by R. S. Higham
“Kill him?” James asked. Calmer than expected.
Stacey paused, “I didn't say kill him. Look I’m just tryin’a help my new friend James out, “He smacked James hard on the back, “I’m gonna get goin’, here’s my number, call me when you have more time to think about it.”
He staggered out of the booth and eventually out of the door, his beastly body swung to and fro like a wrecking ball. James sat for a while, he’d barely touched his drink, he felt sick looking at it, but that wasn’t what was making him feel that way. Deep down inside he was desperate for something more thrilling than his mundane, failure of a life and maybe Stacey could give that to him. When his energy returned to him he stood to leave, Red told him Stacey had taken care of the bill and so James left.
Back at the apartment James pulled his keys out of his pocket and slammed them down on the kitchen counter. Within them was Stacey’s number. He flipped over the paper.
7
The following evening after a fairly lifeless day of recuperating James whipped out his laptop and lounged on the couch with it. The blank Microsoft Word page stared at him.
“Time to get writing.” His hands hovered over the keyboard. The fat man from the bar squeezed his way into his mind and he found himself typing out his characteristics. But the more he wrote the more he realised Stacey was right, he needed to see some real action if he wanted a story. He closed the document without saving.
He glanced over at Stacey’s number and his stomach fluttered like a nervous schoolgirl. He took the paper in his hand, the handwriting was far from neat but it was readable. Taking a nerve steadying breath he dialled the number and after a series of rings a tired, yet familiar voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Stacey? It’s James.”
“James? Didn’t expect your call so soon, you had time to think?”
“Yes.” James replied, but found it hard to continued. “I-I want your help.”
“Well good, heck we’re like vigilan’es! His address is 105 Capri apartments on Jeffrey Street, ‘bout half a mile from here. You got that? Meet me there in therdy minutes.”
“Tonight? Thirty minutes? You’ve got to be joking.” James wanted to do this but he had had no time to prepare or persuade himself that it was a bad idea.
“Now or never, kid. Just be there.” The sound of crackling and then the dialling tone followed as Stacey hung up the phone.
James’ hands were shaking. His heart started thumping in his chest and he felt it was a really bad idea phoning Stacey, it wasn’t too late to cut ties with him was it? He'd barely had time to think.
But he was running out of ideas and money like toilet paper.
He decided to rent a hire-car for a quick getaway; he couldn’t risk anyone spying him standing around the man’s home. He’d used a place up on Frank Street a couple times in the past; they were open pretty much twenty four hours because a lot of the tourists go there when they’ve arrived at the airport. And the fact that the man running the place kept himself to himself was just a welcome bonus.
The icy wind sliced into his cheeks and made his nose run, his voice sounded nasally and typical of the season but he wasn’t too bothered by the cold despite wearing only a thin coat over a T-shirt and jeans, his nervous sweating had seen to that.
James hired a banged-up Ford Mondeo as requested by the balding hermit who was working the graveyard shift. It took him slightly over ten minutes to find the place, he had hoped he would have more time trailing around looking so he could psych himself up for the night ahead but he arrived safe and sound and right on time, yippee. It was a short, squat, off-white building that resembled a prison more than somebody’s home, and it was about as wide as one too. Colourful graffiti embellished the stone balconies that stretched around the length of it.
James exited the car and glanced around for any sign of Stacey, there were a couple other cars on the street but no motorbike, although if he was smart he would have rented too. He waited outside for a few minutes but when Stacey didn’t appear he made his way into the building, checking the floor numbers before going up the stairs. When he reached numbers 100-120 he saw Stacey resting against the wall opposite 105.
“Am I late?” James called, cursing himself for waiting outside.
“Don’t got a watch so I couldn’t say.”
“Is this the place?” James asked.
“Yup, you ready?”
“Sure.”
“You got your notebook?”
“Er, no, I- I didn’t think of it. ”
“You know that’s why we’re doing this; we may as well go home if y-ain’t gonna write about it. I don’t like doing this you know.”
