Sin (5 page)

So anyway. I had a cunning plan.
It didn't involve turnips or pushing pencils up my nose and saying
"Wibble," or anything so loop-de-loo. I was going to teleport (that
word again - if I say it enough times, do you think you might start
to accept it?) straight out of my cell, padded nicely in a lovely
glaringly serene white, right into the fiery heart of a dragon.
Well, a reactor at least. Being licked by 20 foot flames flaring at
a sliver below 1000°C wouldn't have been entirely pleasant, but at
least, I figured, it'd be quick. And if it wasn't quick, well maybe
I deserved that.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the
chance to find out either way.

Self preservation. What a
wonderful, sick, twisted, spit-in-your-eye, spiteful thing it is.
They should have a society named after it.

I couldn't do it. I wanted to,
oh, how I
wanted
to! But I, the I inside, wouldn't let me.
It didn't even ask if I minded. There was no conversation, argument
or heated debate over coffee. I wanted to commit suicide, kill
myself, end it all, but
I
wouldn't let me. I don't know
whether I was doing it deliberately, or if it was the grand old
Universe having it's little bit of fun. Maybe the school bullies
had been replaced by something far greater, and the Cosmos was
taking its turn in hefting a great size 10 where the sun doesn't
shine.

Cheers, pal. Yeah, thanks a
bunch. Remind me to return the favour one of these millennia.

So I tried. I clicked my little
red shoes together three times and said "There's no place like
death. There's no place like death". Well, of course I didn't. I
didn't have any red shoes for a start. I only wore these soft black
soled things. We used to wear them at school. What were they
called? No laces, just in case I wanted to do exactly what I wanted
to do. What damage I could manage with a couple of thin bits of
string with plastic ends, I don't really know. I'm not particularly
inventive when it comes to doing myself in. If it's quick and
relatively painless, then yay! Let me at it. If it's slow and the
equivalent of a body wide paper cut? Thanks but you can keep it. No
really, you have it. I'm fine with the death I've got.

Hey, paper cuts really hurt!

So what did I do? I didn't have
my trusty little tuppenny sidekick geeing me on. Not that I think
that's a bad thing. Mr Two Pence had caused me a whole load of
trouble and heartache and had then piled on a good wadge more for
the simple pleasure of it. Nice of him, eh? Listen to me.
Heartache. Trouble. ME! I sound like a right selfish arse. Sod all
happened to ME, apart from the ruination of my life, of course, and
the everso slight inconvenience of being stuck in a padded cell.
But at least I had a life! Thanks to me, all those people...

All those people.

Deeeeep breath. In through the
nose, out through the mouth. Focus.

Plimsoles. Crappy little
fall-apart-if-you-sneezed soft shoes for PE. God I hated PE.
Physical Education? My physique was educated enough, thank you very
much. Maybe it would have gotten an F in the mock exams - well,
maybe a C if I was a wee bit vain - but running around a muddy
field in the rain in shorts in September was not something I
thought my body needed to learn. And cross country?

Can I ask why?

A group of kids running (and I
use the term about as loosely as the Weightwatchers Slimmer of the
Year's old knickers) around the streets, ducking into alleys for a
crafty ciggy or nipping home for a packet of salt 'n' vinegar
before running across the muddy field, in the rain... You know how
it goes.

Back to the molecular
transference of my physical atomic structure from one spatial
co-ordinate to an alternative one. Or good old teleportation to
you, me and the lampost.

I'd built myself up to a grand
old height for the big day. The hour of doom was noon, when the sun
would be high in the sky, birds would be singing, kids would be
playing and the plague that a pair of nice, sweet, stupid parents
had named Sin would be incinerated. Was Justice ever sweeter? I
think not. I had no real ideas about what I was going to do - the
methodology of my madness. Well, you've got to be mad to kill
yourself, haven't you? Mad, but not necessarily crazy, thankee very
much. I was wound tighter than Donald Duck's behind, snip snapping
at anyone who happened by my cell that morning. Not that there were
many. Room W17 didn't get that many visitors under normal
circumstances. It wasn't the local branch of Woolworths, nor was it
the local drugs den. It was just a simple padded cell, or rather
cushioned accommodation, a third of the way along a blazingly white
corridor of similar such rooms.

