Sin (8 page)

I wasn't hungry, nor was I
tired. My legs weren't heavier than a mobster's hit, concrete shoes
and all, and there were no stitches in time to save nine digging
their wee ways into my side. So why was it getting darker than Dr.
Connors' mood the time Bender Benny told him he (Dr. Connors) was
the crazy one and everyone else was saner than a rattlesnake on
ecstasy? I didn't quite get the rattlesnake analogy, but sometimes
Bender Benny talked a lot of sense. Mr. Shrink-o-matic 2010 didn't
appear to think so though, and had made sure Benny had realised the
error of his ways.

We didn't see the Bender for a
few days after that. It might have been about a week. He was
quieter.

I figured that, if I could have
been plonked on a beach somewhere when I'd intended on ending up in
the belly of the dragon, I could, I supposed, equally have been
plonked a few hours later. Maybe teleportation included a slight
risk of time travel. Perhaps it was the equivalent of turbulence on
an aeroplane flight. No oxygen masks were there to drop in the case
of an emergency, and no air stewardesses were on hand to show you
the wheres and whyfors of a life jacket. If you hit a cosmic air
pocket on your teleporting way from one place to another, maybe you
hiccupped a few hours into the future. Hey, if we're walking in the
realm of Star Trek, why not add in a dash of Doctor Who for good
measure?

I was new to this. Even I didn't
entirely believe, deep inside, that I could teleport. Even I still
thought I hadn't done exactly what I
had
done. It was all
madness. Maybe I was in my padded cell, strapped up tighter than
Scrooge and doped up to Alpha Centauri. Maybe none of this was real
and I was a pigment of Bender Benny's emancipation.

But the death told me it was
real enough. All the souls, torn from their bodies like giblets
from a chicken, en-masse screamed at me that it was real
enough.

Still. Time travel, on top of
everything else, was just a step too far over the border into
Crazytown, population 1. I'd just been wandering for longer than
I'd thought. Time flies by when you're having fun, or causing
youngsters to plough their cars into the trunk of a tree.
Apparently time is relative. Who's relative, I don't know. Does
time, his cousins, his mum and dad and the dog gather around the
table for Christmas dinner, ready to tuck into too much turkey and
pigs-in-blankets? Which one refuses to wear the paper crown from
the cracker, that's what I wanted to know.

I did begin to feel tired then.
The energy drained from my body like a lightbulb being switched
off. I was suddenly knackered and the thought of taking any more
steps was so daunting, I'd have rather kissed a pissed off
Rottweiler. I stopped and stood there, looking at nothing in
particular, feeling... feeling floppy. I just couldn't be bothered.
I didn't know how far I had to go, mainly because I had no idea
where I was going. A house could chance across my path, but would I
stop there? What if I did? What then? Would someone open the door,
a big old farmer or a young, vulnerable farmer's wife?

"Hey there," I'd say. "I wonder
if you could help me. You see, I've just escaped from a lunatic
asylum..."

Would the resident reach for a
gun to shoot me? Would it be a phone to call the police? Perhaps it
would help if I mentioned how, precisely, I'd managed my
escape.

"I teleported out," I'd tell
them. "It's a simple trick of matter transference. You should try
it; it'd save you a fortune in taxi fares."

Perhaps not.

It did occur to me, as it would
have had to, that I could use my new found talents of spaceshifting
(as opposed to shapeshifting which, to my knowledge, was beyond my
abilities) to get myself somewhere else. The problem was, of
course, that I might well end up back in the mental home. Or on a
beach in Outer Mongolia, if they have any beaches. Or even sitting
in a furnace with a great walloping flame up my backside. Right now
even my original plan of action had become a plan of inaction.
Suddenly death, my own anyway, was something I didn't fancy trying
out. Death was a bright spangly pair of purple trousers that I
wouldn't be seen... dead... in. I didn't want anyone else to die
because of me, but I wasn't keen anymore on biting the big apple
myself.

Call me selfish if you like, I
don't mind, but not shellfish. Well, maybe a bit crabby.

