by Jacob Rayne
‘Got you, fuckface,’ she grinned, rubbing her hand on the shotgun barrel.
She performed a fast and reckless U-turn then followed the car.
For a few heart-breaking minutes, she thought she had lost it, but then she saw it parked up by the side of the road.
The lights were on, the keys still in the ignition.
Without stopping to debate the merits of her plan, she pulled up, killed her engine and took the gun and hid in the back of the car with the red doors.
The car journey seemed to take an age, with Debbie being tossed around, bashing parts of her that she didn’t know existed off the sides of the car.
The driver made several stops, presumably to drop off drugs by the sound of the faux rapper lingo being bandied around by the owner of the car and his customers.
She recognised the driver’s voice as being Boxy, the bastard in charge of the gang who were responsible for the kidnapping of her daughter, and grinned at the thought of what she was going to do to him when she got out of the car.
The shotgun was a reassuring weight in her hands. She was looking forward to seeing what Boxy and the girl looked like after it had been used. Give the fuckers a shotgun makeover.
Finally the car stopped its rounds and pulled up. The handbrake creaked on. Boxy got out of the car and his footsteps slowly faded.
She waited until she heard the front door slam shut then popped the lock on the back door and quietly climbed out of the car.
It was time to get Becki back.
Ten
Debbie’s face twisted into a malevolent grin at the thought of finally getting to use the shotgun on the scum who had tormented her over the past few months.
After ensuring the street was empty with a quick glance over both shoulders, she pressed her face against the front window and saw the girl.
Though she couldn’t see her face, she could tell it was her by the dirt-smeared white Kappa tracksuit top and the scrunchie that pulled her face taut.
‘Gonna get both barrels now,’ she said, grinning and patting the shotgun.
She tried the front door, but it was locked. No problem, she’d get in somehow.
The rear of the semi-detached house had a small window which was ajar, but there was no need for her to climb in; the back door was unlocked.
Debbie shoved the door open and moved inside. She heard voices and laughter from deeper inside the house. Probably hurting Becki some more, she thought with a frown. With this in mind, she picked up the pace.
Someone must have heard her footsteps, because they started to come through the double doors at the end of the corridor.
Debbie pressed herself behind the door and gave the emerging person a solid clip on the jaw with the shotgun butt.
The girl who had taken Becki dropped like a sack of shit, her eyes widening as they saw that Debbie had somehow found her way here.
‘You took my daughter,’ Debbie hissed.
The girl raised her hands above her head but let out a deafening shout.
Debbie gave her a hard shot to the face, shutting her up and mashing her lips into her teeth.
‘Another peep out of you and they’ll be scraping you off the walls for days,’ Debbie growled. ‘Now where is Becki?’
The girl remained tight-lipped, but looked round to the double doors as if seeking help.
Debbie took a quick look into the next room and saw the lad known as Boxy trying to load pellets into an airgun with unsteady fingers.
Before he could do anything, she unloaded both barrels into his gut. Blood spattered her face and clothes. The gun fell to the floor.
‘Where is my daughter, you piece of shit?’ she hissed.
‘Fuck you,’ he managed between agonised breaths.
Blood spurted through the fingers he had clasped to his gut to stem the bleeding.
Out of the corner of her eye, Debbie saw the girl getting up. She went to fire at her but the gun was out of shells. She cursed and reloaded.
Her shot blew chunks of plaster out of the wall as she aimed at the fleeing girl. Debbie followed her upstairs, unable to get a shot in because of the twisting staircase.
Objects came down at her, clay houses and vases that bounced off her head and arms and chest, serving only to madden her and make her all the more determined to get her daughter back.
Finally she reached the top and heard the girl lock herself in one of the rooms. From behind this door she heard Becki’s anguished cry.
This spurred her on to greater efforts and she blew the lock off the door with a close range blast.
The door inched open. Debbie was ready to duck back in case the girl had her own gun.
She didn’t, but she did have a knife and it was pressed to Becki’s throat.
Becki’s cry broke Debbie out of her paralysis. She’d never felt so scared or angry in all of her life.
This scruffy slag had the nerve to hold a knife to her daughter’s throat after everything else she had done.
She was going to curse the day she ever laid eyes on Debbie and her family.
‘Put the knife down or I’ll blast holes in you,’ she said, her eyes narrowed.
The girl laughed. ‘You’ll hit her too, you silly bitch.’
Debbie realised the girl was right. Her aim was less than perfect and the shotgun did spray a pretty wide field of fire, so she was liable to hit her daughter.
‘Put the knife down, bitch,’ Debbie said. ‘You’d hurt a child would you, you fucking coward?’
The girl laughed and drew a bead of blood from Becki’s neck, laughing at Debbie’s cry of rage and Becki’s distressed howl.
Debbie’s rage went up a gear when she saw the blood-encrusted hole where one of Becki’s front teeth had been.
‘You’re going to die for hurting her.’
The girl laughed and put her hand over Becki’s mouth to silence the howl.
‘Becki, play woof-woofs,’ Debbie said.
