When You Wake up and Scream

Naoise yawned, feeling thoroughly depressed. She had been sitting in a cramped corner of Starbucks for several hours now, surrounded by paper with messy writing and scribbles all over them. She was studying for her Psychology module test that was coming up, and she also had an essay to write. She enjoyed Psychology, but she thought it was ironic that it was going to be the very subject that sent her mad.

'How am I supposed to know?' she muttered angrily, as she read another revision question. She yanked her book closer to her and flicked through the heavy volume, glaring at the pages as though her suffering was entirely the book's fault. She found the answer and re-worded the sentence in the answer box.

Just as she was about to take a break from the revision questions and continue to plan her essay, mourning the fact that her coffee was finished, a fresh cup was put down beside her. Surprised, she looked up to see if it was one of her friends from the Uni. It wasn't. It was, in fact, Conán.

"For you." he said to her. "You look slightly suicidal."

"I am," Naoise said dramatically. "Thanks."

"You want any company?"

"It's not a problem with me. I'm looking for an excuse to stop studying."

Conán laughed.

"You're terrible, you have no self control."

"See, that's why I need someone to blame it on."

"What are you doing?"

"What am I not doing?" Naoise groaned. "I've got this module exam which goes towards my whole course on Monday, so I'm having to revise everything we've done for that, and our lecturer never shuts up. On top of that, the charming pig has set us an essay, which he insisted on dictating to us just as we were leaving the lecture. So I had to scribble down the key words and I've spent a good hour trying to decipher what it means."

"Sounds like the craic." Conán laughed. "Glad it's not me."

"I bet you are."

"So, what's your essay on? I thought you'd just finished one?"

"I have, and as a reward we all got another one. That man is sadistic. This one's on psychopathy."

"Psychopathy?" Conán repeated. "Is that like, crazy people and stuff?"

"Sort of, but it's not just all crazy killers and things. It's abnormalities, which could be depression and things. Although, it can apply to psychosis and things like that."

"That doesn't sound too boring."

"No, it's not boring, just tiring. I know what I want to write, but obviously it's got to be structured and coherent and blah, blah, blah. If it were up to me, it would be a list of bullet points! The case studies are fun, though. I get to look into people with mental illnesses and crazy murderers and loopy loons."

Conán laughed.

"Loopy loons." he repeated. "That's such a politically correct thing to say, coming from a Psychology student. And anyway, don’t you be so stereotypical. Who says killers have to be crazy? They could be perfectly sane, for all you know."

"No one who could kill another person can be sane, Conán."

"How do you know that?"

2Well, because it's killing someone, isn't it? It's not like swatting a fly or anything like that. It's another human being. It lives."

"A fly lives." Conán raised an eyebrow over dark and glittering eyes.

"Yes, well, you know what I mean. It's not the same, is it? It's not as social as humans are, you know, its family won’t be grieving and the kids won't loose a parents and the friends won't be devastated and all of that."

"How do you know there's not a little fly funeral going on right now, with a tiny coffin and all of the fly's brothers carrying the coffin and the widow fly there?"

Naoise was struggling not to laugh at the seriousness on Conán's face, even though his eyes were bright with the joke.

"Conán?" she asked, just as seriously. "Do you want to be a case study for my essay? Because I'm starting to think that you're one of these loony loons that I've been reading about. I can see it now. 'Conán Connolly, a young man from Dublin, is so obsessed with fly rights that he's convinced fly funerals go on as we speak'."

"It's true, there is. You'll see one day, because they'll make us pay." he grinned. "How did we get onto this subject anyway?"

"You were saying that people who kill don't necessarily have to be mad."

"Oh yeah! Well, I stand by that view."

"So someone who can stand over someone and watch them die isn’t crazy?"

"No. People see people die everyday." Conán shrugged. "Policemen, firefighters, paramedics."

"Yes, but the person isn't dying at their hand, are they?"

"Well, they might be. What is a policeman has to shoot a criminal, and the guy dies? Essentially, he's a murderer, but he's not mad, is he?"

"No, but it can't be nice for him."

"Well, no, I guess not, but perhaps you should mention that in your little essay? Some people have a different way of thinking about these things, and they'd have to train their mind to get on with these things, wouldn't they? I mean, that policeman is probably devastated that he had to kill someone, but he gets on with it and goes back to the job. To be honest, I think that's a little extraordinary."

