Sin (38 page)

I clicked up a folder level,
back to the list of patients' names. Scrolling back up the list I
looked at each one in turn, just to be sure I wasn't mistaken. Then
I stopped. I wasn't mistaken, no matter how much I wanted to be.
Managing to find my way to this office, with Caroline over my
shoulder, without being caught. Having seen, previously, the code
to gain entry so I wasn't left standing in the corridor twiddling
my thumbs, waiting for Christmas. Jeremy, the last person I
expected to see, not least because he was dead, providing me with
the password I needed to gain entry to the video file cache. And
then, out of hundreds, finding possibly the one file that told me
what I needed to know about myself. There could, quite easily, have
been many like that, where Connors had to prompt Other me - I
couldn't deny that it
was
me in the video, though it was a
past incarnation after which I was mistakenly brought back as
myself rather than a butterfly or a dolphin into performing like
the circus act he'd made me.

It seemed Fortune had joined my
gang, cosying up with Fate and Mr. Grim to watch over, support and
laugh as I fell flat on my face. She'd thrown her magic fairy dust
to help me on my way, but now, as she liked to do, had turned her
other cheek and slipped a whoopee cushion under my arse.

Johnson Bernadette was the name
at the top of the screen but that wasn't of even the slightest
interest to me, whether I knew her or not. My eyes were fixed on
one particular name. Below Bernadette's. After Johnson in the
alphabet. Like mine, a single capitalised word.

JOY.

Can your blood run cold? Is
there an internal thermostat that drops your body's temperature
down a few degrees, from 39°C to scared to hell? If there was then
someone had just grabbed my dial, given it a twist and kicked me
all the way to -273° Terrified.

Joy.

I moved the cursor over my
sister's name. I had to look. She couldn't have been here. I'd have
known, somehow. If she hadn't told me, Connors would have, or I
would have heard her name mentioned at least once. There had been
nothing. I went to click the mouse button.

"Hello Sin."

* * * *

I should have been surprised,
again. I was intent on the computer screen, drawn in like Carry-Ann
in Poltergeist, sucked into the hellish world that Connors and I
were creating on the monitor. I should have fair leapt from my
skin, skeleton and flesh departing company like a banana peeled. My
heart should have stopped beating in my chest, becoming a rock
faster than Medusa could blink. But I wasn't and they didn't.
Instead of being shocked, I was expectant.

"Hey doc."

"How are we today?"

I looked up, not wanting to take
my eyes away from my sister's name on the screen but not having a
choice. She couldn't be on there. It was a mistake. A coincidence,
but I wasn't going to allow Connors to see my confusion or fear. I
was going to look him in the eye. Steady, sharp and, mostly, ready.
As I felt none of those things, if he saw through my feint I was
probably done for. If I wasn't already anyway. My mind had still
not come forth with a plan, so I was playing it by ear, not that my
ears were particularly musical or that good with plans. Our eyes
met across a room crowded with tension and apprehension that
bordered on anticipation. He was smiling, of course. He had his
prey in his grasp. He could reach out and snatch me from my seat
and, with a little medicinal help, I'd be his once more.

Or so he thought. I was sure
that, given an injection, I would be amenable to his wishes - his
own little lap dog, sitting up and begging for him to pet me or
have me do tricks for him. Things had changed, however. I was no
longer under any illusions about him. I no longer felt he was the
nice, genial, dedicated man that had welcomed me into his fold. He
could drug me, confine me, strap me up and tie me down, but sooner
or later (and I could wait), I would have a chance. Just a single
second would be all it took. At some point his guard would fall,
the drugs would wear off, the straps wouldn't be as tight as they
should. Then it would be his nose that bled. His ears and his
eyes.

He might decide to kill me now.
Catch me unawares and slip me a needle like he did Jeremy. I
doubted that though. He hadn't finished with me yet. I, however,
had finished with him. I didn't have to go find him because he'd
come to me. This was his office, his lair, but it was on my terms.
His smile told me he didn't realise that. His smile said that he
believed he had the upper hand, ready to slap me down, to swat me
like the fly he thought I was. It said 'Look at me, trust me, like
me'. Another day, another me, I would have. I, along with many
others, would have fallen for his smarm. Not this day. This day, as
Barry Coombs had once thought before his fate was decided on the
turn of the screw and the flip of the coin, was a good day. Whether
I lived to see the sunrise as dawn broke out in her morning chorus
or whether I finished this night having a take out with Mr. Grim
didn't matter. Connors would not be smiling. Somehow I would ensure
that the take out would be for three and if I was dining with the
Reaper, then he would be joining us.

