Five Tall Tales E-Book

Gerry Chadwick

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Another collection of short stories featuring a combination of Horror and Sci Fi.

With a bit of mystery and thriller thrown in, hope you enjoy reading them as much as i loved writing them!!

Leseprobe

Gerry Chadwick

Five Tall Tales

As always, for DebbieBookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Kings Pawn

Kings Pawn

Dinah didn’t know what made her stop at the pawn shop that day. She had never stopped there before but the moment she saw the chess set she knew it was fate.

Dinah was a chess fanatic, collector, player, queen of her local chess society. Which was rare, even in the modern era the chess world was still very male dominated. So why stop at this store, she didn’t know. But she didn’t care when she saw the set in the window!

It was a classic black and white marble board and there was a classic style to the pieces, however, one side was a dark, charcoal grey, not black and the other side was a creamy white and it was the way they caught the light that attracted her the most. Small crystal flecks glittered when the light caught them. Instantly, she knew exactly where it would fit in her home office. There was a table with a Tiffany lamp she had bought a while ago. The flecks would catch the light from that lamp beautifully.

She bought the set from the tall, creepy guy in the store. Pretending to browse while he packed it carefully into a box. Nothing else appealed to her but she didn’t want to chat to him, she never really had much in the way of social skills. Didn’t take part in “girl talk” at work because she had no interest in fashion, men and god forbid, babies!

Dinah’s world was numbers and chess. As a high earning accountant she saved her rich clients millions and that paid well. That gave her time to feed her passion, her love, chess. Her first set had also been bought second hand, when she was just thirteen. Two of the white pieces were missing and she had roughly carved out replacements from a candle and had literally made her own board from a piece of white card she had stolen from an office supply store, along with the black marker she had used to painstakingly mark the squares before colouring in the black ones.

She had learned to play from online sites, she had a cheap phone that her parents didn’t know about. Not that they would’ve cared, actually that was a lie, her mother would’ve used it to go crazy at her. Her dad didn’t care one bit, he drove a truck and that was the only thing he cared about and the only thing he ever talked about, to Dinah or anyone who was close enough to listen. The only thing she ever learned from him was how to repair a truck, clean a truck and siphon fuel. He was hardly ever at home anyway, leaving Dinah stuck with her mother, who’s hobbies were drinking and taking out her frustrations on Dinah.

As a teenager she retreated into her own world, did extra work at school, especially in her beloved maths and joined the chess club where she got beaten mercilessly for months until she started to get the hang of it all. Everyone else in the club was male, of course, it was nerd central. But then, everyone thought she was a nerd anyway so, no big deal. Finally, when the other club members had all stopped hitting on her, by then she was fifteen, she started to win games. The next term she won the school tournament and started to earn some grudging respect. After that there was local college. Her father died, heart attack, she hardly registered it. Her mother drank more heavily and got more abusive, but by then Dinah had a lock on her bedroom door and just avoided her.

Now, she was in her late thirties, had a nice, two-bedroom apartment with two cats and her mother was in a home, sober for the first time in years but mostly out of it because of a combination of a stroke and dementia. Dinah played the good daughter, paid the bills and never visited.

She parked her Honda in her allotted space, a sensible car for a sensible woman and carried her bag, Gucci, one of her few luxuries, along with the boxed chess set up in the elevator to her apartment.

Garry and Bobby trotted over to meet her as she entered. Garry, named after Garry Kasparov, was white and Bobby, named after Bobby Fischer, was black.

“Hi guys!” she greeted their attention and deposited her bag on the sofa. “Back in a second” she carried the box to her office.

It was actually the larger of the two bedrooms and was at the back of her apartment, she gave more importance to chess than sleeping and so gave in more room. Closing the door behind her, no cats allowed in here, she placed the box on the desk. The room was a shrine to chess. Shelves and tables were covered in various sets from classic marble to tacky Disney. One wall was clear of shelves and it contained her gallery, signed pictures of the chess greats. Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Morphy, Steinitz and even Capablanca, the last three sadly not signed. Plus, her most recent acquisition, Magnus Carlsen.

She placed her new purchase on the desk, she would unwrap it and place it later, she passed back into the main apartment and fussed over her cats. Taking off her shoes she went into the kitchen area and poured cat food into two bowls, one white and one black of course, although the cats themselves had no preference and bent their heads to eat, purring loudly. Having made sure they had plenty of water she washed her hands and moved into her bedroom, there she changed into comfortable pajamas and slippers before returning to the kitchen, where the cats were still milling around, retrieved a prepacked salad from the fridge along with the remains of a glass of Chenin from the night before and snagged a fork from her cutlery draw before sitting on the sofa and turning on the TV.

