Creative Book of 10 Best Short Stories Page 7

  I had to react quickly in order to save the people in that car. I remove the cell phone from my pocket and dial the emergency services telephone number before climbing from my wheelchair onto the railing of the bridge. Knowing that the police would pinpoint my location and send a unit to investigate, I toss the phone on the ground without talking and push myself over the edge. I feel alive again as I begin the rapid descent from the peak of the bridge. After executing a perfect swan dive, I plunge into the dangerous river below. I quickly return to the surface of the water feeling invigorated by the adrenaline rush. With great frustration, I attempt to kick my feet in vain, trying to swim faster toward the sinking car. Luckily, the use of my wheelchair helped me achieve significant gains in upper body strength because it took all of my effort to swim against the river’s deceptively strong current.

  The body of water continues to swallow the front end of the car as I search through the rear window. Several beer cans, along with an empty bottle of brandy, litter the dashboard as the car aims for the floor of the river. I hold my breath and swim underwater, attempting to see if the driver is conscious. As I set eyes on the face behind the wheel, all the air escapes my lungs, almost causing me to drown. I race to the surface for a huge gulp of fresh air before returning underwater to confirm the person’s identity. I cannot believe my eyes as they set sight upon the disabled veteran who torpedoed my BMW a year ago.

  As my temper rages out of control, I would not be surprised if the surrounding water bubbles vigorously like a hot spring. Heroic thoughts battle with my sinister intentions over the landscape of my emotions. Multitudes of questions bobble the scale of my conscience. Should I save this woman and her innocent child, or should I leave her behind to face the consequences of her actions?

  As I contemplate risking my life to rescue them from a watery grave, the irresponsible mother awakens. She screams in terror as she quickly realizes her whereabouts while the steering wheel presses against her chest, pinning her to the seat. She pounds desperately on the driver side window, begging for freedom. My heart almost surrenders to her plea for help until I realize that she failed to glance into the backseat to check on the condition of her child. Once I combine the fact that she is drinking and driving on a suspended license with the fact that she is unconcerned about the baby, my compassion evaporates faster than the alcohol she consumed that night. I conclude that she does not deserve my assistance.

  I rise to the surface of the murky river, feeling unremorseful over my current decision until I look into the trembling eyes of the terrified child in the backseat. My shoulders burn from exhaustion, but I could not ignore the screams of the baby. The frigidness of my heart melts as compassion for the innocent child fills my spirit. I use my elbow to pound repeatedly on the rear window until the glass finally shatters.

  The car immediately starts sinking faster, as water rapidly enters the cabin. I rip the frightened three-year-old from her car seat and carefully pull her through the broken window. She almost cut off my air supply as she wraps her arms tightly around my neck. I could hear the child’s mother shouting apologies and begging for help as she struggles to keep her chin above the rising water. Although ashamed of myself, I ignore her.

  I swim for shore, trying to get the child to safety. My arms cramp up, causing us to sink below the surface several times. Determined to survive, I fight the current all the way to shallow water. The river gurgles with satisfaction as it digests the drunk driver. Flashing lights dance across the reflective surface of the water while huge bubbles replace the sinking car in the background. A police officer rushes to assist us, pulling my exhausted body to shore with the child still attached to my neck. He calls for an ambulance before returning from his police cruiser with blankets.

  “Are you the driver of that car?” asked the officer as he wraps the child in a fluffy, fleece blanket.

  “No,” I reply while gasping for air. “I dove,” I said, pointing at the broken guardrail of the bridge, “from up there.”

  “Angel!” the three-year-old shouts, obviously mistaken about the target of my index finger.

  “More like a devil in disguise,” I thought to myself as I purposely neglect to inform the officer of the woman currently drowning on the floor of the river.

  The End

  Something to Live For

  Chris Barnham

  Something to Live For

  Across the table, his head is bowed and he is silent for a moment, hands in his lap. If he sat like that in a church you would think he was praying. But he’s not praying. Who would he pray to?

  His shoulders move a little, quivering like wind-blown water. When he speaks, his words sound like they are filtered through wet tissue paper.

  “I should just top myself.” He sniffs loudly and looks at me with eyes of wet glass. “I can’t go on with it.”

  “There now.” I make myself reach across the table and place a hand on his forearm. One of the prison officers standing against the wall straightens up and stares at us. I shake my head at him and lift my hand, to show it is empty. I am not passing anything across.

  “There now. You can’t talk like that.”

  “What’s the point?” he says. “There’s nothing for me, not after what I did. There’s no life for me if I get out. Anyone who knows me would be glad if I killed myself.”

  “There’s always something to live for.” I mean it. His head drops again and he mumbles something inaudible into his lap.

  Paul was very talkative today.

