A Life To Waste

by Andrew Lennon

  Dave was on his way to meet Claire, they were off out again today, he couldn’t really remember what they were doing, they did so many different things he could never keep track, anyway Claire always had everything prepared so all he had to do was meet her and they could be on their way. As he turned the corner towards Claire’s house he could see her silver Ford Ka parked on the side of the road, Claire was bent over in the boot pushing things to the back, she had to stretch to push things back even in that tiny car, Dave slowed his walk for a moment so he could have a prolonged look at her ass as she stretched in. He had almost reached her, he was just about to get a cheeky grab as she turned around so his hand quickly slid back to his side.

  “Hi Babe!” She cheerfully said

  “Hi” Dave replied like a shy school boy.

  Claire was always saying stuff like “babe” and “honey” or “sweetie” or even “my gorgeous boyf!” Dave didn’t really do pet names or anything like that, if he was to tell Claire the truth, they kind of annoyed him. She liked them though so he left her to it, even if it did embarrass him a bit, especially in front of people.

  “So what are the plans for today then Claire?” Dave asked, he always called her Claire, seen as that was her name, but he always made a point of saying it, almost as a way to emphasise his dislike of pet names.

  “The question you should be asking darling” she said, sounding like Joanna Lumley “is, what ii the plan for this weekend?”

  “Weekend!” Dave said surprised. “But, I haven’t even got any clothes, I didn’t know that”

  “Well you did know, because I told you” Claire cut him off “but as I knew that you would forget, because you always forget, I packed for you.”

  “Oh, ok cool so where are we going then?”

  “We’re going camping babes, with a few activities lined up for while we’re there, it’s gonna be awesome!”

  Dave didn’t know what these activities were, but Claire had organised them so he knew they would be quite cool. One thing he did know though, a weekend stay camping meant they would be spending nights alone! Together in a tent, now that would be awesome.

  “Sweet!” He said “So let’s go”

  “Gimme one sec honey, I’m just gonna grab one or two more things from the house, then we’ll be off, you jump in and I’ll be back in a mo.”

  Claire went jogging back up the drive into the house. Dave stood for a second watching her firm behind as she ran, he really did enjoy that view. Then he climbed in the car and waited for his fun filled weekend.

  The drive seemed to go quite quickly, in fact it was a couple of hours, but Claire and Dave enjoyed each others company so even when they weren’t talking to each other time seemed to fly. Eventually they reached their destination, it looked like an abandoned playground or obstacle course of some sort. There was an empty frame that looks like it had once upon a time held swings, there were long beams of wood placed in various positions around the field propped on other slabs of wood. They were probably used as balance beams. A climbing wall which was about six foot high. It was vertically straight on one side a slightly angled on the other. At the bottom of the straight side there was a pile of tyres, presumably used at some point for kids to climb on so they could reach up to the top of the wall. Now left in scattered piles they and the rest of the field gave out a feeling of abandonment.

  “Jeebus Claire, what the hell is this place” Dave asked

  “What’s the matter? You scared of a little obstacle course?” Claire replied.

  “This doesn’t look much like an obstacle course though Claire, the place is derelict, this wasn’t really what we came to do was it?”

  Claire laughed “No don’t be stupid, even if it was still standing, it looks like it’s for kids. We are just going to camp here, its sheltered, we can use some of the wood here for a fire later and it’s right next to path that leads up that big hill. I thought we could go on a bit of a trek.”

  “A trek, hmmm great, I guess” Dave mumbled, looking like a little kid who had to go and visit relatives on Christmas day.

  “Oh come on sweetie” Claire said “It’ll be nice to get some clean fresh air, anyway it’ll hopefully clear some of that shit that you put in your lungs all the time.”

  Dave looked stumped.

  “Come on Babes, you seriously think I don’t smell it on you all the time? It’s fine as long as you don’t do it around me, but make a little effort to mask the smell hey.” Claire smiled.

  “Yeah, uh, sorry about that, will do.” Dave shuffled looking embarrassed.

  “Come on darling, it’s only a little walk, and besides, later on we can get some real exercise next to the camp fire” She looked at him with a seductive smile. Dave smiled.

  Dave quite often looked back at that day, it was one of his favourite memories, of course he enjoyed the “exercise” by the camp fire but he surprisingly really enjoyed the walk. The fresh air really did feel nice and he had a lot of time to think while walking through the country hills, looking back that was a good day.

  Not all days were that quiet and relaxing, most days out Claire organised ended up in Dave actually having to run assault courses. Or maybe white water rafting, paint balling, laser quest. She even had him sky dive once. She was an adrenaline junkie and never wanted to be sat still. Dave loved every minute of it, he always did things on days out with Claire that he would never think of doing himself. When he was out with her he never felt the urge to roll a joint or the need to go and grab a beer. The fun itself was enough influence to keep him happy. When he wasn’t with Claire he made no attempt to go searching for any of these fun things, when she wasn’t around the only thing he looked for was drink or drugs. He didn’t see the point in looking for the other stuff, that was his and Claires thing, drink could occupy him and work just as well until their next adventurous day.

