Looking After Your Own
By A. G. Pittman

 

The old man pulled his chair opposite the young woman’s, “Let me tell you a story,” he said, leaning forward, his face close to hers.  He smiled warmly, deep lines appearing at the sides of his eyes.

She looked away from him, staring at the floor by her chair.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll like it, though I don’t suppose people of your age are much interested in stories any more.  You’ve all been brought up with television and computer games.”

With a gentle hand he lifted the woman’s chin and studied her face.

“You shouldn’t hide such pretty looks, you know,” he added, tenderly brushing the long fringe of straight brown hair away from her face.  He looked satisfied, “That’s better, isn’t it?”

He settled himself more comfortably, “Now we’ll just give my little story a try and see how much you’re taken with it.”

The young woman shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“You really must be patient, I haven’t even started and you’re fidgeting,” he said calmly, “but if you sit quiet and give the story a chance I can promise you we’ll both have a little treat at the end.”

He paused for a few moments as if deep in thought before starting his tale, “Well this story starts quite a long time ago, especially to one of your age.  It’s all about a young boy called Peter.

“He grew up in a town a long way from here, with his mother, father, brother and sister.  They were a poor family, even for those times, you know.  Of course, his parents were drunks and that didn’t help.  His father would get sacked from any job he managed to find and his mother just sat around the house all day.  She managed to keep the booze pouring down her throat, it seemed, even though the children barely got enough to eat.

“Now Peter’s older brother,” the old man paused and scratched his balding head, “let’s just call him Ralph, shall we?”

He gave the young woman a look of minor triumph, “Ralph!”

“Ralph was a lot older than Peter, while their sister, Mary,” his grin widened, “I got that one a bit faster, didn’t I?” He winked at her.

“Anyway, Mary was a couple of years younger than our Peter, but we’ll get to her soon enough.  I was going to tell you what happened to Ralph, wasn’t I?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Well, Ralph tried to look after the other two as much as he could and protect them from their parents.  Can you imagine that?”  He leaned towards her, his face now stern, “Having to be protected from your own parents?

“Of course,” he now continued in a matter-of-fact way, “their mother was just negligent; she turned a blind eye to what was going on.  Her other eye she kept on her bottle of gin.  Their father was another story though.”  He shook his head sadly.  “He was the cause of all their trouble.  The real trouble anyway.  I suppose they have fancy words and theories about people like that now, but at the end of the day he was just evil.  And not just because of the drink either.  I daresay it helped him along the road though.”

He looked into the woman’s uncomprehending eyes, “Oh, I’m so sorry.  I’m starting to ramble and you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about,” he apologized.  “Let me explain.

“The daughter, you see.  That was his temptation, even though she was only about eight or nine years old.  He just couldn’t resist her, especially when the drink was in him.  Of course, she was terrified.  Traumatized, I think is the word I’m looking for.”

The woman stared at the old man in horror, tears forming at the corner of her eyes.

“Well, you see, it reached a point where Ralph couldn’t stand it any more.  He had to do something about it.  He wanted to protect his little sister.  He needed to.  He stood in his father’s way and told him to leave her alone.  I don’t know whether you’d call that bravery or just desperation.  Maybe a little of one and a lot of the other, but nobody will ever really know.

“Of course, their father, full of drink and rage, exploded.  He could have just pushed the young man aside, but no, that wasn’t enough.  He beat him and beat him, his rage taking over, until the poor boy was a lifeless bloody mess on the hallway floor.

“And naturally their father was full of remorse once he realized what he’d done.  One hell of a way to get sober.  Within two hours the police had taken him away and prison followed.  A long, long time in prison.  At first they tried to get him off as being insane.  They said it ran in his family, but he wouldn’t hear of it.  He knew what he’d done and thought that prison was where he belonged.”

The old man sighed, “After that the children were taken into care.  The mother just faded away.  She never visited the children or asked after them.  For that matter, she never visited her husband in prison either.

“The daughter, now, she probably deserves a story of her own, if anybody could be bothered to write it.  After Ralph was killed she never spoke again.  Of course, being in care was no picnic for the kids, especially back in those days.  The other girls in the home used to taunt and tease Mary incessantly.  Not speaking made her an easy target, but at least she fought back in her own way.  Peter, on the other hand, had become so timid that all he could do was run and hide.  Oh, how he hated those other children, especially the girls who treated his sister so badly.  But with all that had happened in his life, I guess he was like a spectator through his own eyes.  You see, he just couldn’t cope with the world.  He got his own share of teasing, but I think it was the way his sister was treated that really affected Peter, particularly when she was taken away from him, as well.”

