Sin

by Shaun Allan

  That Connors had forced me to practise the teleportation (the phrase 'stop sniggering' includes the implication not to smirk) was not lost on me. From the brief video clip we saw in his office, it seemed I should have this down pat by now. I was sure that that hadn't been the only session he'd had with me, not by a long way. I'd have been surprised if I hadn't had daily 'treatments'. I mean, if the shoe was on the other foot, plimsole or clod-hopping welly, I'd quite possibly have done the same myself. Would you be able to stop yourself? It'd be like a boy in a toyshop after closing - it would be possible to play with all the things you always wanted for Christmas but knew you'd never get, because buying you a present tapped into your parents' alcohol budget. Besides, Christmas had was all about commercialisation now, and it had lost its original meaning. So toys and other gifts were simply different ways to line the pockets of the retail giants. Not being bought them made a statement to... someone or other... and was character building into the bargain.

  A little like being given the first name Sin.

  Apparently.

  So my father used to tell me anyway.

  The thing was, I didn't fancy pumping myself full of drugs, as Connors had, just to rediscover my lost talents. Only a short time ago I was welcoming of them - the drugs that is. They helped me forget. They helped me believe it had all stopped and I was normal - as normal as a man locked up in a padded room floating on a nice fluffy cushion of Risperdal could be. Even if I did want to get my daily dose, I didn't expect to be buying them over the counter at Boots, at least not without one or two questionable eyebrows being raised. I felt under the spotlight enough without elevated bodily hair adding to the interrogation. Low 'brow' joke about things getting 'hairy' tried to skim through my mind, but I resisted their push, knowing that my sometimes inane sense of humour was out of place in situations like this. Joy was glaring at me with the heat of a solar flare and I needed to appease her before I got radiation burns.

  I realised that I was being a hypocrite, or something like. I'd lost myself to drugs to smother and suffocate this beast that coiled inside my belly, and then I'd used that same beast to try to end my life. And just now I'd let it out of its cell again, like a prisoner on his hour in the exercise yard, to escape from the clutches of another monster. I wasn't sure just how many times I could do that without it taking its chance and breaking free for good. It was on a fairly tight leash, but I didn't know just how strong that leash was, or even what it looked like. It could be a solid thick chain that could hold the hounds of hell, or it could be as tissue, only 2-ply at that, not even strong enough to wipe your arse with.

  In Farmer Giles' van, I'd had an idea that I could control it. I felt something different - something change. I could quite easily, whether I liked it or not, have torn that bully apart, and quite possibly everyone else in the street. I didn't though. I reined it in. I pulled it back. But how much of it was a breath held? And how much would it take for something to punch me in the stomach, and the breath be expelled and the demon within me to dance, or dine, or dilly-dally on till Doomsday? If that happened, Doomsday would be here a little early, much like the Number Five bus that had passed a couple of stops without having to pick up any passengers, right before ploughing through...

  "Sorry," I said quietly.

  I thought that appearing meek might sooth her savagery. And the meekness wasn't merely an appearance anyway. Coming to the nursery wasn't the cleverest matchstick in the box, but if the blue touch paper was lit, it'd certainly go up with a bang. I knew that. Of course I did. But choosing where to go was akin to throwing sand in the wind and deciding to surf on one particular grain. That one just there. It couldn't be done. The breeze scattered them all too far too fast, and your foot was too big anyway. Now that analogy might seem to be one of my shadier ones, with the meaning only vaguely clinging on to relevance - praying no-one would stamp on its fingers and have it plunge to the depths below, but on some level in my head it made perfect sense. But then I've been told I'm a touch... touched. But then, again, I have just escaped a mental home.

  My not so fake submissiveness didn't work. Why did I think it would?

  "Sorry?" Joy shouted. "Sorry?!"

  I tried not to concentrate on the light dusting of hairs up her nose. It wouldn't help my case.

