Heller

by JD Nixon

Copyright JD Nixon
2011

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition,
Licence Notes

Thank you for
downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your
friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for
non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its original
form.

This book is a work of
fiction. All characters and locations in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or
real locations, is purely coincidental.

Please note that JD
Nixon is an Australian author and Australian English and spelling
have been used in this book.

Discover other
titles by
JD Nixon
at
Smashwords.com
:

Heller series

Heller
(free ebook!)

Heller’s
Revenge

Heller’s
Girlfriend

Heller’s
Punishment

Heller’s Decision (due
2012)

Little Town series

Blood Ties
(free ebook!)

Blood
Sport

Blood Feud (due
2012)

Cover design by JD
Nixon

~~~~~~ ######
~~~~~~

“I’m sorry,
Tilly, but I’m going to have to let you go,” Barnaby said, not
sounding nor looking particularly sorry at all.

He’d asked me
to stay behind after the show had finished and I’d agreed
unwillingly, watching as my fellow cast members dispersed, laughing
with each other and trading friendly jibes. He stood in front of me
with his arms crossed, his doughy butt resting against the back of
a chair. His bulbous swamp-brown eyes were flat and cold and his
fleshy lips glistened as he ran his tongue around them.

“No. But why?”
I asked, bewildered and dismayed. There was still another two weeks
left on my contract and I needed the job badly. It had been months
since I’d had a paying gig.

“You’re just
not convincing in the role,” he shrugged with feigned disinterest,
casually scratching his scalp, releasing a blizzard of dandruff.
“The audience doesn’t believe in you. I can see it in their
faces.”

They were the
worst words an aspiring actor ever wanted to hear. But considering
the role I was currently playing and the audience, they were also
unbelievably ridiculous.

“Barnaby. I’m
a piece of fruit,” I reminded him in a reasonable voice, eyeing him
steadily. In fact I was a slice of watermelon, bedecked in an
unwieldy, triangular-shaped foam costume. My green and white rind
swung out wide in a semicircle past my hips and my legs were
encased in green tights sticking through the bottom of the rind.
The red foam wedge of the costume climbed to a point above my head
and my arms poked awkwardly through its sides while my face showed
through a hole at the front.

It was an easy
month-long gig – a series of short concerts across the city’s
primary schools to promote nutritious eating for the under-twelves.
Funded by the Department of Health, it paid well enough to keep my
lecherous landlord off my back for a few months. And it didn’t
involve me taking my clothes off, as did so many of the other
‘acting’ jobs that I applied for and consequently refused. So of
course I’d been thrilled when Barnaby had rung to tell me that I’d
auditioned successfully.

I’d been cast
in two roles in the show. Wearing a school uniform with my hair
tied into two plaits, I had a starring role in the first half as a
small girl who refused to eat her vegetables. One night in her
sleep she was dragged away to VegieLand by a bossy, know-it-all
carrot to personally meet and learn about the different vegetables.
In the second half, I climbed into costume as the watermelon for an
all-singing, all-dancing fruit salad extravaganza. Luckily for me
it was an ensemble cast, because I don’t have a good singing voice
and was happy to let the melodious, but overloud, pineapple next to
me sing for both of us.

Barnaby
shrugged again. “Your little girl isn’t so great either. Let’s be
honest – it’s a hard role for you to pull off,” he countered,
deliberately lowering his gaze to sweep across my generous chest,
mercifully hidden behind the bulky foam costume. I met his eyes at
that comment, saw the spiteful gleam in them and suddenly
understood what was happening. He had asked me out to dinner the
previous day and I’d turned him down, finding him unattractive and
dull. I was being punished.

He was a
community liaison officer with the Department (whatever that meant)
and was the concert organiser. He had the ponderous manner of a
born bureaucrat and the smug certainty in life of someone who could
count on receiving a regular pay cheque. Pompous and humourless, he
was full of an undeserved self-belief in his great artistic
managerial skills. In short, he was a complete tosser and I had
taken an instant dislike to him that I had tried to hide. I was
struggling to hide it right then.

I blinked my
light brown eyes down at him, far taller than him even in my flat
shoes, and relaxed my facial features into my sweetest expression.
“Oh, but I really need the money. Isn’t there
anything
I can
do to change your mind about letting me go?” I pouted at him,
wondering momentarily how far I would go to keep a job.

“Well, now
that you mention it,” he smirked, placing his hand with caressing
familiarity on my upper arm, running his fingers lightly up and
down. “Perhaps I might be persuaded to reconsider. Why don’t you
slip out of that costume and we can . . . discuss . . . it further
in the dressing room.”

I knew then
that I wouldn’t go very far at all, because I couldn’t repress the
shudder of repulsion that rippled through my body at his touch. He
obviously wouldn’t change his mind about firing me if I didn’t give
him some sugar, but my sugar-bowl was empty. I prised his fingers
free from my arm.

“If you touch
me again the only fruit you’ll be fondling today is your own
bruised plums after I kick them,” I said pleasantly, flashing him a
brilliant smile and burning my bridges with him forever. I turned
and walked backstage, my mind consumed with the sheer joyful
thought of taking off the watermelon costume. I doubted it had ever
been cleaned in its long life, redolent with the body odour of its
many previous wearers. The incredible heat of the day had only
added my own to the noxious casserole.

