Read Fifty/Fifty and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

developed quite the taste for you.”
     
    The two of them laughed together, a laugh that was gleeful and full of joy. They were enjoying whatever it was that was going on, that much was certain.
     
    “ What the hell do you want with me?” asked Charlotte.
     
    “ Can’t you tell?” asked the second woman. She flicked on the bedside light and leant forward. Charlotte saw that the two old ladies were twins, identical except for their voices. With horror, Charlotte began to understand, saw the redness around both of their mouths, the flesh stuck to their teeth as they smiled. Both had crazed eyes, gleaming and wild. She looked towards the end of the bed, where the cat gnawed on the stumps which remained at her calves. As she squirmed she felt the intravenous drip tear at her arm, her stomach turning inside out and her head spinning. Darkness enveloped her as it had before.
     
    The next time Charlotte woke, she was flat on her back with a tube down her throat. She heard a crash of glass, a scuffle and then the door swung open to reveal Patrick. As he began to move towards her he was attacked from behind by one of the twins wielding a heavy wooden rolling pin. He grabbed at the weapon with one hand and swept away the old lady’s legs with a kick which brought her crashing to the ground. She stirred briefly before settling in a heap. Patrick used his census-issue mobile phone to call for an ambulance and the police, stepping over the old lady and out of the room as he explained Charlotte’s condition.
     
    Charlotte had been correct about his previous occupation. Patrick had served with the police for thirty-six years. After calling to report Charlotte missing, he had gone back over her previous workload, tracing the route she might have taken. As he approached the seventeenth house, the grey cat leapt out of a hedge, hissing and spitting at him. It began to wail at Patrick, and as it did so, what looked suspiciously like a human toe dropped from its mouth.
     
    He asked around the neighbourhood, and found out that Barnaby belonged to old Mrs Campton in number sixty-four. When she hadn’t answered the door he had pushed through an old gate with rotting hinges and into the back garden. Through a chink in the curtains he had seen Charlotte’s high visibility census jacket hung over a chair in the kitchen and had broken a pane of glass in the back door to gain entry. He had witnessed some terrible things over the years as a policeman, but nothing came close to seeing a half-eaten Charlotte on that bed.
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Plastic Golf
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    W hen I was a child I had a set of jumbo plastic golf clubs, which I used to smack an oversized plastic golf ball up and down our back garden. Made in primary colours, the shafts were blue, and the clubheads bright yellow. All the kids in our neighbourhood had the same set, with each of the fathers competing to see whose child had the best swing. I can remember summer barbeques where the men stood around with beers as the sausages sizzled, showing each other their air swings and relating their latest tips. The children made crazy-golf courses which went from garden to garden, crossing the street, through flowerbeds and under hedges. That was the beginning of my long and difficult relationship with the game.
     
    The bookshelves in our house were quite varied. My mother has always had an appetite for fiction, something which she passed on to me. My father on the other hand has always been more of a left brain type of person, and so on the bottom shelves there were biographies, books on science and photography, the cosmos, history. Outnumbering all these types of book however, were books on golf. The history of the game, books by famous players, books which promised to instil the right mindset for golf, and most prevalent of all, books on how to attain the perfect swing.
     
    As I grew older and began to play