Sin (13 page)

The van was white, or at least
it had been in a former life. Hysterical comments such as "Clean
Me" and "I wish my wife was this dirty" were finger written into
the grey grime that coated its surface. There was a covering of
dirt so even it could almost have been sprayed on, a sexy new
alternative to the usual metallic blue or red of lesser vehicles.
The originality of the graffiti raised a smile on my weary lips.
They were the sort of slogans that were very funny and at the same
time were decidedly not so. A bit like "Computer users do it with
lots of RAM." I mean, come on people! Nevertheless, I smiled, just
before I thought...

..."Shit!"

Panic overtook humour in the
outside lane as I saw a white van coming towards me. They'd found
me. They'd found me and they were about to run me down! At that
moment I knew what a deer or rabbit felt like. Ambling across a
road, minding their own business, when suddenly they're blinded by
the glaring high-beam headlights of a car or truck bearing fatally
down on them. Feet became fused with tarmac as if roots had somehow
grown and eyes stared unblinking into the bright, smiling face of
Death. Reversing lights - headlights. Same thing. Either way, a few
tonnes of metal was heading my way and it meant business.

But I couldn't move. I knelt,
frozen, one filthy shoe hanging from my limp filthy fingers. I
couldn't breathe, let alone flee. How had they found me? I glanced
up at the sky half expecting to see the tracking satellite hovering
overhead, waving to me.

"Gotcha!"

Brake lights replaced the white
reversing and the van slowed to a stop a few feet away. I dropped
my shoe and reached down to retrieve both it and its partner. It
was an automatic move as my eyes were fixed firmly on the bringer
of my doom. I heard the crick of the hand brake being yanked on,
the cogs clicking in derision of my fate. The red lights, feral
eyes watching me, winked off. A click. The driver's side door
opened slowly, as if whoever might be there was intent on dragging
out my terror. Time became the tortoise to my heartbeat's hare,
anticipation the razor blade of my nerves' wrists.

A booted foot, the wellington
once green, now brown and streaked settled onto the road, the
extending leg clothed in worn, equally dirty jeans. I could see the
hand that gripped the door handle. Big. The type that could grip my
throat and happily squeeze. A beaten red checked shirt sleeve
covered the arm.

Then the man himself. Bigger
than he could possibly be to fit inside the van's cab. The shirt
strained across his huge barrel chest. It was tight enough across
the biceps to look sprayed on. A few days growth of
brown-on-the-cusp-of-red bushed across his chin. Cold blue eyes,
startlingly clear against the muddy exterior of the figure - not
muddy in the same way as my shoes, more so in his complexion and
general state. As if he'd worked for a hundred years in the open
air, shovelling and digging and building. He was muddy. Almost
craggy. He smiled, his teeth as startling as his eyes.

"Ey up, mate," he said, his
voice rising up from his boots. "You after a lift?"

I opened my mouth, but couldn't
think of what to say. A lift? He wasn't going to drag me up and
throw me into the back of his paddy wagon? He could have easily,
probably with his little finger. Well, maybe with both. A lift?

I blinked and woke up, a
baseball bat whacking me into reality.

The van. It wasn't any sort of
paddy wagon. The institute, the police, the CIA, NSA, FBI, OAP,
VIP, QED, KFC wouldn't have vehicles as dirty as this one. They'd
either be a crisper white than untrodden snow or a darker black
than midnight's shadow. They'd have a Transit as a minimum, not
this. What was it? An Escort van? Astramax? Small, nippy and
suitable for shifting a few bags of fertiliser. Or, maybe, the odd
body. They'd be high-tech, this was low spec.

And the man. He didn't wear
black, have shades and talk into his cuff. He didn't have a long
white coat and I was fairly sure he wasn't as dextrous with a
hypodermic as he was with his milking hands. I wondered if his
surname was Giles. He looked so much like a typical -
stereotypical, in fact - farmer he'd probably left his flat cap on
the passenger seat.

"Erm," I said. It could, under
the circumstances, have been "Blah, blah, bleeh, blah," but I'm
sure it was "Erm."

Farmer Giles stood looking at me
with eyes cut from topaz. I stared back with my mouth hanging open
and my hands still limp. I could have been Bender Benny's buddy
Micky for all the life I must have seemed to have in me.

