A Life To Waste (5 page)

Dave was on his way to meet
Claire, they were off out again today, he couldn’t really remember
what they were doing, they did so many different things he could
never keep track, anyway Claire always had everything prepared so
all he had to do was meet her and they could be on their way. As he
turned the corner towards Claire’s house he could see her silver
Ford Ka parked on the side of the road, Claire was bent over in the
boot pushing things to the back, she had to stretch to push things
back even in that tiny car, Dave slowed his walk for a moment so he
could have a prolonged look at her ass as she stretched in. He had
almost reached her, he was just about to get a cheeky grab as she
turned around so his hand quickly slid back to his side.

“Hi Babe!” She cheerfully
said

“Hi” Dave replied like a shy
school boy.

Claire was always saying stuff
like “babe” and “honey” or “sweetie” or even “my gorgeous boyf!”
Dave didn’t really do pet names or anything like that, if he was to
tell Claire the truth, they kind of annoyed him. She liked them
though so he left her to it, even if it did embarrass him a bit,
especially in front of people.

“So what are the plans for today
then Claire?” Dave asked, he always called her Claire, seen as that
was her name, but he always made a point of saying it, almost as a
way to emphasise his dislike of pet names.

“The question you should be
asking darling” she said, sounding like Joanna Lumley “is, what ii
the plan for this weekend?”

“Weekend!” Dave said surprised.
“But, I haven’t even got any clothes, I didn’t know that”

“Well you did know, because I
told you” Claire cut him off “but as I knew that you would forget,
because you always forget, I packed for you.”

“Oh, ok cool so where are we
going then?”

“We’re going camping babes, with
a few activities lined up for while we’re there, it’s gonna be
awesome!”

Dave didn’t know what these
activities were, but Claire had organised them so he knew they
would be quite cool. One thing he did know though, a weekend stay
camping meant they would be spending nights alone! Together in a
tent, now that would be awesome.

“Sweet!” He said “So let’s
go”

“Gimme one sec honey, I’m just
gonna grab one or two more things from the house, then we’ll be
off, you jump in and I’ll be back in a mo.”

Claire went jogging back up the
drive into the house. Dave stood for a second watching her firm
behind as she ran, he really did enjoy that view. Then he climbed
in the car and waited for his fun filled weekend.

The drive seemed to go quite
quickly, in fact it was a couple of hours, but Claire and Dave
enjoyed each others company so even when they weren’t talking to
each other time seemed to fly. Eventually they reached their
destination, it looked like an abandoned playground or obstacle
course of some sort. There was an empty frame that looks like it
had once upon a time held swings, there were long beams of wood
placed in various positions around the field propped on other slabs
of wood. They were probably used as balance beams. A climbing wall
which was about six foot high. It was vertically straight on one
side a slightly angled on the other. At the bottom of the straight
side there was a pile of tyres, presumably used at some point for
kids to climb on so they could reach up to the top of the wall. Now
left in scattered piles they and the rest of the field gave out a
feeling of abandonment.

“Jeebus Claire, what the hell is
this place” Dave asked

“What’s the matter? You scared
of a little obstacle course?” Claire replied.

“This doesn’t look much like an
obstacle course though Claire, the place is derelict, this wasn’t
really what we came to do was it?”

Claire laughed “No don’t be
stupid, even if it was still standing, it looks like it’s for kids.
We are just going to camp here, its sheltered, we can use some of
the wood here for a fire later and it’s right next to path that
leads up that big hill. I thought we could go on a bit of a
trek.”

“A trek, hmmm great, I guess”
Dave mumbled, looking like a little kid who had to go and visit
relatives on Christmas day.

“Oh come on sweetie” Claire said
“It’ll be nice to get some clean fresh air, anyway it’ll hopefully
clear some of that shit that you put in your lungs all the
time.”

Dave looked stumped.

