Outside by the single door entrance to a small Irish bar, a wild party going on inside, heavy metal music bleeding out through the walls and into the street Jenna, twenty four, tall, beautiful and in a wonderfully sexy short black dress is using all her new found seductive powers on Keith, a balding, gold chain wearing man in his forties.
He looks at her, wide eyed can’t believe his luck. He flashes her a greedy lust filled smile, “you’re so pretty.”
She forces a fake smile of her own back at him, “thank you.”
“What do you think of me,” he asks.
She shrugs keeping her false grin, “I don’t know.”
He can feel her interest waning. He gestures to the closed door of the bar, “you don’t want to get a drink from here do you?”
She shakes her head, “I don’t.”
“Then where?”
She turns away from him, nods down the dark empty city street in front of them, “there’s a house nearby that I like, I feel safe there.”
He reaches up a hand to touch her, but thinks better of it, lets it fall back down to his side.
He clears his throat, fighting through his nerves. “You don’t need to worry, I just like being with beautiful girls and you’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”
She glances over her shoulder, another plastic grin, “thank you.”
Enough games he thinks, time to get the ball really rolling. “So what’s the price a man like me has to pay to be with a girl like you?”
She giggles as if finding it genuinely funny. But a shake of her head shows that she’s not answering that here.
-:-
Taking him to an abandoned house, up a crooked and broken staircase and into a small room, a single bed and a large rotting wardrobe the only things inside it, but he would have let her take him anywhere, so this place is just as good as any other.
She lies down on the bed, allowing him to stare up the bottom of her dress, white panties.
“You don’t live here alone do you,” he asks, a little fear in his voice.
“Take your shoes off,” she orders.
He takes them off. Still trying to find out, “I don’t think you live alone; there are other people here right. It’s OK if there are?”
“Take your shirt off, take your jeans off,” her list continues.
He does as he’s told, standing now dressed only in his underpants, an obvious erection on display.
Jenna rolls over onto her stomach and buries her face downwards into the pillow as if afraid.
Keith smiles confused, “what’s wrong?”
She doesn’t answer.
BOOM!!! A sudden terrible explosion as both doors of the wardrobe behind him fling open. Jones, thirty, tall, skinny and with long silver coloured flowing hair that reaches down to his hips. Dressed in a long white robe and with a large heavy wooden club in his hands comes out striking and attacking. He smashes the club down hard and bashes Keith’s skull in like an overly ripe watermelon.
-:-
Down inside a small dark, dank basement Jones drags Keith’s dead body across the floor. He’s exhausted. It’s hard work. Jenna follows on behind him.
A deep growl echoes out from the darkness, a tiger’s growl. And then stepping into the light a monster, seven feet tall, hunched over, hairy and stinking.
Fangs that are too large to fit inside its mouth and nails on its fingers and toes over six inches long.
It instantly starts to feed on Keith’s dead body.
Jones already knows the drill and moves over to the wall and picks up a bucket.
He comes back to the monster and waits. As the monster rips flesh off from the dead body and swallows, it’s then instantly sick. Throwing up a thick purple slop.
Jones catches the slop into the bucket before it can hit the floor. He smiles at it, greedily.
The monster goes on feeding.
Jones looks across at Jenna, “another,” he hisses.
Tears run down her face. “I can’t,” she whimpers, “I just can’t.”
Jones shakes his head, unimpressed.
“This is the price, if you want your boyfriend back you must continue. Find me another.” Jones reaches into the bucket; wetting his fingers into the slop he licks them clean.
“This is madness,” said Jenna.
Jones laughs at her, “there is a way to cure everything in this world. Disease, death, everything has its cure.” He dips his fingers back into the bucket, shows her the purple slop, “this is eternal life.”
-:-
The gentle hum and clanking of a washing machine going through a fast spin cycles fills the air of a small neat and tidy kitchen, a place for everything and everything in its place.
In the exact middle of the floor is a massive oak wooden table that has six chairs positioned around it, Henry O’neil, fifty, a large man, tattoo covered arms and his reading glasses resting atop his bald head is sitting with Decciho, twenty five, handsome, long unkempt hair and a false glass left eye. Impossible to notice unless you’re looking for it, Decciho was born with one good eye and one bad one. The bad one was out of place, the pupil unable to dilate and seemed to hang, dragging down the perfection of his other natural good looks. So his parents had it removed and a glass one put in its place. Decciho’s dressed smart in a suit with his long overcoat draped over his lap. Each with a cup of coffee in front of them, Decciho takes a sip. Henry is waiting for him to speak first.
