Page 1 of Child's Play

Prologue

Winter 2010

‘Come on, what do you want?’ she snaps, rubbing her hands together, reminding me of when I was a child.

But I’m no longer a child. I’m a grown-up and I’m angry. But she doesn’t need to know that. Yet.

‘And what are we doing here, anyway?’ she asks, looking around the deserted park. It is mid-January and one degree above freezing, twenty minutes before the sun falls completely.

My promise of having something for her had lured her here as I’d hoped.

I pat the seat of the roundabout beside me. ‘Sit with me and I can give you your present.’

She looks unsure but curiosity gets the better of her.

I’ve been dreaming of this minute for eight years.

‘Come on, what’s this all?…’

‘Remember bringing me here to play when I was little?’ I ask.

She hesitates. ‘Err… I…’

‘Do you remember pushing me on the swings, sitting with me on the see-saw, playing with a ball on the field?’

‘Come on now, it’s late. I want to get home,’ she says, and I hear a note of fear in her voice.

She knows that something is wrong.

She moves away from me.

I grab her arm.

‘You don’t remember? No? Oh, that’s because you never did, you fucking bitch,’ I say, turning her around.

‘What the?…’

I’ve rehearsed this in my mind so many times. I know exactly how it is going to work.

I raise my right arm and punch her in the temple, knocking her clean out.

A genuine smile lights up my face. That felt almost as good as I have imagined.

I work quickly as the day begins to fade, unsure how long she’ll be out.

She starts to groan as I finish the last tie to her ankle.

‘Hey, what you?…’

‘Comfy?’ I ask, standing back to admire my handiwork.

Her legs are spread-eagled and tied to the metal frame of the spider’s web roundabout, facing down. Her body is bent at the waist so her upper half is hanging down towards the floor, the top of her head touching the concrete base of the ride. Her hands are tied behind her back.

‘Look, I’m gonna puke…’

‘Least of your problems,’ I say, enjoying the fear in her voice as she tries to move.

‘Aargh,’ she cries out as the barbed wire bites into the flesh of her wrists. A nightmare to apply but worth it to see the bright red results of her struggles.