The old man shrugged, “It’s inevitable with a story like this that he should also lose his sister, isn’t it?  Anyway, that’s what happened.  One day young Mary just couldn’t take any more from the others; she reached a point of no return, as they say.  You see, Mary had taken her very favourite doll into the home with her and had kept it hidden away from the other children for nearly two years.  Now a particularly spiteful young lady, let’s call her Hannah, saw her hiding it one day and stole it when Mary went to get her wash at bedtime.  Hannah thought this was most amusing, of course.  Her little gang tossed the toy to each other as Mary returned.  Once again they were trying to torment her.  Well, that would have been enough to upset any child, but Mary snapped.  Now you might have expected Mary to scream, or shout or even throw herself at Hannah, because she knew her to be the ringleader of the little gang, but no, that would be too normal for a little tale like this, wouldn’t it?”

The man gave a snort of laughter, “You see, Mary hadn’t just hidden away the doll, oh no.  Among her few possessions she had all sorts of little items tucked away.  She was quite a little magpie, was Mary.  So instead of reacting wildly like a reasonably normal child, she walked calmly over to where she slept and took something from her belongings.  With her back to the others they didn’t see what she had, but her lack of reaction was most definitely not what they expected.  Hannah, holding the doll, stopped the others with a gesture as she tried to see what Mary was doing.  They waited, confused by her lack of reaction.

With the thing she had just picked up hidden behind her back, Mary walked calmly over to confront Hannah.  She held out her free hand for the doll.  Of course, Hannah couldn’t possibly give it back to her and keep face with her little gang.  She held the toy out and then, as Mary reached for it, she tossed it to one of her friends.  They all thought this was so funny.  Mary, seeming quite calm by all accounts, simply swung her other hand round and plunged a small kitchen knife into Hannah’s cheek.  The knife, apparently, had gone missing from the kitchen some time earlier.  Mary’s possessions were full of such little treasures.

“Anyway, the place became a madhouse, with children running in all directions.  On the other hand Mary seemed strangely calm.  She simply retrieved her doll from where it had been dropped and walked around the building trying to stick her little knife into any of the other children she could get near.  And she seemed incredibly good at finding the ones who tried to hide from her.  The total count, according to official records, was that she stabbed thirteen children that evening.  Really, that’s Mary’s story, or at least as much of it as we need to worry about.  The authorities decided that she was insane.  Probably not an unreasonable assumption given the amount of terror such a small girl caused in a single evening,” the man’s admiration for this small girl was clear in his voice.

The young woman seemed mesmerized by his tale, now silently attentive as the tears ran down her face.

“And now we get to Peter.  You can imagine the effect all this had on him.  He already despised his mother for allowing his father to treat them the way he did.  Then she abandoned them to the authorities after Ralph’s death.  Then the way the girls treated Mary helped shape the way he felt about females in general.  Of course, he was getting older and hormones are something that nature just won’t put on hold because of someone’s feelings.  He found himself attracted to girls.  Not a big problem normally, but then Peter probably wouldn’t be classed as normal by the time nature kicked its way into his life.

“He had become almost completely withdrawn and shy.  This conflicted with his attraction to the girls he disliked so much.  He was being emotionally torn in two.  There was one girl in particular, I understand, to whom he was particularly attracted and at first she wasn’t unkind to him.  Then, inevitably, her friends started to tease her about being friends with Peter.  Well, of course she wouldn’t have anything to do with him after that because she couldn’t take the pressure from the others.

“I think though, that the final fracture in Peter’s personality came at secondary school.  There was another girl—we’ll call her Jenny—who also spurned Peter.  This time though, he had got a lot closer to the girl and started to open up to her.  He felt the pain so intensely.  This time it wasn’t the girl’s friends who influenced Jenny, but another boy.  Typically, Peter didn’t seem to feel any anger towards the other boy; it was all directed at his former girlfriend, building on the feelings he already had towards the opposite sex.  I think that was the final shaping force that altered the rest of his life.  Sanity really doesn’t seem to be a trait for this family, does it?”

The old man paused for a few moments in thought.  The young woman opposite him shifted impatiently in her seat, wanting him to continue.