Naoise was looking thoughtful.

"You're smarter than you look, do you know that?"

Conán's face flashed with unmistakeable surprise at the compliment before he quickly masked it again.

"You saying I look stupid?" he asked lightly, instead, but he knew Naoise was onto him.

"You're also good at covering your tracks, matie, but not quite good enough." Naoise told him, snapping her book closed and looking at him thoughtfully. "Why was being told that so surprising?"

"Well, you know," Conán said awkwardly. "I don’t get compliments very often, you know? So I don't tend to know how to react."

"When was the last time you had a compliment?"

"That was probably the first one, actually. Although, if you count my landlord telling me that I don't smell as bad as I usually do, I guess that might count."

Naoise managed a small smile, and she shook her head at her strange companion.

"You don't smell at all today, if that makes you feel any better."

"I'll treasure that here forever." Conán tapped himself above his heart.

"You're really funny for a guy who's had such a crap life so far." Naoise told him sincerely. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Just go through life managing to laugh about things that are so awful?"

"I don't know." Conán shrugged. "I guess I just don't think too much about it. It's only these things I laugh about. I don't think I'll be able to laugh over my mother, unless I was standing on her grave or something."

"I don't know how you survived all that. If my mother had been like yours I would have probably killed myself, no joke."

"Don't think I didn't think about it. I just never did because I knew that the longer I lived, the more I annoyed her."

"So you have no family, then?"

"No."

"Or friends."

"You're the only person I really talk to, unless I'm yelling at my landlord or his daughter." Conán frowned. "Well, sort of ex-landlord at the moment, seems he threw me out –"

"What?" Naoise gasped, almost spraying coffee over him.

"He threw me out because I couldn't keep up with the payments."

"So you're homeless?"

"At the moment, yes."

"Conán, that's awful! It's freezing out there at the moment! You'll catch yourself hypothermia."

"I hope so, then I can spend a couple of days at the hospital!" Conán gave a wheezy laugh, drawing attention to the fact that he wasn't very well at all.

"Conán!"

"What? I'm being serious."

"If you're homeless you'll need all the money you can get. I'll pay you for the coffee, here –"

"Don't you dare, it's yours. I've been working the past couple of days, so I've got money right enough."

Conán was secretly thinking of the thousands of Euros hidden in the inside pocket of his coat.

"So where are you going to live?"

"My landlord says if I get him the money soon he'll let me move back in."

"How much do you owe him?"

"Only two hundred Euro."

"Only?"

"Ah, come on, it's not that much. I'm already halfway there because I've been working extra shifts."

A simple little investigation would have caused Conán's lies to be exposed, seems he hadn't had any work for a while now, but it seemed to be believable, even though Naoise was still looking at him worriedly.

"You break my heart, do you know that?" Naoise suddenly said softly. "Here I am, with my whole life ahead of me, and you don't look that much older and you're struggling to survive. I've probably said it before, but it's so unfair."

"You get what you're given." Conán shrugged. "This is just my lot, and what I make of it is what I make of it. I could sit in a doorway and beg for money ad be a scrounger, or I could work my ass off and get back to where I was and to from there. To be honest, I would rather do it on my own. I don't want to scrounge off of other people, it's not my place to take what they've earned."

"How old are you, Conán?"

"Twenty."

"You don't look it. You look my age."

"Well, I am twenty."

"You're the same age as my brother Seamus, and you're more mature than twelve of him."

"That's because he's been sheltered by his family."

"I suppose so. Though don't get the impression that we're all spoiled, because we're certainly not."

"I didn't mean it in that way. I meant it as in you've family to back you up when things go wrong – if you make a mistake, your family are there until you get back on your feet. If I make a mistake, it could mean life or death."

"Is it that dramatic?"

"Yes. The streets aren't a nice place, you know. That guy who got that homeless dude is still running around out there."

Inside, Conán was laughing, but he was normal on the outside.

"I suppose so. Though they think it was over drugs or something."

"Still, he hacked his throat open pretty well."

Naoise paled.

"I hadn’t heard about that."

"Hadn’t you?" Conán said conversationally, ignoring her obvious discomfort. "Well, whoever it was stabbed him and cut his throat right open and he got away with it – or she, for that matter. Women can be just as bad."

"Women killers prefer smothering or poisoning." Naoise said suddenly, as a way to distract herself from the gory details. "Men are more of the strangling, shooting and stabbing type."

