The Hedge Ch. 01

Categories: Consensual, Group, Love.

1.

Aaron Redman was a 'Techno-geek', he loved all things electronic, whether it was telephones, cameras or computers, it did not matter to him because he loved them all. He lived with his father in a rambling old four bedroom house that had been in the family for years, it was surrounded by big evergreen hedges, just on the outskirts of their village near Chesterfield.

He did not remember his mother and didn't know what happened to his her as his father would never talk about her.

His father John worked in the town about two miles away as an electronics engineer and was always tinkering with various bits of equipment taken from the scrap bins (with official permission of course). He let his son watch him work in his workshop and explained what the things were and what he was hoping to do with them.

He had made an automatic temperature opening system for his greenhouse windows that was adjustable by remote control from the house. Another thing he built was a radio controlled system for opening and closing the two wooden garage doors and the front gate so that he didn't have to get out in the rain to open and close them. By the age of eight Aaron had the electronics bug too and was able to use a small soldering iron (without burning his fingers too often) and most of his father's small tools.

He had lived alone with his father for as long as he could remember and did not know what happened to his mother. He had tentatively asked his dad where she was and why she didn't live with them but his father would never talk about her so he stopped asking.

Aaron had been an enthusiastic learner at school but was a bit of a loner, he may have even have been slightly autistic but was never tested. He cycled to junior school all year round, which he enjoyed but he was also bullied there, which made him shy away from the other children, preferring to spend his breaks reading by himself instead.

The other thing he liked was athletics as long as it wasn't team events and when he went to senior school, he preferred the longer distances of fifteen hundred metres and cross country. He was fit but not overly tall or strong and the bullying continued at this school to the point when he was twelve, when his father noticed the bruises Aaron occasionally came home with from being bullied.

John Redman was not wealthy but earned a good wage so he sent Aaron to have evening Karate lessons and he went every week for the next three years. He made a big effort to mix with the other young Karate students as he wanted to progress far enough up the belt rankings to be able to stop the bullying and to just be left alone.

He practiced the routines at home every night and did exercises to make him stronger and by the time he had been going for about four months, he felt confident enough to try and defend himself. A few of days later his usual nemesis Baxter, who was a year older, decided to entertain his friends by giving Aaron a few lumps but when he went to slap his face, Aaron blocked his swinging arm, then he tried with the other arm and was blocked again.

Getting angry, the bully stepped closer and swung a haymaker at the 'victim's' head, which was blocked by Aaron's left arm then the right fist rifled out straight, hitting the bigger boy in the solar plexus and knocking him on his ass, making him groan and his friends laugh.

"Leave me alone!" was all Aaron said and turned to walk away.

The boy stood up and charged... Aaron waited until he was close, then turned and side kicked him in the stomach and he went down in a heap and was sick. He realised that he had made a serious enemy but had also made a big point and was left alone at school after that.

He was always wary on his way home, in case they were waiting for him and often changed routes randomly to avoid them but eventually in the middle of May, they got him. He saw only one boy with a fat stick and swerved around him but the boy pushed the stick through the front wheel of his bicycle, jamming it against the forks which threw him off.

He managed to roll with the landing but his shoulder hurt like hell as he stood up and looked at the broken spokes in the front wheel and as he did, four other boys emerged from hiding. He could have run home but didn't want to leave his mountain bike behind, 'they will probably wreck it and still get me somewhen else' he thought.

He took a deep breath and flexed his injured shoulder, it was still painful but it was down to a dull ache now.

They spread out to come at him from different directions but did not have any weapons which was good from his point of view.

"Get him!" came a shout from Baxter who was standing back and two advanced, one from each side as the bike was lying behind him. He feinted towards one who stopped and side kicked the other in the chest sending him flying, the other one retreated.

"All of you, now!" Baxter screamed.

The remaining three ran at him and one tried to kick him, he stepped away from the other two and grabbed the foot and spun him around and kicked his standing leg away.