James wasn’t convinced.
“It’s easy for you, you’ve done this sort of thing before, I’ve not.”
“An’ it’s me who’s doing it again, so just stand there an’ take some mental notes, you got that?”
As the door creaked open James hurriedly pulled on the ski-mask Stacey handed him, a man dressed in only his boxer shorts and a white vest stood in the frame.
“It’s a bit late to be making so much noise isn’t it? Can I help you with somethi-?” He trailed off after clocking James’s balaclava, which caused his squinting eyes to widen.
“Yeah, maybe you can, remember me?” Stacey pointed to his injured face.
“No. N-Now please leave –“ He went to slam the door when Stacey shoved his booted foot against it.
“Don’t start things you ain’t plannin’ on finishin’.” He snarled and lunged at him gripping his hands around his throat.
“ggggggggghhhhhh…….please……ggggggggghhhhhh…..stop.” The man gurgled, his face turned the colour of a fire truck.
“You’re gonna kill him!” James shouted, but Stacey kept his hands clasped firmly around the man’s throat. His head turned a gruesome purple and his voice became a high pitched croak. James threw all his weight at Stacey but barely staggered him. He clawed at his bear like hands, trying to pry his sweaty fingers off the man’s neck but it was no good. He was too strong.
The man’s final attempt to scream was no more than gargled wheezing and his eyes looked set to burst out of his head. His dead body went limp in Stacey’s hands. James stumbled backwards white as a ghost, his whole body shivered, it was like some terrible nightmare. Stacey was still standing over the body when James ran down the corridor and smacked into the door leading to the stairway. He leaned for a moment on the railing, his mouth hanging open. The rest was a blur. Somehow his body managed to get to the bottom of the staircase and took one last look up to the floor where he’d just watched Stacey murder a complete stranger, but there was no movement, he hadn’t left the corridor yet. A cold chill made its way up James’ spine.
His hands were almost shaking too much to hold his keys but after stabbing them a little above the keyhole and a little to the left of it he finally pushed them in and turned- click- he opened the door and slumped onto the driver’s seat, breathing rapidly, his heart thumping loudly in his ears. It felt like a dream, or a horror movie. That reminded him of his book, in all the excitement he’d almost forgotten, his wonderful book, his brilliant idea, and there he was thinking he had no imagination, he had told Audrey Hope he had something big planned. James started to laugh, “what a disaster.” His mind was still in shock, the gravity of the situation barely registering, and he hoped it would stay that way.
The drive home was a blur.
After dropping the rental off he walked back to his apartment and poured himself a glass of milk, warmed it in the microwave, and mixed in a spoon full of cocoa. His mom used to make it for him when he was a kid and his dad always said the same thing. “Chocolate milk is for babies, Jim, when you gonna start drinking coffee like a man?” And he had tried coffee once when he was young. His dad had to go and change his youngest brother’s nappy who was two years old at the time, he left the breakfast table with his bacon and eggs and coffee unattended so James h
ad a sip, it put him off coffee for about seventeen years.
He was surprisingly calm considering what had just surpassed, that said it’s a lot easier to be guilt free when you have someone else doing the dirty work for you. He opened his laptop almost robotically and started jotting down notes, the more he wrote- the better he felt. It started to seem fictional as though every word was of his own devising. His empty stomach groaned- he lifted his hands off the keys. His head banged- he reached for his drink. Dizziness then blackness followed.
8
At half past ten that same morning James woke with little memory of the previous hours. It wasn’t just a blur it had completely vanished as though he’d been dreaming so vividly and then woke up and –pop- the dream was gone. “The last thing I remember I was in Red’s with Stacey and he paid for our drinks and… did I get drunk? No I don’t think I drank anything. Then how did I forget what happened between then and now? Maybe I did have a few drinks then…” He downed a glass of water to ease the aching dehydration in his head and quickly showered. The best explanation he could come up with, and as the day went by he came to believe it more and more, was that he’d simply drank a few beers with Stacey and stumbled home, he was probably drinking subconsciously as he and Stacey chatted. It sounded reasonable, but his mind didn’t completely drop the subject, it felt like something was missing. A full day was missing.
