Sin (27 page)

The 'me' on the monitor was yet
another person, or persona. It seemed a shadow, as if part of me
was missing or had forgotten to turn up for the session. My 'I'
inside was still in my room, slumbering in a drug induced daze and
had missed the call for a one-on-one with the head
Shrink-o-matic.

Examination Room One. Connors
lair. Well, Lair Mark Two, as we were currently in Mark One, the
seat of his highness's personal madness. Not a nice room. It'd had
more names than Prince or Puff Doodad across the years: The Hole.
The Closet. The Inner Sanctum. They were the nicer ones. Sometimes,
when you thought no-one was listening, it might be referred to as
The Screamer, or simply The Room.

Nothing wrong with calling
something The Room. It's what it is, anyway. A room. Four walls. A
door. A recessed, naturally, light. The camera in the corner that
I'd never even noticed was there. A basic screwed to the floor
table. A couple of chairs, one of which was screwed to the floor
and another that Connors used, and placed wherever it might make
you the most uncomfortable. But when those words were used they
were always dripping with dread. They oozed fear like butter
melting on a hot plate. Seeping. Bubbling. And crap on toast.

The Room. I was in the chair
that was screwed to the floor. There were badly filled holes by the
legs where someone, I don't know who as it was before my
internment, had managed to rip it from it fastenings and launch
themselves at the doctor. It was purely the fact that his chair
wasn't fixed in place that a lucky squeal and fall backwards saved
him from having his nose bitten off.

The Room. Always colder than the
rest of the hospital. Your breath could often be seen escaping your
body - if you couldn't then something may as well - on the warmest
August day.

The Room. If rooms or buildings
have souls, then this one's was noticeable by its absence.

Dr. Connors was sitting in front
of me. His face was so close to mine I'd have been able to smell
what brand of coffee he'd had with his breakfast. I was sure I
remembered all or most of our sessions together, but I really
couldn't place this one. He was saying over and over, almost as a
chant:

"Do it. Do it."

Do what?

Ah.

The image on screen seemed to
blink or to blip. There was an almost imperceptible flicker. Then
Connors was standing up and turning towards me. Except I was no
longer strapped to the chair screwed to the floor. The strait
jacket I'd been so comfortably cocooned in was no longer strapped
tightly around me. Where the table had been clear, there was now
the aforementioned garment, neatly folded, arms tucked in and
straps tidy.

I was in the far corner,
crouching. My arms were around my knees, my head down. A foetal
huddle.

Connors crouched in front of me.
I couldn't see his face but his voice implied a chilled smile.

"Well done, Sin. Good boy."

He reached over and patted my
arm. I touched myself where his hand had rested and shivered.

The screen went black, the video
file ended. Connors nodded.

"Yes, Sin. Good boy." He clicked
an 'X' in the top right corner of the screen and the window closed
leaving a smattering of neatly arranged icons against a pale blue
background. "Except now you've been very bad, running away like
that. I'm afraid that I might have to punish you."

The doctor chuckled, a high
sound like a lunatic on helium. Oddly appropriate on one such as
he.

I jumped as I felt a hand on my
arm where I'd been rubbing a moment earlier and Connors had been
patting who knew when. It was Joy.

"Now we go," she said
quietly.

Now we go.

I'd been wrong. Jeremy's death
was the prelude to the main feature. He was the trailer and the
adverts for hot dogs and dream cars. His part in the performance
had lasted for much longer than the (literal) movie, but it paled
beside this last revelation. I was shocked at how the death, the
murder, of someone could possibly seem secondary, but it did. He
knew.

Connors knew.

Joy had been right when she'd
visited me in the forest the previous night. There was a storm
coming, and I didn't have a coat thick enough to protect me from
its force.

"Sin. Come on."

Fair enough.

I turned and we went to the
door. I didn't look back. I didn't need to be reminded of how
Jeremy looked, mild surprise on his face, his hand hanging limp, a
trace of drool on the corner of his mouth. I didn't need that
memory burned onto my mind any more than it already was. I pulled
the door open and stepped out, automatically holding it for my
sister. I did turn back then, for one last look at the man I was
going to make suffer and at the friend I'd lost.

