Dear Diary IV - Part 4
12. December
Part I
Kirsty was exhausted at the end of the first week in December, so quickly went to sleep.
Then her eyes opened, and she saw the figure that was Vicky seeming to unzip and split apart like pieces of orange peel; the space between these pieces was filled with dazzling white light, then a taller figure emerged, dressed in a dark suit, replacing Vicky as the light dimmed. It chuckled, then Kirsty recognized her father standing before her: not the father she knew from real life, barring recent events, but another father with a cruel gleam in his eyes and a mocking, menacing laugh. He pointed to her and said,
‘ahh, look at the blind idiot there, fooling around trying to get her glasses replaced, not seeing a thing until it stands in front of her and waves!’
He vanished, then reappeared right in front of her, taunting her,
‘hello, I’m over here, window-face: your father, otherwise known as the Spechunter. It’s been so funny watching you being so stupid, so deluded, so trusting!’
He burst out into laughter, then moved away a few steps.
‘Oooh, better not stand too far away, you might not be able to see me! Here,’
he snapped his fingers, and his suit instantly became a bright red one, then he asked mockingly,
‘there, is red easier to see than black?’
He laughed uproariously.
Kirsty stared angrily at him and cried out,
‘you knew what you were doing, you sick bastard! You must have been laughing at me all that time! How could you do this to your daughter?’
‘And why not? It was such fun watching you crawl around me, trying to please me. I like that in a woman: especially a myopic one. And what’s even funnier, I really like that fat whore, your sister Emma,’
His voice changed into a parody of Emma, saying,
‘Big Sis, you need to open your eyes, before I get angry and slap your backside so hard your glasses fly off and land on the moon!’
His voice changed back, and he continued,
‘she was on to me the moment she heard me. Oh, what lovely big front bumpers she has! Did you ever notice that when you were playing at whoring yourself? Or did you think the men were really into you just for your glasses? Even your blind sisters Amy and Melissa would realise what’s happening,’
his voice then copied their voices in near-chorus,
‘oh, we are those skinny beanpoles who can’t get our own boyfriends, so we are sharing one, we are so blind - yet not as blind as Kirsty.’
Then after another chuckle, said,
‘then there’s that hilarious thing with your dear little sister Louise,’
again his voice changed into a parody, this time of Louise,
‘hey Kirsty, it’s me, Louise, I’m all perky, jolly, friendly and kind hearted: I’m so kind that I’ve taken to always wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m a Lesbian” on it just in case people don’t realise! I even made the letters really big, about 6 inches high so people who are legally blind can see them too! And maybe even Kirsty, if she squints hard enough! Isn’t that kind of me?’
His voice changed back, continuing,
‘but you missed that one too, were you too busy selling insurance? Or too busy with that ridiculous fat guy at work? You know, hello-my-name-is-Bernie, I’m-a-fat-boring-oaf-that-likes-young-women-with-glasses. I-think-I’m-really-sexy-and-they-are-delighted-by-my-attention-and-groping. I’m-quite-interesting-really.’
His voice returned to his normal speed and intonation, and then he said,
‘there’s also that ridiculous girlfriend Louise now has: no, not the one who couldn’t say a word and had glasses like lightbulbs, oh how she cried out when I slaughtered her like a lamb! Must have been the first lucid thing she ever said! I mean that ginger-haired girl who thinks she’s Miss Marbles. Is she going back to hairy feed when she’s done calculating the odds?’
His voice then turned robotic, and he said,
‘There’s a 100% chance I’m hiding something too. And a 100% chance blind groping Kirsty will miss it. Ask Bernie about groping, he’s really good at it!’
His voice again turned back to normal, then he said,
‘you need to listen to her, she’s cleverer than all the rest of your little gang of idiots put together!’
Kirsty put her hands on her hips and shouted at him,
‘how dare you insult my sisters!’
‘Oh, are you going to tell me none of that matters? Go on, try it. Sorry, it won’t work, I’m stuck in your head forever more!’
Kirsty glared at him angrily. He turned and walked away from her, smirking, then waved his hand. A huge pile of glasses appeared next to him. He plucked one from the pile at random, put them on, turned to her and said harshly,
‘now it’s time for you to welcome back your dear and constant companion from these last few months: Mr Headache. He’s been very loyal, sticking with you through thick and thin. Give him a warm reception, please.’
