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Friend Request
Ratings:
187 pages2 hours
Summary
FRIEND REQUEST is a disturbing, chilling and captivating novel about true horror - not vampires, werewolves or demons, but the genuine terror of an ordinary person warped by abuse and alienation to become a monster. Set in Australia with an English police Inspector chasing the killer, the breathtaking action and nail-biting suspense covers a universal theme. If you were broken, bitter and unnoticed and could get away with anything... what would you do?
Publisher: ReadOnTime BVReleased: May 27, 2012ISBN: 9781921791741Format: book
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Friend Request - William Andrews
Acknowledgements
It is with the greatest sympathy that I acknowledge the help of many people. The writing of a novel from initial idea to finished article is a long and arduous process. It is an especially difficult journey when one is working on a couple of manuscripts at once, as I was.
As I was approaching the point where my books were nearing completion, I admit that I became something of an insufferable bore. At the very least, I was fixated on little else except my writing. You spend ten months building a house, brick by brick – or in this case, paragraph by paragraph – and it gets unbelievably exciting when it’s almost time to put the roof on.
An enormous thank you to my friends and colleagues who, rather than just putting up with my obsession, actually shared it and remained genuinely interested, supportive and enthusiastic. Special mention must go to Phil Ross for our endless hours spent identifying the problems of the world (even if those problems remain unfixed, we know what they are!) and to Hayley Hatcher and Jaime Parsons, who helped me to overcome a couple of idea blockages. Good luck travelling the world, Jaime.
I have learned so much about the publishing process from Jim Hodges that I can say honestly, without his input you would not be reading this. Jim’s cover art for the novel is outstanding and surpassed my original concept by a country mile.
My proof reader, the gorgeous Cheryl Moore, was faced with quite an ordeal with me, forced as she was to read the type of scary novel from which she would normally run away screaming. Her comments, criticisms and brainstorming sessions have assisted me beyond measure. I am eternally grateful most of all for her belief in me, even when my own wavered.
The roof is on at last. Step inside if you dare. All are welcome. There’s plenty of room in the cellar.
William Andrews
August 2010
* * * * *
Prologue
Dylan McCormick could not believe his luck. Until very recently, he would have compared himself and his life to that of one of those pathetic Ethiopian children you see on television, the poor bastard too dejected and resigned to his fate even to bother to swipe at the dozen flies crawling all over his face, cameras rolling or not.
Within a few amazing weeks, everything had changed, improved a thousand fold. Had he not been extremely busy fucking the amazing piece of ass that was currently lying underneath his profusely perspiring, thrusting body, he might just have pinched himself.
He’d always wanted to have sex to the ethereal strains of the Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Now he actually was. He disengaged his left hand, supported his weight entirely on his right arm and cranked up the stereo with the remote control. He didn’t even break his pounding rhythm for a moment. Man, it was a thing of beauty. Good job he was video taping it. He smiled directly at the camera lens, continued pushing hard.
Harder.
Moving inside her at this precise moment was quite simply the best sensation he had ever felt.
As he heard the distinctive opening guitar riff ringing loudly in his ears, he really thought he might cry. Never mind Clapton – Keith Richards was God. Perfect fuck music. The man was a genius.
He found himself absently studying the figure whose legs he was currently gyrating between, almost as though she didn’t matter. Well, she didn’t really. Not to him. That wasn’t the point, or why he felt like crying. His joy transcended anyone else, was his alone.
She had a good, hard body though. Nice tits. Firm and not too big. As though guided by his thoughts, his mouth devoured one of the nipples like a hungry suckling animal.
He admired proudly the feel of the smooth skin of his groin grinding vigorously against the equally cleanly shaved mound between this bitch’s legs. He reminded himself for the umpteenth time that – no matter how economically dire one’s situation might be – his personal credo was that no one should ever skimp on coffee, toilet paper or razor blades. Those were three items where quality was essential and where he demanded the best.
His eyes wandered upward from her breasts, stopped not quite on her face. His attention was held for a moment by her neck. It was beautiful and slender. Her hair smelled sweet, the soft blonde curls fell almost to her shoulders.
Her skin was pale, the complexion of someone who spent no time in the sun. She had evidently been a girl who had safeguarded diligently against the dangers of skin cancer or who had studied hard – he imagined her wasting long hours in the university library, preparing for a future that would now never be.
Lurid marks shone a violent purple across her crushed larynx. The contusions were dark and vivid but would get no darker, the blood flow forever halted.
As he had been choking the life from her, he had wondered if she had ever sung, what her favourite songs were that she would sing no more. She was certainly a bit too young to be a fan of the Stones. Young people today had questionable musical tastes, but then his father had said the same to him once upon a time.
It was not that he felt any remorse. This was the best fuck he’d ever had. The sight of the bruises made him relive the experience of making them – and the excitement returned. It had been better than the sex, heightened it now. Next time, he would do the killing and the copulating simultaneously. He was on the verge of coming now, surrendered to the ecstasy.
He ejaculated, but still the shame, self recrimination and regret he had half expected did not arrive. The elation remained, mingled with an unrelenting determination to do this again. At that moment he knew. He was –
Bang, bang, bang.
The thumping noise from downstairs was louder than the stereo. Faintly, he thought he could also hear screams. Ten seconds earlier and the racket would have put him off his stroke, would have really annoyed him. Now, he was vaguely amused and he toyed with the idea of allowing the futile disturbance to continue for a while, until she wore herself out.
He rose from the bed quickly, pleased with the bolt of energetic power surging through him like a current. Not so long ago he had spent countless hours paralysed on the same mattress, too drained by depressive exhaustion to even raise his head from the pillow.
