Bile crept up into Ronnie’s throat as he forced himself to wield the bloodied metal shovel that was propped up against the bedroom wall. Minnie had found it in the shed at the bottom of the garden and had been using its rusted edge to make slices on the man’s flesh.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he approached the screeching man and lifted the shovel high above his head.
The first collision of the weapon and the man’s neck was not hard enough. It just about broke skin; the tiny dribbles of blood barely noticeable in amongst his black-red pasted jugular. But still, he let out a high-pitched howl of pain that made Ronnie’s hands tremble and sweat against the handle of the shovel.
“YOU BASTARD! YOU BASTARD!” his victim cried, heavily-accented voice ripping through the stagnant air. “GO TO HELL. GO TO HELL. I HOPE YOUR WIFE GETS RAPED IN THE ARSE AND YOUR SON BURNS ALIVE.”
Ronnie’s brow furrowed into a frown as he absorbed what the hysterical man had just said. He knew, logically, it should upset him. He should be furious that this pathetic worm had even put the horrific notion of his baby burning to death into his head.
But Ronnie felt no rage.
In fact, quite the opposite.
A burst of adrenaline released in the back of his brain, his grip tightening on the handle of the shovel. The overwhelming feeling of power tore through him like a tidal wave, making him almost crazy with the thrill. The thrill of knowing that he was in charge. His victim had given up begging because he knew that in just a few seconds, he’d be dead.
Gone, on Ronnie’s terms.
It was a delicious realisation that dawned so suddenly on Ronnie, in spite of the last few weeks of watching Minnie torture their landlord. He had struggled to understand her and had thought that her abuse of this innocent man was needless.
Holding that shovel above his head, seeing him writhe and succumb to his bloody fate beneath him made Ronnie get it.
The world had proven time and time again that it was against Minnie and Ronnie. It wasn’t fair, and there were no rules.
It was either destroy or be destroyed.
And it felt good to be in control.
He realised, at that moment, as he sent the shovel crashing down again as hard as he could, that it felt good to destroy.
Ronnie even found himself smiling as all of the Polish man’s severed neck arteries began to spurt fresh, warm blood into the air like a hissing red firework display, spattering his face and hands.
Chapter Fifty-four
2019
Ross, Julie, Minnie, and the three eldest Garnet kids hovered anxiously in the hallway, keeping the front door open, exposing the grey suburban scenery outside in all of its rain-drenched glory. Underneath his breath, Zach whistled an uneasy tune, whilst Stella stifled a chuckle, and their mother shot them both daggers of warning with her eyes.
Around twenty minutes after the two fathers had dashed from the house in opposite directions and had started searching the street for the missing girls, Paul was lumbering back up the pathway to the house, his eyes red and watery, expression deformed with terror.
“I can’t find her, I can’t find her…” he repeated to himself like a mad person as he scrambled up the drive and back over the threshold of the front door. He lunged himself in Ross’s direction and fell into his chest.
“Can I go check on my dog now?” Stella yawned, apparently indifferent to his dramatic performance.
“I’ll phone the police,” Julie said, voice quivering as she started for the door.
Instinctively, Zach held out an arm and caught his grandmother’s frail forearm, causing her sagging face to drop suddenly.
Minnie slammed the front door behind Paul and whirled around, folding her arms across her chest as she sealed them all inside the house. “No police,” she said to her brother pointedly, “that was the deal.”
Ross’s mouth fell open, “what? Min, you can’t be serious? My daughter… your daughter, has gone missing.”
“They’ll just be playing somewhere,” Minnie shrugged, “Flo is always off on misadventures. It encourages independence.”
In spite of the indifference she projected, there was a slightly lower octave in her voice which sounded strangely sunken, which only her three kids picked up on. It was a sound they didn’t get to hear very often in their mother’s voice because she was always so fiercely defensive of showing any kind of emotional weakness.
But it was there regardless.
The change in her voice.
The sign that Minnie was worried.
Paul whirled around, jabbing a finger dangerously close to Minnie’s face. Tears spurted from the corners of his eyes, the fear and heartbreak so vivid in his pupils that Minnie almost, oh so briefly, felt sympathy for him. Images of Stella in her awful, terrible state the previous day kept attempting to penetrate her skull, but she deflected them all, skilfully, refusing to accept that she had anything in common with other parents.
Too afraid to accept that maybe she was human.
Maybe she could feel some compassion for somebody that wasn’t her family, her team.
Minnie didn’t want to feel anything, for anybody or anything else.
“Maybe you deem it appropriate for an 8-year-old to be out on their own on the streets, but we certainly do not,” Paul bellowed, pushing himself out of Ross’s grip and taking a step towards her. “How can you be so fucking calm, exactly? Anything could have happened to them! Don’t you ever watch the news?”
Stella yawned, deliberately loudly, as if to make a point. She rolled her eyes and held up her phone, shaking it in the midst of the small group.
“Can everyone just chill the fuck out? I have a phone. I can call my sister.”
A short, sharp pause went by as Ross, Paul and Julie each stared in shock at the pretty young teenager and her casual use of such foul language.
Paul
