Intent - Pt. 1
This is just a short (ish) murder-mystery type thing I wrote. About the character Robert Laseki, who's--rather odd--hobby involves setting up 'murders' and solving them under the persona of Clyde Pollart. It was great fun to write, and hopefully there's someone who enjoys reading it. Oh, and don't forget to comment. Cheers!
Intent
No one liked Robert Laseki.
That said, no one had ever really disliked him.
He lived in such a way that most never even knew he existed.
Robert preferred to spend most of his time indoors-either at his house or at a property across the road he kept separate for his hobby.
For Robert, money wasn't much of an issue-he had little but enough from the rent he received on several small houses-left to him by his late grandfather. Ideally, he never had to see his tenants and could deal with them solely by mail.
One of the few occasions on which Robert ventured outside occurred every Thursday evening; Robert would hop in his 1992, black Nissan Pulsar and drive to the supermarket to purchase, on top of his regular shopping, a kilogram of minced beef , some bottles of corn syrup, some red food coloring, and-for this week-a frozen sheep's heart.
When Robert arrived back at his home, he unloaded his shopping and placed it down carefully on the driveway, before manually locking each of the car doors.
He brought up the plastic bags of groceries, carrying two in each hand-to the front porch and with some difficulty undid the two dead bolts on his door.
In the kitchen, Robert unloaded the shopping bags. He placed each item in the fridge or pantry, except for the bottles of corn syrup, the food coloring, and the meat. They stayed on the bench top.
First, He peeled the plastic-wrap off the minced beef and-holding it by its polystyrene tray-tipped it into a blender. He set the machine to smoothie and left it as he went down to his garage to fetch an empty paint tin.
Robert came back into the kitchen. He unscrewed the lids on the bottles of corn syrup and poured both of them into the tin.
He added the red food coloring and-deciding it needed to be darker-added some chocolate syrup he had sitting in his fridge.
The sound of blending had stopped now.
Robert fumbled around in one of the cupboards and produced a wooden spoon.
With great care he lifted the top half of the blender off its base in tilted it over the paint tin, using the spoon to aid the progress of the mangled, pink mass into the liquid below.
After using the wooden spoon once more-to thoroughly mix the contents of the paint tin-Robert leant over and sniffed slowly and deeply through his nostrils.
The mixture smelt right...organic.
He took the paint tin lid and laid it lightly on top of the container. He closed his hand into a fist and brought it down quickly on the lid several times to secure it in place.
Attention then shifted from the closed paint tin to the heart.
It was already wrapped tightly in a white plastic bag and sealed with a supermarket deli sticker, but-wanting to keep it as fresh as possible-Robert covered it in an extra layer of plastic wrap and rolled it up in another shopping bag.
Beside the kitchen bench sat an old leather doctors' on-call bag, the dark brown sheen was cracked and worn, especially around the buckles. Into the bag, Robert placed the paint tin and the wrapped heart. They sat alongside a paintbrush, a serrated steak knife he had put in three days earlier, and a set of keys that were always there.
He hoisted the bag over his shoulder and walked down the hallway. The bag was put down again as Robert fumbled with the front door and was then lifted once more and carried to the property across the street.
After entering the house using the key from the leather bag Robert set to work, starting in the kitchen.
He used the paintbrush to drizzle the red mixture from the paint tin onto the faded linoleum, which he then spread with his foot in a smear that covered the floor and tapered to a thin trail leading, vaguely, into the living room, and from there out into the hallway. After this was done, Robert dipped his palm into the tin, wiped it on the carpet and, occasionally, the walls until he reached the front door.
He placed his hand into the cold, syrupy liquid once more and wiped it lazily on, and underneath, the door handle. Then, tipping the whole paint tin, Robert sloshed a generous amount of thick, red fluid onto the carpet, creating a small splash-which flecked the base of the door with tiny droplets like rubies-and a glossy scarlet pool that lost its shine as it soaked into the carpet.
He opened the front door and placed the paint tin down on the front porch.
Robert grasped the doorframe to steady himself, and carefully dipped the heel of his right shoe into the container. Robert dragged his foot along the porch, down the front steps, and into the grass where he wiped it clean. Then, he went back into the house to find his bag. After he did, he removed the heart and freed it from several layers of plastic. Cautiously, he also took out the steak knife which he slid, blade first, into his back pocket. Back out on the porch, Robert dropped the heart into the paint tin and listened to the 'plop' it made.
