The Fluffy Sofa ✔️

THE PRESENT #3

Octavia stared at Zane, who's body lay lifeless on the floor, surrounded by a seemingly forever growing pool of his own blood. Pure panic set in and she started shaking, her whole body erupted in goosebumps as fear crept in.

"What the actual fuck, Jakob?!" Octavia screamed.

"Um...I...I..I didn't mean it! It was self defence! You saw how scary he got!" Jakob's hands were covered in Zane's blood and he too was shaking like a mad man.

"Yes. But you killed him! With a knife you brought down here! What the hell is going on?!"

"It's a long story, Tavi," Jakob said as he began to pace up and down.

They were in the cellar of Jakob's brother's house. There was a little party going on just above them. Where Octavia should have been. Where she was just minutes ago.

"I'm sorry but you were the one who told me to come. You were the one that made me come down here and showed me him. So I think you owe it to me to tell me the whole story." Octavia was unbelievably scared. She was involved in a murder. She witnessed her best friend's boyfriend stab her paedo uncle to death. What the fuck.

"You know my brother upstairs? He has this business dealing with creeps like Zane. He holds their dirty shit for a massive fee. Once Zane asked for access for all of his videos, my brother thought it was a bit strange but alas he gave him the access. Then the day after, he heard that Zane had been arrested and thought shit he's going to go down with the bastard." Jakob stopped pacing as he faced Zane's dead body and Octavia could see in his eyes that he was on the verge of breakdown.

"Right? So why is he here?"

"My brother and his friends were the ones who got him out. To keep him down here and make sure he didn't say anything about him. Thankfully he didn't, so they were planning on just giving him back to the police, I don't really know."

"You knew who I was when we met, didn't you? Have you seen the videos?" Octavia was mortified. He knew what had happened to her before she even knew. How sick is that? "Wait, did you tell Fin about it before I knew?"

"I knew who you were but only because I saw one day when I was passing by my brother's office. He must've been uploading the video to the database thing he has going on and I just saw stills of the video. I thought it just might have been a sex tape. Like you were in your school uniform and stuff so I didn't want to say anything. I knew he was a client of my brother's but I didn't know it was him in the video. I didn't know you were connected in that way."

"This is all so fucked up, Jakob, you see that right?"

That's when Jakob collapsed in a heap of sobs and tears. His cries echoed within the cellar walls and it sounded almost haunting to Octavia. She wanted to rip her ears off.

"My life is over. Tilly is going to hate me. Fuck!" Jakob got his phone out of his pocket and dialled 999, his fingers sliding on the screen due to the blood. Octavia froze. The police were going to be coming and she'd have to be questioned yet again. Dread seeped into her stomach caused her to wretch. Not again.

"Jakob, you down here mate?" Jakob's brother shouted down the stairs and when he didn't reply straight away, he began the descent down the cold, hard concrete cellar stairs. "Whaaaat the fuck!"

"Hi um I have a dead person here, um..." Jakob said into the phone, clearly still freaking out. "Um...he's been stabbed. Yes...I...it was me, I stabbed him. It was an accident. No the knife is on the floor I don't have it," he began to sob into the phone whilst the emergency operator informed him that police and an ambulance have been dispatched and to stay on the phone until they arrive.

"What are you doing down here as well?" Jakob's brother turned to Octavia, clearly pissed off that she'd found out that her uncle was hidden away in his cellar.

"Jakob told me to come down here, I'm sorry."

"We were on with it and you two have ruined it." He was angry. So angry. And it was then that she realised the fresh bruising around Zane's face and very clearly broken nose. They'd been beating him to make sure he didn't say a word to the police.

"I'm sorry." Her apologies were drowned out by Tilly's blood curdling scream as her eyes fixated on Zane's body and Jakob covered in his blood. Octavia could hear the sirens approaching in the distance. Everything was about to get much worse. "I think perhaps you might have to get your...office sorted quite quickly." Jakob's brother's eyes widened before he sprinted up the cellar stairs, taking two at a time.

"Tavi what the fuck has happened?!" Tilly's voice sounded frightened and traumatised. The colour had dripped from her face leaving a sickly white in its place.

"So it turns out that Jakob's brother and his cronies helped him escape but kidnapped him to make sure he didn't grass on them about the videos. Because they're the ones that had been storing them. Jakob took me down here to help me get some more answers however they ended up in a fight and like the idiot he is, Jakob thought bringing a knife down here would help."

"Fuck."

"Fuck indeed."

The paramedics came running down the cellar stairs and rushed to Zane's body where they checked for his pulse before screaming medical words that Octavia didn't take in or understand. The only thing that sunk in was, "he's alive".