I leaned back in the chair,
trying to be casual. I wanted to not care, or make it not appear
that I did.. I wanted to be fine and dandy and chilled. Crack open
a beer and snack on some tortillas whilst flicking through the
latest edition of Stuff magazine. I didn't want to feel threatened,
or to make it appear that I did. Admittedly, I felt anxious to a
certain extent - here I was face to face with a man who was my own
internal demon externalised. A man who killed because he wanted to.
A man who experimented on people under his care and let those
people be debased and humiliated by those in his employ. A man
whose smile and manner and lies allowed him free rein on his
desires.

"Good, thanks," I said. I wanted
his smile to falter, to grab a hammer and smash his confidence. It
didn't. Obviously the confidence was arrogance shrouded thinly in
surety. I'd have to see what I could do to change that.

"Excellent," he said. He spoke
as a snake would to the charmer for which it had become tired of
dancing. Not that Connors had been the dancer. No he'd been the
maestro and I had been his performing monkey, cap in hand
collecting coins and lives. He was sly and stalking. He should have
spoken with a lisp to complete the illusion.

He was just inside the door, a
door I didn't hear open or close. Dressed immaculately, he was an
imposing figure, with his cloak of superiority wrapped tightly
around him. It wasn't his height nor his pushed out chest, but his
manner. He demanded respect just because. He took a step forward.
Any other time I would have flinched, but not this time. I felt
like He Man against Skeletor. I had the Power. The video I had just
watched told me what I needed to do, or how to do it anyway. All of
them must have been like that - Connors forcing me and goading me
into demonstrating what I could do. Training me, knowing the drugs
would make me forget until he needed me to remember. When I first
came here, I wanted their help to forget too, so I supposed he was
doing, in a way, exactly what I wanted him to do. I hadn't signed
up for the extra curricula activities like Maths Club or table
tennis or slaughter, thank you very much. I was fine with a simple
drug and detain, and when that wasn't working, an escape and (self)
execution. He was the doctor, the brain, the puppeteer and the
perfect gentleman and, whether or not he was a baker or a
candlestick maker, he was a butcher to boot. Even here, in his
office when the game was up, the cards were on the table and we
were the jokers in the pack, he couldn't drop the facade. The game
wasn't up, not really, and our cards were still held closely to our
chests. He didn't know what I planned. He couldn't, seeing as I
still didn't know myself. He didn't know that I'd witnessed the
death of Jeremy. I didn't know if he had a syringe full of death
juice. He didn't know which video I'd seen. Neither of us knew what
the other was thinking, but I DID know that he still thought I was
his little plaything, I'd just come off the tracks for a moment and
he was going to put me back in place and let me chug along on my
way, with his feeding the fire and tooting my whistle. I don't
wanna play no more.

"You caused me a little of
stress, you know."

Shame. Pity it was only a
little.

"I knew you'd come back, though.
This is your home, Sin. We're your family. Where else would you
go?"

Anywhere else sounded good to
me. A furnace, Outer Mongolia, Scunthorpe even. I would even chance
Meadowhall on Christmas Eve.

"I'm sorry I'm so predictable,
Doc." I could have been respectful, sounded fearful to fool him
into thinking I still belonged to him, but I really couldn't be
bothered. The fear was gone. It wasn't replaced by hatred or anger,
it was just a void of feeling. An empty space waiting for an
in-rush of emotion but not even experiencing an in-trickle.

"Come, now, Sin. That's not you.
Cocky and arrogant? It's unseemly."

He was right, cocky and arrogant
wasn't me, but perhaps cooky and confident was. And I didn't care
if I was unseemly or not. Let me be. Let me be a tosser, foul
mouthed and farting, fagging the day away. Who was he to even
pretend he knew me. The me he knew was a drugged up sideshow freak
that he had created. If he didn't like the un-drugged 'normal' me,
then that was up to him.

