Blind Sided

[Ludub]

Thanks a million of the kind comments again  Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Warning: This chapter is a bit dark with more adult themes. No bad language or explicit violence though.

 

CHAPTER 31

Tank watched the car pull up in the driveway.  He could see the outline of the two dark figures as they climbed out either side of the car, Josh's cane was the only thing clearly visible in the darkness, shining white, and identifying him clearly from a distance. Andy came around the car and Josh took his arm to let him lead him into the house. They'd been away a lot longer than Tank had thought they would be. He'd been a little bored the last few days so he'd had to find other ways of entertaining himself. He watched as they closed the door to John's house and lights flicked on in the livingroom.  

He spun around, with a sadistic grin on his face, and eyes shining with excitement. He looked at the two grey heads slumped in the chairs in front of him and announced, in a Jack Nicholson style voice, "They're back!". 

One of the grey heads slowly lifted to look at him. The man, who was in his eighties, had wrinkled and papery skin, and pale blue eyes. He had tape stretched across his mouth and one of his eyes was badly bruised and almost swollen closed. He looked up into the eyes of a young man he was nearly sure was the devil. Tank's eyes glinted with cruelty as he returned his gaze. "Mmm...mmmm" moaned the old man, his mouth stuffed full of rags to the point of nearly choking him.

"What's that Harold? What's that you say?" he asked, mockingly cupping his ear as though he was straining to make him out. "I didn't catch that Harold, try enunciating a little better next time..."

Tank had already reached over and lifted the head of the old woman slumped in the other chair. "What about you, Mavis? She looks like a Mavis, doesn't she?". He laughed, watching her husband strain against his ropes in some futile attempt to protect her. She was bound tightly to the chair, wearing one of those floral nighties that old people wear, with a low scooped neckline. The skin on her neck already showed the marks of his fingers in shades of black and brown. Her eyes were rolling as he lifted her head to look at her. "Nothing to say, Mavis?... No?... That's a pity.  We were having so much fun, the three of us..."

He dropped her head and sauntered back over to the livingroom window. He looked across at the house across the road, the lights had gone out, and all was quiet. He could see the police car sitting outside, too. He laughed when he thought about how he'd asked for directions the other day. He thought he might as well just cross the road in plain view, for all the protection they would be, but it seemed a pity to do things that way, with so little style and finesse. If he was going to go out, he was going to go out with a bang...

... but not yet.

*****

"Greg Snelgrove is dead?!" shouted Josh, shaking with anger, his fists clenched at his sides. "You didn't think I deserved to know that?! Where do you get off keeping that from me?!... I'm not a child!"

"No, you're not Josh... but I didn't think you needed to know about it right there and then... Not when you were enjoying yourself for once", said Andy keeping a calm voice. He'd been expecting this, and preparing himself for it, ever since he got that phone call. He knew that Josh would be angry with him about it, but he thought it was sometimes his job to protect him, even when he didn't want his protection.

"That wasn't your call to make!... I'm the one that psycho kidnapped!" growled Josh, breathing heavily. "I'm the one he........" he stopped himself mid sentence, rubbing his face in frustration. He dropped his hands to his sides again with a loud exasperated sigh, and said, "It wasn't your call, Andy! You don't get to do that to me!"

"I'm sorry Josh, I just did what I thought was best... I'm just trying to look out for you" said Andy, sounding tired.

Josh threw himself on the couch, breathing out loudly. "Don't do it again! I need to know what's going on... I need to know!" He fidgeted nervously with a button on the cushion beside him.  "I have no control over anything anymore, Andy... I don't need you trying to control me too..."

Andy sat down beside him and sighed, thinking that he couldn't do right for doing wrong. "Okay, well... Kat's coming over later, so you can talk to her properly then,  and ask all the questions you need to."

*****

"He passed away on Monday morning from multiple organ failure" she said, looking at Josh with her head tilted in sympathy. "Nate said he'd just lost too much blood and everything started shutting down".

Josh sat supporting his head on his hand, his elbow propped on the arm of the couch, looking thoroughly depressed. "So, it's murder then?".

"Yes, Josh, it's been upgraded to a murder investigation and they're bringing in some big shots from the city to handle it." she said fidgeting in her seat and biting her lip. "I won't be leading the investigation now. It'll be a Detective Carson, who's arriving tomorrow"

She looked at Andy and Josh's worried faces and wondered how to broach this subject with them. It was the main reason that she'd come here but she knew she was taking a big risk and might end up making matters much worse for herself. 

"I think I might come under fire for the way I approached your initial interview, Josh." she said, blushing red with shame.

Josh lifted his head, and narrowed his eyes at her. "You mean how you ignored everything I had to say, and branded me a delusional timewaster? Like that?!" said Josh, with an angry and sarcastic tone. He still hadn't quite forgiven them for treating him so unfairly.

Andy put his hand on Josh's knee and said "Josh, that was my fault... It was me... I thought you'd cracked... I made her think that too. That's on me. You can't really blame Kat"

Kat cleared her throat nervously and said "I shouldn't have let my personal relationships cloud my judgement." She accidentally made eye contact with Andy. He gave her an apologetic smile and she found herself blushing unexpectedly.  She looked back at Josh, a little embarrassed, and put her hand on his. "That can be difficult in a small town like this... where you know everyone... but I'm not making excuses... I'm sorry Josh. You deserved better."

He snorted in derision, frowning at her. "I didn't deserve to be patronised like that!" he said, the hurt apparent on his face. 

"Josh, c'mon, we figured it out eventually... and we've all said we're sorry... It's not like we can go back and change it...", said Andy, in a pleading voice. "You don't want Kat to lose her job over this, do you?!"

He gave a weary sigh and pulled his knee away from Andy's hand. "I suppose not" he said, "I won't say anything... okay?!"

Kat breathed a sigh of relief and smiled a grateful smile at Andy. All the same, she couldn't help feeling a little guilty for what she'd just done. She'd always been very straight laced, and pressuring Josh in this way had been more underhanded than anything else she'd ever done. She wasn't proud of herself. "Thank you, Josh. I really appreciate it."

She looked at Josh again, as he shook his head, looking thoroughly unimpressed and disappointed with both of them.

She was even more nervous about this next part. She knew Josh hadn't reacted well the last time she'd tackled the subject, but Greg's words were still ringing in her ears, and she needed to ask him again. She needed to know what really happened that night "I do need to ask you about something else, Josh..."

*****

Tank sat back in his chair with the blue light of his laptop flickering on his face.  He couldn't help smiling in self satisfaction as he watched the spectacle unfolding on his screen. He was proud of his work. The only thing that made him sad was that people were probably never going to get to see it. His masterpiece, his magnum opus.... it would never have mass market appeal. But he smiled to himself as he thought about that famous quote 'A genius is rarely recognised in his own lifetime'. 

He looked over his shoulder at the bodies languishing in the chairs behind him. They'd stopped struggling a long time ago. He wasn't surprised that Mavis had gone first, but Harold had lingered on for hours after her body had grown cold, refusing to give up.  He had to admire them. They'd put up a good fight. Even the old woman had given him a number of digs in the ribs before he'd managed to subdue her. She'd been a feisty one. He looked at them now, slumped in the chairs, grey and lifeless, and felt a little sense of disappointment. He'd been enjoying toying with them and taunting them, but they'd faded much faster than his father had. The fun had been over much too soon. 

He turned to look at the pile of timber and power tools in the corner of the room, ready for his building project. Leaning back in his chair, he laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. "Well, Harold. We'll have to start building tomorrow. I'm sure you have a wealth of knowledge..." He walked over to the old man and pulled at his hair to lift his head. The face was a yellowy shade of white, with a waxen appearance, and his eyes were hanging open. He looked into the old man's face, giggling in delight, and said "You'll give me a few pointers, won't you Harold?"

[Ludub]

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CHAPTER 32

"Well!" said Mark, a little incredulously, "you've had an eventful few weeks..." He sat back in his chair a little speechless for a moment, feeling out of his depth and really unsure of what to say. He realised that it must have seemed a very flippant reaction but he'd never dealt with anyone who'd had this much trauma to cope with, not in all his years of experience. He put his face in his hands and blew out slowly trying to gather his thoughts. He looked at Josh's face again, and wondered how he was holding things together so well, if what he had just told him was true. 

He shook his head in disbelief when he looked at the reams of scribbled notes he had just taken. Josh had come in like a bull in a china shop and just started talking. He'd talked, and talked, and talked. He'd cried, and ranted, and shouted, and shaken. He'd come close to a panic attack on a number of occasions. They'd gone well over the hour they normally had for their session, and Josh had hardly given him a chance to speak at all. In a way he'd been grateful for that because he had no idea what to say to him. Mark specialised in patients with acquired disabilities, he didn't have the experience to deal with this kind of trauma. Stalkers, kidnappings, murders... He was floundering, and he knew it.

"Em... em..." he stammered. Josh had been pacing the floor while he talked, and had now flung himself back in the chair, out of breath and panting. Looking at Josh, he could see he was clearly exhausted, but he was looking to him for guidance. He was expecting it.

"Well, Josh..." he cleared his throat nervously, and said, "It sounds like the police are doing their best to find this 'Tank' person. You have to trust in them that they will." He'd seen the headline in the newspaper about a Headmaster who was murdered by his own son, but was shocked to find out this was connected to his patient.

Josh breathed out an exasperated sigh. He had expected something more from Mark.  He didn't really know what... just 'more'. He was disappointed. His eyes filled up with tears again, more out of frustration than anything else, "I just don't know what to do."

"It sounds to me like you dont have to do anything, Josh.  It's not up to you to stop him. That's up to the police."

They sat in silence for a moment, equally aware of Mark's shortcomings, and that he couldn't provide much more advice. Josh had to admit that he did feel a little better than when he'd first walked in. It had been good to vent, even if it hadn't really achieved anything.

Josh thought about Kat's line of questioning yesterday. He was surprised at how much it had upset him. He'd been left shaking, with half remembered snatches of memories flooding through his mind.  He'd spent his time in the city trying to forget it all, but this had just churned everything up for him again. It had brought the smells, and noises, and sensations of that night crashing back in on top of him.  He had so many unanswered questions...

He had hardly slept at all last night, tossing and turning, and keeping Andy awake. He still couldn't go to sleep on his own, so he and Andy were still sharing a bed, much to Josh's shame and embarrassment. Every time he started to drift off, his heart would start to beat too fast, and he'd wake with an uncomfortable fluttering in his chest. Once awake, he'd start to torture himself, trying desperately to piece together the fragments of his shattered memory. Nothing seemed to fit. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept through the night.

"I can't remember what happened that night of the kidnapping" he said, with a tone of desperation in his voice. "It's like there's a barrier there that I can't go past... It's driving me crazy... There are flashes but nothing's clear... I don't know if it's because I was unconscious... or if I've... blanked it out because it's... too... too hard for me to deal with..."

Mark looked at Josh sadly, and said, "It could be either, Josh. I can't answer that for you".

Josh's face took on a plaintive expression and he said, "What about hypnosis? Would that work?!". He rubbed his face in both of his hands and breathed out loudly in frustration. "I need to know, I need to know what happened..." he said, his voice trembling with emotion. "He killed his dad... I need to know what he did to me."

Mark sat back and breathed out slowly. He wished it was that easy. "Josh, I'm sorry, but... no... I don't think hypnosis is a good idea... It can create false memories so I wouldn't be comfortable doing that... Under hypnosis people are very suggestible. It's easy to put ideas in their head... You could think you remember things that didn't really happen... It's a very dangerous field in my opinion."

"What am I supposed to do then?!" asked Josh, furiously blinking back tears again.

As Mark looked at him, he thought he looked like a lost child, scared and vulnerable, and looking for easy answers. He wished there was something more he could do.

"Josh, I know this isn't easy to accept but sometimes our minds repress memories for good reason.  Some people think you need to confront those memories, to move on, but I dont think that's always the case. There's a more recent school of thought, that memory repression is a natural and beneficial coping mechanism. Our brains simply cut out memories that would be too difficult to deal with... It might not be a bad thing."

Josh leaned on the arm of the chair, putting his face in his hands again, and breathed out in defeat. 

Mark looked at his watch and was shocked to see that they were coming up on two hours now.  He took out his prescription pad and wrote Josh out his repeat prescription and nervously handed it to him, pushing it into his hand.  "I really hope they catch him soon and you can start to get your life on track, Josh... I am really very sorry all this stuff has happened to you."

*****

"Why don't I get us a pizza?" said Andy, picking up his keys to go to Angelo's. "The usual for you?... Yeah, mate?"

"Yeah, whatever..." said Josh, sounding distant. He was slouched on the couch with one earphone held up to his ear, doing his best to relax but failing miserably. He was so easily startled now, he always needed one ear free to listen out for things.

Andy sighed and turned to leave.  Tamara and Kyle were in John's room, so at least Josh wouldn't be in the house on his own, he thought. He didn't like leaving him on his own now, not ever.

"Um Andy, wait!" called Josh, before Andy closed the door.  "I can't find where I put my new pills. Can you see them anywhere?" said Josh, running his hands over the coffee table and sofa cushions. He hated having to ask Andy for help but he'd just realised what time it was and that he'd forgotten to take his pill.

Andy walked back in, and then over to the dining room table, and lifted the paper bag with Josh's pills in it. "Yeah, Josh. It's here." Andy was relieved that Josh was asking for help, it was a good sign.

Josh took the bottle out of the bag and tipped a pill out onto his palm. He was just about to take it when Andy said,  "Wait, Josh! Let me see those!". 

Josh handed them over looking a little confused. Andy was looking at the pill in his hand with a worried expression.  He'd seen Josh taking his pills for weeks now and he knew they were normally white. These were red with an 'M' printed on them in black writing. "These aren't your normal pills, Josh... I think we need to check with the pharmacy".

"It's probably just a different brand or something" said Josh, shrugging his shoulders. 

"I'm not so sure, Josh, these just look so different. Do you still have the old bottle you had your pills in?" asked Andy. He had a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach for some reason that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something in his bones was telling him this wasn't right.

"Ummm... I think Kyle put it in the bin when he was cleaning up earlier" said Josh, still not sure why Andy was making such a fuss.

Andy went over to the bin and fished out the brown bottle. The label said "Trofanil", just like the new one did. The pills just weren't even vaguely similar, thought Andy.  That sick feeling was gnawing at his stomach.

"C'mon, Josh. I think we can still catch the pharmacy before it closes" he said, grabbing Josh's arm and pulling him up off the couch.

*****

"I can assure you Mr Barrett, Trofanil is now, and has always been, red... I can also assure you that we did not give your brother the wrong pills. It's just not possible!" 

"Well, he's been taking little white pills for weeks now, and he got them here in this bottle" said Andy, brandishing the brown bottle with the label from this pharmacy.

"Yes, and it clearly states 'Trofanil'.... and that's what we gave him!" said the pharmacist pushing his glasses back up his nose with his index finger. He was getting annoyed now and he was doing very little to hide that fact. "What kind of pharmacy do you think we're running here? We don't just go giving out medications willy nilly!"

"The pills were white!" shouted Andy, beginning to lose his cool. 

Josh was standing beside Andy feeling like a spare part. He was silently seething at Andy, feeling a deep sense of humiliation, as Andy took on the role of 'carer' once again. Having Andy make a scene like this in the middle of the pharmacy was the last thing he wanted. He could imagine all the other customers staring at the poor blind kid, so helpless and needy, with his brother fighting his corner. He hated the fact that he was so reliant on other people now. He had no idea what colour the pills were, so he couldn't really add anything to the argument. Maybe they were white, maybe they were red... he'd never know. Then he remembered something...

"Um... if it helps..." he said quietly, "My first set of pills had an 'MH' imprinted in them... These ones don't"

With that, the pharmacist's face fell,  and he stammered "An... an 'MH'?!... imprinted... like imprinted in the pill?... and it was white?!" He turned and went behind the counter and returned a little grey in the face, looking very worried. "Are these the pills?" he said, holding out a few small white pills. 

Andy picked one up and looked at it.  It certainly looked like them, with an 'MH' stamp leaving a deep impression in the pill. He turned to Josh and handed him the pill in the palm of his hand. Josh ran his index fingernail around the 'MH' and said, "Yup, I think that's it... is it not Trofanil?!"

The pharmacist's face flushed red, and he shook his head, looking really worried, "N... No... It's um... Midodrine... It's a medication for people with dangerously low blood pressure."  He looked at Josh with a look of real concern now and then back at Andy.  "I have no idea how this happened! I am so sorry... Mr Barrett, I really think you need to get your brother to hospital!"

*****

Nate took the blood pressure cuff off Josh's arm and looked at Andy, shaking his head and furrowing his brow. He put his hand on Josh's shoulder and looked at him with concern, "Josh, your blood pressure is very high but we're going to get that under control. I have you scheduled in for a kidney function test in the morning".