He went down and landed on his knee with a scream of pain. The other two were wary and moved in more slowly, the feint/kick he tried didn't work and they grabbed him by his arms.

"Gotcha, you little bastard, now you're gonna suffer" cried Baxter and moved in to punch him.

Aaron tightened his arms and shoulders through the pain and caught them off balance by swinging them forwards in an arc to smash into each other, letting him go then he banged their heads together hard and they went down.

Baxter changed his punch to a kick aimed at his balls but he grabbed the swinging foot and lifted it up high and flipped him onto his back, winding him, then stood with one foot on the boy's groin.

"As I told you before, Baxter, leave me alone if you value your balls! But thanks for the workout but next time I will not be so nice" he said firmly, the picked up his bike and the big stick, tucked the broken spokes around the others and pushed the bicycle away towards home.

He told his dad what had happened when he arrived home from work and they replaced the broken spokes together in the workshop.

"You are going to have to watch out for him for years, the others have probably learned their lesson but he could be dangerous."

"Hopefully he will pick on easier targets in future, at least we are not in the same year."

"Just watch your back, son."

News of the fight soon got around the school and he became a bit of a celebrity although it was unwanted, the boys who were with Baxter that day did not associate with him anymore which was a good thing but Aaron was always wary.

Time went by and he started to study for his GCSE's, he chose maths, physics, chemistry and Information Technology and had to take English as well although he did not like the subject. He earned top grades in all of them and a pass in English, enabling him to study 'A' levels in his pet subjects of physics, chemistry and Information Technology at college.

He kept fit and enjoyed running because he could think out problems while covering a few laps of the track or around the local park or the forest at the back of the house and continued to practice Karate at home by watching online videos.

John had paid for him to have driving lessons and he passed his test on the first attempt, which both father and son were pleased about and celebrated with a meal out.

Aaron was quite happy to cycle to and from college and couldn't afford his own car until he was working anyway but his father insisted that he was put on his insurance as an additional driver, in case of emergencies.

On a Saturday afternoon in November, when he was nineteen, he came home from an hour's run in the woods to find his father on the floor of the workshop. He was unconscious but still breathing, Aaron called for an ambulance which took an hour to arrive, to take him to the hospital.

Aaron followed in the car, parked and went to A&E and asked after his father. He was asked to sit in reception and someone would come and see him with news. Fifteen minutes later a pretty nurse called him and he went with her to the relative's waiting room, she sat him down and explained what was happening with his father.

"Your father has had a heart attack and they have taken him straight into the operating theatre. Does he have any history of heart problems that you know of, any breathlessness or dizzy spells?"

"No, none of them, he was not overly fit and a bit overweight, he worked for an electronics company but he did like to work in our garden which is quite big so that's where he got most of his exercise."

"Thank you, I will pass that on to the doctor in charge of his case for when he comes out of surgery" and he went back to reception to wait for further news.

Fortunately there was a small plastic box kept in the car with small change to use in parking machines, he took this back into the hospital to supply him with cups of coffee from the vending machine. He waited for five hours before another nurse came for him and informed him that his father had needed a triple heart bypass operation but was now out of surgery, if he wanted to go and sit with him until the general anaesthetic wears off.

She took him to an intensive care ward where his father was lying with various monitors connected to him. He sat in a chair and watched the monitor and after a while he fell asleep for two or three hours and when he woke his father was awake and looking at him.

"Had a good sleep son?"

"Hi Dad, yes I did, how are you feeling?"

"Like I've been run over by a bus" he croaked, his throat was sore from the breathing tube that had been put in it during the operation.

"What happened, I got home from my run and found you on the workshop floor?"

"I have no idea, I was working on something and singing along to the radio and woke up in this bed just now; so can you tell me what happened?"

"You had a heart attack and had to have a triple bypass operation, whatever that is."

