5PM (15 page)

The box is still tucked under my right arm on the seat and nothing has fallen out or been stolen. I take to my feet and head for the nearest door and on doing so I glimpse familiar buildings only a half hour walk to my home. I see a police car drive by and think of Hannah, and I wonder if I should call her and tell her about the chat woman stalking me on my phone last night.

Pulling out my mobile phone, I see a text message from an unknown sender. I open it and see, ‘Bad day at the office?’ The details say it had been sent an hour ago, so there’s no wonder I didn’t hear it as I lay sleeping on the train.

“Time to use your balls,” I say aloud to myself, and from the list of options, I click on ‘call.’ Within a second, a beep repeats, which tells me I won’t be getting through to the caller.

The trip to my house is long, but my uncanny sense of direction guides my body on autopilot. Talissa’s car is out front, so I have no choice but to face the music. I drag my feet up the pathway to the front door and fish through my pocket for the key. I turn the key slowly and feel the door move inwards.

“What the hell happened today?” Talissa asks with her hand on the doorknob.

“It’s complicated, I’m tired, and my life is screwed. If someone offered to drive over me in a truck, I’d lie on the road in front of them. I’ve messed up badly, Talissa, in more ways than you can fathom, but I need you in my life. I need to see your face each day when I wake in the morning and to hear the kids laughing at the table each breakfast and dinner. I need to feel that long black hair of yours through my fingers, your soft mouth on mine, and your beautiful womanly curves up against me. My body aches to get close to you again, to be inside you, and to be one with your soul again.”

Talissa stares back at me, and for the first time since she got home yesterday, a tear trickles down her face. I put out a hand to wipe it away for her, and she smacks it and walks away from me. I feel like a stranger as if I’m further away from her than I was before we even met.

Could anybody blame her really? She doesn’t know the real truth yet, but she may as well. If she’s going to go on hating me, she needs to know why. My body’s shaking at the thought of spilling it all out.

“Talissa,” I call out, heading for the kitchen. If it’s like any other day, she’s probably already preparing the night’s meal.

“What, Terry?” she looks up at me as her knife continues slicing at the chicken breasts. I see a few small bowls of various ingredients and the aroma of garlic and other herbs flowing through my nostrils.

“You need to know everything I’ve done. I’m not proud of it, and if you tell me to get out, I will. Not because I want to, but because you deserve more than this. I have been unfaithful.”

“That’s not exactly a breaking news headline, is it, Terry?”

I shake my head, “The first woman was the blonde I work with, Emily, the one who left her panties in my car. We hadn’t actually done it at that point, and I think she left them there on purpose so you would find them. The next day, Friday, I slept with a woman who I thought was Lauren Pellmont.”

“If you ever kept up with what was going on in this city you would know the real Mrs Pellmont is twice your age.”

“So I’ve heard but doesn’t take away the fact I was unfaithful. On Saturday, I was arrested here and taken away by the police handcuffed and naked.”

“Yes, Mrs Harris next door asked what the hell happened and smiled at me when discussing what she saw. That was kinda disgusting.”

“Well, I fucked the lady cop, too.”

“Geez, Terry. Is there anyone you haven’t had sex with, besides the babysitter?”

“Well, that was Sunday…”

“No wonder she hasn’t been back,” she puts the knife down on the chopping bench and walks up and slaps me in the face. “You realise she’s only seventeen, don’t you?”

“Yes, you told me that yesterday and I threw up. Talissa, she told me she was twenty-one.”

She slaps my other cheek. “And you thought that was a green light to have sex with her? I guess she brought the pot around.”

“And the ciders. How could she have them if she’s underage?”

“A pretty girl like her? Anyone would happily buy them for her. Or a fake ID. Surely, you had a way to get booze before you turned eighteen.”

“And today I got fired because of Emily. She tried to force me to have sex with her, and when I didn’t comply, she started hitting me then opened the blinds to the office and threw herself around. Phelps saw what he needed to see and told me to pack my stuff, and then I punched him. I’m unemployed, I’ve lied and cheated on you numerous times, and pretty much the whole neighbourhood has seen me naked. I’m a ruined man.”

