500 words a day

743 words 24th august 2009

SO far he thought he’d managed to get away with it. Three weeks no, living in the car. It was tricky, getting his clothes to look like they were not straight from the boot of his car but luckily he didn’t have to wear a suit and tie. So, he could keep this u[ for another few weeks he reckoned. The washing and changing of clothes was manageable, he’d use the gym and he’d paid for 3 more months now so that would be OK, the showers were even better than his at home, or when he used to have a home. He was mainly just ashamed to ask for help from friends or family but also, he was scared. They’d said he wasn’t to tell anyone what had happened, that they’d basically taken his house from him, in repayment of his loan. He only borrowed 10000 but that kept going up and up until they said the only ay they could be happy was if he gave them his house. So he did. They went to the solicitor and he signed it over to them, well to Henderson holdings, whatever that meant, basically that cruel bastard Freddie Mcardle. He was now the proud owner of his 2 bedroom house. He’d lived there with Sheila and the kids until they’d  left him last year. Thats when he started to get into trouble – the drinking and the gambling and the loans and the exorbitant interest. He wasn’t a stupid man, he knew about loan sharks, he knew about Freddie, but he behaved like a stupid man, a very stupid man. He behaved as if Freddie was a benevolent bank manager, as if gambling was a healthy positive activity to accompany the wondrous drinking yourself to sleep, leading to an enhanced sense of wellbeing and calm.





He was starting to get together a plan but wasn’t sure ho long h could keep  with the job an the pretence of everything being ok, keep going to work, boring work but he got paid and he really needed to get paid. He still owed the bank all the mortgage money, he might have ‘sold’ his house but he got no money. He owed 176000 pounds to Halifax building society. He could declare himself bankrupt and that was tempting, just let it all go and start from scratch. But he thought that he might not recover, wouldn’t have the gumption to start from scratch, wouldn’t bother to make anything of himself and actually, an increasingly common thought, he wondered if he’d be bothered to carry on living if he did hat. It was becoming more and more of an attractive option to just stop living, no more worries, no more discomfort or fear or self-loathing. Just nothing. He got scared when he thought about how he’d do it and he imagined all sorts of ways that he’d cock it up and end up really hurting himself or disabling himself or hurting someone else, and this kept it at bay. He didn’t think it would though if he lost everything.





SO he had to have a plan, an elaborate plan. He was a gambler after all and he was going to take  massive gamble, to make himself feel a hell of a lot better and to put himself back n the black, very very well into the black in fact and most of all, to get even with that little shit Freddie.


When he was waiting around in Freddie’s office, he happened to overhear something that he thought he could use to his advantage, something that would stitch him up and earn him a lot of money in the process. When he got the money, he’d disappear and live n South America, change his hair, buy  new identity and start again, but in a much more exciting way. What made all this OK was his back up plan, if all else failed he would definitely just kill himself, quickly and immediately, that way he had nothing to lose. He had nothing now and if it didn’t work he’d cease to exist so it wouldn’t matter. No one would miss him, he wouldn’t be around to be miserable and anxious all day like now and it would all be over. If it did work though, he’d have a chance at a new exciting life, in a beautiful hot part of the world and he’d feel the delicious pleasure of revenge.








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Steve Wybourn





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