Eleven Rules: A gripping domestic suspense (The Rules Book 1) Read online

  Eleven Rules

  PJ Vye

  Copyright © 2021 by PJ Vye

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover: PJ Vye

  Editor: Gabrielle Sargant

  to my Samoan friends

  for the music

  “As my sufferings mounted I soon realised that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation - either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”

  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Rule No. 1

  1. MATAIO

  Nearly twenty years later…

  2. SUNNY

  3. MATAIO

  54 days to go

  Rule No. 2

  4. MATAIO

  54 days to go

  5. TULULA

  6. MATAIO

  47 days to go

  7. MATAIO

  47 days to go

  8. SUNNY

  9. SUNNY

  Rule No. 3

  10. MATAIO

  47 days to go

  11. TULULA

  12. MATAIO

  46 days to go

  13. MATAIO

  45 days to go

  14. MATAIO

  45 days to go

  15. SUNNY

  Rule No. 4

  16. MATAIO

  38 days to go

  17. MATAIO

  36 days to go

  18. SUNNY

  Rule No. 5

  19. MATAIO

  36 days to go

  20. SUNNY

  21. MATAIO

  35 days to go

  22. SUNNY

  23. MATAIO

  24 days to go

  24. SUNNY

  25. MATAIO

  23 days to go

  Rule No. 6

  26. MATAIO

  22 days to go

  27. MATAIO

  18 days to go

  28. MATAIO

  16 days to go

  Rule No. 7

  29. MATAIO

  16 days to go

  30. MATAIO

  16 days to go

  Rule No. 8

  31. SUNNY

  32. MATAIO

  16 days to go

  33. TULULA

  Rule No. 9

  34. SUNNY

  35. TULULA

  36. MATAIO

  15 days to go

  37. SUNNY

  38. MATAIO

  15 days to go

  Rule No. 10

  39. SUNNY

  40. MATAIO

  7 days to go

  41. MATAIO

  7 days to go

  42. TULULA

  43. MATAIO

  2 days to go

  44. MATAIO

  2 days to go

  Rule No. 11

  45. MATAIO

  1 day to go

  46. SUNNY

  47. MATAIO

  1 day to go

  48. MATAIO

  1 day to go

  49. SUNNY

  Chapter 1

  sneak peak - 11 reasons

  Chapter 2

  Two years later

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  PJ Vye

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I Bury Dead People

  The Hermit Next Door

  Make Me Famous

  Prologue

  Ten rules.

  Mataio stared down at the list scratched in thick, capital letters and resisted the urge to rip up the page, get on his pushbike and disappear.

  The meaning of The Rules was clear and impossible to ignore. Each one written so deliberately that every letter carved violently into the other side. Mataio found it difficult to breathe out, like a basketball had slammed into his chest at close range. His head pounded.

  He read The Rules again. And then again. Twenty years seemed like an entire lifetime away. He couldn’t get his head around it. He’d be 35 years old in twenty years.

  He picked up the phone and dialled the number he’d been given. “Watsonia Police Station,” said a female voice.

  Mataio sat silently while the voice persisted. “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?”

  “Sorry, accidental dial,” he said and hung up.

  He smacked his forehead in frustration. The police couldn’t help him. He was on his own.

  He grabbed the list and crushed it into his jean pocket with the tips of two fingers. Rule Number 5. Never Tell. Well, that was the easiest rule of all.

  He turned out the light and lay on top of his single bed, feet hanging over the edge as they always did, and listened to the sound of his cousin playing a sad guitar riff on one side of the wall as his aunt’s monotonous sobs drifted through the other.

  Ten rules.

  Twenty years to pay the debt.

  Did he have any other choice?

  Rule No. 1

  No Social Life

  One

  MATAIO

  Nearly twenty years later…

  Mataio changed out of his scrubs and into his running gear and managed to escape the emergency wing without being stopped. He walked past the front desk and nodded politely to Carol at reception as he headed out into the late winter evening. Daylight savings hadn’t kicked in yet and it was dark by 7pm. He was supposed to have knocked off at 4pm. Normally, staying back wouldn’t be a problem, but tonight he’d have the results and it was all he could think about.

  The rain slowed to a drizzle as he picked up a fast jog to make the 7.15pm bus at the corner of Nicholson and Main. Two passing cars tooted as he ran. Both doctors. Both knew better than to offer a ride, despite the rain. Mataio always caught the bus.

  “At least call an Uber,” they’d say, “If you won’t accept a ride from me, call an Uber. Don’t run in this rain.”

  “I prefer the bus,” he’d say. “Keeps it real.”

