Дэвид Муди - Strangers

Scott walked back to the house then got in the car and drove towards Thussock. The roads were silent today, absolutely no other traffic about. He couldn’t remember having seen a single other vehicle, not that he’d been looking.

When he reached the wooden bus shelter near to the small house where those bizarre twins lived, he slowed down. He could see movement, though he couldn’t quite make out what it was at first. Wait… it looked like someone lying on the ground on the other side of the shelter, feet sticking out but the rest of their bodies obscured by the little wooden building. Hang on, there was more than one person. Had someone else found Jeremy? Were they helping him? He hoped so, because he didn’t want to have to. He decided he’d just make sure it was him, throw the sick fuck his trousers, then go back and tell Phoebe everything was okay, that her dad was fine.

He parked in the bus space in front of the shelter and walked around the Zafira. Then he just stopped, struggling to understand what he was seeing. In spite of everything he’d already witnessed today, what was unfolding in front of him now was bizarre, grotesque and just… wrong . He’d found Jeremy all right, but there was a woman with him. More than just with him, she was astride him. Fucking him . Riding him in broad daylight, neither of them appearing to give a damn about anyone or anything else.

‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded. The woman – who he didn’t recognise – slowly turned her head to face him but didn’t otherwise react, so consumed by what she was doing with Jeremy to care, overcome with pleasure and completely uninhibited. Scott followed a trail back to the bus shelter with his eyes… her shoes, her knickers, the remains of a torn pair of tights… Christ, had this woman just been waiting for a bus when Jeremy came wandering down the road, and had they just decided to fuck on the spur of the moment? It had to have been quick and spontaneous, no time for small-talk or foreplay. Scott almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all, but the serious implications of what he was seeing were clear. There was something inherently sinister about this inexplicable public display of base emotion, something clearly unnatural about this most natural of acts. Should he stop it? Try to separate them? Or should he just get back in the car and drive home and pretend none of it was happening?

‘Jeremy, what the hell are you doing?’ he asked, hanging back a short distance, almost too embarrassed to keep watching but unable not to. ‘Do you know what—?’

A howl of pleasure from the woman interrupted him mid-sentence. He watched as she threw her head back and looked up into the swirling white clouds overhead, groaning as she started to cum. Scott stared as she began to experience an orgasm of remarkable intensity, muscles hard in spasm, gripping Jeremy’s shoulders tight. Scott could take no more and he returned to his car, head spinning. He couldn’t understand why such an uptight little idiot as Jeremy would behave this way? He’d always been so reserved, so proper, overly polite… Michelle used to joke about how awkward he’d always been about sex, how it had always been safe and functional with Jeremy. Never spontaneous. Boring, even. Text-book.

Scott was about to get in the car and drive home when he noticed the woman was up and rushing away, running almost, clutching her clothes. She kept looking back over her shoulder. Was she looking at Jeremy, or looking at him? Hurrying away with shame, perhaps? She was still half-naked. Scott almost called out to her, but stopped at the last second because he didn’t know what to say. He felt like he didn’t know anything anymore. Nothing made sense. How could she possibly be embarrassed now after such an exhibitionist performance seconds earlier?

He noticed that Jeremy hadn’t moved.

Scott could still see his feet sticking out from around the side of the bus shelter, one of them twitching. He thought about Phoebe back at the house. How the hell am I going to explain this to her? For a moment he considered taking Jeremy back with him. His mess, his fault. He can do it…

‘Oi, Jeremy,’ he shouted. ‘Get up you useless bastard.’

Nothing.

Had he fallen asleep? Again the immature side of Scott’s character took hold. Michelle was always having a go at him for falling asleep straight after sex, was this just the same thing? Was poor little Jeremy exhausted after all that uncharacteristic exertion? No way. Jeremy was a nervous little shit, scared of his own shadow, terrified of not doing everything ‘by the book’. So why was he still lying there?

He walked around to where the semi-naked man lay on the grass verge, then stopped.

Fuck .

If Jeremy wasn’t already dead, then he would be in the next few minutes… the next few seconds, even. His face was unnaturally pallid. His mouth moved slightly, as if trying to form his final words, and though his eyes looked directly at Scott, he knew they weren’t seeing anything.

There was blood all over the grass: puddles of it under his pale white buttocks, pools forming between his spindly legs, dribbles running down his thighs.

Where the hell’s it all coming from? Did that woman cut him?

Scott gagged when he saw it, almost threw up. The end of Jeremy’s penis looked like it had been torn apart, as if someone had first skewered the hole, then ripped the flesh away in sections like they were peeling a banana. Flaps of skin hung uselessly over the end of the stump from which blood continued to pump in dull spurts, slowing with the weakening pace of Jeremy’s pulse.

And, for the briefest of moments, all Scott felt was relief. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t care because he immediately knew this was what had happened to Shona McIntyre. This was what he’d seen in all those grotesque photographs that frigging detective had shoved under his nose while he was in custody. This was proof positive to the rest of them that he wasn’t the killer.

The woman.

Was it her?

He reached for his mobile, but stopped. He scanned the horizon looking for the woman and spying her almost out of view, half-running into town. He couldn’t be the one to tell the police, could he? They’d jump to all the wrong conclusions if he admitted to being here. No, Scott knew he had to get away from here fast. He’d phone them from home, let them know what Jeremy had tried to do to Michelle, tell them where he thought he’d gone then let them find him and his fuck-buddy… Better still, maybe he’d stay quiet and plead ignorance and let someone else find the corpse.

He got back into the car, turned a tight circle in the empty road, then drove away at speed.

‘Well?’ Michelle said. She was in the kitchen, waiting. They all were.

‘Well what?’

‘Did you find him?’

‘No,’ he said, because lying was easier than the truth.

‘But he can’t have just disappeared.’

‘Well I couldn’t find him.’

‘You can’t have looked very hard,’ Tammy said.

‘I looked hard enough.’

‘So what do we do?’ Michelle asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do you want me to do? I’m not exactly heart-broken, if that’s what you’re thinking. Call the police if it makes you feel better. Tell them he’s disappeared. Tell them he was acting like a fucking freak.’

‘Scott…’

‘Tell them what you like, just don’t involve me. I’m sick of getting dragged into other people’s messes.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Tammy said.

‘No, I’ll do it,’ Michelle said. ‘It’d be better coming from me.’

Tammy followed her out into the living room, leaving Scott with Phoebe. George played on the floor, oblivious to everything.