He turned to Andy and said,  "I need the name of that pharmacy. I need to make a formal complaint. This can't happen again."

Andy nodded and handed him the new bottle of pills with the name of the pharmacy on the bottle. 

"Will there be any permanent damage?" asked Josh, "Have I damaged my kidneys? Is that what you're worried about?!"

"We won't know till we get run the tests, Josh.  There's no point in worrying unnecessarily... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." He smiled and said, "But Josh... It's not all bad news! It probably explains a lot of how you've been feeling lately. Midodrine would exacerbate your anxiety and raise your heartrate. It's designed to raise your blood pressure... So, if you suffer at all from panic disorders it would amplify those symptoms... Shortness of breath, palpitations, strong feelings of anxiety... No wonder you've been struggling, Josh!... Once we get you off it and onto the right meds, you should hopefully start feeling a lot better!"

"You hear that, mate?!" said Andy, breathing a sigh of relief and patting Josh's foot under the covers. 

"It can cause serious sleep disorders too, Josh... I can't imagine you've been getting much sleep on this stuff... We've given you something to counteract it, so I think you'll start to feel a lot better very soon." said Nate, clipping Josh's notes to the end of the bed. "You were right to come in guys, this could have been very serious. It's hard to understand how this could have happened."

Josh listened to Nate leave and breathed out a loud sigh. He was relieved to know that there might be light at the end of the tunnel but it was hard to feel happy about it. He wondered what more could go wrong for him. Life just seemed to want to kick him in the teeth at every available opportunity. He thought about what Nate had said about 'sleep disturbances' and wondered if strangling Evie had maybe been part of that.  He really hoped it had. At least he would have some sort of reasonable explanation for what he'd done, even if it wouldn't change the fact that he'd done it. He worried that his kidneys might really be damaged, and what that would mean for him. Would he have to live with dialysis now, as well as being blind?! More than anything else he just felt an overwhelming tiredness, as the medication that Nate had given him began to kick in. He needed to close his eyes.

Andy gave Josh's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and said, "Try to get some sleep mate. Don't worry, I'll be here".  He sat down in the armchair beside the bed, watching his little brother fall asleep. He wondered how many times he was going to have to do this for Josh. How many nights would he spend sleeping in this chair? He was exhausted but he just couldn't settle. Something was still gnawing at his stomach, a feeling of unease he couldn't shake... That question kept forming in his head, over and over again, no matter how ridiculous it might seem... Had this been Tank? Had Tank switched Josh's pills?

[Ludub]

Thanks KittCatt, ~JarlieFanEver~, and Kristen for the kind comments again.  Much appreciated! Hope you like this chapter.

CHAPTER 33

Andy woke with a start when Nate touched his knee.  He'd only just managed to drift off after a very restless night. He couldn't stop worrying that this had all been Tank's doing. It just seemed too strange that the pharmacy would have made that mistake when the pills didn't even look vaguely similar. Surely there were safe checks in place as well to stop this kind of thing from happening? The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that it had been him. Tank had been in their house, and in Josh's room, on multiple occasions by the looks of it! He would have had every opportunity to do it.  If he could put cameras in every room of the house, he could certainly have switched some pills! He wondered what else he might have done that they didn't know about... Had they been eating poisoned food?! Was there something in the water too?! His brain had been working overtime and taking him down all sorts of darkened paths full of terrible possibilities. He kept coming back to the same question. Why was Tank doing this?

Nate had startled him, making his heart jump, but he quickly took his feet off the bed and sat up, rubbing his face. "Nate? Hi. Did you get the results?"

Nate nodded, indicating the brown folder in his hand, and moved over to Josh's bed. He sat down on the side of the bed and shook Josh's arm gently. "Josh?" 

Josh's eyes flickered open slowly. He felt a little woozy like he was coming round from an anaesthetic. "Wuh... what's going on?" he said drowsily.

"We have the results of your blood tests, Josh. I got them rushed through." He smiled at Andy, and leaned forward to pat Josh on the shoulder. "You have no idea how lucky you are that we caught this now!"

"His kidneys are okay then?!" asked Andy, the relief evident in his voice.

"They're not functioning as well as they should be, but it doesn't look like there will be any long lasting damage. A few more weeks on that medication and it could have been a very different story."

Josh's eyes had filled with tears again, and he wiped at them angrily with the heels of his hands. He hated that he seemed to cry all the time now. He'd never been someone who cried much before the head injury but it just seemed that any little thing could set him off now. His emotions were so close to the surface these days. He was always on edge, always on the brink of another meltdown... It was embarrassing. He blew out a breath of air slowly, trying to regain his composure, and said, "So, no dialysis then?"

"No dialysis, Josh!" said Nate, smiling and laughing a little. He was relieved. It was nice to be able to give people good news for once, thought Nate. "Now, we won't be putting you straight onto the Trofanil, not just yet anyway... We need your kidneys back to 100% before we'd even consider that."

"So no meds at all then?" asked Andy, thinking they were back to square one. He glanced at his brother, who looked like he was barely holding it together, and thought that Josh needed something to help with his anxiety. Maybe they all did right now.

"No meds at all for now" said Nate. He patted Josh's hand, "I'm going to get your discharge papers, and then you can go home".

*****

Tank stood with his hands on his lower back, tired from the strain of sawing and hammering, and admired his handiwork. It was coming along quite nicely, he thought. He laughed when he thought about his dad's insistence on teaching him DIY skills when he was a kid. They'd certainly come in handy now! He'd started teaching him shortly after his mum had found that cat. They'd both freaked out completely, his mum and dad, worrying about his 'mental health' and looking at him a little differently from then on. But they'd put their boring conservative little heads together and come up with a scheme to channel his energy into something more 'wholesome and constructive'. He'd learnt woodwork, metalwork, welding, electronics... you name it... His dad had been the son of an honest, old-school builder who'd been able to turn his hand to anything. Greg had gone into teaching but he'd been taught well by his father, and he was good at everything, passing on all that knowledge to his son in his turn.  They'd built all sorts of things together in the evenings after school and all through the school holidays. He looked at the plans he'd diligently drawn out with all his precise measurements noted carefully, just like his dad had taught him. "Measure twice, cut once', he thought, smiling to himself. He wondered what his dad would have thought of his finished project... Putting aside the inevitable 'Oh that's so evil! What the hell is wrong with you?!" moral objections he was bound to have, he knew he wouldn't have been able to fault his building skills. It was coming along very nicely indeed... In a way it felt nice to make his father proud like this...

*****

"God, Josh, on top of everything else?!" exclaimed Evie, tilting her head at him in sympathy, "Do they know how it happened?!" She was sitting beside Josh on the couch, holding his hand, and doing her best to pretend she wasn't nervous. 

"They don't know... Probably a pharmacy mix-up... A pretty serious one!" said Josh, frowning and shaking his head in wonder. He still couldn't get his head around the fact that he'd been poisoning himself for weeks.

Andy had brought him straight over to Evie's house from the hospital so he could speak to her. This was the first time they'd met up since Josh had sent her home with Oscar. He'd asked Andy to bring him there, but when they'd pulled up outsidevthe house, he'd nearly backed out numerous times. He'd been scared to go in. He hadn't been sure that Evie would want to see him again. He'd never seen the bruises himself, but he'd created an image of them in his mind that was so terrible he couldn't imagine why she would ever want to forgive him. He wasn't sure he could face her again after what he'd done. He felt so very guilty. Facing Evie would be bad enough, but having to walk into her house, with all her family there, might just be too much. He imagined they were probably angry at him for hurting Evie, and understandably so. He couldn't blame them for that. He had sat in the car, plucking up the courage, for what felt like an eternity, before finally getting out and letting Andy lead him to the door.

It had taken very little to persuade Evie to come downstairs. Zac had disappeared upstairs one moment, and then Evie was beside Josh on the couch, the next. She'd landed on the sofa beside him, with one leg tucked under her, and grabbed his hand, forgetting how easy it was to startle him. He'd jumped nearly a mile high. 

He'd told her about the mix up with the medication and explained the side effects as best he could. He didn't want to sound like he was making excuses for what he'd done, or like he was trying to wriggle his way out of things. He'd still strangled Evie, no matter what way you looked at it, but at least this might help to explain why.

She was clearly pleased to see him but was trying to maintain a distance at the same time. The bruises had faded to pale brown, but if you looked carefully, you could still make out his fingerprints on her neck. She was still very nervous around him, flinching a little when he moved. While part of her just wanted to scoop him up in her arms and tell him that she loved him, another part was frightened to get that close again, frightened of getting hurt.

"Josh, no wonder you've been having such a hard time... With everything going on with Tank,  you've been taking medication that actually makes anxiety worse?!" said Evie, still finding this hard to take in.  "Oh my God, Josh! How on earth are you still holding it together?!"

"I guess... I'm not" said Josh. He could feel the tears coming, like a wave about to crash, and was desperately trying to pull himself together before that happened. He clenched his fist at his side, and dug his fingernails into his palm again, in an attempt to distract himself.

"You are, Josh. You've had so much to deal with... to come to terms with... and look, you're still here! You're stronger than you think you are, Josh! You need to give yourself a bit more credit." said Evie. She was fighting the urge to throw her arms around him, because she knew if she did, she might not be able to let him leave her again. She looked at his big brown eyes, filling with tears, and the hurt-filled expression on his face and she couldn't do it anymore. She put her arms around him and pulled him in to a hug, feeling his body tense at first, and then relax. She could feel him shaking as he cried. "I still love you" she whispered in his ear. 

She led him back out to Andy's car and helped him get in. She leaned down to him to give him a kiss, and he gave her a sad little smile as they said goodbye. They'd talked things through properly this time. They both knew they had too many issues to sort through right now and with Tank on the loose they couldn't even begin to think about getting back together. He knew he couldn't risk her safety, and she wasn't ready to trust him again, not completely. Sometimes love just wasnt enough... 
 

[Ludub]

Thanks again for the kind comments! Hope you like this chapter 

Warning: This chapter is a bit dark. More adult themes again but no bad language or explicit violence.

CHAPTER 34

"What do you think,  Harold?" said Tank, standing back to admire his project, "No, really! I'd value your honest opinion". It was almost finished now and his excitement was nearly getting too much for him. His heart was thumping in his chest every time he thought about what was coming. It had been an ambitious plan, he had to admit that. Taking Harold and Mavis hostage like that, right under the noses of the cops outside, had been a particularly bold move. Borrowing Harold's car and lugging building supplies into the house had taken it one step further. Dressed as a tradie the cops hadn't even batted an eye. It was amazing the level of anonymity an old baseball cap, a pair of padded work trousers, and a paint stained t-shirt had given him. 'Nothing to see here, folks! Just a decent, hard-working builder, doing a day's hard yakka'. 

"No, you're right, Harold" he said spinning round to look at the old man slouched in the chair. His skin had turned a mottled mix of purple and yellow and black and his head hung down so Tank couldn't see his face. "That is a good point, Harold. We do need a test run. It would be a pity to put all this effort in, only for it to fail at the last minute... See, I knew your advice would come in handy!" He chuckled to himself as he continued wiring up a connection. This was going to be so much fun.

*****

Evie looked in the mirror, at the large 'T' tattooed on her abdomen, and traced its lines lightly with her finger tips. She couldn't hide her revulsion. She felt sick to her stomach at the thought that she'd slept with someone who could do so many terrible things. It made her retch to think about his hands on her skin, his mouth on her mouth, his... She tried to push it from her mind but it kept coming back. She could almost smell him on her. She wondered how she hadn't seen it?! It wasn't like he could suddenly have become a murdering psychopath overnight. She'd thought he was troubled, sure, but he'd certainly never struck her as someone who could torture and murder his own father. Had she ever really known him at all? Where had that sensitive guy, who'd cried to her about his mother dying, disappeared to? Had he just been spinning her a sob story to manipulate her? Had he been using her mother's death as ammunition against her? How on earth had she been so stupid?! 

She thought about Josh and everything he'd been through because of Tank.  She tried to put herself in his position. She thought about how frightening it would be to be trapped in a world of darkness, with no way out. To be unable to turn the light on, or take a sneak peek, when you're scared of the monster under the bed. To never know what's coming at you, or if there's someone lurking in the darkness waiting to get you. Every day was a step into the unknown, a leap of faith. She couldn't imagine how frightened he must be.

Tank had played on all those fears. He'd spent weeks torturing Josh, tormenting him with things that made him question his own sanity. He'd woken up to find the boogie man lying in his bed, reaching out to him, touching him... breathing on him. She tried to envisage herself in his place, lying in that bed in the darkness, and what it must have felt like to have your worst fears realise themselves right in front of you. 

Then to find out that it was Tank all along! That it was the same person that had plunged him into darkness and robbed him of his future. The same person who had made such a show of apologising and asking for forgiveness. That it was Tank who'd gradually stripped away, piece by piece, every last little bit of confidence that Josh had left. It had been the ultimate blow.

She moved her hand to the faint bruises only slightly visible on her neck and thought about Josh's nightmare. She couldn't imagine the raw visceral fear he must have felt when he thought that Tank was chasing him. The monster he'd been running from for weeks had finally caught up with him.  She traced the lines of the bruises. Tank had done this too, she thought. He'd driven Josh to breaking point, taking pleasure in inflicting psychological torture, and who knew what else. It had been Josh's hands around her throat but Tank had been the driving force behind them. Every finger print on her neck might as well have been Tank's, marking her, claiming her, just like that tattoo.

She looked again at the tattoo on her stomach, a brand of ownership emblazoned on her flesh. It would be a constant reminder for the rest of her life, of the mistakes she had made, and the role that she'd played in Josh losing his sight. She wanted so badly to cut around it and tear it out. She visualised digging her fingernails into her skin and peeling the tattoo away, leaving a raw and angry wound. She thought a scar would be better than this, but she knew that even that wouldn't get rid of it. Not really, not in her mind where it mattered most. He'd branded himself in her soul, leaving an ugly and shameful stain that she would never be able to get out. 

She pulled her t-shirt down, relieved to hide the tattoo even from her own eyes, and smoothed her clothing with her hands. She picked up her bag and went to find Oscar.  He wasn't going to like this but she needed a favour...

*****

Evie sat smiling at Josh on the couch, excited to show him what she'd done. Josh thought she was behaving strangely but couldn't quite figure it out.  She was being too bouncy, too upbeat... It was making him uncomfortable because he was feeling so down about things today.  A dark and ominous cloud of depression had descended on him over the last few days, but today was the worst. Just getting out of bed had been an ordeal. Having someone crash in the door and jump about the place with enthusiasm was the last thing he wanted, even if it was Evie. His whole life felt like it was falling apart, crashing down in ruins around him. Evie arriving like this just felt like she was dancing on the rubble.

"Josh, I wanted to show you something" she said, biting her lip in nervous excitement. She reached out and took his hand. "I got this done today"

She guided his hand and placed it on her clingfilm covered stomach. His eyes widened as he felt the heat radiating from her flesh.  "What have you done, Evie?!" he said, sounding shocked. 

"I got my tattoo covered!" she said, "I couldn't have that 'T' on me anymore"

His face clouded with anger. He'd actually forgotten about the tattoo,  but flashes of it flooded through his head, and he yanked his hand away from her stomach. "You came to show me this?!" he said bitterly,  narrowing his eyes at her. "To remind me about you and Tank?!"

Her face fell as she realised that Josh might not be as pleased about this as she thought. "No, Josh! I wanted to show you that I got something special that represents 'us'. I got that beautiful painting you did of us, the two silhouettes in the sunset..."

He was facing in her direction with a look of disgust on his face. This was not the reaction that she'd expected. He sat back and covered his face with his hand, breathing a loud sigh. He let out a frustrated laugh and shook his head in disbelief. 

She was confused by his reaction. She reached for his hand but he pulled away. "Josh... I thought you'd be happy?"

Turning back to face her, with eyes narrowed to small slits. "You thought I'd be happy?! You thought I'd be happy?!" he spat at her in outrage. "Let me get this straight! You thought...you thought you'd cover a tattoo that reminds me that you slept with a psycho murderer... the same guy who blinded me... who kidnapped me... who..." 

He got to his feet and moved away from her, turning his back on her and gripping one wrist tightly with his other hand. She could see his whole body shaking with indignation. "And you thought you'd cover that with something that reminds me more than anything of what I've lost!"

"That painting was everything to me, Evie! It represents everything I don't have anymore. I don't have art... I don't have 'us'...  I don't have sunsets.... I don't even have hope..."

He spun around to face her again with his fists clenched at his sides. His face was full of anger and hurt and his eyes were welling up with tears. "And you've taken that Evie, you've taken it, and you've put it over Tank's tattoo!".

