Mostly Dark by Miranda Kate (best ereader for pc TXT) 📕

undressed, but no such luck as they exited the room.

He pulled up, taking his weight off his elbows. Watching that guy light up had made him want a cigarette too. He pulled a packet out of his jeans and enjoyed a smoke here on top of the world.

Johnson surveyed the city below him as it glistened in the night light. He’d been scoping this location out the last couple of days making sure it overlooked the right house.

He’d wanted her ever since he’d first seen her in her debut music video. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t someone worthy of knowing: he owned a music production company. But it wasn’t a big enough concern for her to notice. He’d found out all he could about her, and even though he could access the parties she attended, her group of sycophantic security guards wouldn’t let him close.

He knew he’d tipped into the obsessive when he woke up every morning thinking about her and fell asleep every night with her image in his head. He’d started to resent it, started to resent her. And that’s when he’d come up with this plan.

Johnson ground the butt into the dusty soil and flicked it away, spinning back round onto his belly. Looking through the binoculars again he found her downstairs in the lounge, moments before the French windows burst open and they all came flooding out. Even from this distance he could hear their screams of laughter and knew what they were planning.

He reached out and grabbed the hold-all he had with him and scrabbled about inside with one hand. He didn’t want to miss this opportunity.

He saw her come out, already stripping off her clothes, revealing a sexy string bikini beneath. It reflected gold in the light round the pool. He paused as his hand found what it was looking for and took in the view for a moment. He imagined his hands on that soft, supplicating flesh. It was such a waste.

He took away the binoculars and replaced them with the sight on the rifle. He found his target easily and flicked the safety off in one movement. He took a breath and waited a second as he saw her approach the diving board. She jumped once, then twice, and on the third he pulled the trigger. It hit home, making the dive less elegant, but the crowd round the pool loved it, cheering and thinking it was just the drink.

Johnson smiled as he beat his retreat, knowing that in a few seconds those cheers would turn to cries as the blood surfaced and she didn’t.

He jogged down the top of the ridge, more sure-footed than he’d imagined and jumped into his jeep. Being half way up the hillside he was able to coast the car down to the tarmac, keeping his retreat silent.

If he couldn’t have her, no one was going to.

Drunken Sailors

 

They were school buddies; she’d known them all for years, and they still went out together on a regular basis. The fact that she was the only girl made no difference; she could party hard just like the rest of them. She was one of the boys. Although that night it got missed.

Nancy tried hard not to think about that. She looked at their sorry faces and tried to believe their remorse, believe that it all just got out of hand. But Jimmy couldn’t quite look her in the eye and that bothered her. It made her wonder and recall his eyes that night: the arrogance and the supremacy they’d shown. How drunk had he actually been? There was no telling with him. There were nights you thought he was completely leathered, but then he’d say something and you knew he wasn’t.

But she had watched them all drink that night, watched them all put away the beers with the vodka chasers along with her.

It had been the usual fun in the local bar. Pool was their favourite, and they’d all wanted her on their team; she could pot anything no matter how drunk she was. Then as always they’d moved to the club. Nothing unusual there; two of their six had gone off to chase some skirt. And then afterwards they’d all piled round Johnny’s – again nothing new.

Nancy looked down at her wrists and rubbed them. Maybe the courtroom thought it was a look of humility, but it was pain. The red embedded lines still hurt even though it’d been a week. The doctors said they would eventually disappear, but some days she could still feel the ties they’d used – those horrible plastic things you couldn’t get out of. Something she knew all too well now.

She was asked how drunk she’d been and all she could think was, ‘it’s amazing how fast you sober up when you have to’. But it hadn’t made any difference. She still couldn’t work out how it had started, who had instigated it, and how it had ended up with them thinking it was a good idea. She swallowed, still feeling the gag reflex she’d had to the dirty sock they’d stuffed into her mouth. Another thing the doc said would pass.

Then she was asked to recount what had happened. She didn’t think she could when she’d gone through it with her lawyer, but up here on the stand with them all there in the room watching, it poured out, every detail, totally clinical. As she named each of them, describing in detail what their turn had entailed, she found it cathartic, as though finally stating it out loud made it clear that it was a heinous unprovoked attack, and that the things they did were perverse and brutal. She shifted in her seat, still feeling the brutality.

