Sin (31 page)

That Connors had forced me to
practise the teleportation (the phrase 'stop sniggering' includes
the implication not to smirk) was not lost on me. From the brief
video clip we saw in his office, it seemed I should have this down
pat by now. I was sure that that hadn't been the only session he'd
had with me, not by a long way. I'd have been surprised if I hadn't
had daily 'treatments'. I mean, if the shoe was on the other foot,
plimsole or clod-hopping welly, I'd quite possibly have done the
same myself. Would you be able to stop yourself? It'd be like a boy
in a toyshop after closing - it would be possible to play with all
the things you always wanted for Christmas but knew you'd never
get, because buying you a present tapped into your parents' alcohol
budget. Besides, Christmas had was all about commercialisation now,
and it had lost its original meaning. So toys and other gifts were
simply different ways to line the pockets of the retail giants. Not
being bought them made a statement to... someone or other... and
was character building into the bargain.

A little like being given the
first name Sin.

Apparently.

So my father used to tell me
anyway.

The thing was, I didn't fancy
pumping myself full of drugs, as Connors had, just to rediscover my
lost talents. Only a short time ago I was welcoming of them - the
drugs that is. They helped me forget. They helped me believe it had
all stopped and I was normal - as normal as a man locked up in a
padded room floating on a nice fluffy cushion of Risperdal could
be. Even if I did want to get my daily dose, I didn't expect to be
buying them over the counter at Boots, at least not without one or
two questionable eyebrows being raised. I felt under the spotlight
enough without elevated bodily hair adding to the interrogation.
Low 'brow' joke about things getting 'hairy' tried to skim through
my mind, but I resisted their push, knowing that my sometimes inane
sense of humour was out of place in situations like this. Joy was
glaring at me with the heat of a solar flare and I needed to
appease her before I got radiation burns.

I realised that I was being a
hypocrite, or something like. I'd lost myself to drugs to smother
and suffocate this beast that coiled inside my belly, and then I'd
used that same beast to try to end my life. And just now I'd let it
out of its cell again, like a prisoner on his hour in the exercise
yard, to escape from the clutches of another monster. I wasn't sure
just how many times I could do that without it taking its chance
and breaking free for good. It was on a fairly tight leash, but I
didn't know just how strong that leash was, or even what it looked
like. It could be a solid thick chain that could hold the hounds of
hell, or it could be as tissue, only 2-ply at that, not even strong
enough to wipe your arse with.

In Farmer Giles' van, I'd had an
idea that I could control it. I felt something different -
something change. I could quite easily, whether I liked it or not,
have torn that bully apart, and quite possibly everyone else in the
street. I didn't though. I reined it in. I pulled it back. But how
much of it was a breath held? And how much would it take for
something to punch me in the stomach, and the breath be expelled
and the demon within me to dance, or dine, or dilly-dally on till
Doomsday? If that happened, Doomsday would be here a little early,
much like the Number Five bus that had passed a couple of stops
without having to pick up any passengers, right before ploughing
through...

"Sorry," I said quietly.

I thought that appearing meek
might sooth her savagery. And the meekness wasn't merely an
appearance anyway. Coming to the nursery wasn't the cleverest
matchstick in the box, but if the blue touch paper was lit, it'd
certainly go up with a bang. I knew that. Of course I did. But
choosing where to go was akin to throwing sand in the wind and
deciding to surf on one particular grain.
That
one just
there. It couldn't be done. The breeze scattered them all too far
too fast, and your foot was too big anyway. Now that analogy might
seem to be one of my shadier ones, with the meaning only vaguely
clinging on to relevance - praying no-one would stamp on its
fingers and have it plunge to the depths below, but on some level
in my head it made perfect sense. But then I've been told I'm a
touch... touched. But then, again, I have just escaped a mental
home.

My not so fake submissiveness
didn't work. Why did I think it would?

"Sorry?" Joy shouted.
"Sorry?!"

I tried not to concentrate on
the light dusting of hairs up her nose. It wouldn't help my
case.