He felt for a chair beside the dining table, feeling a little shaky, and managed to pull it out and sit down.  He was beside himself with the stress of it all. He just couldn't believe what an insensitive and hurtful thing Evie had done. He breathed out a defeated sigh. He rubbed his face and said in a quiet, sad voice, "So now he'll be there forever... part of 'us'... underneath... embedded in our images. I feel sick just thinking about it."

"How could you do that?" he said, wiping at a stray tear that was rolling down his cheek.

Her mouth had fallen open in shock. She didn't know what to say. The thought had never crossed her mind that he wouldn't like it. In her mind it had been a clear declaration of her love for him. She'd never thought of the significance of using it to cover Tank's tattoo or that it would churn up such painful associations. She hadn't thought about the fact that it would remind him of the artist he had once been, and the world of light and colour now denied him. She looked down at the clingfilm on her stomach and felt an overwhelming sense of her own stupidity. She yanked her t-shirt down and walked over to Josh, wondering how she was going to fix this mess.

She put her hand on his shoulder, half expecting him to pull away, but he didn't. "Josh, I didn't think... I'm so sorry." she said. All they ever seemed to do was apologise to each other, she thought to herself, they never seemed to just get to be happy. "It was meant in love" she said quietly, "You have to know that". 

"Evie... can you just go?" said Josh, "I need some time on my own".

*****

Tank stood at the window, peering out at Evie as she left John's house. Her cheeks were bright red and she had her arms folded across herself, walking quickly, with a worried expression on her face. 

"Well Harold, It looks like there's more trouble in paradise" said Tank, with a gleeful sneer. He swaggered back across the room and pulled up a chair beside the old man's corpse so they were both facing his laptop. He clicked to bring up the video signal on the screen and grinned at the image in front of him.  He elbowed the old man, and said "So far, so good, eh Harold? Mavis doesn't seem to be enjoying it though... I suppose women do tend to be more sensitive souls..."

He sat beside the two mottled corpses, unfazed by the growing stench of rotting flesh and the buzzing of flies. He was too busy enjoying the show unfolding on his screen. The only sounds were his excited breathing, the buzzing of the flies around his head, a low hum from the fan on his laptop, and the faint muffled cries emanating from the far side of the room.

"I think I might install a microphone for the real thing." he said, nodding in agreement with himself. "It seems a terrible pity to miss out on the full audio visual effect... Still, we're enjoying it, aren't we Harold?" he said, his eyes shining with the exhilaration of it all. His heart was galloping as he basked in the flicker of his laptop screen. The test run was going better than he could ever have imagined. Now the anticipation was killing him, he couldn't wait for the real thing! 

[Ludub]

Thanks again for the kind comments Kristen and KittCatt, much appreciated! 

Warning: Again, dark themes, but no bad language or explicit violence.

CHAPTER 35

Tank emptied the contents of a handbag out onto the table and began to sift through it. He didn't really care who she was but it was sometimes interesting the things that you could glean about a person from the items they chose to carry around with them. 

He'd created a whole back story for Harold and Mavis, pieced together from the pictures, and souvenirs of a life spent together, scattered around the house. Harold had been a young man when the war broke out, maybe only eighteen years old. He'd done his duty, marching off to Europe for a couple of years and had served his country well. He'd even earned himself a few medals. Mavis had been the faithful high school sweetheart waiting at home, with baited breath, for the return of her beloved. She'd been pretty, in a homely way, and eager to be a wife and make a family together. They'd raised three ungrateful children who had all moved away now, too busy with their hectic big city lives to visit mom and pop. They had eight grandchildren but they hardly ever got to see them. Their lives had gradually settled into a quiet and mundane existence of gardening, daytime tv, crocheting, and tea. They clearly hadn't changed the decor in the house since the late 70s, all greens and awful shades of brown and orange.  Mavis had obviously had an obsession with china dolls and had proudly displayed them all around the livingroom with lifeless glass eyes staring from all directions. 'And people think I'm the creepy one!' thought Tank. They had lived such full, and yet such empty lives, he thought. Of course he didn't really know anything about Harold and Mavis, not even their real names. Looking at the bodies rotting in the chairs in front of him, missing for days now, with no one to check up on them, one thing was clear... In the end, the truth didn't really matter... 

As he glanced at the third body that he'd dragged across the floor and propped in a chair beside Mavis, he wondered who she was. He'd seen her around sometimes, hanging around the diner and the surf club, but he didn't know her name. She looked like a 'Debbie' or a 'Jenny', he thought. Her clothing seemed ridiculous, like she was trying too hard to look like a rebellious rock chick but with a bit of Barbie thrown in for good measure. When he'd taken her, grabbing her off the street, she'd had black eyeliner carefully drawn on in that cat's eye effect that was so popular, with the flick at the corner. He laughed as he looked at the mess her face was now, her eyeliner certainly hadn't been waterproof! She'd cried so much, it had streamed down her face, giving her that 'racoon eye' look like someone who'd had one too many gin and tonics. He looked at her hands, all congealed blood and missing fingernails, with remnants of blue nail varnish. She'd fought long and hard, clawing for all she was worth, refusing to give up. She'd certainly put on a good show, he had to give her that. He looked through her belongings with mild curiosity. There was all the normal girl stuff, from mascara and eyeliners, to tampons and perfume. He sprayed a little on his wrist and breathed it in. He was impressed that it was a deep and spicy scent and much more sophisticated than he'd have given her credit for. People could still surprise him sometimes. 

Looking at a group photo she'd had folded up inside her purse, he began to smile from ear to ear. "Oh this is too funny, Harold!" said Tank, roaring with laughter. "You'd get a kick out of this! You'll never guess who our guest is!"

*****

Detective Carson sat on the edge of Kat's desk, with the Snelgrove investigation file in his hand, and looked at her in a very disapproving way.  "So, let me get this straight. The victim, this Joshua Barrett, gave a verbal statement saying that he had been abducted using chloroform but you chose to disregard it?" He flicked through the file as he spoke, running his finger over certain details. "You then failed to do the proper followup until... the following day... when he reiterated his statement? Your actions effectively pushed the investigation back by about 24 hours, during which time another victim was slowly bleeding to death? Have I misunderstood anything?"

Kat's face flushed red with shame. "No. That's correct.... but the victim's brother led me to believe that there were mental health issues..."
 
He gave a sigh, shaking his head at her, and said "Would I be right in thinking that you have a romantic relationship with the victim's brother? This...Andy Barrett?"

"No! It's nothing like that!" said Kat, shocked at the suggestion. "I'm not with Andy Barrett, we're not... No! The answer is no." She'd gone a bright crimson colour, dying with embarrassment. She was painfully aware of how that must look to him, like she was protesting too much, but the more she thought about it the hotter her face got. 

He raised an eyebrow at her in disbelief. "Well you certainly allowed this Mr Barrett to cloud your judgement. You're lucky the victim hasn't made a complaint. From what you've just said he'd certainly have grounds to"

She nodded, looking down at her feet. She couldn't argue with anything he was saying. "Yes, sir... I'm sorry".

The phone began to ring, and Detective Carson nodded to Kat to go ahead and answer. She picked it up feeling under scrutiny.  "Constable Chapman" she said locking eyes with Carson across the desk. "What? When?!" she said, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. She scribbled down the details, grateful to finally be making some progress with this case. "Uh huh, well, thank you for the call." 

She put down the phone and gave Carson a smile. "They've found Greg Snelgrove's car... it's in the city!"

*****

"We have reason to believe that Wayne Snelgrove has left the Bay" said Detective Carson, sitting back in one of John's armchairs with one foot thrown up on his knee, giving him an air of over confidence.  "We located his father's car, it was parked in a central area of the city". He gave Andy a smile, trying to be reassuring but, if anything, it came across as a little smug.

"Right, so... you found his car.... but what about him?" said Andy, looking at Kat who was perched on the arm of another armchair, looking nervous and a little guilty, like a child who's just been told off.

"Um..." said Kat, starting to answer his question, but Carson jumped in and interrupted her.

"Nothing solid yet but we're waiting on some CCTV footage from a hardware store. A clerk there remembers serving someone fitting his description." He put his foot back on the floor and sat forward with his elbows on his knees,  pressing his fingertips together and making a steeple shape with his hands. "I think there's every chance that he's left the Bay, so that might help to put your mind at ease."

"It was over a week ago though" said Kat, "We haven't found any trace of him since". She thought Carson was jumping to conclusions. Just because he'd been in the city a week ago didn't mean he was still there now.

"Not yet." said Carson, scowling at her across the room. He didn't like being undermined. "But we've got his description out to all units in the city. It won't be long till he gets picked up, you can rest assured of that."

Josh hadn't said much more than a few words since they'd come in. He'd been silently seething in anger, sitting there feeling invisible, with his head resting on his fist. Carson had ignored him from the moment he'd arrived, speaking directly to Andy instead of him, and even talking about him as though he wasn't there. People did that a lot. It was as though having a disability made him less of a person, someone that didn't deserve the same basic courtesies as everyone else. Andy behaved like he was his carer, taking over and speaking for him, when it came to dealing with anything difficult like this or anything official. He was sick to death of it, but he couldn't summon the energy today to make himself heard. He felt like he was slowly drifting away from the 'normal' world, and becoming more and more isolated in the darkness. Without meaning to, he let out a frustrated sigh.

Andy's hand immediately landed on Josh's knee, much to his annoyance. "They're gonna get him, Josh! It's good news!" said Andy, in a tone that couldn't have sounded more patronising if he'd tried. Josh pulled his knee away angrily, feeling the sting of humiliation more keenly than ever before. He wondered what this arrogant city cop saw when he looked at him. How weak and pathetic he must seem. 

"Thanks, Andy! I was listening" he said through gritted teeth. "You know what?! I'm blind, but I'm not stupid!".

"We never said you were, mate!" said Andy, looking at his brother in concern, and then rolling his eyes in apology at the Detective.

He gave a snort of contempt and started to get to his feet. "I'm sick of this. Talk to Andy without me." He picked up his cane and started to make his way out of the room towards Jett's bedroom. He shouted back over his shoulder, "You might as well... You talk as though I'm not even here anyway, it won't make much difference if I'm not."

He closed the door to Jett's room already shaking like a leaf. The panic attack had been coming on while he was still sitting on the couch, hemmed in by patronising cops and his well-meaning brother. He'd needed to escape. His heart thumped in his chest, an all too familiar sensation at this stage, and his chest tightened painfully as he struggled to breath. He hated this feeling but he was getting used to it, if that was at all possible. He thought how pathetic that was. He hated this person that he'd become. 

He could hear their hushed tones out in the livingroom, talking about him, and the state of his mental health. It was overwhelmingly humiliating to have people view him like that. He knew that his abrupt exit hadn't exactly helped his case, but he'd had to get out of there! That same thought he'd been having for the last few days, repeating itself over and over in his head ad nauseam, had been hanging over him the whole time. It was like a dark cloud had descended on him but no one else could see the storm brewing. He'd been finding it harder and harder to ignore. 'Everyone would be better off if he hadn't survived'.

*****

Tank watched as the two cops left John's house, giggling to himself at their stupidity. He would love to be a fly on the wall, to see their idiotic faces, when they realised that he'd been here all along, camped across the street, watching them. It was just too funny.

He walked back across the room to the dining room table. He picked up a small black rucksack and started to pack. He had meticulously prepared each item that he would need the night before, even making himself a checklist just to make sure he had everything. He'd been taught well. 

He turned to the three lifeless bodies lined up in their chairs like a doctor's waiting room. He was a little sad that he'd have to say goodbye to them soon, they'd been such good company, especially Harold. That old man had a surprisingly good sense of humour, he thought! Even the new girl had been pretty funny. But he knew the time had come for the main event and his heart was thumping with excitement. "Well, guys, looks like it's showtime!"

[Ludub]

Thanks again KittCatt and Kristen  I really appreciate the feedback. Might be a day or two until I update again but I hope you enjoy this chapter...

CHAPTER 36

"Sooo... Tamara!" said the doctor, leafing through her medical file as though it was the first time he'd ever seen it. " I think it's clear that we have a little bit of a problem."

Tamara was sitting beside Kyle in the plastic chairs at the other side of his desk.  She was doing her best to focus her eyes on the doctor's face, actively concentrating on keeping it still. Any lapse in concentration and his face would blur into a shaky shapeless blob. She'd found that sometimes tilting her head could help, but she thought it probably made her look a little odd, so she avoided doing that as much as possible. Things still weren't easy. 

"You have a condition called Nystagmus. It's quite common in people with head injuries". He frowned at her and set down her file. "What that means is that you have involuntary eye movement. Your eyes are constantly moving slightly, which makes it very difficult to bring your vision into focus. That's why you've been feeling dizzy and bit nauseous".

"Okaaaay?" she said, not sure if she should be worried, or feel relieved to actually have a name for it. "So... what do we do now?" she asked, hoping it might be something that was easy to fix.

"Well, we can work on improving your vision control through specialised physiotherapy... Unfortunately, there isn't a cure, but you may find it improves a little over time." He smiled a little weakly, first at Tamara, and then at Kyle. "My secretary will make you an appointment with the physio before you leave".

He stood up and ushered them out of the room before Tamara even really had a chance to react. They found themselves standing in the reception area feeling a little shell shocked. Kyle put his arms around her waist, and Tamara looked up at him with tears in her eyes. 

"So, that's it" she said, her chin trembling as she burst into tears. "What am I going to do now?!"

He pulled her in to hug her tight against his chest and put his chin on top of her head. "We'll get through this Tam. It'll get better."

*****

Tank sat beside the old man, with his laptop on his knee, looking decidedly pleased with himself. He had three large ragged cuts on his right cheek and his lip was split and bleeding slightly. He put his hand up to the wounds on his face and traced them lightly with his index finger. Things hadn't gone quite as smoothly as he'd planned. 

He grinned as he caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror across the room. His laptop was casting a green light on his face and he could clearly see the cuts on his cheek and lip, and his own maniacal smile. He thought he looked like a villain from a Marvel comic and was quite pleased with the comparison. 

As he looked at the cuts on his face, he thought back to his neighbour's cat. She'd scratched him pretty badly too. She'd tried so hard to get away from him and to stop him putting her in that box.  She'd splayed her legs out in all directions, a flurry of ginger hair, and claws, and razor sharp teeth. She'd fought as hard as her furry little body would let her, using every weapon at her disposal, but in the end she'd been no match for a ten year old boy. He'd stuffed her in that box, bruising her fragile flesh and nearly crushing her ribcage, and then he'd closed the lid. He didn't know when she'd died or how long it had taken. He didn't know whether she'd run out of air first, or died of thirst. He'd listened to her clawing at the inside of the box for hours, drunk on the feeling of power and control. Listening to her cry inside that box had made him feel like a god, giving him a feeling of exhilaration like nothing he'd ever felt before. In fact, that had been the problem, he'd never really felt anything before that. It had been like an awakening of senses, a sudden understanding of what he'd been put on this earth to do. Of course, then his parents had found the box, and all hell had broken loose. He'd had to be more sneaky about things from then on, and hide the real him. But he'd never forgotten about that box. It had been a thing of sheer beauty.

He turned to the old man and elbowed him in a jovial way, sending a cloud of flies buzzing up into the air. "Got my face scratched up, Harold! Look at these beauties!" he said, tilting his face so the old man could see his cuts. He sniggered as he looked at the moving image on his screen, smiling from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat.  "This one put up more of a fight, Harold... A really feisty one, just like your Mavis!" 

He looked at the video signal on his laptop and pulled up a timer in a corner of the video pane. It was counting down but it currently read 5 hours, 19 minutes... 18... 17... 16... He clicked on the speaker icon on the right hand side of the screen and said, "C'mon then, my little streetfighter, lets see what you have to say for yourself!"

*****

"I'm going to have to tell Josh now, aren't I?" said Tamara, biting her lip and staring out the car window at the blur outside. She couldn't focus on anything outside the car, it was all just a blended mix of colours, whirring past at high speed. 

Kyle glanced at Tamara, as they drove back towards the Bay, and smiled at her sympathetically. "I think it's time, Tam." he said, nodding and blowing out a dramatic sigh. He knew she was scared of Josh's reaction, and understandably so. Josh was not going to take this well! Even if Tamara hadn't fully recovered her sight, she wasn't going to be trapped in a world of darkness anymore, not like Josh. The fact that she'd been lying about it would probably be the most hurtful thing, and Josh was so hypersensitive these days, it was very easy to upset him. He was dreading it just as much as Tamara was.

"I'm gonna do it as soon as we get home." said Tamara, turning to face Kyle, and squinting to pull his face into focus. "I'm gonna do it before I lose my nerve again".

