Ctrl-Alt-Delete (Hagar Trilogy Book 1), page 9
Paula would be coming around later and it was a good opportunity to see how far she’d let him go with his latest brainwave. But for now he was alone and so he decided to change outfits yet again.
Since Vanessa had left he’d hardly had to worry about getting caught indulging his perversions and he had become quite blasé with what he now often saw as his ‘other work’, often leaving his main computer logged in all day. Not that they could ever trace him of course, he was far too cunning and computer literate for that.
But all too soon he just had to take a rest again. It was not easy leading a double life. He logged out of a string of web sites, switched off his computer and climbed into bed, still fully clothed in his padded bra and matching panties, pretty pink blouse and short leather skirt clinging tight to his small frame. The clothes always used to be so uncomfortable but he was getting used to them the more he experimented.
He took a sip of water from a glass on the bedside table before placing it on top of his latest book, a copy of All She Wanted by Aphrodite Jones. He laid his head on the pillow letting his blonde wig fall to the floor and was soon fast asleep re-living his latest adventure in full Technicolour.
Twenty Three
On the same Saturday morning as the police were swarming all over Treforest Hal was restless. Waking earlier than usual, probably because he hadn’t drunk that much the night before, he decided to leave the beautiful Magda sleeping and go for a jog.
He left the Bay and headed up Bute Street, on into town he glanced at his watch, it was still only quarter past six but soon he was jogging past the castle and then on up to the museum. He stopped for a rest before turning back but for the first time in ages he seemed full of energy. He often ran three or four miles but once or twice a month he did a ten miler just to flush away the toxins as he put it to the boys.
His headphones were blasting out Warrior by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He thought of the gorgeous Karen O. She was half Polish too so that was allowed, wasn’t it?
The rain had stopped now so he decided to carry on, he ran for another half an hour or so and finally got to the edge of Roath Park Lake. The yummy mummys were power walking their designer dogs in chic Fairtrade collars while others were checking their heart monitors whilst speeding around the lake on £115 Air Max+ Nikes. He eyed them all up as he passed, sweat oozing out of every pore now and his face red with the exertion.
After struggling to keep up the pretence of running as he passed one particularly stunning dark beauty he decided to stop and walk a bit. He usually only ran this far when he was feeling blue. But Magda was home, she was gorgeous and didn’t seem to mind him staying out all night with the boys, so what more could he want? But something was wrong. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something wasn’t quite right in his carefree life.
The Tufted Ducks and Pochards were diving for food in the shallows and suddenly, without warning and showing no fear, a Ruddy Shelduck landed at his feet. His mind instantly shot back to University and the girl he should have stayed with, the one he’d let down so badly. The one he hadn’t realised was the one until it was way too late and he was half way to Johannesburg on his thirteenth can of Castle lager. He thought back to those mad days when it seemed he could do anything without having to worry about the consequences. Happy days alright, happy days. And what the hell had she called those ducks?
It took him over an hour to get back to the flat and when he did finally flop through the door Magda had gone.
Angry when she woke and he wasn’t there, his Polish beauty had started swearing at the top of her voice, in English, but with a heavy accent and sounding so funny if anyone had heard her. ‘Bloody, fucky, bloody, fucky Welsh bastard!’ was the standard address he got whenever he decided to do things he wanted to do and had forgot about what she might have wanted to do. She’d stormed out of the flat and grabbed a taxi. She would stay with her friends on City Road until she calmed down again.
Hal took a shower and decided to lay off the beer for a week. It was no good to him he knew that but after a good workout he always seemed to feel extra guilty about his boozing. He resigned himself to a dry weekend, probably only one of half a dozen in the last twenty years. He doubted he’d ever had one in college. And now he had pissed Magda off as well. He put the live version of Sweet Jane by Lou Reed on his CD player. She loved that track. He felt guilty again.
It seemed, as usual, he couldn’t do anything right and started to wallow over some stale cornflakes. He poured some Argentinian honey over the top to disguise the cardboard taste before pulling on a fleece and heading down to the local Tesco Express for some much needed shopping.
Last night had been great but what was it with women? They all seemed to want to have babies after a month of sleeping with you, either that or they wanted to buy Habitat cushions and put the cleaner over when you had a hangover. Strange creatures for sure. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right one. He’d certainly tried enough of them, but they all wanted to change him and that wasn’t ever going to happen. Not in this lifetime anyway.
Nah, he’d have to find a Thai or Filipino wife or something that could clean, shag and cook but still allow him time out with the boys and time to bugger off for weekends walking, drinking and watching sport whenever he felt like. Yeh, maybe he would try to Google some Pattaya brides later, he laughed to himself, knowing he never would.
After lunch Hal did log onto the net and had a quick look at his Facebook account. The DVD player of his PC was playing some chilled out mood music. He changed his profile picture back from one of a naked cartoon elephant to one of his own. A shot taken about twenty years earlier when he had long hair down to his shoulders and a huge wide collared shirt with tiny pink flowers on. He was always about ten years behind fashion. He updated his status so all the Nigerian spammers, Romanian mafia and sad Americans looking to network would know he wasn’t actually in Cardiff at the moment but on holiday cruising the Bahamas in his new yacht and then he logged off.
