Mr. Secret Admirer

By Lindsey Brenton

Ava has done a good job of staying out of trouble for the last five years. The issue is that trouble seems to be coming for her. Recently, a creep moved next door, she got a new boss at work who thrives off of abuse of power, even her relationship with her boyfriend has been rocky, but none of those things can compare to what is in store for her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsey Brenton
• Release date: Jun 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735185811

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MR. SECRET

ADMIRER

Lindsey Brenton

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are all completely fictional. Any similarity to persons living or dead, locations, or events are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Lindsey Brenton

All rights reserved.

Mr. Secret Admirer is the work of Lindsey Brenton. All characters belong to her.

The cover photo was taken by Josh Lathrop and Lindsey Brenton

Cover design by Tim Huggins

ISBN: 978-1-7351858-0-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-7351858-1-1 (eBook)

Dedicated to fans of Mr. Secret Admirer who have been with the story from conception to publication. Thank you for staying with me through this process.

Also dedicated to the readers who discovered this book later. Thank you for reading.

Chapter One

Henry and the Beginning of Everything

Henry Smith sat on his couch, beer in one hand and the other on the remote. His fingers lightly pressed on the buttons of the remote, not hard enough to change the channel, just hard enough to feel the rubbery surface on his fingertips.

Sound blasted from the speakers, the sounds of fake laugh tracks and bad sitcom writing being projected so loudly they made the walls shake.

The entire floor was covered wall to wall in trash, and if the TV was ever off (which it never was) one could hear the scrabbling of rats beneath the filth. Beer cans, liquor bottles, and fast food wrappings made up the majority of the mess, though after the first layer or so of trash it was hard to tell. A moldy smell permeated the air, and old trash had started decomposing on the layer closest to the floor. Henry had found holes in the walls and on the floor on multiple occasions - either from the rats or the mold - but that was his damn business and no one else’s. 

At one point someone had tried to clean the house, though the efforts were futile. Before the house had gotten to this exact state, his wife had attempted to clean up a bit when she was alive. Henry had always stopped her from moving things around, and after the first black eye she had stopped trying to clean altogether. He would yell that he knew where everything was, and that if she tried to throw away anything ever again, he would know about it.

She hadn’t always been a timid woman, that was a role she had been forced into. She had been dead about a year now; an aneurism of all things. She had died in a grocery store parking lot.

The house - and Henry - had barely changed in her absence. If anything, it had only gotten worse. Without her, Henry took out his anger on whatever and whoever happened to be around. And the trash problem was all the worse now that Henry had existed on a diet of almost exclusively beer and fast food, their containers making up a large chunk of the mess.

The house was due to be condemned soon. Some city officials had come by only to say that the home was not suitable for living anymore. Random authorities always seemed to have a say in every little thing, from what Henry did to what belonged to him. They had been looking for one thing, and of course had gone and ruined everything else while they were there.

He had been angry when he was told he would need to find a new home; in fact he was beyond outraged. The house had quickly gained several new holes after he had hit the walls and floor with a baseball bat. He had continued to hit things until the bat had given way, and after that he had hit things with his hands.

Now the home was in complete shambles, and his knuckles were bloodied, and nothing was any better.

The rage had subsided into an eerie calm, as Henry sat down on the one clear spot on the couch, watching the TV with an empty look.

At least he knew that the city would never find what they had been originally looking for. They could take his house, but they would never get what they wanted out of him.

Henry’s stomach growled as he fingered the buttons of the remote. The city would be coming tomorrow to kick him out. He was hungry. He should’ve packed, but his plans seemed to rest on the bull-headed hope that maybe they simply wouldn’t come.

The pang of hunger was easily swept away by the simmering anger that lied just beneath the surface. So instead of standing and getting something from the fridge, Henry threw his empty beer glass at the wall, grinning wickedly as it shattered, the last mouthful of beer staining the wall.

