Dying Will Be Easy

By Phil Redhead

A house of death and madness ... A place of pain and sadness and joy.

When a shocking death shatters Heather's humdrum life, it's time to pick the pieces back up and rebuild all over again. This time, though, she's going to make some changes. No longer will she let other people’s expectations influence her decisions. No longer will she repress all of her desires. From now on she is really going to live.

New housemate Gemma and Gemma's boyfriend Roland help Heather to concoct a bizarre scheme that might put them all on Easy Street. But old habits die hard, and Heather once again finds control of her future being wrestled from her grasp, this time by the devious, brutal hands of domineering Roland.

Now, instead of embracing life, Heather finds herself obsessed with thoughts of death, and only she can decide whether she will be victim or survivor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phil Redhead
• Release date: Mar 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311573520

Phil Redhead

Phil Redhead currently lives and works in Surrey, England. He has been employed variously as a delivery boy, a supermarket shelf-stacker, a vault supervisor, a salesman of DVDs, a foreign currency cashier, a factory machinist and a shipping clerk.His Little Streets Noir books are dark sex-and-violence dramas set in dead-end commuter towns. He writes about the lonely and the weak; the losers and the misfits and the ne'er-do-wells - the little people who walk the little streets.

Book preview

Dying Will Be Easy

by Phil Redhead

Editor: Sarah Barbour at Aeroplane Media

Photography: Andrew Fysh

Published March 2016 by Little Streets Books

Copyright 2016 Phil Redhead

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

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About the author

1

Di’s naked body formed a clear silhouette in the doorway. The black shape trembled, shoulders heaving, fingers twitching at the bottom of slim swaying arms.

At first, Heather thought that she was dreaming, and she stared across the darkness of her room at the apparition. Suddenly her brain woke up.

What is it, Di?

Di tried to speak, but she could only take shallow breaths, as if her windpipe were constricted. Heather put the lamp on, and Di’s eyes scrunched up reflexively.

What’s wrong? Come on, tell me.

Di swallowed hard.

Where’s Adie? Huh? He’s gone? You’ve had a fight?

Di’s smooth, clear skin was covered by row upon row of tiny goosebumps. He’s dead, she said.

He’s what?

He’s dead … He’s dead. I killed him. Dead.

Heather blinked her eyes with rapid flashes and opened them wider. He can’t be.

Dead.

Di had reached the bed now and she flopped across the foot of it. Heather had to roll her legs to one side. Then she sat up. She laid one gentle hand on Di’s smooth back. Di flinched and shuddered.

Show me. Huh? He can’t be.

No!

There was a pause.

Heather modulated her voice to try again. Now listen, Di. Where is he? In your room? I’ll go and see.

Di shook her head, her face still buried in the sheets.

I’ll go and look. You just stay here.

Di reached out to stop her, but her hand groped limply at the air and fell back on the bed sheets. She let out a sob. The sound was tortured, stretched out, wrenched from somewhere primal.

The light in Di’s room was subdued—a brown-tinged red-yellow, with murky pockets of shadow on the walls and in the corners. The only illumination was from a single angle-poise lamp on Di’s dresser. Its head had been turned against the wall to mute its glare. The room was warm and smelled of sweat and stale alcohol and sex.

Adie’s body lay on its back, uncovered, naked, in the bed. His penis was still swollen, not quite hard. His skin was dry and thick like animal hide. He didn’t look asleep or passed-out; he looked dead.

There was a clear plastic bag over his head.

Heather stared down at the body for a full minute.

The sobs that came along the hallway from her bedroom irritated her. They prevented her from thinking clearly. She growled then turned away from the body without covering it up, removing the bag, or turning out the light.

Di hadn’t moved from the bed when she came back in. Heather reached for her robe and laid it over Di’s shoulders.

Put this on and come downstairs, I’ll make a drink.

Heather quickly dressed in jeans and woolly jumper. Then she led the way along the hall and down the stairs, with her hand reaching out behind her to guide Di by her trembling, cold fingers.

The bright illumination of the kitchen spotlighting made the situation seem even more unreal. The scrape of the chair against the tiles was obscene in the stillness of the night. Heather glanced up at the clock; it was a little after three. The world was silent.

Di no longer cried. Her fingers fidgeted on the table top, and she stared at them, as if she couldn’t quite believe they were her fingers.

Heather brought the steaming mugs of tea over to the kitchen table and put Di’s in front of her. Di twisted her mouth and nose up in disgust.

Drink it. Do as I say.

But I don’t want it.

You’ll drink it down, and you’ll like it.

No!

Heather lunged across the table, shook Di’s shoulder, slapped her face. Now, listen! Get your head together! Think!

Di’s eyes spun in confusion, and she gulped.

It’s happened now, get over it. You have to think about what happens next.

I killed him—

Yes, you did. So now what? You have to think about your options.

I—I don’t know. She gripped her slim fingers around the warmth of the mug and stared into the steam like a fortune teller peering into the future.

Well, Di, if you’re not going to think, I’ll do it for you, shall I? Asphyxiation during sex is hardly first-degree murder, is it, huh? Manslaughter, perhaps—I really wouldn’t know. But I’m fairly sure you won’t be spending the rest of your life in jail.

Tiny, perfect teardrops appeared in the corners of Di’s red eyes. The tears glinted in the kitchen’s harsh spotlights. Then the perfect droplets broke and ran in tracks down Di’s pale cheeks.

