Visions - In my Minds Eye. by ARTHUR HOWE (books to get back into reading .TXT) 📖

out his well-thought-out plan.

I decided to test him and reached slowly down between my legs to the floor of the car.
No reaction.

My hand reached back, searching.

I always kept a couple of tools in my car ever since I found myself stranded on the side of the road late one night, only needing one small screwdriver to tighten a hose that had leaked all of the water out of my radiator.

They were there somewhere, I thought to myself, chin now touching the steering wheel and hand stretched far back under my seat in my desperate effort to secure the only chance of survival.

“Looking for this Sir, are we?” boomed the voice right next to my ear. He was holding the familiar soft plastic case containing the set of four screwdrivers I’d bought just for this sort of emergency.

“Yes, yes thank you,” I said reaching out to grab the case.

He snatched it back towards his chest.

“Now Sir, Sir must make me a promise before I give Sir his tools, Sir Must,” he said teasingly.

“Sir must promise to drive carefully and not to take his eyes off the road or to be doing anything he might regret doing later, Sir,” he said, holding the screwdriver set just out of my reach.

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry. It’s just that I knew I had that set somewhere and you never know when you might need them in an emergency” I proffered.

“So long as Sir’s not thinking of doing anything silly with them that’s OK,” he said pushing the plastic case firmly into my left hand.

“Yes Sir, my Uncle Sipho always said that people worry about picking up a Hitchhiker but no one tells us hitchhikers to worry about the drivers now, do they Sir? We have to be very careful you know. If you read about those Yorkshire rippers and Bundy’s and the likes, you’ll see, it’s us hitchhikers who’s the ones that ought to be careful who we take lifts with.”

I heard the lever on his seat put him back into the reclining position. I was sure he was watching my every move now, just to be sure that I’d be keeping my promises.

I shuffled the screwdriver set over into the side pocket of my door and put both hands on the steering wheel. I wanted him to feel that I was satisfied in finding it and then putting it to rest.

By leaning forward slightly, I could move my head enough to get his face into my rear-view mirror.

Satisfied that he had indeed nodded off, I slowly used my right hand to open the soft plastic case containing the screwdrivers. The one I needed was the largest one, in the far right pocket. It was about ten inches in length with a carefully machined “star” blackened into it’s tip. “Chrome Vanadium,” was clearly marked on the label, and the Salesman had assured me they’d last me a lifetime. I slipped it out and then under my right leg, ready to grab it when I needed it.

The 40km to Bot River sign passed and I quickly worked out that I had another twenty minutes or so before this madman pounced. If I was to survive, I needed to have everything planned, needed to be one step ahead of my Hitchhiker.

I ran it through in my mind, working everything out down to the last second. The element of surprise had to be in my favour, not his. There he was, pretending to sleep in the passenger seat, smiling his rotting, toothless grin, thinking that he’d found yet another unsuspecting victim. Little did he know that I had worked out his evil little plan!

A short time later, the 20 km sign popped up and I was about to nudge my wannabe attacker when his voiced croaked, “ Well Sir, I reckon that’s about ten minutes now before you’d be dropping me then. If you could just pull into the picnic spot just before your turnoff, I’ll be getting me a lift easier from there.”

Again, I froze, my hands gripping the wheel so hard that I’m sure my attacker must have seen my whitening knuckle’s. I eased my grip and told myself to be calm and to be totally unpredictable. Catch him off guard.

I looked left and noticed that he was still reclined in the seat. Then I heard the paper.

The box was wrapped in black paper and I found myself wondering what sort of person goes into a shop and buys black wrapping paper? What sort of sick person actually goes out of is way to buy such a thing? A Madman! A sick perverted, psychotic Madman, that’s who! A man so bent on fulfilling his dirtiest, wildest perversions that he has to have everything just right, even down to the morbid black wrapping paper to cover his butcher’s toolbox!

I had to think quickly now. Time was ticking away and the final confrontation was minutes away.

I could hear the paper rustling and this just made me even tenser.

O.K. now calm down, I told myself.

This is how it’s going to go.

He’s obviously going to open the door – the space in the front of the car is not enough for a man of his size to move around in.

He’ll have his back to me as he fumbles with his acid/chloroform/anaesthetic/poison, getting ready to turn around and pin me down, posing me for his stunning, immobilising shots.

