The cat watched me closely, then rolled over onto his back. Stretching his legs, he then looked at me from an upside down position, looking like the cutest thing in the world.
But I knew better.
I knew if I attempted to step over the cat, Samson would grab my leg and dig his claws in.
I suppose the cat really was just mischievous; he’d never hurt me badly with his claws and had never full on attacked me, he just seemed to enjoy tormenting me.
I also knew better than to reach down and pet the exposed belly; I’d nearly lost my hand once doing just that.
I grinned at the cat. This time, I had a plan.
“Hiya Samson,” I said sweetly. “Gonna move and let me past?”
The cat rolled to his side then back onto his back, his purr rumbling loudly in his throat.
I reached for the small window ledge rested to my left and continued to sweet talk the cat. In spite of Samson’s behaviour, I was not fooled. I quickly grabbed the water spray bottle I had put on the ledge for this reason and squirted Samson full on in the face.
Spitting and twisting, Samson immediately sprang up and dashed down the hallway.
“Ha ha! Score one for Danny!” Chuckling meanly, I placed the water spray bottle back onto the window ledge.
“Don’t you have anything better to do with your spare time?”
I spotted George stood in the doorway of his flat.
“I can’t understand why you two just can’t make friends.”
I approached feeling a little foolish. “He started it,” I grumbled, gesturing to Samson.
Samson, his fur bristling and wet, gave me a look that seemed to say: ‘it’s on bitch’, before turning away and entering George’s flat.
“Aye,” George agreed, “he’s mischievous all right. You’re in for some payback for squirting him like that, though.”
“Can’t be worse than him trying to break my neck or pissing in my shoes.”
George laughed. “He’s never done that ever in his life. To this day you’re the only one he’s ever done that to.”
“Aw,” I said dryly. “That makes me feel so special.”
George laughed again and I looked at him properly. He’d hadn’t been looking too well recently, but today he looked especially run down.
Since I had been living here George hadn’t ever looked fit and healthy, but a knee and hip replacement had withered the older man to a surprising degree. A terrible cold had clutched George in a tight fisted grip a few weeks ago and the old man had struggled considerably to shift it.
I sighed and braced myself.
“How are you, George?” I asked, longingly thinking of the fish and chips that were bound to be stone cold when I eventually got to them. George was not the kind of person you could ask ‘how are you?’ and receive a ‘fine thanks, how are you?’ You asked George how he was and you would get a detailed description of every ache, pain and bothersome bowel movement that had troubled him over the previous few days.
To my delight however, George shrugged then said: ” Sorry young-un, can’t chat a while, I’m missing my program. Samson and I heard you leave then he heard you come back. I paused my show so I could see the showdown.” He winked at me. ” Well worth it. Pop over later for a cuppa.”
“I will,” I said with relief.
I watched George shuffle back inside his flat and felt a pang of guilt. I really should try harder to have more patience with the man. He meant well, but it was hard on the nerves listening to him rambling on for minutes at a time about absolutely nothing. He did have a sister called Evie, a lovely lady, but she lived a half hour drive away and neither she nor George drove a car.
I made a pact with myself that I would make more of an effort with George and I smiled warmly at him when he turned in his doorway.
George gestured to my carry bag containing the fish and chips, the logo of the shop printed on the sides.
“Careful with that,” George said gruffly. “Got my dinner from there the other day and it went straight through me. Never shat so much in my life. Yellow runny shit it was too, my ass hole was in tatters.” He shut the door on my frozen smile, the sound of the TV blaring a few seconds later.
I stared at the closed door in front of me, somewhat stunned, then I grimaced and entered my own flat.
I shut out George’s words and the stomach churning mental image that came with them as I unwrapped my dinner. I stared at the meal and grimaced again. No longer hungry, I felt rather nauseous.
I took a couple of bites, then realised the fish was rather the same colour that George had described, and that did it.
I wrapped the meal back up in the paper it came in and threw the lot into the bin.
Placing two pieces of bread in the toaster and putting the pan back on the stove to boil, I fought a wave of nausea that threatened to spurt from my throat.
You’ve got bigger problems to think of right now, I told himself.
Never mind the freako from last night, I’d have to leave shortly to take a few groceries to my mother.
Well, I didn’t have to, and I often wondered why I felt obliged to help her out after all she’d done to me. She certainly never thanked me for it; on the contrary, she never failed to start shouting and screaming at me, accusing me of thinking I was better than her after I left her alone as a child. Even now some part of me deep down longed for the moment she may sweep me in her arms and apologize for my childhood and the scars she’d inflicted. If anything, that dream was farther away than when I first contacted her 7 months ago. This past 3 months she had become much more aggressive and I was convinced she was using drugs.
Still, I visited her once a week and took some shopping to her home.
I wished with all my heart that I could cut ties with her, but I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and betrayal.
A psychiatrist would have a field day trying to figure my mashed up head out I thought grimly as I settled on my sofa with my coffee and toast and spread the newspaper open on my lap.