He reached across and squeezed her hand. "I'll text Andy and make sure he's home with him".  He glanced sideways at Tamara giving her a slightly mischievous smile. "I just hope he doesn't break any more of John's stuff!" he said, laughing a little.

She smirked for a moment, before her face fell again. She was grateful to Kyle for attempting to lighten the mood but she just couldn't stop worrying. Hurting Josh was the last thing she wanted.

She put her black glasses on again, relieved to rest her eyes for a while. Seeing was exhausting. In some ways being blind had been a lot less complicated, she thought.

*****

Josh sat on one of the weights benches in the gym, with his gloved hands propped on his knees. He was sweaty and out of breath and thoroughly exhausted, but he had to admit that he was feeling a little better than an hour ago. Andy had dragged him down there, refusing to take no for an answer, and practically forced the boxing gloves on his hands. He'd been feeling so down the last couple of days, it had been hard to put one foot in front of the other. He was grateful to Andy for making him do this, but his overriding feeling of resentment towards him was making it difficult for him to admit that. He needed his brother's help and support more than anything at the moment, but he also wanted to be seen as an independent and fully functional adult. It was a constant push-pull of needs and wants. He was so confused.

"Kyle texted" said Andy, as he threw a towel at Josh, forgetting for a moment that he couldn't see it coming. It hit him in the face and made him jump a mile high. Andy grimaced, regretting his mistake, but decided to ignore it and pretend that he'd meant to do it. "He says that he and Tamara have something they want to talk to us about. They should be home by now."

"He didn't say what?" said Josh, trying to undo the velcro on his glove with his teeth.

"Nah, I reckon it's one of three things... She's moving in permanently, they're getting engaged, or she's pregnant." he said smiling. He was happy for Kyle, whichever one it turned out to be. "My money's on pregnant".

Josh plastered on a fake smile, trying to hide his resentment. "Yeah, you're probably right". He felt guilty that he begrudged his friends their happiness and that he couldn't deal with their relationship bliss. He wondered what kind of person that made him, that he wanted his friends to be miserable too. He was just so unhappy in his own life, it was hard to feel happy for someone else. When he tried to picture his future it just seemed so empty now.  He couldn't really see much of a future at all.  He didn't have the loving girlfriend who wanted to move in, or the girlfriend who wanted to get married, or the pregnant girlfriend... He had the girlfriend he'd nearly strangled to death, and the one who'd slept with a monster. Everything in his life just seemed so hopeless. 

"Okay, well, I'm going to drop you home first, and then I think I'll pick us up some food from the diner" said Andy, taking Josh's arm and gently pulling him to his feet. "C'mon, let's go".

*****

Josh opened the door to John's house, secretly a little proud of himself that he'd managed to navigate the path from the driveway and get the key in the lock with minimal fuss.  Andy had wanted to guide him in, but Josh had insisted on doing it on his own for once. It wasn't exactly the biggest achievement, he thought to himself, but it was a step in the right direction. He needed to pull himself together and try to get a little independence back. 

"Hello? Kyle? Tamara?" he called as he pushed the door open.  

There was no answer, so he figured he must have made it home before they had. He folded up his cane and threw it on the couch, fairly confident that he knew how to navigate the room without it now. He knew it was ten steps from the far end of couch to the kitchen, and he really wanted a glass of water, so he started to walk forward slowly.  He only got to take three steps before he tripped over something on the floor and landed heavily on top of it. 

He was startled to find that he was lying on a body, he could feel the heat of their skin under his fingertips. He rolled off them quickly and shook what he assumed was their arm.  "Hello?!" he said shaking them frantically, "Hello?! Can you hear me?!". There was no answer and their body was limp with dead weight.

He felt the shape of the arm, and based on how small and thin it was, he knew it was a girl. He felt down the arm towards the hand and breathed a sigh of relief to find there weren't any beads on their wrist, so it wasn't Evie.  "Tamara!" he shouted, shaking her arm again. He felt back up the arm towards her torso, unsure if she was on her front or her back, and slightly embarrassed to be touching her at all. He didn't want to end up accidentally groping his unconscious friend! He followed her shoulder towards her neck, and found her face, putting his hand in front of her nose.  At least she was breathing!

His heart was galloping as he tried to figure out what to do. He had his phone in his pocket, so he pulled it out, but for a second he couldn't even think how it worked. It had been set up with special functions for the blind so that he could still use it, but he was panicking so much that he couldn't remember how to unlock it or which corner of the screen to press for emergency services. He tapped at it frantically trying different corners of the screen but nothing was happening.

Suddenly his phone flew out of his hand and clattered across the room, breaking against the wall. He was left reeling as he processed the fact that someone had kicked his hand and that there was someone else in the room! Then he heard a metallic click beside his head that sent chills down his spine, and he felt the cold sensation of steel against his temple. He froze to the spot, with his heart beating loudly in his ears, wondering when they were going to pull the trigger. 

Then he heard that laugh, that terrible laugh from the night he was kidnapped, and he knew. 'This is it', he thought to himself, secretly wishing that Tank would just get on with it.

[Ludub]

Thanks for the comments everyone  Much appreciated! So, we're really getting into the darkest part of ghe story. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

WARNING: VIOLENCE AND ADULT THEMES

 

CHAPTER 37

Josh's eyes began to flicker open as he gradually became aware of the noises surrounding him. He didn't know where he was or what was happening. Out in the darkness, he could hear the muffled cries of distress, and choking sounds of the others in the room. He tried to move, but he was suddenly very aware of his own physical discomfort. There was a searing pain just above his right temple, like someone had stuck an icepick in his head, and he could feel his right eye stinging, and sticking together. He could smell his own blood. He tried to take a deep breath in, to quell the rising wave of nausea in his stomach, but he nearly choked himself. With his mouth stuffed full of some kind of material, and taped shut, it was difficult to take a full breath. He tried to move his arms, but he quickly realised that his hands were tied behind his back, holding his shoulders too far back in a position which made it hard to breathe. His legs were tied tightly to the legs of the chair, so tightly it was cutting off the circulation, and giving him pins and needles in his feet. He pulled and strained against the ropes that bound him to the chair, desperately trying to free himself, but there was no slack at all. Tank had tied them well, he thought. Tank! He remembered Tank! The panic was really taking hold now, his heart hammering ferociously in his chest, as he began to remember. He knew he'd found Tamara on the floor and he remembered Tank pressing the gun against his head, but everything else was a blank after that. He had no idea what had happened...

As he fought to get his breathing under control, trying to ignore the pain in his chest, he began to listen more intently to the noises around him in the room. He was doing his best to join the dots and understand what had taken place. He could hear Tamara, to the left of him, sobbing in a muffled way. At least she was still alive, he thought. From the way she sounded he could tell she was gagged in the same way that he was, and was struggling to breathe. She seemed to be very close to him, probably not more than a foot away. 

He could hear moaning from much further away, probably on the other side of the room. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it was Kyle. Whoever it was, he seemed to be crying out in pain, more so than just being frightened. The cries were more urgent, more gutteral, like he was seriously injured. He hoped it wasn't Kyle, but then again, he didn't want it to be Andy either. He felt his stomach tie itself in knots at the thought of either of them being hurt. Thinking about Tank's father, he dreaded to think what Tank might have done to him? 

His whole body was shaking now as the adrenalin rushed through his bloodstream. He thought what a useless mechanism this was, 'the fight or flight response', when he was tied to a chair and couldn't go anywhere. His heart drummed in his chest and in his ears, and he was starting to hyperventilate more heavily. He wondered where Tank was lurking, and whether he was in the room watching. He imagined him there, hovering over him, enjoying every moment of this. He didn't think Tank would want to miss a second of it. He wondered what he had planned for them all. Why had he tied them all up? Was he going to torture them? What was he going to do?! The fear was overwhelming.

"Boo!" Tank shouted, loudly in Josh's face.

He was less than an inch away! Josh had been able to feel the hot exhalation of breath, and light spray of spittle on his face, as the word left Tank's lips. It made him jump so high, and his heart gave such a start, that he nearly choked on the rags in his mouth and started wheezing as he retched.

Tank began to laugh, an exaggerated and sinister cackle, full of malice. It was like something from a horror film, sending chills down Josh's spine. 

"Sorry, did I scare you there, Josh?!" Tank whispered in his ear. He was standing so close now that Josh could feel his body heat and hear his excited breathsounds. Josh couldn't stop shaking, his whole body shuddering now with fear, as his heart threatened to jump out of his chest. What was Tank going to do?!

*****

Tank swaggered around the room, taking in the scene, and feeling a natural high like nothing he'd ever experienced before. Everything he'd done over the last few weeks paled into insignificance when compared to this. The adrenalin rush was incredible. He didn't know how other people got their kicks, but looking at this room full of bruised and battered faces, staring at him wide-eyed in terror, he felt sorry that other people would never know the exhilaration he felt in this moment. To have total control over someone, to hold their life in your hands, there was nothing else like it. They were all missing out!

He turned to look at Kyle, who was looking decidedly pale and sweaty, and shaking uncontrollably in his chair. He didn't think he was looking too well. It would have been so much easier to sneak up on him with a chloroformed rag and put him down on the floor with little fuss, but what fun would that have been?! He'd wanted a little excitement taking down the first victim, before he got on with the nuts and bolts of getting everyone else into place. It just happened to be Kyle who turned up first. Kyle had certainly put up a good fight and had ended up with the injuries to prove it. Tank accepted that maybe it had been a little unfair of him to pull a knife on Kyle. It certainly wasn't very sporting, he had to admit that, but he'd enjoyed watching the expression on Kyle's face change so suddenly. It had gone from one of pure fury, to an eyebulging expression of agony, in about 3 seconds. He wished he could have recorded it. He'd at least done him the favour of leaving the knife in place. He thought Kyle should be grateful to him for that! It was sticking out of his chest just below the shoulder, and helping to stem the flow of blood from the wound. He'd taped Kyle's mouth up like all the others and strapped him in a chair. Much as he would have enjoyed it, he couldn't have him screaming the place down, so he'd chloroformed him while he moved him. He couldn't take the risk with the cops sitting in their car across the street. He didn't want them hearing the screams and bursting in at any moment. Things would have to be done quietly now, so he'd just have to make do with this watered down and muffled version. 'Such a pity!' he thought to himself. Kyle was conscious again now and he could see from the constant shaking that he was clearly in a world of pain. He smirked at him, and pressed lightly on the handle of the knife. Kyle's eyes widened as he gave an anguished cry, wheezing from the injury to his lung, with tears rolling down his cheeks.

Tank grinned in self satisfaction and spun around to look at the other sorry specimens on the far side of the room. He'd lined them up, one next to the other, like they were sitting in a dentist's waiting room. 

Josh was sitting with his head thrown back as though he was looking at the ceiling. He was hyperventilating badly and struggling to breathe properly without choking. He looked like he was silently begging the heavens for help. Tank thought it would be funny if he was actually praying, as though some divine entity was actually going to reach down and help him. He thought about Mavis and her little cross around her neck. All the faith in the world hadn't done her the slightest bit of good, he thought, giggling to himself. This God of hers, the one she'd prayed to faithfully every day, hadn't bothered to lift a finger when she'd really needed help. He'd been decidedly absent throughout the whole ordeal. In fact, He hadn't shown up to help any of them yet! 

The blind girl, he'd seen hanging around with Kyle, was slumped in her chair with her head hanging down and her eyes clamped shut. She was quietly humming to herself. She'd been the easiest to take down, and the least interesting. He'd simply snuck up on her with the chloroform and she'd gone down like a ton of bricks. It had been a joy though, to watch Josh stumble over her body and fumble about the place. He'd looked so frightened, frantically feeling all over her body, and trying to figure out who she was and what to do. It had taken everything he had not to laugh out loud, and ruin the surprise. Then when he'd held the gun to Josh's head, he'd watched the look of recognition creep across his face. That expression of pure fear in his sightless eyes had been a thing of sheer beauty. It had been a pity to have to knock him out too, cracking him over the head with the butt of the gun. In retrospect it had been a silly thing to do given the outcome the last time. He'd worried that Josh might not wake up again and then he'd have missed the whole show. That would have been such a shame! He'd just got a little overexcited thinking about how much work there was to do. "Bodies didn't just tie themselves up!", he chuckled to himself.

Andy had been a different story. Tank hadn't expected him to come home so soon. He'd been watching them for such a long time now that he knew their routines inside and out. Andy normally worked on Tuesdays. He'd heard the car pull up outside and, peeking through the blinds, he'd seen Andy walking along the path towards the house. He'd simply waited for him just inside the door, and hit him over the head with one of John's heavy sports trophies. He'd been surprised at how easily Andy had gone down, hitting the ground like a sack of spuds.  It hadn't been quite as elegant a method as he would have liked, but sometimes you had to improvise. The big lug still hadn't woken up.

He walked over to take a closer look at Andy. He was slouching limply in the chair with his head hanging down and to one side. Head wounds always bleed a lot so his face and shirt were soaked in blood, and it was still dripping, thick like syrup, from the end of Andy's nose. Tank grabbed Andy's hair and yanked his head backwards, quite violently, to look at his face.  There was a huge gash on his forehead, just on the edge of his hairline, and a large purple bruise was already forming. "An...dy! An...dy!" he called in a sickeningly sweet voice, almost singing. "Open your eyes, Andy. We don't want you missing the show". He pressed hard with his thumb on the wound on Andy's forehead. "Errrrmmmm" cried Andy in pain, opening his eyes with a start, and trying to move his head away from Tank's hand. Tank peered into Andy's frightened face and said, "Glad you could join us, Mr Barrett! The show's just about to start!"

*****

Tank pulled Kyle across the room, walking the chair from one leg to another, and dragging him into position so he'd have a better view of the screen. The movement was causing him excruciating pain, and he cried out with each swing they took, from one leg to the next. Tank couldn't help chuckling, and took great pleasure in knocking the handle of the knife at every available opportunity. He'd already turned Andy's chair so he was facing the TV screen too. He didn't think there was much point in moving the two blind ones. They'd be able to hear well enough anyway, he thought. His heart was beating so fast now, he could hardly contain his excitement, and he couldn't wait to see their reactions. He also couldn't wait to check back in and see how the story was unfolding. He thought it was a pity he'd had to miss so much of the show, but he'd been busy making sure his audience were ready for the grand finale. After months of planning, he could hardly believe this day had come. Time to start the show!

*****

Andy watched as Tank plugged his laptop into the flatscreen TV, now pulled out into middle of the floor, so they'd all have a clear view. He wondered what horror they were about to be shown. He'd never been more terrified in his life or felt more powerless. It was overwhelming. His head was pounding from the knock he'd taken, and he was having trouble focusing his eyes. But even through his hazy vision, he could see the state that Kyle was in. He was grey, and shaking, and sweating profusely... He knew he didn't look good. They'd made eye contact at one point, while Tank was dragging him across the room, but Andy had had to look away. He was ashamed that he couldn't do anything to help him. Every pained cry had made him wince, his stomach tying itself in knots. Kyle was like a brother to him and he couldn't stand to listen to him suffer like that. He didn't want to hear anyone suffer like that.

He could see that Josh was bleeding too, from a wound on his head, and that he was clearly in the throes of another panic attack. As he watched him struggling to breathe, he wanted to reach out to him and let him know that he was there with him. That at least they were together in this hellish nightmare, if nothing else. Enduring this in total isolation would be so much worse, he thought. He hated that he had no way of communicating with him when he was gagged like this. With his hands bound behind his back, he had no way of reaching out to him in the darkness either, no way to calm him. 

He felt so utterly powerless but there was a rage building inside him! He imagined himself breaking his ropes like the Incredible Hulk and smashing Tanks head, over and over, against the wall. He imagined it breaking open like a watermelon. But in the end, he knew he would have to sit there, totally vulnerable, and at the mercy of a mad man. All he could do was hope that the police would come to stop Tank before something terrible happened. He glanced at Kyle, with the knife lodged in his chest, shivering and shaking and labouring to breathe. Kyle turned his head slightly to look at Andy, and their eyes met. He could see how frightened Kyle was and how hard he was having to fight. He held his gaze and silently begged him to hold on. 'Fight, Kyle!', he said to him in his head, repeating it over and over, 'Please don't die, mate. Please don't die'.

*****

Tank crouched down beside his laptop and looked back across the room at Andy and Kyle. He grinned at Andy because he could see how genuinely curious he was. He was staring at the laptop and the TV screen with a look that was a perfect mix of dread and good old fashioned curiosity. They were almost ready to start the show. The laptop was plugged in with an HDMI cable so now all he had to do was click on the video icon on the screen and they'd have a live feed. He couldn't hide his excitement now, the smile was plastered on his face from ear to ear. He wondered how his little 'streetfighter' was getting on. 

