Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

After drinking his coffee he showered, and while the water cascaded over his skin, sloshing the sweat off his body, the fact that he’d just relived a bad memory came tumbling into his head. It had been a long time since he’d thought about that set of incidents.

Don’t think of it again now.

Once dressed, he shoved his arms into his warm coat, stuck a beanie hat on, put a full, capped syringe in his pocket along with the Tupperware tub, then left his place. It was a two-minute walk to the shop he needed—in the same row he’d gone to with her after she’d killed his father. He might even browse for a while. He had time to kill as well as a person. That gave him a bit of a belly chuckle, and a pair of teenage girls gawped at him oddly as they passed, giving him a wide berth by stepping off the pavement and into the gutter while he pissed himself laughing.

There was a toy shop along the way, and he went inside to select a wig similar to The Man’s hair. It wasn’t exactly right in colour, but so long as it had the length he could mess it up so it appeared unkempt.

Now that he’d had the memory, he realised with a jolt that he hadn’t placed The Man and The Man Point Two in the correct place. Where she had thrown the plank into the water hadn’t been where he’d left the bodies. Perhaps that had been why the happiness had only lasted sixteen years instead of the rest of his life. Was he being shown his mistake? It was a good job if he was, too, otherwise he’d have had to wait another year to kill again. He’d bet the police were still at the original canal site with their forensics people and one of those white tents. Their presence would make it impossible to carry out his new task.

Purchase made, the toy shop owner bidding him a good day, he congratulated himself on being resourceful and not having to shell out more money to the zoo man for another moth.

Things were falling into place.

Calm settled over him.

With more time to waste, he decided to go to the street in his dream. He’d read on one of those memes that dreams were the subconscious’ way of telling people things, guiding them through life when in their waking hours they couldn’t see the woods for the trees. And wasn’t that right? What he’d seen while asleep had told him so much—had he dozed off and what he’d thought had been a memory had really been a dream?

Yes, a dream.

He knew where the street was now, the dream sparking another memory of him following Jimmy home one day just so he could try to see Beautiful Lady again. He hadn’t seen her—or the bent-stalk flowers. A season had passed since he’d been there the first time, and the edging around the grass had just been overturned mud, bare of the pretty petals and the bowed stems. The borders would be bare again now, what with it being so cold, but perhaps over the years Beautiful Lady had planted something else in their place, something evergreen that lasted all year round.

It took a while to get there, and the journey reminded him of how long it had taken when he’d been a kid, although his legs didn’t ache as they had back then. He approached Beautiful Lady’s house from the opposite side of the road then stood jammed beside a tall hedge bordering one of the front gardens so he could stare across and wish he’d lived there all his life instead of the crummy place he’d been brought up in.

He allowed a moment of indulgence. How different life would have been. He wouldn’t have had a spider bed, but perhaps real cuddles instead. Beautiful Lady would have put her arms around him each time he’d been sad, he was sure, and he imagined she’d smell of wonderful expensive perfume, her hair soft to the touch, just washed and styled.

It never happened, would never have happened, so what’s the point in tormenting myself?

It was useless to look back on his past and wish it had been different. It had been what it had been, and nothing could change it now. He had to build on the future and make sure the coming days were as happy as he could make them. Who knew, he might meet a woman who liked him for more than being the ‘gorgeous’ man he had apparently become, for who he really was inside—someone who wanted a solid family unit. A blonde wife, children with dark hair, and bobbing flowers in the garden.

He could have that, couldn’t he?

An old Ford was parked outside Beautiful Lady’s house. It had seen better days, and he wondered who drove it. It wouldn’t be her, surely. She had class, and in his mind he could see her behind the wheel of a sporty little number, sunglasses and a headscarf on in the summer, the roof down so the heat of the day warmed her lovely face. The Ford might not even belong to anyone visiting her. People were rude and parked wherever they liked these days.

The front door opened, and that man, William, stepped out onto the path.

It gave him a jolt, seeing his father again. Had he survived her attack? Maybe that was why she hadn’t been caught by the police and sent to prison for murder—and, God, how he’d wished that would happen. Day after day he’d prayed for a knock at the door and a policeman standing there. One who’d read her rights then take her away. No such knock had ever come, though, just the tap-tap-tap of the stream of men visiting before The Man had entered their lives and stayed there.