Sin (33 page)

I'll say it again.

Poo.

I clicked my heels together
three times. They didn't spark a little and nothing happened. Go
figure. I closed my hands, clenched my fists tight and my teeth
tighter, and wished for home, or Barbados, or the skip that was
always parked at the end of Number 27's drive. Nothing.

Poo.

My choice, it seemed, was taken
away from me. My mind was made up by Fate and all her minions. The
Gods, sitting up there on their stars, had fancied a laugh. Or I'd
been hit with the shitty end of the shit stick and was now in need
of my own supply of tissue.

Glenn...?

I looked around frantically. A
key was pushed into the lock and jiggled, an almost musical jingle
that made my nerves dance. There was a greenhouse nearby, but I
knew the doors were kept shut by padlock. The ever-fluid boy was to
my left, but his effluent was too shallow to dive into, and I
wasn't a fish anyway. The hangar, for that was what the nursery
almost was - you could pretty much park your plane in it with room
to spare - was a haphazard maze of tables and display areas. A
fountain stood next to a pile of shrub covered rocks which
neighboured a long table covered in soil filled trays with various
wildly coloured flowers sprouting forth. It was, supposedly,
purposeful chaos created thus to keep the minds of the patients
occupied and prevent them from becoming bored. In truth, the
asylum's inmates would have felt all their birthdays and
Christmases had come together if they'd been able to use the
nursery as it was designed. But no. The slapdash arrangement was
deliberate in that its chaos was mirrored in the minds of the
patients. Connors wanted them to shy away. He wanted them to have a
headache at just the thought of walking into what should been a
place of serenity. It worked. On the day the mayor paid his flying
visit, it was double doses all round just to get them shambling
around and amenable. There was no wonder one fell asleep. He would
practically have been a walking coma anyway.

I heard an irritated mutter and
the jangling of the keys. It had gone from a jingle to a jangle,
from musical to menacing in a second. Wrong key, I assumed. A
moment’s reprieve. I ducked, right where I was, and ran towards the
door that the gardener and the orderly were about to come through.
What else could I do? I could have stayed where I was, been
captured, and figured things out as I went. And as Connors was
sticking the needle into my neck, as he did with Jeremy, I could
realise that perhaps getting caught wasn't such a good idea. I
could crouch in the shadows, holding my breath tighter than my dad
would hold his giro, and hope that I wouldn't be seen. And after
Glenn Rafferty screamed in a voice that only dogs could hear, I'd
realise that, as the needle went in, I maybe should have not risked
capture. I couldn't leave the way I arrived, that doorway seemed to
be slammed shut and bolted tighter than a hangman's noose, so I
could only hide by the side of the door and hope I could sneak out
whilst they were looking into the room. Luckily it was still fairly
dark, so night-time was my friend.

Oh.

Night.

Hmmm...

I needed to wake up. Not that I
thought I was asleep, but I needed to get hold on the grip I was
letting slip. It was still dark. The stars were kicking back,
watching the show. The chances of fraidy-cat Rafferty coming in
here after dark were smaller than the chance of Angelina Jolie
calling me on a Friday evening and asking if I minded giving her a
back massage because, you see, all that acting made her soooo
stiff, and Brad just didn't have the touch. Besides, he was a
gardener. He worked day light, not night dark.

So it wasn't him. Who could it
be? Connors? No, he wouldn't have had enough time to get here from
the house, unless he could trip the light fantastical like me. And
if he could, why would he want me in the first place?

I didn't have time to find out.
I practically dived into the shadows in the corner by the door,
just as the right key was found, inserted and turned.
Clickety-click, I feel sick.

I held my breath. Again. It was
getting to be a habit. I'd wish for gills, so I could breathe with
my mouth and nose closed, silently, but I knew my own personal
three wish genie was otherwise engaged in Disney cartoons. And he
wasn't manically voiced by Robin Williams either. Not even Robbie.
Kenneth maybe, all nasal and condescending. "You want me to what?
Really, the people of today, think they can wish for anything!"