Grinning, Becki bit down hard on the girl’s finger.
The girl cried out and let go of Becki, who squirmed her way up onto her captor’s shoulders, leaving enough room for Debbie to shoot at her knees.
The shotgun punched holes in the girl’s left knee and she fell to the floor, screaming.
Becki wriggled loose from her grip and started crawling across the floor towards her mother. Her hands and feet left tracks in the blood.
Debbie ran in and threw the shotgun round in a furious strike which knocked the girl’s jaw out of its socket.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped forwards, blood spilling from her gaping mouth.
Debbie grabbed Becki and held her tight, savouring the feel of her daughter in her arms once more.
But it was not time to relax just yet.
She went downstairs to find that Boxy had almost succumbed to blood loss. He was as pale as an albino ghost and a pool of blood surrounded him, steadily pattering down from the edge of the settee onto the laminate floor.
She watched him die, a smile on her lips, though she did turn Becki away from the sight.
When he’d bled out, she turned to leave the room, but stopped when she heard a vibrating sound from Boxy’s pocket.
She pulled the phone out and connected the call, though she didn’t say anything.
‘What’s going on?’ said a vaguely familiar voice. ‘We went to the mother’s house to arrest her but she wasn’t there. I’m starting to regret working with you. Listen, I’m going to come round now with the money and I’ll take the child, as we agreed.’
‘Ok,’ Debbie said, wanting to speak as little as possible so he didn’t realise he wasn’t speaking to the scruffy bitch.
‘I’ll be there soon. Have the kid ready.’ The call cut off abruptly.
Debbie wondered what the hell was going on and she vowed to get answers.
As she set foot in the bedroom where she’d left the girl, something struck her as being wrong, but it wasn’t immediately apparent.
Then she saw that the girl had moved a little. A long blade swung out at knee height, carving a deep bloody trench in Debbie’s inner thigh.
She was no doctor, but she knew it wasn’t healthy to be bleeding like that.
She hissed as she was hit by the worst pain she’d ever felt, but managed to hold the shotgun steady enough to blast the girl’s elbow out. The gore-stained joint stuck through the white tracksuit top. The girl’s scream was music to Debbie’s ears.
She debated whether she should stop, leave the cops to take care of her, but she knew that she longed to see the girl die as much as she had wanted to see Boxy meet his maker.
She shut Becki in a playpen which had been erected in one of the other rooms and went back in to see the girl. She had tried to drag herself back to the knife but seemed to have given up.
Debbie kicked the blade out of her reach and quickly fastened her belt round her own leg as a tourniquet.
‘Boxy just had a phone call,’ Debbie said. ‘A man who said he was bringing money and was going to take the kid. What was that all about?’
The girl snorted laughter, ‘He’s buying your daughter.’
Debbie’s skin crawled at the idea.
She knew that she couldn’t let this go, so she raised the shotgun and aimed it at the girl’s back. The gun blast made Becki cry in the next room and spattered Debbie with further gore. The girl twitched as agony washed over her.
Debbie reloaded and fired another shot into the girl’s spine. Another large chunk of her flesh was chewed out, blood bursting from the wound.
The girl groaned weakly.
Debbie gave her a final shot and left her in a growing pool of her own blood.
Then she picked up her daughter and waited in the front room, the shotgun cradled on her lap like a second child.
She had no idea where the caller was coming from, but a check of Boxy’s phone revealed that it had only been five minutes since the call.
She used the time to think. If she opened the door on the caller, they would immediately see that something was wrong, so she texted to let them know that the front door was open.
A haze came over her as she waited in the chair, and the steady leaking of blood from her leg left her feeling lightheaded.
It wasn’t long before the front door came open.
‘Where are you?’ the familiar voice called out.
Debbie hid behind the door, leaving Becki on the floor in the middle of the room so she was the first thing her unseen visitor would see.
When the door came open Debbie swung the shotgun with all of her might, sending the visitor crashing facefirst to the floor.
She dragged him into the room and turned him over.
Found herself staring at Osbourne, the smug cop who had visited her home.
Eleven
She struggled to process the information at first. Just what in the hell is going on here?
Luckily Osbourne was already starting to stir, so she would have answers soon.
His eyes bulged as they took in Boxy’s blood-spattered body.
They widened further as they saw the shotgun that was aimed at his head.
‘I don’t have long, so you’d best make this quick,’ Debbie growled. She clicked the record button on the phone to capture his statement.
His hands came up passively, the universal sign for I don’t want any trouble.
He spoke fast, his voice an octave higher than usual due to the gun in his face.
‘When I came to assess the damage to your home I saw your daughter and she was just so full of life. My wife and I have been trying for years to have children but it isn’t happening. I wanted her and I know I’d make a great dad.’
Debbie’s mouth hung open.
Osbourne continued. ‘I went round to arrest Boxy and his girlfriend, but they had seen how much I loved Becki and gave me a proposition. They said they’d kidnap her and sell her to me if I kept the police off their backs. Between us, we came up with the plan of getting you to record yourself murdering your neighbour so we had evidence enough to put you away. Then I could take Becki without you kicking up too much of a fuss.’
