Sin (12 page)

Almost...

* * * *

I woke with a start. Was it
possible to do that with a stop? Or with a finish? Why is it always
a start? Not too long before I'd have been happy to wake up with an
END. As my body jerked awake, the knotted tree trunk gave me a good
kick in my back to remind me where I was. I could have told it that
I hadn't forgotten, but trees are notoriously bad
conversationalists, especially in the mornings. Well, without a hot
Cappo and some toast, who isn't?

But... was it morning? Dewy webs
dotted the ground like a warped game of Twister where all the spots
were white or silver. Now that would be confusing – you wouldn’t
know where to put your foot or hand. I stretched, wincing as my
back breathed a sigh of relief at finally being released from the
bark's surface. I wondered at who spun the wheel and who did the
twisting. Spiders could cheat and squirrels only had short legs. It
wouldn't really be a fair game. I'm glad I'd only played with my
sister and friends.

The light had a hazy feel to it,
as if it was on a dimmer that hadn't quite been turned all the way
up. I could see a vague fog drifting across the fields beyond the
forest, aimless and lost. I knew how it felt. The mist failed to
reach into the confines of the trees, perhaps lying in wait for me
when I emerged. No matter, I thought. I could handle a bit of fog.
It was hardly a case of Mr. T versus Rocky Balboa, was it? Of
course John Carpenter or James Herbert might disagree, but I'd have
to take that chance. If the mist thought it was hard enough to try
it on with me, let it have a go.

Big words from an escaped
lunatic, don't you think?

It certainly felt like morning
time. How early I couldn't tell, but the air had a definite
crispness to it, like it was just out of the wrapping and hadn't
been used yet. I felt guilty taking a breath, as if by exhaling I
could possibly taint the atmosphere - but hey, I felt guilty taking
the last jaffa cake from the box. It didn't stop me. The freshness
of the air was sharp in my throat and nostrils, cleaning them out
as it passed on through. I felt like someone had stuck a Dyson down
my throat and sucked out all the grimy remnants of modern day’s
pollution. It was as if every breath I'd ever taken had traces of
muck and sludge mingled in it, and this clear morning air had
scoured me out better than a hydrochloric enema. I could have been
breathing for the very first time, instead of the twenty millionth
or so.

How often do you breathe in a
life time? I think I read somewhere that it was around twenty
thousand times a day. It sounds like a lot, but it's only about
fourteen times a minute, give or take the odd yawn or hiccup to
spoil the flow. So that makes it about... erm... put the 1 on the
doorstep... about seven hundred million or so in a century? Of
course, if you're still breathing at a century then you're doing
something right - breathing for one.

Anyway, today's felt like Numero
Uno for me. My lungs had been plucked from my torso, chucked in a
washer on 40° and hung on the line to dry, thereafter being shoved
back in my body to start all over again. Refreshed, revived,
replenished and renewed. I guess I'd been RE'ed in every which way
but loose, Clyde. It was great. I was Samson before he'd nipped to
the hairdressers for a quick wash, cut and blow dry. Whether it was
Androcles or Saint Jerome who pulled the thorn from the lion's paw,
I could do it with my teeth whilst blindfolded and with both hands
tied behind my back. Unusually invigorated by the morning, I pushed
myself to my feet, ignoring my protesting joints, and decided I was
going to get my shiny metal behind into gear. If the men in white
coats came a-hunting-we-will-go, then they'd have to catch me. If
Dr. Connors was on the prowl, he'd have to find me. And if my dead
sister wanted to stop by for a chat again, a-haunting-we-will-go,
then she'd just have to call first so I could check my diary.
Either that or she'd have to bring some Viennese Whirls. I hadn't
had any for ages, and I just fancied one.

Of my sister, there was no sign.
Maggots weren't wriggling towards the morning sun like turtles to
the sea and the grass wasn't flattened where she'd stepped. No
cockroaches crunched underfoot and I failed to see any globby bits
of flesh, with hair still sprouting, hiding between the roots of
the trees. My dream had been a dream and no more. Of course it had.
Why did I feel the need to convince myself? Yes, it had
seemed
real, apart from her eye popping out and the like,
but she was dead. It hadn't
been
real. Just a dream veering
precariously close to the edge of nightmare without quite careening
over.

