Sin (24 page)

I shuddered but Jeremy seemed
oblivious. He had the prerequisite timidity, giving the impression
that he was kneeling before his lord. I think he could have been
called 'Monkey Breath' and it would have been acceptable. The fact
that he could easily have crushed the man he faced seemed to
emphasise the smaller one's power.

Dr. Connors was Napoleon before
his generals, or at least one of his foot soldiers. Small in
stature but huge in ego. He wasn't really a short man - his height
was a fag paper shy of average, as if one last mighty stretch would
settle him nicely into the realms of medium - but his overall
appearance was... minimising. He was balding, and had once, up
until very recently, favoured a toupee that hadn't particularly
favoured him. He wore rimless spectacles that seemed to pinch his
head between their arms and squeeze his eyes into a permanent
squint. Perhaps he thought the look gave him an air of Clint
Eastwood, his eyes tight to focus his gaze. Did you feel lucky,
punk? No, not really. If you passed him in the street, you wouldn't
look twice, but he commanded a room with a sort of compressed
regality. He believed in himself so much and kept himself so
tightly bound, you became convinced he was about to explode with a
wondrous cacophony. He was his own spin-doctor and his conviction
was so convincing you couldn't help but be dragged onto the merry
go round as well. And if you felt dizzy afterwards? Well, he had
just the right medicine for that.

Jeremy, orderly of the month for
the past two years running (if such an accolade existed, which is
didn't, but if it did, it would be his) sat patiently. He knew
better than to say anything unless he was spoken at, or on rare
occasions to. Connors made the pretence of being busy on his
computer, the delay a long mastered way of serving up the other
person another mighty slice of discomfort pie. It felt as if it had
been weeks since I'd seen my friend, since he'd last strapped me up
in my snug little strait jacket. I couldn't believe it had been
only so very recently.

My last day in the mental home
was a lifetime ago, and I felt as if I'd aged thirty years. The
world had turned in that time and I felt as if I'd been cast off,
landing on a celestial rollercoaster that had been through loops
and twists and was just about to enter a very long, very dark and
very steep tunnel.

Click, click,
clickety-click.

It seemed that Connors was
actually doing something other than simply dragging Jeremy's nerves
over a line of razor blades, each stood like dominos so that, once
they'd flayed his nerves they could topple over to maybe slice a
wrist or two. The mouse movements and clicks weren't random jabs in
the eyes. Probably, he was upping the dosage of Car Crash Kenny or
ordering a little extra electro-convulsive therapy for dear Dolly
Polly. As far as ECT was concerned, more than enough was about half
as much as was really required in the Doctor's eyes. I could
imagine that, if he ever fancied a change of scenery, a job on
Death Row would suit him. He'd be like Percy Wetmore from Stephen
King's wonderful Green Mile, taking sadistic pleasure in the dip of
the lights and the screams and the smell of cooked flesh (you want
fries with that?) as he flicked the switch to spark up the electric
chair. I wondered if he pulled the legs off spiders. Probably not.
They only had little mouths so you couldn't hear their screams.
He'd hate it in space then, because, so we're told, in space no one
can hear you order a Big Mac.

Finally Connors was finished. He
pushed the mouse forward, leaving it perfectly perpendicular to the
monitor, and leaned back in his chair. Turning to face Jeremy he
was silent for a long time. He stared at the big man, his face
expressionless except for the occasional dark shadow that flitted
behind his eyes. Now you see me, now you don't. What was he
thinking? Had Jeremy done something wrong? Connors leaned forward,
resting his elbows on the desk. It was a familiar pose. He adopted
it when he wanted to appear concerned but was instead planning his
attack. He smiled again. Jeremy, the poor naive soul, smiled back.
The doctor's was warm and fake, the orderly's hesitant and doing
its best to be real, and the mismatched smiles met each other
across the leather desk top and dissolved.

"You seem nervous," said
Connors. "Why would you be nervous?"