  I once had a cat. His name was Magic and he was part Persian and part tabby. He used to sit on my shoulder while I was at my laptop or watching TV. Not when I was on my Playstation, though. That was his cue to fight with my thumb as I battled with aliens or uncovered lost treasures. But anywho. He'd be perched there, on my shoulder, and I'd feel like Long John Silver with his pirate's parrot. With two legs, of course. And both eyes. I never managed to get him to say, repeatedly, "Pieces of eight," or "Pretty Polly," though. Not that I tried as I didn't think that feline vocal cords would stretch much further than meowing to be fed or stroked.

  He was much cuter than my sister was as she began repeating, parrot fashion, "Sorry! He's sorry! Sorry! He's sorry!" to anyone that might be listening.

  Given our location, I hoped that 'anyone' was limited to just me. I also hoped that her ranting wasn't going to draw any unwanted attention. We shouldn't be there, we didn't want to be there, and we would be in a humungous pile of poo if we were found to be there, but there we were nonetheless. Deal or don't, do or die, stick a pine cone where the sun don't shine. I needed to calm her down and decide what the next part of our little adventure might be. Well maybe she needed to decide, as I'd been led by the hand like a four year old to the ice cream van up to now. But there'd be no chocolate flake, strawberry sauce or hundreds & thousands as a treat for me.

  I could slap her, shocking her into silence. She was, mostly at least, substantial. Whatever post-death version of flesh and bone comprised her body, I figured it’d react fairly normally to the palm of my hand coming sharply into contact with it. I could out-rant her. Talk louder and more insistently than her babbling. That, of course, was defeating the object. Silencing her by being Mr. Mouth Almighty myself would probably be the equivalent of picking up the PA microphone and announcing the Return of the Mighty Sin to the grateful listeners of Radio Nutsville FM. Our adoring fans, in the shape of Dr. Connors and his merry men would pour in through the burst open doors in seconds, and they wouldn't be holding out autograph books or left boobies for signatures. And, I'd assume, the sharp objects in their hands would more likely be needles than blue Bic pens. Knowing Joy, though, she'd slap me back - with her fist. We'd had a few scuffles, as siblings do, during our childhood and teens, so I knew that she was a little whirlwind when she was riled. I didn't want to find out what a touch of the supernatural might do for - or to - her. Angry ghosts became poltergeists and that normally meant things being thrown about and smashed up.

  I didn't want 'things' to be me.

  Then I heard something. Or felt like I'd heard something... or something. It was like feeling a breath of sound across my ear. A tickle of tone. You hear it but you don't. You feel it but you're not sure if it's in your head or in your ear. And then there was silence. Real silence. The kind that exists after a storm, when thunder and lightning have been very, very frightning. The hush after the horror. The peace after the party.

  The silence after the sister.

  Joy had shut up. I'd turned away from her ranting, almost in shame. I'd brought us here and I was being reprimanded for being a silly little child. How could I do something so foolish? How could I be so thoughtless? How could I lose his comb? I'd have to pay for being stupid. I'd have to pay for being useless. I'd have to...

  Joy was gone. I looked towards the absence of noise to see a great big bundle of nothing where my dead sister had been. Now abandonment was something I'd been used to. Even whilst still living with my parents, I may as well have been dumped in a gutter outside a half way house, or given a one way ticket to nowhere. At various points I'd also felt as if the world had turned its back on me, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Can't see me so I
don't exist. At various times during those various times, I'd wished I didn't.

  Hence, I suppose, the attraction of toasting my tootsies.