With that, his eyes glowed bright white, then brighter, and still brighter. Twin beams of harsh, violent light lashed out from them, hitting her head, jabbing into her brain, ripping into her mind like saws, then lightning, then fire, then icicles, then knives. Kirsty screamed, holding her head with both hands, falling to the floor, groaning with agony. He stopped and watched her, chortling with amusement. She gasped at the continued agony ringing and reverberating in her head.
She tried to get up beyond all-fours, but her head was spinning too much, dizziness and agony raging in her head. Dimly she heard him say,
’let’s do this again, it’s really hilarious watching you squirm and cry out,’
and those twin beams of cruel light hammered again into her head, knocking her flat, causing her to scream with agony. But then her right hand jutted out almost by accident, blocking the blasts: it helped, a little. She met his dancing, mocking gaze silently. He straightened his jacket, and said, with a note of anger in his voice,
‘oh, you’re spoiling my fun. I’ll have to try harder. You do like it hard, don’t you?’
His voice then mimicked her own,
‘oh, take me, take me, please take me! I’m just a desperate speccy-girl who can’t find a boyfriend!’
With that, the beams of light hit her again, harder and brighter, the effect sharper and rougher, grinding her mind into dust. But Kirsty then held out both hands, blocking most of it. He gazed at her in furious hatred, then said sharply,
‘you’re just a stupid little girl. Give it up, you won’t win. I rule here.’
Kirsty pushed herself up to standing, despite her pounding head. She hissed at him and said
‘I’m not stupid, and I’m not a girl. I’m a mother. I can take anything. Get out of my head, you evil piece of green crud stuck to a nosepad!’
With that, he blasted her again, his anger a scream, the light pounding at her with terrible violence... But Kirsty crossed her arms defensively in front of her face, and reflected it all back at him.
His scream began to change from anger to fear, the light rapidly escalating in dazzling ferocity until Kirsty was forced to looked away... Then it changed, becoming softer and gentler, allowing her to look at it once more. Her father seemed to split from top to bottom: she heard him cry out in distress, crying,
‘no! NO! Not you! How???’
Another figure formed within him: at first Kirsty couldn’t tell who it was. But a familiar voice emanated from it,
‘ahh, Kirsty, my eldest daughter. It’s so good to see you again. And it’s kind of fun to be inside him too, it begins to make up for how he shafted me and so abused my love.’
The light faded, and her mother stood before her, smiling kindly. Then her dreams moved on to calmer and kinder things.
During the morning of the Monday after that, Kirsty got into her dad’s car: she’d tried to avoid him a little recently, her feelings about him decidedly uncertain. But today she needed to get to a meeting quickly and he’d phoned to offer lunch, so she couldn’t turn him down. So she let him take her from her work to her appointment. By now he’d got himself a new phone, although he did again ask if Kirsty had seen the old one. By now, that was not a surprise to Kirsty, and again, she had to lie that she’d not seen it. As she belted herself in, he exclaimed,
‘hey, Kirsty, how’s it going? Still needing the master to give you sales tips?’
Kirsty cringed: this was getting worse than her dealings with Boring Bernie. She suppressed a shiver, then replied,
‘ahh, Dad, if you know anything more, please tell me?’
She let him ramble on about insurance: his knowledge was plainly superficial, akin to that of someone who’d read an introductory book on the subject, or read an online dictionary entry about such. As for getting any really useful selling tips, well, she might as well have asked Annie. She made a show of listening and nodding, even though it was barely worth listening to. “Strange to think,” she thought to herself “that not long ago, I was hanging onto every word he said.”
Then she moved the conversation on to something else, asking,
‘Dad, what do you think of those murders? The Spechunter?’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah... Yes, they’re terrible aren’t they? What I heard is that women are getting scared to go out wearing glasses now, they wear contacts now, which is a shame. They look so good to me.’
Kirsty looked sharply at him, suspecting he might say something like that. She asked,
‘what about if they can’t wear contacts?’
‘I guess they stay indoors. Or else go out in gangs.’
Kirsty made no comment about that.
