5 October 2016

Fantasy

Tick tock...tick tock. For three nights, I had been sitting in the darkness. Waiting. Occasionally, I heard the wailing of ambulance sirens heading up to King's College Hospital. Just before three a.m. on the Sunday, I heard men's voices outside the bathroom window. But it was a false alarm.

By Monday night, I was beginning to think that my prey would never arrive. I was tired. And it was no fun sitting silently in my daughter's darkened flat in Camberwell. I couldn't watch television or surf the net, checking out faraway blogs. The screen light would be a give away. The night hours had passed so slowly. Tick tock...tick tock. This was going to be the last night. In the morning I would travel back to Sheffield.

I must have nodded off around midnight - descending into the dark well of sleep. Down down. To a place of memories and imaginings. But less than an hour later, I was sitting bolt upright. There was a noise at the entrance door. A faint noise. A rat scratching perhaps. The sound of a key in the lock.

This is what I had been waiting for and yet my heart began to pump so violently that it threatened to burst out of my rib cage. Conscious of  every breath I was taking, I stood up as quietly as a Native American scout and moved behind the door of the lounge. Waiting.

And not a moment too soon. The intruder was in the flat now. It was too late to change my mind or press "replay" on the DVD of my life. I could hear him moving quietly, cautiously, There was a pale beam from an electric torch or phone. He was in the kitchen. He was opening drawers. I heard him mutter, "Shit" and "Fuck" under his breath. What if he had a knife...or worse? A gun? It was too late now. No replay.

And then, almost before I knew it, he was stepping into the lounge. He was on the other side of the door, his torch beam on the far wall. He took another step forward and I saw his silhouette against the uncurtained window. This was my moment. Do or die.

The bedspread was over his head in an instant and he was down on the floor with a great harrumph. As I brought him down, like a sack of spuds, his head hit the edge of the mahogany coffee table. Though the wind was knocked out of him, muffled protests emerged from beneath the quilt. He was struggling like a sheep at shearing time but I was in charge. For good measure I gave his head a couple of solid punches and using unsavoury expletives demanded his silence as I reached up to the light switch.

Peeling back the bedspread, my quarry now came into view. No more than twenty with a suggestion of acne - either in recession or bubbling under. I couldn't tell. There was some sort of tattoo on the nape of his neck and I noticed a foul odour of tobacco smoke on his breath. His left eye socket was starting to swell.

He tried to buck me off but by now my knees were pressing hard into his shoulders. He was well and truly trapped. It's not easy to dislodge a seventeen and a half stone Yorkshireman who is intent on revenge. 

"Wot you want? Wot you what?" he asked in his whining Thames estuary accent and when he tried to spit at me I am afraid I lost my temper momentarily and loosened his front teeth with my right fist. He calmed down then so I was able to explain that I had been waiting for him and that he had had no right whatsoever to steal my daughter's handbag and her boyfriend's Macbook. 

I reached under the sofa for the washing line and the belts. I had placed them there at the start of the long weekend in anticipation of this moment. It was a struggle but my will prevailed and soon the rat was trussed up, tied to a chair. I noticed he was trembling and that he had most certainly peed his trousers. Disgusting little rat.

"Wot you gonna do?" he whined.

But I hadn't thought ahead that far.

I got his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and began to thumb through his contacts..."Mum", "Nan" and a bunch of random names that meant nothing to me.
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As some of you will recall my daughter was robbed last Tuesday evening. Her handbag contained the keys to her own flat in south London and sure enough this past weekend the robber travelled down to  Camberwell to rob her a second time. She was away at a wedding in North Yorkshire and then she had to work in Manchester on Monday. When she got back, she found the door to her flat had been left open and a few items had been stolen but nothing of great value because she had anticipated such a visit and had even had one of the locks changed. But still the rat came in. In reality, I am sorry to say that  I wasn't waiting for him. As the title of this blogpost suggests, all of that was just a delicious fantasy.

21 comments:

  1. I feared similar would happen after you said that the mongrels had gotten your daughter's address. The bastards!

    I hope Karma treats them well. Every dog gets its day so "they" say I hope this cur or these curs get theirs...soon.

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    1. With your sense of justice you should be head of Queensland Police. You'd look cool in a police uniform and I would be right beside you paying the bad guys back.

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  2. I was cheering you on in my fantasy as well. But tell me, why are these native American scouts quieter than you run-of-the-mill boy scouts? They always sounded like noisy beggars to me.

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    1. Perhaps when you were playing cowboys and indians in the cobbled streets of Cottonopolis, the indian scouts were noisy beggars but real indians could move as quietly as snakes.

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  3. A young thief tried to rob me on the metro in Rome a couple of years ago. Paul (my hero) took great delight in dragging her by the hair and throwing her off the train. It's nice when you can get the better of a lowlife.

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    1. Was Paul dressed in shining armour that day? What happens when he needs a wee?

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  4. I was burgled about twenty years ago. They took cash and ransacked every room including the bathroom. It was not a pleasant feeling at all.

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    1. I guess that the memory of such an event lives with you forever Mr Heron. Sorry to hear that sir.

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  5. I'm sure many people would feel the same and want to do harm to the creep.

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    Replies
    1. Even a warm-hearted and forgiving guy like you Red?

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  6. Call his Mum AND his Nana... and once they have finished with him, the police.

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    1. Yes that sounds like the best next step but I am tempted to dangle him on the washing line from Tower Bridge.

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  7. Sorry it was only a fantasy - being burgled is an awful experience. Eventually you begin to feel you dare not go out. Sadly there have even beeb a few round here lately but at the last one the police were two hours before they arrived at the scene of the crime although the neighbour who rang thought the burglars were still in the house - I suppose the only answer is to have nothing worth stealing - although I suspect you still feel your privacy has been violated. Commiserations to your daughter.

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  8. Sorry YP, I obviously meant 'been'.

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    1. As it happens she had already planned to move out of the Camberwell flat this coming weekend. She's moving to Balham and Shirley and I are going down to London to help her clean up the flat so she can get her £900 deposit back.

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  9. Oh no. How frustrating for her and for you. It's a good thing she's planning to move anyway. Have the police tried CCTV to figure out who's behind it? Do they even investigate burglaries, or are there just too many of them?

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    1. Such burglaries are commonplace. The frustrating thing is that through tracking she knew where her mobile phone was - and she told the police but they needed a more precise address. Surely they could have checked records for likely candidates in the flats that Google/Apple had identified.

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  10. What a shame she didn't rig up a camera to catch the horrible sod. A greater worry that he still got in with new locks in place. Glad she's moving out.

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    1. It has left her feeling less happy about her working life in London but she is quite a tough young woman and I think she will be be able to put it all behind her.

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