  But those feelings of being sole-shit had faded. Some of it had followed my parents into their respective graves (or urn in the case of my mother - they could never agree on anything) and some had just got lost along the way, probably along with my surname. We'd all hung around for a while years back, chewing the fat - a disgusting sounding phrase that I doubt really has anything to do with dining on blubber - until we'd become bored with each others' company and drifted apart like old school friends or the post-Pangean continents. I didn't realise it until Joy had returned but she had, eraser-like, rubbed out the final remnants of my life-long wallowing whimsy. I was ok with myself. Mostly. Apart from the obvious kinship with Death and all his minions. I didn't feel abandoned anymore. I no longer felt like the failure I'd been portrayed as by my father. His jibes and insults still echoed around in my head, but that's all they were now - echoes. Lacking substance. The meat gnawed from the bones of his derision by the jaws of time. They say time is a great healer. I don't know about that, but Time, when feeling a bit peckish, can nosh away at something until there's only a rack of skeletal remains that not even CSI's Gruesome Grisolm can decipher. I found it comforting that the worms had feasted on my father faster than Time had upon his memory. At least the little wrigglers had got something out of him, even if it was mostly gristle and stringy fat. I doubted even in death he'd been particularly appetising.

  So I didn't feel abandoned when I saw that I was standing alone in the nursery. That surprised me actually. I'd been clinging on to Joy, letting her lead me whichever way was loose, with barely a whisper or whimper. In that short time I'd seen a friend murdered, stolen a vehicle from someone I'd almost murdered myself, and teleported into the hands of the enemy.

  The Enemy. Anyone would think this was a war.

  Well, perhaps it was, although I still had no idea why there was a conflict of any kind. Connors couldn't know that I knew either of his treatment of me or his killing of Jeremy. Why was I being hunted? Was I being hunted, in fact? Perhaps the doctor was simply worried about me and wanted my safe return so he could continue my treatment. And perhaps he taught Sunday School and could ride a tightrope on a unicycle backwards whilst blindfolded. He knew about me. He knew what I was. Probably more so than I did, because I had no idea. But he'd tested me. He'd made me into his personal laboratory rat and had been teaching me to run through his maze, without using my feet. And I could only imagine he wanted that part of me for himself. Somehow.

  It was a war. There had already been casualties - one seagull and one careless driver springing to mind. But how to end it? I couldn't see a treaty being signed or a surrender (unless it was my own). There'd be no amicable shaking of hands and downing of weapons. He was out to get - or be - me and I was out to... not let him. Wow I sounded so 'GRRRR' sometimes, like the Hulk bursting forth from his pants. I'd been basically imprisoned, experimented upon and stalked, and all I could come up with was that I wanted to not let him. It had to be more than that. Not let him? Was I going to just tell him?

  "Don't do that anymore Dr. Connors. I don't like it."

  "Oh, sorry about that. Don't worry, I'll leave you alone."

  "Why, thank you Doc."

  "No problem, but please don't call me Doc."

  Hardly.

  There was going to be pain. Possibly more death. I just had to make sure it wasn't my own. Easy, no?

  No.

  I had to stop him. Find out what and why, and bring him to a screeching halt faster than my old dog Lady when she ran to the back door and saw all this white, freezing cold, snowy stuff. She'd never experienced it before and stopped so quickly the message didn't get from her head to her back legs fast enough to prevent her backside carrying on over her head and into the snow beyond. Naturally she then ran back in, jumped on the sofa and shook herself dry. I hoped I'd have more success with Connors than I did with Lady. He probably wasn't that bothered by snow so it would take a little more to stop him.

  But what more did I have? What could I do? One may think what couldn't I do. Here's a guy that can leap tall buildings in a single teleport. Who could push a bus through a post office storefront with less effort than it takes to sneeze. One would be correct. Apparently I could. And apparently I could control it. But I didn't know how. Apart from the occasional feeling of composure, it was an entity all of its own. I no more held it in check than I did set it free. The control was uncontrolled, and in fact controlled me. But maybe that was a good thing. I should set this beast within me free and let it wreak the havoc it wished until it was sated. And Connors would pay whatever price that involved. I was in the perfect place. The madhouse under the guise of the mendhouse. I didn't think Bender Benny and Company would mind being released from their torment. I could wipe out the whole place in a heartbeat. Take Connors and his whole shitbang, including myself, on the very merry way into nothingness. Oblivion wasn't just a ride at Alton Towers, it was also a place where nobody knows your name - mainly because there was nobody and nothing there to know you.