“Come on Babes, you seriously
think I don’t smell it on you all the time? It’s fine as long as
you don’t do it around me, but make a little effort to mask the
smell hey.” Claire smiled.

“Yeah, uh, sorry about that,
will do.” Dave shuffled looking embarrassed.

“Come on darling, it’s only a
little walk, and besides, later on we can get some real exercise
next to the camp fire” She looked at him with a seductive smile.
Dave smiled.

Dave quite often looked back at
that day, it was one of his favourite memories, of course he
enjoyed the “exercise” by the camp fire but he surprisingly really
enjoyed the walk. The fresh air really did feel nice and he had a
lot of time to think while walking through the country hills,
looking back that was a good day.

Not all days were that quiet and
relaxing, most days out Claire organised ended up in Dave actually
having to run assault courses. Or maybe white water rafting, paint
balling, laser quest. She even had him sky dive once. She was an
adrenaline junkie and never wanted to be sat still. Dave loved
every minute of it, he always did things on days out with Claire
that he would never think of doing himself. When he was out with
her he never felt the urge to roll a joint or the need to go and
grab a beer. The fun itself was enough influence to keep him happy.
When he wasn’t with Claire he made no attempt to go searching for
any of these fun things, when she wasn’t around the only thing he
looked for was drink or drugs. He didn’t see the point in looking
for the other stuff, that was his and Claires thing, drink could
occupy him and work just as well until their next adventurous
day.

Dave had been drinking a lot
more lately, Claire noticed that he seemed hung over almost every
time she saw him. She asked why he had started drinking so much
more. Claire knew that Dave had always been into drinking and
smoking weed, but it never interfered with their relationship
because he never did it around her. It was like he had more respect
for her so wanted to give her his full
sober
attention. Not
lately though, lately he had gotten so much worse. When she
questioned him he mumbled an answer to her about problems at home
and his dad leaving or something. What he mumbled was quite
incoherent and when she asked him to repeat it, he shrugged it off
and changed the conversation.

The dates in which Dave was hung
over became more and more regular, he never had the energy to go
out and do anything that Claire had planned anymore. Instead they
would just sit in and watch a film or just sit in and do pretty
much nothing. This was nice initially, Claire enjoyed the cuddles
and snuggling in while watching film. It was too much for her
though, this wasn’t just once or twice, a nice relaxing date were
they would just cuddle instead of running themselves ragged. This
was
all
the time, it bored Claire. She was an active person,
she didn’t want to be sat on her ass all day watching the world
pass her by. Claire started to nag Dave “come on honey, we haven’t
done anything fun in ages! We have watched more films in the last
month than I had in my whole life!”

“ugghh, I can’t be arsed today
Claire, I’m tired and I’ve got a head ache, maybe next time, let’s
just watch the film yeah.” This was the best response that Claire
got from then on, but she knew that it wouldn’t happen “next time”
she knew that Dave had given up on life and on their
relationship.

Claire started going out to do
things on her own, fine Dave didn’t want to go but why should that
stop her? It didn’t matter what the activity was, climbing,
rambling, assault course even surfing. As well as she could. She
went and did it all. Then later she would go and visit Dave and
tell him about all the things that she had done.

“Sounds great” Was usually the
response, then he would bury his mind back into the TV . She was
hoping that he would like the sound of what she was doing, hoping
that he would start to get jealous of her exciting stories and
start wanting to go with her again. It never happened though, he
never wanted to do anything. It didn’t take long until she would go
to see him and walk into a smoke filled room where he would be sat
with beer in hand. She hated the smell of smoke, especially the
smell from
weed
smoke. At least he usually saved all that
shit for when they weren’t doing anything together, now that didn’t
matter to him.

Claire loved Dave but she felt
hurt every time she went to see him. She knew that he didn’t feel
the same way back, she was sure that once upon a time he did, but
whatever had happened, whatever it was that he wasn’t telling her,
something changed. She knew that it was never going to get any
better, every time she looked in his eyes, there was no response.
He had drifted away into some stoned TV land and he had no
intention of any leaving there.