  Dave had been drinking a lot more lately, Claire noticed that he seemed hung over almost every time she saw him. She asked why he had started drinking so much more. Claire knew that Dave had always been into drinking and smoking weed, but it never interfered with their relationship because he never did it around her. It was like he had more respect for her so wanted to give her his full sober attention. Not lately though, lately he had gotten so much worse. When she questioned him he mumbled an answer to her about problems at home and his dad leaving or something. What he mumbled was quite incoherent and when she asked him to repeat it, he shrugged it off and changed the conversation.

  The dates in which Dave was hung over became more and more regular, he never had the energy to go out and do anything that Claire had planned anymore. Instead they would just sit in and watch a film or just sit in and do pretty much nothing. This was nice initially, Claire enjoyed the cuddles and snuggling in while watching film. It was too much for her though, this wasn’t just once or twice, a nice relaxing date were they would just cuddle instead of running themselves ragged. This was all the time, it bored Claire. She was an active person, she didn’t want to be sat on her ass all day watching the world pass her by. Claire started to nag Dave “come on honey, we haven’t done anything fun in ages! We have watched more films in the last month than I had in my whole life!”

  “ugghh, I can’t be arsed today Claire, I’m tired and I’ve got a head ache, maybe next time, let’s just watch the film yeah.” This was the best response that Claire got from then on, but she knew that it wouldn’t happen “next time” she knew that Dave had given up on life and on their relationship.

  Claire started going out to do things on her own, fine Dave didn’t want to go but why should that stop her? It didn’t matter what the activity was, climbing, rambling, assault course even surfing. As well as she could. She went and did it all. Then later she would go and visit Dave and tell him about all the things that she had done.

  “Sounds great” Was usually the response, then he would bury his mind back into the TV . She was hoping that he would like the sound of what she was doing, hop
ing that he would start to get jealous of her exciting stories and start wanting to go with her again. It never happened though, he never wanted to do anything. It didn’t take long until she would go to see him and walk into a smoke filled room where he would be sat with beer in hand. She hated the smell of smoke, especially the smell from weed smoke. At least he usually saved all that shit for when they weren’t doing anything together, now that didn’t matter to him.

  Claire loved Dave but she felt hurt every time she went to see him. She knew that he didn’t feel the same way back, she was sure that once upon a time he did, but whatever had happened, whatever it was that he wasn’t telling her, something changed. She knew that it was never going to get any better, every time she looked in his eyes, there was no response. He had drifted away into some stoned TV land and he had no intention of any leaving there.

  After a couple of weeks visiting with nothing but drunken or stoned response to every conversation she gave up. She didn’t see the point in letting herself get upset so often, Dave had obviously stopped caring and she had to try and move on and live her own life, the life she was happy living before he came along. She stopped going round to see Dave and she stopped calling him. She never heard anything from him again, she wondered if he even noticed that she wasn’t there anymore, or if he even cared.

  Chapter 7

  Dave woke up on the couch, hung over as usual. He sat himself up, falling asleep on the couch too drunk to make it to bed was a bit of a habit he had developed over time. He rummaged around the table looking for his smokes, picking up empty boxes then crushing them and dropping them back on the table. Great, he thought. “Got no smokes and mums not back from work for hours.” Looks like he was going to have to get off his lazy ass and walk to the shop. He sat for a while, contemplating whether he could really be bothered to get up, get cleaned, get dressed then walk all the way to the shop.

  “Fuck it” he said to himself “No one knows me anyway.”

  He put his shoes on and left the house dressed in the same clothes that he had fallen asleep wearing.

  When he walked out the door the sun hurt his eyes. He wasn’t use to natural sunlight much anymore with not really leaving the living room very often. He squinted and looked around.

  “What the hell is going on?” He said to himself.

  There were police cars and vans everywhere, and an ambulance. There was police tape around the narrow walkway into next doors house. Dave remembered hearing Lisa’s screaming last night, he thought that all this was a little bit much though. Lisa always had violent times with her many boyfriends but he had never seen anything like this.

  “The guy must have killed her” This thought rushed into his head, quickly followed by “and I heard her screams....and ignored them.....oh shit.”

  He was overwhelmed with an instant feeling of guilt. Who wouldn’t be? He ignored a dying woman’s screams. But how was he to know? She screamed all the time, was always fighting. Oh well maybe he was exaggerating it, maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Maybe it was just another fight, but, there was a huge police presence there for something.

