I Do Not Belong Read online

  I Do Not Belong

  by Rick Wood

  I Do Not Belong

  Rick Wood is a British writer born in Cheltenham.

  His love for writing came at an early age, as did his battle with mental health. After defeating his demons, he grew up and became a stand-up comedian, then a drama and English teacher.

  He now lives in Loughborough with his fiancée, where he divides his time between watching horror, reading horror, and writing horror.

  Also by Rick Wood

  The Edward King Series:

  Book One – I Have the Sight

  Book Two – Descendant of Hell

  Book Three – An Exorcist Possessed

  Book Four – Blood of Hope

  Book Five – The World Ends Tonight

  The Sensitives:

  Book One – The Sensitives

  Book Two – My Exorcism Killed Me

  Book Three – Close to Death

  Book Four – Demon’s Daughter

  Standalones:

  When Liberty Dies

  Sean Mallon:

  Book One – The Art of Murder

  © Copyright Rick Wood 2018

  Cover design by superawesomebookcovers.com

  Copy-edited by LeeAnn @ FirstEditing.com

  With thanks to my Street Team

  No part of this book may be reproduced without express permission from the author

  This book is dedicated to those of you who do not belong.

  You know who you are.

  “While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.”

  - Leonardo Da Vinci

  “Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?”

  - Epicurus

  “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and the other begins?”

  - Edgar Allen Poe

  1

  The One Who Doesn’t Belong

  I was bored.

  I guess you could say that’s why I did it.

  Or, that I’m fascinated. Completely overcome by a desire to know more, to know what it’s like, how it feels – to truly experience it myself.

  You see it every day in the news, don’t you?

  Predators picking off easily coerced children, tempting them with a frivolous treat, prying them away from easily distracted mothers who wouldn’t watch their kids with their full attention but would cry on the television appeal.

  Oh, the irony. Honestly, they deserve the scare, just to teach them to watch the child that they apparently want back so sodding much.

  Wah wah wah, cry cry cry, my child my child my child – shut up, you stupid cow, no one cares. Sure, everyone cares about your missing kid for this minute, but then they press the red button, turn off the news, and carry on with their equally repugnant lives. Flush the memory away after tutting for a fleeting second, like that picture of your kid you printed on your t-shirt actually makes a single bit of difference to them. Your child is the discarded milk carton from the previous day’s cereal – not that that’s actually a thing anymore, missing kids on milk cartons. It’s more ‘missing kids on Facebook’ now. Normally as their mother’s profile picture. Like that does anything. Put them wherever you want, you inept cow: you weren’t watching them, so someone took them, you’re a shit mum.

  And that’s the thing – that very thing that enthrals me. The reason behind it.

  Why?

  Why would you do that? Why portray yourself as the doting parent and let your kid go astray with some fucking weirdo?

  But, in all honesty, it’s not the mothers that fascinate me. They are fascinating, yes, but it’s not them. It is the artists behind it that make me want to know more.

  And, honestly, that’s why you watch the news. Isn’t it? Not because you care. Because you are fascinated, just like me. Intrigued by what the artist has done, and who the artist may be, and whether or not the artist is too elusive to be caught.

  And I am a fucking weirdo, let’s not pretend I’m not. You may not realise it fully yet, but that’s only because you are yet to witness what I’ve done. Once you’ve read the book, you will think – no, you will know – I am a fucking weirdo.

  And you are a fucking weirdo.

  And you don’t even realise it.

  And you don’t know why.

  And that brings me back to the why you so ardently demand:

  Human behaviour captivates me.

  It seems, no matter the situation, no matter the stakes, the cost, the person – put someone in a position where they are against another with their life at stake, and they will be a bastard.

  All people are bastards.

  Even you.

  Let’s be honest; who are you in it all for?

  Your spouse? Your kids? You parents? Siblings? Friends?

  No.

  You are in it for you.

  Come on, admit it.

  It’s just between us. No one will know.

  You don’t even need to say it aloud. Your partner asleep in the bed next to you, or your sibling across the room, your friends on Facebook, your parents shoved away in an old people’s home to rot – they won’t hear your thoughts. So you can be honest. Finally, you can be absolutely, crucially, unequivocally, diabolically honest.

  You’re a bastard, too. Aren’t you?

  I want you to answer that question. Now.

  Aren’t you?

  Answer it. AREN’T YOU?

  …

  Thank you. Whether consciously intentional, or subconsciously unaware, you will have given me a yes or no.

  And one of two things will have happened in your response.

  Either you will have responded with, “Yeah, I guess I am,” completely agreed and concurred that you are, too, in fact, undeniably, a bastard.

  Or you have just lied to yourself.

  Easy to do, I guess. But hey, that’s your prerogative. It’s up to you what truth you wish to perceive.