He made himself a couple rounds of peanut butter on toast and flicked through the channels, although he wasn’t watching it his mind was too busy thinking about last night, even though he tried to push it to the back of his mind it kept springing forward again, it was starting to grate on him, why wouldn’t it just go away? Why couldn’t he accept that he’d forgotten what had happened? Was it really so important? He leapt up from the couch and felt his way into the bathroom, his eyes were black from standing too soon. His mouth filled with sour bile, it was almost drooling from his mouth. He fell to the bathroom floor and gripped the toilet seat with two hands. The cleaning smell made the vomit rise faster and soon enough a large black, semi-solid clump of God knows crept up his throat and hit the water like a block of concrete causing it to splash in his face. James washed his hands and mouth and wiped the toilet with an anti-bacterial cloth, he was a clean man, generally. “What on earth brought that on?” He said to himself, his now empty stomach eased. The phone started ringing, unfortunate timing; he practiced his ‘hello’ into the mirror but his voice was still croaky from the puking.
He winged it. “Hello?”
“James, its Audrey, just checking in, how’s the writing going?” She asked.
“I thought I said give me a month, it’s only been about three days.” He twisted the cord between his fingers.
“Chill out, James! I’m just checking your doing OK, I should hope you’re working your butt off, hm?”
“Yeah, yeah I am, done nothing but.” He said.
“Because I’ve decided I want a detailed plot by the end of this week. Start to end.” She added.
“What?” He choked. “Audrey you can’t expect me to- “
“I do.” She cut him off. “I thought you told me you already have something to write about, I’m really not asking for much. A page or two, something to grip me, it can be an extract of what you’ve already written, just give me the flavour of it.”
“Audrey, I’m not sure I’m able to…” He insisted, rather feebly.
“Good-bye James.” She hung up the phone.
“Audrey, wait!- Dammit she’s gone.” “I haven’t written a sentence since we last spoke… I guess she’s got a point, how can I call myself a writer when I don’t even write?”
He started up his laptop, he had left it in sleep mode as he usually did and a Microsoft Word document was open, the last time he wrote was a week ago when he was jotting down some very unimaginative plot ideas. He was sure he had closed it since then.
When he brought it up there was at least three pages of writing he’d never seen before. He read through it, it was a detailed account of last night.
“What the? When did I write this?” His brow furrowed as he struggled to stop reading, he could see the words clearly in his mind but it wasn’t the product of descriptive writing, it was because he remembered it. His mind shot back to the apartment building, the imposing concrete walls and how he thought of the families who called that awful place home, the children who would spend Christmas’s in there pulling crackers and opening presents. How could he forget?
“This happened, didn’t it?” He asked himself. “Last night, I was there, I did this, I murdered this man.” He stood, dazed and walked unsteadily to the phone to call the police and turn himself in when another memory appeared from nowhere, stopping him in his tracks, it was Stacey, that man from the bar, stood against the wall in front of the man’s apartment. He woke his phone and went to contacts; there was Stacey, his name and number. He called it.
“Hey there, Slim.” A gruff voice laughed.
“What do you want?” James hissed.
“What do I want? Sonny, you called me! You tell me what I want!”
“This isn’t funny; did you put something in my drink last night? I can’t remember a thing!” He shouted.
“Last night? Son, we hit the bar two days ago. Did you fall and hit your head after you ran off and left me to clean up the mess?” He was notably calm as opposed to James who looked to have aged ten years in the last thirty seconds.
“Two days ago? Ran off?” He paused,- “did I kill him?” He asked.
“Kill him? Your face was so pale- you couldn’t kill a man with a rocket launcher, an’ I only used my hands.” Stacey said.