A few minutes later, she sat looking down at her papers, then gave them a good shuffle just to divert her thoughts, inadvertently dropping a pen in the process: it fell into the door pocket beside her. Idly she reached in and felt around: there were two pens in there, which was hers? She looked down, and saw next to her pen a piece of chalk, with one end scuffed as if it been recently used. She began to feel queasy, but steeled herself and surreptitiously picked it up with her pen, then stowed both of them in her bag out of sight. She then sat there nervously, silently wishing that the journey would be over “soon, soon, please soon.” The car stopped at some traffic lights, causing her stomach to tie itself in knots. Mercifully, finally, they arrived. She got out and called into the car,
‘thanks for the lift, Dad. I’ll call you later.’
‘You sure you don’t want lunch afterwards?’
‘No, sorry Dad, I don’t have time. Got a busy afternoon after this, thanks anyway.’
She shut the door and watched him drive off, letting out a sigh of relief. Her afternoon was not scheduled to include anything she desperately needed to do, but she thought that perhaps doing things would help divert her mind from other issues. She collected herself and went into the building, and sold insurance as she so often did: her calm, patient demeanour masking turbulent feelings.
Part II
The day after, Louise wrote in her diary
‘Hello, Diary, it’s me again, the myopic chick who loves girls with glasses, especially the one called Cathy. Today I will tell you that my absolutely wonderful and sexy girlfriend Cathy has been helping the police. No, she’s not done anything wrong, she’s been crunching numbers and helping them to sort out which glasses match which murder victim. Apparently they are now pretty sure that Vicky isn’t the Spechunter, nor anything to do with him, except for the fact she broke into a garage or something and stole all the glasses that he’d taken from his victims, then sold them to various people. The Police are trying to find all the glasses, looking for DNA evidence I think. They found some other stuff in her flat, things like a hammer, a crowbar, things like that for breaking into places. One of those people who bought them is Amy and Melissa’s friend Alan: I can’t quite get my head around that one, he’s taking their pictures and posting them up on the internet, apparently they are quite a sensation. Both of them seem to talk about him as someone almost like a boyfriend, I don’t get that either. Are they sharing him? Goodness knows.’
Louise paused and looked at the gallery on her phone: she had many photos of her girlfriend Cathy, both selfies and of her alone, at the start wearing her old full-frame lenses and unfashionable frames, then suddenly changing to those amazing cateye frames with the alluring myodisks. There was a similar transformation in her clothing style: out with the decidedly strange choices, in with clothes that made her look a superhottie, in Louise’s very biased opinion.
She continued to write
’It’s been amazing watching how Cathy has changed, from rather awkward, reserved, closed off, and often grumpy to open and friendly... Well, mostly friendly. She’s not a ginger-haired Emma, that’s for sure, there’s a wonderful girl in there somewhere, and she’s slowly coming out. But there’s something else you need to know, it’s that I think she’s hiding something terrible about her past. I don’t think it’s something she did, and even if she had done something really bad, I’d be willing to forgive her completely. She could have tried to blow up the planet and I’d forgive her. Anyway, I asked about her father, and her face and attitude seemed to change back to how it was when I first met her, it was almost scary, I’ve not seen her that distressed before. I don’t like seeing her unhappy. If her father did something bad, he can’t be as bad as Kirsty’s dad seems to be, can he?’
Two days later, Kirsty sat on the end of Emma’s bed: she’d spent the last few days wracking her brains, trying to work out what the code was for her Dad’s old phone. It wasn’t her birthday, so maybe it was her mother’s birthday? She’d spent long hours agonizing about it, knowing if it was wrong, there was only one attempt left. But she had to try, she had to know what he was hiding. So, she turned it on - by now she’d ascertained there was nothing wrong with it at all, contrary to her Dad’s assertion - and carefully typed in “3006”: she was desperate not to waste an attempt. Her finger hovered over the “ok” button. Then she pressed it. The “Failed” message came up, then “1 Attempt Remaining”. She stared at it, hissing through her teeth in frustration. What could it be? She had no idea, or at least no idea that made any sense. Or did it have to make sense? It could have been “1234” for all she knew. Sighing, she replaced the phone under Emma’s wardrobe, spent some more time wondering, then went to check on Annie.
At the end of that week, Kirsty fell asleep, then saw her mother again. She walked up to her, asking with disbelief writ across her mien,
‘Mum? Is that you? How?’
