KIMMY'S LIST

CHAPTER 6

Malcolm Denver crawled his vehicle to a stop, parking by the kerb in the quiet residential court.

The dashboard clock showed 10:15PM before it shut off with the vehicle engine. The time was significant to Malcolm.

The leafy street in which he parked was not his street, but it was not foreign to him. It was nothing more than a car park. He surveyed the immediate vicinity before reclining his seat. His eyes remained fixed to the rear view mirror.

Malcolm was a well - respected man in his society. He was the Principal at his local primary school with thirty - two years’ experience in education. He was the former president of his Rotary club. He was the incumbent chairman of his lawn bowls club and he could be found on many Sunday mornings, working as a volunteer for local charity organisations.

Earlier tonight, he volunteered at an Oolong soup kitchen providing meals and food hampers to the homeless and families in the community from a lower socio-economic background. He was on his way home when he detoured.

All this charity work and caring for the needy however hid a darker, sinister side to Malcolm Denver. It was a seedy side driven by uncontrollable urges that lured him here tonight.

He checked the time on his watch before returning his eyes to his mirror, waiting.

Malcolm sat upright in his seat when a familiar car passed by in the adjoining street, behind Malcolm’s vehicle. He checked his watch. Right on time.

He waited five minutes then alighted from his vehicle. He was a short, overweight man with an unflattering head piece, unconvincing in its efforts to hide his male pattern baldness.

He quietly closed his car door, nudging it until it clicked. With a push a button, the car’s indicators flashed.

Following one final check of the immediate vicinity, he made his way back to the adjoining street, turning left. His corpulent silhouette was difficult to discern skulking in and out the shadows cast by street lighting.

After a short walk he stopped out the front of a single storey home and scanned his surrounds. The front of the house was in darkness. The vehicle he earlier waited for was parked on the street out front. He leaned back against the waist high, brick fence and feigned doing up a shoe lace, all the while scanning for prying eyes.

When he was satisfied all was clear, Malcolm quickly entered the property, via the driveway and made his way across the front yard to the high picket fence, side gate. He knew from experience there was no dog to worry about. He slowly opened the gate, closing it behind him.

For the most, the side of the house was in darkness, except for the light shining from a window, two - thirds of the way down. Malcolm edged his way to this window. The privacy screen erected on the side fence, to his right, hid him from the neighbour’s view.

Malcolm’s heart pounded as he arrived at the window. The blinds were open, so too was the window. He took a deep breath then peeped around the lower corner of the window.

He frowned at the empty bedroom. He stood back against the house and checked his left and right, then his watch.

It wasn’t long before the sound of a female singing caused him to smile. Malcolm moved back and peered through the window, keeping close to the lower corner. A sinister smile filled his face.

An attractive young woman - probably in her early twenties, entered the bedroom wearing a fluffy white towel wrapped tightly around her shapely body. She sang a danced around the room to the tunes pumping through her headphones, oblivious to the prying eyes glued to her window.

The fifty - eight year old pervert had her routine down pat. He knew from previous visits, she attended the gym four nights a week, returning home around 10:20PM each night for a shower, followed by an unwitting show for her audience of one.

He knew she lived in a share house with two other university girls. He knew she left her blinds open, along with her window on the warmer nights, like tonight. He knew the privacy screen was there and he knew he had got away with watching her now for several weeks.

Her first mistake was believing she didn’t need to close her blinds because of the privacy wall on the neighbouring fence. Her neighbours couldn’t see in, but creeps like Malcolm could.

Malcolm watched on as she removed the towel and dropped it into a clothing basket in the corner of her room. Malcolm’s pulse quickened as he leered at her toned and shapely naked body, testament to her many dedicated hours spent in the gym.

He was particularly focused on her free moving, sizable breasts as she danced around the bedroom, oblivious to the unintended performance she provided. Malcolm removed his phone and took a series of photos to add to his growing collection.

She was a young woman comfortable in her own skin. She was in no hurry to cover up and this suited Malcolm.

After several minutes of perverted leering, the primary school principal removed some tissues from his pocket and began pleasuring himself, while he watched his naked, unsuspecting victim.

When he was done, he took one last leer, then quickly and quietly retreated back to his car.

His vehicle’s indicators flashed twice as he quickly approached. He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. His heart still pumped heavily, as his mind’s eye re-visited the visions of his naked goddess.

While fumbling with the ignition key, the door behind him opened and someone slid into the back seat.

Malcolm frowned. ‘Who’s that…?’ He said. He tried to glance back at the uninvited intruder.

A gloved hand came around from behind and grabbed his forehead, pinning his head firmly to the headrest. The other gloved hand pressed the tip of a knife blade into the side of Malcolm’s neck. The knife point slightly pierced his skin. Blood trickled down his neck.

‘What do you want from me…?’ Malcolm said. His heart pounded, but this time it was from fear.