"So, I'm sure you'll be honoured to know that this a private screening of a world premiere" he said, putting on a deep announcer voice. Then in his own voice, he added, almost breathless with anticipation, "I think you're gonna enjoy this guys. Especially you, Josh!" 

He clicked on the icon on his screen bringing up the video pane. Suddenly the room took on a sickly green tone with the light shining brightly on Tank's face. There were muffled gasps of shock as Andy and Kyle realised what was on the screen. They were looking at a tiny room or large box, maybe four times the size of a coffin, lit up in that minty green tone of a nightvision camera. There was a girl crouching in the corner, rocking back and forth and hugging her knees. It was clear that the space was too small for her to stand up in or to move around easily. Her face was hidden but they could see that she had long dark wavy hair and beaded bracelets on her wrists. From the way she was rocking, it was clear that she was crying, but there was no sound.

Tank got up and strutted across the room to Andy, feeling like he was walking ten feet tall. He'd never felt so strong or so powerful before. It was like suddenly finding out that you had super powers. He felt like a god. 

This was going to be so much fun, he thought. He stood behind Andy with his gun in his hand and put it against Andy's right temple. 

He looked at Josh, who had his eyes closed tightly and was busy nodding and shaking his head like he was having an argument with himself. "Hey, Josh!" he shouted loudly at him. Josh was clearly startled, and opened his eyes, swinging his head in Tank's direction. "Hey, I'm talking to you, Josh!", he sang at him, grinning like a maniac. "I've decided to give Andy here, your loving brother, the honour of filling in the blanks for you, Josh. It wouldn't be fair if we just put on a show and we left you out of it. I'm all for equal opportunities and facilitating the disabled... So, I'm going to get Andy to describe it for you!". He looked at Tamara and said, "Blind girl! You too, I think you'll enjoy this!"

He pulled the tape off Andy's mouth, as violently as he could manage,  while still holding the gun against his head. He pulled the rags out of Andy's mouth and his sudden intake of air made him cough and wheeze. Andy had never had a mouth so dry and the rags had left a repulsive taste behind that he couldn't get rid of. He desperately needed some water.

"So Andy, you're going to be a good little hostage and do what you're told... Aren't you, Andy?" He pressed the gun into the side of Andy's head and waited for an answer. When he didn't get one, he pressed the gun against Andy's head wound, and repeated, "Aren't you, Andy?!"

"Argggh, yeah! Yes!" cried Andy in a very hoarse voice. He would have to play along, he thought, and hope against hope that the cops were already on their way. There was nothing else he could do.

"Okay, so, Andy" said Tank, "Why don't you look at the screen and describe to little brother over there what's happening. Come on!... Come on, Andy... Use your words..."

Andy glanced back at the TV, his stomach turning, as he watched the girl screaming in silence on the screen. Her eyes were lit up like white shining orbs in the nightvision. She was clawing at the walls now, and crying hysterically. He wondered if there was any way he could somehow avoid telling Josh the truth. He couldn't do this to him! It was the one time that he'd been glad that Josh was blind, he didn't want him to know what was on that screen...
 

[Ludub]

Thanks again everyone for the lovely comments!  Hope you enjoy this one!

WARNING: STRONG VIOLENCE AND ADULT THEMES

 

CHAPTER 38

2 days ago...

Tank wandered through a less than reputable area of the city scanning the faces of the young homeless men as he went. It was an area on the outskirts of the city where lots of runaways slept under the overpasses and in old abandoned buses. It was mostly wasteland with scrubby overgrown grass and rubbish discarded everywhere. He passed one young hopeless face after the other, searching for the facial features he was looking for. Finally he found him! He knelt down in front of him, tilted his head to the side sympathetically, and smiled as warm and kind a smile as he could manage. "I'm your guardian angel" he said.

*****

22 hours ago...

Evie walked back along the beachfront towards the caravan park, lost in her own thoughts and hugging her arms protectively around herself. She'd just spent the last two hours at the diner with Matt and Maddy, watching them as they fawned all over each other in that sickening new relationship kind of way. She'd hoped that spending a bit of time with her mates would help take her mind off her troubles with Josh, but it had actually made her feel worse. She had no idea how to fix things. He was so fragile these days, so easily hurt, and she'd done something now that she couldn't take back. It was such a large tattoo that she'd never be able to cover it or have it removed. It was there to stay, a constant reminder of Tank's insidious insertion into their relationship.  She understood it now, his reaction to that tattoo. She didn't know how she could have been so stupid!

She was hugging herself, partly because it was a little cold tonight,  and partly because she felt so sorry for herself. She wanted nothing more than to feel Josh's arms around her right now, to snuggle into his chest, and know that he still loved her. She imagined that the arms wrapped around her were his, holding her gently and keeping her warm...then suddenly she remembered the feeling of his hands around her throat and she wondered if she'd ever be able to trust him to hold her again. Why did everything have to be so complicated? 

She knew the answer to that question. Tank was why. Tank was always why. He was the reason that everything had gone wrong. He was the dry rot that was threatening the very foundations of their love, and undermining them at every turn. He was the cancer that had set in, eating away at them from the inside, and destroying the flesh and bones of their relationship. He was everything that was wrong with her life, everything that was wrong with Josh's life... She'd never hated anyone the way that she hated Tank. 

She'd reached the caravan park and could see the house in the distance. She hugged herself tighter, wondering if it was actually getting chilly outside, or if it was just that she was feeling so tired and broken that the whole world seemed a more cold and hostile place. 

She suddenly became aware of a presence behind her, like someone was following her. She spun around, wide-eyed and frightened, peering into the darkness, but she couldn't see anyone. She was sure there had been someone there, she'd almost felt them breathing on her. Surely it couldn't just be her imagination, she thought.  She looked around in fear but there didn't seem to be anyone around, not close by anyway. There was just a father and son in the distance, sitting outside their caravan with their backs turned to her. She was nervous and jumpy now, her heart beating a little too fast, and her stomach giving a little flutter. She glanced back towards the house. It wasn't too far away at all now, all lit up, and welcoming, and like a safe haven. She toyed with the idea of running. She wanted to run for all she was worth, bursting in through the doors to the safe and loving arms of her family. She was scared of what was lurking in the dark. But she told herself she was being ridiculous. She wasn't going to let Tank control her like this! She shouldn't be scared of walking through the caravan park. This was her home! She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction...

*****

20 hours ago...

Oscar couldn't help being a little worried.  Evie should have been home by now, he thought. He knew she'd gone to the diner with Matt and Maddy but she wouldn't normally stay out this late without letting someone know.  He'd already tried her phone but it had just rung out, so he was wondering whether to call Maddy or not. Things were still a bit awkward with them and he didn't want her to think he was being weird calling her so late at night. Still, he was getting worried, so he pushed those considerations aside and picked up his phone. At that moment, a text came through that said "Won't be home tonight, gonna watch a movie at Maddy's and crash on her couch. See you tomorrow." He thought it sounded a little cold, and not like Evie's normal tone but they'd had a bit of a fight before she left the house so he thought maybe she was trying to let him know she was still annoyed with him. He'd make it up to her tomorrow, he thought to himself, as he turned off the lights and headed to bed.

*****

18 hours ago...

"Eeeeeevieeeee!" sang Tank, kneeling down in front of her, and putting his hands on her knees. She'd been coming round for a while now but hadn't quite regained consciousness. Her eyes were fluttering every so often and she'd moved her head, lolling it from side to side, like it was too heavy for her neck to support. She kept moaning strange little noises like she was talking to herself. He looked at her tear stained face, so pale in the green light of his laptop, and smiled to think of the last time they'd been this close. She'd gone to bed with him in that house he'd taken her to. She'd laid down beside him voluntarily, and allowed him to take her clothes off. She'd even allowed him to sleep with her. She'd been so deliciously gullible. It didn't seem to matter what story he spun her, she'd fallen for every single one of them, hook, line and sinker. There just had to be enough teenage angst and rebellion in his stories to make her think he was a troubled but sensitive soul, something like a James Dean character. "Evie! Wake up Eeeeevieeeee!" he said to her in a sing-songy voice, pinching the skin on her thigh hard between his forefinger and thumb.

"Errrmmmmm" squealed Evie as her eyes shot open. She was still under the effects of the chlorofirm and her vision was very blurred, but Tank's cruel smile slowly started to reveal itself. She could see the gleam in his eyes, as he regarded her with about the same level of empathy as a salivating hyena. 

"Welcome back, Evie! I've missed you!" he said pretending to act coy. He pulled his head into his chest the way small children do when they're feeling shy, and glanced at her sideways in a coquettish manner. "Have you missed me?" he asked, grinning at her.

He looked at her as she stared at him in horror, with tears running down her cheeks in rivulets, and he began to laugh. This was all going so much better than he could ever have imagined.  He was almost grateful to Josh now that he'd interrupted him the last time. The plan he'd had the first time round had been very mundane in comparison, and wouldn't have been anywhere near as much fun as this had turned out to be. Getting Evie to come with him to that house out in the bush had been far too easy. It all would have been over and done with much too soon. He'd never been good at showing restraint, but he was proud of himself this time, he'd waited it out and gone the distance. Not only that, but this time he'd be leaving the world with documented evidence of his genius, the beauty of which was unparalleled. He couldn't have been more proud of his work.

He grabbed Evie's face, holding her chin in his hand firmly, and forcibly turned her head to make her look to her left. "Guys, we have a guest! This is Evie, everyone, I'd like you all to make her feel very welcome" he said, giggling like someone demented. Ignoring Evie's muffled sobs, he continued, "Now, this is Harold.... and his wife Mavis..." He moved to the end of the line and he grabbed the brown curly hair of the girl sitting at the end of the row, yanking her head back so Evie could see her discoloured and lifeless face. He picked up her arm and waved it stiffly in Evie's direction. "Oh that's right, I think you two might already know each other? Phoebe, don't be rude! Say hello to Evie!" he said, grinning at her maliciously. Evie closed her eyes, shuddering as she sobbed. 

"Don't be like that Evie!" he said, kneeling back down at her feet with his head tilted in sympathy. "We're gonna have a lot of fun, you and I." 

*****

12 hours ago...

Kat sat at her desk silently stewing about the meeting she'd had with Carson and Emerson earlier. She'd been put on desk duty for the next few weeks until the internal review. Carson had said he'd make a recommendation that she be put on probation rather than suspended. He'd made it clear that he liked her and that from what he'd seen she was a person with her head screwed on. He said that he liked the fact that she'd owned up to her mistakes and accepted responsibility for her actions, and that it had taken a brave person to do that. She hadn't tried to falsify the details and cover herself like a lot of others would have done. He said he admired that honesty in her. While she'd been pleased at the glowing endorsement, her relegation to desk duty couldn't have come at a worse time!

They'd received information that a young male, fitting Tank's description had made a purchase on Greg Snelgrove's credit card yesterday morning. He'd been traced, from the store he'd used it in, to a house not too far away, on the outskirts of the city.  It was some kind of squat used by runaway teens. Everyone was gearing up to make the arrest, throwing on their bulletproof vests and loading their rifles. She was going to miss out on the action and excitement. Not only that but she'd wanted to be the one to make the arrest. This thing with Tank had become personal. She'd wanted to be the one to take him down... For Andy, for poor Josh, and most of all, for Greg. She'd made him a promise that she wanted to keep. Instead, she was going to be stuck here, feeling useless, and doing everyone else's paperwork all day. It wasn't fair!

*****

10 hours ago...

Tank dragged Evie's unconscious body, gripping her by her ankles, across the floor towards the box. He'd never seen her look more dishevelled, or more beautiful for that matter. Her arms trailed limply along above her head, and her long dark hair was terribly tangled. Her face was peaceful now but you could see from what was left of her makeup just how much she'd cried. It had been a pity to have to gag her. He'd chloroformed her again for this last transition. He wanted her to have her hands free and to be able to scream to her heart's content once she was in there, so he'd needed her knocked out while he put her inside. He'd peeled off the gag and untied her hands. When he'd taken the ropes off he could see how bruised her wrists were. She'd really struggled!

Now was the hard bit. His back was aching from all the manual lifting. Dragging people about the place and lifting their dead weight onto chairs was more difficult than you'd think. His back certainly wasn't thanking him for it. He came around to pick Evie up and he put his arms under her armpits to lift her torso. He'd found this was the easiest way. He began to lift her off the floor when he suddenly felt her finger nails clawing at his face. She tore chunks out of his cheek making him cry out in pain. She managed to wriggle out of his hands, and in an instant she was on her feet and running in a wobbly way towards the door. She reached the front door, screaming for help and banging as loudly as she could, as she desperately tried to get her fingers to work the locks. She could hear him laughing as he followed slowly behind her. He was enjoying this! Tank caught up with her and reached around her to restrain her arms, but she headbutted him backwards, smashing his bottom lip against his teeth. She spun around, locking eyes with him in hatred and defiance. She wasn't going to let him break her, she promised herself that. She was going to survive this one way or another, and she was going to kill him with her own bare hands.

"Evie! Evie!' he purred to her in a consolatory kind of way, like you would with a petulant child. "Surely you don't want to leave now?  We're having so much fun... and we haven't even got to the best bit yet!". He put his hand up to stroke her face. She flinched as his hand made contact with her skin, feeling a deep wave of nausea at the thought of him touching her, not again. Looking into his eyes, sparkling with malice, she thought this was the face of evil in its purest form. There was nothing human about this man. How had she let him fool her before?

He brought his other hand up to clasp her face in both hands. He smiled at her, his biggest whitest smile, despite the blood of his split lip. When he began to lean in as though he was going to kiss her, Evie took the opportunity to try to knee him in the groin. But he moved at the last second, chuckling loudly. He was enjoying this. "So, Evie's a little streetfighter, is she?! I'm impressed!" he said, grinning at her. With that he smashed her head back as hard as he could against the wall. She went down, her legs giving out from under her, as she lost consciousness. 

Closing the box up and securing the seals so it was airtight had been immensely satisfying. To know that he had total control now was exhilarating. Evie would live or die by his hand. He could decide if she ever got to breathe fresh air again, or if she'd suffocate slowly in this box. He'd come a long way from when he was 10 years old, this was much more sophisticated, with cameras and microphones so he wouldn't miss a moment of it, but essentially the principle was the same. Evie might as well have been that ginger cat, clawing and miaowing inside that old wooden box. He couldn't wait for her to wake up so he could watch her reaction, the moment it dawned on her that she was going to die in a tiny soundproofed box, with only the red blinking light of the video camera for company. He'd enjoyed watching Phoebe the other evening, but without the sound turned on it'd been lacking something. This was going to be so much better...

*****

3 hours ago...

"I can't believe you fell asleep!" said Constable Sanderson, climbing into the car with bags of takeout food. "What if you got caught sleeping on the job?"

Constable Lewis rubbed his eyes and sat up straighter in the driving seat. "Yeah, well... you sloped off to see your missus, didn't you?! They might want to know why there was only one of us here to start with!..." he growled, frowning at his partner. He grabbed one of the burgers Sanderson had brought them, taking a large bite, and sighed, "What can I say, I got bored! Besides we both know, the big dogs are off getting a bit of the action in the city today. There's nothing happening here." 

"Yeah there's supposed to be some big bust going on, some place just outside the city. I heard Emerson talking about it to Chapman this morning. 'Little Miss Nose in the Air' has been benched though, did you hear?" said Sanderson, smirking at his partner. He took a big bite out of one of the burgers, and mumbled through his burger filled mouth, "Improper Conduct, apparently". He couldn't help chuckling a little.

"She won't like that! That girl has her nose so far up Emerson's backside..." said Lewis, shaking his head in disdain.

"Yeah, she's not really a desk duty kind of girl... She'll be going crazy..." said Sanderson  smiling to himself.

They sat, munching their way through the burgers and fries that Sanderson had picked up for them, listening to music playing quietly on the radio. The sun was beginning to set, and the street was bathed in a beautiful golden light. Everything looked so peaceful.

"Rrrrrrrhhh, this is so boring!" exclaimed Lewis, "Seriously, we've been doing this for weeks now and there's been no sign of any psycho, murdering teenager! Nothing! Just an ordinary house in a boring as hell street!..." He thumped his fist off the steering wheel,  "I can't stand this anymore. It isn't the big shots who have to sit here, with their ass cheeks going numb, day after day!... Oh no, they're off doing the big dramatic SWAT team entrances, glory hunting, while we're stuck in this car.... Like a flaming sweatbox... You really stink, do you know that?! Do you?!... So do I! I stink to high heaven!... I can't even stand the way I smell!... And you know, what?! I need to pee! I need to pee, and I'm not doing it in a coffee cup like some kind of animal anymore!" He was shouting now, red in the face with frustration. He threw all the food containers out the window in a rage, including the burger that Sanderson was still eating. "I'm leaving! You can come with me, or you can get out of the car and stay here on your own!"  Before really giving Sanderson a chance to answer, he'd put the wheels in motion and driven away at high speed.

