Jams Roses - Son of a Serial Killer

‘You know what, wait here,’ said Tanya, before wobbling out of the room and up the stairs.

Natalie had never in her life shown any interest in babies or pregnant women. What she did have an interest in was herself, looking after herself, and manipulating others into making her life easier, better or more exciting. She was a devious, self-serving bitch, who was soaking up all the information that Tanya offered to her, preparing the biggest con she had ever attempted. Even for a woman like Natalie, when conning someone, a bit of luck was always welcome. And then it walked in through the front room door.

Tanya sat back down next to her guest and held out the digital pregnancy test she had not only talked about, but the one she had used all those months ago when she first discovered she was expecting, still with the word pregnant on the result screen. Natalie knew within seconds that she would be leaving with it tonight in her bag.

And with Tanya being as simple and naive as she was, all it took was Natalie to play dumb, claim she was useless with names of products, and how much easier it would be if she could take it and show the chemist what she wanted, and it was done. The pregnancy test was put into a clear, plastic sandwich bag and then into Natalie’s handbag.

Natalie would still practise acting pregnant for when in front of Ben; the sympathy vote would definitely help them to re-establish their relationship on an ‘affectionate’ level, but with the help of a piece of kit that declares she is one hundred per cent pregnant, he couldn’t deny that they have some sort of future together. Unless, of course, he didn’t believe he was the father, but Natalie already had a strong argument for that one planned already.

The sound of the front door opening was Natalie’s cue to leave.

She stood and thanked Tanya for her help, and asked her to keep the pregnancy to herself for the time being. David walked into the front room, dressed in sports gear from his squash game, and stopped on the spot when he saw the Natalie stood in front of his wife. He didn’t say a word.

‘Natalie was just here to say congratulations for our little bundle of joy,’ said Tanya, happily patting the bump of her belly. ‘She’s just leaving.’

From the atmosphere, David concluded that he wasn’t in the shit.

‘Hi Nat,’ said David, struggling to hide his awkwardness in the situation, ‘I’ll, erm, I’ll walk you to your car.’

Natalie walked past David and out of the front door, he followed closely behind and when a good distance from his home, and more importantly from his wife inside, grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he said, anger reddening his face. ‘I’m sorry things went sour the other day when Ben came home, but that wasn’t my fault.’

Natalie pulled her arm loose from David’s grip and stared hard into his eyes.

‘Don’t ever grab me like that again,’ she said, before adding cockily, ‘unless I’m on the clock.’

She turned and walked to her car.

‘You stay away from my wife!’ shouted David, kicking himself for raising his voice so close to home.

Natalie smiled at him as she pulled away down the road.

Ben Stepped out of the shower and dabbed his body dry with the clean towel that Eve had hung up for him. He wrapped it around his waist, picked up Eve’s toothbrush and brushed his teeth whilst staring in the mirror, knowing that his reflection no longer belonged to him.

The man in the mirror winked.

Eve and Ben had agreed that in order to move forward, he must come to a decision on what he was going to do about Natalie.

Eve worried a little that Ben would forgive his girlfriend for cheating on him. Would she lose this special guy so soon after they had built this amazing bond? She decided that no, she didn’t think so, and encouraged him to find a solution to the situation sooner rather than later, whilst he was still hurting inside, in fact.

An outsider looking in on Ben’s life could be forgiven for thinking all women were manipulative and worked for their own agendas. Ben agreed that it was better if everybody knew where they stood.

For him, the greatest problem on his mind was the knowledge in his head. He knew that he had killed two people. He was a killer. He knew he could be found out by the police and sent to prison for a very long time, or even not found out and maybe forced to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. Although, when he thought about the two youths, that he so savagely beat to death, he didn’t feel guilt. Staring at his alter ego in the mirror, and the man in the mirror staring unflinchingly back, they both knew that the only feeling Ben felt was the fear of being caught, which one would imagine, would lessen over time.

The more Ben thought about his craziness, because he was certainly quite a bit crazy and he’d accepted that at this point, the more he believed that he really didn’t know his father at all. His father was The Phantom; his mother had no reason to lie. And as upsetting as this idea was, it also had a calming effect, because his father was never caught.

Ben knew murders went unsolved, and he was sure nobody had seen him at the canal, and he had left no weapon to be found and no other clues as far as he could tell. So, had he gotten away with it? He thought he probably had. Which led to the next potential problem, could he control his anger in the future? Could he face Natalie, for example, a woman who had very recently broken his heart, when he had been going through the hardest time of his life?

Eve had organised a one-on-one appointment for Ben to see an anger management counsellor, someone she had known for a while, and who could see him early in the afternoon. The plan was to see this guy before he went home to Natalie and hopefully learn some special techniques for keeping calm in the heat of the moments that would surely arise.

When the time came, Ben sat opposite the softly-spoken counsellor and explained that he had lost his temper with two teenage boys, who had been verbally abusive and even assaulted him by throwing a stone at his head.

He also gave, upon request, any mitigating circumstances. As the words came out of his mouth, of his father, his job and his girlfriend, Ben knew how stupid this sounded. There was a fundamental problem with this process. Ben could only give the counsellor so many details about the incident, and the counsellor could only give advice relative to the information he had been given.

‘There is no problem with defending yourself against people who are doing you harm, not morally, nor legally, to an extent,’ said the advisor, after listening to Ben recount events.

‘Reacting with violence is not a good thing, but in a situation such as this, completely understandable,’ he continued. ‘You were forced to defend yourself, and your natural reaction was to fight. Some would have fled, but either response is justifiable due to the circumstance you found yourself in, by no fault of your own.’

The counsellor also touched on the last two months that Ben had lived through, especially the morning he’d had, these were all factors that could impair one’s judgement. Stress, emotional pain and shock are hard enough to deal with one at a time, all three together is tremendously difficult for anyone.

Ben sat and listened as he was given techniques to help curb his temper if anything like this arose in the future, but Ben knew the breathing techniques and counting to ten were not going to be of any help. He’d been using these tools for coping for a while already.

After shaking the counsellor’s hand and thanking him for his time, Ben walked out onto the street and realised that there was nobody he could rely on to get him through this. There was nobody he could be absolutely honest with about what he had done, and nobody who would stand by him after learning what a monster he had become. Nobody, that is, except his mother.