“Terry, you’re not a ruined man, you’re a cu…”

Isaac walks in and cuts her off. “Mummy, Daddy, please stop fighting.”

Talissa glares at me, then turns back to our son and embraces him.

* * * * *  

I shut myself
in the study and turn the computer on. First thing I do is check my emails. I filter through the ones I don’t intend to read and delete them instantly. There’s one from Phelps Brothers Real Estate saying an official notice of separation will be sent by courier ASAP. Then there are a couple from my brother and one from my sister.

But the one that gets my attention is the one posted a minute ago from BluesGirl88. ‘I need to see you online ASAP.’

The last thing I want is a squabble with animated characters in fake scenes, but if it gets me closer to a resolution with what’s going on, I need to do it. I load the chat program and there she is waiting for me, inviting me to a private chat before I can even think to do anything else. Accepting, I take a quick peek at my other contacts—none of them are online, but then it is only three p.m.

“So here we are, where it all began nearly a week ago,”
she types and the blues club scene loads in full.

“If I knew then what I know now, I never would have gone into this chat program. I’ve lost my job and I’ve lost my wife, and come tomorrow, I’m going for a long drive to do the world a favour and end it all.”

“If you want my sympathy it’s not going to happen. If you want me to say ‘no, don’t do it’ then you’ll be sorely disappointed. You’re the one who took it too far, who thought he could take what he did in 3DDreamChat into the real world and go fucking everyone without consequence. You had it all, Terry—the beautiful wife, two beautiful children, and a successful career—and you squandered it all. You can sit there and blame me, but you know it’s all your fault.”

“Yes, it is my fault, but why the hell have you been stalking me?”

“I thought if I could keep you occupied on DreamChat, you’d be too occupied to have sex with real women who aren’t your wife.”

I feel like every time I chat with her, I’m talking to someone different. I repeat those two words over and over—someone different.
“I’ve worked it out, BluesGirl. You’re a multi-operated avatar. That’s why you can’t be tracked down, because you move between locations when someone else takes over you. You’re four people in one, and you’re all in this together to fuck me up.”

“I’m not sure I like what you’re suggesting, Terry.”

“So who are you now? Are you Emily? Or Lauren? Or Hannah? Or Brittany?”

“You couldn’t be anymore wrong if you tried, Terry. I know those women you speak of, and how you fucked each and every one of them, but none of them are me. I would love to tell you who I am, just to see the look on your face.”

“Why not, then? Why can’t we meet somewhere public and have a real face to face discussion? Why come on here each day and play around when we could have something real and fantastic and possibly have a future together? Don’t you want to take that plunge?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever be ready for that, Terry.”

“I need to know how you know so much about me, and yet I know nothing about the real you. You have me by the balls, BluesGirl, and I’m helpless.”

“You need to get away, Terry. Come tomorrow, you won’t be safe where you are and neither are your wife and kids.”

“Who’s after me, BluesGirl?”

“The most dangerous bitch on the planet, and if you’re anywhere near as smart as you think you are, you’ll work it out soon before it’s too late. It’s been great, Terry, but we can never communicate again. Please be safe, and in my own weird way, I love you.”

And like that, she was gone. Can I be sure it will indeed be forever? If she has my email address and phone number, how can I ever feel a hundred percent secure she will leave me alone? What if she’s right? What if I am in danger? And what if it’s not her, then who the hell would be after me?

Could it be Emily, the chick who seems to forget to put undies on unless she wants to leave them where other people can find them? She seems horny for me one minute, then a cold, calculating bitch the next.

Maybe Lauren, or whatever the hell her real name is. Why impersonate a widow to have sex with me? Or Hannah—the cute policewoman who had exposed me in my completely naked form to the neighbourhood, only to then seduce me later that same day. And then Brittany, the lying little skank who told me she is four years older than she really is. She also seemed quite competent with a kitchen knife.