All she got was news about market rate increases, she frowned, the housing market was getting tight and was going to get worse. Dinah was an accountant to some pretty high earners and would have to get some of her clients to think about their mortgages.

She switched channels until she found an old sit com to watch while she ate, then she cleaned up and re-entered her office. There was a table with a lamp on it against the wall beneath the shelves, the table already had a set on it of course but, she carefully moved that to a space on a shelf and unpacked her new purchase.

As Dinah laid the set out she was pleased to see that the quartz like flakes in the pieces did indeed catch the light as she had hoped. Finally satisfied with its position she switched on the lamp and smiled broadly; the effect was stunning. Thoroughly satisfied she switched off the lights and went back to her wine, cats and television.

The next evening she came home with a purpose. One of the online chess club members had published a puzzle on their shared site, the usual format, several pieces set out on a board, white wins, checkmate in five moves. Dinah had seen it first thing this morning but hadn’t been able to look at it since and it was driving her crazy.

She swept into the apartment shooing cats as she went, dropped coat and bag, retrieved her laptop and dumped food and water in the cats bowls, spilling some. Tutted at the litter tray, which was a mess, but would have to wait, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, kicked off her shoes and almost ran into the office.

Half an hour and two thirds of a bottle of water later, she moved the white queen into place. Checkmate in five moves, done, she would submit her solution later after she had eaten. Dinah laughed and sat back in her black, pleather, office chair and chugged back the rest of the water.

“Ha!” she said to the empty room and spun the chair with her stockinged feet.

She grabbed the edge of the desktop to stop the spin and slowly rotated herself back the other way. Rising slowly she switched on the lamp on the table with her newly purchased set and peered intently. The white kings pawn was on the fourth square, pawn to king four, a classic opening move.

Slowly and carefully she picked up the piece and turned it in her hand. Had she subconsciously moved the piece while setting it up the day before? Must have, buying the set had been very exciting to her after all, that must be it. Dinah returned he piece to its starting position and nodded to herself; she was probably being fooled by her own subconscious mind. She gathered her laptop from the desk and went back into her living space, threw the bottle into the recycling and sniffed. Wow! Litter tray!

The next morning she readied herself as usual but couldn’t leave without checking the office. Cautiously she opened the door and flicked on the main light switch because the small window to this room always had the blinds drawn. Staring she let the door swing open and entered the room. There, under her tiffany lamp was the new set and there it was again, pawn to king four! Her hand shook slightly as she replaced the piece, a noise from the door startled her and she turned to see Garry’s inquisitive white face looking up at her.

“No, out!” she pushed him back through the door and closed it. She turned and stared at the set again, what was going on? Was she cracking up? Sleepwalking? Sleep playing? She laughed, no time now, she had to go to work.

It was in the back of her mind all day, her brain had been on auto pilot, just functioning enough to get through the day. Driving like a maniac to get home, would probably get a ticket in the mail for running a red light, she crashed in through her apartment door and, scattering cats as she dropped everything, threw open the door to her office and flipped on the light.

The set was exactly as she had left it, Dinah let out an audible sigh of relief and turned the light off again. As she reached for the door handle to close it she heard a faint scraping sound, she spun and flicked on the light again, her eyes widening as she watched the kings pawn slowly complete its journey to square four. Quickly she turned the light off again, slammed the door and scuttled across to the kitchen saying.

“No, no, no, no, no!”

The cats ran away in confusion. Dinah stood at the kitchen sink feeling nauseous. She gathered herself and walked back to the door, opening it slowly she turned the light back on and crept across the room, crouching down slightly to look at the pieces on the board. Nothing further had happened, she looked closely, there were no strings or mechanisms in evidence.

“Well of course there aren’t you idiot” she admonished herself, she stood and made to leave but then stopped and turned back.

“I’ll show you” she said in a determined voice, picked up the pawn and returned it to its starting position with a loud “Hmmph!” and left the room, slamming the door again. As she walked away she heard a loud swishing sound and had the feeling of a cane whipping across her back. With a horrified cry she fell to her knees, pain streaking through her body. The blow had struck in a line across her shoulders, high on the left and lower on the right. Carefully she touched her left shoulder with a trembling right hand, it came away with red on it, she was bleeding and there was a tear in her blouse.