‘Ahh, Kirsty, you should know by now what you can achieve if you fight hard enough. Here I am, but just for a little while.’
She smiled, then said
‘I’ve been dying to do this again.’
She hugged her daughter tightly, then Kirsty felt her grip weakening
‘I always knew you could do it. Put it all together, keep our family going, sort out all the problems. My wonderful eldest daughter. You make me so proud.’
Kirsty pulled away, seeing that her mother was fading away like smoke being puffed gently, then more strongly so. She asked,
‘what about his phone? What should I do? What is the code?’
Her mother, who was really beginning to fray, answered,
‘think about it: he only ever cared about the glasses, not the person, not their birthday. It was all about the glasses. All about the prescription. Why else did he bother coming into my life?’
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’
‘You’ll work it out. Ask Cathy to help you. He’s right about that, she’s a clever one.’
Her mother had by then virtually vanished. Kirsty didn’t know what to say, but heard her say, waveringly and as though from a great distance away,
‘give my other children a hug from me. Tell them I love them all!’
With that, she vanished. Kirsty abruptly awoke, for some moments disorientated; then once she realised where she was, she remembered what to do: it was all about the glasses.
Kirsty was busy in the attic again 3 days later, rummaging around in the stuff left there after her mother died. Glasses, anything about her glasses. And it had to be her glasses, because Kirsty nor her sisters existed at the point when he’d met her. There were several boxes of old photos: a few pictures of her mother when she was much younger that bought a tear to her eye. But she knew she had to stop looking at old photos and ornaments: what attracted her father to him was her glasses, nothing else, so the code for the phone ought to be her prescription at that time, which made more sense to her than anything else. But discovering what that might be - that was going to be difficult. She could find no photo that was definitely of her mother from that period.
She came to the last box, full of stuff that was even nearer to being useless rubbish, some laden with memories but nothing of any use. Burrowing down and down she was almost ready to give up, and once she had emptied it, she gave a mighty sigh: there was nothing, nothing at all. She felt like punching something, so punched the box in frustration. It moved, and then she saw something underneath: bits of paper. Curious, she picked one up. It was a prescription! Suddenly hopeful, she started picking them up, looking for the one which would be immediately before her date of birth. But the one she found that ought to have been the right date was semi-illegible. Was it 12? 13? 11? Kirsty couldn’t tell, and started to feel despair again: she could guess, but only had one try. But then she remembered Cathy, and wondered if she could help, using her clever-clogs mathematics.
Kirsty sat in her room, the purloined phone in her hand, switched on with one attempt left. Cathy had done her number crunching, using her complicated “9th Theorem”. She’d explained it to her as best she could, but then Kirsty wasn’t a mathematician: she was in insurance sales. Cathy had put the prescription slips in order by date, and used that sequence to deduce her mother’s myopia progression at around the age of 28. And the answer was, according to Cathy, “1211”. Thus Kirsty sat with her finger poised over the keyboard, waiting to type it in. She had no other choice: she had to know. So, with utmost precision and care, she typed in the code and pressed “OK”. And that was it, she was in. “So, what is it I’m looking for?” She thought to herself.
There was nothing particularly remarkable in any of the files: she was half expecting to see a list of dates for going out prowling or something of that ilk. But there was only a few meeting dates with herself. Beyond that, a few birthdays. Then there was the gallery, in which she found the selfies and also pictures of herself. And one more picture: it was a bloody face of a man wearing glasses. It was weird and distressing to look at, but fitted entirely with her current view of her father: a violent psychopath. She assumed he’d got the picture off the internet for whatever ghastly reason or fantasy he might have. Sighing, she turned it off, thinking “Well, what a waste of time that was.” The doorbell rang: it was a taxi: now that she’d started avoiding her father, she was using taxis to get to important meetings again. She quickly hid the phone back under Emma’s wardrobe, ran downstairs, and got taken to another large shiny building to sell insurance.
The next day, Louise picked up her Diary and opened it, intending to write something. But on the first blank page, she found writing: it wasn’t hers. It was Cathy’s. It read
‘Dear Louise, I’m really sorry to intrude in your diary, but I just read your previous diary entry. I’m also sorry that I haven’t had whatever it takes, maybe courage or something, that I need in order to tell you about my father. So, here is me trying to do this. I’ve not told anyone else about all this, no girlfriends or anyone else, I don’t even talk to my mother about it anymore. There’s just nothing left to say about it between us.’
