When You Wake up and Scream

"What in Hell do you think you're doing, boyo?"

It was Conán, and he was pinning the man to the floor easily, displaying strength his size didn't suggest, his hands pressed against his throat.

"You could do well to leave her alone!"

"Get off me, you psycho! I'm only havin' a bit o' fun!"

"A bit of fun? Well, it didn’t look like it to me! I'll just say I'm having a bit of fun, shall I?" Conán tightened his grip on the man so he made a strange choking sound.

"Get – off – of – me!"

"Only if you swear you'll get the Hell out of here, or I'll finish you off, matie!"

"All – right,' he gasped. 'Just – get – off!"

Conán, with great difficultly, let go of his throat and jumped up, putting himself between the strange man and Naoise.

"Go on, get out of here!" It had taken all of Conán's strength to let go of the man – he had been tempted to strangle him, but he couldn’t because of the fact Naoise was there. It took extreme self-control to watch him run off. Conán was breathing heavily, wishing he could have killed him.

"You all right?" he asked Naoise.

"I'm … I'm fine," Naoise replied. "Thanks."

"What are you doing out so late?"

"Just walking."

"What's wrong, eh? I can tell you've been crying from here."

Naoise sniffed.

"It's nothing, it's stupid."

Conán raised his eyebrows.

"It's obviously not just nothing if it's made you cry. Come on, tell me. What's wrong?"

"It's nothing big, honest, it's just me being an idiot. I fell out with some friends, that's all."

"Oh?" Conán was watching her with those dark eyes of his, and Naoise suddenly got the strong feeling that he could see right into her head, almost read her thoughts. She shifted slightly under his hard gaze. "And why would that be?"

"I just overheard them bitching about me being my back, and I've never been one to sit there and let someone be all two-faced on me."

"And who was it?"

"Well, it was my three roommates. Two of them – Colleen and Clodagh, I don't really care for anyway, I've never got along with them. But the things that hurt me was the fact that it was Mary who was doing most of the bitching."

"Yeah, she looks like she could be a bit of a cow." Conán muttered. "I noticed in Starbucks, she had cow potential."

Naoise managed a laugh.

"Cow potential? Where did you get that impression from?"

"Well, the way she looks down her nose at everyone with a face that looks like she's sucking on a particularly sour lemon."

Conán did a scarily accurate impression of Mary and Naoise found herself laughing properly now.

"You're weird, Conán."

"No, I'm normal. You're weird." Conán grinned. "So, what are you doing with yourself now? You should really get yourself back to the Uni. Do you want me to walk you back?"

"I'm fine, Conán, I'm not going back there anyhow."

"So where are you going?"

"I don’t know. I was going to go home. Mummy probably won't be pleased, but I'm not staying in the same room with those three again. If I did have to, the place would wake up to a triple homicide."

Conán grinned.

"I can walk you if you want."

"I'm fine, Conán. You should be getting in yourself, in case that bum comes back with some mates."

"That's why I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine." Naoise insisted. Conán tried to persuade her otherwise, but she was adamant that she wanted to be on her way, and so Conán had to let her go in the end, though he watched her for as long as possible to make sure that there was no trouble. When he was sure that she would be all right, he turned back towards the city centre. He didn’t feel like going back home at the moment. He liked the city in the middle of the night, the peacefulness and the way he could stalk down the streets in the shadows, watching but never being watched.

He was subconsciously looking for someone, he knew that, and he soon succeeded in his mission. He walked softly over to the man he had just seen off, the one who had been bothering Naoise, and he stood calmly in front of him until the man noticed him.

"What do you want?" he spat out. Conán grinned.

"To finish the job." he replied.

"Finish the job? What job did you start?"

Conán crouched down so he was face to face with the older man.

"You know the part where I had you pinned to the floor and I had my hands wrapped around your throat and I was squeezing pretty tightly and then I had to let go?" Conán suddenly lowered his voice. "I don't usually let go." he whispered.

There was a moment of blankness on the man's face, before his eyes widened and he realised what Conán was getting at.

"What the Hell are you?" he burst out, trying to shift himself away from the younger man with the strange look in his eyes. Conán caught his arm, however, and held on tightly.

"What the Hell am I?" he asked. "I'm a killer, that's what I am."

Before the other man had a chance to process what Conán had told him quick enough to get away, Conán had pinned him to the floor in a similar position to the one he had got him in earlier, and had replaced his hands in the former position, wrapped tightly around the man's throat. He squeezed tightly, not wanting to give the man time to scream, and his plan was working, as all he could manage were a few strange choking noises before he eventually went silent and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Conán performed his usual trick of keeping his hands in place for another minute or so, knowing that when he was going to have to leave the body, he had to be careful to ensure that his victim was truly dead, and not going to regain consciousness in a couple of hours and be able to identify him.

When he was satisfied that the man was dead, he stood up again and hurried back the way he had come, heading back hurriedly to his flat. He got in and poured himself a whiskey and Coke, sitting down on the sofa and turning the TV on. He wasn't really watching the programme, but he liked to hear the sound of other voices in the room. It made him feel less lonely. He was really thinking about the latest murder. It had satisfied his urge to kill for now, but Conán knew that it wouldn't be for long. The urge was arising in him more and more now. He remembered his first murder – the prostitute who had looked like his mother. When she had died, it had been a whole year until he killed again – he had been eighteen at the time of the second killing, and he hadn't gone out intentionally to do it. He hadn't killed anyone when he had been nineteen, and now all of a sudden, he was killed a lot more frequently. He had killed more people in two weeks than he had in three years.

The urge to kill was with him permanently now, and Conán knew that there was no way to escape it.

He didn't remember any other thought after that. He must have fallen asleep.

*

Conán had been drunk that night two years ago, and he had been thrown out of the pub for starting a fight with another man at the bar. Conán had been winning as well; he was a lot stronger when he was drunk. They had both been thrown out onto the street by the angry security, and the other man had decided to follow Conán and make something of it out of sight of the security.

Conán remembered vividly being knocked to the floor as the man punched him in the back of the head from behind, and he had hit his face off the floor hard. He had been dazed for a couple of seconds before he became conscious of the fact that he was being violently kicked all over his body, and he realised that he was going to have to fight back or be badly injured.

He had grabbed the man's leg just like he had done with his mother all of those years ago and pulled as hard as he could. The other man was drunk, and so it was easy to pull him to the floor. Conán had dazed his attacker – the man had hit his head hard on the way down, and Conán took his chance and pinned the man down by his throat. The man had looked up at him, breathing heavily, wondering what the smaller man would do. Conán had only planned to punch him for a while and let him know his place, but almost before he was aware of what he was doing he had been sitting on the man's chest with his hands wrapped around his throat. He remembered holding on tightly as the man struggled and gasped for air, and Conán had narrowed his eyes and shook the man slightly, tightening his grip until he felt the man stop moving beneath him, and he had gone limp and his gasping had stopped. Conán had held on, looking down at the man's face for a while until he removed his hands from his victim's throat and pressed his ear against his chest. There was no heartbeat.

For a couple of minutes, Conán had been in shock that he had killed another person, until the now familiar feeling of elation had swept over him and he had begun to tremble almost in delight.

He could have sat looking at the body all night, but there had been footsteps at that moment, and he had jumped up and ran as fast as he could out of there.

*