As such, with my possible
destination being either the inside of a white dwarf star or
sitting on Dr. Connors knee while he ate his supper, I decided to
keep on walking, exhausted or not. Thunder rumbled, fairly closely.
The clouds were chanting their song of attack and I was right in
the firing line. Maybe walking would do in preference to getting
wet.

Off to my left, to the side of a
freshly ploughed field, was a small copse of trees. They were
obviously an artificial planting, the trunks marching in even ranks
across neatly trimmed grass. All were of the same make, model and
serial number, but not being a botanist I wasn't sure which. Maybe
willows or something. They weren't oaks or elms, I knew that much.
They could have been baby redwoods, waiting to become fully grown
so a car could drive through their bases, but I doubted it. It
didn't matter anyway, though I did briefly think I should take
better notice of the world I seemed hell bent on destroying.
Whether willow, redwood or bonsai, they were enough to offer me
shelter from the coming storm, and if they didn't want to offer,
I'd certainly take. The sky had turned angry and I didn't want its
temper taken out on little old me, thank you very much.

The first spatterings of rain
were throwing themselves at me as I left the road and, by the time
I had reached the cover of the first branches, the spatterings had
become an onslaught as each drop did its very best to hit me. They
weren't bothered which part of me they made a target, any would do,
but I felt like John Cleese accidentally saying Jehovah in the Life
of Brian. A good stoning had taken place, albeit with water instead
of rock, and I was battered and served up with chips and mushy
peas.

So much for not getting wet.

Wiping the rain from my face
with my sleeve I looked around for a nice comfy tree to sit
against. It looked like I was going to be here for a while, so I
figured I may as well get myself settled. The branches and leaves
above me served their purpose in protecting me from the rain well
enough for me to remain soaked and not to progress to drenched, not
passing go and not collecting £200 - which was a bit of a pain
because I could have done with the money. Vodkas don’t buy
themselves. One tree looked to be not quite as knotty and knobbly
as its neighbours so that's where I parked my behind. It wasn't
exactly the most comfortable place I'd ever rested, but it would
have to do. I contemplated removing my wet clothing, but without a
radiator handy to dry them on I decided my own body heat was the
nearest I'd get. Besides, I wasn't sure whether I'd be colder with
them on or off, so I chose wet and clothed rather than cold and
nude.

I looked at the forest around
me. It was nice. Now nice is a word I don't like to use too much -
thanks, pretty much, to my old English teacher. I remember he
banned us from using it in essays once because it was so insipid
and overused. This is nice, that's nice, they're nice, I'm nice,
you're nice, mice are twice as nice. Using it in conjunction with
other words was fine and double dandy, but on it's own, it wasn't
nice at all. The forest, however, was nice. It was pleasant. Not
insipid by any means, but restful. Even with the raindrops drumming
along to their rock-steady-beat, peace seemed to reign beneath the
blanket of leaves.

It was nice. Sorry Mr.
Staniforth, but it was.

There weren't any birds
whistling or whooping, but I did hear the odd scurry of a squirrel
or rabbit hidden nearby. I didn't really know where they'd be
hiding, as the ground between the trees was covered in a thick but
neat carpet of grass, as if it had been a football pitch a couple
of days ago and someone had accidentally dropped the trees here and
hadn't got round to picking them up. But they scampered thither and
to, keeping their distance from me and from the downpour beyond. I
didn't mind them staying away from me. I wasn't in the mood for
company, and trying to hold a conversation with a squirrel was
something I was too tired to bother trying. They can be skittish
creatures and tend to have a short attention span, so any chat is
liable to dip and dive from subject to subject faster than I could
make a banoffee pie disappear. Rabbits are different but just as
hard to please. They simply look at you with blank faces, making it
obvious that, no matter how riveting your conversation might be,
they just wanted to know where you kept the carrots. I couldn't
blame them. My stomach was starting to growl so a carrot or two,
while not banoffee pie, would have been quite welcome.

I wondered if anything was
happening anywhere else. By that I meant did the Grim Reaper owe me
any thanks for chucking a few more shredded souls his way. I
thought not. I'd know. I wondered if the boy in the car had been
missed yet. Or had he been found. I wondered if I'd get some sleep.
Then I slept.

