Diaries of the Damned (40 page)

“No, I can work, I promise, I’ll give them all something special, get extra cash from ‘
em, please, come on, baby, please.” The girl, Becky, was now on her knees, begging in the street like a woman who had run out of options; through it all, the baby continued to scream.

“You really care so much about this fucking brat. I mean, it does nothing but fucking scream and cry. I mean how often do you need to slap that thing on your tits every day? Just do it once and leave the fucker; maybe you’ll be looking normal again one day this century. I mean look at it. Have you ever looked at your kid?” he asked her with sudden seriousness.

“Yes, please don’t hurt my baby. Somebody, help…please,” she appealed to the audience who were – the younger ones at least – beginning to reach for their cell phones.

“Really, ‘cos I don’t think anyo
ne could love a thing like this. Father’s looks and your brains or something, I mean.” He stopped then and began to reach into the pram. The baby cried harder instantly.

“Hey, you leave her alone!” a young male voice called out from the crowd. Marcus had no idea who it was, his eyes were closed – or at least he thought they were
, because he could no longer see anything.

There were sounds of a struggle, grappling, followed by a clattering sound as the knife was dropped. Marcus tried to move; he had to try and stop the man. He was a cop after all. He dragged himself somehow, fumbling on the ground, but just couldn’t go any further. The newcomer cried out in pain. A hard thumping sound – no doubt a fist and some other body part colliding – followed this as the man fell to the floor.

While this skirmish went on Becky rose to her feet and made a beeline for her child. She grabbed at the pram and tried to run away.

“Where you going, baby? We
ain’t finished talking here.” The black man reached out and grabbed hold of the fleeing Becky’s hair. It wasn’t a solid grip, but the swift tug he gave it still created enough backward momentum to pull her to the floor. The pram came rolling back, the child inside hysterical, as was its mother. “Shut that monster up, woman,” he snapped, losing control now.

His head was thumping, voices singing out to him in a chorus of song that had been driving him mad for years. He clamped his hands to the side of his head and began to claw at his
ears, as if trying to pull out the noise. Becky rose to her feet once again, but she didn’t run away. She watched in dumbfounded horror as her pimp, Deejay Afité, drew blood scratching away the inside of his ears and the side of his head where they were attached.

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up!” he called out, turning towards the pram, his eyes wide with rage.

In one strong movement he grabbed it by the base and threw it through the air, flipping it over, spilling the well-wrapped child onto the floor. Deejay collapsed down onto his haunches as if trying to catch his breath. He clapped his hands against the side of his head and began to drive the fingernails of each digit into his skull, pushing and then scratching with all of his strength as the voices continued to scream inside him. Then, as always, they left just as sudden as they arrived, leaving Deejay with a pounding head and a serious need for a fix.

Everybody gasped, and now people came running to help. Marcus heard it all, clearer and clearer as his heart began to slow, the heavy pulsating rhythm becoming irregular and weak.

Becky watched her child fall in slow motion; her own movements slowed from the years of mistreating her body, yet spurred on by the empowering forces of motherhood. She leapt for the baby, crawling over the floor to get to it.

“Leave it be, bitch. I want to see what the little fucker does,” the man snapped, but Becky ignored
him; she kept crawling, or so Marcus pictured. He heard the man bark at her to get up, to save being on her hands and knees for later.

Marcus’s final credits began to roll, scored by the sound of the police sirens as they approached the shopping arcade. Marcus took his last deep breath and forced his mind back, away from the nightmare
scene that had snuck up on him and pictured his wife and his kids. He pictured the holiday they had taken about seven years ago. They had gone to the beach for a day and had run around in the surf, played football and Frisbee and all manner of beach games. The day had ended with a barbecue in the sand before heading back to their small rented cottage just a couple of miles up the road. It was a sickeningly perfect day, one which had Marcus not been there to experience firsthand, he would have argued was only possible in movies.

By the time the police and resulting ambulance arrived,
Afité had fled, although he was caught a few miles up the road, covered in blood, still brandishing the knife that he had remembered to pick up from the floor. He left behind him one dead police officer, a severely injured infant and a critically injured young woman who bled to death as soon as the ambulance crew rolled her onto the trolley. Her face had been trampled on and half crushed, along with her ribcage. The resulting post mortem showed investigators that she had died from massive internal bleeding, and the CCTV footage told the story sufficiently to sentence the killer even without the eyewitness reports that all confirmed how the young lady had begged for her life as Deejay Afité stomped on her chest and head. Even in her dying moments she had begged him to leave her baby alone. She had shielded the infant with her body as best she could, but was unable to keep it safe from every steel toed blow that was rained down upon her.

The two bodies were stored together in the mortuary, the only occupants that day; they were buried on the same day
, too; one drawing a big crowd, the other just a handful of mourners who turned up on call to see an unnamed woman committed to the earth. Nobody could even hope to understand why they had died, or what an impact it would have on everything.

Grab your copy of Highway to Hell for just 99cents from
Amazon