Being Neighborly

‘Paul,’ Lucy said as she rubbed hand cream into her dainty little hands lying in bed with the only man she had ever loved.

‘Yes dear,’ Paul answered turning a page of his new book.

‘I think I might bake a batch of cookies for the new neighbours, you know, welcoming them to the neighbourhood!’

Paul put his book down and took off his glasses. He had the horrible habit of chewing on the plastic ear bit. He looked pensively into the distance, ‘well, I guess if you were making cookies, you could make a double batch so we can have some as well?’ He looked at Lucy with one eyebrow raised. He loved Lucy’s cookies.

‘Yea,’ Lucy smiled back at him, ‘I could do that!’

The pair looked at each other and began to kiss and ended up making passionate love to together.

The next morning, Paul whistled his way down the stairs and kissed Lucy as she was making lunch for the boys. She didn’t object…well not until the boys did!

‘Uuuuggghhuu!’ they said in unison.

Paul poured himself a coffee and stole a bite of toast from their youngest, Jamie, who is five before he attempted to leave for work.

‘Hey Hun,’ Lucy stopped him in his tracks, ‘what do you think about bringing the cookies over to the new neighbours?’

‘Just if you’re making them for them, then you’re making them for us too.’ He smiled gesticulating to himself and the three boys.

‘Have a good day at work,’ Lucy giggled and the front door slammed shut.

After the school run, Lucy went to work on the cookies. She followed the ever-loved recipe to a ‘T’ because of the great food poisoning of 2021. She not only poisoned her family, but it was Pauls birthday and all of the guests got it too. It was like something out of Slumdog millionaire. Lucy will never be left forget about it. Now when friends come over, they bring their own food! But chocolate chip cookies she had down….as long as the recipe was in front of her.

She played cat and mouse with the oven, taking trays out and putting more in…leaving some trays in longer than others…. She didn’t know how she did it exactly, but she had made some delicious cookies. They were so good that she had already eaten two.

There was no way in the world Lucy was willing to lend the new neighbours Tupperware so she put eight cookies in some tin foil and made her way over with them.  

She knocked at the door to no answer, yet she heard movement inside. She knocked again. A slim woman in her early thirties answered the door tentatively. Lucy smiled and proceeded to welcome her to the neighbourhood and informed her that there were cookies in the tinfoil.

The woman looked terrified and backed away from the door, shaking her head. As she was closing the door someone from inside called out, “I’ll have those.” Lucy was confused. Something wasn’t making sense here.

The male voice who called out made his way to the door, the woman braced herself for impact. The young man, also in his thirties, was wearing boxer shorts and a vest. Lucy smiled and handed him the tinfoil.

‘Aren’t you going to invite the lovely new neighbour into our home?’ he asked the woman who began to tremble.

‘Please,’ she said in a shaky voice, ‘come in,’ and opened the door wide enough for the light to shine in on her battered face.

Lucy quickly backed away, ‘sorry I have to pick the kids up!’ she said with urgency and turned to face the road. She jumped. Another man, this one with a baseball bat in his hand was standing right behind her. He roughly grabbed her arm and dragged her into the house.

‘We did ask you nicely!’ he stated as he brusquely sat her down on a rickety wooden chair, the other one tying her hands behind her back with cable ties. Before she knew it her tears were running down the duct tape that was covering her mouth. She screamed, but the tape dulled out the sound. That was the first time a man had ever laid her hand on her. Mr boxershorts, who she found out to be called Ben, hit her with such force that her face jerked to the side. She could feel the blood rushing to her eye where she would put money on having a big bruise later.

As her face stayed to the side, she saw the woman who answered the door shaking in the corner.

‘Why oh why did I have to be neighbourly?’ she asked herself before one of the two grabbed her hair and turned her head towards them.

‘Don’t you be looking at her! She is just a pathetic sack of shit. You answer to me now…. got it?’

Lucy nodded out of fear and thought that this would be how she died. She could see it in their faces that they wanted nothing more than to kill her.

‘Do you want to go first or will I?’ Ben said to the guy with the baseball bat, who turned out to be called Matt.

‘You went first last time!’ Matt replied.

