Her Demonic Angel

By Joy Mutter

Not enough time to commit to reading a whole book? Her Demonic Angel is a collection of fourteen of my best short stories. Some are stranger than others, but most are different shades of dark. They’re written in a variety of genres, so there should be something for everyone to enjoy.

To whet your appetite, here are the titles of some of the short stories in the collection: Mirror, Mirror; The Boy They Called Dragon; The Day Nobody Gave A Damn; An Email From Jane; Stuff; Getting Rid Of The Enemy; Skin; Too Beautiful; Philately Will Get You Nowhere; In Memoriam.

“If you haven’t read any of this author’s other books, this is a great one to give readers a peek into a wonderful writer’s vivid mind.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Mutter
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781519452238

Joy Mutter

I was born in Jersey and lived there for eighteen years. I worked in Kent as a professional graphic designer for over twenty years after gaining a Graphic Design Degree at Coventry University. I moved to Oldham in 2012 and have been writing books full-time up north ever since.I’ve written, designed, and published more than twenty books since 2007. The first three, A Slice of the Seventies, The Lying Scotsman, and Straws are third-person memoirs that form The Mug Trilogy.My fourth book, Potholes and Magic Carpets is contemporary, character-led fiction. I’ve also published one illustrated nonfiction book called Living with Postcards.Random Bullets was published in 2015. It is a contemporary crime thriller with a paranormal twist.Her Demonic Angel contains fourteen of my best short stories in different genres. Between 2016 and 2017, I published The Hostile Series of four contemporary paranormal thrillers. They consist of The Hostile, Holiday for The Hostile, The Hostile Game, and Confronting The Hostile. The Hostile Series Box Set contains all four books in The Hostile series.In 2018, I published a psychological thriller called The Trouble with Liam. The Trouble with Trouble, Trouble in Cornwall, and Troubled, all explicit standalone erotic thrillers in The Trouble series, were published in 2020 and 2021.Novellas The Brothers Grimshaw and A Sunny Day in Oldham were published in 2022.Between 2021 and 2023, I published the Nuru and his Crows Series consisting of Nuru and his Crows, The Storms of Padstow, and Punishing the Innocent.Nine of my books are also available as audiobooks.

Book preview

Her Demonic Angel

and other short stories

Joy Mutter

Her Demonic Angel

Copyright: Joy Mutter

Published: 2016

Publisher: Joy Mutter at Smashwords

The right of Joy Mutter to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without prior written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Contents

Contents

Her Demonic Angel

The Day Nobody Gave a Damn

Too Beautiful

Getting Rid Of The Enemy

Back To School

Stuff

Skin

Philately Will Get You Nowhere

Mirror, Mirror

CBB Hell

In Memoriam

An Email From Jane

The Boy They Called Dragon

Conor’s Revenge

Books By Joy Mutter

About The Author

Her Demonic Angel

‘Get off! You’re hurting me,’ bellows the young mother from next door. High-pitched, defiant banshee wails stream endlessly from her rebellious daughter. My heart sinks as my anger rises, pumping my tired, sluggish blood ever quicker around my decrepit body. I crank up the volume on my television to try to drown out the din, hoping my noisy protest will cut short the conflict. No effect.

My dysfunctional neighbours are at it again. Claudette is shouting threats in her strong Devonian accent at Angel, her eight-year-old, fair-haired only child. Angel is defiantly screaming foul abuse back at her mother, confident there is nothing Claudette can do about her insults. The evil child is deliberately banging their living room door over and over again.

My anger and irritation increase alarmingly at each bang until my blood is boiling. My marquetry picture of a maiden kneeling beside a stream that hangs on the adjoining wall tilts alarmingly, threatening to tumble onto the floor.

‘I’m sick of straightening that picture after every row. It can just stay crooked,’ I mumble, knowing full well I’ll be straightening the picture at some point this evening, despite it being a pointless exercise.

‘Shut up! Shut up, for Christ’s sake,’ chants my brain. My nerves are jangling as though a thousand fingernails are being scraped down the school blackboards of my youth too many decades ago to mention. Over the past three years, I’ve endured many of these unsettling and intensely disruptive barrages of negative energy flying out of the pair of battling females.

When I first moved my old carcass into my new home on this idyllic Devonian seafront, I wondered if it was the sound of endless screaming matches coming from next door which had prompted the vendor into being so eager to sell it to me. The selling price had seemed too good to be true at the time, but I soon discovered the reason why the house had been so reasonably priced. After the stressful years of nursing my dear husband until his death five years ago, I’d been yearning for a peaceful, trouble-free retirement now I’m a widow. Dear Angel has put paid to that dream.

