Gary Doolan stood in the bus shelter watching the Post Office with all the nervous anticipation of a hungry hyena lying in wait by a watering hole. The chill January rain beat down on the shelter, drumming a relentless rhythm on its grimy glass sides. The air felt wet as he inhaled, taking a drag on his roll-up, a well-loaded joint that fought bravely against the elements to stay lit. Its amber tip glowed briefly, adding colour to the hopeless monochrome world around him. The weather matched his mood. Why the Hell am I here anyway? He exhaled, watching the pungent smoke plume rise like an angry little storm cloud. Potential pickings were slim today. A gaggle of young teenage mums had been in to collect their benefit payments. Before the girls, there had been some big shaven-headed steroid-induced gorilla of a bloke in a tracksuit. All bulging neck muscles and tattoos. Gary certainly needed the cash, but wasn't willing to get his skull fractured for it. He ground his joint out despondently against the glass side of the shelter, leaving a dark smudge on its smooth surface. Sod it. He'd bugger off home and smoke the rest in the dry.
The old lady appeared out of the rain on the opposite side of the road, little more than a blurred spectral shape emerging from the middle distance. As she drew closer, he watched her struggling with several over-filled plastic bags of groceries. Her other arm had a thin blue leash coiled around it. A tiny dog was attached to the leash, pulling with all the enthusiasm of a Siberian husky. He recognized the creature as being a cross-bred minature terrier of some sort, the type of little rat that wealthy old widows doted on and kept as pampered company once their husbands had died. He watched her keenly as she went inside the Post Office. He grinned wickedly and took the crumpled joint back out of his pocket, relighting it by way of celebration. Things might just be looking up after all!
He struggled to observe her movements through the glass panel in the Post Office door. The never-ending parade of cars and lorries passing by on the road kept breaking up his clear view of her, raising an obscuring wall of spray as they sped past. She took something out of her pocket, handing it over the counter. The clerk returned it to her, along with something else a few seconds later. She put whatever it was back in her bag of shopping. A bank card? A pension card? A wad of cash? A purse? It has to be one of those! He took a deep drag to calm his nerves. This was it...the onset of the adrenaline rush! She came back towards the door, struggling to open it as she wrestled with her shopping and the dog. He braced himself, wiping his sweaty palms over the front of his tracksuit top as his heart rate increased.
When she came out, the little dog seemed to be going mad, frantically pulling back on its collar and tumbling over itself between her ankles. The animal seemed to be having trouble standing upright, bucking wildly and getting tangled up in its own leash. The old woman looked confused by the animal's panicked behaviour as it yanked backwards, trying to lock its tiny legs into place defiantly. In the end she seemed lose patience with its antics, putting down her heavy load and scooping the tiny dog up in her arms. Once she'd re-gathered her shopping, she crossed the road and entered the park behind the bus shelter. Gary flicked the finished joint nonchalantly into a puddle and followed her from a discreet distance.
She was now almost thirty feet ahead of him, huddled up against the curtains of rain lashing over her. It was now a deluge, pewter-coloured skies hurling grey waterfalls over the sodden landscape all around them. The noise of the rain would perfectly mask the sound of his eager footsteps gaining ground behind her. 'Twenty -five feet'!
He had to wait until she followed the path round behind a clump of trees before he made his move. Only then could he strike. His breathing grew heavy as he picked up his pace. Adrenaline. Fifteen feet. Dark branches formed tall arches over the black tarmac path, bare skeletal limbs intertwined high above their heads. Winter had stripped them of their leaves, dead hands clasped together in prayer, fingers tightly interlocked. Ten feet! Suddenly the little dog's head appeared over her shoulder and looked straight at him. Its large brown eyes were fixed on him, little orbs set into a fluffy teddy bear face. It was a look that he'd often seen before on powerless victims faces, but he had never before seen that expression on a dumb animal. The look of mortal fear, a look that implied intelligent dread, a knowledge that something terrible was about to unfold. The little dog whimpered as it shook in the frigid air. Five feet!
YOU ARE READING
The Lives And Times Of Gary Doolan
HorrorA murderer and thief meets his fate at the hands of an ancient God and has to purge his soul by his own hands.