"Like I said, Doc, sorry."

Connors paused and looked at me
for a long moment. He was slowly walking forward, advancing. I felt
myself waiting, almost straining forward to pounce on the pouncer.
I wanted him in my own grasp. I wanted to shake him and make him
see what he'd done. But he wouldn't. He wouldn't see or understand
that what he was doing was wrong. As far as he was concerned, I
guessed, his egocentricity raised him above the paltry moralities
of me, you and the postman. The kind of people who might step on an
ant, but would feel guilty about it. The kind that might wish for
someone to be dead, but would balk at the thought of sticking in
the syringe or stabbing the knife. He stopped by the chair, his
hand leaning on the back next to Caroline's head. I stared at it,
thinking, if it touched even a single hair on her head, I'd happily
break those fingers, snap the hand off at the wrist.

"That's fine, Sin. We'll let it
go. You've been through a lot, running away like that, but now
you're home so it's all fine."

My eyes, his hand.

"Thanks Doc. I appreciate that.
That's the kind of man you are, eh?"

"Well, I try to..." The corners
of his mouth were turned up but his brow was furrowed down. "Ah.
You were being facetious. Seriously now. It honestly doesn't become
you."

Death didn't become me either.
As much as I could do things that were extra ordinary, I didn't see
myself as extraordinary, so Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep might be
able to fight Death, but it would be a battled I'd lose if he
tapped me on the shoulder and beckoned his bony hand.

"I apologise," I said, sitting
up straight. I knew I wasn't imposing to someone like him, but I
could at least put on a good show.

"Accepted. So, my boy, did you
enjoy your little adventure?"

Adventure? Was that what it was?
I try to kill myself, end up killing others, meet my dead sister
and see the man before me murder my friend. Very adventurous.
Enjoy? Hardly.

"It was ok," I said with a
shrug. "I would have preferred a beer and a movie."

"I'm sure you would. Wouldn't we
all." I doubted he would even look a pint of lager in the eye. He
would be wine all the way to the gutter. "But what now, Sin? What
are we going to do now? Are you going to let me help you? Can I
help you? Or are you going to run off again? If you do, you know I
won't be chasing after you again. I did it this time because I was
worried about you and wanted to make sure you were safe. You'll be
on your own."

On my own. What a horrific
thought. Me, with no-one there to hold my hand, to keep me company,
to... oh, hold on, I'd spent my life on my own. I was used to it.
And the thought that he might bugger off and leave me alone? Gave
me warm tingles. Clearly, he was talking out of his bottom. He was
excreting verbosity, that was for sure. If I did "run off again,"
he'd be chasing my tail like the hounds after the fox, sniffing me
out so he could have me for lunch. I didn't have any intention of
running anywhere, not anymore. This was the final chapter, the end
game. Whether it be checkmate, house or the dawn of the apocalypse
I didn't know and didn't care. This office may as well have been an
arena, a screaming, bloodthirsty hoard spectating, panting for
blood, a king holding his hand out, thumb extended to decide the
fate of the combatants in the center. Well I wasn't Maximus
Glutious Wotsicus and I didn't have the legs for a toga. And, I was
done being on display, an exhibit in a cage so Connors could poke a
stick at me to get me to perform.

How to answer. Tell him where to
shove his help? Make him angry and take my chance to... do
whatever? Follow his lead, accept his help, then take my chance
to... do whatever? Or just not answer and... well... do whatever? I
told him the truth.

"I'm not going to run, Dr." I
looked him in the eyes. They sparkled, the flame of a gunpowder
trail Guy Fawkes would have be proud of lighting them up. Big badda
boom. I wanted to see tiredness in them. I wanted to see him weary.
It might have slowed him down, muddied his thoughts. Given me the
chance to do my thing. If this was a Hollywood blockbuster and if I
was Will Smith or Brad Pitt, I'd probably have been doing my thang
right then, rather than just my thing, spinning out one-liners like
a spider on its web. But it wasn't. And I wasn't. I also didn't
think I was as sharp as the doctor. I was me and he was he. I had
to wait and see who would be the one to be cut first. And there's
me out of plasters.