I once had a cat. His name was
Magic and he was part Persian and part tabby. He used to sit on my
shoulder while I was at my laptop or watching TV. Not when I was on
my Playstation, though. That was his cue to fight with my thumb as
I battled with aliens or uncovered lost treasures. But anywho. He'd
be perched there, on my shoulder, and I'd feel like Long John
Silver with his pirate's parrot. With two legs, of course. And both
eyes. I never managed to get him to say, repeatedly, "Pieces of
eight," or "Pretty Polly," though. Not that I tried as I didn't
think that feline vocal cords would stretch much further than
meowing to be fed or stroked.

He was much cuter than my sister
was as she began repeating, parrot fashion, "Sorry! He's sorry!
Sorry! He's sorry!" to anyone that might be listening.

Given our location, I hoped that
'anyone' was limited to just me. I also hoped that her ranting
wasn't going to draw any unwanted attention. We shouldn't be there,
we didn't want to be there, and we would be in a humungous pile of
poo if we were found to be there, but there we were nonetheless.
Deal or don't, do or die, stick a pine cone where the sun don't
shine. I needed to calm her down and decide what the next part of
our little adventure might be. Well maybe she needed to decide, as
I'd been led by the hand like a four year old to the ice cream van
up to now. But there'd be no chocolate flake, strawberry sauce or
hundreds & thousands as a treat for me.

I could slap her, shocking her
into silence. She was, mostly at least, substantial. Whatever
post-death version of flesh and bone comprised her body, I figured
it’d react fairly normally to the palm of my hand coming sharply
into contact with it. I could out-rant her. Talk louder and more
insistently than her babbling. That, of course, was defeating the
object. Silencing her by being Mr. Mouth Almighty myself would
probably be the equivalent of picking up the PA microphone and
announcing the Return of the Mighty Sin to the grateful listeners
of Radio Nutsville FM. Our adoring fans, in the shape of Dr.
Connors and his merry men would pour in through the burst open
doors in seconds, and they wouldn't be holding out autograph books
or left boobies for signatures. And, I'd assume, the sharp objects
in their hands would more likely be needles than blue Bic pens.
Knowing Joy, though, she'd slap me back - with her fist. We'd had a
few scuffles, as siblings do, during our childhood and teens, so I
knew that she was a little whirlwind when she was riled. I didn't
want to find out what a touch of the supernatural might do for - or
to - her. Angry ghosts became poltergeists and that normally meant
things being thrown about and smashed up.

I didn't want 'things' to be
me.

Then I heard something. Or felt
like I'd heard something... or something. It was like feeling a
breath of sound across my ear. A tickle of tone. You hear it but
you don't. You feel it but you're not sure if it's in your head or
in your ear. And then there was silence. Real silence. The kind
that exists after a storm, when thunder and lightning have been
very, very frightning. The hush after the horror. The peace after
the party.

The silence after the
sister.

Joy had shut up. I'd turned away
from her ranting, almost in shame. I'd brought us here and I was
being reprimanded for being a silly little child. How could I do
something so foolish? How could I be so thoughtless? How could I
lose his comb? I'd have to pay for being stupid. I'd have to pay
for being useless. I'd have to...

Joy was gone. I looked towards
the absence of noise to see a great big bundle of nothing where my
dead sister had been. Now abandonment was something I'd been used
to. Even whilst still living with my parents, I may as well have
been dumped in a gutter outside a half way house, or given a one
way ticket to nowhere. At various points I'd also felt as if the
world had turned its back on me, like an ostrich burying its head
in the sand. Can't see me so I don't exist. At various times during
those various times, I'd wished I didn't.

Hence, I suppose, the attraction
of toasting my tootsies.

