The tabloid newspapers, celebrity magazines, and cable television crews welcomed Roger Walker as he stepped off the plane, back onto English soil. Cameras flashed, interviewers called his name, and already back in the newspaper offices, reporters compared him to everyone from Philias Fogg to Houdini. It was the Guinness Book of Records people who were blessed with this new star’s attention, handing the hero a shining gold trophy, for Roger Walker had just travelled round the world by foot, stepping on every country on God’s great Earth in record time, for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever.
The record time itself is of no importance. That record will change, as will the number of counties in God’s great Earth. What happened to Roger Walker after he arrived home is that which is truly remarkable.
Roger got himself a nice glass trophy, with a solid steel lock, in which he placed the trophy. As the media circus of which Roger wanted no part played on outside, Roger sat crossed legged in front of the cabinet, gazing at the trophy, hypnotized by the wonder of his achievement. His mind drifted to the long days of loneliness that had dominated his escapade, and he raised himself to address the feeling. He hit the town, and found himself the best wife fame and fortune could buy.
The couple enjoyed the early months of their union, and despite Roger’s habit of muttering “been there, done that” when any country on Earth appeared on the television, they soon became accepting of each other’s ways. Roger bought a large Victorian home, surrounded by a great expanse of garden, front and back, and reserved the top floor for his trophy cabinet.
Realising now that he had so much to lose, so much to be stolen from him, in the form of a fine home, a lovely wife, a beautiful trophy, Roger resorted back to his vast sponsorship savings and wired up the home with the most faultless burglar alarm system that technology could offer. Having spent three months observing the installation of the system, Mrs. Walker expressed her concern regarding power cuts, so the couple bought the most rang-ridden, fiercest Alsatian they could find. They called it Rex-T.
Satisfied that their home was secure, and under the notion that one of each of them was not nearly enough, the Walkers began trying for a baby. Mrs. Walker fell pregnant, and was overwhelmed with a desire to decorate the house to her liking. Roger gave in to his wife’s modernistic leanings, allowing her to turn everything inside the house white, whilst painting the outside of the house black. As Mrs. Walker went about charcoaling every tree in the mansion grounds, basking under the spray garden sprinklers shooting out jets of ink, Roger sat cross-legged on the upper floor, gazing at his trophy.
It was a local wine merchant who later called the media’s attention back to the Walkers. When he received the mysterious order to leave ten bottles of Krystal champagne outside the Walker’s property on the eve of every month, old Mr. Treely obliged unquestioningly. It was only on the third month, when Mr. Treely considerately tried to pass the bottles through the gate of the property and received an electric shock for his efforts, that his benevolence expired. The public marvelled at what type of lifestyle this one-time celebrity was now leading, not having been seen in public for at least eighteen months. The previous owner of the property appeared on a documentary questioning the dietary habits of the family, stating firmly that the only food that could be grown in the garden were mushrooms and potatoes.
The electrified fence was a matter for the authorities. The police stood outside the property having found the phone disconnected and the fence still electrified. The chill emanating from the grounds, the impenetrability of the pitch-black façade of the building, and the two dimensional stillness of the scene before them was too much to bear. The case was closed.
*
Lesley Waitling had played considerably less part in the world. He’d missed his true calling in cheerleading, and had played very little part in that. His father was supposed to encourage thirteen year old Lesley to take classes, resulting in him becoming the greatest cheerleader, male or female, that England had ever produced. Instead, through a rare cosmic glitch thirty years ago, Lesley’s dad spontaneously entertained the notion of signing his son up to dance classes for just two seconds, before dismissing the idea out loud as “bloody ridiculous.”
Lesley was non-the-wiser. He drifted through life, from one subject at school to another, from one menial job to the next, never knowing why, or where, or how, and not really caring. The feeling of not being where he belonged became so intertwined with his existence that Lesley readily accepted his entrepreneurial older brother’s offer to work for him, as a door-to-door cheese salesman.
His first point of call following relocation was the Walker mansion. He stood outside its foreboding iron gates, now adorned with a rusty and menacing sign – “Electrified!” Utterly perplexed as to how the household received visitors, and not wanting to disappoint his brother, Lesley began to scale the wall. As he made it over the top, dragging his bag of cheese after him, Lesley cursed the King Burger meal he’d had an hour before, but as he crashed to the ground, the window-poster for King Burger recruitment flashed before his mind luringly.
Amid the shrieking of the wind, and the tearing sound beneath his feet with every step, Lesley perceived a rustling from the row of trees siding the property. As he stepped ever closer to the looming building, Lesley kept his head turned to the trees, eyeing suspiciously the darkened black of the garden. There it was: a small figure, human in shape, darting from one tree to the next, parallel to the intruder! Lesley quickened his pace. The creature kept up. It was small, human in shape, with piercing white eyes shining through the evening dusk. It emerged – a human child – only different, naked, but tattooed from head to foot. It let out a piercing yell, in a language of its own, to the house now thirty feet away. Its mother, in matching tribal tattoos, stretched from a lower window to return the yell in the connecting tongue.
“God, I hate my life,” thought Lesley.
Lesley began a nervous trot to the front door as the child bounded along at a distance. It leapt through the open window, into its mother’s arms, as Lesley reached the door. Crash! A being with the weight of an ox crashed into the other side of the oak portal. Lesley stumbled back in shock, dropping his bag of cheese. He hated dogs. The being roared with all the agony of the underworld. This was no dog. Lesley darted to the alleyway and made for the back, as the door crashed to splinters, and Roger Williams landed on the path on all fours, wild-eyed, snarling, foaming from the guts. His naked, sinewy muscle tightened in murderous resolve, distorting the intricacies of the family tattoo, before pouncing forward in pursuit of Lesley Waitling.
Lesley’s arms flapped through the air as he darted out into the back garden, stumbling over potatoes past Rex-T’s head on a stick – a monument to a previous escape attempt – and eyeing the distant fence with useless hope. His lungs were bursting, his heart was pounding; he was making no ground and he could already feel Roger’s snorting hot breath on the back of his neck. Whether it was down to the unordinary amount of blood pumping through his brain, the desperate need for that little bit extra, or his own life flashing before his eyes, Lesley assuredly screamed out in delighted recognition: “Cheerleader!” as Roger’s weight brought him to the soil.
As Roger Walker devoured Lesley Waitling alive, Mrs Walker urinated a circle around the spectacle, and their first-born howled at the moon.
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