This evening, the shouts of verbal abuse, the endless banging of furniture and doors speak of imminent physical violence. I fear for both their young lives, and for my sanity. It’s clear how much power the vile child exercises over her cornered, desperate mother. Angel seems all too aware that today’s society frowns upon parents who physically chastise their misbehaving children. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been distressed to hear the pitiful sobs of the despairing mother coming through my walls after such stomach-churning confrontations.

‘You can’t make me! You can’t make me!’ I hear Angel shout smugly. The girl clearly has the upper hand in this evening’s struggle for supremacy.

‘Given half a chance, I’d bloody well make you, you little vixen,’ I mumble.

I wonder whether to knock on Claudette’s front door to offer to help her restore order.

‘My attempts to restrain the child won’t do a blind bit of good,’ I remind myself.

I remember a conversation with downtrodden Claudette I had one morning over the dilapidated garden fence that divides our two properties. I’d tactfully brought up the tricky subject of her daughter’s appalling behaviour after having suffered another of their appalling rows the night before.

Fearing she might tell me to keep my nose out of the situation, I’d gently asked, ‘Would you like me to have a little word with Angel? Would it help you in any way?’

‘I only wish that you speaking to her would help, but nothing anybody says to her has any effect. She just screams that she doesn’t care what I think or do to punish her,’ Claudette had said, her greasy hair flopping into her pained, downcast eyes.

Sighing dolefully at the memory of the girl’s disgusting language, I’d said, ‘I know. I’ve heard her shouting out just those words at you, and a lot more besides. Angel still sees your ex-husband, doesn’t she? What’s her behaviour like when she stays at his house?’

Claudette had looked on the verge of tears. Her face always looks puffy from crying. ‘She’s apparently as good as gold with Steve and his new woman, which makes me feel even worse. I feel so inadequate, as though I’m bringing her up badly. I’m at my wit’s end. I don’t have a clue what to do to make the little devil behave when she’s alone with me.’

‘How does Angel act when she is at school?’ I’d said.

‘She’s always well behaved at school and in public, but as soon as we’re alone together, she goes berserk. Wish we’d never called her Angel. The name sounds ridiculously ironic. It was Steve’s idea to christen her Angel, not mine.’

‘You have my sympathies. It must be so hard for you, bringing up such a strong-willed child mostly on your own.’

A few months after my relocation to Devon, Steve, Angel’s father had stormed out of their house never to return. There hadn’t been enough time for me to become properly acquainted with him, but he wasn’t really my cup of tea. From what I’d seen, he appeared to be vain and arrogant. How such a plain woman as Claudette ended up married to such a good-looking, but shallow, peacock remains a mystery to me.

‘Steve wasn’t much use to me, anyhow. I’m better off without the cheating bastard,’ Claudette had said, her eyes flashing with anger as she recalled how her husband had so cruelly wounded her by his treachery with another woman.

Hoping to avert her tears, I’d said, ‘I’m sure you’re right. Nobody needs a cheat in their life.’

‘Steve has always spoiled our daughter rotten, and I reckon that’s partly to blame for the problems I now have with her. Angel was and always will be a daddy’s girl. She doesn’t like the fact that I don’t spoil her the way he does, so she’s punishing me for it. Angel only started bullying me soon after her father left us, although she and I have never been as close as he is to her. I certainly can’t afford to spoil her now Steve’s run off with that vile tart from the Post Office in town. I miss his wage more than I miss Steve, to be honest.’

A loud crash from next door cuts short my thoughts of my recent conversation with Claudette. As the terrible row rages on over the sound of my Coronation Street programme, I think back to my own childhood. Angel’s appalling behaviour would never have been tolerated back in the fifties when I was Angel’s age. Living under a strict parental regime, if I’d dared raise my voice to either of my parents in the way that the Exorcist girl next door shrieks abuse at her mother, I’d have been hospitalised.

My father used to hit and verbally chastise me on an almost daily basis from when I was about ten to when I was sixteen, even though I’d not been a particularly naughty child. He liked to banish me from the dinner table for scant reason on countless occasions. The brute needed no excuse to regularly lash out at me for perhaps looking at him oddly, or for not laying the table as he deemed fit. He was a six-foot-four antagonising bully who’d always had it in for me throughout his life, and beyond.

I can’t recall ever having behaved badly enough to warrant the harsh punishment he relentlessly dished out to me. I was a perfect child compared to the pint-sized Beelzebub who I now hear screaming insults at her floundering, ineffectual mother.

I’m not putting forward the notion that my father’s ultra-strict discipline had been a better way to raise a child than the ‘shout, but don’t hit’ wishy washy method adopted by the mother next door. My father was an extreme example of brutal parental discipline that should never be emulated. But, neither should a child gain the upper hand and be allowed to terrorise its parents as is happening next door right now, and in so many other households across the world.

