A Gift.

A Gift.

Darren woke up and began a long, sighful yawn. Rubbing his eyes, he

sighed once more.

"Better get the day started, eh?" He said to Kitty, his black cat. Kitty

meowed and made her way excitedly over to the kitchen cupboard, where

Darren kept the food pouches. He swung his legs over to the side of his

single bed, and he felt a cold breeze. Had he not shut the window the

night before? Wearing just his pajama bottoms, he ambled over to the

curtain, which was moving wistfully with the help of the gentle wind

coming in from outside. He pushed the curtain back and reached for the

handle to pull the window closed. As the window came to a halt with a

thud, his eyes caught something. On the windowsill, there sat, rather

conspicuously, a little black notebook with a black biro in it's rings.

Darren looked outside warily, glancing around to see if he could spot

anyone. Everything was quiet.

Picking up the notebook, he pursed his lips. Who had left this for him?

Did they climb up the outside of the house and drop it into the open

window, or were they inside the house when this object was delivered? A

sense of paranoia began to creep at the back of his mind. However obscure

this gift was, it seemed to have a real purpose.

Darren opened the notebook.

It wasn't new. It was a little worn, although any evidence of prior use

had mostly been torn out of it. There was writing on one page, on the

second page of the little dark book: "Samantha Walsh. Mark Lovell. Audrey

Walsh. $20,000. You know what to do." The handwriting really did seem

familiar to Darren, but whose was it? He didn't spend too much time

thinking about it before taking the little black notebook downstairs and

into the kitchen, where Kitty was patiently waiting, making use of the

time by washing herself, as if she didn't do that enough already.

"You won't have any fur left soon, Kit." Remarked her loving owner as he

got her breakfast ready.

"You know what to do." Those words, although written, resounded in his

head, until he started voicing them out. Then there was a knock on the

door. Startled, Darren turned his head to look towards the porch. He

waited for a few seconds. He waited until he heard the person's footsteps

get quieter and quieter until he could hear them no more. As he walked

over to see if anything had been left at the door, he wondered how his

day would play out. That notebook... Who left it? What did it mean for

him? He didn't really need $20,000- he already had more than that,

inherited from a family member. But it sure would be nice to earn it, he

thought to himself.

The door opened with a creak, revealing a small parcel sitting on

Darren's doorstep. He picked it up quickly, and looked to see if anyone

was watching him before he rushed back inside and closed the door.

Ripping open the parcel, he broke through the layers until something

dropped out and fell onto the floor. It was a letter opener, designed to

look little a two-handed sword,accompanied by a note that read "You know

what to do." Darren muttered these words to himself, and began nodding.

It was cold outside. There has been a frost for the past few days, though

the sight of snow was something still anticipated. Darren opened the

notebook. "Samantha Walsh"- her workplace was his first port of call.

With the letter opener concealed in his left jacket pocket, he stepped

outside and got into his car.

There at the dance studio, where Samantha worked, her first class was

just finishing up. The little girls she had been teaching were getting

their jackets on, ready to be picked up by their parents as normal.

Darren stood outside the window, in plain view. Some of the kids pointed

and chuckled, while others just looked on at the stranger, frowning as

they did. Samantha looked at Darren. She was beautiful, she was kind, and

very understanding of him when they were seeing each other. It hadn't

been very long since she had decided to call it off. She no longer felt

comfortable around him, so she said. Darren waited for the last of the

kids to leave the studio before he stepped inside. The hard soles of his

shoes clapped against the laminate flooring beneath him, until he came to

a halt about ten feet away from his former companion- the woman he had

thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with, until she so

cruelly changed her mind.

She looked at him, and started to go pale in the face. "Darren, what are

you doing here?" She asked, as her breathing became more and more

shallow. "Mark's on his way, he'll be here to pick me up in a minute,"

she continued, "and I don't think he'll like seeing you here-" Darren

ferociously whipped the letter opener out of his pocket and redirected it

upwards into the neck of the woman he had once loved. "Shhh." He said.

Dropping to her knees, she tried to hold onto him, but couldn't manage to

grip her hands around the now bloodied jacket. Darren sat down beside her

and waited.

As the shock of what he had just done reached him, he began to

hyperventilate. He could hardly see through the layer of tears that were

obscuring his vision. "DARREN!" It was Mark's voice. He was shouting,

screaming, crying over the unexpected scene of horror that was there in

front of him. "I KNEW YOU WOULD DO SOMETHING, I KNEW IT! YOU'RE INSANE!"

He yelled, before Darren did the same to him as he had just done to the

woman he, too, was heavily in love with.

Standing up and running out of the dance studio was all Darren could

think to do. Immediately after exiting the building, he turned and

vomited into the bush that was next to the doorway.

He took a deep breath, then another. Then one more deep breath before

wiping his eyes with the dry sleeve of his jacket.

He looked up. There, on the other side of the parking lot, was a black

SUV that looked familiar to Darren. The woman in the driver's seat had

both hands on the steering wheel and was staring right at him, wide-eyed.

It was Audrey- Samantha's mother. She hadn't been supportive of his

relationship with her daughter, and was always very clear on that. She

didn't look bold at that moment in time, though, as the pair locked eyes

for a few seconds.

The car screeched out of the parking spot and shot out of the exit, as

Darren ran to his own car. He quickly made his way out of the parking lot

and onto the road that his next unfortunate victim had begun driving

down. Catching up to her at a set of traffic lights was a nice surprise

for Darren, but the lights soon turned to green, and Audrey was free to

try to escape.

They seemed to be the only cars on the road. Conditions were perfect, he

thought. As the SUV slowed down to go around a bend, Darren kept his foot

on the acceleration pedal, quickly getting closer and closer to achieving

his wicked, selfish and cathartic goal. The front of his car pushed into

the back of the SUV, and the driver could not fight against the force of

that push. Her car careered off of the road, and as it hit a conifer

tree, Darren slowed his car right down. He turned his engine off.

He reached into his right-hand pocket and pulled out the little black

notebook. He took the pen out, drew a line through all three of the

names, then drew a circle around where it said "$20,000." Opening the

glove compartment, he said to himself: "A gift from me to me. Worth every

penny..."

Darren cried. He sobbed.

As the sound of sirens got louder and louder, he covered his ears with

his hands. As the flashing lights got nearer and brighter, his tears

covered his eyes.

There was a knock on the car window.