Home Intruder: An Extreme Horror Novella Read Free Page A

at work, Ed really needed to grow a pair.
    Home. If only. Jaz had only been here a few hours but she was already head over heels in love with the place.
    “She still fancies you.”
    “What? Who?”
    Jaz rolled her eyes.
    “You know who.”
    “Don’t be soft. Course she doesn’t.”
    Jaz regarded her fiancé thoughtfully. Part of his charm was that he genuinely didn’t believe women were attracted to him. But they were. In droves. He had this kind of geeky charm, this hapless, bumbling quality. He was the kind of guy that flew around the house looking for the glasses that he was wearing, or the keys that he was holding. He was the type that made five cups of coffee for himself in the morning in quick succession because he couldn’t remember making them and he always came home from work to find full cups of cold coffee languishing on every window sill and table top.
    He was also incredibly good looking. Tall and slim to the point of thin, he had big, puppy dog brown eyes and a narrow nose, lending him a studios quality. His face was lean but comprised of hard lines, and his upper lip curved upwards in a pronounced cupid’s bow that reminded her of Jonny Depp’s mouth.
    Sometimes it was charming that he didn’t believe women fancied him. Other times, like now, it was just plain annoying.
    “Okay, fine, she doesn’t fancy you. She’s just coming round tonight to get to know me better.”
    “She has a boyfriend. He flushed my head down the toilet once when we were at school.”
    Jaz sprayed beer across the little wooden table.
    “He did what ?”
    “It was only the once. I said that if he ever pulled a stunt like that again I would ram his head up his arse and shit down his neck.”
    Jaz could well believe it. Ed was more than capable of looking after himself. He looked like a victim, up to a point. He was sweet and skinny and studious, but he could turn in a heartbeat.  A look would come over his eyes like he was capable of murder. She had only seen it once, in a nightclub when some guy had groped her breast as she stood talking to Ed at the bar. The man had been much bigger than Ed, but that hadn’t stopped Ed from pinning him to the bar by his neck and very quietly warning him that if he so much as looked at Jaz again, he would not be responsible for his actions. It was his calmness that had unnerved her, rather than the threat of violence.
    “And you want to spend an evening with these people? A woman that still fancies you, with her boyfriend that wants to beat you up?”
    “I’m sure that Boko can’t even remember flushing my head down the toilet. We were only fourteen at the time.”
    “Trust me. He’ll remember.”
    Ed looked lost in thought, his big brown eyes glazed over.
    “I didn’t start dating Linda until we were sixteen, but looking back I suppose there was the whole love triangle thing going on. Or love square, if there is such a thing.”
    “How so?”
    “I was totally in love with a girl called Kerry Brown, but I guess Linda had always liked me and we had been friends since forever. I always knew Boko liked Linda. Probably why he flushed my head down the toilet.”
    Jaz couldn’t help but giggle, despite her irritation at him.
    “So what happened to Kerry Brown?”
    “She and her family moved away on my sixteenth birthday. She never even knew I existed and I just kinda fell into seeing Linda.”
    “I had no idea you were such a Romeo.”
    “You’re the one that wanted to come back here so you brought all the history of my teenage angst upon yourself.”
    “Yeah.”
    Jaz liked to consider herself an easy going kind of girl. But there was something about Linda that put her on edge. A look in her eyes that, if she was honest, made her flesh crawl.
    She’s not right and I don’t like her.
    You sure that’s not sour grapes talking, Jazzy baby?
    Thoughtfully she sipped her pint.
    “Penny for them?” he asked.
    “Just a bit apprehensive about tonight.”
    “Don’t be. We’ll