Mrs Green moved her glass to the side of the desk and gestured for Ben to give her his hands. Slowly he placed his murdering hands into the palms of his mother. Their eyes were locked and she spoke softly to her son, her last remaining family.
She told him that she knew about his father from the first time he had committed murder, and contrary to what Ben was probably thinking, it was what made Mr Green the kind and generous and loving husband and father that he was before he passed away.
She explained she knew about the voice in the head, and the man in the mirror, and the only way to take back control of the mind was to release the pressure from time to time.
‘You know who you are now, Ben,’ she said.
She passed him the glass of wine and he took a large gulp, large enough to finish the glass. He put it down on the desk.
‘I can’t kill people, mum,’ he replied. ‘I can’t do that. I’m scared, mum.’
‘We know you can, Ben, you already have,’ she said, sounding so calm, almost hypnotising him when she spoke. ‘It’s in your blood. You need to commit to this life, Ben.’
Ben sat back in his seat.
Commit? He thought to himself.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘You can try and hide your feelings, learn to live with the man in your head dictating your every mood, owning your every thought, or you can take control. Every now and then, release the pressure. Give in to your will. Let your nature take over for just those few moments, then bury those feelings until the next time.’
‘I… I can’t control this,’ Ben replied. ‘He’s too strong, mum.’
Mrs Green shook her head and once more took Ben’s hands in her own.
‘You will listen to me. If you want any sort of future, you must listen to me. If you don’t let nature takes its course, you will go mad. He will not let you think, he will not let you choose your path, he will ruin everything from here on in,’ she said, passionately, convincingly.
As shocking as it was to be having this conversation with his mother, Ben had himself realised that since the murders, the voice in his head had quietened down. Sure, the man was still in his head, and in the mirror, but he hadn’t been as nasty, or as forceful as the last few weeks.
He wondered if his father had sat down with his mother and had a similar conversation all those years ago when the bad things started to happen. She wasn’t all there in the head, his mother, but she was a strong woman and this was now becoming very clear to Ben.
‘So what do I do?’ he asked.
‘You take charge. Today,’ she said.
Mrs Green reached into the drawer at the front of the desk and pulled out a large knife, she placed it on the desk between her and her son.
‘What?’ said Ben.
‘Either your girlfriend, or that bastard she’s been sleeping with. Or even that man who sacked you from your job,’ she said. ‘Decide.’
Ben was taken aback, lost in the moment. He was being told by his mother to choose someone to kill. Was this real? How did it get to this? He stood and looked beyond his mother, at his reflection in the window. When his father had died, had Ben inherited that dark part of his soul? Did Ben now carry the torch of death in his absence?
He checked his watch, and then picked up the knife.
‘I’ll kill my boss,’ he said.
Mrs Green stood, walked around the desk and hugged her son. They held each other, this mother and son who had just formed a more complicated relationship than any normal soul could imagine. Then she loosened her grip and looked into her son’s eyes.
‘Go.’
30
Ben crouched down behind a vehicle in the underground car park. It was reserved for executives and managers and was below the office block that housed Cutting Edge Marketing. He had left his own car at his mother’s house and used the walk to psyche himself up and prepare himself for his first premeditated murder.
Charlie was the boss of the company and never stayed late at the office and was often the first the leave by a good hour or so. Ben was hoping this would be the case today.
He had already been waiting for nearly an hour, constantly sweating and jumping out of his skin at the slightest sound. He could have sworn there was someone there watching, waiting to catch him red-handed, stood over the dead body of his ex-boss with a bloody knife in his hand. He would often stick his head up from behind the car where he was hiding, but nobody was there to be seen.
He’d cursed himself for bringing no form of camouflage, knowing that if anyone saw him that he would almost certainly be recognised. Fortunately, the rumour was that the car park security cameras were not working after an electrical glitch and hadn’t been repaired, something to do with certain companies claiming that it was not in their rental contract to contribute to the uphold of the CCTV system, as this was not general upkeep of the building. Some had paid, some hadn’t; but as it stood, it was believed that the firm managing the building were not willing to pay the remaining cost themselves. If this was true, this was good news for anyone planning to commit a crime in the area.
Finally, Ben heard footsteps, then a voice on a phone.
‘Yeah,’ said the voice. ‘Listen, I’ll be there soon. Yeah, I’m gonna cut out, I’m in the… shit.’
Ben heard the ‘BEEP’ of Charlie unlocking his car with the remote device then peeped over the car and saw him with his back to Ben and approaching his vehicle.
Adrenaline pumping, Ben stood and marched over to his chosen victim. Charlie heard the heavy footsteps behind him, and turned to see the man he had fired the day before.
Ben stopped on the spot, sweat running into his eyes. He had run the sequence of events through his mind a hundred times in the last hour. Wait for Charlie, approach from behind, attack then leave. What he hadn’t envisioned was Charlie to ever face him, to make eye contact, to ever know that Ben was there.
‘What the fuck are you doing ‘ere?’ said Charlie, eyeing Ben up and down and shaking his head disapprovingly, ‘look at the fucking state of you! Jesus, Ben, you wanna get some fucking help. Go on, fuck off.’
And with that, Charlie opened his car door, sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him, watching in the mirror as Ben spun on the spot and speedily walked off towards the car exit.
Charlie put the key in the ignition, awkwardly pulled his phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before checking his hair in the rear-view mirror. He was interrupted by a tap on the window.
‘What now?’ he muttered, under his breath.
Charlie half turned the key, held his finger on a button and lowered the window.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
Those were his last words.
A knife had already been plunged in and out of his neck three times before he had even realised what was going on. He tried to get to the passenger side of the car, out of harm’s way, but his attacker was almost in through the window, frantically sticking the knife into random parts of Charlie’s face, neck and body.
Charlie had started throwing his arms towards the figure in the window and maybe connected once or twice, but it wasn’t enough. There was blood-loss, shock, fear and then death. Charlie lay slumped across the two seats. No more cockiness, no more arrogance, no more cruel words. Charlie was no more.
Ben stood a block away from his old workplace, bum against a wall, leaning forward and trying to control his breathing. He threw up.
He couldn’t remember getting to where he was. He couldn’t remember anything really. He checked his
