Vacant citizen (standard:horror, 1714 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Mar 01 2009	Views/Reads: 3273/1962	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
David is known as a person who is non-too bright, so would-be thieves try to take advantage, but is he all he seems?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

for subjects to talk about. He watched as he took another sip, then 
began coughing, spraying coke over the carpet. He began to cough more 
violently as though he was choking and grabbed his throat. He fell to 
the floor, convulsing and retching. David stood up quickly, at a loss 
as to what to do. The doorbell rang and he raced out, opening the door. 
Gavin looked surprised. “Gavin, call an ambulance, your friend's having 
a fit” David said quickly. Gavin could hear Harvey coughing and 
spluttering, and ran inside, followed by David. When they found Harvey, 
he was no longer coughing. He was still, silent. Gavin pointed at him 
and looked at David. “You've poisoned him! You've poisoned him! You're 
a murderer”. David shook his head. “No, No, it was...,” Gavin ran to 
the front door, stopped and pointed at David. “Murderer! I'm calling 
the police. I'm calling the police. Maybe you should kill yourself 
before they arrive”. He then turned and ran out, not giving David a 
chance to respond, who walked into the front room where Harvey was 
still lying unmoving. He put his hands to his face and stared down 
through his fingers. Gavin's voice resonated in his mind. ‘Murderer,' 
It kept saying. 

Gavin was visibly nervous, stood inside a bus stop as though he was in a
cell, waiting for guards to come and take him to the execution chamber. 
He didn't know how long to wait, maybe a few more minutes. He'd only 
been there for two, but he couldn't handle the anxiety any longer, so 
left the small shelter and headed straight back to the house. This part 
of the plan was the most optimistic. They were hoping that because 
David had attempted suicide once, he would try it again given a 
hopeless situation. He guessed that David was fretting about the 
impending screeching of tyres, and police bursting in to cart him away 
to a prison cell. He would therefore be known as a murderer around the 
town, and become an outcast. The situation Gavin and Harvey had 
presented him with was one where David had to make the quick decision 
to end it all, to decide that he would be better off dead. They could 
then steal anything of value, and be long gone before anybody found his 
body, and when they did, there would be nobody pointing the finger in 
their direction. 

The back up plan, was that should David not kill himself, then they
would, and make it look like suicide. Perhaps that would have been 
easier, they had guessed, but they had seen programmes and films where 
that had happened, but it had been worked out to be a murder. This way 
he really would kill himself, so they in effect, were not murderers. 

Crossing the threshold, he was immediately hit by the silence. He walked
into the front room and saw David sat in his favourite armchair, a 
glass of water in one hand, and a bottle of pills in the other, tablets 
scattered around. Gavin smiled slightly. His plan had worked, he 
thought. David was leaning to one side. He looked dead. Gavin saw that 
Harvey was still lying in the same position. “Oi! Get up, we don't have 
much time” he said, but Harvey remained where he was, silent and still. 
Gavin then noticed that the area around Harvey's throat was a pool of 
blood. He stepped across quickly and knelt down to shake him. 
“Harvey!,” he said, loudly. A shadow then fell across them. Gavin 
looked around at David who had stood up and was sending a baseball bat 
towards his face. The first hit split his skull. “Think I'm stupid eh? 
Thought I didn't know what you were doing?” The second strike killed 
him. 

David sighed loudly and sat back down. If only they hadn't been so
opportunistic. If only they hadn't tried to take advantage of someone 
whom they guessed wasn't the brightest match in the box, then he 
wouldn't have to try and haul their bodies into the loft, to join that 
of his boss many years ago when he had lost his job. It was David who 
had invited him around, who took out his anger with the same baseball 
bat on his skull. David blamed that incident for his low IQ level. It 
had also sent him into a spiralling depression, the result of which was 
his cry for help. He had never been the same since then. He wondered if 
this incident would change him again. Would he try and kill himself for 
real? Would he become a serial killer, executing those who had done him 
wrong? He didn't know. For now though, he would have to discover if he 
still had the strength to get them up there, but in the meantime, he 
would relax and enjoy the silence. 


Tweet