Breaking Point (6 page)

Fuck this. I look, and he’s reaching into the box for a fresh bulb and this time, when he says, “Open your mouth,” I do it straight away, staring at him, wide-eyed, mouth too dry to swallow. I can’t do this. I have to do this. Where is my fucking cavalry?

“It’s coming sweetheart. Any minute. Any second. Fucking hang on.”

He walks over to me, pushes the bulb into my mouth. It’s small and round and nearly goes, but in the end, my jaws are jammed open, teeth stuck near the widest part, in a position that I would have described as agony a couple of hours ago and that now barely makes it as discomfort. He looks at me, smiling, giving me time to think about it. It’s a pretty unpleasant and ineffective ball gag, I guess, but I’m not sure…

Still looking me in the eye, still smiling, with really dizzying speed, he strikes me with the heel of his palm dead in the centre of my chin, a vicious uppercut.

Several things happen at once. The bulb shatters as my teeth come together, and my mouth and upper throat fill with slivers of broken glass. My head flies back into and bounces off of the wall with great velocity, bringing spots in front of my eyes. The metal end of the bulb, jagged glass sticking out of it, tumbles out over my chin and towards the floor. I don’t yet feel pain in my mouth, but I’m aware that it’s filling up with blood. I feel dizzy, faint. And from a million miles away, the wrong end of the telescope, I feel my phone slip from my ass and fall towards the floor, the impact of my head on the wall having caused me to jerk my hips forward. My mouth continues to fill with blood, I feel it start to flow between my lips, and I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead.

And then, audible even over the staccato assault of ‘Apple Tree,’ I hear the most beautiful, wonderful sound in the history of all creation: a police siren.

Loud. Getting louder.  Heading this way.

CHAPTER 11

His whole body twists towards the sound. I feel the phone bounce off my heel, and I shift my foot so I’m standing on it. My mouth is open, and I tip my head forward, letting the blood pour out, carrying some of the glass with it. I can feel more sharp slivers further back, and I focus everything I have left on resisting the urge to swallow.

The siren becomes impossibly loud then, terribly, starts to fade, before suddenly cutting off. Still staring at the bricked-up window, as if he can see through it, he pulls a remote from his pocket and cuts off the music. There are more sirens coming. Why did they go past? Why the fuck aren’t they kicking the door down?

He looks back at me, a snarl on his lips that I’m sure is unconscious, and there’s real anger there. I feel my whole life turning in this moment. Killing someone is not nothing, he said, and I wonder if he’s going to decide he’ll take what he can get. Precious seconds tick by and still he doesn’t move. Still the door doesn’t burst off its hinges. Still my saviors do not come. My mouth is full of blood; it’s flowing freely down my chin, my chest. I’m breathing shallowly through my nose and my throat tickles, maddeningly. The other sirens don’t pass the house. They get louder, then stop. Wherever the police are going, it’s not here.
Fuck that. They’re setting up a perimeter; that’s all. They’re…
No. They’ve got the wrong house. Fuck my luck, they’ve got the wrong house.

His snarl starts to fade and a cautious smile returns to his eyes. I think he’s gotten there too. Fuck it.

“Wait here.” He appraises the tools, my dangling, useless arms, and laughs. “Don’t touch anything.”

And he’s gone.

I lean against the wall, head down, shallow breathing through my nose, continuing to bleed out of my mouth, and I try really hard to think. They’ve gone to the wrong house, and I know why.

Fucking Noel.

Fucking Noel is my wife’s ex. They were still together when we met, and he lives on this estate, just a few doors down. Fucking Noel was a dick when they split, phoning in the middle of the night and hanging up, leaving dead flowers outside the door, signing up her email account to some spam porn. Pretty low level, but creepy, especially the flowers. After a week or so, Tracey went to the police, they paid him a visit, and we’ve not seen or heard from him since. I’ve never even seen the guy, let alone met him, but when I told Tracey about my cycle route home, she told me that he lived here and to keep an eye out.

Irony.

She heard the estate, maybe heard tortured, put two and two together. Probably had the police back on the line before the battery even died. They had their own record
,
and they jumped.

