New Zealand.
Maybe I can’t have the guy, but maybe that isn’t the reason he came into my life in the first place. Maybe I was always supposed to go to New Zealand. Without dwelling too much on the decision, I hit book and allow a flurry of excitement to wash over me. Then I grab my bag and I race down the stairs with the hint of a smile on my face. Everything still sucks I know that, but I feel good to be taking action. It’s pretty much the first time in my life that I’ve ever done something so productive.
“Mom,” I call out loudly. “I’m going.”
“Where are you going?” she replies, coming to join me in the hallway by the front door. “And why do you have that big rucksack?”
“I’m moving, Mom. I’m finally going.”
“Oh.” She looks understandable stunned. “Right, I see. Where are you going.”
The words roll off my tongue feeling so damn good. “New Zealand.”
Mom clutches her chest loo
king like she might throw up. “You can’t leave the country,” she gasps. “You can’t just go like that.”
“I’m an adult, Mom, I can do what I like.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“Your father won’t like it.” She shakes her head rapidly. “He’ll stop giving you money. You’ll be stuck out there in a different country all by yourself.”
I think about the money that I already have in my bank account and shrug. I have more than enough to get me started, even without a steady influx, and I’ll just get a job when I’m out there. No problem. Actually, the idea of starting again all by myself with the pressure of having to do something with my life is nice. I feel like that’s exactly what I need right now.
“I know, Mom.” I shrug. “But this is what I have to do.”
With that I open the door and I scoot outside without looking back once. I know I’m making the right choice, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I need this. I need to go.
Chapter Twelve - Tia
One Month Later…
“Oh my God, I needed this night out,” my new best friend, Ashley, smirks and rolls her eyes. “Work is really riding my ass at the moment.”
“Yeah, me too,” I comment idly. I don’t mind though, I like the hard work. Landing the position as a staff writer for one of the smaller newspapers in Wellington was a pleasant shock and just proved to me that leaving America was the best thing for me… a fact that I have confirmed to me every single day. “Good job it’s Julia’s birthday then.”
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