Sin (26 page)

In fact, it might still be a
guilty pleasure of his. Something he did late at night whilst other
men were surfing porn or pleasuring their women in the good old
Viking way along Testosterone Terrace. He'd never admit it, of
course. Oh no. An intellect and ego as inflated as his? It was his
own private form of fornication. Anyone who discovered it would
have to be disembowelled whilst writing out one hundred times on a
blackboard "Dr. Connors does NOT read comics. Dr. Connors does NOT
enjoy himself." Life was for the common man and the good doctor
would definitely not class himself as common.

Jeremy shook his head. The rest
of him was shaking too and for a moment I thought he'd shake
himself apart. Well, it was one way to get out of this.

"No. I don't believe it, sir.
Sin was, unfortunately, ill."

He sounded so sincere I felt my
stomach fall away inside me, leaving a hole the size of... I don't
know. What's big? Besides Connors' ego. The Empire State? The
doughnut of Homer's dreams? J-Lo's bum (in a nice way, of course)?
He really didn't believe me. He really did think I was lying or
delusional. At least he was referring to me as ill and not insane
or doolally or a sandwich short of a picnic, meat short of the two
veg. I'd take those small mercies wherever they were served.

I saw Connors relax. His
shoulders, normally so fixed in place they could have been
stand-ins for the Dallas wardrobe department, dropped a fraction
and the syringe was returned to his pocket. From the corner of my
eye I saw Joy relax too and felt a sense of relief wash through me
like the falls of Niagara.

Nice one Jezzer. A bit touch and
go there, walking the tightrope of terror up in the heights of the
big top, blindfolded and sans safety net, but you got to the other
side with barely a slip. Take a bow.

A "Thank you, Jeremy" from the
poised cobra allowed my friend to join the ranks of the relaxed and
he visibly slumped in his chair, his tension spilling out onto the
floor to lap at my ankles, mixing with the waters of my own
release. Finally the doctor believed him. As did I. He thought I
was first mate on the slow boat to Crayzee. Cheers bud.

I couldn't blame him, could I? I
hadn't sprung from the prolific pen of Stan Lee or been bitten by a
radioactive cheesy wotsit. I didn't rescue cats from trees, swipe
children from the path of oncoming buses or make the Earth spin
backwards to save the woman I loved. No. I split the cat apart
along with the tree. I threw the bus through the window of a post
office, taking the child along with it. And as for making the world
spin in reverse to change the course of time, I'd probably cause
its axis to shift and plunge us all into the next ice age. The Day
After Tomorrow would be today. But Jeremy wouldn't, and couldn't,
believe this. I was ill. I was delusional. I was raving and rabid
and unreasonable.

And I wanted to leave. I'd had
enough of this. Connors had played his games. Maybe he did know how
to have fun, and reducing grown men to quivering wrecks was his
idea of a good time. His equivalent to ten pints and a kebab.
Either way, the show was over and I wanted my taxi home. What use
was this? I'd learned that I was on my own. My only friend of the
past months thought I was demented. My only support was a ghost. I
wanted to leave. I wanted to turn my back and hey, maybe keep that
appointment with the furnace.

Nah. Maybe not, but I'd seen and
heard as much as I wanted, and more. I'd been a captive audience to
a ritual humiliation and Dignity had left the building. I felt Joy
take my hand and let her. My body hung there as if it was the
remains of the practice dummy on a rugby pitch. No, this is how you
take an opponent down! Run, smack, crack. Again. Run smack, thud.
Again. Run, smack... Back to the house and stare at a spot on the
wall for a few hours until I decided what I was going to do, or
Judgement Day arrived, whichever came first. If that happened, I
figured I'd be at the back of the queue. Sorry, Sin, we're full up.
I believe there's room for one more down below.

Connors had stepped forward. He
was now standing behind Jeremy, his hand on my friend's (yes, a
sense of betrayal hadn't changed that) shoulder.

"Thanks you," he repeated. "I'm
so glad we agree."

It happened so fast I didn't
realise what was going on until it was already underway. Until
Connors' hand had left his pocket, holding the hungry needle,
desperate for its vampiric bite. Until it had pierced the neck.
Until the thumb had pushed the plunger. Until Jeremy had gasped,
stiffened and slumped.