The door opened. The hinges
squeaked quietly, as if they, too, were scared to make too much
noise. The whole building, as quiet as it was, became even more
hushed.

"Go on, it'll be fine," a voice
hissed.

I knew the voice immediately.
Jersey. I didn't think his name was actually Jersey, and he never
wore anything other than t-shirts under his uniform, but I'd never
heard him called anything else. Except perhaps Mr. Jersey by some
of the patients, those that thought the orderlies were in charge
and demanded respect rather than simply being fast food cast-offs.
No, that was unkind. Dr. Connors didn't trawl very far up the
(fast) food chain in his recruitment drives, but most of his
employees weren't too bad. Jeremy was the only one I'd call decent,
but others had varying degrees of apathy from not giving a flying
fig to almost, if pushed, caring. Jersey was somewhere in between
the two, depending on what he was after. He was so slimy I was
often surprised he didn't leave a trail. Especially around Connors
and the female or richer patients. He was the sort of person who'd
make you want to wash your hands if he so much as walked past you,
as if his aura was unclean. His voice, lowered, no doubt, because
of the late hour, snaked over me, having the same effect. I felt
like a bird on the beach after an oil spill.

I shuddered, not at the prospect
of being caught, but at the feeling of my skin suddenly feeling
slick and greasy.

"I don't..." A woman's voice. A
stumble.

"Go on, I said. Quick!"

A pair of silhouettes entered
the nursery, the first, small and obviously female, coming a little
too fast, feet not keeping up with the rest of her. She fell
forward, hand on mouth as knees met floor. She clearly knew to be
quiet as barely a whimper, not much more than a gasp of air escaped
her mouth as she landed. She was used to this. A veteran. The
second was bigger, though not much more so. He was... spindly. I
could already feel the oil making my feathers slick. I knew
immediately who he was bringing to the nursery. He hung around her
when he was on duty, treating her like his personal pet. She was
quiet, unassuming, introverted. Caroline, that was her name. I knew
nothing more about her, which was unusual. Normally everyone's
conditions were the subject of much discussion. No-one kept their
particular version of insanity to themselves. Some like to brag
about it, some even gloat that they were more tapped than the next
person. Others told their tale as a sort of therapy.

A problem shared is a problem
gossiped about, except no-one really gossiped about anyone else. It
was all just chit-chat. Non-judgemental, casual chat. You didn't go
on holiday, you rarely saw your family, you, in some cases, didn't
even know what day it was. Talking about each other's individual
degree of dementia was often all you had. For me, my own personal
problem was paranoia. It was the best I could come up with. I could
have, I guessed, told it straight - that I could kill people with
my thoughts even when I hadn't thought about it - but that was a
step too far from mental to monumental. I wanted them to think I
was unbalanced, not imbecilic. I wanted to be kept sequestered in
my own little cell, with just enough chemical help to stop my
demons becoming everyone else's. How this had progressed from that
to this, from my voluntary, if not quite factual, incarceration to
my being the fox with a thousand hounds sniffing out my tail, I
couldn't guess. How Connors had discovered, unearthed or just
beaten out of me my secrets was something I would have to ask him
one of these days, maybe over tea and biscuits. I wonder if he
liked chocolate hob-nobs.

Caroline was different. She
spoke to people, had friends in here, but still, no-one knew the
real her. No-one knew who she really was or why she was in the
institute. She just turned up one day, sat quietly in a corner
staring at the floor, and that's pretty much been it for her. She
interacted with the others, including myself, wasn't nervous or
jumpy, and had been known to have a sharp sense of humour, but if
she was sitting in a room, even being the only one there, you could
overlook her. Caroline blended in, like she was lost in the maze of
Being and her inability to escape resulted in your eyes skimming
over her, looking past her, forgetting there ever was a Caroline.
It could easily be days between anyone saying more than three words
to the girl, but she didn't seem to mind. She simply sat, in her
chair, staring at the floor.

