Zodiac's toy by John Jones (best free ereader .TXT) 📖

"There was a load of vegan shite, but I made these crab paste sandwiches". He and Blotto just ate for a while.

Lee stood above Ray and tried to ask him again. "Why Ray? Why did you threaten Gary? You should know not to threaten someone like him with the police. You could have sent me back to prison".

"I didn't...wasn't me.."

"Stop fucking lying Ray it was you I was there you fucking cunt," he stamped on his head again, then stepped back.

"What's happened Ray? What's happened to the little runt I used to know?" Lee put his hands to his head for a few moments, pacing back and forth. Then he stopped and looked at Blotto who had a mouthful of sandwich. He held out his hand.

"Pass me the Stanley". Blotto swallowed and smiled, handing him the knife.

"What are you gonna do?" he asked. Lee stepped around the coffee table to stand before Blotto.

"The scales of justice will be balanced. Caroline and Wayne have their futures mapped out. They will get married and have two children, Dawn, and Nicholas. She is on half-day today and is six minutes away with Wayne," Lee slashed Blotto's face, blood spattering the cream leather sofa. Blotto cried out and tried to protect himself, but Lee continued to slash at Gary’s underdog who rolled to the side and then onto the floor. His back was hacked, but Blotto had the strength to get to his feet and head for the exit, dripping blood as he went.

Lee stepped across to Ray.

"Tell her you lost your key and had a nose-bleed. She'll believe you and be very pissed off, but she won't kick you out". He then kicked Ray hard in the face, cracking his nose. He cried aloud and blood spilled onto the carpet.

Lee left, following the trail of blood. Blotto was staggering along the pavement, heading for a row of shops. Lee just walked, Stanley knife in hand. Blotto looked back, knowing he wasn't going to outrun him, so held his bloodied hands up in an appeasement gesture.

"Lee!..why?" but Lee just continued slashing Blotto's face and chest, skin ripping, making his white shirt soaking red. Blotto again found strength and turned and headed out onto the main road.

People shouted and yelled and backed away as they watched Lee walk after the bloodied man staggering and getting his back slashed, where he collapsed heavily onto his shoulder and then onto his back. Cars came to a halt and there were a few horns beeping.

Blotto made a futile attempt to stop his face being hacked, but he grew weaker and Lee knelt beside him, becoming more frenzied as his focus went to the neck. The blade ripped open the flesh easily and blood gouted out onto the road, but still he hacked and slashed until the neck was a ragged, bloody mess.

Blotto didn't move. He was dead. Lee stopped, and stabbed the Stanley knife three inches into the left eye. He let it go, then stood up and walked onto the pavement, where he collapsed to his knees, breathing heavily.

Sirens punctuated the air, and police cars screeched to a halt.

"Ray!" shouted Caroline, stood with her hands on hips in the doorway of the living room, looking at the prone figure of her brother lying before the television. Behind her Wayne was looking at the splintered door. He saw an ambulance speed by, sirens wailing.

Caroline saw the sledge-hammer.

"Ray, what the fuck?"

"Caroline!" said Wayne, "that's the first time I've heard you swear". They both entered the living room. She pointed down at Ray.

"Sometimes I do, and it's always his fault". Ray rolled onto his back, holding his bloodied nose.

"I lost my key and got a nose-bleed," he managed to say.

Ten minutes later he was on the sofa, a dish-cloth over his nose. Even Wayne was annoyed with him. Him and Caroline were out back, finding things to do rather than be in Ray's presence.

He wondered perhaps if Lee and Blotto had been sent. Gary could have sent them after him, and they headed straight for the house where they knew he would be.

However, he saw that Lee attacked Blotto, and then chased him outside, so perhaps neither of them would be returning here to finish the job. He didn't know why Lee flipped out over Blotto, but knew that if he could appease Gary, then he could call them both off, and Caroline and Wayne would be out of danger.

A danger they wouldn't have to know they were in.

He could hear them talking out the back, and decided to quietly slip out and head for the high-rise. The way he normally would have went was blocked by police tape, vehicles and an ambulance. Could be Blotto, he thought. Lee was slashing him up. It must be, which means Lee will be either caught or on the run. Either way, neither of them should be coming back to the house. Or it may be something else entirely. Blotto shouldn't be thinking about coming back because he'll be bleeding, and if Lee came back he shouldn't harm Caroline, but then Ray didn't know. Lee may be angered enough to do something, but he had Blotto in mind at the moment, but as to why he attacked him, he had no idea. Their attentions should not be on Ray, or Caroline and Wayne at the moment, at least not for a while.

He cut through another route, and as he did, the total realisation of what he was about to do began to sink in.

Gary would probably kill him.

He walked with trepidation as the fact weighed heavily on his mind, that perhaps this was suicide.

