Cuckoo in the nests (standard:drama, 3987 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Dec 04 2019	Views/Reads: 1530/1062	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
How many people live in your house?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

her clothing cupboard was never more than practical. No daring 
lingerie, as he'd discovered when rummaging through her clothing. She 
always wore passion-killer underwear, but it didn't matter. Sometimes 
he would take an item of her clothing up to his bed in the loft. Half 
of it consisted of her things. A towel, a bra, a jumper, a cushion. 

He also liked to have a little fun to amuse himself when he was in the
house. Basically he enjoyed moving things around, and tonight he put 
the television remote-control on the bottom of the stairs. He lived 
mostly in the dark, as he had quite adapted to it, and also because if 
he put any form of light on it may be seen coming through the small 
hole in the ceiling. 

None of the occupants ever seemed to venture here. Only once had the
occupants at number 40 came up while he was in the next loft, but it 
wasn't for long, and it was only to store something. Even though for 
one hour he had hidden in the corner of the loft of number 38. In this 
house there were sparse furnishings and even less in the loft. A few 
old suitcases with some knitting patterns, plenty of asbestos 
insulation and some yellowing photographs of people who probably lived 
in this house possibly three or four occupants ago. They will have no 
relation to Mr Rutherford who lay asleep in his clothes without a sheet 
covering him, as he did most nights after the pubs had kicked him out. 

He would be zonked out until morning. Dale moved across to the loft
entrance, and was soon putting down the rope he had by all the 
entrances. These lofts were quite high up and he guessed he would hurt 
himself if he dropped, so the rope was the best he could do. Mr 
Rutherford's kitchen was sparse and he didn't have much in the way of 
food, but he made himself a cheese sandwich and sat down to watch 
television until dawn broke. 

Rutherford, back in his heydey, was an infantry corporal, and when that
petered out he took to earning money as a taxi-driver. Fifteen years he 
was fine, nary a point on his licence until he started to enjoy a 
slight tipple below what was legally required to drive. However the 
limit got closer and closer, and he would basically drink and drive, 
getting away with it, because in his mind he thought he would be fine, 
until one day it caught up with him, ploughing his taxi into a 
street-lamp. The two passengers in the back had skin lacerations from 
flying glass. Rutherford lost his licence, his job, had to pay damages 
and a large fine. Not only that but he was ostrisced by those in his 
locality, people who knew him, people who he crossed paths with. 

Only his true friends stuck with him, and that only amounted to about 2
or 3. However, the alcohol also stuck with him, becoming his most loyal 
friend. He managed to keep the house, but not much else. His dignity, 
his honour, any sense of respect he once held, all poured away down the 
drain. A man without any interests besides sport and politics. 

Dale's moving of things around didn't really work too much, because
Rutherford hardly noticed, believing he had put them there, maybe in a 
drunken haze, he would just assume it was him, but Dale did it anyway. 

As he watched him sleep, Mr Rutherford kind of reminded him of himself,
having nobody to really rely on, no-one who cares. Down in London four 
years ago, having been long-term unemployed, Dale had been sent by the 
job-centre on work experience in a supermarket. Trouble was Dale was 
not used to being told what to do, let alone being talked down to. His 
manager was a rigid, straight-laced perfectionist. A place for 
everything, and everything in it's place. So when he told Dale to go 
and brush up the car-park, he told it in a patronising way as though 
chastising a child. 'Now you, go and brush up the car-park'. 'You 
what?' said Dale, 'Who d'you think you're talking to? Don't you speak 
to me like that'. 'I will speak to you however I like. You'll do as I 
ask or I'll tell the job-centre to get your money stopped. Don't think 
I want to employ alcoholic drug-addicted reprobates like you...' 'What! 
you cheeky...' and Dale saw red, and punched the manager in the face, 
then proceeded kick and beat him, grabbing a nearby wine bottle and 
striking him with it. It didn't break, but had it done so, Dale would 
probably have used the jagged weapon. Other workers soon came to the 
manager's rescue, but the damage had literally been done. 

Three months in prison and one-hundred and eighty hours community
service. 

It was during the fourth hour of the service that he and a few other
workers had been tasked with removing graffitti from a railway bridge, 
that he saw a window of opportunity to escape. The supervisor was at 
the van. The others were on a break, and Dale found himself out of the 
eyeline of all of them, and ran, realising after about two miles that 
he was still wearing a yellow high visibilty jacket which he discarded. 


He soon found the house for sale, broke in, and it wasn't long before he
was calling the lofts his home. 

He believed the police would be hunting him down. Little realising, that
although they would be looking for him, he wasn't high on the list of 
priorities. He was hardly fugitive number one, but he had visions of 
armed police patrolling the streets, possibly even a reward, as even 
the public may give him up. So in the loft he stayed, as the house 
gained a new occupant. 

He made his way back up there, closing the hatch behind him, not that
Rutherford would notice he guessed, but he still did it anyway, and 
made his way back to the middle loft of Barbara's house where he had 
his bed. He looked through the hole in the ceiling and saw she was 
still in dreamland. 

