Sin (28 page)

"Sit up, Sin. You know that does
your back in."

Joy was standing at the door.
Had she walked upstairs? Drifted through the floor like Casper?
Disappeared from her chair only to reappear at my door like...
well, like me I suppose.

She was right. I'd be a walking
grimace if I didn't sit up straighter. I was a martyr to the red
hot poker that every so often was shoved between my shoulder
blades. Straightening up, the grimace playing on my lips for a
moment like a pond skimmer racing across the surface tension of the
water, I looked at her. I tried to return her stony stare but
managed little more than a slightly muddy look. I felt drained. Not
really sorry for myself, but somehow lost. Perhaps it was because I
had expected to have been found by now. Not found by the men in the
white coats with their happy needles, but found by myself - not
lost inside of me anymore. Instead I was still wandering aimlessly,
being led rather than leading, a horse being taken to water, and if
I didn't drink I'd be chucked in and drowned. Should I give in?
Succumb to whatever wanted next to take a bite out of the Sin pie?
Wallow in pity with a capital SELF?

It would be so easy. Drift
beneath the waters of dismay like a strait-jacket on the sea,
waving goodbye to any who might notice. Who needed breath? Who
needed life? Wasn't it better than all the pain, fear and strife?
Well, to be honest, for seconds that felt like a week and a half, I
thought it was. Time had stood still and was waiting patiently for
me to decide what I was going to do. In that pause between one
heartbeat and the next my mind was made up. Give up or give 'em the
one finger salute.

Aye, aye, cap'ain.

I smiled. It was pretty much,
from the middle to the ends, genuine. Maybe a little dip to the
left of centre, but only a little.

"Go on then, you frippet," I
said. "What now?"

Joy smiled then. Like chocolate
sauce drizzled over profiteroles, all was well once more.

"What now?" she said, walking
over to the bed. She sat down beside me (a spider to my Miss
Muffet?) and took my hand. "Now I apologise."

Apologise? I was surprised.

"Apologise?" I asked,
surprised.

"Yes. I shouldn't have spoken to
you like that."

Should I tell her that no, she
shouldn't have. I wasn't a football to be kicked about when she was
bored and stuck under the bed when she wasn't. I was the one going
through this crap. She could vanish off to whichever cloud she
liked to plonk herself on and play harps all the live long day. I
had to hang around here and face whatever music wanted to batter my
eardrums. I'd tried the cloud approach, but it hadn't quite worked
out as planned. Should I tell her that? Probably. In fact,
absolutely.

"Don't worry about it, chick.
You've got your reasons."

See, I knew how to stand up to
her.

"Perhaps." She squeezed my hand.
"But still. You don't know what those reasons are, so I have to
make allowances for that."

My sister, apologising. Wow. It
had to happen sooner or later, like me bedding a nymphomaniac
fetish model. It had to happen; I just didn't expect to be drawing
my breath if it did! Don't get me wrong, Joy didn't automatically
assume she was always right. I think it was more a case of everyone
else assuming that. And if she actually was wrong, I'm sure she
would admit it, just as she was now, but I could never recall
witnessing such a monumental moment. Just as I've never bedded a
nympho fetish model resplendent in PVC and strategically placed
clamps.

I smiled again. What was the
point in arguing or griping or holding a grudge? For all I knew I
could still be locked away in my padded cell, drugged up to heaven
upon high, and this could all be a hallucination. But while I had
my sister back, I'd accept that and anything she had to throw at
me. I'd just maybe get better at ducking.

"It's fine. Don't worry." An
edge of me felt that it wasn't fine, not really, but Joy had a
habit of dulling the sharpest edge, so it was fairly easy to run my
finger along it without drawing blood.

"Sure?"

"Sure."

And I was sure. There were
bigger fish to fry, and they weren't all haddock in batter. One or
two sharks had swum into the net too - a net that, I figured, would
be closing in on me fairly rapidly. I was a dolphin caught up with
the tuna and I didn't know if I'd be able to free myself or whether
I'd end up in a can on a shelf in Asda. Sin in brine. Delicious
with mayonnaise.

"Good."