“Have you tried the police,” asks Decciho.
“They won’t do anything.” said Henry. His voice tired, he’s explained this to so many people before Decciho. He’s just tired of everything and now he’s at breaking point. Wants to keep the faith but you can hear the doubt in his words. A doubt he’ll never let his conscious mind accept, despite his unconscious mind screaming “your son is dead. Ben is dead.”
Decciho flashes him a warm smile, “that I don’t believe.”
Henry tries to explain, “he’s a missing person. One of many.
And he’s just going to stay missing because they’re not doing anything to find him.”
Decciho has some more of his coffee as Henry goes on, “that’s why I’m hiring you.”
Decciho nods.
Henry reaches down underneath the table and brings up a framed picture of Ben O’neil, nineteen, skinny, good looking and could easily fit into a young indie rock ‘n’ roll band. Henry shows it to him, “I have this picture for you. It’s a good one. Taken about six months ago. Better than the pictures I sent you in the e-mail.”
Decciho takes it from him, gives it a quick look.
The desperation in Henry’s voice grows louder still, “I just want you to find him.”
“Tell me about him?” asks Decciho.
Henry smiles, “he’s just a good kid.”
“How long has he been living away from home for?”
“About four years. He’s been living with his girlfriend for a lot of that time,” said Henry.
“You’re able to talk to her still?”
Henry nods, “yes.”
Decciho queries, his detective mind spinning, “when was the last time?”
Henry shrugs, “I don’t know.”
Decciho presses a finger against the side of his own head, “think.”
“A couple of week ago,” guesses Henry. “I just want you to find him. Find Ben. You’re meant to be the best aren’t you?”
“How often did you talk to your son?”
Henry takes a breath, thinks this over. “Every couple of days I would at least get a facebook message from him. Most times we spoke on the phone.”
“And when was the last time?”
“Four, four and a half months ago now,” said Henry.
Decciho eyebrows raise, “An unexpected disappearance?”
Henry shakes his head, defeated, “this isn’t like him. He wouldn’t do it. I just need you to find him.”
Decciho stands up out of the chair, puts on his over coat, getting ready to leave. “I want to check all his things that he has here and I want you to give me every name, number and address of everyone you know who’s connected to him.”
“Today I got a letter of his last pay slip from his job,” said Henry, hoping that this might be of some use.
Decciho nods, “I’ll take that.”
Henry smiles, “thank you,”
Decciho corrects him with a shake of his head, “thank me when the job is done.”
-:-
The ad in the paper described it as a one bedroomed apartment perfect for city living for any ambitious bachelor, and at only seventy pounds per week and not seeing himself staying much longer than a few days Decciho really couldn’t work himself up enough to complain about it. He looks around the main front room, empty except for an old sofa pushed up against the wall, with a card table and fold out chair by the window overlooking the city street below, he drops his bags down.
Into the bedroom, tight for space, a small window with no curtains and a plain wooden board floor, with just a single but freshly made bed there’s also an empty waste paper basket next to it, but nothing else. Decciho moves to the side of it, with his foot he pushes down against the mattress testing it, happy enough with it.
Back into the main room and Decciho sits down at the card table.
With a collection of bills addressed to Ben he’s searching through them. He decides on a bank bill. From his pocket Decciho takes out a butterfly knife, and with a lot of skill and control he flips it open and slices at the top of the letter. Quickly reading through it. Caresses his thumb over the address, knows that’s where he need to go next.
A short tube ride underneath the streets of London and he finds himself facing down a once grand old Victorian house but that’s now been converted into flats.
Decciho walks up, Ben’s bill still in his hands, double checking the address.
Now inside and Decciho steps into a young man’s room, messy with movie posters covering the walls. A few small piles of clothes on the floor, with a desk overflowing with old DVD’s, computer games and bits of paper.
Lex, fifty, short and scruffy stays by the door as Decciho moves past him. “This is all his stuff,” said Lex.
“There’s a lot here,” Decciho comments.
Decciho heads straight for the desk, looking for something of value. Lex watches him.
“Take what you like, his father refuses to collect anything,” said Lex.
“So why are you holding onto it?”
Lex takes down a deep breath, pride suddenly filling his chest, he boldly boosts, “He paid, that’s why. Never late, sometimes early. For the rest of this month this room is still his. I’m not a bad person I just don’t think he’s coming back for any of this.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen it too many times before. He’s not my first tenant to just get up and leave and he won’t be my last,” said Lex.