Do you remember your dreams? I
didn’t. Not very often anyway. Sometimes, if I woke in the early
hours then drifted back off to sleep again, I'd have snatches of a
dream still clinging to me when I awoke properly. Occasionally
those snatches would be full episodes and I'd recall them for a few
hours or so before they would fade. Usually, though, I didn’t.
Sleep is a coma that only the insistent blaring of an alarm or the
not too gentle shaking of a burly hospital orderly can rouse me
from. And if I still retained glimpses from a dream, I rarely
believed it to be my subconscious trying to communicate some hidden
message to me. I'd like to, really. It would be good to have your
brain ticking over problems while you're out for the count,
supplying you with the answers in the form of little soap operas
ready for when you wake up. I'd like the human brain to be capable
of stuff like that. Perhaps it is, Who knows? In my case, though,
it didn’t happen, or if it did, my subconscious kept the solutions
to itself. Maybe my dilemmas were too much for me to handle and I
didn’t realise it? Or maybe there aren't any actual solutions. My
inner demons wouldn’t stay inner enough for me to resolve them.
They had a habit of escaping every so often and people died. I
always wished I could dream more - or at least remember them. That
would mean that things were getting better. That would mean the
Reaper was doing his own dirty work.

"Hey, Sin," said Joy.

* * * *

I looked up. The trunk was
obviously not as smooth as it had first appeared. Knots as big as
fists were digging their knuckles into my back and no amount of
squirming on my part could ease the discomfort. Even so, I didn't
bother standing or moving away. I supposed I could have lain on the
ground, but I knew I'd have felt exposed. With my back against the
bark, as much as the bark tried to put me off, at least I felt I
had some protection. Protection from what, I didn't know. I was
fairly sure that, if I didn't know where I was then Dr. Connors and
the rest of the 'sane' world wouldn't know either. That was unless
they'd subcutaneously implanted a tracking chip somewhere on my
body and satellites were currently spinning across the sky, homing
in on my location so the hounds could come a-calling.

Oh my, wee doggy, what big teeth
you have!

All the better to tear you limb
from juicy limb!

"Always one for melodramatics,
eh?" Joy commented. Her voice was like warm chocolate, velvety and
smooth and, no doubt, high in calories.

"Oh," I said, smiling, "you know
me. Why make a molehill out of a mountain?"

Joy was standing in front of me,
looking much the same as the last time I'd seen her. Her hair was
just past her shoulders, brown with blonde streaks that were
not-so-fresh out of the bottle. Her eyes sparkled their usual
green, smiling even when her mouth frowned. She seemed taller than
I remembered, but then I was slouched against a tree that was doing
its best to make sure I never stood straight again, and she
was...

... She was dead.

"You're dead," I said, matter of
factly.

"You're not looking so good
yourself, mister," she said. "At least I can make a clean job of
it, not like some I could mention."

I assumed, by that little
comment, that she meant me. Joy had a habit of, where I'd make
jokes, she'd make jibes. Usually it was all in good humour, just a
different slice of the funny pie to the one I tended to munch, but
I couldn't always tell if she was being serious or not. She looked
fairly stern right at that moment.

"Hey," I defended, "I tried.
It's not my fault I didn't end up where I wanted."

It sounded like I was sulking -
a petulant child with my bottom lip dragging the floor. I knew Joy
was only teasing, but I couldn't help it. Perhaps I was just pissed
off with myself. Perhaps I was just pissed off with the world.

"Anyway," I said, picking my lip
off the floor in case it got dirty. "You're dead. You don't have an
opinion."

"Who are you to say what I can
and can't have?" she huffed. "You're still, even after that
mightily pathetic attempt to do otherwise, alive. You don't know
the first thing about being dead, so I suggest you keep you’re
opinions
to yourself, thank you very much."

"Sorry," I said, dropping my lip
again. I was angry enough at myself, not least because a seagull
and boy were gone thanks to me. Having my own sister picking on me
was a shiver past too much.

"Sin," she said, the melted
chocolate back in her voice, "Get a sense of humour."