He flicked the switch on the coffee percolator as he strode naked through the kitchen; the appliance began bubbling away to itself as Dylan continued down the hall, opened the non-descript door that led to the basement and made his way down the bare concrete stairs. The delicious smell of Brazilian roast would be wafting through the entire top area of the house by the time he returned.
What felt like a long time ago, in reality just a few days, he had arranged a small library of his favourite books on the few shelves that adorned the walls of the landing at the top of the stairs. He had recently begun to enjoy spending hours at a time there, reading by the incandescent yellow electric light, as he sat on the top step and listened to the sounds emanating from the room below. As he descended, he reminded himself of two things – that he should replace the bulb with a stronger wattage so as not to strain his eyes and that he really should re-read The Great Gatsby.
It was not his house, but he was settling in just fine. He would be a first-rate tenant.
As a small child, the creepy opening titles of the TV show Callan had freaked him out so severely that he had screamed and screamed. Little Dylan had never allowed his parents to watch the show due to those opening credits, that depicted a light bulb swinging in a darkened room, throwing shadows. That alone had freaked out the fragile young boy, but the cascade of glass shards at the end when the light bulb exploded had been enough to make him convulse with terror.
Adult Dylan, upon embarking on his journey of reinventing himself, had chosen to face those deep-seated childhood fears and he had made himself sit there for hours on end until the waves of terror had subsided. Dylan wondered whether re-runs of that old British show had been telecast recently in Germany – he mused as to what phobias might beset his prisoner and resolved to find out. If she had none, he would gladly create some for her.
As he walked slowly down the steps, a slight icy frisson slithered down his spine with each step. Clearly, childhood nightmares were difficult to suppress entirely. He squashed it, buried it with the weight of the pleasure he had just felt and that which he was about to experience.
The wooden floors that had conducted the noise from the basement so clearly had also carried the sound of Dylan’s approach. The banging ceased even before his hand reached up to the shelf for the key that would unlock the final door. He could sense his captive tensing as she anticipated his arrival in her dungeon. The thought of her fear excited him again. He was aroused as he entered the darkened room, clicked on the light to blind her, disorient her.
Keep that up and I’ll come down there and slit your fucking throat, you Kraut bitch,
he said coldly, calmly. He looked her straight in the eye; his tone was even, deliberate. She would know he was serious. If she wanted to live for a while longer, she would know.
The woman was sprawled on a soiled single mattress half a dozen wooden steps below him. She was restrained firmly at the ankle by a thick stainless steel chain threaded through a ceiling bracket twenty feet away. The distance between them might as well have been ten miles.
She must have been standing on the mattress and clanging the short length of chain against the low wooden ceiling. Now she was lying meekly, pretending to be compliant. She saw his erection and her eyes – accustomed to the gloom and startled, narrowed by the sudden tidal wave of cruel brightness that burned her retinas – widened once more.
When he had grabbed the key from the shelf outside the room, he had retrieved something else as well. Now he revealed it, like a stage magician performing a conjuring trick. It was her passport, burgundy in colour and gold embossed – the European passport of a Stuttgart native now a long way from home.
At first, he had considered allowing her to send emails or text messages, maybe even the occasional phone call under pain of death if she misbehaved and said the wrong thing. He had a rudimentary grasp of German and he had thought that creating a fake trail for the backpacker might buy him some time to keep her for longer. But he knew that it would be far too easy for her to drop clues and raise suspicion – like saying hello to dear old Uncle Heinrich who did not exist.
No, he reasoned, it was far better to allow pretty blonde Beatrice Muller to disappear from the face of the Earth. For several weeks, it would be assumed she was merely getting drunk in a backpacker hostel somewhere, spreading her long legs for any young stud who could afford to buy her a beer – far too busy having wild inebriated fun to ring a worried Mutti or Vater and tell them she was okay.
Her gaze met his momentarily, was drawn to the passport in his left hand. Her attention was captured. It was the emaciated traveller’s lifeline, her connection to her life – her false hope.
He smiled thinly to himself. Inside, he was ecstatic. He tossed the passport downward in her direction; she clambered for it clumsily – grasped it, but not before it hit the piss-stained mattress – like a seagull swooping on a stray chip. She held it close to her cold naked body, cradled it between her exposed breasts as though finding solace and warmth in its inanimate presence. Her tits had shrunk since she’d been down here, he noticed. He could see her ribs. Good. She’d needed to lose a few pounds, the bratwurst- gobbling cunt.
You can keep that,
he told her ominously. You’ll never get to use it again.
Click.
He extinguished the harsh glow of the single electric light and closed the door to the sound of his captive’s shivering sobs.
His smile was broader now as he ascended again to the world above the cellar dungeon. He felt alive. He had been invigorated, exorcised. That could only possibly have gone better if he had made the light bulb explode. He imagined her jumping out of her skin, terrified, as he had done as a child.
He was certain the thought of that old television show would never scare him again.
Dylan McCormick opened the uppermost door and returned to the upstairs part of the house, careful to close and lock the door behind him. As he did so, he could once again hear rock music blaring from the stereo in the spare bedroom. Midnight Rambler was playing now, just reaching its climax:
I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, baby, and it hurts…
Fuck, he thought to himself, he loved the Stones.
* * * * *
Chapter 1
Cancer had stolen Dylan’s mother from him two weeks after the boy had turned fourteen. Leukaemia had devoured Margaret McCormick’s cells relentlessly, mercilessly, completely without pity – but slowly, so slowly, like a torturing cannibal. From her first visit to the hospital to her final journey to the cemetery had taken eighteen months, but they had seemed like as many years.
The day of the funeral had been unbearably hot and humid, especially for a frail youth wearing a black mourning suit and tie for the first time. Helping to carry the coffin, he’d thought at one point that he was going to faint. He’d wanted
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