“I didn’t kill him? Oh thank God! Then why was I there? Why did I see it? Why did I write about it?” He asked.
“You answered it all in one; I helped you out, as a friend. You needed somethin’ to write about so I provided.”
James was silent. He had so many questions but none of them seemed to matter. “I don’t understand, why would you do this… for me?” He almost said “to me”.
“Why not? Look, if I knew ya’lled be actin’ this way I wouldn’t have, I’m sorry I put ya through it.”
That knocked him back, an apology was the last thing he expected. “Okay… can I ask one more thing?”
“Shoot.”
“Won’t Kate tell the police that her boyfriend got into a fight with you and then he suspiciously winds up dead?”
Stacey laughed, “oh, that wasn’t him.”
“Then who was it?” James went on, but the phone was silent, he looked at it, it was back at the home screen. Stacey was gone.
He spent the rest of the day reading through what he had typed up and trying to swallow it, it was a bitter pill. It was a relief he hadn’t actually hurt anybody, not directly anyway, but it was his fault they were there.
As the hour hand crossed over 9PM he decided to start writing the plot. He had to start writing soon and perhaps this was a sign from some divine power, although the only deity that fit the bill would be the Lucifer. He started by jotting down a few character traits and Stacey certainly had a lot, this was going to be easy.
9
‘Stacey was above average height and above average weight. He was from an inbred family which made him slow and dumb and his face was misshapen. Throughout his school years he’d been bullied horrendously. They’d hit him with thick tree branches and giggle as he’d whimper in pain and sometimes they would draw blood, a lot of blood. The younger boys often freaked out and ran off but the more Stacey kept returning to school the more violent they got knowing they’d never be caught. This all came to an end when one summer afternoon the group of boys chased Stacey through a neighbouring forest. It was dense and dark and Stacey was a slow runner. Mark Sugden, the leader advanced on him in a flash; Stacey lay sprawled on the bed of twigs and pine needs as Mark bust his face open with blow after blow. Stacey didn’t try to cover his face with his arms like he usually did and Mark stopp
ed confused. He looked down to Stacey’s stomach, a patch of red was soaking his T-shirt. A tree branch was poking through his skin.
“Oh, crap!” Mark shouted as he leapt up off of him, by now the other boys had just caught up and they were screaming too. Stacey was silent for a moment then he let out a infantile cry. The proverbial scales fell from each boys eyes, no longer was he an object to toy with and ridicule, he was like them, he bled like them, in that moment they found their humanity.
Stacey never came back to school, as far as the boys knew he had survived the incident but he never came back.
We fast forward thirty years to meet Stacey again, living in the same forest where he had been grievously injured. His hovel – a clever little dug out covered by a thick layer of moss, completely hidden. Inside there were no necessities like a bed, food, water, he gathered all of this from the forest when he needed it and slept on a pile of leaves. Surviving like Frankenstein’s monster on berries and nuts it was a mystery how he had managed to live. But something snapped one day in Stacey’s fragile mind, most believe he saw a group of boys walking through the woods who reminded him of Mark and his gang and the memory of that day thirty years ago spurred his actions. The hard fact is he wanted revenge on the world that hated him, the men that punished him simply for being different and he was finished living in the woods.
The quiet town of Foxbridge was his target. The inhabitants had long forgotten about their deformed friend, his family had been run out of town years back when they started looting the shops and tormenting the young girls, a few unfortunate inbreds had been beaten to death in the riot but the townsfolk tried hard to bury that secret along with the dead bodies. They had presumed Stacey had either joined them or died in a ditch somewhere but they were just glad to be rid of all of them. The police department had become lazy and had gained a few pounds now they didn’t have any one from The Hills Have Eyes to chase and crime was at its lowest ever. The dark secret was sticky enough to bind people together, no one ever spoke of it but it always cast a shadow across people’s faces and no one wanted to follow their example with petty crime.