He wondered if he should venture into the third house, as it was more
dangerous in there, the chance of being caught being much higher. 

He had assumed it was a married couple, but it seemed more like a
marriage of convienience, perhaps business was their pleasure. 
Occasionally he would see what he hoped to see through the hole in 
their bedroom ceiling. Good old-fashioned love-making, but mostly only 
one of them slept in the bed, the other downstairs in a makeshift 
sofa-bed. He believed it was because one worked irregular hours, as 
sometimes one would be up through the night. 

He knew they were trying to go into business together, and guessed it
must be something to do with computers because there was an office desk 
in the lounge with an expensive looking PC and sheets of paper 
scattered around. 

When he knew they were out, or when he guessed they would be away for a
while, then he would have the run of the house, and with it being quite 
messy anyway, his presence was not obvious. They had a lazy house cat 
who would stare at him when he entered. Then it would lose interest and 
go back to lounging on the sofa. 

As one of his jokes, Dale would put food from the fridge in the cat
bowl. Slices of bacon. Salted peanuts, carrots, and he would put his 
ear to the spyhole and hear them arguing over it: 'Well it wasn't me', 
'and it wasn't me!'. 

Tonight though, he could see Chantelle in her bed, reading, Philip
downstairs. 

He couldn't work out their routine, but still, he got some good things
out of it. They had a penchant for organic food. One of them must have 
been a vegetarian and he would help himself sometimes to them as 
despite not being vegetarian, he quite liked the food. The bathrobe he 
always wore had belonged to Phil. 

He wondered when he was going to go back down there, but there was no
rush, and went back to his makeshift bed. 

After another week, business was as it was, careful not to step loudly
up there, but in Rutherford's case it didn't matter too much because he 
probably wouldn't have been too aware anyway, but as it was he was out 
as usual in whatever pub took his money, and Dale was lounging on his 
sofa channel surfing. 

Suddenly he heard the gate outside open and footsteps. Dale panicked,
but when he heard the letter-box slam he breathed a sigh of relief. 
Sometimes that happened, someone would knock, or the postman would 
deliver. It always produced fear in Dale and he would search for a 
hiding place in the time it took for him to realise it wasn't the 
occupant. 

He saw it was a small envelope, and wondered if he should open it. Leave
the door ajar so it looked like somebody let themselves in and read it. 
Why not? this can be his little joke while he was in the house, so he 
opened the envelope, saw it was a card inviting him to a funeral. If 
he's sober, Dale thought. Must be an old friend of his. He put it back 
in the envelope and threw it on the floor, then opened the front door 
slightly, and went back into the loft. 

When the sky had thrown its blanket of dark over the houses, Dale was
spying on Barbara as she sat on the edge of the bed, taking her 
tablets. It seemed like she was taking more than normal, but she lay 
down and switched off the bedside lamp. 

Soon she'll be in slumberland, he thought, and it wasn't long before he
was going through her kitchen, rustling himself up a supper of chicken 
noodle soup with slices of wholegrain bread, and after he'd sat and 
watched some television he went back up in to Barbara's bedroom. He put 
on the bedside lamp, and the first thing he noticed was all the tablets 
around a half empty glass of water. She must be getting worse, he 
thought as he went around the bed and got in beside her. He lay down 
and snuggled up, putting his arm over onto her stomach. Despite never 
really having much in the way of affection, from anybody, he did, at 
some level, desire company. Somebody who really knew him. 

Something wasn't quite right though. Barbara was cold, and very still.
He flinched and quickly got off the bed. It didn't take him long to 
work out she was dead. 

He left the room and walked around and around, down the stairs, up the
stairs, down the stairs, anywhere but the bedroom, until he finally 
knew he had to go back in there, once his anxiety had burned to a 
manageable level. 

What am I going to do? he thought, staring at her. He was never going to
call anybody, but he wanted to, to let somebody know. So after much 
deliberation, he worked out what to do. It would probably involve more 
people around for a while, but still needs must, and he gathered what 
food she had left in her kitchen into a few plastic bags to take into 
the loft, and then set about doing the only thing he could think to do 
whilst retaining his secrecy. He pulled the duvet back and grabbed her 
feet, then dragged her out to the top of the stairs. 

He went down to the front door and opened it, feeling a breeze on his
skin, something he had not felt in a long time. He wanted to check 
there was nobody around. At 2am all he could hear was the faint sound 
of an engine, probably a distant taxi, and on the corner of the road 
there was the street lamp that lit up most of next door. For now, all 
was muted, and he worked quickly, and dragged Barbara down the stairs, 
out onto the pavement and into the pathway of Rutherford's. He had 
already opened the front door, so opened it wide, and placed Barbara at 
the gate. Half on the pathway, and half on the pavement so she could be 
easily spotted. 

He also decided to go and grab all of her pills and scatter them on the
pathway, in the hall, up the stairs and around Rutherford's still 
sleeping form on the bed, creating some form of half-cocked crime 
scene. The police could scratch their heads trying to decipher it. 

Dale decided to take Mr Rutherfords food, what little he had of it,
along with Barbara's back up into the loft, where he knew he would stay 
for a long while. 