Scrambling to her feet she ran to the bathroom. She tore off the blouse and was astonished to see a rip in the back and bloodstains on the edges of the rip. In the mirror she could see part of the mark on her back, it was red and puckered and, in several places, pinpoints of blood welled up, some were large enough to have run down her back. This is what had marked her blouse. It really looked as though she had been whipped.

Dinah undressed and got in the shower, her back stung painfully as she washed off the blood as gently as she could. Drying herself she noted that there were still a couple of small spots of blood on the towel, then checked the mirror again. The bleeding had stopped but the was a livid red mark across her back. Carefully she put on her dressing gown and padded barefoot back to the office.

Once inside she looked at the set, once more the pawn was at kings four. Carefully she picked up the board and placed it on the desk. Slowly lowering herself into the chair she stared at the pieces. The kings pawn had moved a total of three times now in two days, each time she had ignored it and put it back, the last time she had been punished for doing that.

“OK then” she whispered through clenched teeth, “You are demanding that I play” Dinah licked her lips and cautiously took hold of her own kings pawn, nothing happened, no pain or other sensation, nothing. So, very carefully, she placed the pawn down on her own king four space. She released the piece with an audible sigh.

Nothing happened, Dinah stared at the set for a long time, zero reaction. Eventually she rose, left the office and went to bed, not thinking for a moment that she would be able to sleep but, eventually, the painkillers she had taken on the way to bed kicked in and she slept soundly.

The next morning she awoke feeling bleary and dry mouthed. As she moved to get out of bed pain flashed across her back, she got up and studied the sheets. No blood, that was a good sign at least. Walking slowly into the kitchen she swooped on the cat bowls and filled them, placing them on the floor she stepped away to let the purring commence.

Almost still in a dream state, she went to her office and stepped inside, as the door closed she stood in the darkness for a moment, her hand on the light switch. She flicked it on. Blinking a little Dinah walked around the desk, seated herself and stared at the board. A second move had been made, knight to queens bishop three.

“Protecting the pawn” Dinah murmured, simple enough.

She stared at the board for a few moments, then moved her own knights pawn to open a path for the queens bishop. The other white knight moved to kings bishop three, it was ahead of her thinking, covering its own bishops path. Dinah stood and left the office; she needed coffee and breakfast.

Standing in the kitchen she found herself staring at the bowl of cereal with a spoon in her hand as an idea formed, that was it, that was the answer. This chess game was a blessing, she had been given the chance to become one of the greats. She put down the bowl and spoon and headed back to her office. She had been given this set to play against and get better. It was all training, yes, there would be punishment but in the end her game would improve she would be a great player, even a Grand Master! Dinah took her seat and smiled to herself.

“Let’s do this” she said and reached for the board.

Almost an hour and half a dozen moves later, after all, she wasn’t playing to the clock, Dinah saw an opportunity to capture the white knight, she would lose a pawn but it was worth it. The move made, she placed the captured piece on the desk, where it crumbled to dust and disappeared. She gasped, her hand to her mouth, how was her game going to improve if the pieces fell apart when they were captured. She watched closely as her own pawn was taken, it too crumbled to nothing as it was taken by the white pawn which pushed slowly through the vanishing dust.

She screamed as another whooshing sound ended with another searing pain across her back, this time lower. Reaching around to feel the area she discovered there was no blood this time and it felt like here shirt was intact. She stood, wincing, how had the blow struck her so low? The back of the chair should be in the way and why was she hit anyway? Punished for losing a pawn, what the hell was happening to her?

In the bathroom she once again looked at her back, there was a mark but not as bad as the previous one. She poured herself some water and got an apple from the fridge. Sitting on the sofa she fussed with the cats while she ate and drank and thought about her bizarre problem.

After a short respite she left the cats and returned to her desk to survey the game as it stood. The captured pieces were still gone, was it trying to make her a better player and if not, what was going on. She studied the board for a short while and then captured an unprotected pawn, it slowly vanished like the others and there was a pause. Was the board thinking? Had she intimidated it by taking two of its pieces? She had already decided to take her time over moves, she had no desire to make mistakes and face further consequences. The board made a move and, after a small exchange of moves, it paused again.

Dinah sat and stared at the board, a half hour passed before it moved again and she gasped. Surely it had made a mistake, the remaining white knight was exposed, she took it and the piece crumbled. There was another long pause, Dinah remembered what Kasparov had said about playing Deep Blue, humans get tired! She decided to leave the game and rest until tomorrow.