I used to like the lights,
recessed into the high ceiling (so, I suppose, I couldn't jump up
and bash my brains in if I was so inclined), fairly subdued to help
keep me calm and equally subdued. It meant that when I ventured out
of my cell, either by choice or by 'request', six inch nails of
light were immediately hammered into the depths of my optic nerves,
at least until I became accustomed to the 600 watt neon strips
they'd decided to install in the corridor. Yes, they probably were
only 60 watt bulbs, but combining white light with white ceilings,
floors and walls, and dressing the staff in the same colour, enough
to make them often look like disembodied heads floating along the
hall, was something of a contrast to the relative duskiness of my
room.

On this fine morning, however,
no amount of twilight could ease my tension. It was the right thing
to do. Of course it was. End it all, and it all ends.

Such are the plans of mice and
men and me, that not all goes according to said plan. It wasn't my
fault, and yet it was entirely my fault. Pretty much the same as
all this low down stinking pile of doggy doo-doo we call life, in
fact. I had no real control over events, but it didn't stop me
being to blame. The finger of guilt was pointing, Pythonesque,
directly at my bonce. I could feel it close enough to scratch my
head with or to pick my nose. Granted, this finger bore a striking
resemblance to the one on my own right hand - I was the only one
who knew of my particular gift. Dr. Connors, bless him, knew as
well of course, but he only believed the sun rose in the morning
because, as a young boy of only 5, he'd somehow climbed onto his
parents roof at the crack of dawn to see for himself. He'd also
wanted to hear if Dawn actually cracked, but he's yet to confirm
that fact either way. It's a story he never ceases to enjoy
telling, and it's one I and many others never tire of nodding and
smiling and pretending to enjoy hearing. Consequentially, he didn't
give a flying fudge about my claims, they couldn't be true, because
then the sun might actually go to sleep at night, waking up all
refreshed in the morning, ready to face the challenges of the day.
Or the stars might be fairy dust in the night sky, sprinkled by
some wayward Tinkerbell who's lost her way to Neverland.

Who knows? Maybe they are.

So. I didn't have any ruby
slippers. Scotty wasn't orbiting in a geo-stationary orbit ready to
beam me up. I didn't even have my lucky two pence piece. I had me.
Just because I'd realised the truth about my relationship with that
coin didn't automatically mean I knew what I had to do. As far as
I'd been aware previously, it was all flip and catch. Flip the
coin. Catch the coin. Kill a few hundred people. It had been that
simple. That direct. Except the coin had nothing to do with any of
it, other than being a catalyst. It had been the coin dropped into
the jukebox of my mind, ready for me to press the right combination
of buttons to play the records of destruction. It was a lot cheaper
than the £1 for three songs that my local pub charged, that was for
sure. Except it was also much, much more expensive. Devastatingly
so.

Ruminations had been ruminating
around my head all morning. They'd been chased by packs of rabid
doubts which had in turn been pursued by... well, by fact. People
had died. People had died because of me.

So in the end, it was as simple
as dear Simon.

How, though? I thought I'd have
to screw up my eyes. Clench my teeth and my fists. Hold my breath.
Squeeze my whole body. But it didn't feel right. No great efforts
had been taken previously, when all had been needed, it seemed, was
an unconscious flick of the hand to send a small coin spinning
through the air. What if that was the case now? But to do something
so
big
had to take
something
, didn’t it?

I didn’t get the chance to find
out. I didn't really even need the deep breath I'd taken. I was
about to say some magic word or other, like "Go," or "Now." Maybe
Houdini or Paul Daniels or even Sooty the Bear would have scorned
those words for not being as theatrical as ‘Abracadabra’ or ‘Izzy
Wizzy Let's Get Bizzy’. This, however, wasn't conjuring. It wasn't
even, to me at least, magic. It just was. So "Go" and "Now" weren't
needed.

I went, then.

Just like that, as the wonderful
Mr. Cooper would say.

I knew exactly where I wanted to
go. I knew just where my crypt, or rather my pyre, would be. Right
on top of a 1000°C, hot as hell, flame.

