~
When Daniel finally surfaces, amid the devastation of his flat, there is no more violence left in him. Just the self loathing of knowing that yet again he’s betrayed the brother he loves. Long ago, he’d betrayed him to the sea, and now he’s betrayed him to that repugnant monster. All those delusions that Alex had been out to get him, when all along who was really programmed to destroy the other?
The derisive answer calls out to him from the gaping jaws of the oven.
Daniel compels his body to drag itself through the carnage. He’s able to stand just long enough to push, turn and hold the knob until the flame ignites, before sinking back to the ground and aiming his face at the dancing blue light. He blows, and the light disappears with a pop. Now he must edge forward, into the arms of that scornful hiss. The bitterness of burnt fat helps with the smell they add to the gas. He must breathe in deeply and let his blood absorb the poison and drive away all remorse. For a moment, he is swallowed up in a dentist’s giant chair, the terrified child who tries so hard to take tiny, inconsequential breaths. But he pushes the image away. There is nothing here to fear. It cannot be long now – yes, he can already hear it coming: the roaring in his brain – swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. The back plate of the oven advances ahead of him down an ever lengthening shaft, the shielded fan venting lethal retribution. It’s the perfect way to end it. They may not find him for hours. And when they do, they will turn on a light and blow the whole of this stinking, disease-ridden building to kingdom come; tenants, dogs, bicycles, pushchairs, graffiti, Santa Claus and all.
Maybe somewhere up there Scoff is waiting. Fully restored of course; God would not be so cruel as to have him spend eternity in dying torment. Seeing him again might just bring the peace Daniel craves. Scoff will not judge him, or love him any less for what he has done. Love without condition. What is that shape approaching through the tunnel? Could it be Scoff? Yes, there he is! Oh, but why so sad? And so thin, pushing his little head between the broken blades of the fan and poking a dry nose through the grate. This is not right. Scoff was an innocent. He should be lithe and frisky, not forever damned like this. Daniel’s shoulders are shaking now, his body beginning to spasm.
If Scoff, then maybe his mother too. The prospect chokes him even more than the gas. He longs for her, but dreads her appearing. How ever to find peace if she does? Why is unconditional love between man and beast so attainable, between man and woman so beyond reach? Something is standing there aloof. She sings to herself. It is his mother’s voice, but what form does she take – the sprightly young bride or the skeletal, cancerous widow? The image is fuzzy; she won’t step forward into the light. His view of her is impeded by the blades of the fan. Though the fan still recedes her song grows louder. It isn’t song – it’s a wild keening, the cold unearthly baying of a soul racked by grief.
And… wait, if his cat and his mother, then maybe… oh God, there’s another voice breaking through the cries. Assertive, judging. Daniel wants out. The man is demanding something that he cannot quite hear.
Click.
Swimming through blackness.
Nothing.
A pale morning light bathing the room. No hiss. Just the drumming still in his ears.
Slowly, in and out, Daniel breathes to check he’s really still alive. No more gas. Somebody has saved him. Have they? Then why is nobody pulling him clear, or opening a window, or calling an ambulance? Still on his belly, he draws back slowly and stares at the room. Definitely no gas. Nobody here. Then the penny drops – or more precisely, the pound. Fate’s dirtiest trick yet. Saved by the meter, by the petty lack of a quid. One measly pound sterling, the price upon his head. Because he’d been out of pocket Daniel gets to live. Fate has decreed it.
Quite how long he slumps beside the cooker with his back propped against the sink makes no odds. It could be minutes or hours – it’s all free time, it’s all a bonus, fate’s special offer on life; two for the price of one. It’s however long it takes to sift through the wreckage and formulate some kind of a plan. Like waking up on a desert island, surrounded by the flotsam of the sunken ship and wondering how it assembles into a survival kit. Time is no longer measured in those arbitrary divisions of the clock face – tick, tick, tick – but in live-or-die tides of hunger and thirst, waking and sleeping, day and night, heat and cold. When he does rise, it is to step warily but with purpose into the bathroom. It is to strip off his soiled clothes, squat over the toilet bowl, and clean himself up.
Seeing his own nakedness, touching his own skin, smelling his own waste: such basic affirmations of life. So universal, so commonplace. To think he’d just tried to kill himself. Christ alive. What kind of a hellish darkness was that? For life to mean so little as to throw it away on an impulse. Look at his hands; they hold, they grasp, they respond to the instructions of the brain, intelligently – not ‘move this muscle, now move that one,’ but ‘reach for the soap, take up the towel’. The hands will do the rest. He’d come so close to relinquishing that mystical partnership between brain and body. For a near lethal moment he’d valued at zero the very spark that keeps him from being just meat. Any old piece of meat in any old oven.
