Better Off

Sensitive content: A woman is followed by a stranger. Supernatural themes.

She’d finished loading the groceries in the boot and was busy strapping the baby into the back seat when she saw a figure in her peripheral vision. He was standing still, looking not at her but at the car. Ever alert—mothers always are—she finished clipping little Kieran’s belt then turned to face the stranger, brushing her hair off her face.

He spoke first. “That’s really nice.”

“Sorry, say again?” It had been a big day but Emily made a habit of being nice. She closed the door on Kieran’s fussing and crying.

“I like yer sticker,” replied the man, pointing to the bright slogan and reading aloud, “The world’s a better place with you in it.”

Emily tilted her head to one side and offered a pleasant, sunny smile. “Thanks. I’m glad you like it.” She turned to head to the driver’s side but the man continued.

“People just need t’ be nicer to each other, don’t yer think?”

He was dressed shabbily in tracksuit pants, flannel shirt, and thongs, but that was nothing unusual given the suburb. Caboolture was in the process of being “upgraded” as her husband, Tom, liked to put it. Historically a low socioeconomic suburb, properties in Caboolture were being snapped up by professionals and young families, like the Wilsons, desperate to enter the property market. Tom and Emily lived in a hodge-podge of dilapidated Queenslanders with unkempt lawns and established lowset houses undergoing ambitious renovations.

“Name’s Dale,” he said, offering a hand. Emily immediately noticed grime beneath the fingernails, skin of a pale, almost grey complexion; she knew it would be clammy to the touch. Despite the awkwardness and her penchant for politeness, she couldn’t bring herself to shake his hand.

Now it was Dale’s turn to tilt his head, but his smile wasn’t pleasant. “Sometimes,” he began, “I wonder if the world wasn’t better off without me. Y’know?” Another offer. Kieran was wailing now; his overtired howls seemed to shake the car. Surely this stranger knew Emily needed to attend to her child?

Suddenly breathless—her heart had begun racing—Emily laughed louder than she intended and knew immediately it wasn’t the right thing to do. “Nonsense! We’re all important; we all matter. I’m so sorry,” she headed around the front of the car, making for the driver’s side, “but I’m going to have to—”

Dale moved quickly and met her at the door, a firm hand on the handle. “Go? But I just wanted a chat.”

Emily recoiled, panicked. Was there anyone nearby? Was this the kind of situation where a woman screamed to get attention? Her child was in the car. Her child! But this man … there was something in his manner that somehow crushed all hope, all thought of rescue, and at the same time mocked the idea that she was in danger. Just a chat.

“Sometimes,” he began again, quieter than before, “it’s good for ‘em to cry.” He looked through the window at Kieran and smiled.

Something in that smile surprised Emily. It seemed sympathetic, knowing. But she had to break the spell, to escape this awful—yes, awful—moment and flee. “Please,” she said, and again instantly regretted it, “I need to take him home.” She glanced at the window and saw all at once her face, hands clasped as if in prayer; the face of her child, the most beloved and precious thing in the whole world, cheeks streaked with tears and red; and him, this assailant who had not really lifted a finger nor said a harsh word, yet had scared her more than anyone in her life. In the reflection his eyes stared at her, into her, challenging and … mocking?

Instinctively she slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and locked the car remotely. She began walking backwards, retreating to the safety of others. Kieran would be fine locked in the car. It wasn’t hot, and this man could not get to him.

“Where are you going?” For the first time, his tone was surprised. Then sardonic. “Better places to be? Better people to see?” He began to stroll after her—away from the car and Kieran at least—arms swinging. Emily glanced over her shoulder towards the supermarket entrance where there was a security guard; oblivious to the situation, he was petting a guide dog and chatting amiably with its owner.

Only fifty feet or so then she would be at the door, in the company of people. What would she say? What, after all, had happened?

She turned fully and ran to the door, to the guard. She couldn’t stop herself. “Help!” The faces of the security guard and a handful of shoppers immediately turned, startled and concerned. Emily almost fell into the arms of the security guard. Words spilled out; she turned to point out the stranger.

He was gone.

***

She’d cried when she called Tom. A loud, heavy wail, waking Kieran again in his cot. It had taken her a good hour to settle him, beside herself though she was. Then she undid it all but she didn’t care. Just to hear Tom’s voice on the phone was all the permission she needed to let go of the weight she’d carried, like letting a great, heavy shield fall after a day on the battlefield.

The story was embellished in the telling, she realised, but again she didn’t care. He was a creep, a psychopath, probably a stalker. “The way he looked at me, Tom”, she said, shuddering. Tom had immediately left the office, promising to be home as soon as he could.

Emily regretted ever buying in an area like this. It wasn’t safe. “Some first home. I could never be at home in this hole,” she muttered as she collapsed on the couch. Kieran was asleep again, finally, and Tom wasn’t too far away. He’d have been home already if it wasn’t for some idiot on the Gateway causing a crash and turning a one-hour commute into two and a half. She could picture it now, some tradie hoon in a hotted-up ute, weaving through traffic, longhorns decal across the back window. “Morons, all of ‘em,” she said, picking up the remote. Buh-bumm. Netflix would distract her from reality.

Soon she was lost in Paris, the bright designer colours and elegant decor so far out of her reach but so enchanting. “A girl can dream,” she sighed. And anyway, Tom was climbing steadily at work. A promotion wasn’t out the question. Then travel … Emily took out her phone and dove right in to her Pinterest boards, picking one titled “Anywhere but here”.

Time on such evenings waiting for Tom was elastic, not to be measured, just spent on whatever required as little effort as possible. Distraction. Emily was browsing Bunnings on her laptop, wondering if she could transform the back patio into a Mediterranean courtyard when she heard footsteps on the driveway and their dog, Flopsy, barking at the gate. Odd. Why wasn’t Tom parking in the garage?

