Sin

by Shaun Allan

  "So, I'm awake and you are really my dead sister's ghost, come to haunt me?"

  "What makes you think I'm a ghost? What makes you think I'm haunting you at all? Just because I'm dead doesn't make me a cliché, you know."

  Fair point, I thought.

  "Well, if you're a zombie," I pointed out, "you're not baying for blood and you haven't got half of your head missing. I know you don't like horror films, but remember when we watched Dawn of the Dead together?"

  "That was Shaun of the Dead, and if you'd prefer I look the part just to convince you, then I suppose I could play along."

  As she spoke, I noticed movement in the corner of her eye. At first I thought it was a tear forming and was going to ask her why she was crying, but when I saw it wriggle and plop out onto her lap, my mouth dried up. There on her tan coloured trousers, creamy and bulbous, was a maggot. I stared at it for a moment, my usually smart mouth staying dumb. When it was joined by a second, equally bulbous cousin, I looked back at my sister's face.

  Or what was left of it.

  OK, so her roots needed touching up before, but now they were a mass of movement as maggots swarmed across her skull making her look like an adolescent Medusa. Sections of hair, along with the skin it they were attached to, slid down across her face leaving streaks of red and brown. Carried by the added weight of the larvae, they dragged over her still sparkling eyes until they reached her jaw and fell onto her lap. She smiled again and a cockroach worked its way out of her mouth, all spindly legs and antenna at first, then seemingly all body, hard, black and glistening. The cockroach joined the scraps of head and crawled over the writhing maggots until it fell onto the ground and scurried away, thankfully in the opposite direction to me.

  One shining eye bulged outwards at me until I thought it would explode, spraying me with gloop and cornea. Instead it popped out and hung by its optic nerve, swinging lazily on her cheek. It still sparkled, even though it was now bloodshot and yellowing.

  She raised one hand. The hand was missing its flesh. Skeletal, with withered tendons struggling to stay attached, it pointed at the remains of her face.

  "Is this better?" she asked. Her voice oozed from between decayed lips, no longer velvet but slime, still smooth but bubbling slightly and on the edge of coagulating in her throat.

  I regarded her for a long time as the maggots feasted on her flesh and wriggled into her ears and nostrils.

  "Nothing a bit of foundation wouldn't fix," I said.

  She laughed, spraying blood and teeth on the ground between us. A molar landed on my foot and I picked it up and handed it back to her.

  "You dropped this," I said. Whether Joy was a ghost or not, this was a dream, so there was no point in being disgusted or frightened. None of it was real.

  "That's the Sin I know and love. Thank you Doctor for injecting some humour back into the old misery!"

  This was how I remembered our relationship. We always seemed to bounce of each other, sometimes like Sumo wrestlers but more often than not like two balls in a Newton's Cradle - tick-tack-tick-tacking, trading funny little comments with smiles on our faces - what was left of them in some cases. I relaxed and Joy's face returned to its normal pretty self. She picked up the sections of scalp off the grass and laid them back on her skull, pushing her eye back into its open socket. I'm sure this was more for theatrics than necessity as, when she opened her mouth all her teeth were back in their original places, lined up on parade for inspection, Sergeant. The maggots were gone, though I didn't notice them disappear and the bloody streaks across her face faded to nothing.

  "Ugh," I said, pulling a face. "You can take off the Halloween mask, it's not for a couple of months!"

  "Oh, funny boy," she smirked. "You should be on stage."

  "Thanks."

  "Sweeping it."

  I laughed anyway, even though it was an old joke and not particularly funny. Sometimes, without being able to help myself, I'd be on the precipice of laughing at a funeral, looking down the pit of complete embarrassment. You know when it's so wrong you can't help it? Like Death By Chocolate cake smothered in double cream? You know you shouldn't but you grab the biggest spoon in the drawer anyway? It was like that, almost. I knew I was in a bit of a state. I was an escaped mental patient, had no money, no real clothes, no idea where in the world I was and I was chewing the banana with my dear old sister, R.I.P.. You've got to laugh.

  No, really. You have to.

  "Come on. Buck up bucko!" She jabbed me in the arm with her perfectly re-fleshed finger. It hurt. Well, at least it meant she wasn't a ghost and this had to be a dream. And at least I wasn't naked or running around school in my pyjamas.