Where was slow motion when you
needed it? If John Woo had written this scene, I might have had
time to intervene before the syringe had completed its fatal fall.
If Spielberg was bankrolling the action, I could have leapt to his
rescue, Matrix-like, taking the doctor's arm and twisting it, the
needle puncturing the throat of the attacker instead of the
attacked.

But this was reality. Or it was
reality's closest relative. Brother. Cousin. Whatever.

I stared. Joy stared. Dr.
Connors smiled.

"I believe you, Mr. Jackson," he
was saying. "I really do. But for me to be safe, you must be sorry.
I'm sure you understand."

He pulled the needle from
Jeremy's neck. He tossed it onto his desk as if it was nothing more
than an eye gouging pencil. Jeremy didn't move. He didn't breath.
Of course, being dead, he couldn't.

Connors returned to his own
chair. He was humming. Almost whistling a happy tune.

I looked at Connors and Jeremy,
first one then the other as if I was watching a macabre tennis
match. A rotting heart was being volleyed back and forth, my
attention captured like a dolphin in a tuna net, unable to take my
eyes off the decomposing flesh as it was batted to and fro. Except
the only rotting heart was deep inside the doctor's chest. And I so
much wanted to rip it out. Finally, deuce. Match point. Game. I
turned to Joy and I saw the tears in her eyes. She hadn't know my
friend. I don't know if I'd ever spoken about him. Said his name.
Hinted that he existed. But the tears were there. I had none. I had
nothing. Rage had wiped remorse out like the nuclear blast of a
Terminator film.

I wanted... I needed to hurt
Connors. A pencil in the eye wasn't enough. Decapitation. Slow. Not
enough. I wished, briefly, that I'd lived on a farm when I was
younger instead of a flat on a council estate, where the nearest
greenery was the square of grass that I'd played football on, using
the 'No Ball Games' sign as a goal post. I wished I'd learned how
to skin a rabbit or pluck a pheasant. He would have been plucked
and skinned. Boiled perhaps. Alive, obviously.

But my visits to farms were
restricted to the play farm at Rand with its pig pens and lamb
feeding days. And its trampolines and witches' hat rides. Taking
the foil off a chocolate Easter Bunny was the closest I came to
skinning a rabbit.

Joy breathed in deeply, exhaling
slowly. It was a version of my own method of focussing. Breathe in,
and on the exhale move your index finger away with the breath.
Banish the bananas, you might say. Well, you might not, but hey ho
daddyo. My impotence at being able to only stand and watch was
threatening to screw me up into a tight little ball and play ping
pong with me. What was the point? What was the reason?

"Come on," I said. "Let's
go."

Let's go. Simple as that. Leave
Doctor Death and his victim and just walk away. No calling the
police - not that I'd be able to use the phone - and no goodbye to
my friend. I'd had enough.

"Wait," said Joy, her hand
gripping mine.

"No more," I said. I didn't see
how there'd be anything left to show me. Anything that I'd care
about, anyway. Anything that mattered. No more. Done. Enough.

"Sin," she said, her voice
hushed, which seemed strange since we couldn't be heard anyway.
"Wait."

* * * *

Well. Joy had her ways. With a
look you'd be walking on clouds, almost paddling in the break
waters of the sky. But she also had a way of, when she meant
something, you knew it. It was more than a woman's whiles. More
than one of those stares you get that say, just because I haven't
told you how I feel, doesn't mean you shouldn't
know
how I
feel! Was it an inflection in her voice? An underlying tone that
grabbed you by the shorts and made them curly if you didn't stop,
look, listen and not bother thinking because she was going to do it
for you? Was it a shadow in the glitter of her eyes? A slumbering
demon that you really didn't want to be stirred? I don't know. I
don't think it was any of them. When Connors spoke, people
listened. He pretty much commanded it - or demanded it. When Joy
spoke, if she spoke in a certain way, people also listened. But she
didn't command it, she deserved it. Or requested it. Or maybe it
was just that you could feel everything she'd done, and you knew
without knowing that she'd earned it. I wouldn't say that to her
face though. She'd dig me in the ribs and tell me to get a
grip.