  Some days he hardly says a word and I wonder why I bother. It’s a half hour on two trains and then that miserable walk from Plumstead station. You have to cross the busy road that goes between the railway station and bus station then walk down some crumbling concrete steps and through the smelly, dirty underpass. After that there’s the half mile walk along the side of a road, with no cover, and usually no one else around. Graffiti everywhere, along with fast food boxes, dog shit and other rubbish, lying in piles by the side of the path.

  You don’t want to do all that just to find Paul can’t even be bothered to talk. A couple of times, a long time ago now, he wouldn’t even come to the visiting room to see me. One of the screws came out to tell me I’d wasted my journey. He delivered the news with a little half-suppressed smirk. To the screws visitors are hardly better than the scum locked up inside. Maybe worse in some ways; unlike the prisoners we have a choice and could just stay away. Prison officers assume friends or family of prisoners are criminals too, they just haven’t been caught yet.

  It wasn’t like that today, though. Paul was pumped full of himself. You could see it as soon as he strode into the visiting room. He bounced along on his toes, heels barely touching the floor. He held a piece of paper in his left hand. His right hand was at his side, fingers drumming on his thigh as he walked towards me.

  He looked fit and strong. There was a period early in his sentence when he didn’t exercise and ate poorly. I was worried he wouldn’t last long enough to come out the other end. The last five years have been different. He spends hours each day in the prison gym and you can see it in the tight muscles beneath his tee shirt and the spring in his step, like he’s got foam rubber in his shoes.

  He says it’s down to me, giving him hope, giving him the will to go on. Otherwise, he says, what he went through eighteen years ago was enough to finish a man.

  What he went through. It could certainly finish a man. That must be true.

  Eighteen years ago Paul was thirty years old. He had a girlfriend, called Sandra, who was twenty-five. They lived in a rented flat in East Dulwich, south London. The prosecution at Paul’s trial said he met Sandra only six months earlier. The Court was told they both had problems with alcohol and witnesses said the relationship was violent, with frequent arguments. Sandra was seen with blackened eyes and Paul once grabbed her by the hair and kicked and punched her in a local cafe. He had a violent past, with a conviction for assault, but Sandra didn’t know that, or didn‘
t tell.

  One hot evening in August, Paul killed Sandra. At the trial, they said she suffered twenty-eight blows to the head with a hammer. Paul put a plastic bag over her head to suffocate her, but the hammer had already killed her. He then wrapped her body in black plastic bin bags and kept her in the flat.

  A few days later he phoned her sister Ellie, who lived a few miles away in Bromley. Paul said Sandra was ill and asked Ellie to call round. That evening Ellie died of strangulation after suffering a sexual assault that was described in Court as brutal and macabre.

  I hadn’t met Paul when these things happened. I first met him three years into his sentence. We have never talked much about his crimes, although he told me years ago that he felt guilty but the murders seemed like something done by someone else. If there was anything he could do to make up for his crime, he said, he would do it. But he knew there was nothing.

  “There’s always something to hope for,” I say.

  I stare at the top of Paul’s head. He never had much hair, but years ago it was because he shaved it off. Now there is no sign of any hair growing. Just a couple of liverish blotches on a smooth pink scalp. The surface of his head looks pale, like an egg.

  I reach behind me and put my hand in the pocket of the large coat hanging on the back of my chair. There is a hammer in the pocket. I take it out and hold it in my right hand. It has a good weight to it, heavy enough but not too heavy. I can hear the blood roaring in my head. The prison officer is not looking. I glance at the hammer. It has a round head, like a cartoon character’s nose. Paul’s head is still down. His shoulders are shaking again.

  I am tight as a drum skin. I stand up, carefully making sure that my chair does not scrape on the floor. I pull my arm back. There are years of pain in a tight knot at the back of my neck. As my arm swings down I feel the knot dissolve. My whole body sings as the hammer head smashes into the top of his skull. I can feel the sound of the blow. I can taste it, smell it. It’s the sound of a melon dropped on the floor and the taste of a mouth full of lemons.

  The room fills with a white light. For a moment my eyes are blind, like someone has just taken a flash photograph.

  Paul is saying something. He is sitting upright, unharmed. I am still sitting with my arm stretched across the table towards him.

  “There’s you,” he says. “You’re what keeps me going. I don’t deserve it.”

  My hand is empty. There is no hammer. There never has been. There are cold drops of sweat between my shoulder blades. A wind whistles in my head like the last song of a dying whale.

  “You don’t want to hear me complaining,” Paul says. “I need to remember, one day I’ll be out. That’s what keeps me going. That’s what I live for.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  I live for that too, I think but don‘t say. There’s a smile on my lips like a piece of rotten meat.

  “There! Look at that.” Paul dragged the chair away from the table and dropped himself into it, pushed the piece of paper across the table at me.

