Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  Chapter 7

  Bullocks

  Yesterday I thought I had problems, but that was yesterday. Today, I couldn’t have cared less about the neds in my head, or my presentation at work for that matter. They were nothing compared to the problem I was facing now.

  OK, I had to think. I had a lot to do here. Best take a leaf out of Karen’s book and write a list:

  1: Make sure yesterday’s clothes are clean

  2: Strap Michael in pram in front of TV

  3: Empty dish washer

  4: Put jacket away

  5: Make sure Karen has gone

  6: Get rid of cat

  7: Take Michael to soft play

  The clothes in the washing machine looked like the clothes I’d had on yesterday, no sign of blood anywhere. Good, I could tick that one off the list. Michael was more than happy to sit in front of the TV watching his favourite program Hi Five. On switching it on, Michael started to sing along with the title song. The chorus went something like: one, two, three, four… hi five! Michael interpreted this as: dug a dug a dug a… I five. Close enough. Tick.

  I emptied the dish washer and hastily put my jacket away, dropping it several times in the process. “Fuck!” I yelled as the jacket beside it slid off its hook. It wasn’t like I had all day. It only took about thirty seconds to get all the coats to stay put, but that was thirty seconds that could have been spent mopping up a moggy.

  I checked out the living room window to make sure that Karen’s car had indeed gone. It had. Good. Tick. I looked at my watch. Bloody hell, half an hour had passed. At this rate Karen would be back before I had a chance to get to soft play.

  Right, focus… what’s next on the list?

  *

  Picture the scene. I was standing over a dead cat, one hand on the tail, attempting to push the rigid body sideways into a black, plastic bag, a bag that refused to open properly. God, I was having no luck today! I cursed the air. It was like someone was standing over me, impeding my very actions. Probably my dad.

  No. My dad wouldn’t do that to me. For starters hopefully he knew that I had very little to do with this abomination. I still wasn’t sure that I had even done it. In fact, in a strange sort of way I was convinced that I hadn’t.

  I pushed again. No luck, the headless moggy refused to go in.

  “Please dad, help me. Please.”

  For a second I thought I was about to start crying, my voice almost cracking. I stopped to take a deep breath. “OK. Calm down. Take a deep breath and calm down.”

  Shit, I almost jumped out of my skin. My phone had just beeped. I held the cat over the bag as I rummaged around in my pocket. The position I was standing in – legs akimbo either side of the tarpaulin – prevented me from getting easy access. “Fucking hell!”

  I glowered at the screen on finally getting it free; I didn’t have time for this. The message didn’t have a name attached, but it didn’t take me too long to recognise the number. The text consisted of three simple words: “See you soon.”

  What the fuck? Who the hell did he think he was?

  A memory suddenly appeared before my eyes. Why this particular memory had decided to raise its ugly head now was anyone’s guess. The memory was of me as a kid, twenty-seven to be precise. And it involved the casuals.

  When I was young the cool gang at school was called the casuals. This group didn’t consist of your ivy league kids, as Americans might have called them, no, these kids were thugs who’d jump on your head just for looking at them. I was friendly with one or two of them in my school, but most of the nastier ones were running feral after having been expelled. I suppose they were a bit like the neds of today, the only difference being they looked cool as fuck. They were always dressed in the latest fashions, which changed like the wind; neds on the other hand are far from cool, and appear to have been stuck in a time warp for the past fifteen years. Surely someone at some point must have told them that Burberry hats went out of fashion the moment they came in. And what’s with the sports gear? What is this time spanning phenomenon we call the track suit? At least the thugs in my day looked good.

  Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is that most of these kids were a nuisance to all including themselves. For one, they would be constantly asking you if you had any spare change; you would be walking down the high street, and just like that, wham, they would have you. It’s unnerving how charming a thug can be when he wants something from you. More often than not you would have to part with your mum and dad’s hard earned cash. It was that, or part with your head.

  This was how it was when I was a kid, somewhere back in the eighties. I left that all behind, though, when I was eighteen. I left for University, only to return to visit my mum and dad on the holidays.

  Some years later, when I was in my late twenties, I was walking down the same high street that I used to get bullied on. I had been away for almost a decade. In the time since I’d left home I had become a man of the world. I’d been to University, got myself a degree in IT and had gone on to have a successful career as a programmer. My childhood was far behind me, the thugs from my past a laughing memory, either in prison, strung out on drugs, or better still… dead. These kids were all but ghosts to me now.

  Or were they?

  As I walked down the street I think I must have pissed my professional pants. Standing on the edge of the high street was one of the worst casuals of his day. He was standing with a load of kids dressed in tracksuits: the modern days casuals. It was obvious to me, right from the moment I saw him, that this guy hadn’t just stopped to chat with them, he was one of them.

  As I marvelled at how time had frozen for this guy, something terrible began to happen: the ex-casual raised his head and spotted me. And then… BANG! The starter gun was off, and both him and his tracksuit were jogging over towards me.

  “Peter? It’s Peter right?”

  He knew my name. How the hell did he remember my name?

