Nightmares - Short and Sweet before you Sleep Page 6

had even begun to download some apps.

  Angela laughed when she saw that her son had taken almost twenty photos, all looking like they were the same photo just with different filters used. Although she loved her son Angela was pretty sure that she didn’t need twenty of the same photo and so decided to delete all but the last photo so that she had plenty of space for other photos.

  One by one Angela deleted the photos, she had deleted nineteen of the twenty before the photo that confronted her froze her as she stood. This photo wasn’t of her son doing the duck lips for a selfie, instead the photo that confronted her was of her son fast asleep, as he currently lay, fast asleep.

  At first Angela thought he had taken a selfie like that and then realized that you could see both of his hands caressing his head as if they were his pillows.

  The realization hit her, he couldn’t have taken the photo. Someone had to have taken the photo of him but who. It was then that her bedroom light flickered before turning itself off. Angela was startled when she heard footsteps running in the hallway from her bedroom door towards Connors room before stopping.

  Angela raced and turned on her bedroom light before following the path the footsteps she had heard just moments earlier make, and threw open Connors door switching on the light to see who had taken the photo of her son.

  Once again Angela froze, paralysed in fear, Connors bedroom that she had chased the footsteps into was empty.

 

  Angel

  He was sitting down on his front porch, his wooden rocking chair that he had passed many afternoons in the blistering sun in, keeping him company as he sipped on his cold beer – nothing tasted better after a hot day of chores around the house.

  Throughout the day John had finished painting the new fence, mowed the front and back lawn, and had cleaned up the carport, and just to add good measure he had also washed and detailed his car.

  Retired at 83-years of age there was nothing better for him than to do what he wanted to do, and most importantly do it when he wanted.

  With cold beer in hand he watched as his neighbours one-by-one returned home from work, from school, or whatever else they did during the day. To be honest John no longer recognized many of his neighbours, it wasn’t that he was losing his mind at his age or anything like that but the neighbourhood had changed dramatically over the recent years.

  The neighbours that he had grown to love over the last fifty years that he had been living in the house with his wife June, the neighbours that they once used to catch up with once a week sharing around the cooking duties as they took turns hosting.

  People he was proud to be calling friends had sold off their properties and had long packed up and moved to the sunny coast lines to enjoy their retirements, their properties mostly torn down, sub divided and new apartment blocks built in their place.

  Apartment units sitting where his neighbours pools that he sat next to, dangling his feet into while enjoying a cold beer in years gone by, the once vibrant community spirit now long forgotten as everyone became too busy caught up in their own lives.

  Taking another swig from the cold can in his hand John still made the point of waving to each and every neighbour that drove past returning home, many too busy or preoccupied to return the friendly gesture.

  “John,” he heard his wife June call out to him. Shit John thought she’s still nagging at me, John thought as he ignored his wives call and continued to swig out of can that was moving closer to empty with every hard earned mouthful he was taking.

  He couldn’t believe it as he saw yet another couple drive past, John once again waiving this time the couple looked directly at him and completely ignored him as if they couldn’t see him, like he was invisible.

  How Rude, John thought as he finished off his can.

  “John,” he heard his wife call again, John choosing once again to ignore her beckoning even though he could do with another cold can. But he didn’t want to go in ranting and raving about the obnoxious neighbours and how far downhill the neighbourhood had gone.

  To be honest John continued to ask himself why they still had the house, he hated living there it was depressing to see the world around him deteriorate, and he just continued to ask himself why.

  “John,” Junes’ voice called from inside the house again, her voice was actually getting on his nerves, he loved her to bits but once it got to the shrieking stage it was almost too much to bare.

  Finally John stood up from his chair, it rocking behind him in memory of the last twenty minutes they had spent together relaxing the afternoon away, and made his way inside. The flyscreen door banging as he entered the house.

  He walked part way up the hallway towards where his wife had been calling him, when out of nowhere he heard a loud crashing sound.

  John raced back towards the front porch where the loud sound had come from and saw that the rocking chair he had been sitting in just moments earlier was crushed under some of the cast iron roofing.

  Undoubtedly if he was still sitting there he would have been seriously injured, if not killed. John was shocked, knowing how close he had just come. He wandered away from the front porch and back into the hallway.

  Halfway up the hallway he stopped once again. Turned towards the bookcase on the far side of the wall at the picture of his wife that sat proudly and lovingly beside the urn that carried her ashes, what she had become reduced to two years earlier after losing a long battle with cancer.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice still with love, the same level he had always had towards her the day he met her and the love he still had for her despite her being long gone. She had always been his rock, and even in death she had been there for him.

  It just wasn’t my time, he thought to himself as he blew a kiss towards the photo and made his way towards the fridge for another cold can of beer.

  Jacks Back!

  Detective John Stephens couldn’t believe it. Here he stood in a glum, poorly lit ally way, in the middle of a cold winters night, surrounded by rubbish bins from the nearby Chinese fast food restaurant, laundry mat, with the stench of faeces making him ever so cautious of where he stood or placed his foot when taking a step.

  He once again looked at his watch. He had been handed that watch just two months earlier by the department to celebrate his thirty-years on the job. He chuckled to himself, thirty-years on the job, all those cases solved, families reunited with loved ones and cherished keepsakes and yet he had obviously been the one to draw the short straw as he was the one standing where he was… looking at the footpath that crossed the ally way in front of him, doubtful about what he really was doing there, yet for some reason he was the one assigned to the task of being there.

  Today was meant to be a rewarding day for Detective John Stephens, he had been part of the New York Police Department establishment for thirty years, the first ten as an officer followed by the next two decades as a Detective, albeit in a number of different divisions such as homicide, armed robbery and for the last five years the special crimes unit.

  After thirty years it was time for Detective John Stephens to hang up his badge and check in his gun for the final time, he was going to retire and take up a position working within the private sector in which he had been promised a payload that was almost double his regular take home income from within the NYPD.

  At fifty-years of age it was time for John, who was married to his wife Maureen, and had three grown up children, to start thinking of his retirement and this latest job offer was a nice little increase to his regular savings in the final years of his working life.

  He picked his wrist up and had another look at the cheap arse gold plated watch that now donned his wrist. Tick… Tick…. Tick…. The time continued to tick over, Detective Stephens thought to himself that instead of being back at the station enjoying his retirement party from the force, or instead of spending his last day on the job chasing down petty criminals to have one last burst of activity with the badge he instead was sta
nding in this dungy ally way, a note in hand, and being able to watch as time, his career in the force, and most importantly his life slowly ticked by.

  Surely someone of his calibre could be utilized better in his final assignment than to be standing in this ally way awaiting for something that probably wouldn’t happen, or materialize. And yet the captain thought this was the best use of his time, it made John happy that this was his final shift if this is what the captain had in mind for him.

  You see eight-years ago the five-one at One Police Plaza had received an anonymous letter claiming to be that from none-other than ‘Jack the Ripper’ himself, yes the serial killer from England’s Metropolitan region who is believed to be responsible for the deaths of at least six prostitutes between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891 – some 123-years earlier.

  The letter shared information in relation to the murders of six prostitutes in Whitechapel, and had claimed that he had always wanted to visit New York City and would make his return on Friday 22nd August 2014 at three-thirty am. Exactly 123-years to the day that the first confirmed Jack the Ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols, body was discovered...

  While many looked at this as a hoax, including Detective Stephens himself, being one of the detectives of the Special Crimes Unit it was his role, and that of the others that made up the unit, to investigate the case to see