I feel a moment of helpless rage for all of them, but I don’t have time to indulge it. I have seconds before he comes back, and he’s probably going to want to end it quick, and even if he doesn’t, I can’t take many more hits and still get out of here. If I don’t get some kind of treatment for my mouth soon, I’m going to swallow glass, and then I think it’s only a matter of time before I drown in my own blood. I run my eyes over the tools. My eyes linger on the lighter and the turps, but the screw- top lid is back on. I run through picking up the bottle, maybe using my teeth to open it, somehow getting the Zippo open… Nah, not happening.

Steel toe caps for the win.

I reposition myself against the wall, so that I’m braced. I’m going to get one shot, I think, and it has to count. I get the phone under my toes. I also look at the door. No clue about the lock from this side. Fuck it. Burn that bridge if I can get across it. I hear what I assume is the front door shut, three steps, and the door fucking flies open as he storms in. There’s a hectic colour in his cheeks; his nostrils flare just a bit; his eyes are wild; his grin fixed. The door bounces off the wall, theatrically, and he catches the rebound without taking his eyes off of me.

“They’re raiding the guy three doors down. The fuck is that, mate?” He flinches his body towards me, scary quick. I jerk back, and he barks a laugh. “You got the shittiest luck ever, don’t you? Thought they were coming for you? Why would you think that? No-one knows you’re gone, do they?” He’s mostly convinced, but I can hear just a note of doubt.

It’s time.

I kick/slide the phone towards him, clumsily, and it bounces off his shoes and catches there. For a fraction of a second, he flinches. His eyes widen comically. God, it’s beautiful. At this moment, he is beautiful; a predator caught in a moment of total surprise, hearing the snapping sound the second before the trap closes. His eyes are just fractionally starting to narrow; his head is just starting to rise back to look at my face when my boot collides with his shin.

I put everything I have into it, using my back to push myself forward, forgetting about balance, about pain, about everything except forward momentum in my left foot. I picture in my mind kicking a spot about a foot behind him, so I’m still accelerating, with all the ragged, adrenaline-fuelled fury I have. I deliberately ignore the groaning feeling in my midsection and barely notice the bubbling, guttural roar that is coming from my mouth as I connect with his shin.

There's a gratifying crack. His eyes pop out, and he fully yelps like a wounded dog. It’s a wonderful sound. He also hops backwards, trying frantically not to lose balance, hands on his shin, like a cartoon cowboy kicked by a horse. As I turn towards the door, I see the back of his leg strike the edge of his blue box o’tricks, and he falls backwards. Hope you land on something sharp, fucker, I think, but it’s all about getting the fuck out of Dodge, now.

I slap the edge of the door with my hand as I run past it
;
pain fucking explodes up and down my arm, but it does the trick and the door swings. Somehow I manage to move fast enough that it doesn’t catch me on the heels as I pass through the frame, and I hear it slam behind me.

I hear a yell of incoherent, blood curdling rage, and scrambled movement from behind the door. I turn, as quickly as I can. It’s a bolt; that’s all – a good thick one, with just a hole drilled into the door frame to hold it. But it’s big and solid, and the door opens inwards so he can’t just kick it out. Good deal. All this goes through my head in nanoseconds, while I reach out with my right hand to throw the bolt. The pain is horrendous, but the will to live is stronger, and with another damp grunt, another spike of sickening agony, I throw it shut.

My knees start to sag, wobble, and I can feel blood tricking down the back of my throat. I tip my head forward to lean it against the door, and let my knees bend until they touch wood. Just as I do this, a single massive blow strikes the door, hard enough for it to rattle in its frame, and the handle turns but the bolt holds. You ain’t kicking this one down, sunshine. Fuck you.

The world is turning grey again, my breath catches in my throat and, involuntarily, I cough/retch and a fountain of dark fluid hits the door. My stomach explodes with pain, and my eyes blur with tears. I realize that I’m sliding down the door; my legs have given way entirely, and I’m well on the way to passing out again.

I’m on my knees, and everything feels like it’s disappearing down a tunnel. I pant and bleed and sweat and try to come back, to swim for the surface. I know I need to get up. You gotta move, son. Hit the motherfucking road, Jake. Get the fuck out of here, hockey stick stylee. I’m still thinking this and panting when, with an earsplitting whine, the spinning circular saw blade passes through the door.