She was in bed and watching something on TV with her cats when the power went out, this had happened before so she didn’t panic. She reached for her phone and turned on its light, she went over to the window and looked out to see bright lights everywhere, must just be her building. That had happened before on rare occasions too. She switched off the light and called her landlord and got a “No Service” message. Maybe he was busy trying to fix the fault, whatever, she was tired so, she turned off her phone and lay down.

Two hours later the lights and TV came on and woke her. She got up and got some water, the fridge and freezer were back on so that was good, hopefully nothing had spoiled. She went back to bed and slept.

The next morning she awoke and wandered into the kitchen, fed the cats and ate cereal to the background noise of purring. Internet and TV were back as well as power so all was well, she dressed and opened the door to her office.

What she saw stunned her, some of the shelves had fallen to the floor and two tables were overturned. There were broken chess pieces everywhere and her prized photo’s were on the floor, their glass smashed.

She looked at the game on the desk, it was untouched. A move had been made, Dinah realised that the knight she had taken had been a trap, a diversion. Moving it had opened a path for white to capture her castle on the queens side. Suddenly she knew why the damage had happened and the power outage, she had lost her castle so her punishment was to have her home, her own castle, attacked.

 Dinah spent all day cleaning up, managing to save the pictures but losing the frames. With utter sadness she realised that every set in her collection was damaged in some way, all she could hope is that she could replace them in some way from online sources, in tears she threw the ruined pieces away. Going back to the now tidier office she stood with dustpan in one hand and stared at the game on her desk.

“What are you?” she yelled to the empty room, “What do you want?” she screamed, “What?” she threw the dustpan, it bounced off the set and landed on the floor at her feet. The pieces were exactly where they had been before, nothing had moved or fallen over.

Dinah picked up the dustpan and threw it again, same result, seething she picked it up again. She called out in pain as the same whoosh sound forced her to drop the pan and lean against the desk with tears in her eyes. She ran to the bathroom with the same pain searing across her shoulders, this time there was blood again and a tear in her t shirt, she took the shirt off and treated the wound as well as she could.

As she put on a new shirt in the bedroom, she became aware of a noise, a buzzing sound. Leaving the bathroom she saw that Garry and Bobby were sitting on the sofa, their ears pricked, staring at the office door. Slowly she approached and opened the door. Stepping inside the noise got louder and as she closed the door she realised it was the chess set. Every piece was vibrating, producing a steady hum.

“It wants me to play again” she thought and stepping around the desk she lowered herself into the chair. Immediately the vibration ceased, Dinah studied the game. Instinctively she moved her knight to trap the bishop in the corner. Then she sat back and watched. After a full hour, nothing had happened.

She jumped as her phone rang. It was the home where her mother lived. Of course, it was Sunday they always called with a report on Sunday. After a short chat and being told that her mother was quiet but fine Dinah said goodbye and put her phone down on the desk. The set still hadn’t made a move so she got up and remembered that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, feeling the hunger begin she headed for the kitchen where hungry cats were waiting too. She made dinner and fed them, after she had eaten she played with the two fur fiends before they settled in front of an old movie.

She woke with a start, the TV was still on, what time was it? The news said it was seven forty-five. Crap! It was Monday and she had to get to work.

Dinah dressed quickly, hissing through grinding teeth at the pain in her back. Threw cat food into the bowls and topped up the water, grabbed her bag, car keys and, where the hell was her phone? Of course! It was in the office where she left it after the call from the home.

Dashing into the study she snatched it up and, not even looking at the board, ran out of the room and out of her apartment to the car.

She had a crazy day at work and was glad to get home. The wound on her back had been hurting all day so she wanted to shower right away and tend to it. She closed the door and leaned against it; Bobby came to greet her.

“Hey buddy” she said to the cat, bending to scratch its ears “Where’s Garry?” she looked around the apartment, it was very unusual that both cats didn’t meet her at the door. She stood and saw that the door to her office was open, not wide, but enough to allow a cat to enter.

“I must’ve left it open when I grabbed my phone this morning” she mumbled, absently. She pushed open the door and turned on the light. “Garry” she called softly, “Where are you? I hope She you didn’t cause any more damage” she sighed. There was no sign of any damage, but no sign of a cat either, Bobby was at her feet so she shooed him away and closed the door.

