Archival memory fragment from 09/03/2008 17:08. An old Word .doc on an old hard drive.
RS Pinner
When I first moved to this new house I was particularly delighted because it had a room which I could use as a study. My writing to date has earned me a grand total of £360 in the past seven years. I was hoping to address this by having to pay extra rent for a spare room.
The first night in the new house, I was looking out over the back yard of the flat below ours, looking at the bleak puddle ridden parking spaces and the extra-cost garages. Behind those two pylons, a low hill and the distant lights of canary wharf could be seen. Grim, but inspiring somehow. I decided to try to write something. Then, just as I’d opened Word one of the doors to the unlit garages opened, and I could just discern the weak light from a hand-held torch. Within minutes the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw being revved up came thundering out of the dark. The chainsaw revved two, three times and then began gnawing on the silence with its loud and ferocious voice. I saw in my mind the torch holding chainsaw maniac cutting up a fresh corpse in his backyard abattoir. I grew very scared and turned out the lights in my room. The change in the light seemed to alert the chainsaw freak, because he put the chainsaw into a low rev for a minute, listening it seemed.
Then again, I heard the revving and the inside of my brain splashed with the blood of a young naked victim. I would never be able to work in this room.
Fascinated, I continued to watch. I was sure that the killer would reveal himself and I would see the evidence enough to call the police, but I was reluctant to do so already because basically I was clearly just being very paranoid.
I watched a while, but the chainsaw was turned off. The garage door closed and the torchlight walked away.
It was a week or two before I solved the mystery. I was watching a man, kind of fat and old, flying a model helicopter around and I realised the chainsaw murderer was actually the man who owned the ailing model shop next door. He was just fixing one of his helicopters or something, and it sounded exactly like a chainsaw.