When it was soaked-the white streaks of fat on its surface stained a gaudy pink-he took it out and stabbed it several times with the steak knife, tearing and lacerating the flesh. Robert felt an almost sadistic pleasure as the blade's serrations grated through the dense muscle fiber.
When the heart was too soft and mangled to cut anymore, Robert took what was left and wrapped it back up in its plastic bag. He threw the knife under the porch steps, and went inside to collect his things.
Robert picked up the brush, paint tin, and the bundled-up heart-and put them into his bag. Robert lifted the bag and walked out of the house without closing the front door. He crossed the street and reached his home just as it started to rain.
This was on the eighth of July.
********
It is now July the tenth, and Detective constable Clyde Pollart arrives at the crime scene hunched over with his hands deep in his jacket pockets. The expression on his face is one of intense concentration, and-even though he trudges along slowly-each step gives the impression of a man with purpose and no shortage of reasons for being where he is, or doing what he is.
Clyde looks at the property in front of him. An overgrown rosebush conceals a front lawn strewn with daisies. Behind this sits the house: a small, single-story villa with flaking paintwork, and a porch out front. The front door is open. From it protrudes a smeared bloodstain that trails across the porch and ends abruptly at the bottom of the front steps. Whatever more there might have been was washed away in the rain the previous night. Clyde observes the open door, but for the sake of conserving evidence, he makes his way to the rear of the property to look for a back door.
He finds one-leading into the laundry.
Opening it is not much of an issue. After checking underneath the door mat and inside the drainpipe, Clyde finds a key hidden inside a conspicuously placed garden gnome. Behind the door is a small laundry. Clyde sees nothing except a front-loading washer, and a shelf, holding a bottle of fabric softener. Clyde then moves on into the kitchen where he discovers something very interesting indeed. He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a camera. Clyde reaches over, pointing the camera downwards, and photographs the brick-red streak of dried blood covering most of the lino flooring.
The stain tapers to a thin, broken line, which trails off, crookedly, out into the living room and into the hallway. There, the blood becomes more distinct, and is joined by a series of scuffed handprints, that form a macabre finger-painting on the pale wallpaper. Clyde follows the smeared and irregular progress of the prints to the front door where they scrabble uselessly at the handle, slide down to the base of the open door, and end in a large blotch of dried blood on the carpet. Clyde photographs these before focusing his attention on the new trail leading out of the house. This blood is different from the splattered, uneven stains inside.
The new trail takes the form of a clean line, which crosses the front porch and steps. Clyde avoids treading on it as he steps outside. As he noticed before the blood ends at the base of the front steps. After some searching around the garden, Clyde finds a knife-looking as if it came from the kitchen-lazily hidden under the wooden porch steps. The blade is covered in a slightly crusty, dark-red layer, and between the serrations are tiny shreds of flesh. He removes a plastic zip-lok bag from his pocket along with a pair of latex gloves, which he pulls on. Very carefully, he picks up the knife and places it inside the bag.
Clyde stands up straight and ponders for a moment, making up his mind as to what happened:
According to neighbors, the couple could often be heard arguing. This time, an argument in the kitchen went a little further than intended-suspects Clyde-one of the couple turning on their partner with the steak knife. They must have done a lot of damage. Although it seems that the victim had enough strength to stumble out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the front door. They clearly struggled with the deadbolt, and didn't escape in time to avoid-judging by the volume and spattering of the blood-several deep cuts to the vertebral arteries in the side of the neck. After the front door had been opened, the victim's limp and bloodied body would have been dragged across the porch-hence the clean smear of blood-and into the garden.
From there the body was thrown in a car-boot...
No...
... a wheelie bin.
...or perhaps a large black rubbish-bag, in which the corpse was stealthily carried to a park in the dead of night and buried in a children's playground...
Maybe not.
Clyde continues to mutter to himself as he walks off the property and across the road to his house. He unbolts the two deadlocks and goes to sit down in his living room.
As he sits-slouched on a faded-grey armchair-two words start to repeat themselves in his head:
NO...
BODY...
********
Robert waited for the voice to subside-or at least fade to a point where he could ignore it.
It was adequate, he decided.
He paused to scratch his cheek and thought again...
No...it wasn't; he didn't even solve it, not properly anyway.
And the knife-the knife was generic...boring to say the least.
Robert gazed at cheap paperback thriller that lay open and facedown on his coffee table.
They used a poisoned doorknob.
Robert pulled out the bag he had in his pocket and examined the steak knife inside.
The sheep's heart had helped a little in making it more realistic, but it was still a knife, and the fact that it was so well suited for murder made it duller still.
