When You Wake up and Scream

Conán's mood hadn’t improved when he was released from hospital the next day, and he stalked the streets with another bottle of whiskey, waiting for the sun to go down so he could make his move. He was angry once more with his lot in life, and he wanted to make some others pay. He strangled the first person he saw that night, a young man who didn’t look any older than him, and who was clearly from a decent background from the way he was dressed. Conán didn't care anymore; he just wanted to make someone suffer. He choked him from behind until he fell unconscious and then finished him off in his usual manner, watching the life go from the boy's eyes.

He hurried home afterwards and waited in the living room until the clock read that it was two o'clock in the morning, and then he made his move. If he couldn't dispose of Mary in the original manner, he certainly wasn't going to let her lie in the bathtub and stink the place up, so he re-located the body to the boot of the car and drove her across the city, before leaving her in an alleyway far enough away from his flat to be able to relax.

When he arrived back at the dark and lonely flat, he almost couldn't bear the thought of another lonely night in there. He paced the living room for a long while, debating over what to do, and then he finally took the TV remote and quietly turned the TV on, so at least there was some talking in the room. After a while longer of pacing, he retrieved Steve from the freezer and sat him on the sofa facing the TV. He watched the head for a while, marvelling at how in tact it still was.

To busy himself, Conán decided that now would be the time to try and do something about the heroin rocks he had stolen all those weeks ago. He still had a lot of the money left, but he didn't care for the drugs and he didn't want them in the flat with him any longer, so taking a hammer, he placed the rocks on an old bag and smashed them up into tiny particles of powder. He was thorough in his work, and he was deliberately smashing them into fine powder because he couldn't think of anything better to do when he was finished. Eventually, though, he realised that if he hit them much longer he would be smashing up singular atoms, and so he took the bag carefully and he shook it over the toilet, flushing it away. He washed the bag in he sink along with the hammer to get rid of any residue, and then he placed everything back where it belonged. By this time, the sun was beginning to rise again, and he went and sat on the sofa next to Steve.

'I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Steve,' he muttered quietly. Steve stared at the TV, dull, unblinking, but Conán knew he was listening. 'You must be pretty annoyed at me, at any rate. I'm sorry I had to kill you, but I can't think of anything else to do. You know, it's just something I need to do to get through life. Weird, that, isn’t it? But I have to, something's driving me, and I don't know what it is. It's just for those few minutes after killing somebody; I feel … I feel happy, you know? As if I have some sort of control over where I'm going. But then that wears off and I'm left again with this gnawing urge … this compulsion to do it again, and the whole bloody fiasco starts again. I don't know how to stop. I think I want to stop, I don't know. I just don't know, and I wish I did.'

Conán sighed into the heavy silence and carried on gazing at the television, though he wasn't really seeing anything. Eventually he worked out that it was the news, and something caught his attention there.

"Garda officers have said today that, after the discovery of another body in Dublin City displaying the same signs of strangulation, that the recent murders may be linked. Four bodies have been found within a couple of weeks, one in an abandoned house, and the other three left on the street, presumably left where they had been killed. All four were strangled to death, and Garda fear that their killer may be the same person, or people. They have also mentioned two other cases that may be linked, which are that of Francis Cooke, aged thirty-nine, who was found several weeks ago dead in the city centre with his throat cut and the disappearance of twenty-nine year old Paul Farrell, who has not been seen for several weeks. Mr. Cooke and Mr. Farrell were both homeless, but the recent discovery of the two latest victims, eighteen-year-old Mary O'Connell, who was reported missing the day before, and seventeen-year-old Oran Ross, have raised concern. Garda Cillian McAfee, who has been placed in charge of the case, had this to say.

"'Unfortunately, we now have reason to believe that a recent spate of killings and disappearances are, in fact, linked. We wish this wasn't the case, but now the facts have been presented we would like to ask the people of Dublin to remain vigilant and not to take any unnecessary risks. We can begin to suspect that there may be a serial killer on the loose, and until we can track this person down, we would ask people to take necessary precautions, such as never travelling alone and reporting any suspicious behaviour to the relevant authorities. The two young people found this morning have added another dimension to the tragedy, and we would like to close in on the person without any more horrific losses.'"

Conán was stunned, and then he smiled for the first time in a long time. Serial killer. He liked the ring to it. These people were not just statistics; they were the mark, evidence, of a serial killer. And that killer was him. He turned to Steve.

"Paul, is it? Well, I like Steve better. Paul can be your middle name."

He smiled again. This had given him a new thrill … the fact that people would be sitting in their houses right now, scared, apprehensive, anxious … and it was because of him. He had a sudden vision of the city gripped in fear, all because of him, and he lost himself in this fantasy for several hours until the banging on the door interrupted his thoughts.

As he processed what the sound was, he was gripped in fear. He couldn't think who it was, and the only thought that came to his mind was that the police had tracked him down, that the earlier impulsive killing of the lad had caused him to slip up and leave a clue …

What was he going to do? He realised that he had a severed human head sitting next to him on the sofa and he quickly dived up and unceremoniously bundled Steve back into the freezer.

"Sorry!" he muttered, as he once again caught the head off the side of the freezer. He buried him amongst the packets of food. There was more banging on the door and he called, as calmly as possible, to whoever it was.

"In a minute, I'm getting it now!"

He hurried to the door and opened it, his hands visibly trembling, and he was so relieved to see it was Naoise that for a minute he didn't think to ask why she was there or how she had managed to remember where he lived, and he didn't notice how distressed she was until he saw that her shoulders were shaking and she was hic-cupping with the effort of stopping the sobs ripping through her.

"Naoise! What are you – what's wrong with you?" Conán had never seen Naoise crying properly before, and he had to admit that she looked tragic. He took her wrists gently and pulled her into the flat – she collapsed against him and carried on sobbing loudly. Conán felt incredibly awkward – he had never had anyone come to him when distressed before and he hadn't a clue how to deal with it. He stood shocked for a split second, before he moved his arms around her and gave her a slight squeeze.

"I – I just h – heard," she hic-cupped, when she had recovered slightly. "Did you h – hear? Did you h – hear about M – Mary?"

Conán's heart plummeted. How was he going to get through this one? It had been he who had killed her! This was going to call for his best bit of acting.

"No, I haven't heard anything, Naoise. What's happened?"

He pulled her over to the sofa and gently sat her down, sitting next to her. She was still trembling, but she had managed to stop sobbing.

"You know we had that f – fallout?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, when I r – ran off she c – came after me, and Colleen and Clodagh t – told me that she didn't come back to the d – dorm! So she was reported missing and … and … oh, Conán, she's been k – killed!"

Naoise collapsed into fresh sobs, and, still playing at being the innocent and caring person that he was, Conán pulled her closer to him and held her again until she calmed down.

"Naoise, I don't know what to say," he said to her softly. "That's just such a shock."

"I just can't believe it! I feel awful; it's all my fault! If I hadn't have stormed off, she would never have run after me! And I'd fallen out with her as well, I wish I could have made it up with her before … before it happened!"

"Don't say that, Naoise," Conán told her softly. "You can't start blaming yourself. You'll drive yourself crazy."

Naoise nodded slightly.

"I can't help it, though." she sighed. "I just wish that I hadn't fallen out with her! You never expect it to happen, do you? You're told all of these things about not going to bed on an argument and always tell people you love hem because you don't know what's going to happen … but you never think that it's going to happen to anyone you know! I wish I could go back and not crack up at her … I should have sat down and talked things through with her!"

"What did youse even fall out about?" Conán asked. Naoise paused.

"You." she eventually sighed softly.