Then she heard the rasp of the side gate latch lifting, the swing of the gate opening. Tom was going to see Flopsy first? Honestly, she thought, he could be so thoughtless sometimes, such a man. She tossed her phone aside and headed to the kitchen window that looked onto the backyard. “Oi!” she said to the insensitive idiot crouched down on the grass, ruffling the ears of the golden labrador.

He stood up and she saw by the patio security light that it wasn’t Tom but the psycho from the carpark. This time Emily didn’t wonder if she should, she simply screamed.

She felt only terror; in a flash of lucidity Emily realised she hadn’t locked the sliding door to the patio. The intruder was closer, only a few feet away. The breakfast bar stood between her and the door. And her phone was in the lounge room—but where? She’d flung it aside in her frustration with Tom.

Her scream died on her lips. He knew. She knew he did. That she was utterly helpless. He’d moved alarmingly quick in the carpark this afternoon when he wanted to, and he wasn’t stupid—somehow she knew he was anything but—he would’ve put two and two together and realised she didn’t have her phone on her. First thing she’d have done if she did was dial triple zero. And she wasn’t going to run any further away from little Kieran to find it. She could go on screaming, but she thought bitterly of the screams she heard all too often in this neighbourhood; they stopped eventually.

“Now,” said Dale, breaking the silence. He raised his hands, palms up as if in surrender. “If you’ll cast yer mind back t’ this morning, I only wanted one thing.”

It was absurd. This stranger, probably homeless or a felon, standing there on her back patio, talking as casually as though he was asking for some change at the laundromat. And stupid Flopsy, dopey as ever, sitting looking at her like he was after some scraps!

“A chat?” Emily spat the word out.

Dale smiled a straight sort of smile that just stretched his thin lips even thinner across his pale, stubbled face. “Yeah, love. To talk.”

“You’re trespassing,” she fired back, thrusting a finger at him through the glass. “You’re breaking the law.” Good, she thought to herself, get angry but stay calm. You’re better than this creep. She sized him up. Why had she been afraid of him? She took a deep breath in, felt her power, the stores of strength that men knew nothing about. She’d been a footy player, for Pete’s sake. I could take him, she thought, and instantly felt in control.

Dale crouched once more beside Flopsy, as if submitting to Emily’s subtle assertions of superiority. Flopsy, in turn, rolled over beside him, offering his belly for a rub and getting one. “You’ve got me pegged, love,” chuckled the man. “Law-breaker. Public enemy number one. Everythin’ that’s wrong with the world, yeah?” He paused, his hand resting on the dog’s tummy. “This boy here a good judge of character?”

She hadn’t wanted the stupid animal. Tom had fallen in love with Flopsy as a puppy; he didn’t even ask. Just brought him home. “He’s an idiot.”

“Just like that bloke in his ute on the M1 this arvo?” Dale turned his head away as he said this, gazing off into the night, but after letting his question hit Emily full in the stomach, he turned again to face her.

“What—” Emily flinched, taking a step back from the window. In an instant she was laid bare, fallen to the invader. How?

“He didn’t make it home, that idiot.” Dale stood to his feet and stepped to the window, his face close to the screen. “But don’t worry, Emily. The world may just be a better place without morons like ‘im.”

At the sound of her name from his mouth, a mouth full of dirty yellow teeth, of accusation and contempt, the glass in the kitchen window splintered. The glass in the sliding door too.

“Emily,” he said again in a tone of finality. The panes burst inward, showering her in a million shining fragments as she fell to the tiles. Flopsy leapt to his feet, barking wildly at this man who only a minute ago had been his best friend. Dale stepped around the dog and through the empty door frame. With awful strength, he lifted the dining table and in one motion swung it around to block Flopsy’s path. With three more strides, his thongs crunching over the glass, he was beside Emily.

Dale knelt beside the helpless, dazed woman. She was bleeding in countless places. Dale touched a place on his knee where he too was now bleeding, then held a finger to Emily’s face. “We’re both bleeding, love.”

“Kieran,” gasped Emily. She planted her hands on the floor beside her as though to raise herself to her feet, but immediately shrieked with the pain of a thousand needles entering her skin.

Dale picked up a tiny piece of glass and held it carefully between thumb and index finger. “Sometimes it’s the smallest of things,” he continued, over the sound of Flopsy’s barking and Kieran’s wailing, for the baby had woken again to the ruckus. “But it hurts. Lots of people out there hurting, Em’.”

Emily was weeping now, saying her baby’s name over and over, begging God to keep him safe. Tom’s name, too.

“Yeah, he’ll be home soon, I reckon. Then he can help you to yer feet, see to these cuts—you’ll be fine.” He stood slowly to his feet, turning and taking in the Wilsons’ home, nodding at the many changes and improvements they’d made thanks to Tom’s considerable salary. “What’s next on the list, Emily? Downlights? New kitchen?” He stepped out of the kitchen, running a hand over the shiny coffee machine, pausing to look closely at a holiday photo, Thailand two years ago.

“You’ll be fine, girl,” Dale repeated before pushing the table aside and leaving through the void that had been the sliding door. “First things first, tell Tom to replace—”

“Get out!” shouted Emily from the kitchen floor. A shudder shook her body and she sank back on the tiles.

Dale waved a hand dismissively, or in farewell, then gave Flopsy a pat on the head. “Wise up, young fella; it’s a dangerous world,” he said, slipping out the side gate, then down the driveway and past the 4WD parked on one side with vanity plates that read ‘4EMILY’.