  “Yes,” I stammered. “Smitty, isn’t it?” I acted as though I couldn’t quite remember him, but damn right I remembered him. Smitty started to reminisce, evoking cine films in my mind that I had long since wanted to forget. I smiled back at him politely, but in truth I just wanted him to slither back into the past from whence he’d come.

  As he talked I remembered. I remembered how this guy had thrown his head straight into a complete stranger, just for laughing whilst walking past him. Back then he was a nutter of the highest order and probably still was. I wished he would just go away.

  You should be careful what you wish for.

  In the blink of an eye his chat had all but stopped. He had noticed someone else across the street. He nodded to the person as if to say I’ll be with you in a minute, and then he let me have it.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any spare change on you, would you?”

  My mind came to a halt. My God, nothing had changed.

  “Sorry... sorry, I have nothing on me.”

  Up until that moment his attention had been firmly fixed on the person across the street. On saying this I suddenly realised that he was right back with me. A look of disgust suffused his face. “Really?” he said with a sneer. “Come on now. You don’t look poor to me. Any money I find on you I keep.”

  I was dumb struck. What had he just said? Any money I find on you I keep? Any money I find on you I keep? It took me a couple of seconds to process this incongruous information. I was a man of the world, a respected professional, and yet this greasy, lanky bastard had managed to throw me right back into my purple blazer and tie. I didn’t want to go back to school. Despite being good at exams, I’d hated school.

  “Sorry,” I spluttered.

  “You heard me. Any money I find on you I keep.” Smitty’s charming demeanour had well and truly gone. In its place was the angry thug of my youth, the one who would jump on your head as quick as look at you.

  “I’m telling you the truth. Look, all I have is a bank card. I don’t carry cash on me the
se days.”

  “Fair enough. There’s the bank over there.” Smitty pointed towards a hole in the wall. “I don’t mind waiting.”

  What the fuck?

  Smitty suddenly spotted someone else, or perhaps he realised he’d pushed me just that little bit too far. Anyway, whatever the reason he decided to leave it at that; but just before he left me he turned once more, an angry sneer zig zagging across his face like a scar. He touched his throat. Oh God, he was going to tell me I was a dead man.

  “When you shave,” he said, “you really should shave the bits under your adam’s apple. It looks a fucking mess.”

  And that’s when it dawned on me; that’s when I realised why this particular memory had chosen to rear its ugly head now. That feeling of indignity, of anger for letting this man do this to me was the same. How dare he do this to me. Who the fuck did he think he was? See you soon. See you fucking soon?

  I looked down at the text message, just to make sure that it was actually from the priest’s brother. For a split second I was that child again being bullied by the school thug. I had a good mind to throw his God damned book in the bin. Where was it anyway? I looked about the room to see if I could see it, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  It was then that I remembered the cat.

  I looked down to see the kitty’s sphincter winking back at me. I had to get rid of the cat before Karen got home.

  Wrap it up in the tarpaulin, then put it in the bag.

  I put the body back down on the ground and started to roll it up. Why didn’t I think of that? The freeze wrapped kitty slipped sweetly into the bag. “Thanks, dad,” I said, acknowledging the fact that the idea had probably come from him.

  I stopped in my tracks. I had forgotten to add a task to my list: Find the cat’s head.

  *

  Yesterday I had spotted someone who might have been someone from my past, someone who had caused me a lot of pain. But lets put things into perspective here: it wasn’t like he was a threat to me now. In fact, now that the cat thing had happened, I couldn’t have given two shits about the neds.

  I paused to think about this as I unstrapped Michael from his pram. Was that right? Whereas yesterday I had whipped myself up into a feral frenzy over them, today I didn’t actually give a damn. It was as though nothing had happened.

  The cat on the other hand was a big problem. How the hell was I going to get rid of it? I had wrapped it up in a double bin liner and placed it into a carpet bag. Even that wasn’t enough in my mind. Where was I going to put it? I could take it to the dump and throw it away with all the other rubbish. I looked about the room for something to throw away along side it. Surely no-one would suspect me if I were throwing away loads of things.

  But what if the dump had CCTV? What if the bin men scooping up the rubbish accidentally ripped open the bags to find Tiddles? They could roll back the CCTV cameras to spot the car that dumped her in the first place. They would then trace the number plate to my door. And then they’d have me.

  “Stop being ridiculous.”

  But hang on a minute. Don’t all cats have smart chips in them these days. They would be able to use it to trace the cat back to the next-door neighbour. They would then rewind the CCTV, spot my car, and they’d have me.

  And what about DNA analysis? Could they trace my DNA?

  OK. The dumps out. So where am I going to put it?

  I could throw it in a river. I could take it into the middle of nowhere and toss it into a large body of water.

  But what happens if someone finds it, traces the chip and reports it back to the neighbour. Even if they didn’t know it was me, it was going to look suspicious. No way would a cat wander off ten miles or so just to throw itself in a river. And I don’t think it would wrap itself up in a black bin bag either. Cat’s are clever, but not that clever.

  Shit, I was going to have to be smarter than this. Perhaps the middle of nowhere wasn’t such a bad idea. I could take it out into the middle of a wood and bury it. No one would ever find it if I buried it deep enough. Surely there would be no CCTV in the countryside.

