ASBO: A Novel of Extreme Terror(42)

Andrew eyed the stairs. With panic threatening to explode his heart, he made a break for it. Frankie tried to grab him as he passed, but Andrew managed to fend him off by poking the umbrella into his face. The sharp point found its mark and caused Frankie to flinch back against the wall, clutching one eye.

“Fuckin’ dead man!” he shouted after Andrew. “I’m going to mess you up.”

Andrew rushed up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Frankie continued shouting hateful threats from the floor below, rallying his drug-addled troops into battle. Andrew sped across the landing and headed for the only room he knew that had a lock: the bathroom.

Once inside, he slammed the door shut behind him and turned the lock to: engaged. Then he dragged the linen basket across the tiled floor and used it as a barricade. He collapsed on top of it and placed his back against the door, huffing and puffing like a marathon runner. It would all be for nothing, though. The door was too thin to hold out for long, and upon realising that, Andrew figured out his biggest mistake.

He was trapped.

In any other room of the house Andrew could have escaped through one of the windows, or at least cried out for help, but the bathroom had only a slim, horizontal pane of frosted glass set high into the wall. Even if he broke the glass it was too small to get through.

Andrew gave up, leant his head back against the door. It wasn’t long before Frankie arrived and started to kick it in.

***

“You’re a dead man,” said Frankie, thrusting another kick at the door.

The wood at Andrew’s back was already cracked, splintered, and weakened further with every blow. Andrew pushed against it, trying to brace the wood, but he already knew that it was a lost cause. Frankie was going to get through eventually.

Andrew checked out his surroundings; the bathroom seemed alien to him. Once a room where he could relax, de-stress, and release the worries of the day, it was now his prison; a cage where he was the rat trapped inside.

Another kick struck the door and rattled the fragile woodwork of the frame. Andrew stepped away from the door and begun rifling through the bathroom’s wall cabinets, but couldn’t find a single thing to defend himself with (unless toothpaste had recently been reclassified as a deadly weapon). The recently-renovated bathroom was a jewel of modernist design – which meant it was pretty much empty.

Andrew put his hands on the only thing that seemed even slightly useful and pulled. The chrome towel rail came away from the wall easily, the thin cavity wall offering little resistance. The quality of newer built homes did not compare to the industrious design of Victorian housing, but Andrew was thankful for it right now. However it was also the reason that a large, cracking dent was widening in the middle of the bathroom’s flimsy door.

Frankie was going to get through soon and Andrew prepared himself for it; the earlier option of running no longer available.

“You’re finished, old man,” Frankie shouted through the door, rage filling his voice like steaming liquid into a beaker. “Going to string you up and let your family watch you hang!”

“Yeah,” said a female voice that could only have been Michelle. “But I’m going to stamp on your head first, you f*ckin’ perv!”

Andrew could hear Dom and Jordan on the landing as well, but could not make out their words – it was just laughter mostly. It sounded like a party out there. The whole gang is here; ready to get their pound of flesh.

A desperate anger started to occupy Andrew, an instinct reserved only for when fleeing was no longer an option – a sudden spark of insanity that infected any animal inescapably cornered: the willingness to fight to the death.

Andrew clutched the towel rail above his head and told himself it was a mighty broadsword. He pictured that his attackers were pillaging Vikings coming to take his land and women.

Frankie continued kicking at the door.

The wood splintered.

Cracked.

Caved.

Before the door gave way completely, Frankie gave one last hefty kick that splintered it away from the frame. It forced open slowly, pushing aside the linen basket that lay against it.

Frankie poked his head through the gap and grinned maniacally. “Hey man, what you up to? Guy spends too long in the bathroom it starts to look a little…unsavoury.”

Andrew huffed defiantly, still clutching the towel rail above his head. “Nice word. You learn that today? Here’s another one for you – *!”

Frankie lunged into the bathroom.