Despite feeling sad for Barbara, he did fall asleep and was woken in the
morning by the sound of a police siren. 

Dale had retreated into Chantelle and Philip's loft, setting up his bed
in the corner. He had covered both dividing holes as best as possible, 
and had listened as the police had come around, loud footsteps, loud 
voices, and in both other lofts somebody had come up and shone torches 
around, but he had kept quiet as a mouse up there, and Phillip and 
Chantelle had also been interviewed, and he had tried to listen at the 
hole in the ceiling, but all he could hear was muffled voices. Muffled 
voices that sometimes grew louder, and when it seemed that they had 
wrapped up their investigations with Mr Rutherford and Barbara, the 
police seemed to take an unnatural interest in Phillip and Chantelle, 
having found a separate lead or reason to raise suspicion. 

At one point when the police were not around, the couple were in the
bedroom arguing, and he could hear everything: 'The police have got 
nothing on us. We can sue them' 'Look if they find out though that our 
business is illegal, then we're getting put away' said Chantelle. 'Not 
if we're careful. I can create a temporary internet file where all the 
accounts will be stored and our hard-drives clean, and I can make it 
password locked, encrypting it with only administrator permissions' 
'But the police can get round this stuff' 'Not all of them, certainly 
not if I use a dormant emulator programme to scramble the information 
inside, and when we get back to it I can just unscramble it. It'll be 
fine'. 'Yes, alright then'. Still, for the next few days, they were 
visited by the fraud-squad, and on a few occasions the police came into 
the bedroom and he would watch as they would rifle through their 
cupboards and drawers like legal burglars. 

When one of them looked up, although he didn't catch his eye, Dale
realised that with the police being unnaturally thorough, using a 
sledgehammer to crack a nut, sending in the army and riot-squad to 
rescue a cat from a tree, he guessed soon they would be up into the 
loft, and he didn't want a torch in his face, being recognised and sent 
back. 

So into Mr Rutherford's loft he went, setting up his bed, and the next
day the police came into Chantelle and Phillip's loft, but found 
nothing of any note, and they soon lost interest, then he heard raised 
voices, almost screaming: "....can't do this to me...", then: Silence. 
For two days, Dale stayed and barely moved much, until he realised, 
everything was quiet from all the houses. 

It seemed as if they had all moved out, and Dale decided he would brave
a trip down into the couple's house. 

Some of the commotion he had heard must have been removal men because
the place was more sparse than what it used to be. All the electrical 
items had gone and it was just furniture and some crockery. 

He wasn't to know they would spending time locked away for fraud. Their
business was in website design with a few hidden trojan horses in the 
programming design to hijack personal information such as bank details 
and passwords, so they could covertly relieve whomever was using the 
sites of thier finances, and the blame would come directly to the 
person who had had the site built. 

It was only when police were making investigations regarding Barbara
that when they came in to ask a few questions, people's bank statements 
were seen printed out and scattered around the place, so they had more 
questions to ask. 

Yet, the removal men had not finished, not in any of the houses, and
what food he had he had to make last, because there was no more. 
Decorators and landlords came, and in Mr Rutherfords workers were there 
for several days. They even cleared out the loft, and, quiet as a 
midnight lake, Dale huddled in the corner of Phillip and Chantelle's 
house, and waited. 

He had made more of a thorough job with Mr Rutherford than he could have
comprehended. The finger of suspicion was pointed at him and he was 
charged with murder and put away for two years. His house was since 
repossessed, and after a while, there was complete silence for several 
days in all the houses. 

He decided to go down to Barbaras and felt rather sad as he looked at
the bed where she used to lay, and standing at the bedroom window he 
could see the front gardens of all three houses, and in all of them 
there was a 'for-sale' sign, and it dawned on him that he would be 
getting new neighbours, new people to kind of get to know, to embrace. 

Yet he knew he could just leave, could rustle together some clothing
from up in the loft and take his chances out there. Would they still be 
looking for him? he thought. His case would probably not be closed, so 
there maybe someone who would recognise him. He knew he wouldn't be on 
the most-wanted list, but still, had visions of police-cars screeching 
up and guns being pointed at him. Yet, being in the loft wasn't so bad. 
It was a roof, a bed, regular food. 

He wondered if he could perhaps live down in one of the houses until it
became occupied. 

For a few days, he tried living in Barbara's house, as it was the most
furnished, but in none of the houses there was a television, and he 
wasn't used to sleeping on a bed, and it was of a morning that he heard 
the front door open and voices filter through. This snapped him awake, 
and he knew what it was. It was a potential buyer being shown around. 
There had been several in all the houses. He walked out onto the 
landing and the voices were too close. "...ok, so through here we have 
the lounge.." That was Dale's opportunity to clamber back up into the 
loft and close the hatch quickly trying to be as quiet as possible. 

Soon the buyer was on the landing having looked through all the rooms. 

Dale could hear them clearly, literally being around seven feet above
them. "Well, yes, this house would be ideal for me and the wife, our 
three kids and two dogs. I would love to buy it". New neighbours, 
thought Dale, and smiled in the darkness.


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