  "I'm ok." I almost meant it. "Just been a bad day, you know?"

  "Oh, I know. You've the world on your shoulders, and you're no Charles Atlas!" Her voice had returned to its previous silkiness and no longer sounded like she was going to choke on her words and her own blood. "Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, taped over the video, bit the Big One. Trust me, when I bit the Big One, I think my eyes were too big for my belly. It's a pity you can't take a bite, and then if you don't like it, spit it out."

  "You mean like Marmite?" I asked.

  "Marmite?"

  "Yes. I tasted it once. Bloody disgusting. I spat it out and it took about an hour to get rid of the taste."

  "Yes, then," she said, a little sadly, "like Marmite. I took a great chomp at a Marmite sandwich and now I'm not living to regret it."

  "So," I said, wanting to bring the conversation back to something resembling normality, even though the subject matter was far from normal. For someone who could kill people thousands of miles away and who could teleport his body in the blink of a wink with no strings or mirrors required, what really counted as normal any more, anyway? "What can I do for you?"

  Joy frowned playfully. "Can't a sister visit her brother nowadays?"

  I nodded. "Of course she can," I said. "But since you're dead and I'm supposed to be, I figured you were here for something else. Are you in my head, conjured up just to keep me company? Or am I actually dead and this is hell?"

  "So you think I'd have ended up down there, do you? Thanks a bunch bro'!"

  "Well, I don't know. Did you?"

  "Do I have horns and a sexy little tail? Not as far as I can tell. So no, I didn't end up 'down there', but thanks for thinking I might."

  I shrugged. How was I to know what went on after death? I'd tried to take a peek but the door had been slammed firmly in my face. There might be Heaven, there might be Hell, there might be a great white light or there might be endless repeats of Crossroads with nothing to eat but cheesy Wotsits or prawn cocktail Monster Munch. I didn't want to piss Joy off whether she was real, ghost, dream or cannibalistic zombie eyeing up my liver for lunch, but I hadn't had the best day. Give a guy a break, eh?

  Still. She was my sister. I hadn't seen her since before she'd killed herself, naturally, so perhaps I should be nicer. Depending on your religion, by committing suicide you could either be a blessed martyr or damned for all eternity, doomed to walk the earth in new shoes with no plasters. Did your religion dictate your afterlife - if there was one? Just because I was having a wee tete-a-tete with her didn't mean life after death was a reality. Maybe it was a surreality? I was dreaming and she was a conjuration of my mind, a sleight of hand illusion performed by the snoozing synapses of my brain. But it made me think. Did your own personal beliefs create your Heavens, Hells and Asguards? Was reincarnation real for those that believed in it, but if you didn't you had no chance of coming back, whether as a dolphin, a butterfly or a fresh pile of steaming doggy-doo-doo? And what if you believed in nothing? Was death the snuffing of your not so eternal flame?

  Who knew? Ask me another.

  Either way, I was pleased to be reunited with Joy, even if it was all in my not completely stable head. I'm not saying I was as crazy as Dr. Connors liked to insist I was, but there had to be something a little whoo, a little whee up the
re, didn't there? I hadn't lost the plot entirely, but I'd possibly skimmed a few pages. Otherwise I'd still be sitting in my cell waiting for the needles to come and pay a visit. Saying that, if all was jolly double-dandy, I wouldn't be at the hospital at all. I'd be in a comfortable job, earning a comfortable wage, maybe even with a comfortable girlfriend. I'd have a dog called Frank and be trying to stop next door's cat from leaving little presents between my lobelias.

  Hmmm. I'm not sure which is the better deal now.

  Hey ho, away we go.

  "I don't think that," I said. "Of course I don't. I don't even know if there is a 'down there' for you to end up in." And besides, this was Joy. She'd made so many people happy it had sent her over the edge and she'd felt forced to take her own life. It was better than taking other lives like I had a penchant for doing. How could someone like that end up 'down there'?

  Not that I'm implying Australia is all that bad.

