Whispers

Published by Geoffrey Kevin Walby

Whispers

The quiet ones are better left alone

By G.K Walby

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 1996 Geoff Walby

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

About the Author

Connect with Geoff Walby

Other Books by Geoff Walby

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER 1

Tick tick tick went Oliver’s mind as it churned over the memory of the incident two nights before. The torment still burned within. Nights like Monday’s were traumatic and recurred in Oliver’s life like clockwork.

11.30 a.m. Awake and dressed earlier than usual. Tea and toast on the menu, with a side order of ranting to ease those smouldering embers … just a few words; the same words that made up every other rant; a technique to free his congested mind of the thoughts that made a shit life feel as shit as it really was.

Society hates me. It always has. Right from the word go. No justified reason. No solid explanation. All I can make out are insults about the way I look, the clothes I wear. Petty, pathetic, unnecessary. Sometimes punches, pushes, kicks, slaps. Now things are being thrown at me. Just like on Monday night.

What was it – a chocolate bar, a packet of sweets? I’m not sure. But they’re lucky wankers: lucky to be alive, but they don’t know it. Those kids have no idea how close they came to death that night. I could have done it there and then. I could have got them all. Could have pumped every one of them full of lead. It would have been easy. As easy as crushing eggshells beneath my shoes. I was only walking home. What exactly was their problem? What exactly is everybody’s problem?

Two slices of bread were pressed down into the toaster, elements glowing red. The smell of toast rose up to Oliver’s nostrils and his empty belly began to rumble.

The internal rant still demanded its voice. The mental congestion hadn’t yet dissolved.

Who do the bastards of this world think they are? Why am I always on the receiving end of their malicious mouths and restless fists? During my school years it was always the same groups of kids that picked on me. Now it’s different fuckers on different days of the week, as if everyone in the world has a one-day licence to inflict pain, torment and abuse on me – an active social organisation designed to cause mental aggravation and grievous bodily harm. The Oliver Tridwell Depreciation Society: a pride of well-fed lions that only wants to attack me for the sake of being sadistic.

Nineteen years I’ve been a punchbag for society, ever since my first contact with people. I wish I’d never come across a single person in my entire life. I do fuck all to provoke any of them, and never have, but cunts in the street, the Job Centre, everywhere, terrorise me. And for what? What the hell have I done?

Oliver’s heartbeat accelerated. He held his breath and clenched his fists, grasping his rage. The rant helped, cleansed him of his misfit status, replaced it with an awareness of his latent retribution.

I’ve had enough of it! Of living with my tail between my legs: never retaliating, letting it go on! I could be the most devastating bastard of all and I’m quite determined to follow it through now that my patience has been exhausted. I’ve come to hate life, the world, and all the shitbags within it. We’re enemies. That’s my outlook. Society’s fault not mine.

A release of my anger is the only answer to my troubles. An iron fist for each and every one of one of them. Put them in their places. Shut them up once and for all. The lesson Mr Fitz taught me all those years ago back in school has proved itself time and again. The method works well. It works a treat. And I’ll use it against this world, with a touch of my own genius.

You’ve made a big mistake, people. You’ve twisted my fragile personality into a constant state of insecurity and paranoia. You’ve created a sense of victimisation within me. It feeds the jealous rage that runs deep within my blood and fuels my dark thoughts with an overwhelming urge to avenge myself on your society.

If only you knew what I’m capable of. If only you were aware of how my thoughts are concentrated on revenge. Then you’d stay clear and keep your mouths and punches to yourselves. But you don’t know, and you wouldn’t be able to comprehend such an incident taking place until it was all too late.

You don’t see what I see, people. But you should. For the sake of yourselves and all of those you love, you should take a look inside my mind and find out what you’ve done.

You’re asking for it. You’ve always been asking for it. And as time ticks on and you continue your assaults you become more and more destined to get it.

Carry on, fuckers – carry on. Wait and see what I can do. You don’t stand a chance when the time finally comes.

PING! The toast popped up and Oliver exhaled, cutting short the rant. He placed the toast on a grubby counter attached to a grubby wall, a knob of cheap supermarket margarine spread on both slices. He hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon and was starving. There were only two slices of bread left, and he’d saved them especially for now, when he knew he’d be at his hungriest.

Malnourished from self-neglect, Oliver was all but a skeleton. In the coming hours he’d go hungry unless he went to his parents’ house to raid their fridge. Next Monday, his benefits would be paid. Until then he’d have £5.50 to his name, which was soon to be spent on something much more important than food.