On the coffee table, beside the paperback, sat Robert's notes: a fat compendium detailing his projects for the past three years, written on loose-leaf pad paper and bound with nylon string. He picked it up and flicked through dozens of pages. They all ended in the same way. Robert stopped and glanced at one of his older ones: body not found, it said, has possibly been dissolved in acid. Robert winced and read another: Bone fragments and spatters of blood were discovered in the pantry, but no corpse has been found as yet.
That was one of his best, he decided, but in the end, it was as flawed as the others. And besides, it had practically ruined his blender.
He put his notes back down on the table and sighed.
Robert spent the afternoon in his bedroom, writing 'final warning' letters to his tenants and reading his crime thrillers-in an attempt to keep himself occupied. But it proved pointless. That evening, as Robert's eyes slid lazily over the pages of 'Speculation is Rife' Robert found himself paying less and less attention to the story, and showing no interest in whether she killed him or not.
Instead, Robert could not stop thinking about the notes on his coffee table. He put down the novel, and walked back into his living room where they lay. Robert sat down and turned to the first blank page...
He found a pen between the sofa cushions and pulled it out...
After that, Robert could remember nothing, save waking the next morning, stiff and uncomfortable, on the living room carpet.
***********
His notes lay open on the ground next to him.
Robert rolled over onto his stomach and took a closer look.
There were no more blank pages.
In their place was something new, which he must have written the night before. Robert turned back to where it began, so he could read it.
From the very beginning, he could tell that it was perfect. Robert did not dare to breathe too heavily as he read, as if the words were tissue-paper cutouts that would tumble and float away at the slightest disturbance. He continued to read. Sometimes it was startling and vivid, at others, poetic. Not once was it anything short of brilliant. And, at the very end was the body. The flesh was mangled and torn, and its face a mess. The bright red substance seeping from the tear duct had dyed the one remaining eye a deep burgundy, and the cartilage of the nose had been reduced to a pulpy smear across the cheek.
Robert placed down his notes and stood up off the floor-out of respect perhaps?
It was beautiful, he thought.
Robert began to fidget, clenching and unclenching his fists.
He tightened his jaw and took deeper and deeper breaths through flared nostrils.
It was beautiful...and he could never make it happen.
He kicked the couch as hard as he could and felt it do nothing, so he picked up the cushions and threw them violently across the room.
He smashed his fists repeatedly on the coffee table until his knuckles were white before finally stopping.
Robert sat down on the floor and began to cry.
Continued in pt. 2!...
No one liked Robert Laseki.
That said, no one had ever really disliked him.
He lived in such a way that most never even knew he existed.
Robert preferred to spend most of his time indoors-either at his house or at a property across the road he kept separate for his hobby.
For Robert, money wasn't much of an issue-he had little but enough from the rent he received on several small houses-left to him by his late grandfather. Ideally, he never had to see his tenants and could deal with them solely by mail.
One of the few occasions on which Robert ventured outside occurred every Thursday evening; Robert would hop in his 1992, black Nissan Pulsar and drive to the supermarket to purchase, on top of his regular shopping, a kilogram of minced beef , some bottles of corn syrup, some red food coloring, and-for this week-a frozen sheep's heart.
When Robert arrived back at his home, he unloaded his shopping and placed it down carefully on the driveway, before manually locking each of the car doors.
He brought up the plastic bags of groceries, carrying two in each hand-to the front porch and with some difficulty undid the two dead bolts on his door.
In the kitchen, Robert unloaded the shopping bags. He placed each item in the fridge or pantry, except for the bottles of corn syrup, the food coloring, and the meat. They stayed on the bench top.
First, He peeled the plastic-wrap off the minced beef and-holding it by its polystyrene tray-tipped it into a blender. He set the machine to smoothie and left it as he went down to his garage to fetch an empty paint tin.
Robert came back into the kitchen. He unscrewed the lids on the bottles of corn syrup and poured both of them into the tin.
He added the red food coloring and-deciding it needed to be darker-added some chocolate syrup he had sitting in his fridge.
The sound of blending had stopped now.
Robert fumbled around in one of the cupboards and produced a wooden spoon.
With great care he lifted the top half of the blender off its base in tilted it over the paint tin, using the spoon to aid the progress of the mangled, pink mass into the liquid below.
After using the wooden spoon once more-to thoroughly mix the contents of the paint tin-Robert leant over and sniffed slowly and deeply through his nostrils.
The mixture smelt right...organic.
He took the paint tin lid and laid it lightly on top of the container. He closed his hand into a fist and brought it down quickly on the lid several times to secure it in place.