He survives, yes, but that spectacle staring back at him in the mirror still screams of a man destroyed. He wipes an arc through the misting glass and looks closer. So much muscle has been lost from his face. The skin hangs from the bone like wet washing on pegs. There’s a lifelessness to the eyes, the pupils dilated, the whites turned pink. A cherry red mark, courtesy of Morris’s boot, sweeps down from one eye and along the cheek to the left side of the mouth, just missing the nose. In some ways he’s been lucky. Whiplash to the neck, brain shake, but no broken teeth. He’ll bruise handsomely, but hopefully that’s about it. The harm done by that flying fist to his stomach is the much greater worry. That sensation of having everything pile-driven into his flesh had been truly sickening. As he steps into the shower, as the gentle stream of water loosens and dislodges the matter around the wound, allowing him to unpick and peel away the cling film, he’s given better measure of the damage. Where Morris’s knuckles had struck, the thick black scab has fractured into tectonic plates. Beneath the crust, the scarring has been pummelled a deep scarlet, and already the waxy yellow magma has renewed its flow. The healing has been set back at least a week. Lots and lots of gel and bandaging. Lots of rest. Housebound for the foreseeable future. His desert island.
Stepping out into the hallway, for the first time he sees how totally his flat has been trashed. The kitchen is in disarray, drawers yanked from their runners, contents strewn across the floor, every cupboard door flung open, broken dishes everywhere. This has to be Morris’s work, searching for money that wasn’t there, or scrabbling around for his liquid prize – only finding the pipette, never for one moment suspecting the cough mixture bottle. Daniel can’t help but feel victorious when he spots it lying there on the floor. Almost out of spite, as a trophy, he picks it up and raises it to the light. Only for the gloating over, certainly not for the drinking.
But the price of this trophy – to have Morris do that unspeakable thing to Alex: his brother pinned there at the hands of that beast. He must stop this, deflect his thoughts, anything to block out the image before it tries to destroy him again. At first Alex would have been confused, then outraged as his sheets and pyjamas were disturbed, then terrified and suffocated by the sheer weight and brutality of the man. All those marks; so much blood. Oh, Christ. Alex, poor bastard. Did he put up a fight? How much pain did he suffer when Morris…?
No! He can’t bear to think about that. It’s an act that shames him – shames him not as the impotent bystander, but as though he’s both victim and perpetrator of the act itself. He must never tell anyone what has taken place here. He must destroy the evidence, wipe his memory, reinvent the whole scene. Tearing the soiled sheets from the bed now… no-one beyond the three of them must ever know. Bundling them with the discarded pyjamas into a bin bag… Gulnaz may guess the truth, the d
octors might even diagnose it, but Daniel will never corroborate their suspicions. No good putting the sheets out with the waste: the police would find them there, riddled with Morris’s DNA… Morris might brag of it – no doubt other victims of his would have good cause to believe him, and certainly they’ll know the reason on the day that Morris’s body is dragged from the canal or dug up on waste ground. But nobody will ever hear of it from Daniel. Nor will he ever confess to the murder; he only knows that it will happen. Morris may be built like a tank with firepower to match, but Daniel will one day stand up to him, like that guy in Tiananmen Square. And Daniel won’t be armed with carrier bags and reasoning to turn away his enemy, he’ll be armed with a knife, to finish the job he’d sworn to do last night.
The black bag on the floor. Launderette. No, safer to burn the lot, tonight in some back alley.
It’s afternoon now. For the past hour he has sat on the camp bed. When he can find the energy, he’ll strap himself up again and throw on some fresh clothes. Tonight he must go out with those sheets. Eventually he might be ready to start reassembling his flat. For now though, he’s not ready for anything. For now, he’ll just sit here, naked.
“Hey, come here.”
His words are a reflex to a mistaken visual cue, spoken before rational thought can challenge them. That shape under the chair is only a pair of shoes. It’ll take time to get used to Scoff not being around. No more Scoff, no more Alex, and no more Gulnaz. A desert island indeed. Just his mind. Just his demons.
The clock is smashed. Maybe an hour later he stirs, maybe two. Dusk is already falling again, but in truth he won’t be able to leave the flat tonight. He takes some scissors from the drawer and drags out the bin bag, begins hacking away at the bed linen until he has a soiled pile separated from the rest. Only this needs destroying. It can be done round the back out of sight; the rest disposed of safely with the garbage.
Had he really tried to take his own life? Such a terrifying thought. There may be little enough to live for, but he must never ever try that again. For some reason Gulnaz hasn’t been back for Alex’s things. Nor has she sent for Social Services or the police.
They’re all packed up in an old suitcase now and waiting under the stairwell for her to arrive. He’s left her a message saying as much. She needn’t knock at his door; she needn’t see him at all. She can just call by, collect and disappear.
A day later, he notices that the case has gone. Just his spare door key lying on the mat.