Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,20

used violence to express feelings he could never relate vocally.

He engaged in mutual masturbation with another boy in his class, a boy who walked the thin line between the bullied and the bully and didn’t want to slip. There was a strong chance Dean would try to further his fantasises with this boy, and if he did his sexual inclinations would be exposed, leading him to take his own life with the help of a bottle of his father’s whisky and a box of paracetamol. On the plus side, should his future converge with the twisted one of Jonathan Marks, then liver failure would prevent him from the romantic irony of being murdered by the hand of his tormented sweetheart.

A middle aged couple, their faces alight with the peppy glee of contentment, trudged past. They walked parallel to each other, a foot of pavement separating them. They tried to look nonchalant, uninterested in each other, but they were clearly paying more attention to each other than the dogs they walked or the park they walked in. They were telling the world that yes, they may know each other, but they weren’t exactly best of friends and certainly weren’t indulging in a sadomasochistic affair. An affair that would bring the cherry-faced woman close to Michael’s door when she forgot the safe word and her lover continued to strangle her.

Michael eyed them up as they passed, a complementary smile was dropped his way by both, but he doubted they even noticed him.

He sighed heavily and stood up to leave, cutting through the centre of the park, keen to avoid the outskirts where Martin Atkinson’s body was probably moments away from being discovered.

He shot a glance at the bullies and their victim as he moved to within ten feet of them. None of them paid any attention to him. Dean was still calling the shots as he stood over his anguished victim.

“Now, let’s jump on top of him!”

“Wait, why?”

“We’ll wrestle him! Come on, that’ll show him!”

Michael barely suppressed a smile as he moved past with quickening steps.

“Dude, that’s not wrestling.”

6

Daytime television, where the banal, the pointless and the idiotic combine to create a torrid and unmemorable concoction of watered down humanity that isn’t fit to show to those who choose their TV time.

Angela Washington loved it. She loved the mindlessness of it all. The topics unfit for human consumption that became fantastical during the day when all the kids were at school and she could stand and do the ironing whilst looking down, in her own modest and introverted way, on those worse-off and less intelligent than her. It made her smile, even when she had nothing to do but housework, and that was the most important thing.

When the doorbell sounded she was still smiling. She put down the iron, still fizzing a vapored dragon breath into the already humid living room; untied her apron, tainted with trails of flour and eggs from cakes currently rising in the oven; checked her appearance in the mirror above the fireplace, flicking a saturated stray hair from her forehead; and went to answer the door, humming happily to herself.

She wasn’t expecting anyone but had a few friends and neighbours that liked to drop by unannounced.

Through the peephole she could see two figures standing at the door, their height and size seemingly uniformed. She sighed, anticipating salesmen or Jehovah's witnesses. She opened the door regardless, deciding it was too late to rudely turn her back, having exposed her silhouette through the smeared glass in the door panel.

The men at the door were wearing black suits, black ties, black shirts and black tinted sunglasses. Their arms were folded behind their backs in a formal manner.

“May I help you, gentlemen?” She couldn’t see any briefcases, bags or leaflets, but also couldn’t see their hands. Nor could she gather their intentions from their blank stares.

“Angela Washington?” One asked.

“Yes,” Angela answered politely.

The two men exchanged a blank stare and then looked back at Angela -- her left hand still lightly grasped the door frame, her right toyed with the back of her tight ponytail.

“May we come inside?” Two wondered.

Angela swapped a stare between the two men. “Why?” she inquired with a hint of curiosity.

“We have a few things we need to discuss,” he replied.

Angela ducked her head in between them and threw a gentle wave to her neighbour across the street, passing by with his small Jack Russell tugging mentally on the lead two feet in front of him. He threw