But Joy had spoken. So I
listened. When it came down to it, what else could I do? I wasn't,
as had been pointed out, in Kansas anymore. I'd neglected to pick
up an A to Z to help me find my way back to the land of the living,
if Grimsby could be called that. For all I knew, if I stepped back
through that door, I could end up like Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis
in Beetlejuice. Open the door and try to escape, and I'd find
myself in a vast desolate land of sand with huge razor-toothed
snake like creatures hungry for a piece of Sin Steak Pie, just like
mamma used to make. Yum.

Sod that. And besides. I think
any fight or life left inside of me disappeared with Jeremy's final
breath. Strange how that could change in a second. Only a moment
had passed since I wanted to feed Connors to a pack of the giant
rats that wandered the Seven Hills. Now I was suddenly deflated.
Fine. We'll wait. We've paid the entry fee. Got the popcorn and
drink. A small tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream. The
main feature had been on, or at least I hoped it had, and now
perhaps they were going to show some trailers. Maybe a cartoon.

Click, click, clickety
click.

Connors' finger tapped his mouse
button in quick, successive strikes. He didn't look over in the
direction of the body on the chair, which seemed now to be someone
other than the orderly who'd been nice to me on so many occasions.
Jeremy had done his best Elvis impression and had left the
building. What remained now was a husk, the cast off skin of a
snake in human form. No, not a snake. The doctor was the snake. The
doctor had waited, played his game, got his answers and struck
anyway. Why? Why kill him? He'd admitted he thought I was crazy. He
hadn't used those words, of course. 'Ill' was a much nicer way of
putting it and I did appreciate the effort, even though I had
plastered over the disappointment with a trowel the size of the
QE2. But he didn't believe me. So why? What did it matter? Why kill
him?

Click, click... pause... Connors
leaned into the screen, his icicle inducing smile playing across
his lips. Something had captured his attention.

Click. Drag. Click.

Voices.

Something was playing on the
computer monitor. I heard Connors' voice as it said...

"Do it, Sin. Do it for me. Do
it. Do it. DO IT!"

Did I run? Ask me another. I
only know that one moment I was standing next to my sister and the
next I was behind the doctor's chair, staring at his screen, not
entirely sure what I was looking at, but at the same time very
sure.

CCTV. The miracle of the modern
age. They say in the UK there's one camera for every 14 people. You
get snapped something like 3,000 times a year. Say cheese! Sizzling
Sausages! Monkey’s knickers! Of course none of this would mean
anything to the viper sitting so close I could wrap my hands around
his throat and squeeze. I could imagine the uses he would put
hidden cameras to, all under the umbrella of care and healing of
course.

The camera angle was awkward.
The room was being viewed in isometric, from a high corner and the
lens seemed to have a curve that was distorting the picture - not
quite like looking through a fish bowl but having at least a hint
of the aquatic. Two people were in the picture. One was the doctor,
white coat and tight spectacles. The other was me.

Or it looked like me.

I was once on television. I used
to, years ago, run an online magazine for stories and poems.
Nothing major certainly, but people liked to see their work
published, even on a small web site that not too many people had
visited. Still, for all of its lack of size, and size isn't
everything so we're told, the magazine managed somehow to gain the
interest of a computing program on Sky's now defunct .tv technology
channel. They wanted to do a piece on the pros and cons of web
based publishing as opposed to its more usual paper form. Nervous?
Me? Damn right I was. But they wouldn't take no for an answer.
Maybe I didn't fight it too hard though.

Anywho. Off I jolly well trotted
on the choo-choo down to London. It was an experience, that's for
sure. This was long before the days of coins and flips and catches
and death. I felt normal. Special, in fact, that I was going to be
on the tele! Me! I didn't expect that I, a nobody who just put a
few stories and poems on the web for people, would be faced off
against the chief buyer for a major publishing agent. Hmmm. David?
Goliath? Where's my sling?

I almost hesitate to use the
word 'fun' but it was, really. At least it got me on the box.
Except when I saw it, and I waited and waited and scored the TV
guide to make sure I didn't miss my 15 minutes of Warholean fame,
it wasn't me. Was that what I looked like? Did I really sound like
that? It was a surprise. Not necessarily unpleasant, but
unexpected. Was that the way others saw and heard me?