After 5 minutes of reading, I sighed and folded the paper, unable to remember any specific details of what I’d just read. I knew that I would feel a lot better in myself if I could just cut ties with my mother once and for all. Every week I went through this stomach churning anxiety when I knew I was going to see her, yet every week I continued to go. My brother, Ricky, whom was actually my cousin but I was very close to him and had been since the day I moved in to my aunt and uncle’s, hated my mother with a passion and never held back his views on how I should handle her.
And still, even though I knew everyone was right, I couldn’t break ties.
And worse, I thought I knew why.
I’d promised myself when I first contacted her that if she ever laid a hand on me, then I would walk away and never look back. I remembered the first time I visited her after so many years away.
She was even worse than I remembered.
She had been sober when I arrived, but had started drinking shortly after.
The more she drank, the more vicious she became. I had been stunned to learn that she truly believed in her mind that I had abandoned her when I was a child, and that her sister, my aunt, was evil and twisted. She believed my aunt had turned me against my own mother.
My mother blamed the neighbours on the street that we grew up in, she blamed her family, she even blamed the police and social workers who got involved after she was attacked by a client who had whacked out on drugs.
It was everyone’s fault but her own, she had done nothing wrong to me, or in her words: “nothing that no other parent’s aren’t doing to their own undisciplined little bastards right now.”
But she hadn’t yet hit me. Is that what I was waiting for? I felt like, if she hit me, it would verify in my own mind that I hadn’t deserved all those beatings years ago and enable me to walk away. I guess on some level I still felt that I was to blame somehow. She’d certainly told me often enough as a child that good boys didn’t get
hit, therefore, I was a very bad boy.
How could I hate her and hold her accountable for what she did, if she didn’t believe she had done wrong?
How could I walk away from her and have her believing that I had abandoned her once again?
Ricky told me straight what he thought: “Let the crazy bitch think what she likes,” he’d told me through clenched teeth. “You owe her nothing, you never did and you never will. And don’t you let her get inside your head and make you think otherwise. Just walk away and leave her in the hole she’s dug for herself.”
I wished with all my heart and soul that I could do just that.
Whenever I awoke on the verge of a scream in the middle of night, I vowed I wouldn’t go and see her again. Usually I awoke before the belt touched me, but sometimes it would strike me on the back and torso and I’d scream, the pain as real in my dream as it had been in my childhood.
Was this what I needed? My mother to strike out at me? Is that what it would take to justify my leaving once and for all?
But I don’t need to justify myself, damn it.
I groaned and covered my face with my hands.
Trying to distract myself from the troubling thoughts of my mother, I switched on the TV. I was flicking through the channels, hardly paying attention, when something familiar caught my eye.
I leaned forward and frowned.
The attractive news presenter was standing in front of a building, and the building looked very familiar.
“Where have I seen that place before?” I muttered to myself.
I hit the volume button, the news presenter’s words reaching me just before my mind cleared of confusion and I knew where I’d seen the building before.
It was the apartment block from the night before.
“Jesus,” I muttered, then gasped as the words ‘brutal double murder’ reached me.
I was there last night. What the hell happened?
I thought of the freako, as I’d begun to think of him, then shook my head.
It can’t be anything to do with him, I assured myself.
But as usual, news reports always have to give you the worst possible news.
Two pictures flashed on the TV screen side by side, and I gasped in shock and disbelief.
It was Michael and the blond that I had followed the night before.
Chapter Six
I entered my mother’s home, the anxiety that usually clutched me laid smothered beneath heavy layers of fear.
The shopping bags weighed down my hands as I stood still, the gloom and stench of my mother’s home momentarily pulling me from my troubling thoughts. My nerves grew taunt and my chest tightened.
I couldn’t decide at that moment what was troubling me more: the brutal murders of the couple I had followed and the fact I may just have encountered their killer, or being in my mother’s home.
I grimaced and stepped around the rubbish strewn across the long hallway. The house had been beautiful once, before my mother had moved in, or so I had been told. I gasped and stumbled as I stepped on an empty vodka bottle, nearly sprawling on the floor. I carefully avoided all other obstacles and the worst of the stains on the once cream carpet before I entered the large kitchen.
Not that the kitchen was a better place to be than the cluttered filthy hallway; it was in fact worse.
Every kitchen counter was cluttered with empty takeaway wrappers, clothes, rotten plates and empty alcohol bottles. The whole of the kitchen floor served as the bin with every inch covered in mess and rubbish.
I stood still in the mess and stared ahead, once again struck by the horror of the night before.
Murdered.
They were murdered after I left.
Although that fact in itself was alarming, it wasn’t the reason for my fear.
The hooded figure had been watching the couple, had seemed as interested in them as I had been.
And he waved at me.
Suddenly, the filth of my mother’s house, and my mother herself were the least of my worries.
Until I heard the footsteps walking along the hallway.
“What’s the matter with you, bastard? My house offending your royal highness?”