Ben rolled his eyes. Matt pointed the bat at what Lucy presumed was his brother?

‘Fine!’ Ben held his hands up to Matt.

Lucy got a fright when Matt produced a switch blade and cut her shackles, freeing her arms…but not for long. The next thing he did was lean her to a stack of boxes, where he brutally raped her. When he was finished, Lucy distraught, Ben had his turn. He was by far the rougher of the two.

All Lucy could do was cry and pray it to be over soon. When the two men finished, they went back for seconds…Lucy’s screams muffled by the duct tape.

When they were finally finished, there was a knock on the door. Ben quickly tied Lucy up again. She found it very sore to sit, whilst Matt looked through the peephole in the door. He didn’t know who he was seeing, he just knew he had to get rid of him.

‘Anna,’ Ben ordered the shy little mouse, ‘go and open the god damned door woman!’

She moved towards the door with haste only opening it a crack and tried to shoo whoever it was away.

‘Hi,’ Paul said, his voice making Lucy scream with gumption.

‘What do you want?’ anna asked abruptly, feeling Matts bat on her back.

‘I’m looking for my wife! She said she was going to drop cookies over to ye….is she by any chance still here?’

‘No!’ anna said abruptly and closed the door.

Paul put his foot in the door jamb and pleaded with anna to help him find his wife.

‘Did she bring over the cookies?’

‘No,’ anna said the baseball bat giving her a dig, ‘I mean yes!’

‘Is she still here?’

‘Yes’ anna said quickly changing her answer to ‘no!’ as her arm got twisted behind her back by Matt.

‘You seem to be in pain!’ Paul noticed. ‘Are you ok?’ he said and inched his way into the house where he saw the legs of someone, he knew to be his wife’s and backed out of the house again, ‘we’re just across the road. If you hear anything please let us know as Simon wants and elephant for his birthday and Lucy usually deals with that sort of stuff!’ he asked.

There it was…Lucy heard it clearly. He said elephant…their safe word. He was sending her a message. When you work as a detective with highly well know prisoners, you go over an abduction scenario’s with your wife and create a safe word.

Paul knew from what he saw that he had minutes, not hours to get his childhood sweetheart out of harms way. He walked nonchalantly across the road of the cul de sac and entered his house as he normally would, closing the door behind him gently.

He was in panic mode. The first thing he did was ring his boss, then his mother-in-law. He knew his boss would come up with a routine rescue mission that had already left as he was on the phone to his mother-in-law to ask if he could bring over the kids. He did not want them in this house where they would be able to see some tough shit go down.

‘Of course you can Paul, you know my grandbabies are always welcome at nana and pops….as long as you look after our little girl, we’ll look after your boys! Deal?’

‘Deal,’ Paul smiled. That woman could charm the pants of just about anyone she ever met.

Paul bundled the kids up in the car and drove the ten minutes to nana and pops where they were waiting for them. Nana held Pauls face and said, ‘just promise you’ll bring my baby home!’

He nodded and she kissed his forehead for luck.

Paul hightailed it home where he was met with a sea of blue flashing lights. The armed forces were even there.

‘All of this because of cookies?’ Paul questioned himself with a furrowed brow.

He saw his boss, one foot on the floor of the passenger side of a vehicle holding a megaphone.

‘If you surrender your hostage now, no harm will come of you. If in the next ten minutes you don’t surrender your hostage, we will have no choice but to take her by force. The timer has started ticking!’

‘What are you doing man?’ Paul asked shaking with shock. ‘You just gave them ten minutes to kill her!’

‘What with the information you relayed to me, I think they will give her up!’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘Like I said…we’ll take her with force!’

 

In the house Ben and Matt were pacing the living room like there was no tomorrow. Matt had his hands to his ears, Ben was panicking.

‘Seriously dude, we have to let her go!’

‘Yea, but then we go to jail!’

‘It’s not the worst place I’ve been!’ Ben confessed.

‘They would kill me in there!’ Matt was waving the bat around making Lucy and Anna nervous.

‘The secret is to seriously fuck up the biggest threat first so that his lackies respect you and worship you for doing something they didn’t have the balls to do!’ Ben explained, ‘that’s what I did anyway!’ he said with pride.