She kissed my cheek, then stood
up and started pacing. My room isn't as palatial as I might have
liked. Even though its furnishings were sparse, a cat could be
swung with just about enough room not to take its head off on the
wall as you spun. Around the bed there was floorspace for some
jeans and duds to be thrown without tripping over them the next
morning, but that was about it. It mean that Joy's pacing would, if
it went on long enough, wear a rut in my carpet. I assumed a
ghost's or zombie's footfalls would have some effect similar to my
own anyway.

Besides. She'd just used the
word 'good.' Pacing, to me, didn't appear to be good at all. Pacing
appeared to be, in fact, bad. The distant frown on her face did
nothing to change my opinion of the complete absence of 'good,'
convincing me instead that I was in the company of awful, appalling
and dire, the three blind mice of my mood. Well bugger how they
run, and bugger chopping off their tails with a chainsaw. Whack 'em
over the head with a hammer instead. Say it like you mean it.

"Joy."

She stopped her striding and
turned to me. She tried to look at me but for some reason couldn't
quite make eye contact.

"Come on," I said.

We had to get this, whatever it
was, over with. I understood she was unable to tell me whatever it
was she knew. I didn't quite understand how she could have that
restriction and yet still take me to Connors' office to witness a
murder, but I was sure there was a completely irrational
explanation. Whatever her reasoning, it was all irrelevant. We had
a situation here, folks, and my fretting or her carpet thinning
would have only a detrimental effect on the outcome. Not that
trailing a rut in the rough pile of the polyester-wool mix could
really influence the life and times of a raving loony and his
deceased sibling, but you never know. Maybe it was taking Chaos
Theory a step beyond the beat of a butterfly wing, but maybe that
step was right on the line proving that no, officer, I hadn't been
drinking or smoking something I shouldn't have been, and I was
perfectly capable of driving this here automobile of my life right
into the nearest tree. Thank you and good night. Wish I had an
airbag.

To be honest, and I'm nothing if
not honest...

Hold on. Does that mean my
honesty is the only thing I've got going for me? Does that mean I'm
a hollow shell of a man if I'm not a fine, upstanding, paid up
member of Honesty International? If my family motto isn't 'Tell a
lie, gotta die, stick a penguin in your eye' then I'm a mere
shadow, a shade of substance with neither hope nor honour?

Nah. Don't be daft.

So. To be honest, and I'm lots
of things if not honest, Chaos Theory may well play its subtle,
sinister part in all of this, but it was like an extra in a Lord of
the Rings battle sequence. There were thousands of others in the
fray and unless it was wearing a pink hat, feather boa and a frilly
little sequined tutu, it wasn't really going to be seen amongst the
polystyrene armour and fake blood. No, this time it was... erm...
Time. Something we were in as short supply of as we were salt and
vinegar Pringles. It was a Mother Hubbard day today and the
cupboard, both of Pringles and Time, was bare. With every tick of
the clock, Connors and his hounds were closing in and once they
popped, I doubted that they'd stop.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. What
time is it Mister Wolf? Time to bite off your head from the twinkle
toes up.

My 'what now' question hadn't
been answered, but I hoped Joy would have some idea. I figured
she'd have a plan that she'd love to come together. I also hoped
that either one of us, but preferably both, would drag themselves
up out of the Drums of Dol and get this showboat steaming along the
Mississippi. The hesitant smile that played hopscotch across my
sister's mouth indicated that she might just be the one to pull the
whistle and yell out 'All aboaarrdddd!' And I would help by
weighing anchor.

I was going to make a joke there
about the anchor weighing 18 stone 4 pound, but I won't. Especially
as it would be more like around 30 tons or more. And ‘weigh anchor’
doesn't mean that anyway. But that's the point of the joke. But I
didn't make the joke.

Erm... Anyway...

Anyway... I was beginning to
feel like I'd swallowed some chewing gum and my shit was twanging
back. The mood in this house was bouncing up and down faster than
Zebedee on ecstasy. Or in ecstasy. It was a coin, yes, two pence
probably, that was being constantly tossed. Flip and catch. Happy
and sad.

"Come on, indeed," said Joy.

'Eileen?' Oh, sorry,
'indeed.'

"We need to get out of here."
She reached out for my hand and I automatically held out my own.
Before I stood, though, I asked:

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere."