“Come on Garry” her voice wavered as she began to get concerned, “Where the hell are you?” she walked around the desk, which went all the way to the floor so he couldn’t be under it, she pulled the chair out and looked there, no cat. She looked at the board on the desk, her knight had been taken, so it did realise that was the only logical move. Almost absent mindedly she captured the bishop with her pawn, the larger piece falling away to nothing.

Dinah sat down in the chair, still in her coat, which she unfastened. Looking down to undo the last button she noticed the bottom right-hand drawer of her desk was slightly open, she reached down and opened it fully.

“Oh my god! Garry!” two sightless eyed glared at her from the drawer, the white cat was dead. “How did you get stuck in there?” she cried, tears fell on his fur as she reached in and pulled him out, to her horror she saw that his head was loose and almost facing the wrong way, she cried out again and dropped hos body on the desk next to the board.

“You did this” she spat through quivering lips, “You took my knight and killed the nearest animal as a punishment” She raised a hand to swipe the pieces from the table but then hesitated, remembering what had happened last time she hit the set. She looked back at the bundle of white fur on the desk “Oh Garry” she sobbed and picked up the body.

In the kitchen she placed the body in a black plastic bag and put in under the sink, she would deal with that later. Bobby watched her cautiously and when she tried to pick him up he ran away and hid under the coffee table, this made her start to cry again.

She took off her coat and stumbled into the bedroom where she lay on the bed and dozed for a while. After that she changed into a simple t-shirt and leggings, fed Bobby, he came for the food at least, then she ate a light meal and drank some water before taking another bottle of water into the office. She closed the door firmly and sat at the desk.

“Right” she snarled at the board, “Let’s do this!”

For the next six hours Dinah played chess like she had never played before, slowly, methodically, tactically, trying not to lose further pieces at all costs. At one point there was an unavoidable exchange of pawns, she knew the blow would come so braced herself before making the move, then went to the bathroom to tend her wound and put on a new t-shirt, throwing the torn one away.

Early in the morning she realised she was losing; she could see mate in six moves unless she took the drastic measure of taking her opponents castle. However, doing that would mean she would lose her queen. The thought terrified her, what punishment would that bring.

Dinah jumped as her phone alarm went off, saved by the bell? Hardly, sooner rather than later she would have to make that move and face the consequences. But for now she would put it off as long as she could and think about her options.

Although tired she went to work but took the afternoon off and returned to her apartment, she changed and sat on the sofa with Bobby, who seemed to have got over any trauma at the loss of Garry, who was now in a dumpster on the other side of town. Dinah thought the less questions the better and, though it upset her, dead cats were found in dumpsters all the time. How would she explain his death to a vet for body disposal?

Next morning, just before her alarm, she was awoken by another stinging blow, this time across the front of her left thigh. She limped to the bathroom to treat the wound, only twenty-four hours this time, this was ramping up. She made her way, painfully, to her office and took a seat. Then she sat, staring at the board, suddenly a scratch appeared on her left arm, just above the wrist. She gasped as a small amount of blood ran down onto the back of her hand, then cried out as another appeared an inch above the first. She stared at it, this was it, she realised, it was forcing her to make the move. A third scratch appeared.

“All right!” Dinah yelled, “I’m doing it!” She captured the offending castle and sat back as it disappeared, ignoring the blood running down her hand. Slowly the white queen moved one space and took her queen, which also crumbled to nothing. Dinah closed her eyes and tensed herself, several moments passed, slowly she opened her eyes. Nothing had happened, no cuts or blows or damage to the room, nothing. Everything was quiet, then, gradually she became aware of a noise in the next room.

Cautiously she opened the door, her phone was ringing, Bobby was pawing at it playfully Dinah picked it up.

“Hello? Yes this is Dinah” she flopped onto the sofa, everything forgotten. The rest of the conversation felt like it was happening to someone else and she was eavesdropping. Her mother had died of a sudden heart attack, she ended the call, promising to be there as soon as she could. She dropped the phone and stared into space.

 After a few moments she stood, walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard where Garry’s body had been recently. She took out the hammer she used to hang pictures and, almost in a dream state, entered the office. Dinah looked at the half-completed game, wiped a tear from her eye and raised the hammer.

“I didn’t love her” she exclaimed, angrily. “I never did” she went on, “But she was still my mother!” she screamed the last part and swung the hammer down in the direction of the white queen, there was a ringing sound as it connected and the tool flew out of her grasp before flying back over her head, crashing into the door behind her and landing on the floor.

