Colour Series Box Set (97 page)

“You look like crap, Callum, it’s a bit early to be on the booze isn’t it?”

“I’m fucking dying. It’s never too early when you are dying. I heard
you
had an eventful night last night.” He looks like the cat stole the canary, oh yes Doc, I know everything.

“She told you?” he asks with a slight smile looking around the room to see if she is here somewhere. They had sex, good sex, it’s written all over his face and I want to punch him. She wasn’t meant for him.

“No, she’s having a personal day. You know there’s someone watching her all the time don’t you?” I smile. I still love playing the games. “Avery has a dirty shadow, nothing she does goes unnoticed, doctor. Watch out where you play. The other guy she fucked last night is dead in a bathtub.” He winces a little at the other guy comment. His ego is wounded, he thought he was special, poor fool, no one is special to that girl.

“I just had some fun, I think she did too. She doesn’t know it yet but she likes to be pushed around a little.” He’s trying to make me react so I don’t.

“Hmm. Just know what you are getting into, the score is pretty uneven where she is concerned eighty-seven dead bodies and she is still adding to it every week.” I need him to back off, I need her to want Harmon, to need him she has to fucking choose him.

“Callum, Callum? Are you alright?” His voice brings me back to the room.

“No the pain is off the charts today. Like four hundred not ten.” I tell him as it slashes at my insides again. “And I have a fucking headache.”

“Callum, we need to talk about your plan, now, I’m being honest. There is really very little I can still do for you. You’re going to start going into rapid organ failure soon and we wanted to avoid that at all costs.” I know what he’s saying, time is a bitch just like my wife was.

“I need two days to finalise things then we can do it, Mat, I’ll be done. Thursday is the end.” He nods as injects me with something to dull the agony but it never does and hands me a joint.

“Smoke it, old man, it will help.”

He packs his things meticulously into his bag while I smoke the weed he just handed me and chase it with whiskey. “She liked you,” I say out loud, the drugs talking. “Or you’d be very dead already.” He frowns at me.

“Avery isn’t going to kill me, Callum. Not before I kill you if that’s your concern. It was fun, but I rarely go back for seconds and I’m not going to be in town long after Friday.” Closing his bag up and looking at me with the pity I loathe, he nods at me. “She is different though, something very special in her.” I hear the evil undertone and the angel of death twinkles in his eye. The darkness inside him likes the pitch black inside her, they are a dangerous combination.

“I suggest you leave her alone, Mat. I have her future very well planned out and you, my boy, are not in it.” My threat clear he gives me a knowing nod one villain to another. There’s a reason I don’t trust doctors, Shannon, him and countless others in between. They’re evil fuckers all of them. We talk about my plan for the future as I get high and the sweet smoke takes my pain away. I need him to know she has a future all mapped out.

“See you Thursday, Callum. Take it easy. I’m looking forward to it. Don’t ruin my fun.” The slimy fuck leaves me to smoke, drink and wrap up my business and my life.

There is nothing else for me, no redemption and forgiveness doesn’t come for those who are born damned, so I’m happy knowing I will not be going to a better place. I don’t deserve one, I’m not nor have I ever been worthy of anything good, my life is a testament to that. I’m a living breathing tragedy and I will suffer the tragic end I deserve, but I will do it on my terms and in my time. The only thing I will keep in this world is the sliver of dignity that I have hung onto through this disease. I sit at my desk and sign my new will and testament, the one that splits my assets between Avery and Harmon should he honour his appendix to the contract within two years of the date of signing. Should he not do so his half goes to my sister Amya. I may not live to see it but I can die in the hope that my dream of a suitable successor will come true. Slipping the notarised documents back in the envelope, I get up to go and deliver them to my lawyers on the third floor as Harmon is coming back into the office. He’s a twenty year younger version of me, without a death sentence tightening around his neck, regret sneaks into my mind as I think of all the things I would have done differently. There aren’t many, the biggest one is I would never have shoved the girl who held my heart out of her bedroom window. My path was changed that night more than any other of the defining moments that came before or after, that night left my feelings exposed. That night turned me into a vicious rapist. It tipped me over the edge and started a free fall into madness that I still cannot stop. Once upon a time, I was just a boy with a gun in his hand and the desperate need to belong in the world. Now I’m a sad, bitter old man with an empty heart and home and I’m too weak to hold a gun to kill myself.

I stop Harmon in the middle of the reception area holding out my hand, I shake his. “It’s up to you and her now. I’m done. Try not to fuck it all up at once.” He looks confused like he really thought I would be here longer, but also like he has no idea what to say to me at all. “Bye, Harmon.” I let his hand fall and walk away from everything I have built with the blood of my family.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind.

If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

ON MONDAY NIGHT,
I felt something. On Tuesday, I killed the one person I think I might have loved. On Wednesday, I woke up in my childhood room with tears burning my cheeks. On Thursday, I saw my father’s eyes as he cried and tried to tell me the news that Callum died. On Friday, I sat between the graves of my mother and dead lover. I wished for the little girl that used to swing in the tree that is now burnt and fallen to come back and breathe her life into me. On Saturday, I couldn’t get out of bed and Sunday, I drowned in the wine from the vineyard store. On Monday, I got dressed but never left for work, my dad tried to talk to me and I cried, so he left. In a week, I have lost everything that held me together and as I fall apart slowly and painfully I don’t even try and keep any part of me I let it all shatter and break apart.