After a couple of weeks visiting
with nothing but drunken or stoned response to every conversation
she gave up. She didn’t see the point in letting herself get upset
so often, Dave had obviously stopped caring and she had to try and
move on and live her own life, the life she was happy living before
he came along. She stopped going round to see Dave and she stopped
calling him. She never heard anything from him again, she wondered
if he even noticed that she wasn’t there anymore, or if he even
cared.

Chapter 7

Dave woke up on the couch, hung
over as usual. He sat himself up, falling asleep on the couch too
drunk to make it to bed was a bit of a habit he had developed over
time. He rummaged around the table looking for his smokes, picking
up empty boxes then crushing them and dropping them back on the
table. Great, he thought. “Got no smokes and mums not back from
work for hours.” Looks like he was going to have to get off his
lazy ass and walk to the shop. He sat for a while, contemplating
whether he could really be bothered to get up, get cleaned, get
dressed then walk
all
the way to the shop.

“Fuck it” he said to himself “No
one knows me anyway.”

He put his shoes on and left the
house dressed in the same clothes that he had fallen asleep
wearing.

When he walked out the door the
sun hurt his eyes. He wasn’t use to natural sunlight much anymore
with not really leaving the living room very often. He squinted and
looked around.

“What the hell is going on?” He
said to himself.

There were police cars and vans
everywhere,
and
an ambulance. There was police tape around
the narrow walkway into next doors house. Dave remembered hearing
Lisa’s screaming last night, he thought that all this was a little
bit much though. Lisa always had violent times with her many
boyfriends but he had never seen anything like this.

“The guy must have killed her”
This thought rushed into his head, quickly followed by “and
I
heard
her screams....and ignored them.....oh
shit.”

He was overwhelmed with an
instant feeling of guilt. Who wouldn’t be? He ignored a dying
woman’s screams. But how was he to know? She screamed all the time,
was always fighting. Oh well maybe he was exaggerating it, maybe it
wasn’t as bad as he thought. Maybe it was just another fight, but,
there was a huge police presence there for
something.

Dave lowered his head and
started to walk past the huge crowd that surrounded the police. He
kept his eyes glued to the ground trying to avoid any eye contact.
This wasn’t necessarily because he wanted to avoid the police. He
always avoided eye contact, he just wasn’t used to people anymore,
he tried to avoid everyone. As he was walking he noticed red marks
on the floor and some on one of the hedges as he passed the
house.

“Was that blood?” he thought
“no, surely not, surely?”

He quickened his walk and
carried on to the shop.

The police and the huge crowd
were still there when he returned. Again he managed to ignore them
and get into his house with no problems. He sat down on the couch
and fixed his eyes back on the TV, then he returned to Dave mode,
vegetation mode.

A couple hours of vegetation
mode had passed when there was a knock on the door. Dave groaned
and decided he would ignore it. Then there was another knock, then
another.

“For gods sake!” He moaned
and

got up to answer the door.

Wh When Dave answered the door
he was faced by two police men. They went through all the formal
introductions, then entered the house.

“Did you see or hear anything
unusual last night?” Officer Stephens asked.

Officer Stephens looked to be in
his forties, Dave didn’t fully know all the different ranks in the
police force, but just judging by the way this guy carried himself
and spoke, Dave guessed he was quite high up. You didn’t carry that
kind of
authority look
if you hadn’t earned it through years
of work. The second officer was a lot younger, Dave thought he had
probably just come along so he could observe how questioning
actually went.

“Didn’t really hear anything
unusual”
Dave said “I was just sat in watching TV as normal,
didn’t hear anything.....apart from Lisa, but” He paused “But
that’s nothing unusual, I hear Lisa almost every Friday or Saturday
night. You guys must know her well, the amount of fights she has
with the dudes she brings home. I’m guessing by all that action
this morning that last nights guy really did a number on her
yeah?”