A Crime Fiction Book Series
Gone Too Far West by Isobel Wycherley
Series Excerpt
The summer term, and exam week specifically, is well underway at college now. My alarm is set for eight o’clock, just enough time to get ready and get to college for half past nine.
As I roll over onto my back after turning off my alarm, I look around my room to ease me into my sleepy morning routine. My eyes scan over the hundreds of pictures covering my walls, lingering over my favourite one of me and Laurie, when we were younger. I was just a baby when the picture was taken, but Laurie still has a protective, older sister arm resting gently over my tiny body. Looking at it makes me smile, with the smugness of having the best sister in the world. Seeing all these pictures of my loved ones makes me really appreciate how important it is to make the most of your life, which is exactly what I plan on doing.
As I look over at the window, shielded behind the new, white drawstring blinds, I see the sunshine pouring out of the sides, which puts me in the mood to get ready and enjoy the drive to college. I swing open my wardrobe doors and ponder over which one of my many colourful shirts I’ll wear today. I decide on a very sensible Hawaiian shirt, bright red, covered with big blue and green leaves, closed together with little brown wooden buttons. I match this with a pair of blue jeans, which have more holes in them than actual fabric. I do everything else I need to do before heading downstairs.
My dad is sat at his desk, facing away from the door.
“Alright, Flic?”
“I sure am on this glorious summer’s morning, Father. How are you?” I sing in my cheeriest voice, this chipper mood being a genuine feeling.
“Alright.”
That seems to be as much as I’ll get from him this morning, and it speaks volumes, so I make the smart decision of avoiding him until he decides to cheer up. When that will be, I will never know. I walk outside and I get into my car, Black Beauty, start the engine and connect my phone to the speakers. Of course, I put on my Tenacious Toes playlist. I roll down the window and reverse out of the drive.
Waiting at the front of the queue at a set of traffic lights in the centre of town, the sun starts to warm up my car to the perfect temperature and I feel the heat of it on my skin, cooled down every so often by the light breeze coming in through the window. The Hawaiian guitar solo of the TT song kicks in on full volume. I close my eyes and take a deep breath as I revel in this moment of pure bliss.
I sit there for a moment, relaxed and enjoying life.
Until I’m rudely interrupted by the sound of car horns, and an angry male voice.
“Get a move on!” I hear being shouted out of the window of the car behind me.
The light is on green.
I take off my handbrake and start to pull away. I raise my hand to signal ‘sorry’ to the man who shouted. As I get further away, a few of my outstretched fingers start to bend, leaving only my middle finger stood to attention. How rude.
“Oi!” I hear him spluttering through the mouthful of fumes he just swallowed from the burning rubber of my tyres.
I can’t help but laugh to myself as I create more and more distance between me and the man, who now seems to have an axe to grind with me.
I soon stop laughing when I approach the next set of lights. On red.
For a second, I contemplate whether I should just drive through the crossing traffic, 007 style, but I conclude that I’d rather not die today, so I come to a weary stop and put on my handbrake again. I look into my rearview mirror and I see the man getting out of his car.
“Of course, it’s a BMW,” I say aloud, half hoping that he can hear me.
“You’re out of order, you, kid!” he barks, pointing a fat, self-important finger in my face, but then, just like the miracle of turning water into wine, the light turns to green.
I smile a big, cheeky grin and turn back to face the man, who’s now leaning into my window. “Better get a move on, mate!” I tell him happily.
I take the handbrake off, wink at the balding businessman, who I assume is rather respected and feared in his place of work, and race Black Beauty off the starting line and into the distance.
I can’t help but laugh at him again, as he fumbles back into his car, with a long line of angry, late for work commuters behind him, beeping and swearing at him from out of their car windows. If only his colleagues could see him now!
I park my car in a small car park, just around the corner from the college buildings. I look to my right as I get ready to leave and see that I’m parked next to a car belonging to a girl I’m friends with, who is in my first lesson of the day, Drama. She rolls down her window and beckons for me to quickly get into her passenger side seat. I oblige.
“Alright, Holly?”
“Look what I’ve got!” she insists.
She takes out a pre-rolled spliff from a small compartment under her steering wheel.
“I bought it from this guy in town last night,” she explains to me, excitedly.
“Do you know what’s in them?” I ask.
“Well, weed obviously, Flic.”
She seems quite annoyed that I questioned her about this, so I decide to leave it and let her do what she wants.
“I’m going to smoke it with Emma on Monday, before Drama. It’s going to be so funny!” She’s already laughing at the idea.
She puts it back in the compartment beneath her steering wheel and we walk to our lesson together.
The lesson is rather uneventful, just talking over exam preparation, and our teacher sets us some homework to create a dramatic monologue for Monday’s lesson. I watch the clock as she speaks to the class, wishing time away as I know that, after this, me, Jenk and Len are going to the field to smoke some weed we have left over from the other night. Javan misses out, as he is nowhere to be seen in college today.
I meet Jenk and Len at the front entrance and we walk down the long road exiting the college to the main gates. We sit down in a field behind the car park and start to skin up whilst listening to TT and talking about how excited we are about going to see them in Amsterdam.
We smoke the spliff on a two-puff pass basis, since we’re strapped for time.
“Would either of you fancy doing anything more… extreme?” Jenk puts forward the idea, contracting a little bit, considering how we might react.
“What, like skydiving? Not really,” I say, frowning and shaking my head as I pass the spliff to Len, who chuckles at my joke.
“No, I mean drugs,” Jenk titters.