The voice, hoarse from years of heavy smoking, came from directly behind me, yet I couldn’t turn around.
The same questions ran through my mind, but as usual, I didn’t have an answer to them.
In spite of my current frame of mind, my skin crawled and my stomach squirmed. Memories that were painful, both physically and emotionally tried to surface and I forced them back into the box in my mind, the box I struggled every day to keep a tight lid on.
“Your shopping,” I said softly, gently lowering the bags to the ground.
“Look at me, bastard. Look at me!”
I squeezed my eyes shut. It was the same routine every time.
For the past three months, this is what my mother had become. When I’d first contacted her, she had been riddled with self-pity. Everything had been everyone else’s fault but her own. She’d had a bad break in life, she claimed, and needed understanding and compassion. She was a pathetic human being, I knew this, but I hoped that one day she may turn herself around and make something of herself. I hoped that one day she might see beyond herself and look at me, really look at me, and remember the horrific upbringing she had subjected me to, then spend the rest of her days making up for the scars she’d inflicted upon me.
Every time I saw her however, the hope inside died a little more.
Even now, the little boy within me yearned for the love of his mother, and I just couldn’t turn away from her.
Behind me, my mother chuckled nastily. “Some son you are, can’t even look at your own mother.”
I heard her move towards me so I stepped away, then turned and left the kitchen. Once again negotiating the obstacle course of assorted junk and mess in the hallway, I entered the living room.
The smell in here was unbearable.
My mother never opened the curtains or the windows and all the disgusting smells trapped within the room seemed to clot in the air. In addition to the rubbish and rotted food, the smell of cigarette smoke caused my chest to tighten and brought tears to my eyes.
This was not the house I’d grown up in, but it was the same in so many awful ways.
The mess. The smells. My mother.
This house was large, a four bedroom fancy house and newly built when my mother moved in.
When my grandparents, my mother and aunt’s parents had died, they’d left a substantial amount of money behind. To the surprise of all, they’d left a larger sum to my mother, in spite of cutting her out of their lives years earlier.
Perhaps they felt guilty and left the money as compensation for their absence.
Or maybe they hoped she would straighten herself out with the money.
Either way, my mother had a large nice house that she had trashed and lived on a nice estate.
I had ￡100.000 coming to me, but my grandparents had made it clear in their will that I was to receive the money on my 30th birthday and not one day earlier.
During her many aggressive rants, she cursed her parents for shutting her out and liked to point out that no-one came to visit her in the hospital after her near fatal attack.
There was no joy, no pleasure and nothing positive about this woman, but the hardest thing for me was the lack of remorse she felt. She constantly threw in my face that I’d left her, abandoned her when I was a child and that her sister was an evil twisted woman for turning me against my own mother. Numerous times she had defended her actions and the beatings given to me, telling me I was a horrid boy, ungrateful and undisciplined, not very easy to love.
I found it hard to walk away from her while her point of view was so off, for I knew that she would believe I’d abandoned her for the second time and continue to wallow is self-pity.
For reasons that were completely beyond me, I wanted to help her.
As I looked aroun
d the room, I saw a pair of my mother’s jeans on top of a huge pile of clothes thrown on the floor in the corner.
A black leather-type belt was threaded through the hoops and I gritted my teeth as dark memories assaulted me once more, and this time they would not be suppressed.
I would hide under my filthy stinking duvet as her thunderous voice screeched nearer and nearer. The duvet would be pulled off me and I’d cry and beg and plead.
Sometimes, it could be for no reason at all, but most often it was because I had come home too early and a man was still with her.
The severity of the beating depended on the man, and it became so bad that I came to hate the nicer of her men, the ones who’s morals and principles denied them the ability to have sex with my mother while her young son was in the house.
They would leave and my mother wouldn’t get paid.
When that happened, I was whipped with the buckle end of the belt.
I still had faint scars from that belt, but the worst of my scars were the cigarette burns.
I squeezed my eyes shut at the painful memory of my mother pinning me down, sitting on my buttocks as she stubbed the lit cigarette into my skin, my squeals and shrieks of pain causing her to cackle and curse.
Before the memories could torment me any further, my mother’s voice suddenly raged from the kitchen.
“You useless bastard!” she shrieked.
A cold feeling swamped me and I stared ahead at the wall.
Soon after, my mother stormed into the room and threw a can of soup across the room, barely missing me.
“You can take all this shit with you when you leave. It’s not food I need you useless bastard. And what’s with the bleach and shit? How dare you bring cleaning stuff into my house, you cheeky prick!”
For the first time since I’d entered her home, I turned and looked at her.
The foolish, hopeful little boy within me broke down and wept as he did every visit. She reminded me, as she did every, time of a zombie. A zombie from the most horrifying movie ever made. With her eyes that were sunk into her skull and circled with black rings, her pale wrinkly aged skin and the cadaverously thin body, not to mention her black and yellow teeth, she truly did resemble the living dead.
Stalked Page 4