Not that I'm saying my sister
was a nightmare. She could sometimes be, though, a bit wee, a bit
woo, a bit wah, if you know what I mean. Often even a bit WOAH! I
didn't know whether to blame that on hormones or just general
femininity. Who understood a woman? Not even women was my guess.
And isn't any sibling a nightmare at times? Isn't it always a case
of 'I can call you but if anyone else does I'll rip their head
off?' Such it was with Joy and me. She did my head in, big style,
sometimes, but she was still my sister. So why dream of her with a
face melting faster than hot wax?

Go on, ask me another. Dare
ya.

My shiny metal behind was
loitering, I realised. It was looking for a reason to stay put and
to not enter the big, wide, scary world. It didn't have to look too
far, of course. Being the right hand scythe of the Big D was reason
enough to cower, head between the knees, mooning the world, but I
was having none of it. What could I do? Sit here, waiting to see if
Joy would call again, or how long it would take me to starve or
freeze to death? Sure, that sounded like a plan. Do nothing and
nothing could happen. I liked it. But it didn't work like that.
People died if I was simply walking through town. Hell, people died
if I was sat on the toilet! Sitting tight and waiting for the end
to see how bitter it would be wouldn't stop people joining the
queue for the one last dance with the Reaper. No. I couldn't do
anything so I had to do something.

A light breeze stroked my face
and I smelled Jasmine.

Joy.

No again. It was probably the
endless sea of rape seed or maybe a farmer had fed his cows some
new additive so their doo-doo wouldn't smell quite so much like
doo-don’t. My mind was playing tricks and fooling me into thinking
I was smelling my sister when I couldn't have been. Dreams didn't
leave odours. Go on mind - play your tricks. Have a laugh on me,
I've got plenty to spare. God knows I didn't need them myself.

Get going!

I walked to the edge of the
trees. For some reason I was nervous about stepping out. The tree
line felt as if it was the edge of a cliff, the outside world an
abyss daring me to leap. Naturally, that was nonsense. OK, so maybe
there were snipers hidden in the bushes along the road side,
waiting for me to make the wrong move so they could take me out
with a single shot? I checked my body to make sure there were no
red dots giving me the targeting equivalent of measles - a fatal
dose. There were none. Obviously. I was being silly. If 'they' were
looking for me - the men in white coats, the police, the nameless,
faceless,
They
- I didn't see how they could possibly have
found me yet. If I didn't know where I was, how could anyone else?
Short of hiring one of the Charmed Ones to swing a pendulum over a
map, what could they do?

A tracker. Perhaps not all those
injections were the happy drugs being pumped into me. Maybe one
little prick (ooer missus) really was a microscopic, subcutaneous
computer chip and right now satellites were spinning high overhead
shouting down to the Big Bad Wolf that "HEY! HE'S OVER HERE!"

And the Big Bad Wolf, or Wolfey
as he likes to be called, will huff, and he'll puff, and he'll
bloooooow me away.

Well. Here's one small step for
Man and a dirty great jump for little ol' me.

I stepped forward. I didn't feel
a bullet tear through my chest and bury itself all nice and snugly
in my heart. Half a dozen SWAT teams didn't fall from the sky as
helicopters zoomed over. And the men in the nice white coats didn't
rush me and bundle me into the back of an unmarked van ready to
return me to my very own padded cell. I was still alive, untouched
and currently unnoticed. I had to admit to a little disappointment.
Not at the absence of a bullet through my brain - the suicidal
tendencies had realised I was a bad bet, so they'd left me in
favour of some other troubled soul. The disappointment stemmed from
the fact that I hadn't thought beyond that one step. Because no-one
had pounced on me like a cat on a rat, it meant they also hadn't
taken my choices. I still had them laid out before me like a car
boot sale, some going for 50 pence and some for the grand price of
a couple of quid. And I was the boy in the sweet shop unable to
decide between the gob-stopper and the jelly worms.