‘You evil bastard,’ Debbie hissed, her finger tightening slightly on the trigger.
Tears shimmered in his eyes. ‘I only ever wanted to be a dad,’ he sobbed. ‘I would have loved her like she was my own.’
‘She’s mine,’ Debbie growled.
She felt an overwhelming urge to pull the trigger and blow his conniving brain out of the back of his head, but she was sick of killing. She already had four deaths to her name and she would not add more.
‘I should kill you for your part in all of this,’ she began, ‘but I can’t cope with having more blood on my hands. Those two I will not mourn, but my neighbours I will see in my nightmares. I’m going to get your colleagues here, get you named and shamed.’
She hurriedly punched three nines into her phone and blurted her story to the stunned operator.
She stood over him, the shotgun pointed in his face, until the cops arrived.
Blood loss and adrenaline distorted her sense of time, so it seemed the house was surrounded with blue lights almost immediately after she hung up.
The cops cuffed the pair of them. Osbourne was taken to the cells while Debbie was taken to hospital.
When she awoke, she was handcuffed to a hospital bed.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked. ‘Where is Becki?’
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’
‘Getting my daughter back from those scumbags.’
The cop nodded.
‘They killed someone in the park. They murdered my husband and kidnapped my daughter.’
‘I know.’
‘That other cop was involved,’ she said, trying to sit up but hampered by the cuff around her wrist.
‘Relax, we know. We got Osbourne’s statement from your phone and he also confessed to conspiring with the two dead teenagers.’
‘Am I going to go to jail for this?’ she asked, panic-stricken at the thought of missing out on more of her daughter’s life.
‘I wouldn’t like to say, but, under the circumstances, it looks as though you had no choice.’
‘And I let the cop live, even though every part of me was baying for his blood. That’s got to count for something too, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I reckon it has. The doctor told me to call him when you woke, so I’m going to leave you alone for a moment.’
‘Thank you.’
She slumped back to the bed and closed her eyes for what felt like a second.
The curtain behind her rustled and a doctor appeared. He asked how she was feeling, then explained that the wound to her leg had become badly infected.
He said that if the situation didn’t improve over the next twenty four hours, the lower leg would probably need to be amputated.
The policeman undid her cuffs, then carried Becki in. She gave her mother one of those adorable wrinkle-nose grins that Debbie had longed to see.
Debbie was once again distraught to see the hole where Becki’s tooth had been torn loose and hugged her daughter like her life depended on it.
‘I love you with all my heart,’ she said. ‘I won’t ever let anyone hurt you again.’
Becki bounced on her mother’s stomach excitedly. It was clear that she was as happy to see her as she had been to get Becki back.
‘Just you and me now, kidda,’ Debbie whispered.
Debbie’s lower leg did need to be amputated, but the operation was successful. She saw her stump as a badge of pride, but still cursed the day she had become embroiled in the gang’s affairs.
Though she struggled to walk with the prosthetic limb the hospital had given her, she became very proficient in a wheelchair.
She took the wheelchair up the ramp of the court and relived her ordeal in front of a judge and jury.
Osbourne gave evidence, including a full confession of his part in the case
.
The judge admitted that Debbie had acted under duress and in the best interests of her daughter and cleared her of all charges.
Her friends and family showered her with concern, but she didn’t feel deserving of it.
She felt stronger than she ever had in her life.
She had been through hell to get her daughter back and was looking forward to raising her.
Life was much harder now, without her leg and her husband, but, on the plus side, walking in the park was no longer an option.
Digital Children
1
The bones in Josh’s hand ground together beneath the fierce pressure of Marsha’s grip. He gritted his teeth against the pain, knowing it was nothing compared to the agony his wife was feeling.
‘Come on, darling, you can do it,’ he said, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow with his free hand.
Marsha grunted, a fleck of snot flying from her nose as her purple face contorted with agony and exertion. Sweat plastered the white hospital gown to her body.
She sank back to the bed, panting for breath.
Josh felt for her, the delivery of Caleb, their first child, had been brutal so far. An agonising fifteen hour labour in a ward that was hotter than hell was now just finally coming to an end.
If they had another kid, they were going to make sure the delivery date fell in winter. Giving birth at the height of summer was salt in the wound.
Josh whispered to Marsha. She didn’t seem to hear him, just remained lying with her head on the pillow, her eyes closed, letting out little pained breaths.
‘You’re doing great, Marsha,’ the young midwife said. ‘We just need to check the baby isn’t getting distressed.’
Josh nodded. Marsha remained motionless, conserving her energy for the next push.
The midwife moved in and pressed a stethoscope to Marsha’s bulging belly.
Bu-dum-bu-dum-bu-dum-bu-dum-bu-dum came the baby’s heartbeat. Marsha smiled, despite the agony that washed over her.
‘You’ll be holding your beautiful baby boy within the hour,’ the midwife smiled.