Watching the margarine melt into the piping-hot toast, Oliver visualised himself from two nights earlier. But his imagination turned the tables, evening the score, putting himself in control of the situation, forcing fear and torment into them – those others. The enemy. It was a fantasy that enabled him to walk with his head held high, aware of society’s scorn but feeling a sense of power and superiority.

He stared at the wall, concentrating on that altered moment, and his eyes began to sting. The urge to prove himself, and have everyone witness that proof, made him hot with enthusiasm and overwhelming desire.

He bit into the toast and the acid in his stomach ran riot with the signal that food was on its way. He scoffed down the first slice; the second waited on top of a dollop of Marmite that had been on the counter since the previous Thursday. He filled the electric kettle, clicked it to boil, then began chomping into the second slice.

Jaws working furiously, images of vengeance unfolded before him: the screaming, crying and dying – a positive act to undo all that had been done to him. As the kettle began to boil, so did the energy and excitement of Oliver’s ambition as he mentally rehearsed one of an infinite number of venues in which his masterpiece might take place.

The street, the shopping centre, my old school. I could get them anywhere and there’d be fuck all they could do about it. These wankers like to catch me by surprise. Well, guess what … I can fucking catch them by surprise as well.

The longer the water bubbled, the more people died. No more punches and slaps, no more looks of hate, no more name-calling about his Sesame Street Big Bird walk, or the ‘trampy gypo’ clothes he wore. Just silence: untouched, undisturbed. So easing was the vision. So pleasing the outcome. The boiling kettle spoke volumes – after all the hot-headedness and bubbling over he’d endured, the time would come when the boiling would cease. Boiling ... boiling ... Click!

Snapped once more from his daydream of vengeance, he swallowed the last mouthful of toast. His breathing returned to normal and he poured the hot water over a teabag in a tannin-stained china mug chipped around the edges, and stared aimlessly around the room as the tea was allowed to brew.

I have no memories of infant school other than a square carpet somewhere in a corner. It was as if I lived in a mental shell for those years. Junior school, however, gave me many memories and bore me my first scars. I felt shut out and unwanted from the very beginning. The other kids looked down on me, called me names, made fun of me. ‘Ugh! I’m not sitting next to him. He’s yucky!’

No doubt I was a ‘dirty tramp’ then too.

I curled up further into my little shell. The teasing and name-calling only sparked the build-up of inner rage that fed my frustrations as time went on. I felt it happening by the moment.

Throughout junior and secondary school, I was ostracised and taunted. Girls would look at me, their faces screwed up in disgust, then turn away when I noticed. Looking back, I was too silent, too easily intimidated, and no one sought my friendship or came anywhere near me just out of sympathy or kindness. On an hourly basis, I, the loner, was met with verbal insults from the girls and physical bullying from the boys. My skinny frame was small, weak and frail. I was easy to overpower. And with each assault, I’d sink deeper into the world I’d created for my own comfort, cocooning myself in a mental chrysalis, only to hatch as a violent and tormented monster. All because of them – those evil kids.

Since then I’ve always referred to my chrysalis as the Flickering. Within it, I don’t hear the outside world in the same way as others; a loud buzzing in my head blocks the sounds. The buzzing’s like a pneumatic drill, entertaining me with its monotonous zzzzzzz! It hugs me with its warmth and comfort. Wherever I walk, wherever I sit, whatever I think about, it’s always with me. When I hear someone’s voice it’s like listening to them speaking next to roadworks. Even loud music seems unable to break through it.

But it’s my vision that earns the Flickering its title. Since it began, my eyes stopped seeing what normal people saw. My vision became distorted for my own security. Between myself and the world around me is the Flickering, like the snowstorm on an untuned television screen, blocking out everything. Whatever I look at is distorted by this blanket of protection. It’s as though everything in the world is plastic or make-believe, and the gap between me and the Flickering is all that’s real. Reality comes across as fake. And within this chrysalis, my fantasies of revenge have formed and metamorphosised.

The tea had brewed. Oliver dipped his fingers into the cup and pulled out the teabag. He gave it a squeeze and threw it over his shoulder. It landed on top of another teabag . He hadn’t needed to look; his aim was so accurate there was little chance he’d miss. A dash of milk and the tea was slurped down in readiness for another.