“He tell you that he was leaving,” Decciho asks.
“No.”
Decciho questions, “when did you first find out he was missing?”
Lex doesn’t hesitate, Decciho’s professional, almost police like tone is making him a little uncomfortable, “when his father called me.”
Decciho finds a large notebook, stuffed fat with loose papers and kept closed with a piece of string wrapped around it.
He shows it to Lex. “You mind if I borrow this?”
Lex shakes his head, “No, take it. Take whatever. The more you take now the less I’ll have to end up throwing into the skip.”
I might find him yet and he might still want some of these things back,” said Decciho.
Lex smiles, tired. “Don’t underestimate a parent’s instinct. When his father called me I could hear it in his voice. He knew his son was gone. He knew it in his gut but his heart makes him continue on. You’re not going to find him.”
-:-
Back at his apartment and sitting by the window, a cup of coffee in hand Decciho flips through the notebook found in Ben’s apartment. He finds a picture of ‘Jenna’. She’s sitting down in the
middle of a green field.
-:-
Later that day and inside a small family run café, Jenna, dressed now in a pair of blue jeans and a Japanese cartoon printed t-shirt sits alone at a table for two by the window.
Decciho at the counter is watching her, a smile slowly growing; ‘it’s her, oh my god it’s her’ he seems to be saying to himself over and over in his mind.
Jenna see him staring, their eyes lock.
She gestures down to the empty seat at her table, invites him to join her.
He doesn’t need to be asked twice. From his pocket he takes out the notebook and from inside this her picture. He flashes it at her, “this is you isn’t it?”
She’s frozen, silence.
“Jenna,” he asks.
She’s shocked, her eyes stretch wide and her mouth hangs open.
He asks again, “Jenna right?”
“How do you know my name,” she demands.
He sits down at her table, still smiling. Out from another pocket he takes out another picture, this time of Ben. Out of its frame and folded in half, he gives it her, “I’m looking for Ben O’neil, you know him don’t you?”
She unfolds the picture, seeing Ben’s picture a few tears escape, she lifts up and holds an open hand in front of her mouth as if that will be enough to hide her overwhelmed gasps. “Oh my god.”
“I’ve been hired to find him. I’ve been paid a lot of money to do it. He’s your boyfriend isn’t he, I think you can help me,” said Decciho.
She nods.
Decciho leans back in his chair, studying her. “I’m living in the apartment just across the road, I’m very lucky to have bumped into you like this. I’m going to want to ask you a bunch of questions, just try and answer them as best you can.”
She drops her hand back down, a few deep breathes and the tears stop. She’s regaining control. “What is this?”
“I just want to talk to you.”
She shakes her head, “Why? Did his dad ask you to. Look he’s a nice man but I don’t want him talking to me anymore.”
Decciho tilts his head over to the side, “Why not?”
She shakes her head again, “There’s no need. I don’t like to. I don’t like the way he talks to me.”
“How does he talk to you?”
Jenna frowns, “Like I’m a member of the god damn family. Ben is all I care about. Ben is the only family I want. You understand?”
Decciho nods, “Yes.” He pushes on, “you were living with Ben. His girlfriend. Dating. You met him at work. Knew him for about three years. You knew him better than anyone I should think?”
She slams a fist down against the edge of the table, “Don’t talk about him like he’s dead.”
Decciho queries, “You don’t believe he is?”
She points a finger at him, angry, “I know he’s not. Who the hell are you?”
“I’ve told you. I’ve not lied. I find people and I’ve been hired to find him.”
She takes another deep breath, a moment to herself, “and you think you can?”
He nods, confidant, “I’ve never failed yet.”
She drops her head down, stares down at the top of the table “And what if he is?”
Decciho needs to check, “Is what?”
“You know.”
“Dead?”
She nods, “Can’t find him if that’s the case can you?”
Decciho furrows his brow, doesn’t like to admit it, but believes it to be true, “most of the time that makes searching for someone so much easier. But dead or alive I will still find him.”
She breaks down crying some more, “I just want to see him again. I love him so much. He’s all I think about. I just wanted to look after him. Spend the rest of my life with him and then it was all taken from me.”
“Was he worried about anything?” Decciho asks.
“He never worried.”
Decciho goes on, “was there anything that didn’t fit in with the rest of what you knew about him?"
“No.”
He keeps going, “Speaking to anyone that he didn’t introduce you to. Go out and not tell you where?”