Jeremy looked shocked. He hadn't
expected that. Dr. Connors believed pleasantries were verbal
banalities for people who had nothing better to say. They were
grass cuttings - snippets of waste cast aside to die. Of course, if
you thought about it, once they died they provided fertiliser for
the conversations to follow, but he didn't see that. Dead and gone,
and superfluous when alive. Small talk was no talk. While others
might see speech as corn that, when the heat was applied, popped
and overflowed its container, spreading in all directions, to him
it was a straight line. You could get in your car and drive from A
to B and the indicator light would never blink once. A surgical
incision from which any words that might leak out were quickly
mopped up and tossed in a yellow sacked bin for disposal in an
incinerator. He was more to the point than Robin Hood, and his aim
was twice as deadly. But no one would challenge him. Nobody slapped
him for an abruptness that was often on the wrong side of rude. He
didn't believe that he was wrong and so others tended to follow the
same train of thought, even as it drove them off a cliff and onto
the rocks far below.

No one would expect him to ask
how their day was going or how the kids were. Would he even
remember you had children? Perhaps. Knowledge was power and even
knowing the details of a person's family made you stronger because
it could be used to take them off guard. If they knew Connors would
not ask, if he did they would be disarmed. And a disarmed
individual was practically sprinkling the paprika on themselves. I
said, do you want fries with that?

Still. The fact that Dr. Connors
avoided the niceties of conversation as if they were an angry wasp
to be swatted away (an act that sometimes made them more insistent
on being noticed), didn't forgo the chance that he might ease into
a dialogue rather than ploughing in all guns a-blazing. Rambo, he
was not. I doubted he could sew a suture Stallone style, sans pain
relief, but he'd gladly do that to you.

This. It was... sly. Unexpected.
Direct, but off topic. Not that Jeremy seemed to know what the
topic was, but the look on his face implied that he was expecting
to be torn off a strip or two. It was an almost considerate
question, and that made it all the more disconcerting. And clever.
Disarm and beguile, then decide whether you want rump, fillet or
sirloin as they roll over for you.

"I..." Jeremy floundered. Was
the doctor being nice? Or was he trying to trap him? What to say?
"I'm fine, sir."

That's right. Deny everything.
It came off in my hand. It was like that when I got here. She told
me she was 18. I couldn't see Jezzer ever saying that last one.
Sure, it's always the quiet ones, but he had honest eyes.
Intelligent eyes. If there was a type, he wasn't it. He was... He
was nice.

Connors smiled again. If I gave
him a warm beer, I was sure I'd see condensation forming on the
glass.

"Good, Jeremy. That's good." His
name again. Leave, friend, leave. The false sincerity - surely you
can see through it?

Jeremy looked blank. He didn't
know how to respond. LEAVE! That's how you respond! He nodded. It
was the best he could do.

"Now Jeremy," said Connors. He
leaned back, his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingertips
together. He was the picture of pleasant, the epitome of ease. How
could you doubt him? How could you wonder? "We seem to have a small
problem, don't we."

Not a question, a statement. Lay
it out, bait it and wait.

"I don't know, sir." Jeremy
straightened in his chair. The seat creaked, possibly in fear. It
had been in this office for a long time. It had, no doubt, seen
many things. Perhaps it knew what was to come and wanted to escape.
I could sympathise. I tried to will my friend to hear me. If my
sister could read my thoughts then maybe he could read mine too. If
I could only project them to him. If I could shout enough in my
head then maybe he'd hear me.

"It won't work, Sin." Joy shook
her head. "We're here but we're not, not really. Nothing you could
do would make a difference. If you picked up one of his pencils,
you could stab it in his hand, but he wouldn't feel it. He wouldn't
see it."

"I could?"

My spirits lifted suddenly. The
chance to hurt him and for him to not know it was me. I couldn't
pass on that. He was looking at the orderly without saying
anything. He was waiting. Watching. He saw the sweat bead on
Jeremy's forehead. He saw it run into the corner of his eyes. He
saw Jeremy try to blink it away, not wanting to move to wipe it in
case the doctor took it as some sort of admission of guilt. For
what, I assumed my friend didn't know. But guilty until proven
innocent, your honour. I walked over to the desk and picked up a
pencil. There were three, all as sharp as the other. I imagined he
honed each to perfect points after every use. No matter. All the
better to maim you with, my dear.