  For me, I chose four people – four supposedly undefeatable, shiny beams of light – and I let them tear each other apart. Destroy each other. I thought, putting myself amongst them, I’d have to do more talking, coercing, manipulating, pushing. As it was, I got away with saying and doing very little to move the situation along.

  Being the bastards they are, whether underneath or on the surface – they did exactly as I expected.

  And boy, are they bastards.

  Like you.

  Just wait. You’ll see.

  You may, on occasion through their story, question whether you would do the same. Whether the actions they take would be the same as yours within the scenario put forward to you in this story. Maybe there’s one character you identify with more, or one you hate, or one you take a particular liking to as a relationship grows. Maybe someone’s backstory convinces you of that character’s noble intentions, or complete and utter ruthlessness. Maybe you even choose to root for one to be the killer. Maybe you even guess who I am. Maybe you get it right, maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re certain, or maybe you just sit back, shut the hell up, and read the sodding book.

  Remember, whatever your thoughts – you would act no differently.

  And hey, I’ll be straight with you.

  I’m a regular bastard too – except more so.

  Because I’ve embraced it.

  And to consider yourself above any of the beautifully terrible people would be delusional. It would be void of reality. Void of truth, and void of logic.

  And, what’s more, to convince yourself you’re above me and my actions would be preposterous.

  I’m not a psychopath. I don’t have a personality disorder. Nor did
I have a terrible childhood that scarred me for life and produced the monster you may accuse me of being. To relinquish the role of my character to any of these traits would be to demean my genius and what I seek to accomplish.

  It would also demean my likeness to the average person.

  Your average Joe.

  Your regular nobody.

  You.

  I am you, except more so.

  Remember that.

  2

  0 hours, 0 minutes

  A small shaft of light graces the room with its presence, fluttering through an irrelevant crack with such vague illumination that it does nothing to endow the scene with clarity. Despite being the only natural light to creep into the room, it is so insignificant and so miniscule that none of the characters you are about to meet discover it. There is a fake light flickering overhead, like you would stereotypically expect in a neglected corridor, or an abandoned warehouse, or a piss-stinking bathroom at a run-down garage in the middle of nowhere.

  That flickering light in itself is so artificial it would make your mind burst against your skull. It has a strong orange tint, like someone had peeled a satsuma, turned it into a transparent material able to filter light, and fixed it against the bulb.

  Five figures lay dormant upon the faded tiles. A chain around each right ankle secures their positions with an inescapable security. There are a few metres of give on their chain, but ultimately, they are confined to the small radius that the chain allows them. They will be able to move, yes – but none of them will be able to leave; not only are they confined by their restraints, but there is no visible door that makes a route out obvious. It is a room with no windows, no apparent exit, no visible means of escape.

  The interior of the room is a cross between a filthy kitchen and an unconventional basement that one never enters. In truth, it is a bomb shelter, built out of paranoia, but one so neglected that you would not recognise it for such a use any more than you would recognise shredded felt as the teddy bear such material originally created. The crackling walls display feverous mould, over a floor that’s once startling decoration is now reduced to mossy imprints, covered by dirt engraved for such a long time it has become as much a part of the surface as the floor’s immovable cracks. An unidentifiable drip creates an irritating ambience – an irritating ambience which grows even more irritating when entwined with the hollow reverberation that mimics any of the room’s ill-fated guests, transforming all small sounds to a suffocation of the ears. As our protagonists begin to stir, their shuffles repeat back in a vast echo caused by the walls, floor, and ceiling of the metallic box.

  One by one they wake. One by one they panic. One by one they look at each other, terrified of what is going on.

  It would be boring to describe to you the sheer mortification of each waking character individually, and for you to have to experience it five times, so I will spare you the unneeded details. After all, you are not stupid – you can make the assumption that if you were to wake up in a random room that felt like a knapsack, with four strangers, with your ankle fixed to the floor, you would be equally horrified; so to describe each character’s independent adjustment to the awful situation they find themselves in would be to patronise you and waste your time. It would be obviously safe to presume that each of these people woke with a start, a scream, and eyes wide with terror. That their bodies trembled like a ship caught in a storm, and their tears were just as wet as said ship’s deck, and their stomachs just as sickly as any passenger on said rocky ship. That their thoughts ran through a hundred vile possibilities of why they may be there: sexual slavery, torture, perversion, monotonous curiosity, sadistic thrills, or to simply give their captor a raging erection. And, in all honestly, I couldn’t say that any of those possibilities would be right or wrong.

  But let’s not waste your time with all that needless description of how their hearts are racing, how their blood is pumping, how they think of those they love, yada yada yada, blah blah blah.

  Let’s just see how the scumbags get on, all right?