She growls, furious. “There’s nothing I didn’t know about him.”
Decciho disagrees, “there are always things we hide from other people.”
She snaps, “well there was nothing that he hid from me.”
Decciho tries a new direction, dismissive, “does it makes sense to you that he would disappear into thin air?”
She has to admit, “No.”
He gestures with his hand, twirling it in the air like a music conductor, “because there must be a reason?”
She doesn’t answer.
Decciho gives her a moment, and then asks, “what did you see in him. When you started a relationship with him, why?
She doesn’t understand, “what?”
“Just answer the question.”
She needs to think about it, takes her time and then shrugs, “he made me feel beautiful. Just by looking at me he made me feel that way. He told me I was beautiful every day and I believed him each and every time.”
“And that’s what you got from him?”
She stands up out from her chair, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She walks away, heads for the door.
He calls out after her “I’m only looking to help.”
But it only falls on deaf ears.
-:-
Nightfall, cold and dark, sitting tense inside his ninety eighties rust covered ford car that crawls to a complete stop, Decciho’s watching Jenna, he’s been following for the last three hours and she’s now walking to the front of the rundown abandoned house with a man, a long overcoat and a big thick brimmed hat, hard to see his face. White, ugly, maybe there’s a few teeth missing also.
Jenna leads the man inside and lets the front door slam shut behind them.
Decciho comes slowly out of the driver’s side door, looking over the house, the upstairs windows first as if he fears being watched himself. A curious gin sits on his lips, trying to work it all out.
-:-
Inside the basement Jones drags his latest victim across the cold, hard dirty concrete floor. A trail of blood left behind them.
He dumps it down, his sweat covered face is one of relief as he lets go and straightens his back up.
He then steps over to the wall to retrieve the bucket as the heavy laboured footsteps of the monster echo out all around him.
Jones comes back to the body with the bucket and waits.
The monster leans over it, sniffs at it, before it then shuffles backwards as if it’s not all that interested.
Jones lets out a deep frustrated breath out through his nose. He then pulls out a small knife from his back pocket and cuts the man’s throat, blood pouring out.
The monster black eyes grow wide, as if this act has full woken it up, reaching out it’s disgusting hands it grabs a hold of the man and pulls him closer.
Biting into his face and ripping off a chunk of flesh. As soon as the monster swallows its first mouthful it throws it back up in the form of that same recognizable purple slop. Jones holds out his bucket and catches it. He reaches in hungrily and get a few quick mouthful of the purple slime himself.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
This sound fills the basement. Jones snaps his head up. Looking up at the ceiling, scared.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
There it is again.
He places the bucket down to the side of the monster, who’s still eating and being sick.
Jones moves over to the other side of the basement, unseen in the darkness.
He then turns on a small computer monitor, and sees the black and white footage of his security cameras all throughout the house. The one outside shows Decciho waiting at the front door.
Decciho reaches for the doorbell and presses it again.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Jones shakes his head, annoyed.
He turns monitor back off and rushes for the door to the basement, sticking his head out he screams, “bring him to the room!”
-:-
The door to the bedroom creeks open as Jenna slowly pushes it open.
She steps in as Decchio follows in behind her.
She moves over to the bed and sits down on the edge of it.
He scowls at her, “What are you doing here?”
She pats a shaking hand down next to her, “Sit.”
Decciho shakes his head, moves to the side of the bed, “What’s going on?”
Jenna turns away, can’t bring herself to look at him. “Did you follow me?” She asks.
He points at her accusingly, as though he’s now building towards receiving a confession from her, “I believe you are the key to finding Ben.”
Jenna suddenly starts to undress, both hands shaking, terrified. She takes off her shoes, socks first and then her jeans. “Lay down with me.” A gentle request.
Decchio’s studying her, “What are you doing?”
She then takes off her jacket and shirt. Now only in her underwear.
Her voice no more than a seductive whimper, “you think I’m pretty don’t you?”
Decciho watches her with lust filled eyes. “Where is he. The man you came in here with?”
“What does it matter?” She asks.
Decchio fights against his urges that are growing from within, “put your clothes back on.” He asks this more in hope.
She caresses her breasts with the backs of her hands, “come lay with me, please.”
She closes her eyes and waits.
Decciho cautiously moves closer to the bed, staring at her body, taking it all in. His knee softly hits against the bed frame. He begins to lowers himself when BANG the doors to the wardrobe fly open and out leaps Jones, club in hand and swinging.
