When You Wake up and Scream

"Have you stopped seeing that weirdo, then?"

Mary was cross-legged on her bed, the bottom bunk, sticking some things into her notebook where she kept her revision notes. Naoise was at the desk, putting the finishing touches to her conclusion at the end of her essay, books stacked up and some opened all around her. She paused and looked at her friend.

"He's not a weirdo, Mary." she said softly. She was worried about him. She hadn't seen him for four days, and he had sounded sick when he had left. She hoped he had somewhere to live now, as she hadn't seen him sitting around the city centre.

"He is! I could smell the whiskey off him from a mile away, and did you see the state of him? He looks like a hobo!"

"That's because he is." Naoise said patiently, slowly printing a sentence as she spoke. "Well, at the moment he is. He does have a flat, but his landlord threw him out. He nearly has the money to get back in, though."

"You're hanging around with a bum?" Mary snorted with laughter. She was annoying Naoise tonight. Naoise snapped her book closed angrily as she finished with it.

"He's not a bum, Mary!" she snapped. "Just because you and I have had a decent start in life doesn't mean everyone has! I'll have you know he's a very witty, intelligent and funny guy, he's just had a hard lot in life."

Mary rolled her eyes.

"Please," she muttered. "Stop gushing over him, Naoise, he's probably fed you a whole load of sob stories."

"That's right, Mary, because I'm the one who believed that man in the pub was a jet pilot."

Mary flushed scarlet.

"I didn’t believe him!" she said indignantly. "I was drunk and chose to humour him!"

"And humour him you did."

"We only snogged!"

"That's quite enough in my books."

"Anyway, this isn't the point. You shouldn't hang around with people like that. They could be anything – murderers, rapists, druggies, you name it."

"Come off it, Mary, I think I would realise if Conán was out killing people."

"And how would you? Would he sit down and tell you?"

Mary had a point. A shiver went up Naoise's spine.

"He doesn't seem the type." she said eventually, knowing how pathetic the excuse sounded.

"Naoise! You should know from your research it's always the quiet ones. They're either quiet and lonely and sorrowful or what?"

"Or funny and friendly and sociable." Naoise muttered, and then she rolled her eyes. "Stop trying to convince me I'm running around with a murderer, Mary. You're being an idiot."

"That might come back to haunt you one day." Mary giggled, and then she carried on with her sticking.

*

Conán had scored an easy target this time. He had wanted it to be easy, as he didn’t know what he was doing and he couldn’t afford any setbacks. This particular homeless man was drunk, and probably high as well, as Conán hadn't had to persuade him into anything. He had just pulled the man to his feet and led him off without any fuss at all. Conán had already decided when he unlocked the door to his flat that there were to be no formalities. He was going to kill the man straight away and then work from there.

The man was practically unconscious from drink and drugs anyway, by the time Conán lay him down on the sofa. He watched the man interestedly for a while, until the man opened his eyes and looked at him. He looked a little more alert all of a sudden.

"What do you want with me?" he slurred, the drink still evidently prominent in his system.

"What do I want?" Conán repeated softly, his voice quiet. "I just want to try a little something out, that's all."

Conán didn't bother explaining any further. It was the truth, anyway. He darted quickly over to where the man was lying, jumping up so he was positioned on his victim's chest and could press both hands down against his throat with ease. The man's eyes widened and he automatically started struggling. Conán applied more pressure to his throat and held on, and quickly the man's struggling became weaker. His eyes began rolling back and he started making strange choking, gargling sounds. Conán was breathing heavily, partly because of the effort of fighting against the man, and partly because of the excitement he always felt when murdering someone. Gradually, the man became still and his raspy gasps stopped. Conán held on for another minute of so, and then let go, leaning over his victim so his cheek was over the man's mouth. There was no movement of air, and no beat of life when Conán pressed his hand over the dead man's heart. Conán sighed heavily, his breath shuddering slightly, and stood up again, looking at his handiwork almost proudly.

He eventually tore his eyes away from the body. He could quite happily stare at it all day, but he knew that he had work to do. He had been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of days, and he knew what had to be done, but he wondered if he could actually go through with it. He walked softly over to the body and swung one of its arms around his shoulders, heaving the dead man up. His head lolled forwards, and grey-blue bruises had already appeared where Conán's hands had been. They wouldn't get much worse, though, not now his heart wasn't beating anymore. It gave Conán a strange feeling of accomplishment to think about the man's heart sitting still in his chest. After all these years of beating constantly, it had stopped, and all because Conán had decided it should. It gave him a very God-like feeling.

Conán dragged the body through to the bathroom and tipped it into the bath. It landed with a dull and limp thud. Conán pulled it over so the man was on his back, and leant against the wall for a minute, catching his breath. When he had recovered, he thought grimly about the task in hand, wondering if he could go through with it, closing his eyes and searching his thoughts …

"Is that the brat, eh?"