I need to tell Talissa we need to put our problems aside, go to the police and get protection. Or maybe I could go to a place I know well and wait the storm out while my wife and kids seek refuge at her family’s place.

Walking from the study, Talissa heads my way. Her look isn’t any less angry than before she sent me from the kitchen. “I just got off the phone with the police. They’ll be around in the morning. They haven’t told me why, but that we should all stay put here.”

“I think I know why, Talissa, and it has a lot to do with those women I slept with. I think they’re working together and intend to hurt me pretty bad, and perhaps you and the kids. We need to be ready, do you still have your gun?” I ask her.

“Yes, and I can still hit a tin can from a hundred yards.”

Talissa had once been a champion sports shooter in her early twenties, and I know, if she needs to, she’ll use it. I tell her about the chats I’ve had with Bluesgirl88, the whole lot including the animated sex and violence and the threats she’s made.

“Gee, Terry, you better never go near a computer ever again, you really know how to pick them. I tell you what… I will sleep on the floor outside the bedroom after we put the kids in the bed. I want you in the middle of them and you better not leave the bedroom unless I tell you it’s safe because I’ll be sleeping with the damn gun under my pillow and will use it on anything moving near me that wakes me up while it’s still dark. Despite everything, I don’t want to see you killed. Do you think the threat is real?”

I look at her and wish I could rewrite the whole past week. It’s one thing that my sins could well lead me to my punishment, but it sure isn’t fair to my family. “Yes, I do.”

DAY 9

It’s the early
hours of the morning, and my son and daughter are fast asleep on either side of me. I haven’t been able to close my eyes, let alone get a wink of sleep, despite my extreme tiredness. Every sound I hear outside the window puts me on edge, be it a moth hitting the window or a car driving by. Sometimes, I think I hear voices outside, which in reality, exists only within the confines of my head, and come from the people who have played a part in the last few days’ madness.

The bedroom door creaks open, and I nearly jump a metre in the air. My eyes, adjusted to the night, I soon make out the familiar shape of my wife, and she signals me to come out. Any parent will tell you, getting out of a bed your kids are sharing with you is like stepping through a minefield, and just a single wrong touch of an unseen limb can trigger a child to immediately wake from any stage of slumber.

I move like I’m in a slow motion sports replay, sitting up straight from where I lie and continually looking from left to right for the forms of my partially hidden children. Once I’m upright, I propel myself forward using the heels of my feet to pull myself along to the end of the bed, and I do a mini celebration in my head when I reach the finish line of the carpet on the floor. One foot in front of the other, I make a path for the open door.

Closing it behind me, Talissa grabs my hand and guides me to the living room where she has set herself up in a makeshift bed constructed of quilts, blankets, and a few pillows.

“You haven’t slept at all either, have you?” I ask her.

“No, Terry, not a wink.” She looks like an angel in the darkness in her white tee and white panties, albeit an angel built to sin like the devil. “I want you to know I hate you and what you’ve done to us, and if someone really does want to kill you, I don’t blame them. But you’re the father to my children, and a good one at that or when your attention’s on them rather than blonde sluts who want to fuck you for reasons only known to them and to me right now. We could all be on the run tomorrow, or you could be in jail or even killed, so I want us to make love just one more time, not just for old times’ sake, but because my love for you is as strong as my hate right now. It might not make sense to you or anyone else if I had to try to explain it, but I need this, and you will do me like it’s our last night together.”

“Talissa…”

“Don’t speak,” she lifts her shirt over her head, and those big breasts stare back at me like a pair of long-lost friends. She pulls her panties down to her knees and gravity does the rest, allowing them to hit the floor. Closing the gap between us, she pulls my boxer shorts down to the ground, and we start to kiss like it was our first kiss ever shared.

It doesn’t take long until we start touching each other all over, and within a few minutes, we’re screwing like we’ve overdosed on aphrodisiacs.