I reached
around to unzip myself. No matter how hard I tried though, I only
ended up struggling uselessly, twisting myself around back and
forth trying to reach the zip. But it stubbornly remained in the
centre of my back, totally unreachable from either side. Someone
had always been around to unzip me after the other concerts, but
because Barnaby had kept me late, the place was now deserted.

Damn.

I heard
footsteps behind me and spun to find that Barnaby had followed me
backstage, bad-tempered rejection oozing from his pores, mouth
sulky with petulance.

“Can you unzip
me, please?” I asked politely, showing the nice manners that my
mother had taught me. Just because I thought he was a creepy
pervert who’d been sickeningly turned on by my little schoolgirl
role, didn’t mean I shouldn’t mind my Ps and Qs.

He grunted and
stalked over to me, yanking ungently on the zip. He was responsible
for the costumes, so his irritation with me wouldn’t stop him from
performing his duty as the brave protector of such important
government-owned property. As if I wanted to steal an ancient,
faded and stinky foam watermelon outfit anyway! I was equally
amused and insulted at the thought. What on earth did he think I
would do with it – wear it around town? I mean, how embarrassing
would that be?

The yanking
continued for what I judged to be an excessive amount of time with
no resultant zipping noise signifying any success at bringing me
closer to freedom from the costume.

“What’s the
matter? Why are you taking so long?” I snapped at him, suspicious
that he was using the exercise as an excuse to get his hands on me
again. I hoped he realised that I had meant it about kicking him in
his plums. My foot was primed and raring to go.

“Your little
thingy’s broken,” he said, frustration clear in his voice.

“I’ll break
your little thingy in a minute if you don’t hurry up,” I
threatened, throwing away any pretence of being civilised with him.
“It’s frigging hot in this costume. And it reeks. I have to get out
of it urgently.”

“The little
thingy,” he repeated sullenly. “You know? The little bit you hold
to move the zip up and down. It’s snapped off. And now the zip
won’t budge at all.”

I spun around
to face him. “Are you telling me the zip’s broken?”

“Yep. Looks
like it,” he informed me blandly, his features expressionless.

“So I can’t
get out of this costume?”

“Mmm, it’s not
looking good,” which was said with the definite hint of a bitchy
smile.

“Barnaby, it’s
forty-one degrees today,” I reminded him.

“It
is
a very hot day,” he agreed, fanning himself briefly with both
hands, suddenly cheerful.

“Barnaby, I
have to catch the bus home.” His smile widened.

“Sorry Tilly,
there’s nothing I can do. These costumes are old. I guess the
Department should think about retiring them and buying some new
ones.” His accompanying smile brimmed with
schadenfreude
.
“Tell you what. I’ll let you go home where you’ve a better chance
of finding something to help you undo the zip. Maybe some pliers
might help?”

He gave me
another fleeting flash of his pearly whites, except they weren’t
white at all, more of a weak pee yellow. I was seriously starting
to hate him.

“But you have
to return the costume tomorrow to my office downtown,” he ordered,
abruptly aggressive. “Any damage to it will be docked from your
pay. You understand?”

I stared at
him angrily. I hadn’t even been paid one cent yet for the two weeks
I’d already worked and there he was, threatening to take some of
that much needed money away from me. Didn’t he realise that my
landlord had exorbitant rent and busy hands?

“Your costume
will be returned in pristine condition,” I promised, with all the
frostiness of a snowman sucking on a snow cone during a snowstorm
in Siberia.

He snorted at
me rudely and carefully scooped up all the other discarded foam
fruit and vegetable costumes while I stood immobile at the back of
the stage, the full awfulness of my plight slowly sinking in. I’d
been counting down the minutes until I could remove the hot and
smelly costume for the day. Guess I’d have to restart the
timer.

Shoulders
slumped, my small backpack of clothes and belongings dangling from
my hand, I left the school hall and trudged to the bus stop. Dark
thoughts swirled around my mind as I tramped the streets. I’d
enjoyed the rare experience of having a job, had liked the work and
the regular hours and had been looking forward to receiving some
pay. But now I was fearful of my immediate future, not so much
because of the penury, but because of the boredom. I wanted to have
a job. I wanted something to do in my life. I wanted to earn some
money. And I really didn’t want to have to move back home with my
parents because I couldn’t pay my rent. I had turned twenty-five a
month ago, for God’s sake! It was humiliating to still be so
dependent on them at my age.

By the time I
reached the bus stop I was drenched in sweat. The stop had no
shelter and was situated on a busy road, so I was forced to stand
in the blistering sun, inhaling exhaust fumes while I waited. And
waited. The bus was twenty minutes late and I was the only
passenger waiting for it at the stop. But I didn’t feel the
slightest bit lonely, accompanied the whole time by a barrage of
horn-tooting and catcalls thrown from the vehicles zooming past me.
Very funny everyone
, I thought sourly,
let’s all make fun
of the poor, unemployed piece of fruit
.