Justine Russell

The local park, a few hundred metres away from the local chippy, early afternoon on a brisk spring day.

I’m waiting on a bench for my friend to arrive. We’d agreed to meet at half-one but it’s two now and I’m beginning to get annoyed. Priya — my friend — is always late. She promises with wide eyes and earnest smiles that this was the last time, I swear! and sends me a sheepish, apologetic text the next time round.

The wind is picking up and the light jacket I’m wearing is barely fending off the chill. I keep checking my phone, hoping that Priya will send me a message letting me know that she has arrived. But no luck. The last message was sent half an hour ago, Priya had just gotten on the bus. She won’t be arriving anytime soon.

I wrap my arms around myself, bracing against the wind, and watch ducks choke up some limp bread left by an overenthusiastic child and his resigned parents. They had entertained me for a brief ten minutes until the parents had decided a whole loaf of bread was adequate for the dozen or so ducks congregating around and that they probably shouldn’t empty the second bag into the lake. The screams of the child can still be heard in the distance, if you listen carefully enough.

A shadow falls over me.

I look up expecting Priya to be sneaking up on me, but it isn’t her.

“You’re sitting on my bench, love.” The old man standing before me says in a rasping voice. He’s white, short with wide shoulders, deep-set eyes. His face is so deeply lined it’s remarkably loose. It looks as though it could be peeled off easily, in a careless gesture.

“Your bench?” I ask, nervous but incredulous.

“I always sit here.”

I shift to on end of the bench, the irritation towards my friend being redirected to this stranger in the form of stubbornness. “Don’t let me stop you.”

He sits down slowly and sets his plastic bags down on the floor. I’m tense, stressed by this sudden proximity to a complete stranger. He leans back, legs spread wide open in a domineering stance. We sit, silent, for a few moments.

“You know,” he says, speaking in a slow deliberate manner, “back in the day, if someone had talked to me in the way you did just now, i would have kicked his teeth in.”

He speaks so casually he could be speaking about the pale sun dipping through the clouds.

I’m frozen to the spot – alarm bells begging me to leave that spot, “What?”

He doesn’t reply immediately. He stares down at my feet, at the Docs I’m wearing. “Wore those very shoes in fact.”

“Are you being serious?” My grip on my phone is painfully tight.

He laughs, “Of course.” He looks at me directly. His eyes are a milky weak blue, hardly intimidating. And yet I’m terrified. “But don’t you worry, love, I didn’t punch pretty girls like yourself.”

His tone of voice implies he did something else, possible worse.

“What did you do?” My voice doesn’t sound as strong as it was a moment ago.

The man doesn’t say anything for a while. I can tell he’s chewing on his words, imagining what they’d taste like out loud. His bags rustle as a breeze dances around us and my phone stays silent of any notification from Priya.

“Well, I was a ladies man.” The man starts, looking ahead at the lake once more. “After a successful date, wining and dining and the like, I’d invite the lady home. Some took more convincing than others, but I’d always convince them in the end. Took them to the same house I live in now, just on the end of South Lane. Decoration has changed, mind you.”

South Lane… that’s only a street over from mine.

“What did you do to them?” I almost know the response when I ask the question.

“What most would do after a successful date.” He winks at me then, laughing hoarsely at the disgusted expression that must have flashed across my face.

He sighs, “But afterwards I’d ask them to stay, forever. They never wanted to.” He leans closer to me, like he is divulging a secret. I can smell his decaying breath. “That was when I’d take a carving knife and slash their pretty little necks. That way they stayed with me forever after all.”

That is more than I can bear. I get up suddenly, gathering all my belongings, and make my way as quickly as possible to the closest exit.

At the gate I turn round, hoping that he isn’t watching me. And he isn’t. He sits serenely, hands clasped and observing the ducks. It’s almost like I’d imagined what he’d said.

I’m shaking, I realise when I stand just outside the park. Adrenaline of some sort is making itself known, making it hard for me to think.

Someone calls my name. It’s Priya, out of breath and smiling.

“What’s wrong?” She asks once she gets close enough to see my face.

“Let’s go to mine,” I say instead of replying.

She follows without complaint, apologising for being late and asking, worried, whether anything had happened.

And something had happened. I’ll tell her later, when we’re in my room, surrounded by my things – a safe space. But for now, as we pass South Lane and I see a detached house set apart from the others, I can only think of him. Sitting calmly in a park. A murderer.