doing in my head, I wasn’t breathing.
Answer him!
I gasped then drew a long, zig-zaggy scratch with the key on the seat. Breathe. Looking down through the gaps at the ground and some migrating ants let oxygen return to my blood.
“Prove me right. Graffiti?” He’d torn up another grass stalk and was playing sword fights or something with them while pointedly not looking my way. “One question. I’ll be back tomorrow, here, same time. I’m on holidays until university starts. I’ll make it simple. Tell me this. Yes or no. Do you want me to help you?”
Then he rose to his feet, dusted off the back of his jeans, and he strode away, just in time to avoid us confusing an old man on a walker coming along the path.
I nodded to the man and waited for him to stomp on past, before placing the key’s tip on the paint.
At first I was frozen. Then I remembered Mister Black’s lesson. I remembered how to side step. How to push against the compulsion.
Took me half an hour of stopping and starting, but I carved out a big Y .
If he didn’t return to read that, I’d given myself a headache for no bloody reason.
When I opened my car, and slid into the seat, I realized I’d brought the gun after all. It was underneath the magazine on the passenger seat. Totally illegal to carry one about like that.
That wasn’t what bothered me. When had I decided to bring it? This side-stepping in my mind might be causing side effects. Or was there another reason?
What if none of this was happening, and I was simply going mad? I snorted. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel, and lowered my head until it touched the leather.
I contemplated the twig pieces, dirt, and grass in the foot well. The floor in here needed vacuuming.
“Well. After all the horrible stuff, I’m due for something nice, like going insane.”
Killing a person was said to be hard to do. Reuben though? I had a world of hate and disgust stored up in the sewer part of my mind. If I didn’t have Reuben’s eyes on me, watching me, I might do it. Except that would be murder. Imagining was easy.
I’d killed before but that had been accidental. Accidental at first, anyway. He’d asked for it. Deserved it. It’d been night time. Seeing him dead afterward had wrecked me – the police walking around, lights strobing across the scene, with me shivering and clutching the blanket someone had given me.
I pulled an ugly face. If Reuben didn’t simply make me put down the gun, if I made myself do it, what were my chances he’d stand still? He’d know. Mister Black had seen when I meant to do things.
When I failed, he’d beat me, or worse. Reuben wasn’t a man to stop at mediocre. He’d do worse. Much, much worse. My imagination stuttered; my hands tightened on the wheel.
Ugly, ugly thoughts. Me, bludgeoned and dying, blood spreading.
Maybe he wouldn’t go that far. Maybe.
Fear would stop me from shooting him.
If I couldn’t do it, could Grimm, my librarian who knew bad people? He wanted to help.
Oh, that was such a sucky idea – turning him into a murderer.
Wait... I let my thoughts play with each other.
Was that why he didn’t want anyone knowing we’d talked? If Reuben died, would the police ever connect A to B? Librarian to lecturer? We’d only had one café date.
“Shit! No!” I banged my hands on the wheel. “What am I thinking?”
I started the car and drove off, trying hard not to think about anything bad for a while. Failing, but trying.
Chapter 17
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Zorie
The morning started off surreal. How did I plan my day, when any minute a man might arrive and tell me to follow and come be his sex slave?
There was no plan. I just lived it and suffered the dread cycling through my head. I made myself do...stuff.
Grimm wanted to meet me at the same time, same place? I filled the day with housework then the
Answer him!
I gasped then drew a long, zig-zaggy scratch with the key on the seat. Breathe. Looking down through the gaps at the ground and some migrating ants let oxygen return to my blood.
“Prove me right. Graffiti?” He’d torn up another grass stalk and was playing sword fights or something with them while pointedly not looking my way. “One question. I’ll be back tomorrow, here, same time. I’m on holidays until university starts. I’ll make it simple. Tell me this. Yes or no. Do you want me to help you?”
Then he rose to his feet, dusted off the back of his jeans, and he strode away, just in time to avoid us confusing an old man on a walker coming along the path.
I nodded to the man and waited for him to stomp on past, before placing the key’s tip on the paint.
At first I was frozen. Then I remembered Mister Black’s lesson. I remembered how to side step. How to push against the compulsion.
Took me half an hour of stopping and starting, but I carved out a big Y .
If he didn’t return to read that, I’d given myself a headache for no bloody reason.
When I opened my car, and slid into the seat, I realized I’d brought the gun after all. It was underneath the magazine on the passenger seat. Totally illegal to carry one about like that.
That wasn’t what bothered me. When had I decided to bring it? This side-stepping in my mind might be causing side effects. Or was there another reason?
What if none of this was happening, and I was simply going mad? I snorted. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel, and lowered my head until it touched the leather.
I contemplated the twig pieces, dirt, and grass in the foot well. The floor in here needed vacuuming.
“Well. After all the horrible stuff, I’m due for something nice, like going insane.”
Killing a person was said to be hard to do. Reuben though? I had a world of hate and disgust stored up in the sewer part of my mind. If I didn’t have Reuben’s eyes on me, watching me, I might do it. Except that would be murder. Imagining was easy.
I’d killed before but that had been accidental. Accidental at first, anyway. He’d asked for it. Deserved it. It’d been night time. Seeing him dead afterward had wrecked me – the police walking around, lights strobing across the scene, with me shivering and clutching the blanket someone had given me.
I pulled an ugly face. If Reuben didn’t simply make me put down the gun, if I made myself do it, what were my chances he’d stand still? He’d know. Mister Black had seen when I meant to do things.
When I failed, he’d beat me, or worse. Reuben wasn’t a man to stop at mediocre. He’d do worse. Much, much worse. My imagination stuttered; my hands tightened on the wheel.
Ugly, ugly thoughts. Me, bludgeoned and dying, blood spreading.
Maybe he wouldn’t go that far. Maybe.
Fear would stop me from shooting him.
If I couldn’t do it, could Grimm, my librarian who knew bad people? He wanted to help.
Oh, that was such a sucky idea – turning him into a murderer.
Wait... I let my thoughts play with each other.
Was that why he didn’t want anyone knowing we’d talked? If Reuben died, would the police ever connect A to B? Librarian to lecturer? We’d only had one café date.
“Shit! No!” I banged my hands on the wheel. “What am I thinking?”
I started the car and drove off, trying hard not to think about anything bad for a while. Failing, but trying.
Chapter 17
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Zorie
The morning started off surreal. How did I plan my day, when any minute a man might arrive and tell me to follow and come be his sex slave?
There was no plan. I just lived it and suffered the dread cycling through my head. I made myself do...stuff.
Grimm wanted to meet me at the same time, same place? I filled the day with housework then the
Similar Books