"Oh really?" Conán raised his eyebrows. "How'd you know that?"

"I'm interested in criminal psychology." Naoise said. "I just learnt it in one of my books."

"So there are stereotypes, eh?"

"Yeah, all sorts. Serial killers are usually white males below the age of thirty-five, you know."

"Ah, so if you're a serial killer and the police close in, all you have to say is that you're a forty-year-old black woman?"

Naoise laughed.

"I think that, for a start, they may notice, and secondly, I think that they might know that you understand a little more than you're letting on."

"Well, it would be worth a shot." Conán chuckled, coughing afterwards.

"You don't sound too good."

"I'm not, really. I've caught a cold, I think. It's only to be expected, really."

"So where are you staying tonight?"

"Ah! I've got myself this classy doorstep, five minute walk away from the city centre with charming riverside views."

"You should be a comedian, Conán."

"Perhaps I shall yet?"

'I'd cheer for you.'

"You'd be the only one." Conán laughed.

Naoise smiled, and then turned her attention to her books, which were strewn all over the table. She looked depressed again.

"I must be mad. Sometimes I wish I'd never bothered with Uni. I could be working, without all of these essays to do and tests to stress me out."

"Aye, but then you'd most likely be trapped in a job that you hated." Conán said sensibly. "Best put the hard work in now, so you can enjoy the rest of your life."

"Yes, Life Guru," Naoise laughed, and Conán grinned.

"Perhaps I should start up a hotline?"

"All you'd have is me stalking you."

"Ah, well. It would be better than nothing."

"You wouldn't mind being stalked?"

"Well, as long as you weren't sitting there outside my flat with a pair of binoculars, with some hedges stuck to your head."

"I don't think I'd be that bad. Just lots of letters and breathing down the phone."

Conán snorted with laughter.

"That would still be slightly disturbing."

"Did you have any idea what you wanted to do when you left school?" Naoise asked, flicking at a page disdainfully.

"No. Well, yeah, sort of. But it involved moving out and getting out of the hellhole I called home. I didn't really have any academic plans, because I wasn't good in school."

"You weren't? But you sound pretty smart."

"Oh, I wasn't a dunce, nothing like that. I just couldn't concentrate because I lived in fear. You'd be surprised what a crappy home life does to your concentration. I'm sure you've had some experience? Perhaps your parents argued before you left for school or you fell out with your ma, and then at school that was all you could think about?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Naoise said thoughtfully. "But never to the stage that I was terrified of going back."

"That was only the half of it. I dreaded going to school and I dreaded going back. There wasn't really anywhere I could go."

"You weren't bullied as well, were you?" Naoise asked sympathetically, her eyes wide.

"Sort of, yeah," Conán shrugged. "But who could really blame them? My mother didn't give a crap about me so my clothes were always filthy and I was a skinny little rat as well, and I was always caught stealing food. They must have thought that I was a right tramp. There's always something in school, isn't there? They'll always pick on you for something."

"Like my hair." Naoise grimaced, flicking her ginger curls. Conán gave a small smile.

"But I bet if you'd had brown hair or blonde hair they'd have picked on you for something else." he said, and Naoise knew it was true.

"So how did you cope with it?" she asked. "Did you just ignore them, or what?"

"Ignore them?" Conán laughed. "No way, not me. I loved it when they started on me. I spent my whole life being beaten on by my mother and her boyfriends or whatever they were … pimps, probably … anyway, I used to love it. I used to beat the living daylights out of them if they ever tried coming near me."

"You must have been strong for a skinny kid."

"Not strong, just angry. It's amazing what you can do, when you're angry."

"So you took your anger out on them?"

"Yeah. I used to be a professional at nose breaking,"

Naoise laughed, just as someone else turned up alongside the table.

"There you are, Naoise!"

Naoise looked up. It was Mary, her roommate and friend.

"What's the panic?" she asked.

"I'm completely stuck on this essay, that's what. I was just sitting there and the more I looked at the question, the more rough drafts of my suicide note crept into my head and before I knew it I was standing on the edge of the bridge over the Liffey."

Naoise laughed.

"You're so over dramatic, Mary."

"It's true! It should be against the law to do things like this to us, and –" she broke off, eying Conán with interest. Conán found himself glaring, not realising that he was doing so. She looked like the girl he had strangled when he was seventeen. She looked like his mother.