  “Jesus, Mataio, don’t you get enough of that in here?”

  It was true, the emergency department in St Van Croft’s hospital was enough reality for anyone. More violent incidents than St Michaels with much worse facilities. It was why he’d chosen the hospital. Terrible work conditions and a difficult clientele meant he could serve almost all The Rules without drawing attention to himself.

  Mataio arrived at the bus stop with enough time to stretch his arms and hamstrings and rub the back of his neck that had spent the best part of the previous night crouched over a laboratory bench. Another thirty minutes on the bus and he’d be home. Another thirty minutes and he’d know if it’d worked.

  He climbed the steps and found a seat in the usual place as the smell of someone’s KFC filled his nose. He tried to remember what it tasted like. He knew he’d loved it. It used to be his takeaway of choice when he was a teenager, but he hadn’t tasted KFC chicken in nearly twenty years. He wondered if the herbs and spices were still the same. Back in the beginning it was one of the hardest things to give up. The drip of grease down your chin as you gnawed away until every bone was stripped bare. Now, he wasn’t even sure if he’d eat it once The Rules lifted. The cravings for his favourite foods disappeared long ago and he rarely gave it a second thought. Especially not tonight.

  The trip seemed to take forever, the bus stopping more than usual. Or maybe he just noticed it more. He stood at the front before
the bus had stopped and leapt from the steps when the doors opened, jogging the short distance to his building. There were no footpaths in the industrial area so he ran on the road. All the businesses were closed this time of night—the instrument repairer, the secondhand car parts yard, the welding sheds. Only the moon lit his way home.

  The lights weren’t on in the upstairs apartment, but the English girl’s car was home. She must be asleep already. She had a strange schedule—much like his own. Probably why he’d noticed. He wondered if he’d hear her singing tonight. There wouldn’t be any yelling—the boyfriend had only been gone three weeks of a six-week rotation. She only sang in the weeks he wasn’t there. She only screamed in the weeks he was.

  He checked the mail, not expecting to see anything and didn’t. He opened the roller door and headed straight to the bench.

  Positive.

  Mataio checked it again.

  Positive.

  He crouched down and rocked back and forth on his heels awhile. Conclusive and beyond his expectations. He’d checked it a dozen times, so it had to be right. He ran his hands over his head and flicked his hair forward—an old habit, even though he hadn’t worn his hair long in years.

  Maybe, just maybe, it would work. If it worked on rats and rabbits, it was ready for human testing. A human with nothing left to lose.

  Mataio stood and ran through the data again, even though he knew there were no mistakes. It had been easy. Too easy. He checked his watch. Ten p.m. He should probably get some sleep before making a human dose, but his heart pounded too hard and his mind wouldn’t settle. Sleep never came easily and tonight it would be near impossible.

  How had this compound variation been missed by the big pharmaceuticals? The research had all but been done.

  He could have the dose ready and be at his aunt’s house by noon tomorrow if he started now. Maybe he should call her. It’d been almost twelve months since he last visited.

  Mataio dropped to the cold concrete floor and pounded out fifty push-ups, his breath causing steam clouds in front of his face. The warehouse didn’t insulate well against the extremes of Melbourne weather, but he ignored the discomfort. Heating cost money and his money was spoken for.

  Mataio stood, stretched his thick, brown arms to the ceiling, then out wide to the sides until heat burned in his shoulders, and then he turned back to his notes and began.

  Two

  SUNNY

  Sunny sat at her catalogue-styled kitchen table and doodled circles and squares over the tax bill until the afternoon sun disappeared and she could no longer see the page in front of her. She should get up and switch a light on, but the darkness seemed appropriate.

  The pain meds kicked in about an hour ago and the heaviness in her body made her feel lighter in the head. Thoughts never seemed as absolute when she took pain meds. Thoughts were hazier. Less threatening. Less personal.

  The neckline of her work smock dug into her skin and she struggled with the side buttons until, fed up, she lifted it over her head and let it drop to the floor. She wouldn’t be at work tomorrow, or any time after that. No need to undo those buttons ever again. The thought didn’t please or displease her. It just sat there, no longer of use like the bag of baby spinach in her fridge. Purchased with high expectation but now slowly rotting.

  Three weeks to the day until Judd would be home. That gave her two weeks and six days to do it. She felt her shoulders droop as the weight of her decision sunk in. A wave of tiredness swamped her but she didn’t have the energy to lift herself off the chair and into bed, so she dragged herself over to the couch instead and fell onto it, flicked off her shoes and undid the top button of her pants, releasing her belly at last. She laid there, her nose pushed to the backrest, her eyes closed and felt the heat of her breath as it bounced off the fabric in front of her.