But they weren't there. The
office was gone. The door had gone. I could still feel the handle
in my hand, but when I looked, my hand was empty. Darkness was
around us and I felt so small.

But Joy was light and lo, there
was light. Well, the ghostly ectoplasmic variety anyway.

My mind was racing, a scalextric
set where the car was predesigned to fly off at the corner just as
they all did. I turned my mental back on the track. Let my thoughts
race where they wanted, I didn't have the time to be a spectator to
their inevitable collision. If a wreck was going to happen, I was
going to be caught in the mangled remains anyway, so why look out
for it? My brain would let me know.

"Hey Sin."

"Yes?"

"This is your subconscious. How
goes it?"

"Not bad. Fair to crap, you
know?"

"Well that's an improvement
then."

"Sure is, what can I do for
you?"

"Oh yeah. Thought I'd let you
know that the race is over."

"Cool. Who won?"

"Well, it wasn't us, I'm afraid.
It wasn't pretty. You know what those bends are like."

"Sure do. Tighter than..."

"A barnacle on the bum of the
Titanic. Indeed. Anyway. Thought you should know you're now
officially insane. Mind is in shreds and there's guts and thoughts
everywhere."

"I'd hate to have to clean that
up. Thanks for the nod."

"Welcome. See ya. Wouldn't want
to be ya."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, you
already are."

"Oh yes. Oh well. Shit
happens."

Yes it does. It was whether or
not we carried a pooper scooper around with us that mattered, or at
the very least a carrier bag. I had neither. Bummer.

* * * *

"What now," I asked Joy.

She'd brought me here. I'd let
her lead me like a bull to a china shop or a lamb to the kebab
house. It wasn't like I'd really had much of a choice, was it? Joy
said 'Jump' and I asked off which cliff. I'd at first thought I was
simply, and it had been simple at the time, on the run from the
mental institute. An escapee who should have been able to walk out,
seeing as I'd been the one to voluntarily walk in. Now, though, the
wolves were baying for blood, and my jugular had been well and
truly sliced open, spraying great crimson swaths that would most
probably lead them to me like the breadcrumb trail of Hansel and
Gretel. Maybe I should save the witch a job and stick myself in the
oven, gas mark 7 for the rest of my life.

Dr. Connors would like that, I'm
sure. Wine and dine like Lecter on happy pills.

Joy didn't speak for a moment.
She was staring at the ground, her face sad. I followed her eyes,
for a second wondering if I'd see Jeremy looking back at me,
smiling. "Only joking!" But he wasn't. There was just mud, sick and
pallid in the light oozing from my sister. She looked up at me, her
eyes watery.

Ghosts could cry. Go figure.

"Come on," she said, starting to
walk off. I almost automatically took a step to follow, but then
stopped.

No. Not this time. I needed to
know.

"No," I said. "Not this time.
What was all that about. Where are were going?"

Joy stared at me without
speaking. The moisture cleared from her eyes as a grim
determination crept in, turning them grey. I didn't like that look.
I never had. Steely and soulless, as if her eyes had been replaced
by those of the Terminator. All that was missing was the red light
signifying life.

But then, my sister was actually
dead.

"Come on," she repeated, her
voice as cold as her stare. I'd forgotten my warm, loving sister
could be like this. Happiness normally drifted from her like
pheromones, as much a part of her as the colour of her hair or the
scar that crossed from her middle right knuckle to her thumb, a
keepsake from falling off her bike when she was twelve. And I still
say I didn't push her, even though my backside was singing that
same song for two days afterwards (thanks dad). It was as if she'd
tossed a coin, possibly a two pence piece, and it had fallen face
down in shit.

I could have said no again. I
really could have. I'd learned long ago, though, that you didn't
argue with my sister when she was like this. Puckering up to that
not-so-friendly Rottweiler was like kissing a new born baby when
compared with standing up to Joy. I opened my mouth, not entirely
sure if acquiescence or opposition would leap out into the maw of
the lion, but it seemed Joy took my slight pause to mean the
latter.