"Serious is what that is, son. It's strange but there isn't a history of heart disease in either side of our family and I have never smoked, I don't drink much but don't exercise as much as I should, I thought the garden was enough to keep me fit, what time is it?"

"Coming up for midnight, why Dad?"

"You still have college tomorrow, you go home and get some sleep and I'll see you tomorrow evening, I'll probably be here for a couple of weeks before they let me go home."

"Okay Dad, I'll see you tomorrow and bring some of your magazines for you to read, bye."

"Thanks Aaron, I appreciate it, bye."

He didn't sleep very well that night and the lessons at college seemed to drag by but finally he got home microwaved the meal he had taken out of the freezer that morning and hastily ate it. He put half a dozen electronics magazines in a bag and drove to the hospital, parked and reported to the nurse at the ward reception, that he'd come to visit John Redman.

"Oh, can you wait a moment please" and she picked up the phone and called someone and a minute later a doctor came to the reception.

"Are you Mister Redman's son?" he asked.

"Yes Aaron Redman, why?"

"Could you come with me for a moment, please?" and he led him to a small office and closed the door, they sat down and Aaron asked,

"Is there a problem with my father?"

"Err, yes there is and we had no contact number for you, I am sorry to tell you that at four fifteen this morning, your father had a second heart attack and we couldn't save him."

"But you had him monitored and he seemed fine when I left... what happened?"

"We think that a blood clot formed in his heart and stopped the flow, it would have taken less than a minute, I am sorry."

Aaron barely heard his apology, his father was dead; he was on his own and as far as he knew he had no other family or friends. He took a deep breath and thanked the doctor and made his way back to the car and drove home, still carrying the magazines. He reversed into the garage and remotely closed the doors, sitting in the dark and cried for a few minutes, then went into the house and made a coffee. He poured a good shot of whiskey into it, sat down and drank it and cried again before going to bed and finally fell asleep.

He got up in the morning, made himself breakfast and sat at the table drinking and thinking of what he had to do now. Fortunately it was Saturday and therefore no college for a couple of days but he had a few things to do.

He started to go through the writing bureau to try and find any paperwork for the family solicitor, his father's work address and phone number, any insurance companies he had policies with. The electric and phone company could wait as would the bank or they would freeze his accounts and the bills still had to be paid from the current account.

Once he found the documents he made the calls and one to the hospital, who informed him that there would have to be an autopsy carried out before the body could be released. He called a local funeral directors and asked them to make all the arrangements for a basic cremation, when the body was released.

He decided to go for a run to try and settle down and hoped he didn't meet Baxter as he would probably cause him some serious damage. His run was uneventful and he felt better for it after he had showered, then he removed all the bedding on his fathers bed and washed them, just leaving a bedspread covering the mattress.

He went through all the drawers, cupboards and wardrobes in the room but only kept a few personal things.

Everything else, he took to the recycling centre as there was nothing that was any use to him.

The funeral was a quiet affair, the priest, pall bearers and Aaron, were the only ones there. There were no hymns, flowers or anything else and he left the ashes at the crematorium.

The will left everything to him and he had the names changed with the utilities companies, there was some pension money from the company he worked for, a fairly big insurance policy pay-out, a couple of savings accounts and some shares that his father had bought many years ago. When he looked them up he was pleasantly surprised at their current value.

He cashed everything in and found that he had more than enough to finish his 'A' levels and if he didn't find a job immediately it didn't matter for a couple of years and then he could always sell this big old house and buy a flat somewhere. There would have to be a lot of work done both inside and out before he could do that but he was in no rush to do it.

The only big thing he had changed was the TV, he had bought a fifty inch flat screen one and had it mounted on the wall and dumped the old big, heavy one that had been in the lounge.

He continued to keep the vegetable plot up together but the rest sort of went a bit wild because he was studying and had started redecorating the house from top to bottom. He guessed it would take a couple of years and he would chop the long grass and overgrown bushes and hedges when winter came and it had all had died back a bit.