Matt couldn’t keep his mind off of the time he wore a wire which ended up taking 50% of heroin off the streets. ‘All of those bastards want revenge!’ he mumbled to himself.

‘Ask them if we could get a deal!’ Matt asked Ben.

Ben opened the door, six red dots were pointed from the lasers off of the guns from the armed forces, all situated right at his heart. ‘Can we have a deal?’ he asked scratching his balls.

‘No!’ Paul bellowed.

Ben walked back into the room, sat down on the scuffed, ripped, brown leather recliner and relayed the message to Matt….’no!’

He sat back on that recliner and said, ‘fuck it, if I’m going down for this then I’m going down happy. He took out his switch blade again and freed Lucy’s arms, bending her over the boxes one last time. Lucy knew that she could do nothing but take it so she didn’t resist as much making it not hurt as badly as the first two times.

When Ben had finished with her, he sat her down and told Matt to keep her sweet. Matt bent her over the boxes as well and when he was finished Ben came back with a sawn-off shot gun.

Ben walked Lucy out, the shotgun pushing hard against her back. If she had known when she was making the cookies that it would be something like this going to happen to her, she would have laughed and only baked one batch for her brood.

Ben was recognised by some of the police officers, not all but some who in turn told the others.

‘Mr Hill! fancy seeing you here.’ inspector detective Johnson said. You’re a tough man to find!’

Ben blushed, ‘you’re an even tougher man to hide from!’ he retorted.

‘Let the girl go and nothing will happen you!’ detective Johnson shouted. He was well aware Ben had a weapon.

‘I’m not going back to that shithole!’ Ben said and threw Lucy in the direction of the police and ‘BANG’ fired his gun. Then he was shot down by the six-armed policemen, presumed dead.

She went down, she went down hard! Paul wanted nothing more than to go over to his beautiful wife, who’s blood was beginning to trickle out and around her body, but the detective in him knew there was still another suspect in the house and he didn’t want to deprive his kids of both of their parents, leaving them orphans.

The armed police raided the house. Paul couldn’t hear or see anything but his beautiful bride laying limp on the driveway. He heard one word…’clear!’ and ran to her.

Lucy had been shot in the back. He lay down beside her as she was trying to say something under the duct tape that was still over her mouth. He took it off and heard the sweetest voice in the world ask, ‘is it over?’

‘Yes, my love, it’s over!’

She smiled and asked about the boys.

‘There safe with nana and pop!’ Paul reassured her and wiped some hair from her face and moved it behind her ear.

The paramedics began to work on Lucy the second they arrived…right before she blacked out.

When she woke, Lucy found herself in a hospital bed with tubes and wires coming out of her like the London underground.

‘Am I dead?’ she asked in a husky voice, her mouth as dry as sandpaper. Paul lifted up her oxygen mask and put a straw into her mouth. She drained the water from the cup and Paul repositioned the oxygen mask.

‘No silly!’ he giggled. But you were in surgery for four hours as the doctors took out all the debris left by the shotgun. ‘They had to take one of your kidneys my love.’ He said sombrely.

‘Good job I have two then!’ she giggled and then winced at the pain.

Paul pushed the button in her hand that was connected up to morphine…she drifted back off to sleep.

When she woke, three of her favourite people were in the room, four if you counted Paul. ‘Hi boys!’ she said in the most upbeat manner she could muster. She was met with three gap toothed grins that warmed her heart.

‘We made you cards mom!’ the eldest, Simon, announced.

She looked over at them as they stood amongst the flowers on her night stand. Tears filled her eyes. ‘I will cherish them forever!’ she smiled.

‘Dad ordered us a pizza, and cookie dough ice cream!’ Derek, the middle boy announced.

‘He did?’ she smiled grateful that she didn’t have the oxygen mask on her anymore, now she was getting it from a tube resting in her nose.

She noticed the boys were withdrawn and if she wasn’t in so much pain, she would have let them climb all over her. She was just grateful that they were together. When the food arrived the five of them ate and laughed, just like a normal dinner. Lucy smiled at Paul, who smiled back…. this was the life!