When asked who had brought it to a stop, the true denigration of what they’d put Nancy through was revealed. Johnny’s mother was sitting in the courtroom. She’d already given her testimony through tears – tears that her own child was capable of such horror; that she had been the one to discover it after not liking the sounds she’d heard from his attic room. At no time was there a question that it had been a game, Jimmy’s knife had put paid to that. Why would you need to hold a knife to a friend’s throat if it was all in fun?

Nancy was relieved at the verdict, knowing she wasn’t going to have to see them now for several years. It would give her time to recover, time to try and find a way through. She was still in shock she knew that, the doctor didn’t need to tell her. She just wished the song in her head would stop; the one they’d put on repeat that night to remind them of the good old times. One line in particular kept getting stuck, along with the image of Jimmy’s face as he’d mouthed it during his turn; ‘Way hay and up she rises’. They’d been more than just drunken sailors that night.

Echo of a Whistle

 

Jonas had no idea how long he’d blacked out for this time. His heart raced as he spun round trying to see if the man was still there, but all he could see were empty train carriages sitting in the disused siding.

He shook his leg and pulled at his foot, but it was still wedged right under the track and he couldn’t reach it.

It was really dark now, and the wind startled him as it hurtled round the corners of the derelict train sheds. Any second now the man would appear. He’d chased Jonas through the woods and out onto the embankment, he had to be here somewhere.

He fought back tears of fear and frustration. He knew that crying for his mummy wasn’t going to help him – the man had been right about that – but the images of the underground room haunted him, with its dirt floor and rusty metal cot. He couldn’t go back there; he couldn’t go through that pain again. The very thought of the man touching him; putting those metal things near him. He yanked at his foot again to distract himself from the image.

His escape had been a stroke of luck rather than planned. Not only had it been one of the rare days that the man hadn’t used the equipment on him, but the man had been complacent, allowing Jonas to go alone to clean up. Jonas had been halfway up the stairs by the time the man had shouted, already running for his life.

And he’d almost made it, but then he’d caught his foot running across the tracks.

He’d been too busy looking over his shoulder at the man, wondering why he’d stopped at the top of the embankment. And then the ground had come up to meet him: the air rushing in his ears creating a high pitch sound as he fell, and a blinding white flash as his head hit the track.

He attempted to reach his foot again, leaning on the track as he did so, and that’s when he felt it – the vibration. He peered into the darkness and made out two pin pricks of light. They were moving towards him, increasing in size. In his gut he knew it was a train.

But instead of feeling panic, he felt calm. It was over; whether dead or rescued the man couldn’t have him anymore.

Jonas looked up at the oncoming train, the lights clearly visible now, his eyes tracing their perfect roundness. He waved his arm and waited, listening for the whistle, the signal that they’d seen him. But it didn’t come.

And as the train raced through him, he realised he’d heard the whistle earlier that day already, the blinding flash hadn’t been his head hitting the track. His foot wasn’t trapped anymore. The man was gone and so was he.

Being Prepared

 

Paul laid the lace wedding dress out on the bed. It still looked as fresh and white as it had done that day. He could still see her in it. She’d wrapped it up so carefully in tissue paper, making sure there wouldn’t be a wrinkle in it. He unfolded the sleeves, smoothing them out gently, and ran his fingers along the edge of the shoulderless sleeves, and then along the sweetheart neckline of the bodice. He loved the sensation of it and remembered how it’d felt under him that night when they’d returned to their hotel room to consummate their vows.

She had talked about how she’d wanted her daughter to wear it on her wedding day, and how she wouldn’t mind if had to be altered a little. But there had been no daughter, or son, so the dress had remained untouched.

Paul was secretly pleased; he wouldn’t have wanted to see any other woman in it, it would’ve detracted from the sweet memories it held. And he needed those memories to hold on to now. He had to try and salvage something from the ensuing years of pain.

He turned the dress over, being careful not to crease it, and started to undo the tiny buttons that ran down the back. One by one it opened and he smiled as he remembered how it had exposed her back that night to his kisses.

Once he was done, he stepped back wondering how he was going to do this. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it’s what she would have wanted.

Paul lifted her up and if it wasn’t for the dead weight of her, he imagined that this was pretty much what it was like to dress a mannequin. Her limbs were rigid