Jersey noticed her, but that was
in the way a spider notices a fly. Once she was caught in his web,
Jersey proceeded to pull her legs off one by one, slowly over the
months, until she could barely walk without him. Figuratively
speaking, of course. She didn't go from able-bodied to limbless,
shuffling across the floor on her belly, she just lost whatever
identity she arrived with. She was Jersey's when Jersey wanted her.
That
was noticed.
That
made her
be
noticed.
But when Jersey wasn't there, in an abstract way, neither was
Caroline. She faded into her seat as if she were part of its
upholstery.

Now, Jersey was making her his
own again. This time he was deflowering the wallflower.

It was like an episode of Lost
or Coronation Street. Granted those two programmes were completely
unrelated, but the appearance of polar bears in Jack Duckworth's
bath tub or the Rover's Return being frequented by the survivors of
an airplane crash or employees of the Dharma Initiative was not the
issue. There hadn't been any opening credits and there wouldn't be
closing ones either, but I could suddenly see how this was going to
unfold. I realised who Jersey, the vile with the smile, reminded me
of. More so than Connors, Jersey was Percy Wetmore, slimy prison
guard who patrolled the Green Mile. A man you could despise simply
by hearing his voice in another room. Yet, still he had his way.
Still he, being an orderly and as such one of the Lords and Masters
of the Institute, had the patients in his thrall. Still he could
take Caroline from her bed where she'd be sleeping (for, if you
weren't asleep after lights out, they had a pill that could help
you with that) and bring her to the nursery. A nursery that should
have been a place of caring for flora or children, not one of money
making schemes and grand empty gestures. And not one of abuse and
loathsome things that raped the smile from your face.

I saw it all, and not with a
psychic sense of foreboding where I had a Final Destination style
vision wash over me, more with a sick sense of inevitability. I was
sure that the star players of this show would prefer to stay
un-credited, though the cameras would still roll and nothing would
be left on the cutting room floor to lower the certificate from 18
to U or even 13A.

The, gentle at first, urges and
requests.

The softly spoken protests.

The gradual build up from
friendliness to force.

The muted cries. The
acquiescence. The tears and then the drugs that would wipe it away
like a jay cloth on a spill on a kitchen worktop.

And the feeling of smug
superiority that beat down the murmurings of guilt like Goliath
turning to David and saying 'Is that all you've got?' before
raising his mighty foot and stamping it down on his opponent's
head.

I wanted Jersey then. Not in the
disgusting way he wanted Caroline. I wanted him in the way David
wanted Goliath. In the way I wanted the boy child-killing racer. I
knew, in the way I know things, about all the Carolines that had
gone before. And the Benny's too. And I knew, in the way I know
things that I shouldn't and wish I couldn't, that Dr. Connors knew
too.

I wanted Jersey.

I wanted Jersey dead.

I could stop him. I could step
from the shadows and tap him on the shoulder.

"Put the girl down, Jersey. You
don't want to do that, do you?"

"Sin! How you doing buddy? The
girl? Sure, no problem. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Won't
happen again."

I could leap on him, pulling him
back, forcing him to the ground as he would Caroline, smashing his
face, breaking his neck the way Steven Seagal and countless other
action heroes had taught me. Or I could sneak away, ignoring the
drama playing out and Caroline's plight. I could carry on with my
planless plan and stop Connors, save myself and save the world.

Or 'D' - none of the above.

It was there before I knew it.
The feeling. Creeping out of me like spiders from a dead man's
mouth. And nothing like that. An EMP, an electro-magnetic pulse
that would shut down all the circuits and generators that sparked
and chugged in Jersey's dark heart and darker soul. And nothing
like that. And nothing like a pocket nuclear explosion, small
enough to just destroy the building and maybe the street but leave
the nearby 24 hour supermarket untouched.

Well, you never knew when you
might run out of milk.

The feeling, and I couldn't
describe it as anything other than just that - a feeling - swept
from me, finding cracks in whatever dam inside me held it at bay,
making those cracks fissures, and the fissures holes. It had an
insubstantial substance - there but not, real and utterly unreal.
It roared but was voiceless as it hammered at Jersey. Then it was
gone. My throat gagged, clenching so tightly I thought my tongue
might snap, and the thunder faded.