"Somewhere? Where's that?"

I'd have to look at a map, or
Google at least, one day and see if there actually was a town
called Somewhere. It'd make a change from living in a town called
Malice. Oooh, yeah.

"I don't know," she said. "We'll
find out when you take us there."

When I...?

"When I take us there?"

"Yes. We can't stay here. He'll
find us. He doesn't know this house yet, but it probably won't take
him long. His pet has escaped and he wants it back in its
cage."

"His pet? I'm his pet? What do
you mean?"

"Sin, you saw what the video. He
knows. He knows! He's not going to let a prize like that get away,
not while there's a chance he can use it - control it."

A pet? A prize? I was neither of
those. I was a person. I was me! I wasn't sure who that murdering,
teleporting me really was, but it was still me! As for controlling
me!?

I realised I was shaking my head
and stopped myself, but Joy responded to it.

"Yes, Sin. As much as you might
not like it, he knows. And he's known for a while. That was a
fairly recent video, but there's others. So many others. Don't you
remember?"

"Remember what?" I remembered,
or thought I did, pretty much all of my time in the hospital. I
couldn't recall any gaps. There were no slices of my memory's steak
and ale pie being munched on by the Spirit of Forgetfulness, with a
few chunky chips and some garden peas covered in lashings of
gravy.

Saying that, I didn't remember,
not even with a whisper of recall, the episode in The Room that
Connors had been watching. What else was missing? What else had he
made me do? I felt my face drop, the muscles sagging suddenly as if
they'd been tensed up for days and the weight of all that skin had
become too much for them and they'd had to let go, breathing a
hefty sigh of relief as they released their grip.

He did know. That much was
obvious. But how much did he know? Moreover, how much was there to
know?

"He's had you as his little lab
rat for months now." She sat on the bed beside me, her hand on
mine. It felt cold. I felt cold. My blood had gone the way of my
face - south for the winter - and I was shivering. Even her arm
around me failed to give me any warmth.

See? Shit twanging day, all
right.

A lab rat. That was what I’d
been reduced to. I wondered if I’d even been an actual bona fide
patient. But then, were any of the patients really patients, or
where they merely a hobby to the Doctor, passing away the days
whilst giving him something to vent his megalomaniacal tendencies
upon. I know which I leaned towards, and it didn’t involve a
modicum of care or a Hippocratic oath. Hypocritical, perhaps, but
Hippocratic? I think not. When had I been promoted from mere loon
to Teacher's Pet? When had I scampered up the ladder of Life, Love
and the Lunatic's Way to become Connors' personal plaything? And
what had I had to do to get there?

These questions and more were
unlikely to be answered in the next thrilling episode of Sin: A
Life Unfolding. Or should that be Unfeeling? Or perhaps even
Unravelling. If only this had really been a Hollywood blockbuster,
or even an old Ealing comedy. At least I'd have had a script and
could potentially have looked ahead to see what was going to happen
to my character. Was I going to go out in a blaze of gunfire,
leaving behind the beautiful accomplice, her bosom heaving as she
sobbed for her loss? Would I ride off into the sunset on my trusty
steed, with only a trail of settling dust to show I'd ever passed
this way? Would I wake up in the shower to find this had all been a
horrible dream and that I was actually married to Victoria
Principal?

Hmmmm...

No.

The doo-doo was twanging with
yo-yo like precision and all we could do was duck to avoid getting
whacked in the eye.

So, (deep breath) I was a lab
rat. Well, this rat was going to bite back. This rat was badder
than its Seven Hills cousins and was going to crap in the lunch of
the good doctor. This rat was going to give Connors a nice
unhealthy dose of rabies before the day was out. Granted that was a
metaphorical dose of rabies and a probably metaphysical bite. The
crap in the lunch was too tempting an offer though... Either way,
some arses need to be kicked and I had a size 9 ready and
waiting.

I just had to figure out how.
Well, I had a lot more than that to figure out. How? Why, Where and
When, and their little brother What all wanted to join the club,
become fully paid up members and sport the flash little badge and
cap. Sign up here, guys. Thirty days free subscription and you get
a nice shiny pen to boot!