The light from her went out and
the clammy touch of darkness stroked my cheek.

There was a brief growl to my
right. A dog? A demon? A rabid rat? My stomach clenched. My legs
went cold. My heart missed a beat, then another, before picking up
the pace to start racing.

Then Joy's voice. "Open your
eyes, Sin."

I didn't realise I'd closed
them.

Name's Dorothy.

Yep. You heard me right.
Dorothy. I was only missing the blue chequered dress and pigtails
to complete the picture. Scampering along beside me could even have
been Tonto. Oh, hold on, that's the Lone Ranger. Toto then. I hear
those drums echo in the night, guys 'n' gals, and they're beating
for me.

I didn't even have to click the
heels of my ruby slippers together. Not that I had any, of course.
Red is so not my colour.

What planet is this guy on, I
hear you ask. Well I don't of course. You're not the voices in my
head. Are you? Nah. The voices in my head sound more like Joe
Pasquale on helium or James Earl Jones in his best Darth Vader
incarnation.

"Sin. Come over to the Dark
Side."

Jimmy-boy, I'm already
there.

Dorothy, that's me. And Joy was
either the Good Witch of the North (or whichever direction she came
from) or the Wicked Witch of the West, except she wasn't wearing
stripy tights and curly shoes. Oh, and a house hadn't fallen on
her. But, either way, we were no longer wandering the yellow brick
road of the Seven Hills. Nope, we were back in Kansas. Or Grimsby
to be more precise. If we'd even left. Joy was sitting in her
recliner, feet up, looking at me. Her face was expressionless,
neither smiling nor frowning, angry nor happy. A blank canvas
perhaps waiting for me to be the artist of her mood.

I was standing in the middle of
the room, my back to the television and the bay window. I felt
exposed. The light from the streetlamp outside seemed to stop just
inside the window frame as if fearful of venturing further. I could
feel its fear prickling my back. Well, maybe I just had an itch,
but right at that moment the light was scared of stepping too far
over the boundary into this room, whether because of the occupants
- myself and my sister - or because of something more sinister.
Saying that, what could be more sinister than two siblings who
could, with neither thought nor whisper of a breath, alter the
course of someone's life. Sure, in Joy's case it was for the
better. In my case though, altering the course of someone's life
meant diverting them over the Niagara Falls into a fire pit
below.

I didn't blame the light. I
wasn't too fussed about being there either.

"Don't doubt me again, Sin."
Joy's face was grave. There could almost have been a tombstone
about her head. Her voice was a monotone that held not a single
inflection, yet carried such a mighty weight of meaning, an ant
would have struggled.

"Pardon?"

I was, to say the least, miffed.
I hadn't broken out of a mental home just to become the lap dog to
my deceased sister! I was so used to following her when we were
kids, it came naturally now. And she seemed to have a touch more of
a clue about what was happening than I did - which wasn't
surprising seeing as I had no clue whatsoever. Even Sherlock
Holmes, had he gone for a wander around the recesses of my mind,
would have found it far from elementary to find clues of any sort
in there.

"I said..."

Sod this. I wasn't going to take
it. So she was my sister. So she was dead and seemed to be party to
knowledge that she couldn't, or maybe even wouldn't, share. So
what? I'd just gone for a stroll in the Twilight Zone and had seen
someone I'd considered a friend killed. And the killer knew all
about me and my funny little ways. So excuse me if I have to wonder
what I'm doing. Excuse me if I don't automatically fall into step
behind the Squadron Leader. Excuse me if I happen to want to know
what the hell is going on!

I interrupted her with the only
thing I could think of at the time. A classic line. One to be proud
of.

"Whatever."

I stormed off upstairs to my
room, a petulant little boy who'd been reprimanded and didn't
really understand why.

I sat on my bed, hands clasped,
thumbs rubbing against each other. I was slumped forward, my
shoulders hunched and neck at such an angle that I'd be sure to
suffer later if I didn't move. Well tough titties. Let me suffer.
Let me be in pain. Would it be so much worse than the way I was
feeling? I doubted it.