* * * * * 

The sleep I
had after we had sex felt incredible, even though I only squeezed in four hours of it. I’m still tired, but there’s no time for a sleep-in as the early rays of the morning sun glare through the living room windows. We’re covered only with a sheet, so I pat around the floor looking for my boxers. Talissa stirs, and soon sits up looking for what she wore before our moment of passion. Looking at her face, I can’t help but feel things are back to how they were before we had sex in the early hours of the morning. She locates her shirt and panties and promptly puts them back on.

“I’m not running, Terry. I’m staying here with the kids. If Emily really is coming for you, why should I feel unsafe?”

“But if anything happens to any of you, how bad do you think I’ll feel?”

Matilda comes bursting into the lounge room. “Is Brittany coming today? I miss her.”

I put my arms out and allow her to dive into my embrace. “I’m sorry. I don’t think she’s coming back.” I fight back a tear and tighten my embrace.

“I love you, Daddy,” she says. Now I’ve lost the fight against the tears. Talissa leaves the room, and a couple of minutes later, I can hear the water of the shower running. Matilda still hasn’t let go, and I don’t want her to. Then she looks at my face. “Why are you crying, Daddy?”

There are too many reasons to name them all to her, but I have to pick something. “Daddy has to go for a drive, and he might never come back. But don’t forget I’ll always love you and your brother, and you can carry that in your heart.” Her eyes water and I don’t think I can take any more of this. “Daddy has to get dressed, sweetheart. I won’t be long.”

Matilda nods and relaxes her embrace on me, and I walk to the bedroom to find some clothes to change into after I take a shower. Talissa is quick as always in the shower, and the water is turned off already. Isaac is still in a deep slumber, and as usual, no amount of noise wakes him until he’s ready to be woken.

Walking into our little bathroom, I see Talissa wrapped in a towel standing outside the shower cubicle, but she doesn’t smile at me as I strip off next to her and get under the showerhead. I guess the sex hasn’t repaired much of the bad feelings she has for me.

“Don’t be long,” she says, walking away from the bathroom, leaving me to bask under the massaging jets of water hitting my back. Barely a minute passes when I hear the doorbell.

I turn the water off, and try to attempt to dry myself off with a towel in world record time, but the water doesn’t seem to want to leave my body as quick as I would like. Throwing it down, I grab the clothes I threw on the bed next to the sleeping figure of my son and start to dress.

“The police are here, Terry,” Talissa says. “They want to speak to you urgently.”

“Okay,” I answer, and she’s gone before I get the second syllable out. I throw on the rest of my clothes and walk to the front door where Hannah and Ed are standing.

“Terry, can you step outside with us please,” Ed commands rather than requests.

“What is this about?” I ask, trying to read the poker-faced police officers.

“Your boss, Harold Phelps, has been found dead in his home, the fatal wound coming from a knife to the back where it’s been left for us to find. We have reason to believe you would want to kill him. However, given the timeline of events, we don’t believe you did it.” Ed shows me a photo of the brutal murder.

“Is this normal to show a non-suspect this sort of thing?” I ask. The photo shows the side of Phelps’ face with his eye still open and blood surrounding the protruding weapon. Is it wrong how I don’t feel bad for him?

“There’s something else,” Hannah says and passes me another photo. It’s a picture of Brittany lying face up on the side of the road with a bullet hole in her chest wearing the clothes she wore here on Sunday.

“Oh, shit,” I say. My stomach’s threatening to rise up, so I run to the bushes on the left of the garden path and vomit for a good couple of minutes. This shit has gotten real.

I wash my face under the garden hose and try to regain some composure before going back to talk to the cops. They haven’t moved from their spots, and Hannah is doing a great job of treating me unlike someone she has been intimate with.

“Sorry for the disturbing images, but you need to know what you’re up against, Terry,” Ed says.

“I intend to draw these people out, and I have somewhere I can go to be safe to do this. Can someone guard Talissa and the children until this is resolved?”