He signed into Twitter and sent a dirty joke around the world, followed by some cryptic messages about Tom Cruise being gay, followed by something about Simon Cowell’s possible cocaine habit. He loved to stir did Hal.
He checked his e-mails and surfed through a few trekking sites looking for a cheap trip to the Himalayas. He visited the Berghaus and Marmot web sites and wondered if he should buy the latest Troll Wall waterproof jacket or just get a Millets own for a quarter of the price. Then he uploaded a couple of new images to Flickr before switching it off for the day. He fancied a walk tomorrow, so he rang Alun, then Dave and asked what they were up to.
‘Hya butt, you about later? Fancy a bimble? Somewhere remote,’ asked Hal.
‘Llandovery? Rhayader? Plynlimon?’ came the reply from Dave.
‘Yeh, wherever, just need to get away, bored with work again, fed up doing the same tedious stuff, what about you?’
‘Oh I think we all feel that way nowadays mate. Everyone is so highly skilled now but no-one ever gets to use those skills. We end up feeling worthless or under-valued, our jobs are a chore. Routine drudgery will be the end of contentment and prosperity in the UK, mark my words mate. Ecstasy and coke are filling the gaps already. We’ll all need permission to think soon. And then the inevitable downers will haunt us in middle age as our brains fail to cope with their past over-excitement of our dopamine centres…’
‘Bloody hell, I just fancied a walk in the country, I didn’t need a psycho-evaluation, or nineteen eighty four mate.’ said Hal.
‘OK, sorry butt, how about a quick Fan dance?’
‘Perfect, will drive up to Ponty, pick you and ‘Quagmire’ up and we’ll head off to Brecon. Have a pint afterwards in The Star is it? Do us a favour and organise him with some proper gear. We don’t want to be seen walking with a man wearing a bright blue Ikea bag again do we? I’ll bring a spare coat too,’ said Hal, instantly forgetting his earlier pledge to stay dry inside.
‘Tidy, sounds cool.’
‘Oh, it will be this time of year, still snow up there mate, OK see you later you twat!’ Hal laughed down the phone line.
Twenty Four
June 2010…
Brecon by day might well be considered a small but attractive market town situated in Powys, Mid Wales but walking through the town at night was like starring in the remake of ‘Shaun of the Dead’. During Roman times, Brecon had become a cavalry base to support the invasion of Wales and is positioned at the confluence of the rivers Honddu and Usk.
A strategic location for the Normans in the late eleventh century, a castle was built that still overlooks the town to this day. A small cathedral also sits incongruously in the centre of town while drunken locals play human pinball with the shops and railings on a typical weekend.
You could definitely lump Brecon into the split personality category. Much more than just an outpost before the wilder parts of Wales begin but a popular holiday destination in its own right. Home to an army garrison, the Jazz festival, a posh school, a large farming community and a travel mecca for ramblers and mountain bikers.
Located along the A470 at the northern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, the town has expanded in recent years and still commands spectacular views of the wide range of surrounding hills, including Pen-y-Fan, the highest point in southern Britain at 2,907 feet.
The month of August feels like a contradiction too. The annual Brecon Jazz Festival sees two distinct groups of people coming together in close proximity but rarely mixing. The middle classes of England who listen to the music and book all the town’s hotels up years in advance, and the working classes of the nearby valleys who come to Brecon with just one thing in mind, to get blotto in the pubs and streets, before retiring to various fields and camp sites on the edge of the town.
The outskirts of town have vast areas of countryside where sparsely scattered farmhouses, converted barns and other smaller dwellings are slowly being taken over by richer folk from the city of Cardiff or by the English who arrive from further east.
For the people of the valleys though, the largest population base in Wales outside Cardiff, the word ‘Brecon’ is synonymous with the outdoors and clean air rather than the town itself. To visit Brecon is to go walking as much as it is to drive into town.
Brecon was beautiful any time of year but in spring going into summer it was magnificent, just like the handsome woman with the long red ringlets, who paused for breath and stood with a steaming mug of tea. She stooped slightly to exit the low farmhouse door and looked up at the sky which was a nicely bruised grey, blue and pink colour. The air was cool and clear and the ash, oak and hazel were out in force. The wind had finally lost that cold winter’s edge, the sun was out and the ivy was already starting to grow back over the stonework on the side of the old cottage. That would be another job to re-do, when there was time, she thought.
Vanessa was slim but deceptively strong and needed to be to keep up with the work she had set herself to complete before next winter came. An hour later she stopped carrying stones around the back of the old farmhouse when she was disturbed by the sound of gravel crunching as Chris drove up in his shiny new Renault Megane soft-top. She ran to greet Jenny’s ex-lover, jumped off the low wall next to the boarded up old stables and fell straight into his arms. They kissed passionately and he carried her inside hardly noticing her dirty face or sweaty breasts.
