Closer Than You Think - Darren O’Sullivan

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window. He could see Blair shuffling back into the lounge. Opening the back door, he stepped inside and quietly closed it behind him. Moving to the doorway between the two rooms he watched his target trip over the coffee table, swearing loudly as he did. Blair steadied himself, turned and headed back towards the kitchen. Without panicking, he stepped into the space behind the open door and held his breath. His victim walked into the kitchen and using his phone, opened a small cupboard where the fuse box lived.

      Pointless looking there, he thought with a wry smile.

      After Blair flicked on and off the fuse switches half a dozen times, he swore to himself before giving up and saying out loud that he may as well fuck off to bed. As Blair stumbled past him hiding in the shadows between the dining room and kitchen, he could feel the air move.

      He listened as the kitchen clock ticked from one minute to the next for ten cycles of the second hand before quietly walking up the stairs behind Blair, who was now snoring in his bed. Pausing in the doorway he watched the mound of flesh rise and fall with each deep, vibrating breath and smiled to himself. Blair was oblivious to the fact his time on this earth had completely run out.

      Crouching beside him, he observed his features. He looked entirely relaxed; he slept like a man without a care in the world. A man with no demons. Watching him and knowing what he was about to do, he couldn’t help but think of that summer from 1989 when he was just seven. His first ever kill.

      It was so hot that summer the ground in his back garden had cracked, exposing inch-deep ravines. He had run away again, running until the tears stopped falling and exhaustion crept into his stomach. He came to his regular hiding space beside the old court, a seventeenth-century castle on the outskirts of Kanturk. Once there, he pressed his back against the cool rock of the ancient ninety-foot wall and struggled to catch his breath. Above him, birds fluttered from one side of the walls to the other. He knew he would be in a lot of trouble for running away again, but he couldn’t bear it, not anymore. His father’s voice shouting was like a whisper channelled directly into his eardrum, his mother’s muffled cries were deafening. He didn’t know it then, but what happened next would define who he was.

      Under the trees that lined the castle was a black and white cat. It was playing with something, toying with it, slapping it with its paws, claws out. At first, he assumed it was a frog or a rat, and so did nothing, but when the little bird tried to fly away and was caught again, he took more notice. Frogs were rife, and rats carried diseases. But the little bird hadn’t done anything but fly and sing. Beautiful things. Anything that sang so sweetly shouldn’t be subjected to pain. He threw a stone, narrowly missing the cat, and jumped up shouting at it. The cat panicked and dropped the bird before running away, leaving the bird on the floor at his feet, its body broken, but still breathing. He picked it up, held the little bird in his hands, watching it fight to survive. Its tiny stomach lay open, the contents sticking to his fingers. He knew the bird was suffering, suffering because of another creature and he knew that despite his desperation for the bird to fly away to sing sweetly once more, it would die painfully. Gently he lay it on the ground and raising his boot high into the air he stamped on its little head. After he scraped the remains of the animal from the bottom of his shoe, he thought of his mother.

      Something shifted that day. He knew if he wanted to, he could be powerful beyond compare. He could be in charge of it all – watching Blair sleep up close he felt the same wave of power as he had when he was seven.

      Standing up, he undressed and calmly folded his clothes, leaving them by the door. What was coming next would be messy.

      Afterwards, with raised goose bumps on his naked skin, he walked back to the bay he knew his mother would have loved. Behind him, the fire was starting to grow, soon to be all-consuming. Once in the bay the wind was less fierce, the bay protected by the cliffs on three sides. Even in the total blackness he could still see the beauty of the place. Yes, his mother would have loved it here. She would have brought a picnic and they would have sat and eaten it on a quiet midweek day, the sun beating down on their heads. She would walk in the sea shin-deep and stare out to the vast blue, trying to see beyond the horizon, and he knew he wouldn’t have interrupted it. She would look beautiful, and in peace.

      Thinking about his mother made him realise he was covered in blood and needed to be cleansed. Carefully placing his clothes against the cliff, he walked into the icy sea. He let the cold water surge over him, relinquishing control. Because nature was the only thing that was incapable of punishing someone, even at its most violent.

      Washing himself in the tide, he heard sirens in the distance. He looked back from where he’d just come: the house itself too far away and with a cliff blocking it from view, but in the sky, he could see his mark, the black clouds smudged with an orange glow as the fire raged. They would put it out, and then they would find Blair Patterson. His body, burnt beyond recognition, likely unidentifiable without the use of dental records.

      It would remain a mystery, the power cut, the lack of clear motive, and then, just when the murder felt like yesterday’s news, he would do it all over again.

       Chapter 4

       6th May 2018

      St Ives, Cambridgeshire

      An hour after deciding to go to the shops on my own, Geoff walked me home and checked the house. Once satisfied, he offered to come with me to the shops again, insisting it was no bother. I said I was OK, and he smiled, told me I was more than OK before kissing me on the head and leaving.

      I prepared myself for the walk into town. I messaged Penny, telling her I was venturing out. She messaged back an emoji, the one with the bicep curling. I think she was telling me to be strong, but I didn’t really get emojis. Her message, although designed to be light was anything but, because it was obvious she was trying not to make a big deal out of something that was a huge deal. I wished I hadn’t messaged.

      It took another two hours for me to leave the front door. It wasn’t often I went out my own. But today I felt bolstered, brave. I blamed the unexpected text from Paul and my even more unexpected reaction to it. I thought I would feel anxious at spending time with him, but far from it – I felt excited, nervous, but the kind that makes you smile.

      I was only minutes from my front door, only minutes into my courageous day, and my smile was gone. The half-mile walk into the town centre was stressful, the footpaths busier than I would have liked. Mothers with glazed expressions through sleep deprivation pushed their babies in buggies; their children’s eyes shone in contrast as they drank in their new environments. Older people ambled as if they had all the time in the world – somehow defying its passing, as they gently walked for a morning shop. There were those who were on a day off or like me, unemployed. People. Lots, too many of them, all going about their day. Not one paying any attention to the small woman who scuttled through them.

      And yet, I couldn’t help but feel I was being watched, a feeling I couldn’t shake despite the obvious truth. No one cared anymore. I was now just another face in the crowd. But I felt it, regardless. That was just how it was. A long time ago I had tried to combat the insecurity I felt in public, but it was a battle that wasn’t mine to win, so I learnt to make peace with feeling both watched and overlooked. The rational side of me knew there were worse problems to have, worse things going on. But still, the battle remained.

      To help stop my fear from taking control and rendering me useless, I played with my necklace, fingering the four keys that hung from the chain. Front door, back door, downstairs windows, upstairs windows. As I repeated my mantra, I focused on the used chewing gum someone had trodden into the ground and counted each piece. I hoped once I made it into the supermarket, I would feel safe.

      By the time I made it to Tesco Express I had counted forty-seven pieces of old gum and my hand ached from continually moving the keys back and forth. It was disgusting to think about, the amount of gum, all those germs, but counting helped. I thought I would feel better being indoors again, but I felt worse. Grabbing a basket, I walked down the aisles, acutely aware of the exit becoming further and

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