2.

One Saturday morning as he was taking a break from painting one of the back bedrooms, he saw movement in the hedge at the bottom of the garden, about fifty yards away. Then a boy squeezed through the greenery, he looked behind him and ran up towards the house and out of sight near the workshop.

He saw more movement and another boy came through, then two more, there were words spoken but he couldn't hear them. From the gestures, he guessed that they were searching for the first boy. He remembered being bullied for years when he was younger and thought that this was the case here, so he opened the window and they saw him and ran back the way they had come, back through the hedge.

That still left the boy who was being chased who had not reappeared, then it started raining so he closed the window and went downstairs, out through the front door and around the back. He could not see any sign of him and was about to go back indoors when he heard a sound coming from the open lean-to wood shed.

"Hi, you can come out now, they ran off when they saw me" he said but there was no reply and it was dark in the back of the shed. "I don't mind if you hide in there but be careful of the rats, mice and big spiders who live in there too."

There was a little cry and some scrambling and the 'boy' came to the edge of the pile and he saw it was a girl maybe a year or two younger than him or so and about five feet four inches tall. She wasn't overly pretty with mud and cobwebs on her face and in her hair, she had light brown eyes and short tangled brown hair, a very wet and muddy t-shirt, which matched her shorts and muddy trainers.

"You don't mind if I messed up your woodshed?" she asked tentatively.

"Not at all, it's only wood but rats do live in there in the winter, why were you hiding?"

"Those boys don't like me and were going to beat me up or something..."

"Why were they going to do that?"

"They said I tried to kill their dog."

"Did you?"

"No, but it's a yappy terrier and tried to bite me so I kicked it, they saw me and chased me and I saw a gap in the hedge and thought I could hide in your garden."

"They must have seen you come through the hedge because they came in too, until I opened a window and they ran away."

"Thanks mister, you're not going to report me are you?"

"No, it's nice to talk to someone, I don't get many visitors, mainly the postman" he replied and she laughed nervously.

"Do you live here on your own then?"

"Yeah, I used to be with my Dad but he died a few months ago, so it's just me and the rats which is fine as long as they stay outside" and she laughed again.

"My mum said I shouldn't talk to strangers."

"That makes sense, there are some bad people about; my name is Aaron so now I'm not a stranger."

"My name is Vicky so now I'm not a stranger either, you're getting wet out there."

"I know and you have got very dirty, you look more 'icky' than Vicky" he said smiling. She laughed for the third time but not so nervously as before and replied,

"Yeah, I fell in the mud when they were chasing me, my mum is going to kill me for this."

"I have a washer/drier that would clean your clothes in a couple of hours but if I offered you that, it might be thought of as trying to molest you and that could get me in a lot of trouble."

"You saved me from the bullies so I recon we are friends, if you promise not to touch, I promise not to tell, so you save me from a beating and I... give you someone to talk to, okay" she explained.

"Okay Vicky" and he stepped back and she climbed out of the wood shed, he now guessed that she was about seventeen but only about five feet two tall, she followed him back around to the front door and inside, closing the door behind her.

"It's a bit dingy in here."

"I have started to redecorate from the top down to make it lighter, I don't have anything in your size but I can lend you a big t-shirt."

"That'll be ok."

"Just wait in the kitchen while I get one" and he ran upstairs and brought down one of his clean ones and gave it to her, then went back out into the hall while she changed.

"You can come in now, Arron" she called and when he did she handed him everything which included her trainers and flowery panties.

"Oh... I was not expecting these" he said as he put them into the washer/drier and added detergent.

"The mud had soaked right through them" she said, giggling, "The shirt's long enough so you don't get embarrassed."

"How kind of you to remind me that you're naked under my t-shirt" he replied, laughing. "A question, well two actually, would you like a drink and how old are you?"

"Yes please, squash or juice and I am seventeen... nearly eighteen, how old did you think I was?"