Micky, as was the norm in the
home - Home Away From Harm was the humorous twist on the classic
phrase that Dr. Connors liked to employ - had a nickname. Mucous
Micky. Unless the cold floor was the only option, you just didn't
sit anywhere Mucous Micky had previously been. The guy could snot
for England. A hook had been fastened to his colostomy trolley
specifically for a roll of tissue to help keep the streaming
snotties at bay. He couldn't help it. I think that every wayward
flu bug that wandered through our illustrious halls fancied a bite
of Micky's bum. The fact that he was permanently drugged up to
Heaven on High didn't help. It meant he forgot how to sniff. He
forgot how to tear off a square or two of Kleenex and wipe. He
forgot how to use the innate talents of a three year old and use
his sleeve. So you didn't sit in the same seat as Mucous Micky -
not unless you actually wanted a sticky yellow or green patch on
your derriere.

Mucous Micky was Bender Benny's
buddy. He was about the only one who couldn't easily get away from
the Bender's ramblings. A captive audience, I think it's called.
Micky may not even have known the Bender was sitting next to him
most of every day, but it didn't stop Benny from claiming Mucous as
his own.

Nicknames were our - the
residents' - way (or one of them) of bringing a hint of normality
into the home of Abnormal. We were almost human if we could call
each other something other than Patient XYZ. There was One Eye Joe,
an old Scouser who's penis had a life of its own and steadfastly
refused to stay 'indoors'. Jazzy Jazz Jaroo, the loony formerly
known as Jarrod, had an incontinence problem surpassed only by the
ferocity of his night terrors. Others in the Pseudonym Posse, as
no-one called us because it's only alliteration if it's written
down, included Big 'Un, a quiet man called Ian who was not much
more than five feet and a fag paper tall. Penny Drop was Penelope,
a woman of around fifty who, once upon another life, lived in a
five bedroomed house with three cars and a chihuahua. She'd lost
her son in a car accident whilst driving over the limit and had
never recovered - mentally at least.

No, that one wasn't down to
me.

Eddie the Eagle wasn't called
Edward, but he did have a nose so long and sharp he could have
skiied along it. I didn't know the reasons for his particular
internment as he apparently hadn't spoken a word in the seven years
he'd been at the institute. There were others - Windows with her
obsession for all things glass; Muse and his epiphanies - such as
when you turned the handle of a tap, water actually came out;
Billabong who told everyone he was a kangaroo, even when he was
quacking like a duck; and Car Crash Kenny, a sad man who could only
talk in short mumbled sentences thanks to the fact that his head
still had the dent from the accident that gave him his nickname.
They all had their own story. They each had a tale to tell and some
even made sense occasionally.

Like Polly, the dolly lolly. She
was beautiful. Slim with hair the colour of sunshine and a smile
even brighter. That was when she wasn't crying through the night,
mourning a daughter she'd never had or punching the face of any man
stupid enough to come within a few feet of her. When she was...
normal... she was wonderful. Sweet. Silly. Sharp and shining.
Unfortunately, the normal fought a losing battle with the madness
and her lucid episodes were fewer and further between as each week
passed. As with my name, I blamed the parents. Her father at least.
She still bore the scars on her stomach from when he couldn't or
wouldn't accept she could be pregnant.

Then there was me. The Vicar.
Reverend Sin. Stitching good and evil, holy and un into one neat
little moniker was a stroke of warped genius and I can't remember
who wove the weave. It didn't matter whether I liked the name or
not. Once given it stuck like Mucous Micky's mucous.

As "Erm" didn't particularly
convey my preference either way when it came to the proffered lift,
Farmer Giles, or whatever his name might be, waited patiently for a
few moments for me to answer properly. I couldn't really improve on
my initial reaction - I was so sure that I'd been found the
discovery that I hadn't been discovered was taking its time sinking
in. While it did so the rest of me was waiting along with the big
man before me. I blinked again. In so many films and stories,
blinking is magical. It breaks a spell or gives ghosties, imaginary
or otherwise, the chance to appear, disappear or sink an axe into
your forehead. In my case it snapped me out of whatever zone I'd
been visiting and brought me back to life, back to reality, back to
the here and now with a high and mighty splat.

"Erm," I repeated. I know - not
very original. "Sure. Thanks."

Well, it was an improvement.

