Dominion
Sat hunched within the dark recess Karl Connor felt as small and vulnerable as a china doll. As what seemed like hours passed he could feel the welts from the cigarette burns rising up on his body, smarting, searing…
His body still hissed from the pain of her nails gouging his young and tender flesh. As dread washed through him, how he longed for a shining light in the great dark loneliness of human existence.
Terror began with the fact that he could hardly move. His mind wrestling with some unbalanced nightmare, whilst his body ached with cramps, knots in his muscles as the cupboard under the stairs was no more than three feet long, roughly the same in height and was crammed full of assorted bric-a-brac (a vivid testimony to his mother's car-boot compulsion).
As his panic escalated with him, all his desires diminished to just the need to move, a desperate, overwhelming need to free himself from the dark and cramped conditions. As his mind fractured he tried to scream but found that he could not even speak. The unbearable stress shattering his logic to pieces, finally breaking him from reality as thoughts like moths fluttered through his mind, seeking light in his darkness.
The punishment was as if a tourniquet around his neck, strangling the life from him. His pallor ghostly, he began to writhe and squirm as his shoulders began to shake. His grief vast enough to bring down an empire, as the waiting silence dragged him down like exhausted sleep and his wanting; longing to be freed filled the space oppressively.
Crippled by fear he was suddenly aware of the darkness sucking him down.
Although he had long since managed to spit out the rag that was stuffed into his mouth to stifle his earlier protestations, his breath was still very shallow, trapped by the dull suffocating heat of the blackness that had encroached upon him. He found that his palms were sweating. He had gnawed at his knuckles until they bled, sucking at the warm blood that flowed from them as it were comforting nectar. Recoiling, his mind snatched feebly at passing thoughts whilst above him, he could hear the sound of the splintering wood and the creaking floorboards. He could hear his mother's gin soaked voice echoing as she descended the wooden staircase, her rage biting deep.
'Filthy, dirty boy, I told you he wasn't right, he is the devil's child. I should have had him aborted when I had the chance…'
Moments later he heard the catch being slid from the lock and the cupboard door sprang open, battering his eyes with light.
Springing back from the sudden brilliance, he flinched as the light scolded his vision, momentarily dazzling him.
A torch shone in his eyes but all he could see was the glare, burning his eyes and dragging him still further into his mother's alcohol fuelled nightmare.
Her voice now seemed distant and slurred as she brandished the huge torch at him. Under the skin on the back of his neck, ticks of apprehension still burrowed and twitched, but heart pounding he unfurled from the fetal position that he had been forced into and achingly crawled out from the cupboard. His muscles and limbs screamed with every movement and the abrupt definition of sight stung his eyes, whilst his nerves were shredded and crippled by his own deceiving mind. Believing that to be the end of the punishment he began to apologize, even though he sensed that he done nothing wrong. As he spoke, there was a tremor in his voice, a fragility, not pain so much as emotional distress. The hardness of her heart frightened him. He had taken two faltering steps before he was doubled over, as if a hook had caught his stomach, knocking the air from him. The world had become too strange for him to fully comprehend, and as the large torch lay broken in pieces upon the threadbare carpet, he gazed meekly up at her, into a face set with thunder. He let out a cry of sheerest childlike terror but as he tried to kid himself into believing that life had a purpose worthy of his struggle he knew deep down that he would be made to pay further for his actions…
Extract from Chapter 2 - DEADLOCK
Due to the gridlocked traffic Detective Inspector Ross had arrived late at the crime scene. As he pulled up to the kerbside of the tree lined avenue he looked up through the windscreen and watched as a cadaver, on a wheeled stretcher covered in a thin white body bag with black straps, was loaded unceremoniously into the back of the coroner's black van.
The whizzing sound of a police helicopter intensified in the distance, rapidly growing louder, shaking him from his stupor.
Previously deep in thought, he now caught sight of his reflection in the rear view mirror and could see that his face had turned as white as the swollen moon above. He took a moment to compose himself before he swung the driver's door open. He raised his hand in a vague wave to acknowledge the two body movers from the coroner's office as they turned with a darting urgency from the rear of the van. Still encased in their white coveralls, they mirrored his gesture before walking quickly towards the front of their vehicle.
Detective Inspector Ross remained watching as they pulled away from the kerb and set off into traffic. He then glanced over at the house, which was cordoned off by fluorescent crime scene tape that fluttered in the breeze like ribbons from a maypole. An assorted throng of media types and rubbernecks, some of whom were now attempting to take photographs on their mobile phones, had already assembled at the scene and looked on like a pack of baying jackals only just being kept at bay by the increasingly thin blue line.
He blew out a noisy sigh as he continued to look out of the car window at the unfurling scene.
He was less than thrilled to get a call like this on what so far had been his first day off in little over a month, especially as he sensed that his days at the helm of the investigation were numbered and such a public fall from grace would all but finish his previously fast-track career. At that thought his jaw tightened and he felt a slight tickle of electric current go down the back of his neck, bringing the hairs there to attention. A knot of anxious tension gripped his stomach, a subconscious fear of failure.
He willed himself to relax but as his body was stiff and his muscles ached from lack of sleep his mind had no intention of obeying him. He took a deep breath and swept his hand through his steel grey hair so that most of it fell back into place, whilst the wind took the other rogue strands so that they resembled dancing marionettes.
Ross removed his black wool sport coat and threw it onto the passenger seat before undoing his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves, a display that was intended to state to onlookers that he was getting ready for business.
After fighting his way through the escalating crowd, which combined the concerned, the curious and the downright ghoulish, he flashed his warrant card before ducking under the police tape to enter the crime scene.
As he reluctantly breathed in the chill of the evening, he stared over at he house. It looked unkempt, the garden untended, neglected even. As he walked towards it, the press continued to bombard him with queries, some pleadingly, others rudely, but he ignored them all. He had already braced himself for the media storm, which now invariably followed every new victim. As he stepped inside the house he could still hear the voices being carried away by the wind, muttering and complaining...
www.amazon.co.uk/Dominion-.Wayne-Sharrocks/dp/1843863855
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ISBN-10: 1843863855
ISBN-13: 978-1843863854
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