  "Well, alrighty then," said Joy in her best Ace Ventura voice. It was, basically, crap. My sister was always one to get up and sing at a Karaoke or dance on a table or see if she could down a pint of lager in three seconds without it coming out of her nose. She knew magic tricks which, though recent events and discoveries dulled their shine, Siegfried & Roy might not exactly be impressed by, but they'd certainly appreciate the effort. When it came to voices and such, though, Joy was pants. Her Welsh accent sounded Pakistani and her Sean Connery was akin to Father Ted after he'd had a few. As for Ace Ventura, I didn't think Jim Carrey had anything to worry about. She sounded like Joy doing an impression of Joy, but badly.

  I smiled anyway, deciding to leave the deep and meaningful behind. Thoughts of life and death and cheesy Wotsits could wait for another day. Enjoy the dream because when I awoke I'd be back in the nightmare.

  I belched loudly. It was one to be proud of and Joy slapped my arm in mock disgust. She could lay a good one out when she wanted to, so she was probably only jealous.

  "You horrible, stinking, filthy pig!" she said as she smacked me again. "You really disgust me, you know that?"

  And everything was ok. I was sitting in the woods having a laugh with my sister. The fact that she was dead was irrelevant. The fact that, but a short time before, I'd caused a young lad to make his car more intimate with a tree than he'd have probably wanted to was also, for now, irrelevant. Old times and daisy-chains were the tea on the table tonight, with a healthy helping of nostalgia for dessert.

  "You couldn't help that boy, you know."

  Well that was a custard pie in the face of memories.

  * * * *

  Chapter Five

  "Pardon?"

  I was shocked at the abrupt change of mood. A second ago we were laughing and now laughter had fled screaming into the night. The forest had darkened and the trees had closed in making me feel suddenly claustrophobic. I almost waited for feral eyes to open like slashes in the darkness. None did, so thankfully my dream hadn't travelled that far on the express train into Nightmare Station.

  Joy seemed unaware of the sudden suffocation. She wasn't looking at me, instead picking some invisible piece of cotton or dirt from her trouser leg. Whatever was there was stuck fast and she stayed intent on it as she spoke.

  "The boy. He crashed and there's a better than good chance that he wouldn't have if you hadn't been there, but you couldn't help him. He was lost anyway."

  My heart was suddenly squeezed by an invisible hand that had reached inside my chest and taken a hold, long, cracked and yellowing nails digging in. I couldn't speak.

  "He killed that poor girl. He would have done it again. He would. More than once. It wouldn't have stopped him and it wouldn't have slowed him down. He would have begun to look for it. The rush. The danger. The badness of it. He would have become addicted. He was rotting from the inside out and you did him a favour. You did those little girls he isn't going to mow down a favour. Hey, you did the world a favour."

  Joy's voice wavered, a ripple in the velvet. I could only stare at her, the hand around my heart squeezing rhythmically. What was she doing? Justifying murder? That's what it was! Manslaughter at the very least because I couldn't help it. But what if I could? What if there was some sick core inside me, rotting like she said the boy was? What if I meant for him to die?

  What if I wanted it to happen? I knew. I knew what he had done. Eight years old. That's all she was. But I didn't feel anger or pity for him. I felt nothing. So what if that nothing was concealing my pleasure, or my desire? If I'd reached out to his car with whatever twisted thought or idea crawled beneath the nothing and made it swerve, and made it crash...?

  What then?

  Maybe this was hell and I had ended up in that furnace and I had been char-broiled and I was dead. And Joy. Maybe she believed in Heaven and Hell. And maybe, because of that, we were part of each others' damnation. She was doomed to try and make me feel better - something that, on a grander scale had bled her to a husk - and I was doomed to listen. Her Purgatory was a much more focused and personal version of the life that had led her, or pushed her, here. Mine was to relive my own, the tales retold in my sister's vain attempts to justify and reconcile and appease.

  And I hadn't even brought a picnic.

  I mentally gripped the metaphorical hand around my heart, wresting its grip and flinging it away. What if, what if, what if. What if Willy Wonka had made flour instead of every kind of chocolate? Charlie Bucket would never have been the hero he was and Violet Sludgemonkey, or whatever her name was, would probably be a redcoat at Butlins by now. What if Man really had landed on the moon, or men in black really did protect us from illegal Aliens and the scum of the universe? What if, in space, someone can hear you scream? What if curry night at the Trawl pub, Toothill, was on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday? Would the world come crashing down around our ears like a Paris Hilton CD?