Dinah screamed in pain and clutched her left arm, running from the study she sped to the bathroom mirror and pulled up her sleeve. A dark red mark was at the top of her arm, she watched as it rapidly started to bruise. It was roughly spherical and looked like someone had hit her with a hammer.

She held onto the sink feeling dizzy and sick. Taking a deep breath she turned on the cold water and splashed some onto her face, then she went to the fridge and retrieved a bag of frozen peas which she place on the bruise, now throbbing painfully. With her back leaning against the refrigerator door she slowly slid down to the floor, tears streamed down her face, for her mother, for Garry, for herself. Why? She asked herself, why me?

That thought broke through, her head snapped up. Never had she been a “Why me?” person, never and it wasn’t going to happen now. She got up from the floor, threw the peas back in the freezer and strode to her bedroom.

After a while she left her apartment dressed in black trousers and a black hoodie, carrying two empty wine bottles and an old t-shirt. She drove through the city to an all-night store and purchased some tubing, a disposable lighter and a large marble paperweight she found, she hefted it in her hand, that would do nicely.

She drove again, using back streets and side streets, finally she came to a stop in a darkened alley. Using the length of tubing she had purchased she siphoned fuel from her own tank into both bottles, one useful trick her father had taught her, then stoppered each with a rag made from the old t-shirt. Her lips burned from the small amount of fuel she got in her mouth but she didn’t care. Closing the fuel cap and dumping the tubing down a nearby drain she walked around the corner.

With the bottles cradled in her left arm, the paperweight in her right hand and the lighter in her pocket she approached the detached building which housed the pawn store. It was a squat single-story building with two large windows on either side of the front door. Dinah did not know whether the owner lived there but, secretly, she hoped he did, this would show him. She placed both bottles on the floor.

Then she tossed the marble paperweight in her hand a couple of times and then threw it with all her strength through the right-hand window. With a very satisfying crash it went straight through and disappeared into the darkness of the store leaving a very large hole behind it. A feeble alarm bell started to ring in a rusty box above the door but Dinah felt sure the sound wouldn’t carry any real distance. Would it wake the owner if he was there, she didn’t care. Maybe he would run into his store just in time to see this!

She picked up a bottle from the floor and pulled the lighter from the pocket of her hoodie, flicking it into life she held it to the rag and then tossed the Molotov cocktail through the hole in the glass. There was another crash and a whoomph sound as the fuel burst into flame, heat jetted through the hole in the window but Dinah had already ducked down to avoid it. She grabbed the second bottle, took a couple of steps to the right to get a better angle and repeated her actions.

This time the flames exploded further into the store as she had planned and lit up the left-hand window. The fire took hold quickly and judging by the virtually useless and rusty old alarm system there would be no sprinklers to douse the flames.

Dinah ran back to her car, as she climbed in she heard a window explode, that might attract attention, she needed to leave. She drove away with her lights off and used side streets to get back to the main road, only then did she put her lights on. The last thing she needed was to be stopped by the police.

Arriving back home she took off the hoodie, fed and watered the cat, took a deep breath and walked into her office, firmly closing the door.

Her body was found four days later. A neighbour heard the cat meowing loudly and, after knocking at the door a few times began to notice what she described as a “funky” smell. She called the police. They entered the apartment and found it to be fairly neat and tidy and containing a hungry cat. The odour was traced to a home office where they found the body of a woman in a very bad state sitting in a chair behind a desk.

It was initially thought to be a murder, the room was a mess and the body had several injuries, some old and healing to the back, arm and leg. Others seemed to have happened at time of death, the right ankle was broken and the left shoulder dislocated. Both wrists were badly slashed and there were pieces of broken chess sets all over the floor and everywhere on shelves and tables, along with a smashed lamp and picture frames. The pictures themselves were torn up.

The only clear surface was the top of the desk, which didn’t have so much as a spec of dust on it, as though it had been cleared and wiped clean.

Eventually they discovered that the deceased, Dinah Harris, had recently heard of her mothers death and that her place of work hadn’t seen her in almost a week. Some of her co-workers said she had been behaving erratically for some days before, culminating in her leaving early one afternoon claiming illness. She had never returned. The final verdict was suicide. The neighbour adopted the cat and called him Eric.