Even if you go to prison, it won’t be for very long. And it won’t be anything too harsh. Minimum security. You have no prior offences. You’re no risk to anyone. I doubt you’ll be asphyxiating any men again—am I right?

She pulled herself up short. She probably shouldn’t give Di the impression she was enjoying this.

But she was enjoying this. Yes, very much.

I can’t tell people—

Heather couldn’t stop herself. Why not? You’re worried what people might think? It’s a little late for all that, isn’t it? Anyone who knows you knows you’re a little slut.

Di’s eyes popped open.

Don’t deny it. Shut up and hear some truths. Even my mother has a phrase for your never-ending parade of willing men. ‘Di’s guys,’ she always calls them; we both got fed up trying to keep a track of them a long time ago.

Di’s eyes pinched closed, dislodging more glistening tears.

But fine, if you don’t want people to hear the truth, let’s get the subject back on track. You still have options. You call in sick today and then you buy yourself some power tools. Cut his body up, bag the pieces and dump them in a quarry.

Oh, Heather! No!

Or bury him whole, if you don’t want the mess. It’s still pitch black outside. But I’ll tell you now, I’m not driving you anywhere, so please don’t ask me to. And please, don’t bury the body in the garden.

Di was shaking her head, as if to remove Heather’s words from her ears before they’d burrowed into her brain. She gripped her hair in her fingers and scrunched them up.

Heather blew across her mug of tea and took a sip, intending to enjoy this moment for as long as possible. But she couldn’t keep a straight face, couldn’t stop herself from laughing with a loud spluttering guffaw. She put the mug of tea down and sat back in her seat.

Oh, God, Di, don’t be so ridiculous. You’ve only got one option, and you know it.

But I’m scared.

Too bad. You should have thought of that when you put the bag on Adie’s head.

Di’s delicate, perfect tears were obliterated into a constant, pouring stream. The fine, clear features of her pretty face blurred into an ugly, twisted mask. Her thin lips slackened to reveal a black gaping hole in the bottom of her face, through which a guttural, yelping howl issued. Thick, gloopy spittle drooled from the corners of her mouth.

Heather shuddered a little with delight and stretched her eyeballs wide to take the wonderful sight in.

Stop crying.

Di ignored her.

Diane Small, you listen to me. Just stop this now, you hear?

For a second, she had become the authoritative teacher that she could never quite be in class before her students. Di’s head came out from its darkened lair and she slowly sat up straight.

You have to go upstairs now, dress yourself, and then we’ll call the police together. You know we have to, don’t you? … Diane?

Di nodded once.

That’s good. Now, take your tea with you. Get dressed.

Heather remained at the table and listened to the floorboards as they creaked to mark Di’s passage.

Of course, whatever happened now, Heather was free—that much was certain. Di would no longer continue living in the house. There would be technicalities of ownership that would have to be worked out; but in the circumstances, wouldn’t they be the least of Di’s new worries? Would she go to prison? Doubtful. More than likely go back home. Ashamed and cowed, and half the woman she had always been.

Poor, dumb Adie. He had probably only been days away from dumping her. Or being dumped. And now he was dead upstairs …

She shrugged the thought away. It was difficult to miss or feel sorry for someone she barely knew. She winced at the thought and shivered uncontrollably.

She continued to sip her tea, drawing courage from its warmth, and she stared down at the table top and tried to think. The minutes passed. A frown had slowly blossomed on her face, and it now shamed her. She turned it into an exaggerated smile.

The silence of the house was suddenly apparent.

She glanced at the clock and saw that Di had been upstairs for twenty-five minutes. She came out of the kitchen and called once up the stairs: Di!

She took a few more steps and reached the bottom of the stairs. Diane, come on!

She knew what she would find. Di’s door was closed at the far end of the hall. She stopped before it, turned the handle and pushed it open. She found what she was looking for in the wardrobe doorway to the right.

Di’s twisted, ugly tear-stained face would be her death mask now, marked forever by bruised streaks around her neck.

She had tied the robe’s long belt to the high rail in her built-in wardrobe. She still wore the robe, which had opened to expose her creamy legs and petite body. Her feet hung only a few inches from the carpet.

Heather closed the door.

She went downstairs and stood over the phone, but didn’t pick it up yet.

She tried to keep on telling herself that she was free.

2

Why was this young, sophisticated woman drinking alone? Dress hitched high as she perched upon her barstool; legs crossed at the knees, her bare calves pale and shapely in the cocktail bar gloom.

Who was she? Everyone was thinking it—her included.

What a transformation it was, and so sudden. She was a vision of the woman she had always imagined she’d become. Back when she had been twenty and the world had seemed so promising.

A dash of make-up. A new dress. A £200 hairdresser’s bill. And the added magical ingredient of alcohol.

So easy when she thought of it. So liberating. The world again was a large and wondrous place, not just somewhere filled with petty things like bills and jobs, errands and appointments.

A promising, vibrant place, filled with life. Oh, just that word—Life!

The triangular martini glass in front of her was so pleasing in its elegance. So delicate at its stem, and yet so bold as the glass widened to contain the powerful, dangerous, clear liquid inside of it. The heady, slightly sour taste mingled with the strong fruity flavour of her lipstick. Her sensitive nose noted the assertive fragrance of her own perfume as well. She closed her eyes to heighten her senses as she accepted the sip of martini into her mouth, and she was able to ignore the