Sanderson looked at his colleague with concern. He looked haggard, unshaven for a number of days, and he had dark circles around his eyes. It was clear that Lewis had just had enough. He'd been having marital problems for some time now, and really struggling with the stress of it all. These weeks of stake-out duty had just tipped him over the edge emotionally. Sanderson felt a little guilty now, thinking about the number of times he'd snuck off to have a tumble with his bit on the side. It had been added pressure that Lewis hadn't needed. He'd had the constant fear of being caught by his superiors out there on his own, and having to cover for his partner. Even the loneliness wouldn't have been good for him, he thought. He looked at his partner, who was rallying the car recklessly towards the police station, and knew that at least some of this was his doing.

*****

Present...

Tamara listened, with her eyes closed, as Tank continued to taunt the boys. He'd made Andy tell Josh that it was Evie on that screen. She hadn't been able to see Josh's reaction but she could tell from his breathing that something had broken inside him. Andy had sobbed and sobbed, telling Josh about Evie. He'd tried not to give him any details at first, just describing the box and the nightvision lighting, but Tank had been pretty persuasive in the end. When Andy wouldn't say Evie's name he'd started pressing on the knife handle in Kyle's chest, making him scream. Andy had given in pretty quickly after that, trapped between a rock and a hard place. Josh had given a loud but muffled howl, and tried for a moment to struggle out of his ropes, before giving up. He hadn't made a sound since. Even when Tank turned on the audio so they could all hear Evie crying, and pleading over and over, Josh had stayed quiet. Tank had clearly been disappointed with Josh's reaction and had come over to him, shaking him and smacking him round the face. Josh seemed to have entered some kind of catatonic state. Tank had tried hurting him, digging his fingernails into the cut on the side of Josh's head, but even that hadn't elicited a response. Tank stood back and Tamara took a quick peak at him. He was shaking his head in wonder, but clearly looking quite pleased with himself. She'd snuck a peak every now and then when she thought Tank wasn't looking so she knew the layout of the room and where everyone was sitting. She'd seen Kyle, the furthest from her, slowly dying before her eyes. His cries of pain were more than she could take, so she was trying to tune them out, but she'd made up her mind that she was going to save him. Not only that, but she was going to kill Tank as painfully as she could manage. She was surrounded by sounds of total misery, Kyle being tortured in front of her, Evie screaming on that TV screen, Andy sobbing in his chair... The thought of taking revenge on Tank was the only thing keeping her sane.

Tank had been a bit overexcited when he'd tied Tamara up, leaving the ropes on one of her wrists a little bit loose. Andy's arrival had interrupted things and he'd actually forgotten to tie her legs.  She'd been doing her best not to attract his attention since she'd woken up and so far it seemed to be working. She'd been using her cane when he'd attacked her so he'd assumed she was blind. She was going to use that to her advantage. She'd managed to get one hand free and was gradually working on the knot for the other one.

Tank walked over to take a peak outside. He giggled and turned around with a huge grin on his face. "The cops have gone! Looks like we're on our own now." Andy and Kyle both hung their heads a little lower.

Tamara suddenly found her other hand free but she didn't want to give herself away to Tank so she started to cry a little, quietly so as not to attract too much attention. He skipped back over to the TV screen and ran his fingers along the edge of Evie's terrified face as she screamed loudly into the camera. The clock on the screen said "49:15" and was continuing its countdown.

"Not long now guys" said Tank, still facing the screen. "Of course, it might be sooner if she keeps screaming like that. She'll run out of air soon.... It's a beautiful thing, you know, being there... watching that moment... when someone takes their last breath... to see their face, up close and personal... and to know you could have saved them.... All I would have to do is cross the road and open that box... but I get to choose... Me! I get to choose whether she lives or dies... It's an incredible feeling. I get to hold her life in my hands and take it away from her just because I feel like it... There's nothing in this world that comes close to that feeling. That's why I want the world to know who I am. I've made a movie for you all to enjoy when I'm gone, so my legacy can live on. The whole world is going to know my name." He continued to stare lovingly at Evie's image on the screen. She'd collapsed in a heap against one of the walls, panting heavily as the lack of air and stifling heat was getting to her now. She looked exhausted. "She's a fighter alright" he said, snorting a little, "You have to give credit, where credit's due..."

A lot had happened while Tank had been delivering his monologue but they were trying to act as normal as possible. That meant crying quietly and looking suitably terrified. Tamara had managed to catch Andy's eye while Tank had his back turned. Andy couldn't hide his shock that Tamara could obviously see, his eyes widening at her. He'd taken in a gasp of air, but luckily it hadn't got Tank's attention, he was too engrossed in his masterpiece to take much notice. She'd shown him quickly that her hands were free and that she wasn't tied to the chair like the others. He'd nudged Kyle to let him know, and Tamara and Kyle had shared a tear-filled silent reunion for a few seconds. The look of newfound hope in both the boys' faces was heartbreaking. Tamara put her little finger and thumb out by her side to signal 'phone' to Andy. Hers was on the far side of the room in her handbag. She was desperately hoping his was in his pocket. It took him a second to grasp what she meant but the realisation crept across his face and he smiled at her, motioning to the pocket nearest her with his head. She glanced at Tank, concentrating hard to keep him in focus, and then quickly reached into Andy's pocket, slipping his phone out and behind her back in a flash.

Tank turned to face Kyle with an evil glint in his eye. "Actually, speaking of credit, where credit's due... I made the acquaintance of an old friend of yours, Kyle. Lovely girl... questionable dress sense."  He sauntered over to Kyle, producing his mobile phone. "We took a few selfies. Like I said, lovely girl, just some very strange fashion choices". Kyle bucked in the chair when he saw what was on screen. It was a photo of Tank hugging Phoebe's rotting corpse. He was doing a rock n roll sign with his other hand and sticking his tongue out. Phoebe's head was lolling to the side and her eyes were hanging open, but she was unmistakeably dead with mottled purple skin. Kyle started to retch, coughing and wheezing, as he choked on the rags in his mouth. The sudden violent movement had caused him such unbearable pain that his eyes rolled in his head and he passed out.

Tamara had been trying to ignore her boyfriend's obvious distress and do her best to get them all out of this situation. She couldn't stand the screaming. She wanted nothing more than to go over there and put her arms around him, and tell him that things were going to be okay, but sympathy and affection weren't going to get that knife out of his chest. She had to pull herself together now and be tough. Kyle's life, and Evie's life, depended on her now! She waited until Tank had turned his back on her again and she quickly unlocked Andy's phone and opened his call log. She was surprised to see that nearly all his calls for the last few days had been to Kat. She pressed 'call' and slipped the phone behind her back again, desperately hoping the call would go through without Tank knowing. She nodded at Andy and he cleared his throat to speak.

His voice was shaking but he was speaking as loudly and clearly as he could."You know you won't get away with this Tank, keeping us all hostage... tied up like this. I mean the cops have been watching the house for weeks.  They're bound to come back again to check that you're not keeping us prisoner. This is John's house, not some place in the middle of nowhere. Why dont you leave now, before they get here? Leave before Kyle dies from his injuries, and they add another murder to the list."

Tank had been smiling at him, tilting his head in mock sympathy, as Andy made his little speech.  "Andy, Andy, Andy..." he said, shaking his head and laughing loudly. "You think I'm worried about one more? I want them to come, it's all part of the plan... Thats how I get to be famous... But they'll never get here in time...not to save Evie, anyway... 26 minutes and counting everyone... Tick Tock!"
 

[Ludub]

Thanks to KittCatt, Kristen, Suzza101, and ~JarlieFanEver~ for all the lovely comments.  This is my penultimate chapter. I hope you enjoy it!

 

WARNING: STRONG VIOLENCE AND ADULT THEMES.

CHAPTER 39

Kat had just finished the shift from hell and was standing in the diner impatiently waiting for her order so she could take it home. All she wanted was to get home, have a shower, and get into her PJs. Those idiots Lewis and Sanderson had caused an almighty headache for her today and it still wasn't fully resolved. They'd abandoned their post, leaving John Palmer's house unguarded, and she still hadn't managed to get some replacements in. Lewis seemed to be having some sort of a nervous breakdown and had come into the station roaring the place down and shouting about handing in his notice. Sanderson had spent the whole time talking over him and trying to retract everything he said. Kat had had to send both of them home and she'd essentially been left holding the baby. She'd spent the last couple of hours trying to organise the next shift to come in early but, with everyone gone on the big bust in the city today, numbers were thin on the ground. The house was going to be unguarded for a few more hours yet. 

At least they were fairly confident that Tank was in the city, she thought. The credit card transaction had been the break in the case they'd all been waiting for. The store had sent CCTV footage over, and the young guy on the camera certainly looked like Tank. She hadn't heard from Carson for a few hours now and was wondering how the whole thing had gone down. She was finding it really frustrating being kept so out of the loop. She'd been waiting all day for the update call from Carson to say that they'd got him. Every phone call that had come through today had made her jump.

She thought about maybe calling over to the John's house just to check that they were all okay but she'd tried calling Andy earlier and he still hadn't returned her call. They'd been seeing each other on the sly for a few days now and she didn't want to seem like some crazy stalker or a needy girlfriend. She bit her lip a little nervously, thinking of the mess she was getting herself into.  If the internal review board got wind of this relationship she'd be well and truly snookered. She didn't really know how this had happened. Just seeing the way that Andy was with Josh, the way he looked after him and worried about him so much... it had made her see a different side to him. A sweet and sensitive side. What on earth was she doing, she wondered to herself!

She'd picked up the bag of takeout food, chatting briefly to Irene and was headed out the door when her phone rang.  Shoving the bag under her arm, she managed to hunt the phone out of her pocket. She smiled, and her stomach gave a little flutter, when she was saw that it was Andy.  "Hello?!" she answered, embarrassed at how excited she sounded. Her face fell immediately, as she realised something was wrong. She could hear Andy's voice, somewhere in the distance, speaking as loudly as he could. The bag of takeout hit the floor as she ran out the door. 

*****

Josh had been listening intently to everything that was going on around him. He'd been doing a good job of convincing Tank that he'd drifted off to cloud cuckoo land. He needed Tank to think he wasn't 'there' anymore, to give him time to think, time to plan... A rage had been building inside him like nothing he'd ever felt before, and every pained cry from Kyle, or sob from Evie, was only feeding into it. He'd used that rage, to withstand the pain, when Tank had torn at the flesh on his scalp, and somehow he'd managed to remain passive...  Everything had suddenly become so clear to him. He had to kill Tank. It was the only clear thought in his mind now, repeating itself over and over, as though nothing else existed. He had to kill Tank. He had to break free of these ropes and kill Tank, if it was the last thing he ever did. He had to kill Tank.

He imagined himself like one of those trapped animals that end up chewing their own legs off to escape. He was halfway there. He had managed to free one hand, by pulling so hard he had broken the skin, and stripped a large section of flesh off the top of his hand, leaving the bones exposed. The fury and adrenalin had kept him going and he was working on the other knot, despite the excruciating pain. He thought about the movie he'd seen where some guy had got his arm trapped under a boulder. He thought, if that guy could cut his own arm off with a blunt penknife, he could certainly get his hands out of these ropes. He would have hacked his other hand off if he'd needed to. He hoped that Tank wouldn't notice the growing pool of blood under his chair. He knew his hand was bleeding very badly because the rope he was working on had become slippery and it was difficult to get any kind of purchase on the knot. He wondered if he could use his own blood as lubricant to slip his other hand out. He was going to get free no matter what it took. There was only one thing he cared about now, and it certainly wasn't his own life. 

Tank had been ranting on about the enormous amount of preparation it had taken to set this whole thing up, congratulating himself on his own genius. In the process he'd managed to give himself away. Josh knew where Evie was, or at least he thought he knew. Tank had said something about 'crossing the road' and he'd talked about dolls' eyes staring at him for days... He kept talking about 'Mavis' and 'Harold', an old couple he'd clearly murdered from the sound of things, and how much fun he'd had torturing them. Gradually an image of Cathy and Arthur's livingroom floated into Josh's head. He had helped them out with a bit of gardening last year and he remembered that Cathy had a collection of china dolls everywhere. It was the only thing that made sense. Their house was across the road, it would have given Tank the perfect vantage point to watch them here in John's. He knew where Evie was!

If he was right, then he needed more than ever to get his hand free, so he could kill Tank, and free Evie. In some ways, he wished that he had some way of communicating with the others, it was strange being this isolated in a room full of people, but he had no idea what was going on with them.  He'd done such a good job of convincing Tank that he was catatonic, he thought they must have believed it too. He thought it was probably for the best that they didn't know what was going on with him. For his plan to work, for him to have that element of surprise, he needed them to believe it just as much as Tank...

*****

Kat was on her way to John's house, calling in reinforcements from all neighbouring police stations,  but she knew it would take time for them to arrive. She'd put out a call to all available units that had stayed behind today, and called in multiple ambulances. She knew Kyle was badly injured but she couldn't be sure about any of the others. She just hoped that they could get there in time before things got out of hand.

While driving, she'd called Carson to inform him of what was going on. He was shocked to hear what was happening but he was in his own world of trouble. The raid in the city had been an unmitigated disaster, and had resulted in a large number of casualties. They'd gone in looking for Tank but they'd ended up finding a meth lab, and been met by gunfire. There'd been a large explosion when some of the chemicals caught fire. It had been much more than they'd bargained for, and a number of police officers had been killed, and others injured. The young man they'd thought was Tank had been among the casualties. Carson said that he looked remarkably like Tank but it clearly wasn't him. They were busy sifting through the ruins of an explosion, and dealing with multiple arrests. Needless to say, Tank had not been there. He told her to hold up outside John's house and wait for reinforcements, labouring the point that they'd had enough heroics for one day. They couldn't afford to lose any more police officers, and she certainly wasn't equipped to go in on her own.

She pulled up a few houses down from John's house, not wanting to alert Tank to her presence. She looked at the house, all bright and welcoming looking from outside, and wondered what horror was waiting for her in there. She knew that Carson was right. She couldn't go in there on her own. She wasnt even properly suited and booted if there was an exchange of gunfire, and all she had was her handgun. If she charged in there now she might end up making things ten times worse. She knew she had to wait, for their sake as well as hers, but the waiting was unbearable. What if Tank had killed them all?! What if she was already too late?! Could she really just sit here waiting for reinforcements when they might be dying in there, and when she knew what Tank was capable of?! She'd heard him say '26 minutes and counting', they were almost out of time.

*****

Josh had finally managed to free his other hand and was waiting for his moment to strike.  Tank was pacing up and down in front of him, gleefully counting down the minutes. Evie's breathing was very laboured now. He could hear her gasping for air because Tank had turned the volume up to full capacity so every breath she took was reverberating around the room in stereo. It was an awful thing to listen to, but he thought how much worse it would be if it suddenly stopped. He needed her to keep going, each laboured breath was precious... He was willing her with everything he had to hold on, just a little bit longer. Tank was in a frenzy, hardly able to contain his excitement, skipping back and forth and talking incessantly about how amazing this whole thing was. Josh was doing his best to judge when Tank was in front of him and hoping that he might stop moving long enough for him to pounce.

"10... 9... 8... C'mon guys, count with me! 7...6...5...4... 3... 2... 1" Tank put his hand to his mouth and dropped to his knees on the floor.  The clock on the screen was now at zero. "It's going to happen soon... Its not an exact science, I calculated the amount of air she'd have based on body size... but... oh it's so beautiful!  You have no idea!" he said, staring at the screen with anticipation. Evie was still breathing, but only just...

Suddenly Josh was on top of Tank, reaching both hands around his throat. He'd knocked him over sideways and landed heavily on him, bringing the chair with him as he fell. His hands were coated in blood and Tank could see the bones inside Josh's right hand, where a large section of skin was missing. He was stunned for a second at this sudden reversal of fortune, and more than a little impressed by Josh's newfound strength. 'Not bad for a blind man', he thought to himself. Still, he couldn't let Josh take this moment from him, not when he'd come this far. He needed to hear that last delicious breath, to see the life leave Evie's body, and to know that he had done that. It was the crowning glory of his life's work. He couldn't miss it! 

He looked at Joshs furious face, so full of pain and anger, and couldn't help laughing. He dug his fingers into the injured part of Josh's hand, ripping the skin further back and making him cry out in pain. Josh gritted his teeth and did his best to hold on but the pain became too much and he loosened his grip. Tank used all his strength to headbutt Josh in the face, and then spun him over so the chair was on its back. Tank got to his feet, massaging his bruised throat, and put his foot on Josh's neck, laughing as Josh clawed at it in vain. With his legs still strapped to the chair there was nothing he could do. Tank glanced at Evie's unconscious body on the screen, and chuckled as he listened to the wheezing still coming sporadically from the speakers. It wouldn't be long now, he thought.

