Buried Alive’

by Harry Riley

Right until that fateful night when I killed him I had never thought of Joe as truly evil. Joe and I were brothers.

I am Mark, the naïve, sensible one, but he knew all the angles and I liked him for that, we got into many scrapes together as we were growing up in that rambling old mansion called Dashwoods.

By the time we were in our late teens though dad despaired of Joe ever growing up and settling down. He was forever being called to the local nick to bail my errant brother out of some scrape or other and later Joe’s gambling and wenching drove him deeper into crime. It was about this time that father went to see our family lawyer, he made no secret he was changing his Will; leaving everything to me. Our mother died whilst we were quite young so my brother lost her calming influence. There was nothing I could say to console Joe about the Will except to insist that he would always have a home at Dashwoods.

I promptly forgot about it after that, my needs are simple and I never yearned for excitement and the high life. Joe on the other hand liked nothing better than mixing with the rich and famous.

One night against my better judgement, Joe persuaded me to accompany him to a famous nightclub, insisting I ought to have some fun before it was too late. I must admit I had always had a sneaking admiration for Joe’s incredible zest for life. To cut a long story short the night was a disaster. Somebody spiked my drink and I have no memory of what happened later that night. The events that followed were to be the death of our father but with Joe’s help I was later to escape from gaol and go on the run, hiding from the police. It transpired that I had got into a drunken argument in the nightclub and in front of several witnesses had threatened to kill someone at the bar. This man was later found bludgeoned to death in an alley and the killer, matching my description was seen whacking the body with a golf club. This implement was found at the scene bearing my fingerprints. The evidence was damning and at the trial I was condemned to life imprisonment. From the moment Joe bribed the prison guards to look the other way I was a hunted fugitive. We quickly fled the country and soon Joe and I were in the Middle East, travelling on camels through Saudi Arabia. We knew the authorities were hot on our trail and there was no time for sightseeing in Riyadh. That old garden oasis town was soon well behind us and we had settled down for the night, shivering in our meagre tents. I said I had come to the end of my tether and we had to give up and go home.