‘Unlike your amazing sister Kirsty, I knew my dad from when I was a baby, and like she is, he was an amazing person. He cared for me so much, but little did I know how much pain I caused him. He became very depressed about me having epilepsy, he hid it well at that stage, but then I became highly myopic too and he went downhill really fast. It was all so incomprehensible to me, I was just a child, and there was my father just collapsing mentally in front of me. I had no idea what was going on apart from that my dad was really sad, and he blamed himself for what was wrong with me. I remember the drinking and the crying, and I remember me crying and blaming myself for making my dad so sad. So...’
There was a distorted patch on the paper, the lines warped and blurred, which Louise assumed to be a tear stain. The writing continued beneath it.
‘It came to an end when I was 8 years old, he tried to kill himself twice, then the last time he succeeded.’
There was another couple of tear stains, then more
‘I wish I had my dad. I love him so much.’
Then there was one more line
‘So now you know. So if you still want a girlfriend who’s all twisted up inside with guilt and sadness, here I am. Hugs very welcome.’
Louise sat there absolutely stunned by what she’d just read: it took her a long time to take in, even after another read through of it. She then picked up her phone and used it to send Cathy a message
‘I got your Diary entry. Don’t be sad, none of that’s your fault. Do you want me to come help?’
The reply came quickly
‘Yes please. I’m always wanting my LoopyLou.’
‘Ok will be with you in half hour.’
‘Thanx. Love you loads.’
‘Love you even more, PuddyTat.’
‘:-)’
Louise wrote in her Diary - or perhaps it was also Cathy’s Diary now?
‘LoopyLou has a bigger job with PuddyTat that she ever realised. But, I’m glad to do my absolute bestest best to help her.’
Kirsty wrote in her diary a couple of days later
‘Dear Diary, tonight I feel very frustrated, because earlier I went to the police with all the evidence we’d collected, at Emma’s instigation. She came along, I don’t which of us needed calming down the most. Anyway, we had three photos of a fuzzy shape, Emma swearing that my Dad sounds like the Spechunter, a photo of a dead man (who was Emma’s husband, briefly, before he was murdered) wearing a pair of glasses with exactly the same prescription as hers, so Cathy says, and a bit of chalk. Apparently, that is not enough. Well, I’m utterly convinced, so is Emma and all our sisters, so we have decided to try and catch him in the act. Goodness knows what will happen.’
Part III
Kirsty stood near the mouth of an alleyway, on occasion looking in at the clothes displayed in a nearby shop window, or else wandering round feeling a bit bored. This was the third night in a week she’d done this: hanging around late at night, dressed in dark clothes, a hoody and her coat to keep the cold out. She wore her old glasses: it would be no problem for her if they were taken. At this point she was feeling decidedly frustrated. Where was he? She looked at one of the mannequins standing in the shop window and asked it,
‘well, where is he? Cathy said he would be here tonight. Where’s my Dad?’
Of course, there was no answer. She went to hide in a shop doorway, out of the wind: she didn’t like spending Saturday nights like this. Or any other nights, come to that.
Then she heard footsteps, and peeked out. Along the pedestrianised area, she saw a figure walking towards her. He called out,
‘come, little girl with glasses, so I can see you and have some fun with you.’
Kirsty knew it was her father from his voice and shape. As he grew nearer, she saw his face uncovered, careless in his arrogance. She suppressed a shiver of disgust, stepped out, then stood silently, waiting for him to come, pulling back her hoody a little so that the glasses she wore could be seen, if not her face.
He walked right up to her, telling her as he drew a gleaming kitchen knife from his pocket,
‘well, aren’t you the brave one? Well, the brave ones may fight, but they still die, then they give up their glasses.’
Kirsty pulled down her hoody, glaring at him, and said, almost spitting with disgust,
‘well, Dad, this brave one is me. Are you really going to kill your daughter for her glasses?’
He looked at her in astonishment, silently mouthing
‘Kirsty...’