In another part of the city an investigation into arson was ongoing. A single storey building had been completely destroyed and gasoline was used to start the blaze. The owner, a short, balding, middle-aged man, was suspected of starting the fire for an insurance claim, which he strenuously denied, saying that the building was due to be demolished as part of a local redevelopment project because it had been empty for years.

Virtual Retirement

Virtual Retirement

Helen Waters crouched in the recess of the doorway looking out across the car park to the fence they had broken through, she took a quick glance at Anna using her specialist equipment to crack the pass code that would get them into the building. Helen had been planning this for weeks, ever since she had convinced Anna to help her. It was all well and good being an investigative journalist but this was by far her biggest assignment and the story would be huge.

She knew right away she would need Anna’s help, that was one perk of her job, she got to know some very useful criminals and Anna was one of the best.

She heard a curse behind her, this was proving harder than either of them had thought, but then again they were breaking into one of the top VirtRet facilities in the country, if not the world.

*****

Virtual Retirement had come into being about fifteen years previously in the early 2050’s and over the last decade had become a huge industry in the western world. A combination of Virtual Reality and cryogenics, the basic idea was simple. The cryogenics kept your body alive whilst the VR component was transmitted straight into the brains sensory receptors.

Originally only affordable to the very wealthy it had become gradually more and more available and now even had insurance programmes designed to cover the costs. This enabled someone who was old, infirm or dying of an incurable disease a way of enjoying their last days, living their dreams in an exciting, pain free way, without limits.

The body was placed in a stasis tank and then your mind was enveloped in a virtual world of travel, fame, food, drink, sex, whatever you could afford. The programmes were varied and seemingly endless. Eventually, of course, your body would give out and you would die, but it was being shown that living in stasis slowed both aging and degenerative diseases and could actually prolong your life, in some cases for years. Again, if you could afford it.

The latest advances had allowed a certain amount of interaction between people in the same facility, this was very popular with rich elderly couples and future projects included the ability to visit with loved ones in the virtual world using a VR headset, but this was still at the development stage.

Helen had found herself investigating VirtRet when her father had been admitted, he was her last living relative as she was an only child and her mother had died two years earlier of a brain tumor, no VirtRet for her, it had all happened too quickly. Her fathers terminal cancer could have been a long, drawn out, painful affair so he had immediately liquidated all his assets, handed it all over to VirtRet and they promised him at least five years of painless carefree life, he had been in there now for three of them.

Helens suspicious nature had kicked in right away, she visited with her father time after time and did endless hours of research into the company, nothing bad to be seen, absolutely nothing. The company was squeaky clean and her father was having a fabulous experience, visitors were able to watch footage of their loved ones in their virtual life, her journalist status had even got her a special guided tour of the facilities into the areas containing the stasis tanks. There were hundreds of thousands of them, stacked in a honeycomb of corridors, over eight hundred and fifty thousand at this facility alone.

They even allowed her to see the research facility where she was told that “clients”, their word not hers, could volunteer their bodies to be used for research for a year before they were moved to their “reward” to live a virtual life until they died. This was reserved for the terminally ill, she was told, you couldn’t sign up for that due to old age.

That was where she had her break, you could always see the face of the person in stasis through a glass panel. Helen had worn glasses during her tour fitted with a camera, when reviewing the footage later she realised that she had picked up clear pictures of several “clients” in the research area. She ran them through facial recognition software, all the faces captured retrieved information about how these people had donated themselves to scientific research at VirtRet. All except one, Stephen Miles, he was a drug addict with a long police record for small crimes including selling drugs, he had been admitted to the local hospital and was recorded there as dead and cremated. So what was he doing at VirtRet?

Helen found more like Stephen from various hospitals in the area, if she could link others to the VirtRet research laboratory she had her story. That’s why she had asked Anna for help.

*****

Anna, real name Arheer Sharma, was a reformed jewel thief. She had been a very accomplished one, she explained that he name meant “As precious as diamond” and she had started to take that name seriously at an early age. Initially in her home city of Mohal, in its famous shopping areas, she eventually moved from India, across Europe and finally arrived in America five years later.

Helen had interviewed her in prison, she served thee years of a five-year sentence which she had been given under a false name, the stolen ID of a dead Indian woman. Helen agreed not to publish this information in return for a date, also not part of the news story. That had lead to a relationship which had been going on for just over a year now, no more jewel thefts, just the odd break in to gather information like this.

Which was why they were hiding in a doorway at VirtRet, there was a beep and a click.

“I’m in!” Anna whispered, “Come on”

*****