So imagine my surprise when I
found myself on a beach, breakers breaking against my cold ankles,
my strait jacket lying folded on the wet sand struggling to avoid
being washed away by the tide.

* * * *

I was shocked to say the
least.

The strait jacket had been a
parting gift from the hospital. Because of my supposedly
unwarranted tension that morning, they decided I needed some help
in calming down. Being trussed up tighter than a turkey eagerly
awaiting Christmas lunch isn't as attractive a proposition as it
might at first sound. Saying that, I'm sure there are those who
would, and do, pay very good money for such a 'pleasure’. I, for
one, am not amongst them, I have to say. Naturally, Dr. Connors
didn't realise I'd be vacating my cell that lunch time. I somehow
neglected to inform his good self of my intentions. I doubted he
would be too happy.

But then again.

If he had, then maybe he'd have
plumped for something a little more fashionable. Straps and belts
are something of a fashion necessity nowadays, but there is a
little thing called overkill. I didn't think the flames that would
be dining on me would mind though, so I didn't mention it. I was
pleased the good doctor had decided against medication and had
restricted his treatment to just the jacket. Being pleased about
one of his decisions didn't sit particularly comfortably at my
table, but I needed to be at the very least lucid. I worried that
any amount of drugs, even though I'd often requested their
administration in the past, would prevent me from doing the
diddly-doo. So, yes, I was pleased, relieved and not at all peeved
that I hadn't had a breakfast of needle on toast, washed down with
a cold glass of Risperdal.

As far as I was concerned, I was
interred at Insanity Central purely of my own accord. It was for
the safety of everyone else, not for myself. The medication was
there to numb me. It was meant to blot out that damned coin,
erasing the possibility of me taking another bite out of
population's pie. I didn't need it because I was psychotic. I
wasn't. Nor was I half a dozen different people all squashed into
this one body, each vying for control of the only mouth. I was
normal, in a completely abnormal kind of way, of course. But Dr.
Connors didn't know that. Even if he knew it on some level, he
couldn't believe it. I was talking crazy dude! Rambling a-ho worse
than Bender Benny down in Room 101.

There wasn't actually a Room
101. That was just a cell a little smaller than the rest, with a
little extra padding, where they put you if they wanted to forget
you. ‘In need of extra support’ was how they'd put it, but it
essentially meant the same thing. Bender Benny was crazy. He really
was. Nuttier than Dr. Connors thought I was. Bender Benny's mind
was bent so far round on itself, it could tickle his tonsils if it
so wished. Don't ask me to tell you just what was wrong with him.
Dr. Connors is the expert in matters of the mind.

Hah, I made a funny! Dr. Connors
was an ex-spurt. That's about as far as I'd go. Trust me to
voluntarily put myself in the care of someone who needed treatment
more than his own patients! To be honest, I should have known,
really. That kind of thing just seemed to happen to me. Fate's
fickle finger always ended up picking me out of its nose and
flicking me flat splat on the dirty pavement. When Life played Spin
the Bottle, that old empty beer bottle always ended up settling on
me.

Bender Benny was a danger to
himself, apparently. He mumbled constantly in fractured sentences
that only ever made a weird kind of sense when you half heard them.
I'd never seen him become violent. He'd never so much as raised his
voice or his fist. He simply sat there in the so-called common
room, chained to the tubular steel chairs which were in turn bolted
to the floor. After five minutes of his nonsensical mutterings he
was returned to 101 before he made the other residents nervous.
Every three or four hours, sometimes it was as much as six or
seven, he'd appear again, head slumped, shoulders hunched, mouth
twitching an ever constant stream of nothing. But he was a danger.
Apparently.

As I was nice and sane and
crispy, Risperdal, Valium, paracetomol and vitamin C were far more
than I needed, but Dr. Connors, as he would, disagreed. Maybe he
had shares in a pharmaceutical company. Perhaps he was on
commission. A couple of quid for every pill popped and every tonic
taken. Nice little earner. He certainly believed that preventing,
or downright suffocating, a problem was better than a cure. So a
daily dose was an essential part of everyone's diet. What doesn't
kill you, it seemed, makes you number. Not a number, like 3487,
just more numb. Something like that anyway.