Andrew Shaw leads a very quite and simple life. He has never been in a relationship but he has been in love with countless women, if they had only known it. He shuts down his computer and puts several files into his bag to read over the weekend. Leaving the office building where he has worked for 3 years he adjusts his scarf, the brittle November wind is bitingly cold.
The bus journey home is as it usually is. People talking and coughing, young, drunk and aggressive men trying to board without paying. Crying children. A young woman boards and speaks briefly to the drives then turns and starts asking for change from a £5 note. A Jamaican woman a few seats away has change to spare so he is denied even that chance to talk to someone that he doesn’t work with.
With the nasty hiss of breaks the bus stops and he gets off. Andrew stops as briefly as possible at the corner store to buy milk, cat food and bread. He hates the place. The owner, who seems to always be working the till is rude and morose.
At home and in the shower, as the hot water falls away from him, he runs over the Friday meeting, how rude Josh was and what a bitch Liz could be. He should have just said that 3 days was not enough time to report back on a project he had been handed that same morning, if they wanted to really know what he thought then they should give him the time to read the report, investigate and work out some practical solutions. He hits the button with a stabbing motion, killing the water and dries himself.
Pouring milk onto some generic cereal he can’t help but think, obsess over Josh. As he loads spoonfuls of the cheap tasting, over sweetened food into his mouth he looks back to the first day at Jefferson and Maybury. He and Josh started the same day and fell into, not quite a friendship but a familiar role of two people in a new place and with the disadvantage of only knowing each other. Now Three years later Josh is not quite his Boss but has been promoted enough to be almost the same thing, while Andrew, that came up with the ideas that put Josh where he is still labours at a entry level salary at a job he hates.
Sat on the sofa watching some tawdry Friday night TV show that he is not really watching, he is aware that Fat Puss his cat keeps batting at his arm. Claire never loved him. She left as soon as she found something better. Adome in accounts doesn’t even notice him. His flat is cold and expensive and he hates his job and… He realises with a remarkable lack of emotion that he has just broken Fat puss’ neck.
In the bedroom he changes into darker, warmer clothes and grabs a butcher’s knife from the Kitchen.
Josh Smith loves his apartment. It meant putting his mother in a home and selling her house to get the down payment but it is big. Really big. Part of the old Yeomans’ Lofts that were developed in the late 90’s it is a fanny magnet. He could bang five or six girls a week with this place to impress them. Hell, the last one was still in School. He was Skyping with Canadian tart when his doorbell rang, he didn’t say anything to her. It could be little Lisa, who just loved calling him ‘Daddy’. He barely even tied his dressing gown as he opened the door.
“Andrew? What the fuck do you want?”
Andrew punched the Butchers knife straight through his neck. It severed the carotid artery, vocal chords and severed the spine. As he falls to the floor, there is a fountain of blood for just a moment and in it Andrew sees a rainbow of colour.
There are no security cameras in the building and as he rinses the knife in bleach, he changes back into shorts and a T shirt and goes to bed. he sleeps more soundly than he has done in years.
brumdogg 