We Move Like Wolves

Josh had always said that he would never be one of those boys that became utterly obsessed with a girl. But then again Josh has always told himself many things. As a little boy he promised himself that he would make the best fireman ever, and when he was a teenage boy he said that he would be the biggest player his school had ever seen.

Yes, Josh had promised himself many things and a lot of the time the promises meant nothing at all.

His obsession with Kate Graham started from the minute he set eyes on her. She was a friend of a friend of a friend, who happened to frequent the same pub as Josh and his friends. Their mutual friends were sufficient enough to warrant starting a conversation with her. Kate was essentially the kind of girl that Josh always went for. He was so predictable that his band mates had groaned when he had pointed Kate out to them.

“You always go for the brunettes with blue eyes, and it never works out for you mate,” Chris said judging Josh over the rim of his pint glass.

But the warning fell onto deaf ears. Josh watched Kate across the pub, saw the way she smiled when her friends told jokes about the night before, the way she moved with such ease through the crowd towards the bar, the way she casually touched the bartender on the arm when he joked with her as he handed her drink over. It was clique to say but she fascinated him in every way possible. For the most part of the evening Josh built up enough courage to try and talk to her but hesitated every time. Either her friends always surrounded her or she was heading towards the bathrooms, and if he stalled her there that would just be freaky.

In the end he talked to her by chance. It was a Friday night so the pub was crowded and it got hot very quickly. The brisk autumn air outside was a welcome relief.

Josh was stood outside, two patches of red still on his cheeks from the inside heat when he heard someone swearing behind him. He turned and there she was, in all her long dark hair and big blue-eyed glory. The only thing that he was disappointed to see was that she was trying to light a cigarette, her neatly manicured hands clasped around a lighter.

She saw Josh looking at her, and sent him a smile with her eyes. Once she had managed to light the cigarette she took a long drag and blew the grey smoke out through her nose. She seemed to visibly relax.

“Busy in here tonight,” Josh said rather lamely, trying desperately to start a conversation with her.

Kate knew exactly what he was trying to do; it was so painfully obvious. Yet she smiled, and nodded, tapping off ash from her cigarette with her neatly painted peach pointer finger.

“You’re Josh aren’t you?” Kate knew very well who he was, who he was in a band with and exactly how well known they were, but she could tell that he was strapped for words and wanted to put him out of his misery.

He was thrilled that she knew his name, and his ego suddenly surged.

“I’m in a band,” Josh said and instantly regretted it. He felt like the biggest tool alive and he saw Kate taking another drag from her cigarette to try hide the smirk that grew on her face.

“I know, but it’s not really the kind of music I listen to.”

In one single sentence she managed to shoot him down entirely. It took Josh two minutes to suffer the blow but then waved her comment off with a laugh. He had read in magazines that if a girl tried to put you down it was because she liked you and wanted to play hard to get.

This idea cemented itself in Josh’s head over the course of the evening. Kate desperately liked him but didn’t want to admit it to herself. Any tiny glance she may have bestowed on him, Josh took as a meaningful and longing look. He was convinced of his daydream and took every gesture to heart.

Over the next few weeks Josh did everything to gain attention from Kate. He sent her tickets to the band’s shows, to which she never turned up. He had flowers delivered to her house and texted her frequently. He got a reply ever so often and despite the lack of x’s he still was certain that Kate was still playing hard to get. His charade of sending gifts, special chocolates and letters went on for weeks before he convinced her into going on a lunch date with him. She said yes out of sheer desperation to get rid of him, and the date could have gone down in history as one of the most awkward dates. But in Josh’s mind it was perfect. He hadn’t noticed that Kate ate very little of her salad and said even less but he was so wrapped up in his own alternative universe that he couldn’t see the truth in front of his eyes.

“Josh this has to stop,” his band mate Dan said to him after Josh had made another attempt to phone Kate and had only reached her voicemail. “What you’re doing is frightening.”

“How is it frightening? She likes me! She just can’t admit it to herself,” Josh said indignantly as he pressed redial.

Dan gently eased the phone out of Josh’s hands and replaced it in the cradle. He looked him dead in the eye and truly saw Josh’s delusion and how confused he was at Dan’s actions.

“Kate isn’t into you mate, rather the opposite. She’s not into you at all. There are loads of boys lined up who have a better chance with her than you. She’s just not into you and you look like a fool sending her flowers, cards and tickets to our shows when you know it means jack shit to her.”

Josh looked physically hurt; he couldn’t believe that one of his closest friends couldn’t be happy for him and Kate. In his mind she was soon going to be his girlfriend, he was closer to this step than ever before because for the first time in two months Kate had finally agreed to come to one of the band’s shows. Josh was already choosing which song to dedicate to her, he was even thinking of singing a new song that he had written just for her.

The night of the gig arrived and the tension between the boys was unbearable. They could no longer put up with Josh and his total obsession with Kate. They had tried and tried to talk sense into him, to stop him from making a fool of himself but by now everyone in their village knew what Josh was doing and it caused sniggers and even more rumours than already existed. But Josh was in another place entirely. He never heard the sniggers and the gossip; he was in a happy place where him and Kate existed peacefully. His band mates couldn’t stand to be around Josh and his delusion so they left him alone in the dressing room, where he sat and wore a smile on his face all evening until the fatal knock on the door.