Just get Gary to not target Caroline. Here I am, just get it over with. I mean who's going to miss me? Who gives a flying fuck about poor old Ray? he thought.

I'll tell you who. No-one. Well maybe Caroline, Shelley and his parents. Even though he knew they were disappointed with him. Shane has fucked off and now all I’m left with is Lee who doesn 't care about me anyway. Ray's a soft touch, he'll say yes to anything.

Ray who's just a lower class doleite who likes a smoke and a drink, going nowhere in life other than the pub to meet others like me because I genuinely have nothing better to do in my life than to stare at the bottom of a fucking pint glass, watching Caroline who is 'happy'. She loves that hippy fucker and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She's got prospects, will probably have kids, and then there's me.

Poor old fucking Ray, staring through the window on a cold, rainy Christmas night, watching her family eating and drinking and laughing in front of a cosy fire. Just the black sheep, the son no-one really wanted. The abject failure. The fucking loser who people don't care about, like the beggars outside shops looking up at people who walk on by as if they were not there.

That's me, Ray thought. No-one knows or cares I am here, and when Gary kills me, how long before anyone notices me missing? Perhaps his parents, Caroline and Shelley will make it their business to seek out Gary and thank him for doing them a favour.

Finally someone got rid of him, they would say, and throw a party where everyone would be happy now that Ray is not here to annoy them just by being present.

‘You know what Gary,’ he envisioned his father saying. ‘I wish you were my son instead of Ray. You're a successful businessman and you're expanding’.

Instead of scummy fucking Ray. No prospects whatsoever. Just another face in the crowd. If I could have foreseen what you would become I would have had you aborted. He wondered how many prospective fathers would do the same if they knew how their offsprings would turn out, and realised that barely no child on Earth throughout the history of evolution will have ever satisfied their parents one-hundred percent.

If you don't become a doctor, then you're a failure. You may be rich and famous, but you're not a doctor.

If people tried to please their parents their whole lives, then, Ray guessed, society is fucked.

However, he hoped it would simply be a bullet in the head. Painless. Out like a light. Not torture. The fact he had given himself up may go in his favour, but he didn't really know Gary. He came across as a straight businessman, but then he had ordered torture before.

It seemed he had plenty of nutjobs on his payroll, those who would take pleasure from pain who would love nothing more than to slowly gouge out his eyes and wrench out his teeth.

Still, if that was how it was to be then that was how it was to be. He had to stop them targeting Caroline. Call off the fucking dogs, so when the high-rise entered his vision he didn't feel as much fear as he had because he had come to terms with it.

No-one is going to miss me, and if that was the price to pay for Caroline's future then it was a no-brainer. Anything to stop them being a target, and if he had to be tortured and killed.

So be it.

He slowly entered the building, only to find it strangely quiet. All the doors were open, Gary's slightly ajar, and he decided to enter without knocking, and when he did, found Gary sitting on the sofa sorting through papers, who looked up with wide eyes when he appeared.

"Fuck me you've got some bollocks coming here," he said, putting the papers aside and getting to his feet.

"I'm giving myself up. Please don't go after Caroline".

"Who the fuck's Caroline?".

"My sister and her fiance. Blotto and Lee were in the house when I got there, threatening her". Gary frowned.

"Blotto was threatening her?"

"She wasn't there, but he was gonna knife her when she came back and then stab me. Something like that". Gary was quiet for a moment, unsure as to whether to go work on Ray and attack him, or keep a level head and deal with him in a measured way. He just ran a hand through his hair.

"It's not usually in my game to threaten families. That is an absolute last resort, but I will do it, and I will follow through what I say. I've only had cause to do it once, but your Caroline, I did not send Blotto after her. Blotto does his own thing and enjoys that. He's fucked in the head, but he gets the job done, and his methods are his methods and I don't interfere. Now, you threatened me with the police and threw a phone at me".

"I didn't..." Gary held up his hand.

"Don’t take me for a mug Ray. Even now you deny it when there were witnesses and I've still got a bruise from where the phone hit me". He pointed to above his eyebrow where there was a distinctive mark.

"So, yes Ray. I am going to kill you. You can't be trusted. Clearly those other two fucks didn't manage it, so I'll have to do it myself. I'll just put a bullet in your head, but not here".

Ray's shoulders slumped and he resigned himself.

"Promise you'll leave Caroline alone and not send anyone after her". Gary just shrugged.

"Okay, once you're lying dead somewhere. Now come on, I'll drive you out into the fields and do it there. I'll leave your body in the grass where it probably won't be discovered for a while".

Gary grabbed his coat and keys and they both left the flat, and were soon driving in his red BMW M3 through the streets.

The journey was silent, the atmosphere thick, and after around twenty minutes, there were more trees in the surroundings, and more fields came into view, and they drove out past a woodland where Gary turned into a small lane.

There were wheatfields on either side and Gary drove to a halt.

"Okay, get out, go into