  “What’s going on?” barks the Liverpudlian accent of a black man in his early twenties as he pulls on the chains that clamp around his ankle. His name is Ashley, and he does everything he can to push his bondage off, but unfortunately it does not move. “Where am I?”

  The young girl next to him, merely sixteen years old, a college student already facing withdrawal symptoms from her anxiety medication, backs away from him like an animal scared of an intruder. Her arms shake so furiously you could be mistaken for believing a tornado is surging through her bones. Her face is so full of perspiration she has to keep blinking beads of sweat out of her eyes, and her head won’t stop twitching.

  “Hey,” Ashley says, offering a hand toward her. “Cool down.”

  She doesn’t cool down. She stares at his hand like he’s offering her shit on fire, and backs up against the wall.

  His head pounds with the throbbing of a monstrous hangover – the kind of hangover that would reduce God himself to a quivering wreck, laid out on the sofa with a flannel on his face, demanding to be left alone.

  “Hey,” Ashley continues, holding one hand out to the girl, the other on his head that feels like something is drilling into his skull. “It’s cool. I don’t know what I’m doing here either.”

  Her bottom lip trembles with the ferocity of a washing machine on full spin. She is unknowingly drooling, a large gunk of saliva hanging from her mouth, but she is slowly discovering that Ashley is not the enemy.

  “My name’s Ashley. What’s yours?”

  “M – M – Maya,” she replies.

  “Maya, that’s a nice name. Do you know who put you here, Maya?”

  She stares at him, considering his question, then shakes her head with a rabid fever, which then prompts tears to glisten in her eyes then shoot down her cheeks.

  Ashley turns and looks at the others. All of them cautiously move their eye contact from one another, never meeting each other’s gaze. Extreme trepidation takes hold of their composure. All of them cautious, wary of the others.

  That is, all except one.

  A man sat in the corner glares at Ashley. He is in his late sixties, and there are things about Ashley this man does not like.

  “What’s your name?” Ashley asks.

  “Fuck off,” the man replies. His name, however, is not fuck off – it is Milo Clunk.

  Ashley turns his attention to the other two. One a woman, the other a man.

  “Do any of you know how you got here?” Ashley asks.

  They shake their heads, eyes wide, blubbering messes.

  Ashley looks at their ankles. Everyone is restrained with the same immovable force he is.

  The girl next to him is still blubbering. Ashley tunes it out.

  “Right, let’s be cool, let’s figure out why we’re here. What are your names?”

  “Tariq,” replies the man. Late forties, a Muslim immigrant, proud owner of a pharmacy. His voice is kind, his accent a cross between his Bangladeshi heritage and his many years living in the United Kingdom.

  “Everly,” replies the woman. In her early thirties, attractive enough that she would turn heads as she walked down the street. Except now she is less so – sweaty, with hair greased back, and some kind of contraption around her neck.

  “What is that?” Ashley asks, pointing at said contraption.

  Everly looks down and sees the device. She panics. Starts screaming. Starts shaking. Dancing around on the spot, like constant shifting will do anything to remove it. It won’t – it’s a large metallic necklace, fixed to her body via her collar bone, with a small gun set in place so that it is in front of her throat, pointed straight up at her chin. She grabs hold of the gun and tries to shift it, tries to point it somewhere else, to move it, but it’s no good – it’s welded in place. What’s more, it’s making a ticking noise, as if it is on a timer.

  “What the fuck is happening?” she cries.

  “I don’t kno
w,” Ashley answers, staring at her unwanted necklace. Fresh paranoia makes him look down to see if he has one too, but he does not.

  Tariq goes to have a look at it, and Ashley becomes suddenly startled by his back.

  “Tariq!” Ashley says, pointing – then instantly regrets it, deciding it would have been a better idea not to have drawn attention to it.

  Tariq fiddles with his back, and that’s when he feels it. Something fixed to his spine.

  Ashley immediately feels himself for a device on his body, running his hands over his neck, his back, his legs, his face. Nothing.

  Maya has started doing the same, although with a lot more panic and a lot more tears. Ashley can see she’s young, but wishes she would calm down. Her panic only escalates further, however, when she finds something over her heart. She lifts her raggedy vest to reveal a small metallic circle with a flashing red light stuck just above the left side of her bra, which is purple with large yellow dots on, and slightly too big for her flat chest.

  Then Everly’s eyes fix on Maya, and hold there, and she gasps.

  “Oh my God, Maya!” she weeps.

  “Auntie Everly?” the girl replies. “Auntie Everly, what’s going on?”

  Ashley turns to Milo.

  “You got anything?” he asks.

  Milo doesn’t move from his slump against the wall, except to raise his middle finger and direct it at Ashley.

  “You know, that ain’t helpful, man. We’re all here together for a reason, we got to figure it out.”

  Milo’s middle finger remains strong.

  “Fine. Let’s try and figure out why–”