His hands were still up in front
of him, but I didn't want them. He was watching my friend like a
buzzard watches a dying cowboy in the desert, waiting for its last
breath to expire so it can peck out the eyes. That suited me. I
didn't even pull back for extra force. I just raised my hand and
plunged the perfectly pointy tip of the pencil into Dr. Connors'
right eye. The eye popped, optic fluids squirting onto my hand.
Blood and cerebrospinal fluid - brain juice - seeped down onto his
chin and along the pencil, dripping slowly onto the desk. That'll
stain. He didn't move. He didn't blink, although a length of wood
encased graphite poking out of his eye might have prevented that.
There was no reaction whatsoever. I twisted the pencil savagely.
Nothing.

This wasn't me. I wasn't savage.
I wasn't even particularly fierce. I was confused for a moment.
Back when I counted the institute as a home away from hell, I'd
always had a grudging respect for my doctor. Up until the point of
discovering he wanted me to stay awhile, regardless of my own
intentions, I’d thought he was good at his job. Where did all this
anger come from? How did I have this new found knowledge of his
inner demons? At first I thought it was one of those 'I just knew'
things. Maybe finally getting away from this place had opened my
eyes. The absence of the drug infused regimen had cleared the fog
of the last couple of years and I could see what he was truly like.
But I didn't think so. There was no feeling of knowing. I'd begun
to recognise the signs, or the symptoms, of my curse, and none were
present here. I did just know, but I didn't 'Just Know.'

But the pencil. The stabbing. I
was sick at myself. I pulled the pencil out. It made a sucking
noise - the last dregs of water down a plug hole - and a pop (goes
the weasel). I threw it onto the desk, partially in disgust at
myself and partially in disgust at the fact that it was a wasted
effort. Connors was still sitting there and he was still watching
my friend, albeit with only one eye. I walked over to Joy, my head
hung.

"See," she said with barely a
hint of 'I told you so.'

She pointed to the desk and I
turned back to look. The pencil wasn't where it had rolled after
I'd cast it aside. There was no mix of blood and fluid, like a half
fried egg, pooling on the leather surface. Connors' eye wasn't a
punctured wreck, dribbling down his cheek. All was normal. All was
right. All was very wrong.

"What?"

"We're not really here Sin.
Well, we are, but we're not. It's hard to explain. You could throw
things, smash things, trash the place if you want, but it won't
make any difference. It won't be real."

"So where are we then? How come
I could pick up that pencil?"

"Because we are here, sort of.
It's like we're looking through a mirror, but we're in the
reflection."

So. We'd climbed through Alice's
looking glass. Maybe Joy really was the Queen of Hearts then.

I shook my head. I didn't
understand and I couldn't be bothered to try. Joy kept seeming to
be making sense, but the real meaning was always evasive. I'd grab
for it and it would jump back, staying just out of reach. Catch me
if you can! Besides, Dr. Connors seemed to have grown tired of
making Jeremy squirm. He'd placed his hands on the arms of his
chair and, with a sigh, he stood up.

"Yes, Jeremy. A problem. I would
like, if you don't mind, a little help in solving this particular
problem. Please."

The 'please' was separated from
the rest of the sentence. Not an afterthought, more an emphasis. Go
on mate. Give us a hand. Please? Be a pal. Or else.

"Of... of course, sir. Anything
I can do to help."

"I'm pleased to hear that. Very
pleased indeed." Connors was walking around his desk smiling his
smile, crocodile, circling the room and Jeremy, like a hyena
waiting for the poor animal to get on with it and die. Jeremy
stayed facing forwards, his head down. His eyes flitted from side
to side nervously. I wanted to tell him that it was ok. Tell him
that I'd sort out Dr. Connors in my own inimitable way. But I
couldn't. Jeremy wouldn't hear me and turning Connors innards into
outards wasn't something I'd be able to do, as much as I might want
to and actually be able to. It appeared the devil on my shoulder
was a monster, but he had morals after all. I was sure the angel on
my other was smirking a conceited twist of the lips.

"Do you know which problem I'm
referring to?" Connors was behind the chair now, looking down on
the back of Jeremy's head. He reached into his pocket and, unseen
by the orderly, pulled something from his pocket. Still speaking,
he pulled a sheath off the needle and pushed the plunger of the
syringe up slightly.