He was just about to turn, to tell Andy and Kyle how close they were to that wondrous moment, when he felt a sharp pain in his back. He tried to take a breath in but blood bubbled up into his mouth, gurgling out, and down his chest. He looked at it flowing down his shirt in shock. He turned around slowly to see Tamara with a knife in her hand. She plunged it as hard as she could into his chest three times and then pulled it out again. He hadn't had time to react. His legs buckled and he hit the floor like a sack of spuds. She knelt down beside him and stared him directly in the eye. "Where's Evie?" she asked, sticking her fingers in one of his knife wounds. 

He cried out in pain and then started laughing. The blood was gurgling up in bursts, in rhythm with his heartbeat, and he was half choking on it. "You'll never find her in time." he said, grinning through his blood filled mouth. "She belongs to me.... I get to take her with me" he slurred, as his head slumped. His eyes took on a vacant expression, and just like that, he was gone.

The door suddenly burst open as Kat and the other cops flooded through the doorway. They had been expecting a standoff but what they were met with was a scene of carnage. Tank was clearly dead, slumped in a pool of his own blood. Josh was lying on his back, tied to a chair, coughing and wheezing from the injuries to his throat and nose. He also had a serious injury to his hand that was bleeding badly. There was blood everywhere. Tamara was back on her feet putting pressure on Kyle's knifewound, but Kyle's shirt was soaked in blood and he'd gone a terrible shade of grey. Andy was still totally restrained but staring at them over his shoulder, wide-eyed and pleadingly, as soon as they came in. This looked like a scene from a horror film, complete with sound effects. There was heavy laboured breathing emanating from the speakers all around the room. They stood, mouths hanging open, for what seemed like an eternity.

Tamara screamed at them to get an ambulance. She was sobbing and pressing down on Kyle's chest wound with part of her top that she'd ripped up. 

Everything had happened so quickly! When Josh had flung himself at Tank she'd sprung into action, getting to her feet, with no clear idea of what she was going to do. Kyle had regained consciousness a little while ago. When he saw her leap up, he'd caught her eye, and motioned with his head to the knife in his chest. He'd somehow silently told her, motioning with his eyes, to pull the knife out and use it on Tank. How he'd let her do that without screaming, she had no idea. He'd made that sacrifice for the rest of them. She'd hesitated for a second, her eyes filling with tears as she looked into Kyle's frightened eyes, but he'd urged her on with a decisive nod. He'd closed his eyes tightly, clenching his teeth on the rags in his mouth, and braced himself for the pain. She'd pulled it out as quickly and as smoothly as she could, and then she'd turned and thrust it into Tank's back. 

Now Kyle was bleeding profusely and he'd quickly lost consciousness. She didn't think she could live with herself if Kyle died because of this. If they'd just waited a few more minutes the cops would have arrived and she wouldn't have had to do that. She couldn't get the expression on his face out of her head, he'd been in so much pain! "Hold on, Kyle, please hold on!" she sobbed at him over and over. The paramedics arrived and quickly swung into action.

Kat had been hovering over Andy as the paramedics checked him over. He'd already told Kat about Evie, and she was staring in horror at the TV screen wondering where to start looking. "Do any of you have any idea where he might be keeping her? Is there anything he said for us to go on?"

Andy shook his head, looking distant and dazed. He seemed to have gone into shock. The paramedics rushed Kyle past on a gurney and Tamara left with him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have to go with him!" she shouted, as they rushed out the door.

Josh was lying spluttering on his back. Tank had crushed his windpipe quite badly, and he was struggling to breathe, but as soon as the paramedics removed Josh's gag he began to shout as best he could. In a hoarse voice, that was more like a bark, he said "I think I know where she is! I think she's in one of the houses across the street. Number 83!". With his stomach suddenly tied in one gigantic knot, he realised he hadn't heard Evie breathe in a while. "Go!" he roared at them. 

Josh was crying now as he listened out for Evie. The room was suddenly so much quieter. Her breaths had been so far apart for the last while, that he'd kept thinking each one was her last breath, only for her to take another at the last possible moment. But it had been too long now. They needed to find her!  

 

*****

 

Josh sat by Evie's bed, holding her hand. A ventilator was doing the breathing for her and she was hooked up to a multitude of machines. He could hear the sounds of all the different mechanisms keeping her alive. He remembered a lot of those noises from his own stint in hospital. Whoosh noises from the ventilator, incessant beeping from the heart and blood pressure monitor... He'd hated those noises when he'd been in Evie's position but he'd never been so grateful for them now. As long as they kept going, he knew she was still alive. 'Severe hypoxia' they'd said. They wouldn't know how bad the damage was until she woke up but the doctors were hopeful. Josh had been inconsolable when Oscar had tried to throw him out, blaming him for all of this, and for unleashing a murderer on his sister. In some ways he thought Oscar was right, knowing that Tank had wanted him to witness Evie die. But Evie had been the one to bring Tank into their lives in the first place. Tank had become obsessed with both of them. He didn't think he could go on if Evie didn't make it. Evie was the only thing that mattered to him now. Zac had talked Oscar round and they'd eventually allowed him back in. He couldn't leave her, not until he knew she was going to live. Her family was coming and going in rotation but Oscar and Josh had been the ones sitting by her bedside, day after day. 

Josh's hand was bandaged up and needed skin grafts, but he was refusing treatment until he knew that Evie would be okay. Andy was in every day, pleading with him to have the surgery. The longer he left it, the less likely that they'd have a successful outcome. He'd ripped all the flesh off the top of his hand, exposing the bones and the tendons. The pain was excruciating but he refused to leave Evie's bedside, reluctantly agreeing to take antibiotics and painkillers. Even the doctors had tried, saying they were concerned about the risk of infection, but they couldn't force him to undergo surgery if he wouldn't give consent.

Josh listened to those machines beeping and whooshing, and held on gently to her hand. It felt so small and fragile, he was nearly frightened of breaking it. He wanted her to wake up more than anything but he was frightened of what they might have to deal with when she did. This was going to be difficult on so many levels.  He worried that she might wake up like he did, with brain damage, and have to fight her way back to the world of the living. What if she wasn't as lucky as him, what if she couldn't? What if she was left in a vegetative state?! Even if she didn't have brain damage there was the emotional damage to deal with. She'd been through the worst ordeal imaginable. How was she ever going to come to terms with what Tank had done? How would she ever get past it? 

Her injuries were more than just physical, but she did have physical injuries too. Tank had burned the skin on her stomach where the tattoo was, leaving the clear outline of an iron that you'd use for clothing. There was one going horizontal, and one vertical, to form a 'T'. They were full thickness burns and were going to require skin grafts once she was out of the danger zone. She had a hairline fracture to the back of her skull, and they knew from the physical examination that she'd been sexually assaulted. He didn't know how he was going to talk to her about all of this. When he thought about what Tank had done to her, he couldn't contain his anger. Only the pain in his hand could distract him from it. He was almost grateful for the injury to his hand, pressing on it every now and then, when things got too much for him. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms, and never let her go again, but he knew that she was going to find it very hard to come back from this. She wasn't going to be the same bright and bubbly girl she'd been before, but he hoped that someone like the girl he loved might come back to them eventually. He was going to be here for her when she woke up, and hold her hand through everything. No matter what. He just hoped she wouldn't push him away, the way that he did her. "Please wake up, Evie", he begged her silently.

*****

Kyle was still in the ICU but he'd regained consciousness yesterday. He'd been very lucky that they'd got him when they did. It had been touch and go for a while there, and he'd needed blood transfusion after blood transfusion. His lung had collapsed when Tamara pulled the knife out and he'd required extensive surgery to fix a tear to a major artery. He'd been lucky that the knife had only just missed his heart. They'd had to crack his chest open so he was heavily medicated for the pain. Tamara had barely left his side since he'd been admitted, sleeping in the chair beside his bed both day and night. 

Tamara sat by his bed, holding his hand and stroking the skin softly with her thumb. He opened his eyes again, slowly focusing on her face, and gave her the biggest smile he could manage. He was clearly in a lot of pain despite the morphine. He'd been so out of it yesterday that all he'd talked was gibberish, but he seemed more lucid today. "I'm so proud of you" he said, smiling weakly. 

"I thought I'd killed you" she said, shaking her head at him with tears in her eyes. "I can't believe I did that to you! It must have hurt so much!"

He squeezed her hand, and grimaced a little, from the pain of even that small movement. "You didn't do anything to me... You did what had to be done.... You saved us all." he said, speaking in a breathless way. It was painful to breathe in. "I don't think... I could love you... any more than I do right now."

"I'm so sorry Kyle!" she cried, putting her head down on the mattress beside him, and sobbing uncontrollably. She'd been holding in so much of the stress and trauma for the last few days, and blaming herself over and over for moving that knife. She kept asking herself why she'd done it, and if he'd really wanted her to, or if she'd just seen what she wanted to see in that moment, and basically murdered her boyfriend? She loved him so much, how could she have pulled that knife from his chest?!

"Hey, hey, hey" he said, lifting his arm slowly to put his hand on top of her head. He winced at the pain, and said, "I told you to do it!... Not many people... would have had the guts.... I told you... I'm proud of you."  Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he hunted for the button to self - administer a shot of morphine. He pressed the button and turned to look at her, his big brown eyes filled with concern. He was nearly scared to ask her, not really prepared for the answer if it was bad news, but he needed to know. With his voice shaking, he asked "Is Evie okay?"...

[Ludub]

Thanks for reading, everyone! Thank you to KittCatt, Kristen, ~JarlieFanEver ~, and Suzza101 for taking the time to comment on my story. I have enjoyed writing this so much more than I ever expected, but all good things must come to an end.  So here it is, my final chapter. I hope you enjoy it.

CHAPTER 40

2 years later...

"Guys, it's starting!" yelled Ricky from the couch. She had Casey on her knee and was bouncing him up and down, and playing horsey, while he giggled. "Guys, they're on now!" she yelled again.

Andy ran in, looking excited, and leapt over the back of the sofa,  taking the seat in the middle. Kat joined him a second later, walking around the couch in a much more dignified way. "I'm nervous!" said Andy, smiling at Kat and taking her hand, "I hope this goes well for them... I can't believe they're doing this!"

"It's so brave" said Ricky, smiling at Andy. Then she leant forward, hugging Casey tightly, and added "That's right, isn't it Case?! Uncle Joshie and Auntie Evie are really, brave aren't they?!"

Kyle arrived, with Tamara, and led her by the elbow with his other arm around her back, gently over to an armchair and helped lower her into the seat. He sat down on the arm of the chair, wincing a little, and took Tamara's hand. "Did they announce them already?!"  asked Tamara, sounding both nervous and excited, and biting her bottom lip.

"Yeah, they said they were coming on after the break" said Ricky, smiling across at Tamara. Looking at Tamara's bump, she wrinkled her nose and said, "I remember when I was that big, it's so uncomfortable!".

Kyle put his hand on Tamara's tummy and looked at her with pure adoration. "It's not long now, only 2 weeks." he said, smiling from ear to ear.

They all fell silent as the show came back from commercial break and the two presenters began to make the introductions. All eyes were on the screen. 

"So today we have Josh Barrett and Evelyn Maguire. They're here to talk to us about their new book "Episode Nine" which deals with the horrific ordeal they lived through, the kidnap and torture they endured at the hands of the 'Sweatbox Killer' 2 years ago." said Sarah, the morning TV presenter, giving them a fake sympathetic smile. 

Her colleague, Jim, smiled at Josh and Evie, and said, "It's lovely to have you with us".

The presenters looked at the well dressed couple sitting on the sofa opposite them and were surprised at how well presented and put together they appeared, given what they were supposed to have been through.  The young man had a fitted dark blue shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of smart grey trousers. The girl was wearing a sophisticated black dress and an expensive looking pair of high heel shoes. They didn't look like the victims of violent crime, they looked like young office workers out for a business lunch. Looking at them now, no one would have guessed the horror they'd been through. 

"So, Evelyn, you and your boyfriend here, co-authored this book about the 'Sweatbox Killer'?" asked Sarah, getting down to the nuts and bolts of the interview straight away. "Most people will have heard of the 'Sweatbox Killer', there's been a great deal of media coverage over the last two years, but now you've released a book telling your side of the story. A collaborative account, told from your perspective, with some added interviews with some of the other victims. You wrote it yourselves, it wasn't a ghost writer?"

Evie gave Josh's hand a little squeeze, and he cleared his throat, "Well, Sarah, we don't actually ever call him the 'Sweatbox Killer' in our book... We don't like using that name. It was the tabloid newspapers that insisted on using that name. His name was Wayne Snelgrove, or "Tank"... I think giving him that nickname would have pleased him immensely, giving him some sort of celebrity status, and we're not willing to give him that satisfaction."

Jim sat forward a little, and said "But you did write it together?", looking at Evie for the answer.

"Yes, we did." said Josh, "Both of us... together". They were doing the usual thing of asking the sighted person, and ignoring him completely, as though he wasn't capable of answering for himself. Josh wasn't going to let himself be sidelined. 

Jim decided to go in for the kill. "Well, I suppose the big question is, why would you decide to write this? Why would you want to put all the details of what you suffered out into the public sphere?... Some people might say that it's a shameless attempt to cash in on the tragedy of so many others, the ones that didn't make it... Phoebe Nicholson, Cathy and Arthur Matthews, Greg Snelgrove... What would you say to them?"

Evie fixed him with an icy stare, and said, "W-we've worked very hard to get to a p-point where we can t-talk about what happened to us..." 

Evie had recovered her speech significantly over the last 2 years with a lot of speech therapy but she had a slower way of speaking now and stammered sometimes, especially on words with hard sounds like 't' and 'p', and she had a lot of difficulty with words beginning with 's'. 

In s-s-some ways... maybe it would have been easier if I'd just d-died... It's been a very long r-road to recovery and I'm not even t-totally th-there yet. I d-don't know if I ever will be." she continued. 

She turned to look at Josh, who was nodding along in agreement. She reached out and turned his face towards her, and gave him a light kiss on the lips. Turning back to the presenter, she said, "J-Josh has been my r-rock, but we've had to f-fight to come... b-back from this. S-s-something like this can destroy you as a p-person and d-destroy all your relation-s-ships. We're doing b-better and s-some of that is th-thanks to this book. I d-dont think Phoebe, or any of the others, w-would begrudge us that."

Josh threw a half-smile in the direction of the presenters and said, "Tank was all about control... Everything he did was about having control over someone... and breaking them into little pieces." He plucked nervously at a button on the arm of the sofa. "We wrote this book together... to try to take some control back."

Andy was watching his little brother on that screen very closely, worried for him and looking for the warning signs. Josh had developed a number of 'tells' that showed when things were getting too much for him. The fidgeting was an obvious one but so far he seemed to be holding it together okay. "Go on Josh, you're doing well, mate!" he said to the TV screen. Kat leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. She was amazed at the strength and the bravery of these two, and loved Andy for caring so much about them.

Josh ran his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes, before continuing. "The tabloids ran all sorts of ridiculous stories, full of lies... I was doing a lot of therapy at the time to try to come to terms with things... I couldn't talk about it... I... I mean, the words just wouldn't come out... I'd...um... started... self harming...." He pulled at the button until it came off in his hand. Evie put her hand on his knee and rubbed it in a supportive way. He took a deep breath, and then continued. "My psychiatrist suggested writing it down instead... So... I started... and I suddenly found that I couldn't stop".

"You couldn't stop what... writing?" said Sarah, in a very deliberate way just to clarify things for the viewers.

"Yes... It started out as therapy but it ended up like 60,000 words... I needed to get it out of my head and onto paper".

Evie chewed nervously at one of her finger nails and added, "I was having a really hard time t-too. We were t-trying to be a c-couple but things were so t-tough for both of us that we were just d-dragging each other down." She sighed and covered her mouth with her hand, looking like she was about to start crying. Dropping her hand again, she said, "It was just so hard. We were b-both so messed up." She looked across at Josh again and gave a half smile. "I'm not s-s-saying we're completely fixed now... but we're d-doing... b-better" she said, nodding her head slowly.

She reached over and took Josh's hand between both of hers. She looked at the interviewers and desperately blinked back the tears that had started welling up. "Josh s-s-suggested I try writing too.... s-s-so... we b-both wrote our respective s-s-stories..."

Josh turned to face Evie, doing his best to smile in her direction. "Then we took a really big leap... I showed her mine and she showed me hers." He said, laughing a little halfheartedly. It was a joke that the publisher had specifically asked him to make, to try to lighten the mood.