Staying where I was would cost
about £1.50. It had its merits but was overpriced to be honest.
Besides, I'd taken that step now. I was out in the world and as
comforting as the leafy canopy behind me might be, it was really a
slow grave to China. I'd come from the right, so all that lay for
me in that direction was a burnt out car and the corpses of a boy
and a gull. My strait jacket could be in the belly of a whale for
all I knew. So right was wrong. Left was best. Straight on would
take me across fields and ditches and, in the distance, a small
lake. It meant effort and no visible destination. Turning left and
continuing along the road also had no visible, and possibly viable,
end but it was more likely that a house or village would be that
way. Roads generally went somewhere. They could take their time
arriving, meandering about, taking in the sights along the way, but
they usually got there, somewhere, by the time they were
finished.

So the road it was. Its surface
was smooth as if it had been newly lain only last week. The central
lines, a white seam stitched into the black, were as sharp and as
crisp as the day they'd been painted. Either the road was a brand
spanker, which would wind up all those guys with their fancy
sat-navs, or it was hardly used - a back passage to the arse end of
nowhere. Whichever it was, it still had to have a purpose. A to B
or Y to Z. It couldn't be just A to ?, because what would be the
point? Would the road be bothered, in that case, by its
aimlessness? It could be that the road was sentient. Perhaps it
wandered the world, settling where it wanted, and was just having a
rest here in the countryside. And I was an itch on its back, an
irritation disturbing its slumber.

I walked to the sleeping asphalt
serpent, unsteady across the freshly flooded furrows of the field.
More than once I stumbled, and my feet were becoming weighed down
with the mud they were collecting. I'd easily gained a couple of
inches in height by the time I exited the field, a much cheaper
option, I thought, than a pair of heels. I could market this to
those who were vertically challenged or catwalk models. I could
just see Naomi Campbell flashing a pair of sludge covered plimmies
the next time she was showing off Versace's latest collection. My
shoes were slurping each time they were pulled from the mud, and my
legs began to ache with the effort. I reached the road with relief
and stood for a long moment, enjoying the feeling of increased
height while the ache seeped from my legs. Top of the world,
Ma!

It only took a few steps along
the road for me to realise I'd have to clean my shoes. Apart from
the tell-tale footprints I was leaving as a trail for any possible
pursuers, every step was awkward and an struggle. I stopped and
knelt at the road side, peeling my plimsoles off gingerly between
my thumb and forefinger. The edge of the road merged with the
stumpy hedgerow that ran along the side of the fields as if the
workmen who'd put it down had thought to nicely tuck it under. It
meant that there was no kerb to scrape the muck from my soles so I
tried to use them heel to heel, toe to toe, one shoe being the
spatula to clean the other. I suppose partial success can still be
classed as success, if you're a half-full kind of guy (which I like
to think I hopefully am), so I should have been pleased that the
mud didn't want to leave its new home having finally escaped the
field. As much as I scraped, it simply served to swap the mud from
one shoe to the other. Finally I dropped one shoe, the left, to the
floor and used my fingers, the middle and index serving as a mini
plough driving through the muck and flicking it off back towards
the field from whence it came. I was half way through the second
shoe when I heard the squeal of dirty brakes and looked up to see
the back end of a van pulling towards me, reversing lights lit, as
lights have a habit of doing.

* * * *

Do you think lights sleep when
they're switched off? Taking the chance to snooze a while before
being called, once more, into action, capes flaring in the wind and
capital L emblazoned on their chest? Or do they just sit there,
bored, twiddling their filaments, hoping someone would wander by
and give their switch a little flick? Do they burst into brightness
and savour every moment of life until they are condemned to go back
into the darkness again by a second casual flick? Maybe, baby, they
prefer the darkness. Could it be that the sixty watt bulb hanging
leisurely from your living room ceiling dragged itself into
powering up.

"Oh, no. Here we go again! Can't
a bulb just be left in piece?"

Who knew? "Not I," said the fly,
chomping away on a big meat pie. "Ask me another."

OK. Flies buzz. They don't talk.
And they don't chomp either. They vomit and suck. So sue me.