At secondary school, I was first known as Oliver Twist. That soon became Oliver’s Twisted – a small adaptation by some twat in the third year who, like most others, hated me on sight. I found myself subjected to insults in the corridors and classrooms: ‘You fucking greasy bastard!’ ‘The stink bomb has sat his dirty arse down’. And assaults in the playground: tripped up, caught in a prolonged headlock. I was treated like a leper, a rag doll.

One event during the fourth year of secondary school overshadowed the others. It triggered the churning in my mind, the hate and the desire for vengeance. I realised I had to do something about my situation, about her, and all the people like her.

One day, not long before the summer holidays, I arrived at school late and walked into the humanities room, where the first lesson was due to begin. The teacher, Mrs Conway, was also late so all the other kids were up and out of their seats, conversing and running riot, enjoying their own chaos. The noise was deafening and paper aeroplanes and books were being hurled across the classroom.

I entered unnoticed, saw my seat in the corner, and felt at ease. It was my usual seat. I walked over to it, passing the other kids, placed my bag on the table and took out my pens and books. Then I stood at the window and gazed out towards the science block, thinking about the evening before when my dad, granddad and I had been out shooting on Strachlin Plain.

It was the fourth time we’d been there with our guns, and I was more than looking forward to the next, which would probably be that night after school given the hints my dad had made. The thought of it created a buzz of excitement – a rare feeling for me. I felt like a totally different person while out shooting, as if I had a life and a purpose. Anywhere else, all positivity evaporated. I hated school.

The deputy head came in. Mr Fitz. Bald, bearded and with a vicious temper. ‘Silence!’ he bellowed.

The shithead kids instinctively shut their mouths and found their seats. I, however, remained standing at the window, amazed at the sight unfolding before me. A sudden quietness took over and all eyes looked down at unopened books on the tables.

Mr Fitz looked around and shoved his head between the opening of the door.

The demonstration was enthralling. Confidence and inspiration ignited within me as I saw a way to control other people through hostility and aggression. A hot temper with just a hint of violence; a ready-to-strike posture, a mean face, and a powerful voice that left no doubt it meant what it was saying. Everyone on the receiving end had fallen silent and the aggressor was instantly in command: The Mr Fitz Effect.

I looked over as the deputy head walked out. In my seat was Lizzy Smith, one of the bitches who greatly despised me. There was no reason why she’d chosen my seat rather than her own. It was wise not to sit next to her – she would freak out – so I took the logical step and decided to park myself somewhere else.

I approached the table and leaned past Lizzy to pick up my books and pens. Like lightning, she leapt out of the seat and pushed me to the floor. I scrambled to my feet, shaken and nervous, eyes wide in panic and ears listening in confusion as she screamed, ‘Don’t touch me, you stinkin’ piece of pus!’

Everyone looked on. I felt small, and crumbled as Lizzy laid into me. She loved it, battering me with her mouth like some pissy-arsed mother berating her child.

‘You dirty stinkin’ bastard! What do you think you’re doing, trying to touch me?’

‘I wasn’t—’ I began in a weak, terrified voice, but Lizzy continued with her onslaught, easily out-aggressing me. I disintegrated as she raged in my face. All my words evaporated with her tongue-lashing. Everyone in the classroom stared, enjoying the moment as much as she was. All together against me.

‘Get a life and don’t come anywhere near me!’ Then wham! Lizzy slapped me across the face, playing to the crowd.

Tears formed at the corners of my eyes and my head felt hot with shame. My recent observation had been confirmed – the aggressor takes control and the person on the receiving end feels their power and succumbs.

The class glared in my direction, accompanied by a few bursts of laughter, awaiting the outcome.

Lizzy stared in to my eyes, fury in hers, chest contracting wildly as she breathed hard. Triumphant, proud, ready to slap me again.

I felt tiny and had to stretch my neck to look up at her. She seemed to have grown.

I froze with embarrassment, ignorant of how to manage the situation. Part of me knew I should release my aggression, shock the entire class, just like Mr Fitz had done only moments before. But something held me back, and the humiliation brewed, leaving my pain-stricken anger to build. So, when it did one day erupt, it would do so with a ferocity extreme beyond measure. An outburst that would rock the minds of everyone and never be forgotten. The demon, my saviour, was forming.

Immediately after the event, I ran out of the classroom and into a deserted playground. I crouched down in a quiet area and sobbed, pulling my hair and hitting myself on the forehead. I was labelled a cry-baby. For the rest of that day and the days that followed, I felt even smaller and stupider than usual.

***

That evening on Strachlin Plain, I used the trigger to take out my anger on the birds, rabbits and tree trunks, creating