"It was awful!" exclaimed Evie. "N-not the writing!" she added quickly, and laughing nervously. "R-reading what happened from the other p-person's p-perspective, s-s-seeing it through their eyes..."

"So to speak" said Josh, smirking a little sadly. Another one of the publisher's planted jokes.

Andy looked at Kyle and rolled his eyes. Josh had told him about these lame jokes he'd been asked to make, but it was all part of the deal.

"It's horrible... but in a w-weird way it helps..." said Evie. "C-confronting it like that, laying it b-bare, and looking at it from a p-perspective that isn't yours..." said Evie, trying her very best to smile, but failing miserably.

"We've done a lot of counselling, individually and together... and maybe you could call this book a sort of ... 'collaborative counselling session'. It's really helped us." said Josh. He knitted his eyebrows in a frown, and said, "It was only when the tabloids wouldn't leave us alone... They were hounding us all the time. Stupid question, after stupid question!... You have no idea!... How these people sleep at night, I don't know!?... I mean you're going through something like that, the worst time in your life, and you get someone coming up asking the most insensitive questions. There were days that we didn't want to leave the house or answer the phone." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering the stress of it all. "Then we had the idea to publish it... to answer all those questions once and for all." said Josh.

"It's been l-liberating in a way" said Evie,  "...and its given us a little more control over who we have to t-talk to."

"Can I ask why it's called 'Episode Nine'?" asked Jim. He was quite impressed with this young couple. They seemed much older than their years, which he supposed made sense. They were only 21 years old but they'd seen things, and had such bad things happen to them, that they'd lost that youthful exuberance. They were like a pair of old and battle-weary souls who were trapped in young and beautiful bodies. He'd read portions of the book so he knew most of the more gorey details. He knew the injuries they'd sustained and the repercussions those injuries had had on their lives. He knew Josh was blind because of it. He was curious about them though, it was hard not to be. He noted the support bandage Josh was still wearing on his hand, and the vacant stare of his sightless eyes. Looking at Evie, he wondered what the scars on her midriff looked like, and whether they still formed a 'T' or not. There weren't many visible signs of what they'd been through, but he wondered if they were really such young and beautiful bodies after all.

"Well, um... Tank left a sort of 'movie' , if you can call it that... He wanted the world to see it, so he could show everyone what a genius he was... I think it's clear he was no genius. He was sick and twisted... and clever.... but not a genius...  When it comes down to it, he was a psychopathic teenager who got carried away with his own hunger for power and control. Like those kids that go on shooting sprees in America." said Josh. "He wanted to be famous, and I suppose he got his wish". Josh took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. His heart was beating a little too fast just thinking about it.

Andy was getting worried now, he could see that Josh's anxiety was getting on top of him. He was pressing his injured hand into the arm of the chair. He'd started doing that when he needed to calm down. He had nerve damage in the skin on the top of his hand, causing hypersensitivity, so any contact was painful. He used pain to release built up stress. He could see that Evie wasn't doing too well either but she was generally better at hiding it.

"What he really left was a shambled together collection of videos documenting the emotional torture he put me through in the lead up to... that day... and the very real physical torture of all his other victims." 

"But, 'Episode Nine'?" he asked again.

"Episode 9 is missing. It's a huge gaping hole in my memory. He drugged me... and kidnapped me... and I lost a lot of time" said Josh, grimacing, and fiddling with the threads on the sofa where the button used to be.

"Josh can't remember what happened that n-night and for s-s-some reason T-tank  chose to leave episode 9 out of the m-movie... It's his p-parting b-blow, just that last little bit of psy-psychological t-torture..." said Evie. She rubbed Josh's leg again, and he took her hand and held it tightly. She knew he hated talking about it, even if he had insisted on calling the book that to force himself to confront it.

"So, do you think Episode 9 is out there somewhere?" asked Sarah, sounding a little too excited by the prospect. "What if it's something so terrible that you wouldn't want to remember?"

"Thanks for that" said Josh, giving her a sarcastic smile. "I'd never thought of that!" he said, snorting in derision. "You don't think I torture myself every night, and every day, about what happened. Maybe I'm better off not knowing...but it's a piece of me that he took... he took that night from me... and I can't get it back... I think not knowing is probably worse. Your imagination is usually worse than anything they can do to you in reality."

"I d-don't know about that" said Evie, staring into the distance and biting her lip. "S-s-sometimes I think I'd like to reach into my s-s-skull... and claw out the p-parts of my b-brain that remember that night with Tank... If I could have a big f-foggy blank instead... I'd be happy."

Josh squeezed Evie's hand, feeling bad about making this all about him. He knew that what Evie had been through was so much worse than his ordeal but they'd agreed beforehand to steer the focus away from her. She couldn't have coped with direct questions about the torture or rape, and they'd made that clear to the presenters when they'd agreed to do the show. Evie's story was off limits. But it was clear that Evie's mind had drifted off there anyway, and he could feel her body trembling on the couch beside him as she tried not to cry.

The presenters must have had people in their ears telling them to move on to something a little more lighthearted. They both suddenly started smiling like maniacs and straightened up like they'd just been told off for slouching. "Uh huh" said Jim, making it sound like he hadn't listened to a word either of them had just said. Eager to get the interview back on track, he said, "I understand that Kyle Braxton made a good recovery in the end? He had very serious injuries, didn't he?"

Evie nodded at the interviewer, grateful for the interruption. "Y-yes, he was in the ICU for a long t-time but he p-pulled though, thankfully... His s-s-stab wound meant that he had to have a...th-th-thoracotomy... It's a t-tough s-s-surgery to recover from."

Jim smiled at Evie, and said "And he and one of the other victims... Tamara Kingsley... got married last year,  didn't they? And I've been told they're expecting?!"

They both nodded, smiling from ear to ear. "T-twins!" said Evie, giggling a little.

"We're both really happy for them. They've had a really tough time with all this too. Kyle was in a very bad way physically and emotionally for a long time. Phoebe's passing really affected him. She was his ex-girlfriend,  and they'd been friends for a long time. It was hard to deal with, on top of everything else... He's only really getting things back on track now." said Josh.

Tamara looked up at Kyle, who was watching the screen, and took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. He glanced down at her and gave her a half-smile. Kyle was living with chronic pain and was on fairly heavy medication to help him live a normal life. Things hadn't been easy for them. He was still doing physio twice a week because his chest muscles were so weak and he had difficulty standing for any length of time. He'd been back at work about a year now but he spent a lot of time sitting behind the bar doing paperwork. The one shining light in his life was Tamara and that wedding band on her finger.  She meant everything to him and he was over the moon about the impending arrival of their twins. He couldn't wait to be a dad, it was what he'd always dreamt of. He would finally have a family and somewhere to truly belong... He looked back at the screen and smiled. They'd come a long way the last few years.

"Quite a few romances out of this tragedy, weren't there?!" said Sarah, sounding a little bitchy.

Josh chose to ignore her tone and smiled, genuinely pleased for his brother, "Yeah, my brother Andy, and Constable Kat Chapman. She was one of the cops working on the case. They got together a short time after..."

Andy looked at Kat with a slightly guilty expression. They'd never told Josh that they'd been seeing each other before Tank took them all hostage. They didn't want the Police Department to know and it was just easier to keep it a secret from everyone else. Tamara smirked to herself thinking of his phone log. 

"...and they're still going strong!" said Josh. "They're actually getting married next year." He shook his head, smiling incredulously, "Never thought my brother would end up marrying a copper!" 

"What about you two?" asked Jim. He'd really warmed to them at this stage and felt sorry for them that they'd been through such a terrible ordeal so early in life. He hoped they could make a go of things. They seemed like a nice couple and they really seemed to care about each other. "No wedding bells on the horizon?".

"Not yet" said Evie, smiling and squeezing Josh's hand.  "W-we're actually leaving for Uni t-tomorrow. We b-both got into UWA so we'll be moving to P-perth! I got into English L-literature... It's a b-bit of a d-departure for me,  but I r-realised I really enjoy wr-writing"

"And you, Josh?" he asked, genuinely interested. Josh seemed like an intelligent young man, and he knew from the book that his dreams of being an architect had been crushed, so he wondered what avenue he was heading down now.

"Psychology" said Josh, laughing a little. "What else?!"

*****

"I'm so proud of my little brother!" shouted Andy, throwing his arms around Josh as soon as he walked through the door, startling him, and scaring Bonnie the guide dog. 

"Andy! Let go!" said Josh, laughing and pretending to be annoyed with him. "I have to get Bonnie some water" he said, stalking off towards the kitchen. 

Andy watched him go, smiling from ear to ear, before turning to give Evie a hug. "You did so well!" said Andy, "like proper TV stars!" Evie hugged him back and smiled up at him all teary-eyed, her chin trembling as she tried to blink back the tears. "Hey, hey, you okay?" he said, tenderly taking her chin to turn her face up towards his.

"I'm f-fine..." she said, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand. "I'm just feeling a b-bit emotional and overwhelmed."

He gave her another hug and brought her over to the sofa, getting her to sit down beside Kat. She was shaking, and blinking furiously to stifle the tears. He knelt down in front of her, tilting his head in sympathy, and said, "We can cancel the party if you're not up to it?"

"No" she said shaking her head emphatically, "I don't want that... I w-want to see everyone!" She wiped angrily at the tears rolling down her face. "I d-don't know why I'm like this!"

Josh made his way over to the couch, and Andy helped him find the space beside Evie. He'd heard her getting upset while he was in the kitchen feeding the dog. He took her hand between both of his and said, "Evie, it's okay to not be okay. You know that... we can stay another day and do the party tomorrow... or not do the party at all. It's totally up to you". 

She looked at him, sniffling, and wiping away the tears with her free hand. She laughed a little and said, "No, I just had a l-little w-wobble... I'll b-be okay." She gave him a peck on the lips and smiled as best she could. "I want t-to s-s-see everyone".

*****

The garden was full of people milling around with drinks, laughing and chatting happily. They'd never actually had a housewarming party so this was nice, thought Andy.

Andy and Josh had moved house a few months after the hostage situation because Josh couldn't be persuaded to come back to their house, or anywhere near John's. He'd been sleeping in the hospital ever since it happened and wouldn't come home, not even to eat or take a shower. Eventually Andy had decided that they needed a new start and he'd packed them up and moved them somewhere new. Kyle had spent nearly six months in hospital, so Tamara had lived with the boys in their new house until Kyle was ready to come home. Kyle and Tamara had found a place of their own together after that. Now it was Andy and Kat, and Josh and Evie, a happy little foursome in their cosy two bedroom house. But pretty soon Josh and Evie would be gone and that just left Andy and Kat, co-habiting like a proper married couple. Andy was a little scared at the prospect.

The garden wasn't a huge space either, and tonight it was heaving with people who'd come to say goodbye to Evie and Josh before they left for Uni. They'd all been very impressed with the TV interview. 

Andy looked across the garden at Josh and Evie standing together, hand in hand, while they talked to Mr Stewart and Roo. He was going to miss them and in a way he was terrified to let them go. Josh and Evie, and their recovery, had been such a huge focus of his life the last few years, he wasn't sure what he was going to do with himself once they were gone. He was also frightened to let them out of his sight in case anything else happened to them. He still struggled with his own sense of guilt. He wondered why he'd been the lucky one who'd come out relatively unscathed. Why had Evie and Kyle had to suffer so much when all he'd had was a bad concussion? When he thought about sitting in that chair while Kyle nearly bled to death, and Evie struggled for breath, he felt like he'd let them all down somehow. Josh had nearly skinned himself alive to get free, and Tamara had saved everyone. What had he done?! Nothing! The shame of it often kept him awake at night.

Kyle was sitting at the patio table with Tamara, laughing with Ricky and Nate, and enjoying a few beers. It wasn't often that Kyle kicked back like this. His medication meant that he couldn't drink much anymore, and sometimes he was in too much pain to come to social things like this. It was nice to see him enjoying himself. Ash was sitting with them too. Phoebe's death had hit Ash very hard, and he'd gone off the rails for a while, drinking himself half to death and getting himself mixed up in some pretty stupid stuff, but he seemed to be getting his life back in order now. As Andy looked around the garden at their friends, he thought about how much Tank had impacted all these people's lives, directly and indirectly.

He could see that Josh was talking to Oscar and Andrew now, while Evie talked to Matt and Maddy. Josh and Oscar had managed to work things out eventually. Oscar had apologised to Josh in the end, saying he was sorry for taking things out on him when Evie was first admitted. He knew Josh hadn't been to blame for what Tank did but he'd needed to lash out at someone, and Josh had seemed like the easiest option. Oscar had really stood by his sister throughout her recovery, and he and Josh had become quite close again as a result. It hadn't really come as much of a surprise to any of them when Oscar had finally come out, but Josh had been the one to support him and encourage him to tell his friends and family. They were getting on well now and Oscar was making plans to come visit them at Uni in a few weeks. He was even going to bring his boyfriend Andrew, who they all seemed to really like. He was a physio at the hospital who'd helped get Evie back on her feet, so they all knew him pretty well at this stage, 

Things were getting better, slowly...

He looked around the faces in the garden and breathed a heavy sigh. Things hadn't seemed this hopeful in a long time.  Kat came up behind him and leaned her arms over his shoulders and around his neck. She kissed him on the cheek and said, "This is nice". He turned his head to look at her and smiled, "I know, it is, isn't it?".

Kat said, "I thought you should know... they cremated Tank's body. No one in his family wanted to claim him, so it just sat in cold storage till they did a mass cremation yesterday. No one wanted him."

He took her hand and kissed it. "Kat, can we please just have one evening where we don't talk about him?... I'm just so tired of it."

*****

Evie and Josh had just left for Perth with their car stuffed to the brim with all their things, and Bonnie the dog stretched out on the back seat. They left, all smiles and excited waves, as they headed for their new life in Perth, leaving this whole sorry mess of bad memories behind them. 

Kat and Andy closed their front door, and he put his arms around her waist. "Well, future Mrs Barrett", he said smiling from ear to ear, "What do you want to do now that we have this place all to ourselves?"

She smiled back at him, putting her hands on either side of his face, and gave him a long slow kiss. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she said, smirking at him mischievously.

"Uh, I think so?" he said, laughing a little. 

"Great, you get the pizza, and I'll hunt the ice cream out of the freezer!" she said, running and jumping on the couch. She looked round at the disappointed expression on his face, and bit her bottom lip, smiling at him and laughing. "The look on your face!" she said, giggling like a schoolgirl. 

His face broke into a smile, and he leapt over the back of the couch,  landing beside her. He started to kiss her, tickling her under the arms, and she squealed excitedly. "We could still get the ice cream" he said, laughing.

He pulled an envelope out from under him. It was a padded envelope and it had something hard inside that had been digging into his hip since he'd landed. It had Josh's name on it, on a printed and official looking sticker.

Andy held it up, and looked at Kat quizzically. She looked a little guilty and said, "I forgot to tell Josh about it. It arrived this morning"

Andy started to rip it open and found a DVD inside. It had "Episode 9" written in black marker on the outside of the case. There was a solicitor's letter inside saying that this DVD was to be issued in the event of Wayne Snelgrove's death, but that the solicitor had only received notification of his death when the body had been cremated and all the paperwork had been filed. There was also a handwritten note from Tank.

"Dearest Josh, Thought you might enjoy a private viewing. Here's to a lovely evening we spent together. Much love, Tank xox"

Andy's stomach turned as he looked at it and his heart began to race. He looked at Kat with his mouth hanging open. He didn't know what to say. Kat tried to take the DVD from him, and said, "I don't think we should watch it. I don't think any of us should watch it"

"We have to, Kat" said Andy. "We have to know what he did. Josh needs to know... I need to call him and get him to come back, they can't be too far away yet, they can still turn around" he said, hunting his pockets for his phone.

"Wait, Andy!" said Kat, in a plaintive voice. She looked decidedly worried. "Maybe we should find out what's on there first? Josh is starting to get his life together. What if this puts him over the edge and he can't deal with it?" She took Andy's hand and looked at him pleadingly, "What if it's something really bad?!"

He sat looking at the DVD, twirling the case round and round, trying to decide what to do. After a few minutes he got up and went over to the DVD player. With hands shaking so much he could hardly get the DVD in the slot, he put it in and pressed play. Coming back to the sofa, and taking Kat's hand, he wondered if he was doing the right thing.

The DVD ran for 15 minutes but they should have turned it off much sooner. They sat on the couch with faces drained of colour. Andy stared at the floor, unsure of how he was going to speak to Josh when he called from Perth. How would he ever look him in the face again? Kat was staring at her hands, equally unsure of how to look Andy in the eye. Some things cannot be unseen.
 

 

 

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