But those feelings of being
sole-shit had faded. Some of it had followed my parents into their
respective graves (or urn in the case of my mother - they could
never agree on anything) and some had just got lost along the way,
probably along with my surname. We'd all hung around for a while
years back, chewing the fat - a disgusting sounding phrase that I
doubt really has anything to do with dining on blubber - until we'd
become bored with each others' company and drifted apart like old
school friends or the post-Pangean continents. I didn't realise it
until Joy had returned but she had, eraser-like, rubbed out the
final remnants of my life-long wallowing whimsy. I was ok with
myself. Mostly. Apart from the obvious kinship with Death and all
his minions. I didn't feel abandoned anymore. I no longer felt like
the failure I'd been portrayed as by my father. His jibes and
insults still echoed around in my head, but that's all they were
now - echoes. Lacking substance. The meat gnawed from the bones of
his derision by the jaws of time. They say time is a great healer.
I don't know about that, but Time, when feeling a bit peckish, can
nosh away at something until there's only a rack of skeletal
remains that not even CSI's Gruesome Grisolm can decipher. I found
it comforting that the worms had feasted on my father faster than
Time had upon his memory. At least the little wrigglers had got
something out of him, even if it was mostly gristle and stringy
fat. I doubted even in death he'd been particularly appetising.

So I didn't feel abandoned when
I saw that I was standing alone in the nursery. That surprised me
actually. I'd been clinging on to Joy, letting her lead me
whichever way was loose, with barely a whisper or whimper. In that
short time I'd seen a friend murdered, stolen a vehicle from
someone I'd almost murdered myself, and teleported into the hands
of the enemy.

The Enemy. Anyone would think
this was a war.

Well, perhaps it was, although I
still had no idea why there was a conflict of any kind. Connors
couldn't know that I knew either of his treatment of me or his
killing of Jeremy. Why was I being hunted?
Was
I being
hunted, in fact? Perhaps the doctor was simply worried about me and
wanted my safe return so he could continue my treatment. And
perhaps he taught Sunday School and could ride a tightrope on a
unicycle backwards whilst blindfolded. He knew about me. He knew
what I was. Probably more so than I did, because I had no idea. But
he'd tested me. He'd made me into his personal laboratory rat and
had been teaching me to run through his maze, without using my
feet. And I could only imagine he wanted that part of me for
himself. Somehow.

It was a war. There had already
been casualties - one seagull and one careless driver springing to
mind. But how to end it? I couldn't see a treaty being signed or a
surrender (unless it was my own). There'd be no amicable shaking of
hands and downing of weapons. He was out to get - or be - me and I
was out to... not let him. Wow I sounded so 'GRRRR' sometimes, like
the Hulk bursting forth from his pants. I'd been basically
imprisoned, experimented upon and stalked, and all I could come up
with was that I wanted to not let him. It had to be more than that.
Not let him? Was I going to just tell him?

"Don't do that anymore Dr.
Connors. I don't like it."

"Oh, sorry about that. Don't
worry, I'll leave you alone."

"Why, thank you Doc."

"No problem, but please don't
call me Doc."

Hardly.

There was going to be pain.
Possibly more death. I just had to make sure it wasn't my own.
Easy, no?

No.

I had to stop him. Find out what
and why, and bring him to a screeching halt faster than my old dog
Lady when she ran to the back door and saw all this white, freezing
cold, snowy stuff. She'd never experienced it before and stopped so
quickly the message didn't get from her head to her back legs fast
enough to prevent her backside carrying on over her head and into
the snow beyond. Naturally she then ran back in, jumped on the sofa
and shook herself dry. I hoped I'd have more success with Connors
than I did with Lady. He probably wasn't that bothered by snow so
it would take a little more to stop him.

But what more did I have? What
could I do? One may think what couldn't I do. Here's a guy that can
leap tall buildings in a single teleport. Who could push a bus
through a post office storefront with less effort than it takes to
sneeze. One would be correct. Apparently I could. And apparently I
could control it. But I didn't know how. Apart from the occasional
feeling of composure, it was an entity all of its own. I no more
held it in check than I did set it free. The control was
uncontrolled, and in fact controlled me. But maybe that was a good
thing. I should set this beast within me free and let it wreak the
havoc it wished until it was sated. And Connors would pay whatever
price that involved. I was in the perfect place. The madhouse under
the guise of the mendhouse. I didn't think Bender Benny and Company
would mind being released from their torment. I could wipe out the
whole place in a heartbeat. Take Connors and his whole shitbang,
including myself, on the very merry way into nothingness. Oblivion
wasn't just a ride at Alton Towers, it was also a place where
nobody knows your name - mainly because there was nobody and
nothing there to know you.