The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble by Gareth Wiles

mother’s milk as a baby, and this made me even keener not to see Agatha suffer death. She would not leave me, she
could
not; with her hands bound to the bed up here she was mine and only mine, and nobody else but the dog would be here at the house now. Yes, poor Miss Coombs I thought, but that was in the past now. All things had to come to their end eventually, but Agatha and I had yet to begin.
    * * *
    That night, as I plotted my statement regarding Miss Coombs’ disappearance, I had the urge to sample some of Uncle Joe’s wine. I stumbled down into his cellar deep beneath the house with only a candle as my companion and found what I had hoped lay down here. A vast row of untouched bottles, inches deep in dust, lay in wait for my consumption. This was the first time I had ever been down here, but I knew my uncle had enjoyed his wine. Now it was
my
wine, just like his daughter was mine, and I picked up a bottle and dusted it down. It was thirty years old already, and I opened it there and then. Sitting down on a crate, I swigged straight from the bottle and before I knew it the contents were gone from it. Another bottle was sought out, and I repeated the process. It made me rather merry to begin with, as I thought upon all the good in the world. I thought about Troy and all the pleasure he had given me from a mere pup in the barn to this very evening as he did everything I told him to. As I continued to drink, however, I was reminded of the bad that had occurred over the years. Miss Coombs was gone from my mind during this remembrance, instead it was filled with all the beatings I had received first from my father and then from Uncle Joe. I smashed the empty wine bottle in anger, taking a large gulp from the nearly empty one in my hand. Something just wasn’t right about it, when I gave it a bit of thought, and I somehow felt I’d been wronged. This was perhaps the first real time I had reached these heightened emotions regarding the treatment I had received and I truly began to feel hatred towards the two men. I was nothing like them, I was better than them. Even Ffoulkes, my own non-blood brother from the factory, had turned on me and dealt out his own physical abuse. However, I was the one who was still here on God’s fair Earth and in control of my own destiny. I would rise up, literally, from the ashes of the old factory and rebuild it with renewed authority. I would show no weakness, no hint of compassion to those who tried to wrong me. Ffoulkes had taken me by surprise, but nobody else would be afforded the same leniency. For too long I had been my father’s son; weak-willed, complacent and nondescript. I was nothing like
he
. I was my own man, and would succeed where he had failed. Granted, his biggest failing was in dying, and I had almost been as foolish to allow this to happen to me during Ffoulkes’ assault in the factory. Nothing, and nobody, would be given a similar chance. Miss Coombs could have proven to be my downfall, but I had disposed of her; and Agatha, who lay upstairs in the house above, could potentially attempt unwarranted tomfoolery again. If only there was some way to save her from herself, and keep her with me as my own. She would come around to the life I’d provide for her eventually – it was just a matter of waiting patiently for that to happen. I looked around the cellar, swishing my candle from side to side to get a better look at the space around me. It was then, as my drunken head loped lazily from side to side, that I struck upon the perfect method in which to enact my wish – Agatha would come and live down here in the cellar. Away from harm’s way in the world beyond this closed environment, we could build the perfect life together. Fate had granted me continued existence in spite of life’s tough tribulations, and I was not going to throw it away in idiocy. At that very moment a very brief vision of something else flashed through my