Golden boy (standard:horror, 1607 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Feb 04 2010	Views/Reads: 3255/1893	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A new football sensation is destined for stardom, but not if a disgruntled fan gets his way.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

with the intention of breaking his shin. There wasn't much in there he 
could use. An eight-inch wrench, a beech mallet, or a digging spade. He 
picked up the spade, and wandered around the garden, checking his 
watch. It'll be the second-half now, he thought. Then he realised that 
he could be seen from a few nearby houses from their bedroom windows, 
so he spent the next hour and a half in the shed, nervously dry-washing 
his hands, and looking up like a meerkat everytime a vehicle drove past 
the house. 

When the main gateway doors opened, Peter breathed in a deep, nervous
breath, picked up the spade, and walked quickly to the side gate. He 
was soon peering around the side of the house at a black Ford Ranger. 
He heard a voice talking, and then he appeared, talking into a mobile 
phone, with mirrored sunglasses, dulled blonde long hair in a band, 
wearing the Denwick football club kit. Peter raced around, swung back 
the spade before the boy could see what was going on, and sent the 
weapon into his right shin, hitting it on its side, so easily splitting 
the bone and tearing through muscle. He collapsed to the ground, and 
screamed, but Peter had gone, throwing the spade aside, and 
disappearing along the road. 

He spent the next few days mostly in hiding, fearing the police raiding
his abode and hauling him to solitary confinement, and on the day of 
the semi-final, he was tuned in to local radio to hear the team news, 
and was horrified to learn that Tristan was playing. Surely there had 
to be some mistake, he thought. There's no way he can play football 
after that.  He was preparing to leave when there was a knock on the 
door, and it was as he'd feared. Two men flashed their badges at him, 
and it wasn't long before he was being interviewed at the police 
station. Fear ran riot within him, like an exited bird when let out of 
its cage, fluttering around the room. Some of the nerves where for 
Penhallow town. They would be playing now, and he wondered how they 
were getting on, whether golden boy was dancing around their defence, 
or whether he was hobbling towards the goal on crutches, and still 
scoring. 

“I've told you,” said Peter, “I'm not guilty, I don't know anything
about Tristan's brother being attacked. Nothing to do with me”. 

Tristan, being a paranoid striker of some note, became more and more
suspicious as his star rose. He was sure he was destined for the 
premier league or Serie A, so he had coerced his brother who looked 
very much like him to fool the paparazzi into thinking it was him when 
he left the football ground. He thought they would either follow him, 
or be waiting at his house, so when his brother got there, he would 
ring Tristan to tell him it was safe to come home. So far, two 
reporters had been outside his house in four months, that was all. 

“You've got nothing on me,” said Peter with all the conviction he could
manage. “Oh really,” said Detective inspector Fitzpatrick, leaning 
across the table. “Where you, or where you not caught stealing from a 
supermarket 18 years ago?”. Peter's eyes widened in fear. “Such 
naivety,” said the policeman. “Your fingerprints where all over the 
spade, and they matched the ones we still have on record”. “I thought 
convictions get wiped after ten years” said Peter. Fitzpatrick shook 
his 48-year-old balding head. “Not wiped. Not deleted, simply moved 
from one file to another, and made to sound like it's removed. It 
simply gets archived. Nothing ever gets wiped”. Peter was aware that 
his prints may be taken from the spade, but was so convinced that they 
could never trace him because he wasn't on record, that they wouldn't 
find him. His lack of guile and desperation had convicted him. 

He later found out that Penhallow town had won the game. Golden boy had
been sent off after five minutes. Angry about his brother maybe, or 
angry that the press would be with him more, and he would have to learn 
better English. Either way, when the final came a month later, 
Penhallow were playing Millworth, and the sliding hatch to Peter's cell 
opened and a tall moustached warden looked in at him sitting on the 
bed, staring at nothing as he served two years. “Your team lost two 
nil,” he said, and closed the hatch. Peter lay on the bed and curled up 
into a foetus position, and stayed like that for a long time. He became 
quiet and reclusive, simply just staring for hours at a time, sometimes 
rocking back and forth, until he was confined to a mental institution, 
and never left.


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