The home didn’t look much better from the outside. The roof had needed a good patching long ago, the paint was peeling, and the porch was completely sunken. On most of the windows at least one of the shutters was hanging off its hinges. Some of the windows didn’t have shutters at all anymore.

A figure approached the house. He moved slowly, his clothing tattered and dirty. His skin was completely covered in mud and dried blood, making him appear inhuman. He limped to the house; his expression stony though his leg hurt so badly. If he made an expression, the wounds under the mud would re-open, and he had already lost far too much blood to lose any more.

The sounds from the TV muted his uneven steps as he walked onto the sunken porch. The figure peered in the front window, seeing the outline of Henry Smith against the glare from the television. The figure moved around to the back of the house, where the screen door had been taken off its hinges and the door behind it was only locked with a doorstopper jammed into the other side.

The process of kicking down the door was difficult with a hurt leg, his grimace causing some of the facial wounds to open up once again, blood wetting the dried mud. The figure paused, waiting for any sign that he had been heard. Nothing but the sound of the TV and the old house creaking.

The figure crept to the kitchen, pulling a knife from the sink. The knife had been lying in putrid water, the blade covered in mold and rust. He slunk back out the door, completely undetected.

Henry’s stomach growled again, and at this point, he was beginning to become more hungry than he was angry.

Sighing in resignation, Henry decided to finally bite the bullet and get himself some food. He leaned forward, ready to push himself off of the couch, when the living room window shattered behind him, showering glass down all around him. Something heavy crashed into his back, sending Henry face-first into the ground, knocking the breath out of his lungs. His fall was broken by the trash, the wrappers and muck creating a soft cushion to land on.

The heavy object rolled off Henry, giving him enough time to scramble to his feet, coughing as he gasped for air.

What the shit! He grunted, turning to see what had crashed through his window.

Henry was met with a bloody face. Infected wounds, muddy skin, a missing eye, and a slit throat packed with mud.

He fell backwards, scurrying away from the sight in front of him. No. He breathed. No, no, no.

The bloody face remained neutral, the attacker bringing himself to his feet. In his dirty hand he held a knife, the blade glinting in the dim light of the TV.

God damn it! Henry twisted away, his feet moving as if he was running but unable to get traction in the mounds of trash, wrappers and papers slipping out from beneath his feet, halting his getaway.

The attacker brought down the knife into the meaty part of Henry’s calf. The knife tore at his skin as Henry jerked away, his scream piercing through the laugh track of the sitcom he had been watching.

Henry finally gained some traction, hobbling away from the attacker, making his way to the stairs in an attempt to get to the second floor.

The attacker watched him calmly, holding up the knife and admiring the look of fresh blood on it before looking around, spotting the remote. He picked it up, pressing the mute button, and the house became silent. The attacker tilted his head, listening for any sounds from Henry.

Henry fell into his bedroom, pushing the door closed with his uninjured leg. He army crawled to his bed, reaching up into his bedside drawer and pulling out a handgun.

Try and get me now, motherfucker. Henry growled, pressing his back against the wall opposite his bedroom door, turning the safety off. His chest heaved, his blood spilling out onto the floor. His hand shook as he held his gun, adrenaline telling his body to move, but his logic telling him to wait to be found, to have the upper hand.

The sudden silence in the house unnerved him. His breathing seemed so much louder now. He swallowed, his calf sending waves of pain throughout his whole leg. He knew he had to patch up the wound, but he couldn’t risk putting the gun down.

The window by the front of his bed burst, sending glass flying through the room.

Screaming in surprise, he jerked to the left, shooting at the space near the window blindly. He fired two shots before realizing there was no one in the room. Henry tried to control his breathing, as he looked around in confusion before noticing a large rock on the floor.

His eyes widened as he realized his mistake. He had wasted two bullets, and now his assailant knew exactly where he was, and that he had his gun ready.

The silence of the house made the next sounds that much clearer. The sounds of heavy footsteps slowly making their way up the stairs.

Henry grit his