She took off her glasses and held them out to him, saying derisively,
‘there you go, you can have them. So aren’t you going to kill me now? Go on, then, I’m waiting.’
She grabbed his wrist and pulled it up so that the knife was pressed against her throat, and said harshly,
‘all you want is my glasses. Nothing else matters to you. Women mean nothing to you. Am I right? My mother knew it. I know it. You know it, too.’
She shoved her glasses into his pocket, then continued,
‘there, they are yours now to keep. I hope you enjoy them more than I did.’
He gave an angry cry and ran off. Kirsty whistled, then felt in her coat pocket for her new glasses, which she quickly put on. Her vision was now restored, thus she saw three young women emerge from the alleyway: her sisters, Emma, Louise and Cathy. All four of them ran after him. He was faster, but he happened to run past a particular corner. As he did so, a white stick stuck out unexpectedly; he tripped over it and fell heavily to the ground with a cry of alarm. Two tall young women walked out from around the corner: they saw little in the poor light, but heard it all. The other one whacked the indistinct dark shape she saw lying on the ground, then the first woman, hearing the grunts that emerged, joined the assault, impeding his attempts to get up and get away. Before he could get up properly, the other four young women caught up with him: three of them together pushed him to the ground and pinned him, writhing and cursing as they squashed him. He cried angrily,
‘you bitches! I’ll get you for this! I’m the Spechunter, I’ll kill all you bitches one by one and take your glasses! They are mine!’
Kirsty told him firmly,
‘no, we’ve got you for all you did to us! And you’re not taking our glasses!’
She reached into her other coat pocket and pulled out two cords: they were the glasses cords that her mother once had used occasionally, about 2 feet long and tough enough to prevent a pair of glasses falling. And tough enough to help restrain her dad.
With some difficulty, five of the women there pushed this raving, struggling man’s hands behind his back, tied them together, then did the same with his ankles. He still writhed, despite Emma, Kirsty and Cathy sitting on him, shouting and cursing them, so Kirsty reached into her pocket again and took out something else she’d meant to give away to charity or just dump in the bin: a ball of something. She pushed it into his mouth, thus quieting him down. Kirsty nodded to Louise, who had been busily recording all of this on her camera phone. She stopped recording, and rang the police.
‘Hello, we have the Spechunter. We have a confession recorded on my phone.’
Soon the police arrived, and found a most curious scene: a man held down on the ground by a group of young bespectacled women, restrained by two cords, with a ball of glasses cleaning cloths stuffed in his mouth. They picked him up, cuffed him then pulled out the cloths. As they hauled him off, he yelled and screamed dementedly at Kirsty and her sisters, crying,
’fuck you all! I’ll get you all, I’m the Spechunter and you’re all dead, I will take all your glasses and leave you blind!’
With that, he was bundled off into a police van, leaving the girls to high-five each other, embrace and then follow the police to give evidence. Kirsty was last: she looked down at the pavement and saw her old glasses lying there, squashed and broken, having fallen out of her father’s pocket. She put her heel on them and deliberately ground and squashed them some more. Emma called out for her, so Kirsty replied,
‘coming, dear sister. Just dealing with more unwanted rubbish,’
and then walked briskly to rejoin her sisters.
Emma wrote in her Diary two days before Christmas
‘Hello, Diary, I know I don’t say much to you, but this is very important, so I’ll tell you. Kirsty’s dad has been charged with I think 16 murders, including my late husband’s. The Police accepted his crazed confession, and also the video evidence of his attack on Kirsty, and the rest of it all. It’s just such a massive relief. As for my Big Sis, Kirsty, she seems calm enough - she is good at masking her feelings, but I can tell she’s boiling inside. Well, it’s not every day you find out your dad is a serial killer.’
That same day, Amy wandered into the room where Alan was preparing another photoshoot: she was well dressed in a business suit, as was Melissa, who was already waiting there, talking to Alan. Melissa beckoned her over and whispered into her elder sister’s ear,
‘ready?’
Amy nodded, and then they both walked over to Alan. He turned to face them. Amy cleared her throat, and started
‘Alan, we’ve been thinking. And talking.’
Melissa broke in,
‘you’ve been so kind to us both, you’re a good man - and we’re sorry we slapped you around a bit.’