That’s when I’d have to strike. As his back is arched, I’d reach under my leg, grab the screwdriver, and pull my hand back as far as possible. Thrust forward, hard and deep, aiming for two feet beyond to make sure it goes in deep enough. Hit hard, just below the left shoulder blade, pushing through the lungs and piercing his heart. Pull it out. Stab it back in, this time a few inches lower, just in case. At this stage, he’ll probably fall backwards into the car. Strike again, only this time plunging the screwdriver deep into the centre of his chest, just below the rib cage. That should finish him off, once and for all!

“I couldn’t help but notice Sir looking here at my box.” He chirped, interrupting my foolproof plan.

“Sir probably wants to know what I have here in this box doesn’t Sir now?” he asked.
“No, no, really, what’s yours, is your business” I replied, thinking that he was getting some sort of sadistic pleasure out of his teasing and torturing. Have your fun and games whilst you think you’re one step ahead of me, I thought. I’ll just dig a little deeper with the Chrome Vanadium tipped screwdriver when it comes to my turn to show you who’s on top of this situation!

“Sir’ll remember my telling him about my Uncle Sipho, does Sir?” he asked.

Oh God, not another lecture about keeping my hands on the wheel? Humour him, I thought. He thinks that I’m the one with a few minutes left to live. Think again, Shitbreath!

“Well Sir, when my Uncle Sipho died, that was about two years ago Sir, and at that time, we had barely enough money in the family to cover the cost of getting his wreck towed away and, being of lowly farming stock Sir, we were not in a position to pay the undertakers up front.

Now, my Uncle Sipho loved this land and had worked it from a boy until he died at the young age of 59, Sir.” He waffled.

“Well Sir, now Uncle Sipho always said he’d want his mortal remains to lie on the land, there on the farm in Caledon, but not having the money and all, the best we could do was to ask the undertakers to hang onto him until we could afford to bring him back, Sir. But Sir will know, the cost of keeping the body there at the morgue would mean we’d never pay off the debt and so I had no other choice Sir.”

So, the motive is robbery, I thought. Kill and rob the victims for the sole purpose of paying off Sipho’s Undertakers so that they could get his body back to Caledon! My God, what a reason to die!

I noticed at this time that my hitchhiker had lifted the corner of the lid on his box and had his hand inside, ready to strike with whatever weapon he’d chosen for this evil deed.

The lay-by came into view and I struggled between keeping my eye on the road, my right hand on the screwdriver and my mind on my plan to strike first. He wasn’t going to give me that opportunity and was already poised, hand on weapon, ready to strike as soon as the car ground to a halt.

I slowed down to turn into the lay-by, hand ready, ready to strike.

The car had almost stopped and I gripped the screwdriver until it hurt.

The car stopped and I lunged forward, bringing the screwdriver round in an arc that met resistance only when the handle hit up against the bone of his temple.

His eyes went glassy and he looked at me questioningly, not sure quite what had just happened.

His hand was coming out of the box now and I yanked the screwdriver out, swung it back, this time, plunging it to the hilt in his neck, just above the collarbone.

“I think my Uncle Sipho was right Sir, you have to be very careful who you take a lift with now don’t you Sir?” he gurgled through the blood now dripping from his mouth as his eyes finally glassed over and the light went out of them.

The hitchhikers hand had popped out of the box and I finally un-tensed enough to look down to see what evil weapon would have been my undoing had I not seen through his cunning little plan.

The hand was opening slowly as the life ebbed out of his muscles and, like coarse sea salt, I watched as the grey, cremated remains of Uncle Sipho, poured through the hitchhikers fingers onto the centre console of the car.


TICKETS

Perry knew that there was something special about numbers.
From a very early age he realised that there was nothing on this earth or even outside of it, that was random. Every number was significant and a very important part of a bigger picture.
Perry believed in God. He believed that not only was He the ultimate protector, but that He was the ultimate mathematician. One just had to look at nature to see how He had worked it all out, right down to the moon and the tides, the number of petals on a flower, or even the dates on which you were concieved, born and ultimately died.
Perry believed in fate. He believed that there were certain things that happened because they were destined to happen. That’s the way God wanted them to be, he reasoned.
Like his Job.
Perry hadn’t really much of a choice when it came to time to start working and to bring in some money to his Family House. At 15, he’d been told that it was time to get a job, and that his Dad had spoken to Mr Jankelowitz down at the Hardware store on East 52nd. His Dad told him he’d to report for work on Monday morning, Eight O’clock, sharp.
Perry had been there for almost 42 years now, and apart from four days off in ‘67 to have his appendix out, he’d never