  Dave lowered his head and started to walk past the huge crowd that surrounded the police. He kept his eyes glued to the ground trying to avoid any eye contact. This wasn’t necessarily because he wanted to avoid the police. He always avoided eye contact, he just wasn’t used to people anymore, he tried to avoid everyone. As he was walking he noticed red marks on the floor and some on one of the hedges as he passed the house.

  “Was that blood?” he thought “no, surely not, surely?”

  He quickened his walk and carried on to the shop.

  The police and the huge crowd were still there when he returned. Again he managed to ignore them and get into his house with no problems. He sat down on the couch and fixed his eyes back on the TV, then he returned to Dave mode, vegetation mode.

  A couple hours of vegetation mode had passed when there was a knock on the door. Dave groaned and decided he would ignore it. Then there was another knock, then another.

  “For gods sake!” He moaned and

  got up to answer the door.

  Wh When Dave answered the door he was faced by two police men. They went through all the formal introductions, then entered the house.

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?” Officer Stephens asked.

  Officer Stephens looked to be in his forties, Dave didn’t fully know all the different ranks in the police force, but just judging by the way this guy carried himself and spoke, Dave guessed he was quite high up. You didn’t carry that kind of authority look if you hadn’t earned it through years of work. The second officer was a lot younger, Dave thought he had probably just come along so he could observe how questioning actually went.

  “Didn’t really hear anything unusual” Dave said “I was just sat in watching TV as normal, didn’t hear anything.....apart from Lisa, but” He paused “But that’s nothing unusual, I hear Lisa almost every Friday or Saturday night. You guys must know her well, the amount of fights she has with the dudes she brings home. I’m guessing by all that action this morning that last nights guy really did a number on her yeah?”

  The two police officers looked at each other, then looked back at Dave. Now they had looks of suspicion in their eyes.

  Office Stephens continued his questioning “So what exactly do you mean when you say you heard Lisa?”

  Dave was starting to feel uncomfortable, but he decided he had nothing to worry about, he had done nothing wrong so just tell the truth.

  “I heard her screaming, I ignored it being honest because it’s nothing new. There is always screaming and shouting coming from her. You just, get used to it. It’s not like I could help her or anything, she would just find another fella to fight tomorrow”

  “Lisa is missing” Officer Stephens said bluntly.

  This caught Dave off guard.

  “Missing?” he said “How do you know she is actually missing, maybe she just went out somewhere drunk or pissed off after her boxing match last night?”

  Officer Stephens replied “The evidence suggests that there was more than just a fight last night, there is a substantial amount of blood, in fact the quantity would suggest that Lisa isn’t just missing, she is most likely dead.”

  Officer sidekick trainee spurted out “Just a bit, the carpet is dripping in blood, and the walls, holy, wow I’ve never seen any”

  “That’s enough! Thank you!” Officer Stephens silenced his younger counterpart instantly. “please excuse my colleague, he is fairly new, but should still know better.” There was an angry but also disappointed tone in his voice.

  Perhaps they were more than just colleagues Dave thought, maybe this kid was his nephew, or even son. That didn’t matter, the image this young officer had just put in Dave’s head terrified him.

  “What exactly do you think happened?” He asked, now looking completely horrified.

  “Well that is exactly what we are trying to find out, is there anything else you can remember? Anything else that could help us to locate the whereabouts of your neighbour.”

  “No, it was just the screaming” Dave answered but he seemed distant now. The thoughts of this bloody horror show next door had really affected him. “it really wasn’t anything different from normal, honestly, I used to think about going over to help her, but it honestly happens that often now that I assumed she just went looking for it. Can’t help people like that.”

  There was a look in Officer Stephen’s eyes, Dave wasn’t sure whether or not this man believed him. He was telling the truth though, why wouldn’t he? But if the house really was as bad as they said it was, how could it happen without Dave hearing more than just a scream? Maybe there was, he was pretty drunk, he could have slept through it. He had those horror films on too, maybe he could have mistaken the sounds from Lisa for something on the film, it could be done couldn’t it? Especially when drunk. He thought about saying this to the police but he stopp
ed. Would it start to sound like he was making excuses? He didn’t want to start making himself sound guilty. He didn’t want to start drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

  “Do you really think she’s dead?” Dave asked.

  “Like I said, we are trying to find out exactly what happened. We will be questioning other people in the area as well as you. I would imagine that we will have a few more questions at a later date. Will you be here if we need to contact you?”

  “Yeah, I’m always here, I don’t do anything.” Dave said “I mean, I don’t work or anything, so yeah I’ll be here if you need to get in touch with me for anything, mum will be back later as well, she’s in work right now.”

  Officer Stephens and Officer sidekick trainee thanked Dave for his time and made their exit. Dave returned to the couch. This time he wasn’t engrossed in the TV as normal. This time he was engrossed in his thoughts.