“Why, what’ve you got?” Len asks, suddenly very interested.
“Shrooms! Just to get us into the mood for Amsterdam,” he proclaims.
We all smile and raise our eyebrows at each other.
Jenk says he’ll sort something out for a few days’ time, as we don’t want to peak too early.
We start walking back to college, the heat from the sun and the lack of air making our high even higher. Before we know it, we’re completely stoned. We walk onto the long stretch of straight road into the college again. Through my fits of laughter, I notice that the college building isn’t getting any closer. I look down at my feet, just to check that I am actually walking. They definitely look like I’m walking. I look up at the college again and I feel sick as my mind imagines the college zooming out away from me, as if my eyes are camera lenses, attempting to make my life more cinematic.
No thanks.
I stop walking and put my hands on my knees, feeling ill and groaning in confusion and giddiness, with little giggles in between. I look up to find my friends. They’re both sitting on the kerb in an even worse state than me. Which, of course, throws me into yet another fit of laughter.
We split off from Len as we get into the building and me and Jenk walk into our media classroom and sit down in our seats. Our mate Ciggsy strolls in with his laptop and sits in the seat in between me and Jenk. He’s very small, very fat and very ginger, but he’s one of the nicest people you’ll meet, despite having the darkest sense of humour ever.
“Alright,” he smiles, “where’s Ollie?”
Ollie is one of those people in school who you are sure is a serial killer. They walk around the buildings scoping everything out and they always have their heavy, bulky backpack by their side (you’ve got to be fit to carry an array of weapons around like that all day). He’s very quiet and unnerving to speak to. He has short ginger hair, constantly scowling blue eyes that bore into the side of your head whilst you’re not looking, and a long green trench coat in which to hide all his additional weapons.
“Just disposing of his last victim, he’ll be here soon,” I answer.
Our teacher, Gilbert, walks in and briefs us on the overview of the lesson. All we need to do is fill in a sheet with information about films we’ve watched. Just as she’s finishing up, Ollie walks into the room and everybody falls silent.
“Why are you late?” Gilbert asks him, sternly at first.
“I just am,” he says, in a very passive aggressive tone, slowly twisting his neck around and staring at her menacingly.
“Okay,” she quivers as he goes to sit down.
We start filling out the sheet, me, Jenk and Ciggsy working together to finish it.
We get on to a Mexican film about two lads taking a woman on a trip to a non-existent beach, whilst both battling to get the shag. In the end, they wind up having a threesome and they never speak to each other again.
“You defo got a boner watching that!” Jenk says to Ciggsy.
“No, I didn’t.” He shakes his head, laughing as he does so.
“You did, to be fair,” I join in.
“No I did-unt!” he repeats, with extra emphasis.
We just laugh, knowing that he actually did.
After a while, we get bored with filling out the sheet and Ollie has left to go to the toilet, so naturally we start joking about him.
“Bet he just eats pure coleslaw for every meal. That’s serial killer food,” Ciggsy reckons.
“You know when I had to go to his house to record our short film?” I begin. “Well, he wouldn’t let us inside the house, not even into the hall. Probably because the house is littered with dead bodies and coleslaw.”
“I can see it now. You turn up at his house and he says, ‘We’re going to be recording in the basement’ and he opens the creaky door to reveal a dark staircase leading down. He makes you lot go first and once you’re all inside, he locks the door. And when you turn the lights on there’s coleslaw all over the walls,” Ciggsy imagines.
“Have you seen that snap bag of coleslaw he carries round for his lunch?” Jenk asks.
“Yeah, he doesn’t even use a fork, he just eats it with his bare hands,” I follow on.
But we have to stop as Ollie then returns to the table.
Even when he’s sat there, Ciggsy tests his luck by telling coleslaw-related stories in front of him; not like he’d know it was about him, unless Cig slipped up and used his name in one of the jokes: “… big fistful of coleslaw and Ollie eats it out of my hand.” He stops, stunned by the grave error he just made.
Ollie looks up and his hands slide under the table.
“Is he reaching for his gun or his coleslaw?” I whisper.
The tension is interrupted by Gilbert addressing the class.
“Right, for the second half of the lesson we’re going to watch your short films and fill in a feedback form for them all. We’ll watch Group One first,” she shouts.
Ciggsy turns to me with a worried but amused look on his face. “Oh no!” He laughs.
He is in Group One and I ask him what’s wrong, but I can’t hear what he whispers in response, and just as I go to ask him to repeat what he said, the short film starts and Gilbert shushes us all.
A minute or so into Ciggsy’s film, I remember that a few months ago he asked me to record some audio for the film. He asked me to shout a boy’s name and say that dinner was ready. Suddenly, I remember the name that I chose. Ollie.
I tap Ciggsy on the arm and whisper to him, “Now I know what you were worried about. He’s defo going to kill us this time.”
By now, Jenk has also realised that my cameo appearance is coming up soon.
“Ollie, dinner’s ready!” A voice, that is clearly mine, rings through the classroom.
I put my hand over my mouth slowly and I look at Ciggsy and Jenk who are reacting the same way, before scanning the room. Everybody is looking in our direction with worried expressions, even Gilbert. Everybody is stunned to silence as they wait to see Ollie’s reaction. His head slowly turns towards me. His creeping, crabby blue eyes stare deep into my soul as I just stare back, fuelled with the adrenaline of a near death experience.
Thankfully, he just turns back to watch the rest of the film, and everybody else in the class seems to relax and turn back to the screen, too. I’m very lucky to be alive, for now.
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