When You Wake up and Scream

"Please let me go," Mary whispered, and there were tears running down her face. She knew her pleas were lost on Conán, though, and she knew that there was no way out. Conán seemed to realise this as he loosened his grip on her slightly, as though sensing that she had given up the fight.

"Let's just get it over with, eh?" he asked her softly. "I wouldn't be scared, if I were you. I've strangled five other people before, and it's pretty peaceful after the initial trashing around."

"F – five?" Mary whispered hoarsely, trying to step back, but Conán tightened his grip slightly. She looked at his hands in horror, thinking about what they had done. Conán followed her gaze and smiled thinly.

"Oh yes. I stabbed a sixth. You'll be my seventh."

"How can you live with yourself?"

"Quite easily."

"You mean you don't regret what you've done?"

"Not at all. Anyway, enough of this stalling around, let's just get it over with."

"Please don't!"

"I can't let you go now, can I, lovie?"

"I … I know. I'm just … I'm terrified of not being able to breathe. Please don't … don't do that to me! Do anything else, but not that!"

"I may be a killer, Mary, but I do have my limits. Strangling is my thing, right? Anything else take too long, and is way to messy."

"You worry about mess when you hack people's heads off?"

"In the bath, obviously." Conán snorted, as though she were stupid to not be able to work this out.

"You'll go down for a long time when you're found out, do you know that?"

"I don't plan on being found out."

"You'll slip up soon! You may have gone undetected so far but you'll slip up!"

Conán sighed impatiently.

"Are we going to get this over with or are you going to carry on stalling for time?"

"I've told you, please don’t do that to me!"

Conán sighed again and muttered something that Mary couldn't work out. He gripped her arms tighter and dragged her away from the door, back to the sofa – she sidestepped the head carefully. He pushed her back onto the sofa and picked up the whiskey bottle, taking another heavy swig from in and draining it.

"What to do with you, eh?" he muttered, and he went back round to the kitchen with the bottle, or at least that was what Mary thought. In actual fact, he stopped behind where she was sitting and swiftly swung the bottle at the back of her head. It didn't smash, but Conán hadn't wanted it to – it would have made too much mess. It succeeded in what he wanted it to do, though, and Mary slumped forwards, completely limp. Conán walked back around slowly, rolling her onto her back and looking at her. She was still conscious, but heavily dazed. Conán smiled softly and slowly, almost caringly, placed his hands around her throat and began tightening his grip. Mary didn't make a sound, and a minute later she was completely still.

Conán smiled again. It was a relief to him … he could never stand the thought of anyone remotely resembling his mother being allowed to live. They all had to suffer for what happened to him … the world had to pay.

Three hours had passed since he had killed Mary, and Conán was confused. He was ready … he had dragged her body into the bath and he was swigging heavily from a bottle of Vodka, and he had the knife in his hand, but something was stopping him from cutting her up. He couldn't explain it. Time and again he had tried to finish the whole job, but to no avail. He was frustrated now, and heavily intoxicated, pacing back and forth from one side of the small bathroom to another, necking back gulps from the glass bottle in his hand, swaying more and more precariously, unable to make sense of what he was thinking. He didn't want to cut her up – there was something barring him from doing such a thing to a young lady, but then he thought about getting caught and he knew he couldn't, and that would be the stage that he would turn determinedly to Mary's still body and raise the knife once more, and for some reason her would look at her lifeless form and see Naoise and fall away from the bath in horror.

"What's wrong with you?" he muttered at himself as he looked into the mirror. "WHAT IN HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? JUST DO IT! JUST DO IT, YOU COWARD!"

Conán staggered and nearly fell, and he grabbed onto the sink with one hand to steady himself, while draining the final drops of Vodka from the large ten-glass bottle he had only opened an hour before. He had finished off the whiskey beforehand, and he knew he had crossed the line. He had drunk too much, but before he could do anything about it the room span violently, and he got the horrible sensation of falling in the pit of his stomach and he was aware of the room going sideways, before he felt a vague and distant thud, as though he were outside of his body, and everything went dark.

When Conán finally stirred and felt his eyelids flicker open, the room was beginning to darken again. He felt incredibly ill, and suddenly he realised that he had taken his drinking too far that night. He had suffered from mild alcohol poisoning before, and he knew the symptoms well enough to know that he was suffering from a more severe case this time. He knew in the back of his mind that he needed to go to the hospital, but he couldn't muster the energy to get up.

He knew he had to, and he forced himself into a sitting position, retching violently as he did so but not actually vomiting. It took all of his strength to stand up, and he was paralytic as he tried to make his way out into the living room. He barely knew what he was doing as he stumbled to the door and let himself out of the flat, and the next thing he knew he was regaining consciousness at the bottom of the stairs. He didn't know if he had passed out and fallen down them, or if falling down them had been the cause of his loosing consciousness, but he was too disorientated to really pay much attention to what was going on. He dragged himself back up and stumbled towards the door again.

*

Naoise was worried as she hurried down the darkening streets back to her house, her head spinning with what she had been told. Clodagh and Colleen had approached her that day, demanding to know where Mary was. It had taken a long time for Naoise to persuade them that she didn't actually know, but when they had realised that she had been telling the truth, they had paled considerably and become very worried.

It had turned out that Mary had left shortly after Naoise, and gone to find her, feeling bad about what had happened. She hadn't returned to the dormitory that night, and she also hadn't shown up for her lecture. That was unlike Mary.

Naoise was so wound up in her thoughts that she didn't realise what she was looking at until she caught right up to it, and then she realised that it was a figure slumped on the floor, and that slumped figure was Conán.

"Conán! You're not drunk again, are you?" Naoise muttered, not in the mood for having to look after Conán again. She quickly realised, however, that something was incredibly wrong with the young man. He was unnaturally still, deeply unconscious. She dropped to the floor beside him and felt for his pulse. It was racing.

"Conán?" she asked, gently shaking his shoulder. "Conán?"

Conán twitched as she did so, and she watched anxiously as his eyes fluttered open. His pupils were unfocused and his eyes had a glazed look to them; he didn't seem to realise where he was or who was with him. Naoise slapped his face and said his name again, but he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were rolling about so badly that Naoise began to wonder if he had been drugged or poisoned.

"Conán, I'm ringing you an ambulance, all right?" she told him. "You're lucky it's always me who bumps into you!"

Conán muttered something slurred and completely incoherent, and Naoise looked at him worriedly as she brought out her mobile phone and called for an ambulance. He was trying to pull himself to his feet when she got off the phone. She gently pushed him back down.

"Stay there, Conán. You've got to wait here for the ambulance."

"Don't wanna … hospital," he muttered, his head slumping back towards the floor again.

"Well, you're going, whether you like it or not. Look at the state of you! This is the worst I've ever seen you, Conán. You're really starting to worry me. How much have you drunk?"

"Not much,"

"Don't give me that nonsense! How much?"

"Bottle … Vodka."

"How big a bottle?"

"Ten glass."

Naoise groaned.

"You're going to kill yourself!"

"Good.' Conán slurred. 'Good, good, good."