Trying to block out the piercing screams and shouts from next door, my tortured mind thinks back to earlier today, when I’d caught sight of this nightmare combination of weak mother and toxic daughter. Like me, they’d wandered down onto the sun-drenched beach to make the most of the glorious weekend weather before the promised storm hit this part of the Devon coastline.

As today is a Sunday, the beach was sprinkled with mixture of tourists and a few locals like me. I like to fool myself that I’m a local, despite originally coming from Nottingham. I’ll probably be dead before I’m finally accepted by the folk who’ve lived all their lives in and around this seaside resort. Doubt they’ll ever consider me to be one of their own.

Everyone on the beach seemed to be making the most of the scenery and perfect weather, all intent on soaking up the last ounce of sunlight as they sucked in the sleep-inducing ozone. With great difficulty, I’d dragged my sun lounger down onto the silky stretch of sand and was luxuriating in the blissful sound of the waves lapping on the shore, lulling me into a smug reverie.

In my distant youth, on such a perfect day I’d have been bobbing about in the sea, but my bones ache badly these days, so I found it easy to resist today’s call of the ocean. I’d bravely ventured to the water’s edge to paddle when my heart sank. I spotted Claudette and Angel in the distance. To my dismay, they seemed to be walking in my direction. I was aggravated that they’d burst my bliss bubble by entering my line of sight.

I found myself thinking, Please don’t come and sit near me. I really dislike you, Angel. You probably think I should consider you to be cute just because you’re eight and pretty. Well, you don’t fool me for a second. You’re not as sweet and innocent as you’d have us all believe. I know what you are. To me and your mother, you’re not in the least bit cute. So, sod off and leave me in peace!

Hoping my irritation was not plastered all over my tanned, lined face, I briefly scolded myself for harbouring such uncharitable thoughts towards an outwardly innocent child.

At sixty-seven, my facial lines are deepening alarmingly, and creases have appeared all over my sagging body. It’s no longer a pleasure to look in mirrors, only a constant disappointment. However, as a widow living alone with no further use for men or them for me, I’m not as bothered about my appearance as I once was. Nobody could accuse simpering, narcissistic Angel of being unaware of her appealing appearance, despite only being eight years of age.

Mother and daughter briefly waved to me as they walked across the scorching sand to the far side of the beach to buy an ice cream from the busy kiosk. I could see that Claudette’s face was puce and shiny with sweat as she plodded along, while Angel occasionally pirouetted and bounded into the air in her attempt to gain attention from everyone on the beach. Claudette looked especially drained and weighed down by her formidable problems. Her cumbersome frame sank into the yielding sand as they progressed in my direction.

Poor Claudette knows exactly what she’s in for when they both return to their warzone of a house, I thought, wishing they’d hurry up and pass by so I could resume listening to the calming sea. I didn’t want my afternoon to be interrupted by unpleasant memories of Angel’s screams as Claudette did her best to prevent another unholy ruckus.

It’s bad enough having to endure your bad behaviour every day while I’m at home, let alone be reminded of it down here on the beach, I said to myself, resolving to stay long as possible on the beach to avoid having to listen to their intrusive arguments.

While I struggled not to look daggers at her, Angel smiled at me as though butter wouldn’t melt in her pretty, but abusive, mouth. As I looked at her perfectly groomed, long, fair hair and large, blue eyes, all I could think was, You unspeakable little horror! I know you know I can hear you through the walls as you delight in giving your poor mother an impossible time. You’ve ignored me whenever I’ve knocked on the wall dividing our two houses with my walking stick to shame you into quitting your interminable banging and foul, abusive shrieks. Yet here you are smiling at me, as though your commotion is a figment of my imagination. You know I understand what you really are. Walk on, you damned child of Satan, walk on!

The force of my thought waves magically seemed to work a treat. Mother and daughter mercifully carried on walking past me. To my relief, they bought a couple of dripping ice cream cornets and stayed up the far end of the sun-drenched bay. I heaved a huge sigh and returned to my tranquil reverie. While trying to block all thoughts of my impending return to the battle zone, I eventually drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rhythmic calls of soaring seagulls that mixed with the gentle lapping of the waves.

I was rudely awakened by the noise of my snores. Glancing around in embarrassment to see who might have heard me snoring, I realised that the beach was now deserted, apart from a couple of gangly youths kicking a football back and forth in the far distance. Still groggy and shivering in the early evening air, I folded up my sun lounger and set off home to face the evening’s challenges.

Like clockwork, the shouting