Mr. Giles smiled. His teeth
showed, even and white, and I had the sudden impression of a bear.
I wouldn't have been surprised if his next comment had been a
growl. I don't know if bears have white teeth, not having been
close enough to one to find out, but I've never seen Sir David
Attenborough squeezing a bleb of Colgate onto a big toothbrush for
one of his ursine friends. As such, they may or may not have a
lovely set of pearly whites. The farmer type bloke smiled, I saw
his teeth, and I thought BEAR.

He nodded his head, a shock of
mussy hair falling over one eye.

"Come on then. I want to get
back in time for breakfast."

The magic word. It didn't matter
whether breakfast was a full English, with bacon, sausage and fried
bread hiding out beneath a runny-yolked egg or a dry round of toast
with not even a hint of butter. I could happily have scoffed dog
biscuits at that moment. Just as blinking had broken a spell, the
word 'breakfast' had opened the floodgates of my hunger. My stomach
grumbled in protest at being denied sustenance and I had to agree
with it. Just a nibble would have been wonderful. My meagre last
meal had ended up being splattered over the ragged remains of a
gull's wing so my body hadn't had the chance to digest it fully. As
such my belly felt like someone had taken a big shovel and dug all
the way to China. I stood, forgetting I had my shoes in my hands
rather than on my feet. I was sure I heard my back pop, still
recovering from a night snuggled up to the craggy bark of a
tree.

Gilesey-boy saw my mud sprayed
sandshoes and shook his head.

"Don't worry about those." He
pointed. I saw dirt hiding beneath the ends of his fingernails. I
don't know why it bothered me - the man was a farmer so muck was
part of his daily life. It did though. Maybe it was because I'd
spent so long in the confines of Sterility Central. I shook off the
feeling of... not unease, just... not easy. "The truck needs a good
clean anyway. I'll get round to it one of these days."

I thanked him and slipped the
shoes back on my feet. I'd scraped enough mud off them to no longer
feel a foot or two taller and went over the passenger side of the
van, holding my breath as I pulled the door open. I expected, given
the state of the vehicle's exterior, that the inside would smell.
Maybe not stink, but have the fusty aroma of dry dirt and stale
manure. The seats would be stained and torn, the stuffing poking up
like a meerkat sentry watching out for hyenas. Empty food wrappers
would give me a rustling foot bath while we drove and an ancient
Magic tree would be spinning from the rear view mirror, probably
still hanging from the day the van was driven out of the showroom
when Smiler Giler had promised himself he'd clean it every week. I
paused as I moved to get in, shocked that the interior was so
clean. The seat covers looked almost spotless. The dashboard
gleamed as if it had only been polished that morning. There were
muddy marks on the mat in the footwell of the driver's side, but
that was all. The mat on my side could have been bought new not
five minutes before.

"Jump in. Don't worry about a
bit of dirt."

I followed the big man's
instruction. I wasn't too sure that, if our positions had been
reversed, I'd have appreciated a stranger dragging his filthy arse
in my nice clean cab but I wasn't going to argue. He hadn't
mentioned feeding me, but his mention of breakfast had temporarily
overridden my fears about him being an Agent of Doom for Dr.
Connors. I smiled and, whilst I didn't exactly jump in, I was quick
enough in gaining my seat and strapping myself in.

He nodded and turned the
ignition key, spurring the van into life. A moment later, after
he'd checked his mirrors, we were away, the radio informing us that
the station was playing the best of the eighties, nineties and the
noughties, which was probably spelled naughties. A song I didn't
recognise sung by a group I didn't know filled the cab with music
and I settled back into the seat, staring out of the window and
feeling relaxed.

After a while my new farmer
friend turned the music down and smiled at me.

"You okay Doc?" he asked.

Doc?

"You must've been in a rush to
not change out of your scrubs," he said, gesturing at my
clothes.

Damn.

Gotcha, I thought. I tried to
think quickly, to come up with a spontaneous response.
Unfortunately, the faster I tried to think, the less spontaneous
any response became. I suddenly felt like a crash test dummy flying
full pelt towards a brick wall. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, kaPOW! My mind
was whirling and I tried to grab it with both hands to steady its
dervish. Doc, Doc, Dockety-Doc. Go with it, like a leaf on a river
flowing to the sea. Let's just hope I didn't follow my strait
jacket down to a dinner with Davy Jones.