Kate was stood at the door with a man the total opposite of Josh, blonde and with grey eyes that pierced right through you. He towered over Kate and almost had to duck under the low door to enter the room.

“Look Josh I only came here to stop you before you do something stupid on stage tonight,” Kate began slowly trying to gage Josh’s reaction because his great big smile was fast fading. “You’ve been really nice to me and…”

“Don’t be stupid Kate,” Kate’s friend interrupted her sharply and wheeled round at Josh. “You’ve been freaking her out with all these flowers and gifts you keep sending over to her house. Stop it mate yeah?”

“I’m sorry but who are you?” Josh said tried to retain his composure and control, which he could feel slipping through his fingers by the second.

“I’m her boyfriend Ryan.”

The words cut through Josh like a knife.

“We’ve been together for two months now Josh and everything you’re doing has to stop, it’s really damaging what Ryan and I have. You’re a nice boy Josh but I just don’t want to be with you, if I did I would have said so long ago but it’s just not going to happen.”

Josh grabbed the nearest glass to him and threw it at the wall behind Kate. It hit the wall and shattered, sheer centimetres away from her face. Ryan quickly grabbed Kate and pushed her out of the room.

“You’re fucking sick in the head,” Ryan spat at Josh and slammed the door shut behind him.

Josh tore up the dressing room; he threw a chair into the mirror and smashed everything he could break. As the door opened and his band mates cam back in they saw Josh sink to the ground of the chaos he had created they were speechless.

“What the hell happened?” Max asked, almost frightened to here the answer.

“She embarrassed me,” Josh said breathlessly, still trying to control his anger.

“No Josh, you embarrassed yourself,” Chris tried to say gently but Josh wasn’t having any of it.

“She was screwing around with that guy the whole time we were together, and I’m going to make her life hell, just like she made my life hell. I’m going to make her hurt even more than I am hurting now.”

Josh wanted to create a hell on earth for her, and he tried his hardest to make this dark wish a reality. He knew where and when she worked, so he would wait outside of her workplace and watch her being picked up by her boyfriend. He would position himself carefully so that he could be seen but not so obvious that he was just there to watch Kate’s scared reaction. He found her address in the phone book and would stand on the other side of the street, watching her house for any signs of movement.

Initially he only did this to spook her and to remind her of what she was missing but as he carried on watching her and work and at home he became more and more intrigued with what she did in her personal time. This was a side of Kate he had never gotten to see and it fascinated him. By sheer power of observation he could tell what her favourite items of clothing were, who her closest friends were and where she bought her food from.

“Josh what you’re doing is bordering illegal.” His band mates would say to him, but it only encouraged him further, knowing how much satisfaction he got from seeing her frightened face and knowing with what force he was invading her personal space.

As he got bolder he would follow her to work, on her shopping trips to town or to meetings with her friends in the pub. He would always keep a safe distance and make sure she couldn’t see him, but he knew by her scared looks over her shoulder every two seconds that she could feel his presence. Sometimes he would push his luck and physically follow her into the pub or restaurants and sit a few tables over and try to listen to her conversation. Once she saw Josh saw three seats away and the sheer look of panic on her face gave him such an adrenalin rush. There wasn’t very much Kate could do about it though, for all she knew Josh had randomly gone to the same restaurant as her. But she knew this wasn’t true, every day was a struggle for her, she was scared to leave the house alone and when she did manage to get herself out the house she had to look over her shoulder ever five seconds out of sheer fear.

The boy who had initially been sweet and bashful was now her nightmare. She lived in a hell that he had created and she felt his presence everywhere she went.

If Josh had known that Kate woke up every morning scared sick, his need to frighten her might have relented slightly but Josh would not rest until she suffered as much as he had at the hand of her games and rejection. But he didn’t know how frightened she was of him and no matter what his friends tried to do he still lived in his crazed world where he was doing no harm.

The final act of terror occurred on a cold January morning, three months after Kate had shown up in the dressing room and told Josh she was with another boy. Josh hadn’t meant for it all to escalate, or at least that’s what he had told the police. It had just been a sudden urge when he saw Kate hiding a spare key under a plant pot outside her house for her boyfriend. Josh couldn’t let the opportunity to be closer to Kate pass him by like that. Without thinking twice he had waited until Kate was out of sight and then helped himself to the key.

The neighbours were alerted to a stranger in the house when they heard the smashing and breaking of objects next door and they feared a burglar. The burglar was actually Joshua Franceschi, a desperate and emotionally destroyed boy. He had snuck into the house and was confronted by pictures of Kate with her boyfriend, both of them looking blissfully happy. They had transported Josh into a wild rage and he couldn’t stop himself. She was his and had always been his. This other man was a mere shadow that couldn’t replace Josh. He was the one who knew her best, who loved her best.

But as Josh was sat in the police car, his eyes fell on Kate. She was in the midst of the sea of people that had gathered on the street, drawn out by the police presence. Josh’s eyes found Kate and she looked at him with a look that Josh couldn’t place. And in that instance he realized that he never knew who Kate really was, he may have known where she went to the gym, where she met her friends and where she liked to shop, but he never knew Kate and now he never would.