She’d been grafting hard all week and smelled of the outdoors but it didn’t stop them losing their clothes in less than a minute and making love right there on the kitchen floor. She was one hell of a girl thought Chris as she squatted over him and savagely ground her hips into his groin, her wild ginger hair hanging down, tickling his chest. She was a real warrior princess this one he thought. Not an old fuddie-duddie like Jenny had been.
Chris was amazed at how much work she’d done in the last few months, the place was really taking shape now. The kitchen and bathroom were in, the upstairs was plastered and just needed painting and maybe a few homely, womanly touches.
‘Want to help me choose the curtains?’ said Vanessa as she stepped out of the shower, her long curls dripping water down her slender shoulders.
‘Think I need a lie down honey,’ said Chris. ‘What you gonna do with the barns and land?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe get some ponies, they used to be stables after all. I could seduce you in the hay loft then?’ grinned Vanessa as she started to dress herself.
‘Bloody hell woman, you’re insatiable, wasn’t the kitchen good enough, good job your nearest neighbours are three miles away.’
‘Maybe I could get some chickens and a cockerel, drown out your screams ya snapper,’ winked Vanessa.
Since leaving her husband, or was it the other way around? Like she cared. Vanessa had busied herself with the renovation project. She’d been on the sick from school since Easter. Stress. They all did it these days, so why shouldn’t she.
She was a chemistry teacher and had told the headmaster that maybe working so close to all those chemicals had caused the sickness. She helpfully pointed out that perhaps the school ought to prepare themselves for a lawsuit as her solicitor reckoned she could probably prove there was negligence on their part. The council might even make the school close the site.
She always played it this way. Throw the blame at the opposition and it threw them off track, made them worry about getting their own house in order rather than looking at hers too closely. Yes, she was a sly bitch alright.
They say opposites attract and all that but Vanessa and her ex-husband James were just too well matched. And being so alike it was doomed to fail, as she’d always accepted.
He was giving her a fair wedge just to get rid of her though and seemed to have shacked up with ‘mega tits’ back in the city, although she wasn’t sure if the bimbo had actually moved into their old Lakeside home yet.
‘Oh, I can’t wait until the summer holidays love, and then you can help me finish off the old place,’ said Vanessa.
Until then she’d make do with local builders, some of whom she’d had more than the usual ‘service with a smile’ from. In fact one young carpenter lad had been more than attentive when Vanessa had accidentally tipped tea down his jeans. She’d insisted he take them off to dry and seeing as they were alone that afternoon it hadn’t taken him long to get the hint as she ran her slender fingers along his inside leg and up to his CK boxers to check he wasn’t wet there too.
Chris would never know and she didn’t care anyway.
‘How are the local yokels treating you then Van?’ asked Chris.
‘Oh, they’re OK my love. I’m managing to fit a few in alright,’ she winked at her lover, loving the way she could twist him round her little finger. ‘Plastering looks good huh?’ she clarified.
She had used men since she was a teenager back home in Ireland. Growing up surrounded by big brothers in a tiny terraced house, she used to spy on them in the bathroom and was fascinated by the differences in their bodies. And with an extended family of uncles and cousins always popping by she was well-practiced at the art of persuasion and was never without plenty of pocket money as she expertly flashed them all her sparkling green eyes. But she had only been warming up in Belfast.
On the mainland she had really started to use their power to get what she wanted out of life. She married James knowing he was a little shit, but a rich little shit, who would get much richer. His type always did she’d found. Seducing Chris in school had also been easy. And she laughed at his girlfriend Jenny. Oh yeh, she was really nice and as good a friend as a girl could have if a girl ever needed that crap. She deserved much better than the little show off, but she was pathetic, like most women. And Vanessa didn’t see it as a problem, onwards and upwards as she told herself every day.
‘So, how are things with you and Jenny?’ asked Vanessa, when she saw he was staring into space, probably thinking about those young gym girls again.
‘Oh, OK, I think. Haven’t really bothered much to stay in touch, imagine she hates me now anyway. She seems to be making friends in work now, at least that’s what she told me when I called around to pick the last of my things up.’
‘Don’t you miss her at all love?’
‘What! When I’ve got you now? Must be joking!’
‘Oh, just wondered, you know I get jealous so easy,’ said Vanessa, her emerald eyes still piercing through the fluttering eyelashes.
Oh yes she did get jealous, it was true, but not over other women. She could handle all of them alright. But train hard as she did Vanessa hated the fact that the male body was just naturally much stronger.
She thought back to when she was seven years old and how strong her father had been. She hated him. She hated all men in fact. But then she had found a way to beat them, to control them.
As fit and strong as she undoubtedly was, working out every day, running in school and then for her University it was years before she realised that men were actually the weaker sex. She despised herself for taking so long to work it out. She despised women who hadn’t worked it out yet. She despised women like Jenny, who’d had such an easy life, all cosy cuddles and fluffy toys. She revelled in the fact that she could hurt women like her by stealing their men. And stealing men from other women was so easy. They were all the same. One track mind alright. Her daddy had taught her that much.