  No. I doubted it. So why worry about it. Or, at least, why dwell on it. Blank it out. Smother it in Nothing. No pain, no brain. Or something like that.

  Of course that wasn't how it worked. It didn't work much at all, really, but...

  Hey ho, daddyo, away we go.

  It didn't matter if Joy was right or not. If I'd saved half a dozen or more children from being hit-and-run victims at the cost of one stupid, stupid boy's life, it didn't matter. It did matter, but it didn't. Not really. It was what it was. Life and death. Heaven and Hell. Black and white.

  Heads and tails.

  Flip and catch.

  "So?" I said.

  Joy frowned, puzzled. I could see why. My reaction, or lack of one, would puzzle me too, if I wasn't me. In fact, it did to a certain extent. Why wasn't I breaking apart, little bits of me drifting off into the Nothing that waited in the shadows to engulf me? Why was I just hey-diddly-dee-a-normal-life-for-me?

  "So?" she asked. "What does 'so' mean? Is that all you can say? 'So'?"

  "Yes," I answered. "So. So what if I am responsible. So what if I'm not. It's done."

  I realised, suddenly, what was wrong. I knew why I was numb. The same sweet self-preservation that stopped me knock, knock, knocking on a furnace door. It was too much. All of it, and if I let myself feel that, I'd be dragged down Life's little plug hole into the sewers below.

  "I can't take it," I said. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I just... I just can't do it."

  Joy put her arms around me. She smelled of Jasmine. Her cheek was warm and soft against my own. Were my dreams torturing me now? All these memories of my dead sister pummelling me, taunting me. It wasn't FAIR! I felt like a yo-yo, spinning between laughter and sorrow, smiles and frowns, mental clarity and mind-numbing despair, my string wrapped around the finger of some demonic child who was having simply marvellous fun at my expense.

  I pushed Joy away and stood up. This was a lovely dream, what with the ghost, maggots and rotting flesh, but it was only serving to make me feel worse about myself than I already did. Joy's reassurances did more to wind me up than calm me down. I knew she
wasn't being patronising, she wasn't like that. Well, my sister wasn't like that when she was alive. This deceased version was an invention of my own psyche, so I supposed it could be as patronising as my mind felt it wanted to be.

  I was going round in circles. I should have stayed, happy as a hamster with my very own wheel, in the mental home. Dr. Connors would look after my bank account and me, and everything would have been hunky-dory, Jackanory. Yes. Of course it would.

  I feebly tried to push Joy away again as she moved towards me, arms wide. She batted my attempts away and wrapped me in her Jasmine blanket. I let my breathing settle and slumped against her. She held my weight easily, obviously empowered by my subconscious - she could never have carried me in reality.

  Her voice smothered me in velvet calm, easing my anguish. "Sshhhh," she whispered, though I hadn't said anything.

  I took a deep breath, my face buried in her shoulder. A second one succeeded in steadying me enough to support myself. She let her arms drop and looked at me, her face full of concern.

  I smiled weakly, then took a third deep breath and smiled again, stronger this time.

  "Fartypants," I said.

  "That's better," she said, the concern fading. A hint of it lingered still, but she looked more her usual perky self. I hoped I appeared the same. I hoped that, if I looked happier then I would be. If I seemed more confident, that confidence might worm its wicked way inside. "Plonk it, rancid pits," she ordered, indicating the base of the tree I'd been sitting at.

  "Yes, Miss."

  I eased myself back down onto the grass and leant against the trunk. My back protested as the lumps and bumps of the bark found more places to dig into but I ignored it. I wasn't into self-mutilation or any of those whipping rituals religious types indulged in, but I did feel that a taste of pain myself was somewhat deserved.

  "So," I said, hoping again to bring the conversation back on track. I left the word hanging, not really knowing where to take it. This was my dream, but I figured Joy could lead the way for a wee bit. She left the word where it was for a long time, head low, face expressionless, except for the eyes a-sparkling. Then she picked it up and had a play.