TODAY IS FRIDAY
again and we stand in the little graveyard like we used to on Sundays. Dad and me and a lady I think I remember but cannot place. She’s beautiful and her skin is covered like my dad’s while a big man holds her hand as she wipes her cheeks with an old fashioned hanky. Callum’s half-brother, Harmon is here, we met once—he’s a dick. The Catholic priest drones on and I don’t listen to a word of the drivel that he spews. Callum didn’t believe he was going to heaven anyway, he was comfortable with the fact his soul couldn’t be saved. My tears have dried up again, I don’t like to cry and the last week has made me hate it. Everyone has tears except for me and Harmon, he seems to hate crying too by the way he looks at them all. I’m fascinated. He looks so much like Callum, only his eyes are amber not green and he isn’t frail or wrinkled, he’s strong and young. He even dresses just like the old man, the signature O’Reilly three piece suit even when it’s as hot as hell out. Over twenty years I never once saw Callum in anything else. My dad wears jeans, he is sort of old school cool with his ink and greying hair and beard. Even now he has jeans on, he doesn’t change who he is for anyone—ever. I see a shadow behind the remains of the tree I used to swing in as child, standing away from the few who cared is the doctor that started this spiral into mayhem for me. I swallow a very heavy realisation—he killed Callum. No, Callum asked him to die before it got too bad. He killed him, the anger starts to bubble even though I know he wouldn’t have had a choice with Cal, he did it and I hate him for it. I try to stand still as the sharp acid of my rage starts to burn inside me. I shuffle my feet and look at my dad next to me, he grabs my hand and squeezes it. When I look up again Mathew’s gone, but I will find him. I drop the single white Arum Lily onto the coffin as I step right next to the gaping hole in the ground and it swallows up part of my soul as they fill it in.

It turns out the beautiful lady is Callum’s sister, Amya. She was around when I was a baby and even took care of me, I remember her face but nothing else. The big man with her is her husband Robin. They all laugh and tell stories of Callum and my mom and how Robin was the one who did all their tattoos, before he left no one else had drawn on my dad. Cupcakes, wine and café stories that couldn’t sound less like Callum if they tried, the Callum I knew was different. He was the man who killed the devil, ruthless, loveless, cold, calculated and above all lonely, but he gave me the attention my father wouldn’t. We all sit on the patio and drinking and eating, Harmon’s silent almost the whole time, I don’t think he really knew his brother at all besides a few phone calls. I’m not sure they had anything to do with each other. I feel his eyes boring into me and as the sun starts to sag close to the horizon I can’t bear anymore of this and I excuse myself to my room. I close my door and kick off my shoes, a shower is what I need. I cannot face a bathtub yet, as much as I would love to soak in one I just can’t get Eiran’s dead body out of my head.

When I emerge from the bathroom, my dad’s sitting in the chair by the window looking out at the vineyard and the almost night sky that isn’t dark or light. “Want to talk about it yet, kid?” he asks and I think I might want to but I am not sure I can.

“About what, dad?” I ask softly because truth is I have no idea where to start, I was closer to Callum than him because he shut me out. Dad was detached, he taught me to kill, that was our connection, but there was nothing more. The deep bond that should be shared between parent and child was missing.

“All of it if you want.”

“You remember when I was kidnapped and I came home with Eiran?” He doesn’t turn and face me which is better really, I think I might just spill some very ugly truths not even he is ready for. Looking into his tragic eyes will make it harder.

“I remember, you changed after that. Killing became easy for you.” He’s right, it did. It no longer felt like work, but became a release for the insanity inside me, I wanted to love Eiran instead I killed.

“He raped me, not one of you even asked me if I got hurt because I filleted him, you all thought I was fine. I cut a man apart and you all thought I was fine.” My Dad’s back goes ramrod straight and stiffens where he no stands up his hands pressed against the windows.

“Worst part of it was how much I liked it, how he made me feel. He made me feel a little tickle under the hard shell that you and Callum made me wear. I fell in love with the boy that stole my virginity, then I spent ten years torturing him by fucking other men and killing them so he had to clean up, dad. Still want to talk about it?” He nods I can only see the back of his head and a reflection of his face in the glass, he was always just a reflection of his loss.

“Eighty-seven dead bodies and not once did you or Callum try to stop me. At least Callum would yell and scream and make me feel like I should try not to. You never uttered a word.” I take a minute to let the things I’m saying sink in for both of us, facing truths like these isn’t always easy. My father didn’t care enough to try stop me from being a heartless murderer.

“You hide here on this farm and come out of your little hole only when you have to. You don’t see me—the real me, the fucking disastrous mess you and Callum made.” His head drops to his chest in honest defeat. I feel my fingernails digging into my palms as I catch my breath after yelling at him. Panting for breath I hunch myself over and close my eyes.

“I failed you, Avery, you don’t think I know that? You don’t think I look at your mother’s picture and see all the broken promises and shattered fucking dreams. I could not love you.” His voice is soft and sad and his head hangs down his shoulders now rounded over and hunched. There it is, the L word, the forbidden feelings.

“I loved Eiran, so I killed him. You want to know who taught me that?” I wait a second to see if he answers me. “Callum, because other than how to commit a flawless murder you taught me nothing about life, about how damn hard it is to be human.”