Attention then shifted from the closed paint tin to the heart.
It was already wrapped tightly in a white plastic bag and sealed with a supermarket deli sticker, but-wanting to keep it as fresh as possible-Robert covered it in an extra layer of plastic wrap and rolled it up in another shopping bag.
Beside the kitchen bench sat an old leather doctors' on-call bag, the dark brown sheen was cracked and worn, especially around the buckles. Into the bag, Robert placed the paint tin and the wrapped heart. They sat alongside a paintbrush, a serrated steak knife he had put in three days earlier, and a set of keys that were always there.
He hoisted the bag over his shoulder and walked down the hallway. The bag was put down again as Robert fumbled with the front door and was then lifted once more and carried to the property across the street.
After entering the house using the key from the leather bag Robert set to work, starting in the kitchen.
He used the paintbrush to drizzle the red mixture from the paint tin onto the faded linoleum, which he then spread with his foot in a smear that covered the floor and tapered to a thin trail leading, vaguely, into the living room, and from there out into the hallway. After this was done, Robert dipped his palm into the tin, wiped it on the carpet and, occasionally, the walls until he reached the front door.
He placed his hand into the cold, syrupy liquid once more and wiped it lazily on, and underneath, the door handle. Then, tipping the whole paint tin, Robert sloshed a generous amount of thick, red fluid onto the carpet, creating a small splash-which flecked the base of the door with tiny droplets like rubies-and a glossy scarlet pool that lost its shine as it soaked into the carpet.
He opened the front door and placed the paint tin down on the front porch.
Robert grasped the doorframe to steady himself, and carefully dipped the heel of his right shoe into the container. Robert dragged his foot along the porch, down the front steps, and into the grass where he wiped it clean. Then, he went back into the house to find his bag. After he did, he removed the heart and freed it from several layers of plastic. Cautiously, he also took out the steak knife which he slid, blade first, into his back pocket. Back out on the porch, Robert dropped the heart into the paint tin and listened to the 'plop' it made.
When it was soaked-the white streaks of fat on its surface stained a gaudy pink-he took it out and stabbed it several times with the steak knife, tearing and lacerating the flesh. Robert felt an almost sadistic pleasure as the blade's serrations grated through the dense muscle fiber.
When the heart was too soft and mangled to cut anymore, Robert took what was left and wrapped it back up in its plastic bag. He threw the knife under the porch steps, and went inside to collect his things.
Robert picked up the brush, paint tin, and the bundled-up heart-and put them into his bag. Robert lifted the bag and walked out of the house without closing the front door. He crossed the street and reached his home just as it started to rain.
This was on the eighth of July.
********
It is now July the tenth, and Detective constable Clyde Pollart arrives at the crime scene hunched over with his hands deep in his jacket pockets. The expression on his face is one of intense concentration, and-even though he trudges along slowly-each step gives the impression of a man with purpose and no shortage of reasons for being where he is, or doing what he is.
Clyde looks at the property in front of him. An overgrown rosebush conceals a front lawn strewn with daisies. Behind this sits the house: a small, single-story villa with flaking paintwork, and a porch out front. The front door is open. From it protrudes a smeared bloodstain that trails across the porch and ends abruptly at the bottom of the front steps. Whatever more there might have been was washed away in the rain the previous night. Clyde observes the open door, but for the sake of conserving evidence, he makes his way to the rear of the property to look for a back door.
He finds one-leading into the laundry.
Opening it is not much of an issue. After checking underneath the door mat and inside the drainpipe, Clyde finds a key hidden inside a conspicuously placed garden gnome. Behind the door is a small laundry. Clyde sees nothing except a front-loading washer, and a shelf, holding a bottle of fabric softener. Clyde then moves on into the kitchen where he discovers something very interesting indeed. He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a camera. Clyde reaches over, pointing the camera downwards, and photographs the brick-red streak of dried blood covering most of the lino flooring.
The stain tapers to a thin, broken line, which trails off, crookedly, out into the living room and into the hallway. There, the blood becomes more distinct, and is joined by a series of scuffed handprints, that form a macabre finger-painting on the pale wallpaper. Clyde follows the smeared and irregular progress of the prints to the front door where they scrabble uselessly at the handle, slide down to the base of the open door, and end in a large blotch of dried blood on the carpet. Clyde photographs these before focusing his attention on the new trail leading out of the house. This blood is different from the splattered, uneven stains inside.