My chin is resting against the wood, with the rest of my body back on my knees, and that saves my life. The blade comes through the door perpendicular to my throat, close enough that I feel the breeze kicked up by the spinning metal tickling my Adam's apple.

A bomb of pure adrenaline hits my system then, and I fly back against the far wall like I’m on wires, my knees going from weak to locked in no time at all. As I rebound off and turn down the narrow hall to cover the three steps to the door, behind me the saw carves through the wood, cutting around the bolt, but I don’t look back. If I look, I’m dead. All I gotta do is open this front door Yale lock. I use the heel of my hand to push it down, and now I’m thanking God for the gloves because there’s an artificial grip on the palms, which is just enough to stop my hand flying off the bottom of the lever as I push down. I wrench the door open, muscles starting to twitch and shake from being pushed to do too much, the roaring riot of pain in my arm threatening to overwhelm everything. I hook the door with my foot as it swings in and fucking slam it open, pivot, stumble, bounce off the door frame (another explosion of pain) and then I’m out into the cold night air. It’s pure luck that I look left first, because I’m left-handed, and there, maybe one hundred feet away, is a group of four police cars and a guy I’ve never seen before, but who, from Tracey’s descriptions, must be Fucking Noel, bent over the bonnet of a police car with two officers holding him, looking mightily pissed, and the angle is such that he looks up at the banging door, and we make eye contact. I see an expression of almost comic terror rise in his face, and I just have time to start to turn in his direction; in the direction of the blessed, holy, saving light of the red and blue, just time for the half pivot, when an irresistible force crashes into my legs just below my hips and I feel my centre of gravity give.

Time slows down to a crawl. I’m falling, not through air, but thick soup. The tarmac is coming up to meet me with calm patience. I have time to note that I’m going to miss the edge of the curb with my head, and the discarded bubble gum on the ground to my left. I have time to realise this is the same curb I was dragged over, two hours and a lifetime ago. I have time to wonder - is this how it ends?

My head collides with the tarmac. Blackness, then light. I’m on my back. My breath leaves me slowly and painfully; a cloud of vapor in front of my eyes. A bright yellow light shines down directly into my skull and is gradually eclipsed by his head as he leans forwards over me. I have time to observe his now fully animal snarl; his teeth clenched together; his upper lip curled under his left nostril. As I watch, a drop of saliva falls from his mouth and, a few seconds later, I feel it land on my chin. His eyes burn with the purest of all hatred: ambition thwarted, forever. His lips are moving, slowly; he’s saying something but I can’t tell what and anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the chisel in his left fist. He brings it down towards my face with immense power and speed; his face contorted with fury, and I have all the time in the world to wrench my head to one side. I do so. I feel the chisel draw a hot red line down my cheek. I have time to think, Turn the other cheek. I have time to think, He was aiming for my eye. That would have killed me. I also have time to realise that the fact that he’s opened up my face on both sides now doesn’t much matter because he won’t let me dodge the follow up blow, the one he’s pulling back for now. This time the chisel is going right through my eyeball into my brain, and that’ll be me. I have time to imagine the impact, time to wonder if I’ll feel my bowels void, the impact of the metal on the back of my skull before I pass forever. What with all the shit I’ve been through in the last couple of hours, I’m not too bothered. I do have time to feel sad that I’ll never get to hold little Sid; to cuddle him and bathe him and read him a story and kick him a football and buy him a pint, and I’m sorry Sid, as the arm reaches back and back, like a parody of a ballet move, his whole body twisted round to strike. Sorry Sid, sorry Tracey. Sorry son, sorry wife. I love you; I’m sorry, good night, good luck.

He just starts to unwind; the end of the chisel just starts to alter course and enter its lethal final trajectory, when a huge black shape flies across my field of vision. One second, I’m well and truly under the chisel. The next, fuck, millisecond, the benevolent yellow glow of the streetlight bathes me in rays again. My head falls to one side. Blood flows from my mouth, onto the street. I inhale through my nose. Then I exhale. Mist forms.