Conán heard the man's voice as he stood in the kitchen, trying to chip the congealed food from the plates that his mother had thrown at him from her bedroom. He felt his body stiffen up in fear and apprehension. He hated it when his mother brought people home.

"Aye, that's the illegitimate little bastard himself. CONÁN! GET IN HERE!"

Conán obeyed automatically, though he wondered why his mother was referring to him by name. Usually, she would rather avoid calling him by a name, as though it made him too human, a trait that, in her eyes, he did not deserve.

"So you're the little tramp that's wrecking your mother's life, eh?"

The man was almost as disgusting as his mother, but Conán kept his eyes downcast and just nodded in agreement.

"Does it make you feel good about yourself?"

Conán shook his head.

"He hates himself, and rightfully he should." Conán's mother snorted. "He's useless. The only thing he's good for is doing the dishes, and even then he can't do that right. He's a thief and a liar as well, you know?"Is it any wonder? Conán wondered, but he did not dare to speak.

"He's awful quiet."

"You wouldn't want to hear him talk."

His mother lit up a cigarette.

"He's scrawny, too."

"He is. You wouldn't know he were twelve, would you? He looks more like six. What are you standing there for, you toerag? Get in there and finish those bloody dishes, they ain't gonna do themselves!"

Conán scuttled into the kitchen.

"What a weird kid."

"Can't even stick up for himself, can he?" his mother laughed, a wheezy, high-pitched laugh that went right through Conán's body. "Watch this."

Conán heard them come into the kitchen but he knew it would be more than his life was worth to make it obvious that he had been listening. Instead, he stood drying dishes with his hair standing up with fear, anxious at what was coming.

There was suddenly a searing pain in his back and he cried out and darted away. Grabbing behind him at his back, he saw that his hand came off bright red with blood. Looking with wide brown eyes at his mother, he saw she was laughing, holding a bloody bread knife in one hand and a cigarette with the other. She had slashed him with the knife.

"Look at that! He just stands there like an idiot!" she said, screeching with laughter. "Come on, Conán, dear, get back to doing the dishes."

Conán had no choice to obey, only to have to dart away in pain when she did it again. This went on for some time, until his mother and the man grew bored and left him.

He stood in the kitchen, gripping the county tightly, glaring and breathing heavily, left bleeding and humiliated.

Conán was blinded by anger at the memory, consumed by it to such an extent that he hadn't realised what he had been doing until he came back to his senses, dripping with blood, holding a large butcher's knife in his right hand and looking down at what was left of his victim – a mass of barely identifiable chunks.

Conán's breath was captured in his throat as he looked upon the scene, thinking that it looked as though it were something out of a horror movie. He shook the sense out of his brain, realising that although the messy bit was done, the job was nowhere near its end.

Trying not to pay too much attention to what he was doing as a way of protecting himself from the horror of what he had done, Conán moved the larger chunks of flesh into their own plastic bags. Conán didn't remember getting them, but then again he barely remembered cutting the corpse up, let alone anything else he may have done, although he became aware of a near empty ten glass of Vodka next to him on the sink, smeared with bloody fingerprints. Now he understood the haze in his brain wasn't to do with the shock of what he had done. He was glad. The last thing he needed now, was a case of the conscience.

The flesh was still slightly warm, and Conán moved quickly, not exactly appalled by what he had done but wanting to get the whole thing over and done with. He was paranoid that someone knew what he had done, and that the Gardai would catch him in the act.

He saved room by putting the smaller bits in together. He had been dreading a certain part of the whole operation, and that was moving the head. It was probably the strangest experience of his life, though he was soothed by the fact that he felt neither guilt nor revulsion, just … a kind of curiosity, was what he thought it was.

The second part of his plan would take a little longer, but he was happy to wait after what he had done. He wanted things to cool off in case someone had seen something, or someone noticed the man was missing. Nobody would ever find him. He was currently in several different pieces in Conán's freezer, but that was a matter for another day. Right now, Conán had some scrubbing to do.

'This can count as my week's exercise,' he muttered to himself, as he scrubbed at the dried blood on the sides of the bath. Most of the blood had run into the plughole, but some annoying bits had dried on and Conán had to be careful not to chip the bath. He knew that any clue could doom him.

Most of the blood that had caked his hands and arms had gone while he washed the bath, though the surviving bits had to be scrubbed until Conán's arms were red raw. There were splashes of blood on his jeans and T-shirt, and he filled the sink in he kitchen with hot water and threw the clothes in to soak it out to make washing easier. Then he got changed into something more comfortable and sat on his bed. From the way his door was slightly ajar, he could see part of the kitchen, and his eyes drifted to the door of his freezer and a strange rush of adrenaline shot through him and he found himself smiling. This was his little secret. No one would know. This was something that only he knew, in the whole world. He was excited, exhilarated, by what he had done.

There was no guilt. He slept easily that night.