The new trail takes the form of a clean line, which crosses the front porch and steps. Clyde avoids treading on it as he steps outside. As he noticed before the blood ends at the base of the front steps. After some searching around the garden, Clyde finds a knife-looking as if it came from the kitchen-lazily hidden under the wooden porch steps. The blade is covered in a slightly crusty, dark-red layer, and between the serrations are tiny shreds of flesh. He removes a plastic zip-lok bag from his pocket along with a pair of latex gloves, which he pulls on. Very carefully, he picks up the knife and places it inside the bag.
Clyde stands up straight and ponders for a moment, making up his mind as to what happened:
According to neighbors, the couple could often be heard arguing. This time, an argument in the kitchen went a little further than intended-suspects Clyde-one of the couple turning on their partner with the steak knife. They must have done a lot of damage. Although it seems that the victim had enough strength to stumble out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the front door. They clearly struggled with the deadbolt, and didn't escape in time to avoid-judging by the volume and spattering of the blood-several deep cuts to the vertebral arteries in the side of the neck. After the front door had been opened, the victim's limp and bloodied body would have been dragged across the porch-hence the clean smear of blood-and into the garden.
From there the body was thrown in a car-boot...
No...
... a wheelie bin.
...or perhaps a large black rubbish-bag, in which the corpse was stealthily carried to a park in the dead of night and buried in a children's playground...
Maybe not.
Clyde continues to mutter to himself as he walks off the property and across the road to his house. He unbolts the two deadlocks and goes to sit down in his living room.
As he sits-slouched on a faded-grey armchair-two words start to repeat themselves in his head:
NO...
BODY...
********
Robert waited for the voice to subside-or at least fade to a point where he could ignore it.
It was adequate, he decided.
He paused to scratch his cheek and thought again...
No...it wasn't; he didn't even solve it, not properly anyway.
And the knife-the knife was generic...boring to say the least.
Robert gazed at cheap paperback thriller that lay open and facedown on his coffee table.
They used a poisoned doorknob.
Robert pulled out the bag he had in his pocket and examined the steak knife inside.
The sheep's heart had helped a little in making it more realistic, but it was still a knife, and the fact that it was so well suited for murder made it duller still.
On the coffee table, beside the paperback, sat Robert's notes: a fat compendium detailing his projects for the past three years, written on loose-leaf pad paper and bound with nylon string. He picked it up and flicked through dozens of pages. They all ended in the same way. Robert stopped and glanced at one of his older ones: body not found, it said, has possibly been dissolved in acid. Robert winced and read another: Bone fragments and spatters of blood were discovered in the pantry, but no corpse has been found as yet.
That was one of his best, he decided, but in the end, it was as flawed as the others. And besides, it had practically ruined his blender.
He put his notes back down on the table and sighed.
Robert spent the afternoon in his bedroom, writing 'final warning' letters to his tenants and reading his crime thrillers-in an attempt to keep himself occupied. But it proved pointless. That evening, as Robert's eyes slid lazily over the pages of 'Speculation is Rife' Robert found himself paying less and less attention to the story, and showing no interest in whether she killed him or not.
Instead, Robert could not stop thinking about the notes on his coffee table. He put down the novel, and walked back into his living room where they lay. Robert sat down and turned to the first blank page...
He found a pen between the sofa cushions and pulled it out...
After that, Robert could remember nothing, save waking the next morning, stiff and uncomfortable, on the living room carpet.
***********
His notes lay open on the ground next to him.
Robert rolled over onto his stomach and took a closer look.
There were no more blank pages.
In their place was something new, which he must have written the night before. Robert turned back to where it began, so he could read it.
From the very beginning, he could tell that it was perfect. Robert did not dare to breathe too heavily as he read, as if the words were tissue-paper cutouts that would tumble and float away at the slightest disturbance. He continued to read. Sometimes it was startling and vivid, at others, poetic. Not once was it anything short of brilliant. And, at the very end was the body. The flesh was mangled and torn, and its face a mess. The bright red substance seeping from the tear duct had dyed the one remaining eye a deep burgundy, and the cartilage of the nose had been reduced to a pulpy smear across the cheek.
Robert placed down his notes and stood up off the floor-out of respect perhaps?
It was beautiful, he thought.
Robert began to fidget, clenching and unclenching his fists.
He tightened his jaw and took deeper and deeper breaths through flared nostrils.
It was beautiful...and he could never make it happen.
He kicked the couch as hard as he could and felt it do nothing, so he picked up the cushions and threw them violently across the room.
He smashed his fists repeatedly on the coffee table until his knuckles were white before finally stopping.
Robert sat down on the floor and began to cry.
Continued in pt. 2!...
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