“This place you speak of—you need to be aware we don’t endorse vigilante actions no matter how remote. You go there, stay safe, and we’ll have someone ready to take care of this threat. I just ask though that you allow us to put a tracker on your phone so we can send a squad to follow you from a safe distance, provided I can find someone who’ll believe me after what happened on Saturday,” Ed says and looks directly at his partner when he says the last part of his sentence.

She ignores his verbal jab. “We believe the killer is someone who was known to their victims, so you need to make sure you’re wary of everyone. We shouldn’t let you go, but at least we can guarantee your family is kept safe.”

“Talissa knows where I’m going, but I don’t want her coming out to the farm with the kids. I have to do this myself. Please tell Talissa I love her,” I turn and run to my car.

Ed follows me and I stop just outside my vehicle and lower my voice, “I think your partner’s involved, watch your back.”

“Don’t you think I might be aware of that? Oh, here’s the tracker before you try to take off.” He holds out a small device that looks like a memory card. “Put it in your phone now.”

I do as asked and take a look at Hannah, who stares straight back at me, then one last look at the house before I get inside the car and drive away.

* * * * * 

The trip takes
me a little under two hours, and I arrive at the turn-off for my parents’ old farm, about five kilometres from the nearest neighbour and an hour from the outskirts of the city where Talissa and I live. I know the place like the back of my hand, having grown up there as a child and living there until my late teens. The house itself hasn’t been lived in for a few years since my parents decided to downsize, but the farmland is still maintained due to my parents leasing it out.

Croplands spread as far as the eye can see. A bird’s eye view can be breathtaking given the different colours of the various cereals growing from the supple earth below. The driveway consists of fine stones and stretches for a kilometre from the highway, and as I drive along it towards the house, I feel like I am coming home again listening as the tyres crunch the rocks into the earth.

The old brick house stands solid as a reminder of the strength not only in the building itself, but our family unit, too. But turning past the front of the house, I don’t expect to see three vehicles there already. I immediately recognise my father’s old station wagon, but there is also a crimson coloured sedan and a charcoal four-wheel drive.

I find a patch of lawn to park, and get out to walk around to the front entry door. As I begin to align the wooden steps, my mother, father, brother, and sister appear at the top of the landing. I smile at them all, but they don’t match my facial expression.

“Terry, what the hell have you done, boy?” my father asks. I look at each of them, and as I face my mother last, she slaps my face.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Talissa is the nicest woman you could meet and what do you do? You break her heart a number of times,” Mum says.

“You went back to your old ways, Terry?” my brother Joe asks.

“Hey, look, I didn’t come here to be judged, whether I deserve it or not. There is a dangerous person after me, and I thought I could flush them out by coming here, so you all need to go.”

“Yes, we were told that, but whether you’re a dick or not, we stick together no matter what,” my sister Janet says and holds a pump action shotgun by the barrel.

Rifles and shotguns are common on the farm. We quite often used them to scare birds and rodents away from the crops that were the financial blood of our lives. None of us were crack shots, but we could scare the crap out of anything that moved with a single shot in the air.

“If any of you get hurt, I’ll never forgive myself, so please, just go, or at least stay hidden.”

“What about Talissa and the kids?” Mum asks.

“There are two cops keeping watch on our place until this blows over.”

Dad nods. He may be in his seventies, but he’s as wiry and sharp as ever. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of a rifle pointed at me if it’s in his hands.

When I grew up here, there were no such things as mobile phones and the internet, and as far as I know, the house never had either connected. I pull out my own phone and see if I can get any service out here. There are several text messages from various people. One stands out from a number neither my phone nor I recognise, and as I open it, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. ‘Dear Terry, please tell Talissa I’m ok and can babysit again tomorrow. I miss you and your beautiful cock.’

Geez, Brittany’s alive, so who the hell was in that photo the cops showed me? I need to call my wife and tell her to lose the police and get out here where we can protect her. I try the number to our home and it rings for several times before Talissa picks up.