“Now of course,” he started again with a smile, “as people get older they get better at hiding their feelings and everyone would have thought that Peter was quite alright.  Perhaps a little more reclusive than most people, but he finished school, got a job and eventually settled down in a flat in London.  Everything seemed fine.  Of course, that was what everybody thought.

“What Peter was actually doing would have shocked the world.  It started when he picked up a girl in a nightclub.  She left with him and things became a little passionate.  I’m sure Peter didn’t intend things to go the way they did.  I really am sure of that.  I think perhaps he got a little rough with this young lady and she tried to get away from him.  He felt that once again he was being rejected and this made all his pent up frustration and rage explode.  Quite simply, he killed the girl.

“The trouble is, he felt so much better after doing it.  Of course, there was the obvious worry that he was going to be picked up for murder, but for some reason that never happened.  Peter got lucky.

“He found himself thinking more and more about that night and the way it felt to feel the girl’s life draining away as he throttled her.  He wanted to do it again, but he was scared of being caught.  Eventually his chance came.  About two years later, you see, he was travelling and feeling safer for being somewhere where nobody knew him, he found himself a prostitute.  I don’t believe that in the front of his mind he intended to kill her when he picked her up, but subconsciously?”

The old man shrugged, “Anyway, you can imagine what happened.  Again, Peter seemed to get away with his crime.  I don’t know if anybody cared too much about a prostitute anyway.”

However, this made Peter bolder.  The third girl he killed, he actually went out looking for.  Peter deliberately went to a town far from home and covered his tracks.  This time he took a knife with him.  You don’t want all the grisly details, do you?”

The young woman shook her head emphatically.

“Anyway, this is how Peter ended up, with more and more frequent trips away from home and after each of the trips he felt better for a while.  Then the urge would grow and grow until he had to go out and do it again.  Of course, he knew what he was doing was wrong, there’s no question about that.  Even so, he found that after a while it wasn’t enough to just kill them any more.

“There was more pleasure to be had by using the knife, but it still wasn’t enough.  To do this in the best way he needed to tie the women up so that he could take his time over their deaths.  He found the most pleasure in the slow torture of his victims before their lives were brought to an end.  It must be an awful way to die and I think Peter knew that.  Perhaps, with all his hatred, he needed to make them suffer as much as he could before the end.  The shallow jabs and small cuts; the gradual tearing away at their life until they couldn’t take any more pain.  He even kept small parts of his victims as trophies and meticulously recorded his activities.  He found that being able to relive his crimes made him feel a little better.

“He did try to fight the need to do these things.  There are many women alive today who should be glad that he struggled with his conscience the way he did.  Only Peter knew how many he had killed.  They’ve never caught him. His crimes will always remain unsolved,” the old man laughed, “unless they find someone else to blame them on of course.”

The man leaned forward once again, staring into the young woman’s eyes, “And I suppose you’d like to know what happened to Peter?”

She nodded.

“Well, you see, after many years in prison his father came to realize that people should not only be punished for what they’ve done, but they should also try to set things right.  And so, on his release, Peter’s father tracked him down.  Just out of prison, he persuaded his son to let him stay for a week or two.  Peter was reluctant, but the man insisted and of course his son was still timid.  Particularly when he didn’t have a knife in his hand and a helpless victim.

“The father soon discovered Peter’s journals and trophies hidden in the house while Peter was out at work.  He had to set things right.  The man came to realize that he had created monsters out of his children.”

The old man sighed, “It was quite a struggle, you know.  Peter got hold of his knife and fought back like a demon.  I suppose, in a way, that’s what he had become.  Oh, he was so fast, so quick with that blade.

“And of course, that’s how I ended up in here with twenty eight stitches,” the old man gestured at the hospital room, “I suppose the police intend for me to go back to prison for what I’ve done.  I know it was right, though.  He’ll never kill again.”

He looked thoughtful, plucking at his hospital-issue dressing gown.  “I suppose that these are the last clothes I’ll ever wear as a free man.”

“That’s certainly what’s intended,” the young woman answered him, wiping the tears from her face with a tissue.  She smoothed out her uniform and reached down to pick her bag up from the side of her chair.

“You know it’s so kind of you to visit an old man with no family,” he said.

“Oh no,” the young woman replied, “you’re quite wrong there, you know.  You do still have family.” She pulled a scalpel from her bag and held it up to inspect its gleaming blade.

“You see, daddy, you’ve still got Mary.”

 

END