When You Wake up and Scream

Several hours later, and Naoise and Conán were more than slightly drunk. In fact, they were close to paralytic by the time the pub closed behind them and they began staggering back towards the city centre. The moon was full and there were only a few clouds, leading to it being a crisp and frosty night. Naoise and Conán stumbled up the street, laughing louder than they should be at the time of night it was and holding onto one another to stay upright.

"I am so drunk," Naoise slurred.

"I bet I'm drunker," Conán replied, equally as incoherently.

"Not!"

"Am!"

"Not!"

"Am!"

"That's because you're a lightweight." Naoise said, giggling and trying to hit him on the shoulder. She missed and stumbled and Conán grabbed her, but as they were both so drunk they both ended up sprawled out on the floor, though Naoise had landed on top of Conán, leading her to realise that the nasty sounding crack had probably been Conán's head against the pavement.

"Are you all right?" she gasped, but seeing Conán laughing started her off as well, and for a while they both lay there laughing hysterically. Eventually they realised that they would have to try and get up, and this took several minutes. Soon, they were back on their feet, if a little unsteadily.

"Is your head all right?" Naoise asked.

"It'll be fine," Conán laughed. "I'll live … it's freezing."

"I know."

"We're going to freeze to death."

"I hope not!"

"So do I! Imagine if you froze into some undignified position?"

"Like this?" Naoise asked, putting her finger up her nose and causing Conán to nearly fall over laughing again. She tried to grab him and fell against him, and it was lucky that Conán fell against a wall, as he would have ended up on the floor again otherwise.

"I'm going to sleep here." Naoise yawned, leaning her head against Conán's chest.

Conán laughed and she looked up at him, grinning, and her green eyes slightly unfocused. Conán lifted her face up by her chin, and he softly kissed her …

The next thing Naoise knew was that she was waking up sprawled in the middle of a bed, but she couldn't remember for the life of her where she was. She clasped her hands to her throbbing head, groaning as she felt the hangover. It was going to be a bad one, and no surprise, really, considering how wasted she had been the night before.

She sat up slowly and blinked in the light, as the curtains were open. There was no one else with her, and she staggered weakly to the window, looking out of it. The street outside was strange.

"Good going, Naoise!" she muttered. "For all you know, you could be being held captive by a psychopath."

She went to the bedroom door and cracked it open. In front of her was a living room, and to her left the kitchen, which was open-plan. To her right there was another door and a bathroom through a door opposite. She blinked, working out that she was in a flat as there were no stairs.

She padded out into the living room and looked around herself, not seeing any clue as to where she was until she spotted Conán sprawled out on the sofa. His feet were resting up on one of the arms and one of his hands were touching the carpet from where his arm was flung over the side of the sofa. He was breathing deeply, still in the clothes he had been wearing the night before, his face half buried in one of the sofa cushions. She crept closer to him, seeing that there was a little dried blood on the back of his head. She winced, seeing him falling the night before in a grainy memory that was hazed by the whiskey.

Naoise sat beside him on a bit of the sofa that he wasn't sprawled across, and gently parted the hair where the blood was. Conán was oblivious to her presence, as his breathing didn't even falter to show he was aware that someone had touched him. There was too much dried blood to see how bad the cut was, and so Naoise went over to the kitchen, running the tap until the water went hot and digging out a bowl, filling it up with warm water. She took a spare dishcloth and went back over to Conán's sleeping figure, gently washing away the dried blood until she could see the cut. It didn't look too bad once all of the blood was gone, only a small nick, and so Naoise decided he would live and got herself a glass of water before going back to bed, hoping that when she woke up, her hangover wouldn’t be as bad.

A couple of silent and hazy hours passed before Conán suddenly gave a snort and woke up, the headache hitting him like a brick wall as he did so. He blinked a few times, still sprawled half face down on the sofa, feeling his legs resting on the arm of the sofa and noticing that the arm that was dangling down off the side of the sofa was numb. He moved over onto his side and waited for it to start tingling slightly with pins and needles.

When he could feel his arm again, he sat up and swung himself around so he was sitting normally on the sofa. He staggered to his feet and over to the sink, gulping down a few glasses of water to ease the feeling in his throat which made him wonder if it had been transformed into sandpaper sometime during the night.

He bent down and rummaged in the back of one of the cupboards, finding some painkillers and taking a couple for his head. It had been a while since he had had such a bad hangover, so he knew he must have been very drunk the night before. He couldn't remember anything. His last memory was of going into the pub with Naoise, and then it was just blackness until he woke up on the sofa with a throbbing head.

Conán leant against the kitchen counter and looked around the flat. It was silent, and he wondered if Naoise had been up yet, as he could see her where his bedroom door was slightly ajar. She was fast asleep, her hair spread around her on the pillow, one arm tucked under her head. Conán had to admit that she was very pretty. He was also glad that the flat wasn't in its usual state of disarray, as he had cleaned it up the day before because his landlord's daughter had been round to make sure it wasn't a tip. He'd also managed to find himself a few luxuries second-hand, like an old TV and a CD player. They were a bit battered, but Conán knew he couldn't be splashing out on expensive new things, as no one could know about all of the money he kept on himself permanently. He would have to get rid of the drugs soon, as well. No one had found the body yet, though, Conán knew that. He knew he would hear about it if they did, as he had clearly been some sort of drug dealer. All of his other victims had just had a small paragraph in the local newspaper – they were all homeless with no family. He hadn't even heard anything about the man he currently had stored in his freezer.

His eyes flicked to the freezer. He was going to have to get rid of the pieces soon, but he didn't know how. He had some idea of how to do it, but he was going to need a car. He couldn't carry them down the street – there were quite a few bags and as the pieces would be frozen solid now, it would be pretty heavy to carry. He could easily afford a second-hand car with the money he had stolen, but he didn't know how to cover up him racks. Everyone who knew him knew that he was an alcoholic bordering on being a bum, and they also knew that he had no family or friends to give him anything or die and leave him anything. Conán had a driver's licence, but he had never had to use it.

Conán glanced guiltily at the bedroom door again. Naoise was still fast asleep – she hadn't even twitched. Conán decided it was safe and he padded over to the freezer, kneeling down so he was hidden from view by the breakfast counter. He paused again, his ears tuned in to any noise, but as here was none; he carefully pulled the freezer door open and began prising the bottom drawer open as silently as he could. Nothing smelt bad, so he gathered that his plan had succeeded in this respect.

He opened one of the bags an inch, not worried about what he would see anymore. He knew what to expect and it didn't particularly bother him. He looked in, his ears still tuned in to what Naoise was doing, and he found himself looking straight into another eye. He froze, his heart thumping madly with what strangely felt like excitement. He glanced behind him and then shuffled closer to the freezer, taking the bag out properly and opening it fully, staring in amazement at the head. It was perfectly preserved, the eyes still open, and as the blood had all frozen stiff it appeared very neat where Conán had hacked it off, though from memory Conán remembered the head being the hardest bit to sever. It had taken him a long time to finally remove it.

His ears suddenly picked up movement from the bedroom. His heart thumping wildly, he quickly wrapped the head back up in the bag and shoved it back into the freezer, scraping the bag off the side as he forced it back in, glancing wildly behind him.

"Jeez, sorry, Steve," he muttered, giving it the first random name that came into his head, not realising how strange he sounded apologising to a dead person's head. No sooner as he had slammed the freezer door closed, Naoise appeared behind him.

"What're you doing down there, Conán?" she yawned, blinking with sleep.