He nodded, and replied
‘I’m not worried about that. Are you ready for more photos yet?’
he raised his camera expectantly, but Amy pushed it aside.
She coughed, then said hesitantly,
‘we were thinking... If you like... We could go back to how things were between us?’
‘What? What do you mean?’
Melissa sighed, then said, as if talking to a child,
‘remember when you were fucking us both? And you didn’t realise?’
Amy said,
‘it was really fun!’
He put up his hands in protest, then replied,
‘look, ladies, you’re both lovely, beautiful women, but... I have two confessions to make.’
Amy asked, her raspy voice a tiny bit sharper than normal,
‘go on, tell us then.’
‘firstly, I was onto you almost from the start. Melissa, you did tell me what happened to your sister, and I guessed what was going on very fast.’
He then looked at Amy and told her,
‘your little raspy voice is quite a clue. And your fake cochlear implant wasn’t that convincing to someone who’s taught lipreading to as many deaf people as I have.’
And then he looked at Melissa and Amy, first one, then the other, then back again, shrugged and admitted
‘I was never really that interested in you anyway. I was just after the photos.’
The twins exploded
‘What?? What!! You did all this just so you could post up our pictures on your lousy website?’
They cried out, almost in chorus
‘I’m insulted!
Then similarly
‘I thought you wanted me!’
They spent some considerable time shouting angrily and loudly at him, demanding their pictures be taken down. He shrugged and said
‘It’s far too late for that, you know. They’re everywhere!’
That got him a sharp kick in the leg from both of them. After that, the remainder of the evening went downhill fast: they demanded he call them a taxi. When it came, he was obliged to guide them to it, upon which they both angrily insulted his sexual performance; they then got in and were taken home, where Emma was waiting outside to help them indoors, having called ahead to warn her.
Cathy sat reading Louise’s Diary during the evening of Christmas Eve. It read thus:
‘Dear Diary, I’m still trying my best to come to terms with all that has happened this year, some of it very painful. Kirsty’s father has turned out to be the Spechunter: I feel very angry at that, being as he killed my old girlfriend Michelle. I still think about her, although we split up on bad terms, it’s horrible what he did to her. She must have been terrified, unable to cry for help. I also feel kind of angry towards Kirsty, but that’s stupid, she is not her father, not in any way. I will never forget my Michelle, but I will never let that become between me and my dear Cathy. She’s worth so much to me, I love her so much, her cleverness, her charm, that inner warmth she keeps so well hidden, her lovely shape, her sexy legs... And those flashing eyes, peeping out at me from behind those glasses! I am blessed to have such a marvellous girlfriend! Please do not make me compare the two, they are different people. Cathy is the best! ’
Cathy looked up at Louise, and gave warm smile, then told her,
‘you have such a kind heart. That’s what drew me to you... Although I didn’t really want anyone at first. I’m very blessed that I met you too.’
She winked, and her smile turned mischievous, then continued,
‘so, do you want to sit here talking all night long, or shall we two myopic girls have some fun?’
‘Oh, just a minute, I’ve got something else to show you.’
Louise got up and went to her bedside locker, then drew out the top drawer. In it lay some papers, which she took out and showed to Cathy.
Cathy read the topmost line, and almost gagged at the sight of it. Disbelief in her voice, she asked,
‘you want me to do that? You’re not serious...’
Louise met her gaze with her own, a gleam in her eye. She said dryly
‘I can see you will need some persuading.’
‘Okaay... Persuade me.’
Louise sat next to her equally bespectacled girlfriend, kissed her, whereupon Cathy dropped the papers on the floor: the persuasion quickly became a lot more fun after that. Meanwhile, the papers lay unregarded on the floor. The topmost read “Singing Star”: it was an application for a TV talent show.
It was the 27th of December, with what passed for Christmas festivities over, this year muted not because of lack of money, but mostly due to what had recently transpired. Emma had taken Kirsty to the police station where her father was being held: the thought that such a word could apply to the man really stuck in Kirsty’s mind like a fishbone. There he was: chained down to a chair in a room, with a guard present. Kirsty stopped at the doorway, glaring at him; her eyes pitilessly furious. Emma had suggested she leave this for a while, but Kirsty was adamant. He gave her a wicked, voracious smile. They wanted her to see him behind a screen, but she had refused: perhaps they didn’t realise that he was the one more likely to be attacked. She stood in front of him, ignoring the chair provided. She ground out the word bitterly at him,
‘Father...’
