Free Haterz by James Goss

past, tapping my headphones, but the man was insistent.
    He was a little rat of a man. People who care so much about everyone else’s business often have none of their own. He was sneering at me with a nasty look of triumph, as though he knew I was a bad ’un.
    “I don’t know you.”
    “Well, I don’t know you either,” I replied. I kept my voice flat. I didn’t want to be recognised by it.
    “Funny,” he sneered. “What are you doing here?”
    “Walking.”
    “Where?”
    “From A to B.”
    “I see? Really?” There was a look of triumph. “Why?”
    I did an elaborate mime of taking my headphones off and pausing my iPhone. “I am sorry,” I said, “I was just pausing The Archers . Yes?”
    He looked at me, reconsidering. No-one had ever committed a crime listening to The Archers. The Archers itself was crime enough.
    “Look,” I said, same flat vowels. “Are you lost? Would you like directions?”
    It worked. He was wrong footed. “No,” he snapped nastily.
    And all the while the gas hob hissed.
    “I see,” I said. “It’s just you stopped me and I thought...”
    “No,” he replied, “I wanted to know what you were doing.”
    “Getting to my bus.”
    “Which number is that?”
    “None of your business,” I replied, not being a great expert on the buses of Reading.
    “I’ll call the police!” he yelled. “We’ve enough of your sort around here.”
    “Foreigners?” I asked, putting on a slight accent.
    “Yes!” he glowed with triumph. “We don’t want you lot around here.”
    “Because...?”
    “Of crime. Everyone knows that it’s the foreigners who...”
    “Good night,” I said and walked away. He stood there, yelling “Stop, thief!” at me. I kept on sauntering casually away. He was the sort of person who, a few hundred years ago, would happily burn old women on the village green. As it was, he just had to settle for terrorising the people of his cul-de-sac.
    It was an enormous satisfaction to me when I later saw him yelling on the news. He lived in the flat downstairs from Derek. The whole building was already in flames by the time my bus passed it. It was the No. 13 back to the station, since you ask.
     
     
    K ILLING THE DOG was more problematic. I’ve never liked dogs. Just, you know, can’t see the point of them. They say extroverts like dogs, which is a bit like saying yappy people like yappy things.
    There’s no profound science lurking in this.
    Anyway, I tracked down the guy who’d threatened to kill Amber’s dog. She didn’t own a dog, but he did. Lots of pictures of it on his timeline. The flat was nearly identical to Derek’s. These men really were identical—nasty sofa, nasty bed linen, horrifying kitchen, the ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ poster, the hard drive soaked in porn. The differences were minor—whether they had Star Trek on DVD or Blu-ray, whether original series or Deep Space Nine . Which Alien boxset they owned.
    The only real difference was that this flat smelled of dog. The poor thing was clearly desperate for a walk. It looked at me eagerly. It’s always baffled me that nasty people can own nice pets. You’d assume the pets could tell, but, rather like Tory wivess, they’re capable of being very loyal to the most horrific people.
    The dog had growled suspiciously at me when I’d first come in, but had then settled down in a wary ‘shall I eat you or will we play a game?’ routine.
    “Sorry, Fido,” I said. “I’ve actually come to call on you because your owner is an asshat.”
    The dog just carried on looking at me wetly as I pulled out the knife.
    I looked at the knife. The dog looked at the knife. Shiny.
    It knew I wouldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. The poor thing was so utterly innocent and just seemed bored. Plan 1 was to knife it. Plan 2 was to feed it some poisoned kidneys.
    I tipped some blood from the bag of kidneys onto the dirty cream carpet, and then took the dog for a walk.
    We reached a park, and I patted the