Decciho spins around to face him, blocks his attack and shoves Jones back towards the wardrobe.
Jenna’s eyes snap open.
She sits up and watches on, scared.
Jones, stunned comes once again. Swinging his club harder at Decciho’s head. Decciho dodges and Jones misses.
Decciho then reaches inside a pocket and takes out his butterfly knife. Flipping it around once again with his skilled and a well-practiced hand, getting it open he slashes it across Jone’s throat, cutting him deep.
Jones drops the club and reaches up both hands, grabbing at the wound.
Blood spraying out of him like ink from a fountain pen.
He drops down to his knees and then collapses over onto his side, dead.
Decciho, still with his now blood stained knife in hand comes over to Jenna.
She screams.
With his other hand he grabs a hold of her, a fist full of hair and forces her off of the bed, down onto the floor he drags her out of the room.
-:-
Thud, thud, thud. A rhythmic beat as Decciho aggressively drags her down the last couple of steps and finally down off the staircase with him. His knife still in his other hand.
As she hits down hard on the floor of the hallway he finally lets go.
She’s bruised and her legs marked with carpet burns.
He gestures threateningly with the knife demanding, “who the hell are you?”
She gets up to her feet, screams at him, “I’ve told you”
“Then what is this!” He screams back at her, louder.
She lets it all out, “He made me work for him.”
“You’re brass?”
She’s shocked, “No.”
Decciho points to the top of the staircase, “he was trying to kill me.”
Tears streaming down her face once again, “Yes. He’s killed plenty of people before.”
Decciho is taken aback, “And you help him?”
She shakes her head, “I don’t want to. I have to. He has Ben. Ben’s still alive. I have to help him. I’ll never get him back or else. I just want him back. I just want things back the way they were before. He has him in the basement.”
He doesn’t believe her, “Show me.”
She leads him through the hallway and stop at the door to the basement. Decciho shoves a hand hard into her back, growing impatient. “If Ben is here show him to me!”
She opens the door and they both move inside. Dark, it’s impossible to see anything. Jenna leads him.
“He promised me,” she explains.
“Promised you what?” Decciho demands.
She moves into the middle of the basements floor then points towards the back wall. “Just look.”
Decciho doesn’t see anything, “What?
She keeps pointing, “Go closer and you’ll see him.”
He steps slowly further forwards.
As he moves past Jenna the darkness is clearing and there sitting on the floor, hunched over, breathing heavy and resting is the monster.
Decciho stops suddenly, shocked, horrified. Now he sees it. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that?”
Her voice is choked, “It’s Ben.” Jenna wipes the back of her hand over her eyes, the tears falling much more freely now. She doesn’t care anymore, isn’t going to fight it. “The man upstairs, the man you just killed. He turned him into this thing. He feeds him human flesh. It’s sick and that sick makes people immortal if they eat it.”
Decciho can’t take his eyes off the monster, “What the hell are you talking about?” He’s lost.
She keeps going, “inside that thing Ben is trapped. The more it feeds the more it’s sick and the closer I get to getting Ben back.”
Decciho shakes his head, refusing to believe it, “This can’t be real. It needs to be destroyed.”
She pleads with him. “No. I’ve nearly finished. I just need a few more bodies.”
He protests, “I can’t let you do that.”
She steps forwards, stands at the side of Decciho.
He asks, “Why does it just sit there. Why doesn’t it try and escape?”
She holds out a hand, “give me your knife and I’ll show you.”
Maybe it’s from the shock of everything but he lets her gently take his knife away from him.
Decciho’s still just staring at the monster, in awe of it.
She raises her hand up and quickly slashes the blade down across the side of Decciho’s face.
He stumbles away from her in pain.
She cut him deep, blood oozing out.
He turns to face her, snarls. “You bitch!”
She forces up a crazed smile, “it needs to smell blood before it will feed.”
Decciho turns to the monster as it now raises up, standing.
The monster attacks, grabbing a hold of Decciho and sinking it’s teeth into his neck.
Decchio yells out in vain, “NOOOOOO!!!” But his screams are cut short, the monster burying its teeth deep and breaking his neck.
Jenna’s whole body shakes, filled with rage. “I’m sorry, but Ben is in there. I will get him back. No one is going to stop me. No one. I love him too much.”
The End.
__
Submitted by:
TrSimon Parker
2, Howard Walk Dresden
Stoke-on-Trent
ST3 4SW
UK
simonkyleparker@hotmail.co.uk
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