Possessed

Flash Fiction by Ferdi Wheeler

Jack Weir is not in jail, or dead. He hides in the moonlight in my garden, of that I am sure. I can discern his figure where he stands pressed against the trunk of the pine tree. I am looking through a slit in the curtains in my sitting room. I hardly breathe. Why is he just standing there? After all, I know him as a man of action – the mercenary that he is.

Now he moves! He walks towards the front door. I leave everything and run to the bedroom. I don’t have a gun, but I rely on a piece of galvanized steel pipe for protection. If he brakes in – I won’t let him in – I am going to crack his skull.

I grab the pipe from under the bed and stand up. I listen intently. It is silent. He knows how to pick any lock. Maybe he is unlocking the front door now! I must go and ward him off, should he succeed. Wall to wall carpets cover the floors of my house, so I can walk silently.

I smell him, before I see him. True as god he sits on the porch wall and smokes. From the door opening on the sitting room, I have a clear view of the porch, through a huge bay window.

It’s just like him. He’s clearly on the run, yet he sits smoking in full sight of everyone. I walk to the sideboard next to the door opening and crouch down, trying to make myself as small as possible.

I want nothing more to do with him. Yet, I feel mesmerized and helpless. He shoots the cigarette butt away over the lawn – the red coal describing an arc into the night. He walks to the front door. He’s a big man and the glass door grows dark when he stops in front of it. He knocks again and again.

I hardly breathe.

“Jeannie, Jeannie!” he calls in his gruff, rasping voice. “Don’t be silly. I can see you, woman. Give me a few quid. I swear to God I won’t bother you further.”

I remain where I am, but I am faltering. Surely he can see me, if I can see him?

He cups his hands around his eyes and presses his nose against the glass. “I can see you,” he says.

I stand up, the pipe forgotten. My throat is dry. Prisons didn’t inform me that he was out, so he has escaped again.

“That’s better,” he says. “Just a few quid’s all I need. I swear I am leaving.”

“I don’t have much. You must take what I have and leave, hear?”

“Sure thing, my rose, my darling bud. Sure thing!”

I have a few hundred in my safe. I take it back to the sitting room. He is sitting on the porch wall again.

“Remain where you are,” I say and unlock the glass door. The security door is firmly locked. “Here’s money,” I say and extended an arm through the burglar bars.

His big body moves in a flash and he grabs my arm, before I could throw the money onto the porch and retract my arm.

“Please, please, please! Don’t hurt me,” I cry out in desperation.

“Of course not, rosebud. Let’s see what you brought me…Mmm, six hundred. Thank you.”

“Now let me go!”

“No, not so shy, my dear. I heard that you and Garthie are having a ball in my absence, not so?”

“No, no, no, we’re only friends.”

“But you two get naughty now and then, eh?”

“I am going to yell. The neighbors will come!”

“I know. But I want you to learn a lesson,” he says and starts putting pressure on my arm. He bends it against a burglar bar. The pain is severe and I begin to cry. Then, with one brutal push, he breaks my arm at the elbow and I collapse in a heap on the floor.

“Bye-bye, till we meet again,” he says and walks with long strides into the night.

Welfare wouldn’t hear of it, that I stay on in the house while Jack Weir is on the run. So I stay in a shelter for abused women for a while. But the fear never leaves me. The shelter can’t protect me from him. He possesses me. I am his woman for life and I am possessed.

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Bio: Ferdi Wheeler is a South African and retired archivist. He lives in Bloemfontein, a city in the Free State Province. He published in print and online in local magazines. His short stories and poems appeared lately on Litnet and Roekeloos – Plek van die Uitverkorenes. He writes in Afrikaans and English. Examples of his work can be viewed by Googling “Ferdi Wheeler Litnet”, or “Ferdi Wheeler Roekeloos”. He holds a Masters degree in Communication.

Cover photo by pexels/Ellen Araujo

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