  “What is it?”

  “Can’t you guess? Surely you can guess.”

  I could guess. I knew what the paper was without looking at it. In any case Paul couldn’t wait for me to answer.

  “It’s come through,” he said. “They’ve done it at last. Out on licence in two months. Two months! Christ, I thought it would never happen.”

  “That’s great news,” I said.

  “I thought it would never happen,” Paul said again. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists in front of his face. I watched him. My face felt tight and hot.

  “It’s going to be so different now. I’m different now. I’m really gonna work at this.”

  He opened his eyes and looked across the table at me. His blue eyes were like chips of ice from a frozen pond. I used to wonder what was behind those eyes. There was a time when I needed to know.

  “I know I can’t ever make up for what I did,” Paul said. His fists were still clenched. “But I’m going to do something to repay a little bit of it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Yes.” I cranked a smile into place beneath my eyes. “I’ll help. I haven’t waited all these years for nothing.”

  After Paul killed the second sister, things quickly unravelled for him. On the day he killed Ellie she was due to meet her boyfriend, Jack, for lunch in a riverside pub in Greenwich. When she didn’t show up, Jack called her mobile and was surprised to hear Paul answer the call. Paul told Jack that Ellie’s flatmate had been mugged and was injured in hospital. The two sisters were at the hospital with her. Paul invited Jack over to the East Dulwich flat to wait for the women to return.

  Jack later told the Court that Paul seemed agitated as he made them a cup of coffee. There was an unpleasant smell in the flat. Paul said he had a problem with the drains. Jack sat to drink his coffee. He noticed what appeared to be fresh blood on the sofa. Paul said that he had suffered a nosebleed.

  The women did not turn up and Jack left. Suspicions aroused, he went to Ellie’s flat the next morning. The door was answered by the flatmate who Paul had claimed was in hospital. She had not been mugged or suffered any injury and she had not seen or heard from Ellie since the previous morning. The two of them drove straight to Paul’s flat. The door was unlocked and they went inside. The smell was worse. They found the bodies in the bedroom.

  By now Paul was on the run and he stayed at large for over a week before being arrested in Brighton. He told police he couldn’t remember Sandra’s death. He blanked out and when he came round he had a bloodstained hammer in his hand. He said he had taken a shed load of drugs, including ecstasy and cocaine. He said he wished Sandra had not been killed and at his trial he claimed that he strangled her sister accidentally.

  The phone rang. It was Paul.

  “I can’t talk long,” he said. “There’s always a queue for the payphone in here. It’s all set. Next Tuesday. Jesus, I can’t believe it, I’m getting out.”

  I said nothing for a moment. I could feel a tension in my limbs, like a long-suppressed shiver buried in my bones.

  “That’s great,” I said at last.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. There was a faint rustling noise on the line, like waves running over a distant beach. Maybe the screws were listening in. They would be hoping to hear Paul planning his next crime. They don’t believe anyone can ever reform, anyone locked up in their prison is just bad and that’s that. There’s no room in their world for people who want to put right what has been done wrong.

  One time, one of the screws asked me why I came. He meant it kindly, I think. He knew the time and energy that I put into keeping up those visits. He looked up at me as he searched my bag. Quite an old guy, fiftyish, seen it all. He wasn’t being critical, just puzzled why I should want to come here to talk to any of these guys. Least of all Paul, after what he did.

  “He’s lucky to have you visit,” the guy said. He looked at me as he handed my bag back. His head was tilted slightly to one side, eyes slightly squinted, making what he said a question.

  I said nothing.

  “Not related are you? Didn’t know him before he was inside.”

  “No.” I zipped up my shoulder bag and lifted it from the bench.

  “He’s different to you,” he said. He shook his head wearily. “Maybe you don’t know what he did.”

  “I do.” I could feel my teeth pressed tightly together. The muscles in my jaw clenched.

  The screw looked surprised. “What do you think about that?”

  I said nothing. I couldn’t speak, just shook my head.

  “Do you think he can ever make up for something like that?” the screw said.

  I shook my head again. “Never.”

  “Then why - ?” he shrugged at me.

  “Someone has to do something,” I said. “You can’t ever put it right, but you do what you can. You know?”

  He just stared
at me.

  On the phone, Paul was talking again.

  “Is it -?” He hesitated. That wasn’t like him. “Is it still OK, what we talked about?”

  This was the moment. I stood with the phone to my ear and looked around my bedroom. I could change my mind even now. The path forked here. Despite the years of visiting Paul I could let it all go now that he was coming out. I didn’t have to meet him, didn’t need to keep in touch. There was nothing to hold me here. I could move away and he would never know where I was. Maybe I had done as much as anyone could expect. I could just walk away.