  Hang on a minute, though.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  Just then Michael’s face popped into my head. This was going to take time, so I was going to have to utilise all of my options here. Karen’s mum lived just down the road. She had only recently moved back from Australia, where she had lived for the past thirty years. Neither Karen nor her mum had spoken to her dad in a long time. He had a problem with alcohol, something Karen didn’t like to talk about. As far as Karen and her mum were concerned, Karen’s dad was still in Australia.

  I quickly phoned Karen’s mum to see if she was in. She was, and she was more than happy to look after him for a while. One problem solved.

  It was then that I remembered the head. I had looked everywhere for it, but to no avail. God, if my kids found that head, if Karen found it, I’d be in deep shit. Think, think. Where could it be? OK, the most logical place would be the cinema room. I decided to lock it for now and worry about it later. I gave the downstairs one more cursory look, just to be sure it wasn’t lying about, but still there was nothing.

  I’d worry about it later.

  I grabbed the bagged cat from the hallway, locked the front door and headed for my car. And I was just about to throw Tiddles in the back when someone called my name.

  “Pete?” I turned to face the voice. Oh bloody hell. Walking towards me was my next-door neighbour, the one who had owned the cat.

  “Hi, Tom,” I said, my voice almost breaking with fear.

  “How’re things?”

  “Fine, fine,” I stammered, still holding the carpet bag in my hand. “How’re things with you?”

  “You haven’t seen our cat by any chance, have you?”

  I paused, perhaps a little too long for my liking. Speak. Say something, anything. “Your cat?” That’ll do.

  “Yeah, can’t find her anywhere. Regular as clockwork. Always there for her food the moment we wake up. Can’t find her anywhere.”

  “Might turn up,” I replied, attempting to act normal.

  “Might? Ah bloody well hope she turns up. The kid loves that cat.”

  Oh, God. On hearing him say this my stomach rolled over and died. On recollection, Depp loved that cat too. What had I done?

  No, I wouldn’t do a thing like that. I knew it was the kid’s cat. But If I didn’t do it then who did?

  “Well, if you see Tiddles, could you let us know. Depp plays with her sometimes, doesn’t he? Perhaps your wife saw her?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so…”

  My neighbour looked at me strangely.

  “What I mean is, she was gone really early this morning. Didn’t even get breakfast, just headed straight out… I’ll ask anyway, just on the off chance, if she saw it, the cat.”

  “How are things with Michael and Depp?”

  “Good, good. Just handed Michael off to his gran while I do an errand… or two.”

  “Handy, aye, grandparents? You’re lucky there.”

  I suddenly realised I was still holding the headless Tiddles, the boot wide open. I tried my best to swing the bag into the back without drawing too much attention to it. I closed the boot carefully.

  “Well, I better get going. Don’t want to leave him with the gran for too long.”

  “Did ah tell you what happened to me the other day when ah was painting.”

  Oh, God. He was about to subject me to one of his stories. He was bad for that. Most people know when a conversation is over, but this guy liked to talk and talk and talk. Even when you dropped hints that you had to go, he would just ignore you.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Karen told me all about it.” Hopefully that would be enough to forge an escape.

  “Almost killed maself. Ah had just got the paint…”

  “I’m sorry but I need to get to the dump.”

  “Oh, OK. Almost killed maself. The ladder just fell right out from
beneath me.”

  I had to let him finish his story before letting me go. I think he must have spoken for a further ten minutes before I finally got away. Perhaps I owed it to him, seeing as what I had just done to his cat.

  *

  Location, location, location. It’s all about the location. It took me ages to find a suitable site to bury the decapitated cat. Just when I thought I’d found an ideal spot, someone would appear out of the blue. My luck was abominable, but in the end I found the ideal place. It was in the middle of nowhere, deep in a woods, surrounded by lots of overgrown fields. On any other occasion I would have stopped to drink in the beauty all around me. The trees were resplendent, clothed in the colours of autumn: green, yellow, orange, purple. I had no time to enjoy it, though. I brushed the dead leaves to the side and proceeded to dig a hole right beneath a large, gnarled oak.

  I was almost finished when I stopped myself in mid dig. Something didn’t feel right; I felt like I was being watched. I spun myself around to find that I had an audience. Bloody hell, I almost bolted. Standing, watching me in the middle of the wood, was a herd of mad cows. They were all staring at me, steam and saliva spewing fourth from their mouths. It was then that I realised that they weren’t even cows – they were bullocks.

  All at once the herd started to come towards me. Where the hell had they come from? I suddenly remembered the field I had trudged through prior to getting to the wood. It had had no fence. I swung the shovel I was carrying in the air and yelled “Yah, yah,” but not one of them budged. God, their horns. They had great big fucking horns. Perhaps they weren’t bullocks; perhaps they were bulls.

  I froze, squinting my eyes. I had spotted something way off in the distance. Fuck, it was a tractor. I dropped to the ground as though I’d been shot. Oh God, how was I going to explain this. A dead cat was one thing, but getting caught like this, burying it in the middle of a wood? I was in deep shit. I lay there petrified praying that he would just go away, but I could hear the tractor getting closer.