  She could do two weeks and six days. And then it would all be over. Having made the decision, a sense of tranquility filled her.

  She heard the roller door to the warehouse below open and close and vaguely acknowledged that the weird, Islander guy from downstairs must be home. She wondered how long it would take him to notice.

  Three

  MATAIO

  54 days to go

  Mataio pulled down the door and wrestled with the lock, dazed from the intense work and limited sleep, but happy to be armed with enough treatment for a week in his backpack. He turned and slammed into someone. The girl from upstairs carried heavy shopping bags in each hand and he wrapped his arms around hers to steady them both.

  “Woah,” he said, and dropped his hands quickly, another human’s warmth against his own feeling foreign and frightening.

  “Hey, sorry,” the girl’s eyes moved deliberately away, and she tried to push past him, her arms clutching the heavy bags at her sides. “Just trying to get up the stairs behind you there,” she murmured in a thick British accent, almost to herself.

  The metal staircase clanged as she began to climb, the shopping bags banging heavily against each rung.

  He rarely saw her, but when he did, neither instigated a conversation longer than, “Hi, how are you?” Mataio had been quick to shut down interactions with the girl and her boyfriend from day one and she’d been surprisingly quick to get the message. She’d accepted it and never tried to engage in anything neighbourly. But just because Mataio couldn’t be friends, didn’t mean he didn’t notice her. And though he spent the entire year downstairs in a research haze he got to know her habits and moods. The ceiling wasn’t soundproof and the day her boyfriend left for his six-week stint away, she’d play the violin. Sometimes she’d sing. She could squeeze more emotion out of a song or piece of music than he’d thought humanly possible. After a few more days, the television turned on, and the crying began. He’d hear her talk to her dad on speaker phone, her voice all optimistic and hopeful, and as soon as he hung up, the sobbing resumed, the clink of spirit bottle on glass. There’d be days when he heard nothing but the television. Then he’d hear the guitar and she’d sing a while, songs he’d never heard before, sorrowful and lilting. The pattern dictated that she’d be playing the violin soon. And the cycle turned again.

  He didn’t know why she stayed with her piece of shit boyfriend when he yelled at her like she was less than human. But he knew her misery. The violin and the crying became a soundtrack to his own work, and in a weird, disturbing way, felt like company.

  He watched her a moment now, and resisted the urge to help. He’d seen her climb the stairs with groceries before, but today she struggled, like the bags were heavy just to piss her off.

  Maybe it was because he carried a potential cure for his cousin’s disease in his backpack. Maybe it was because carrying groceries wasn’t against The Rules. Or maybe it was because she had a particularly defeated bend across her back today, but the words were out before he could stop them. “Here, let me help you,” he said and took two steps at a time to reach her.

  She stood silently as he took the straps from her hands, looking neither surprised nor grateful. He didn’t meet her vacant gaze, instead focusing on lifting the bags as he climbed the stairs. They weren’t as heavy as she’d made them look.

  “My name is Mataio, by the way. My Australian friends call me Mat,” he said, moving to the side of the landing to allow her through to unlock the door. He didn’t have Australian friends, just colleagues. But it seemed more normal to say friends, even though the word felt weird on his tongue.

  He knew her name was Sunny. He’d heard it yelled in heated arguments a million times through the ceiling. But he’d never told her his own until now.

  She nodded at him as if she didn’t really need to know and scratched through her bag for her keys.

  He watched her and worried. Standing beside her, the late winter sun pushed through a cloud and he knew, something was off. He reached for the first thing that came into his head. “I’m going to be away for a week. Would you check my mail while I’m gone?”

  She found her keys,
unlocked the door and walked in, leaving it open for him to follow. He kicked an empty box aside and stepped in, squeezing past an army of recycling waiting for the bin.

  “I’ll just leave these here,” he said, as he moved to the kitchen bench and lifted the bags onto it. He kept his face impassive as she unloaded the first bag of its contents—a litre of gin, a litre of tequila and three litres of Coke. The second bag contained orange juice, milk and Froot Loops.

  Eventually she noticed his silent appraisal and gazed at him with tired eyes, “Well, thanks.” She didn’t move or make excuses, like the effort would be too much. She just half stared like she’d been the one existing on three hours of sleep over the past two nights.

  It wasn’t against The Rules for Mataio to counsel her. He was a doctor after all. He’d fought with himself a number of times in the past few months when her despair had sounded like torture, but he’d stayed away, and she’d always bring herself back from the misery eventually. But something today was different.