‘Drive,’ was the firm instruction from the back seat.

‘Drive…where to?’

The back seat passenger applied pressure to the knife point.

‘OK. OK.’ Malcolm took the not-so-subtle hint. He started the car and moved off from the kerb.

Following a series of ‘turn left’ and ‘straight ahead’ instructions, Malcolm found himself on the open country road. He glanced into the rear view mirror at his abductor, but all he could see was the left eye of a black balaclava.

‘Where are we going…?’ Malcolm’s voice asked with a notable tremor.

Nothing but silence from the back seat. The pressure applied to the blade was clearer than any spoken word. He kept quiet.

The vehicle’s headlights illuminated the occasional center white line disappearing under the car, and the poorly maintained jagged edged bitumen roadway and gravel shoulder.

Beyond the high beam from Malcolm’s vehicle sat isolated countryside and rural farmlands blanketed by the black of night. The further he drove into the darkness, the quicker his heart rate climbed and the more frightened Malcolm became.

After forty minutes of country road driving, Malcolm’s car headlights illuminated a sign announcing their arrival at Steilights. The remote town, northwest of Oolong once thrived in the mid - 1800’s as a busy gold mining township.

At the height of the 1860 gold rush, Steilights had over fifteen hundred, gold - fossicking residents. Today, there are less than one hundred, mostly farmers, scattered throughout the bush town.

The gold rush may be long gone and the town’s last gold mine closed in 1941, but there remained a residual scar on the land. A number of alluvial deep mining shafts, with associated mullock heaps, were dotted throughout the surrounding bush landscape; evidence this virtual ghost town once thrived in a time gone by.

‘Slow down…’ came the instruction from the back seat. Malcolm eased off the accelerator. ‘Left here….’

The high beam illuminated a break in the long roadside grasses approaching on the left. Malcolm slowed and turned left into the gravel road, lined by one meter high dried grass. His vehicle bounced and rocked along the narrow, bone shaking, and pothole-riddled track.

The car’s high beam illuminated the towering, light grey tree trunks lining the road. They jumped out from the black backdrop.

‘Turn right here…’

Malcolm did as he was told, turning right into bush land.

‘Stop.’

Malcolm pulled the car over. He glanced around the isolated darkness. Visibility away from the car headlights, on this moonless night, was drown to only feet.

‘Turn off the lights.’

He did as instructed. Darkness engulfed their vehicle. Malcolm’s heart raced. He knew this wasn’t going to end well. Why else would he be brought way out here?

‘Turn off the car.’

‘Look … Has this got something to do with that girl I was watching…?’

The knife pressed firmer into his neck.

‘OK…’ Malcolm held up a submissive hand and turned off the engine.

‘Leave the keys. Get out.’

Malcolm alighted from the car. The twigs and dried leaves crunched under his feet. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. He glanced around at the enveloping blackness. No-one would hear him scream out here.

A torch light from behind illuminated the ground in front of Malcolm. ‘That way,’ the voice from behind ordered.

Malcolm commenced walking where the torch light shone. At least the knife had been removed from his neck. He touched the tender wound left by the knife. He grimaced. When he checked his fingers, there was blood.

His abductor shoved Malcolm aggressively in the back. Malcolm quickened his pace. They walked into the dark, tree covered bush for around five minutes when the torch light flicked to the right.

‘Over there…’

Malcolm did as instructed.

‘Kneel down…’

‘I don’t want to die,’ Malcolm pleaded with his abductor. ‘Please, I have a family… I have a wife and three kids. Look, I promise I won’t peep in her window again…Please….

His pleas fell on deaf ears.

‘Your phone…’

Malcolm slid his phone from his pocket and held it up.

‘Unlock it…’

Malcolm did as instructed, then handed the phone back behind himself.

‘Hands on your head.’

Malcolm obliged. He scanned the darkness. His breathing escalated to panting, while the abductor inspected Malcolm’s phone.

After a short wait, Malcolm’s time was up. Using a quick, deft movement, the abductor sliced open the side of Malcolm’s neck, below the ear, severing his carotid artery. Blood spurted several meters from the gaping wound.

Malcolm grabbed his neck in a feeble attempt to stem the flow, but the cut was too deep. Torrents of blood coursed from his body. He collapsed to the ground.

Within thirty seconds Malcolm passed out from the lack of blood supply to his brain. Ninety seconds later the perverted primary school principal was dead. His abductor stood and watched until the life drained from Malcolm.

Once his pockets were emptied, Malcolm’s body was rolled over three times then, with a final push from a foot, Malcolm’s overweight corpse plummeted down an open, vertical mine shaft. The delayed thud resonating back to the top, verified it was deep.

Malcolm would never know it, but he shared his deep dark resting place with two other bodies, in varying stages of advanced decomposition.

Within minutes Malcolm’s car was gone and the area returned to isolated, overgrown bush land