It’s okay, run a bath and sit in scalding water for a while. Don’t spill the Jack in the water though because if it slides into the soap it won’t taste the same. Lee was stupid for sitting in there like that, half of his face collapsed and the whites of his eyes glimmering in the burnt out light. But still he swigged his half full glass with orange liquid smeared across his lips, smirking to himself about the trail of imprints he had left behind. Stupid boy, do you know the trouble you’re in? Of course he did. He had nailed the art of being so un-anonymous that tattooed on his left arm he had ‘whatever happened, it was me’. Every failing of his he had noted in his book. A disgustingly yellow edged diary from the year of 1987. Lee was blind. Blind to the world, to right and wrong and to every law possible. What is law? Law is the strings attached to a puppet and the puppeteers create the laws themselves. In Lee’s mind, they were not good puppeteers and so he decided to cut the spindly threads at every chance he got. He’d been caught every time, taken to the foul stinking prison too many times in fact; you’d need 30 hands to count just how many times. But those hands were somehow inclined to release him after just a few days, and nobody could be sure as to why. Perhaps he had a way with words. Perhaps he was a billionaire. Or perhaps he had fucked so many of the judges’ wives, held them to ransom and blackmailed them that he got out. No one could really be sure.
Today, at precisely 16:33 (lee had stopped his watch as he always did on a special day like today), he had taken his string cutting a crucial step further. Normal people -if you can call a person like this normal- would have burned their clothes, but Lee did not even wash them. Instead he hung them back in his wardrobe with a fresh cardboard label tied to the hanger stating ‘150 – Thursday 24th January. Thames.’ Lee did like his memorabilia. 150 of course was a reference to the number of his ‘accomplishments’. Sick man, you’re a sick man, you’re just making yourself ill Lee. ‘shut up’ he said to himself giving a low grunted chuckle ‘I’m sick because they made me sick but I’m not more sick than they are so there’. And with that he downed the rest of his medicine and hauled himself out of the steaming water. Lee didn’t have a bath to wash away the red evidence, he had a bath because he was an addict; addicted to furiously hot baths. No, a shower would not do, if a bath was not available he would visibly shake. He’d even gone as far as boiling water in the kettle, pouring it into a washing up bowl and dipping his feet in just to get a small fix. This was the kind of man Lee was. An obsessive. He was not an obsessive compulsive, but he was an obsessive.
© Copyright 2016 Alex Watts. All rights reserved.
Short Story / Other
Short Story / Literary Fiction
Short Story / Mystery and Crime
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