And fought to hold back a sob, to tell him harshly
‘I can’t begin tell you how much I hate you... You’ve killed all those women, ruined so many lives, killed my sister’s old girlfriend, my other sister’s husband. I don’t want you to be my father.’
‘ah, but that cannot change, dear daughter.’
In response, Kirsty hissed angrily at him.
He leaned forward slightly, gazing into her bespectacled eyes and calmly said to her,
‘your eyes are just like your mother’s: myopic. Stupid girl, you know nothing, you have no idea what it is like to love a woman who wears glasses.’
Kirsty humphed, then said,
‘you didn’t love her, it was all about the glasses! You only wanted someone wearing glasses! Never anything else!’
In a mockery of kindness, he spoke soothingly,
‘oh, my poor daughter is so angry with me! Shall I comfort you?’
He threw back his head and laughed manically. Kirsty took a step forward, but the guard motioned at her to step back. Grudgingly, she did so. She put her hands in her coat pockets, and her fingers found in one of them something hard and cold, with a rough surface in parts. She knew what it was, but not how it had found its way in there.
He looked at her in the eye again, his smirk mocking her, then said softly,
‘do you want some comfort, then? The same way I did for your mother 26 years ago, so that she would pop you out 9 months later? Mmm... That would be fun! Shall I lick your lenses clean?’
He waggled his tongue at her. Kirsty exploded at him, shouting angrily,
‘you are sick, sick, evil!! You disgust me! You are NOT my father! I reject you!’
She then had to be restrained by the guard, after which her struggles mostly subsided, so she was let go. She turned to face him again and cried out at him,
‘here, you can have this fucking stupid thing too!’
She threw something at him: it was the purple plastic dinosaur: it bounced off his chest, surprising him. She screamed at him,
‘now you can FUCK OFF and DIE!!’
She stomped out, ignoring both his taunts and the guard, then leant against the wall outside, breathing heavily, trying to restrain her sobs. She was then led along a couple of corridors to the waiting room. Emma was there sitting reading a magazine, which she quickly put down, then got up and went to her distraught eldest sister, who was by now weeping profusely. Emma hugged her, started trying to calm her down, telling her that she and her sisters would be with her and help her with whatever she needed, being as she did so much for them. Some time later, Kirsty was being driven home by Emma, red eyed and exhausted from stress and crying. She actually started to chuckle. Emma looked at her curiously for a moment, and asked,
‘what’s wrong, Big Sis?’
‘Oh, I’m just hoping next year is better than this one. It can’t be much worse than this one!’
Emma nodded, and replied
‘I really hope so.’
Epilogue
Kirsty sat in the doctor’s waiting room during the day before New Year’s Day: she was going to ask about her stress levels, and whether anything could be done to help. There was a beep, thus in response she looked up at the TV screen at the front of the waiting area: it said ‘Kirsty Johnson to see Dr Tavadi in room 4’. So off she trotted, looking for room 4. It had a nameplate, which read “Dr Diana Tavadi”. She knocked at the door and went in. The doctor was in her early thirties and very attractive: tall, slim and ample-breasted, with long luscious near-black hair. She turned to Kirsty and bade her sit, which Kirsty did, and then asked what she could do for her. She explained her problem, after which the Doctor nodded sympathetically and suggested she tried some relaxation techniques; if that didn’t help she advised her to come back and she’d get her to try something else. Kirsty thanked her, then started to get up, then belatedly remembered her other query, asking
‘I’ve been having these really weird dreams in the last few months... Never had dreams quite like them, but I can only remember fragments.’
The Doctor replied,
‘well, it’s my view that dreams are a twisted version of reality. It’s like your mind is taking parts of your real life and projecting them into a new form while you’re asleep. It’s not unusual at all, I wouldn’t worry about it.’
Kirsty still felt perplexed, but realised she wasn’t really going to get a better answer. The doctor reassured her,
‘hopefully they will go away when you are less stressed out.’
Kirsty nodded her agreement to that.
Statistics: Posted by Puffin — Sat Jul 04, 2015 1:58 pm