  I could do that. Except I couldn't, could I? I didn't know how. And besides that, whatever he'd done, I put myself under his 'care' to stop myself doing precisely that. I wasn't him, and I wasn't going to let myself become him. Well, if I could help it anyway. Best intentions were better than none at all, weren't they?

  Joy? She'd already proven she could read my mind, so I didn't feel the need to shout out loud. Luckily. I'm sure I would have found that a good number of others had suddenly changed their names to Joy and I'd be surrounded by all manner of people who really didn't bear any resemblance to my sister. I called out mentally, hoping the sound would carry through the skull and veins and flesh to seek her out wherever she might be hiding. I listened to the sound of my voice as it echoed around in my head. I couldn't tell whether it was still rattling around the confines of my bonce or was out there running around free, playing hide and seek. I wished for the latter but expected the former. Nonetheless, I called out again.

  I was greeted by silence. Ok, perhaps the feelings of abandonment hadn't completely left me. Perhaps they, along with Joy, were simply hiding in the shadows, peeking out when I wasn't looking, waiting to run up and whack me over the head.

  I remember once my mum hit me on the back of my head with a roll of kitchen foil. I'd been messing about having a laugh - pretending to be a bee, I think, making silly buzzing noises around her. She hit me a touch too forcefully and apologised "I didn't mean to come so hard..." It took a good while for us to stop falling about laughing, and for me to stop feeling horrified that my own mother knew such a phrase. It was one of the few times when the sound of laughter echoed around the house. And afterwards it did seem to echo, fading into the emptiness that was the house's normal psyche.

  That moment, that few seconds of hysteria (probably more profound because of its usual absence), was genuinely funny, even if it was in a you-had-to-be-there kind of way. This wasn't funny. Not even in a having-to-be-there kind of way. In fact this was a having-not-to-be-there moment! Well, maybe there was some dark humour to be scavenged from me finding myself lounging on the tongue of Pinocchio's whale, especially as I'd brought myself here. I didn't really see it though. I just needed to find the kindling to get it to spit me out.

  Anyone got a match I could borrow?

  Didn't think so.

  Right. Sort this. That was the plan. Not the same kind of plan that the A-Team's Hannibal loved to come together, but perhaps one Howlin' Mad Murdoch would have been happy with. Joy or no joy, that was the question. Right now, the answer was no Joy, so no joy. I felt as if I'd become, in a very short time, reliant on my sister. Perhaps her sudden disappearance was a good thing. Perhaps this would be the making of me. As long as it didn't make me into either a mass murderer (ignoring my past) or a corpse, then I guess I could be happy. If I could figure out what happy was. No. T
urn my frown upside down. At the least into a grimace, if nothing else.

  I shouted out again in my head. Less a (mental) gob open yell than raising my voice and calling. She had buggered off. Whether she'd ran away or thought of something more pressing than her brother's impending death and destruction was up to her. I was on my own, and though I wasn't my first choice for company, I was all I had.

  Go Team Me.

  Give me an 'S!'

  Give me an 'I!'

  Give me an 'N!'

  What have you got?

  Good question. About time we found out.

  Joy wasn't answering my calls. Maybe she was doing some supernatural version of call screening and hadn't bothered to turn on the answering machine. She'd said, about a million years ago, that a storm was coming. Up until moments ago I'd assumed she was going to be my umbrella. Well, hey-hey-hey, if I was going to get wet, or even swept away by the downpour, then so be it.

  I looked up at the sky. The stars stared back down. I wondered if they could see me; if they were like the Norse gods; Zeus or Odin (mixing my deities) looking down, moving me like a chess piece. Sin to Queen's Bishop One. It sounded like a radio call to my backup team of Navy Seals. Well they were probably down the club having a party. They wouldn't be answering. And the stars may as well sit back and enjoy the show. I was going to figure out Checkmate in as few moves as possible even if it killed me.

  Hmmm..... Anyone fancy a game of draughts or snakes and ladders? Kerplunk? Russian Roulette?

  Star light, star bright, why does it have to be so shite?