When You Wake up and Scream

Conán had been sixteen and new to the streets. He had run away only a month before and had been living rough, scrounging what he could, stealing anything else he could get his hands on, and praying that he wasn't discovered and somehow returned to his mother. He had been standing huddled in an alleyway, shivering and blowing on his hands in a desperate attempt to keep warm. It was in the minuses tonight, and one of the coldest winters Ireland had been through in a long time.

"You cold there, kid?"

Someone spoke from behind Conán and Conán had jumped a mile. The sixteen-year-old had only been on the streets for a month but he knew how it worked. Never trust anyone. People always want something back. No such thing as a free lunch.

The man who had appeared beside him was older than him, looking in his mid thirties. Conán took a step away from him.

"What's wrong with you, kid?"

"Nothing. I don't like talking to people I don’t know, that's all."

"What's your name?"

"Why?"

"You look awful young."

"I am."

"What's your name?"

Conán told him a false name, as he always did. He said his name was Patrick, and used his mother's surname. He may hate his mother, but it was her name that would keep him away from her if anyone turned out to be an undercover police officer, on the rare chance that he was reported missing.

"You should get out of the cold, Patrick. It's going to get to minus seven tonight. You'll catch your death."

"I'll be fine."

"I don't think you will."

"I will."

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Much too young to be on the streets."

"Look, are you going to tell me what you really want, or are you going to continue beating around the bush?" Conán suddenly burst out, his eyes flashing. The older man smiled.

"All right, you've got me."

Conán had never gotten a chance to react. The man had swung something hard at his head, and the next thing Conán knew he had been coming round sprawled on the floor of a bedroom in someone's flat. Conán never found out what happened during those several hours of blackness, but he never had any desire to find out, and never had any doubt that it had been bad.

Conán had gotten shakily to his feet and crept to the door of the bedroom, poking his head out. The flat had been quite like the one that he acquired as an adult, so the living room was directly in front of him with the kitchen visible to the left. It had been deserted, and so Conán had hurried quickly over to the door and tried it. To his delight and disbelief, it was open.

Conán's hand had only begun to pull the handle down properly to open the door when someone grabbed him from behind, clamping a hand over his mouth. He had been in the bathroom, and Conán hadn't been quiet enough. Conán had put up a fierce struggle but the older man had been to strong for him. Conán had been thrown to the floor and kicked viscously in the head, knocking him into a daze.

Looking back, Conán knew that this had been the deciding point, where he had come face to face with what he was to become. As he lay dazed on the floor, the other man had put his hands around Conán's throat and tightened his grip. Conán distinctly remembered struggling wildly, before he had made a strange choking noise and gone limp. He had thought he was surely going to die, he could feel himself getting weaker, and he had forced his eyes open believing that it was going to be his last look on the world. He remembered his would-be killer's eyes perfectly, the way they had bored into him, so intense and blue. Conán didn't want to die. He didn't want to be a victim again. He had done the only thing he could have done.

Rolling his eyes back, Conán had closed his eyes and gone limp, holding what little breath he still had. It had been this experience that had taught him to always hang on for a while longer when he began his own career in killing, as the other man had let go of the seemingly dead teenager a couple of second afterwards. Conán had allowed him self to thud the few inches to the ground, and lay there still and sprawled out, his eyelids carefully free from flickering. He felt himself get dragged and pulled up onto the sofa, and then footsteps had walked away, allowing Conán to breath again.

Conán had lay there feigning death, for several hours, marvelling that it wasn't noticed that his body was still warm. The other man sat close to him the whole time, occasionally stroking his hair or shifting him slightly, and get didn’t notice that Conán was still warm to the touch. From the sounds of things, from the way the man was talking to himself, he wasn't exactly all there anyway.

Conán had seized his chance when the man had gone out. He had run from the flat and carried on running all around the city for most of the night, too terrified to stop, even considering going home. He couldn't shake he feeling of the man's rough hands around his throat, choking the life out of him, the feeling of helplessness …

The news reported the man's disappearance, and Conán smiled to himself, watching to short story run a couple more times before he switched off the television and stood up, stretching. He wondered what had ever happened to the man who had almost strangled him to death four years ago. He was probably in jail for something else, Conán reckoned.

Conán went to the freezer and opened the bottom drawer.

"All right, Steve, my man?" he asked the head, which stared at him with glassy and unseeing eyes. Conán read something else in his look. "Don't look at me like that. I know it must get dull in there, all by your lonesome. I try to take you out as much as possible but with Naoise around a lot, it got a little tricky. What do you mean you don't like Naoise? You'd better, because I might happen to love her. Oh, all right. How's this?"

Conán opened the middle drawer and rooted through the fresher body pieces, which were only semi-frozen at the moment. He found the other head and put it into the drawer beside Steve.

"Steve, meet Tom. Tom, Steve. You two get to know each other,"

Conán shut the freezer door and looked around himself, feeling bored and starting to hear the call to kill again. He was slightly worried, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the urge was coming back so quickly and just as strong as it had been before the last killing. He remembered when he would have been able to satisfy the urge for a while, but now there was no more of that. Sighing slightly angrily, he shoved his feet into his shoes and went out for a walk.

Dublin seemed strangely empty without the promise of a flash of bright red hair. He wondered what Naoise would be doing. It was getting towards morning, and so Conán knew she had probably already left. In the back of his mind he knew he was scouting for a victim, but he was pretending that he was just thinking.

He was in luck, as the next opportunity presented itself in the form of a man speaking to him. He didn't look homeless, just drunk. Conán, who was still slightly tipsy himself, deliberately made himself out to be drunker, so as not to arouse the man's suspicions.

"You don’t have any money on you, do you, mate?" the other man asked Conán, who looked at him with realistically unfocused eyes.

"No, why?" Conán enquired.

"Need more money for booze, you know? I already spent it all and the night is still young."

"It's nearly seven in the morning."

"I know. Great, isn't it?"

"Good party you were at, then?"

"Excellent."

"What was the celebration for?"

"Mate's birthday."

"Brilliant."

"Don’t want to stop drinking yet, though, you know?"

"I don't have that problem tonight. I got myself plenty at home," Conán said, sounding as though he was just passing a comment but hoping he knew where the conversation would lead.

"Lucky git."

"Why don't you come back and have some?"

Conán knew that, with a sober person, the idea would never work, but the man was suitably drunk and accepted without question. Conán smiled triumphantly, his eyes glinting.

Conán kept up his casual but drunken demeanour as they got back to the flat.

"You like whiskey?" he asked the other man, who had identified himself as Gerald.

"Of course I do!"

"Good, because I've got plenty of that."

Conán waved Gerald over to the sofa and went into the cupboard where he kept his alcohol, bringing over the whiskey and brought it over to the table with a couple of glasses.

"You live here all by yourself, eh?" Gerald asked.

"Yeah, it's just me at the moment,"

"You not get lonely?"

"A little, aye,"

"That why you asked me back?"

"Yeah, I figured you seemed an all right guy. You don't get many who would accept the offer, nowadays, you know?"

"Well, you never know who you can trust, do you?" Gerald shrugged. "I'm taking a risk just by sitting here,"

"Yeah, you probably are,"

There was a slight hint of threat to his words, but as Conán had planned it went straight over Gerald's head. Conán had wanted to enjoy the moment by himself.

"Not got a girl in your life?"

"Well, there's one," Conán smiled, and it was a genuine smile. Gerald noticed.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Her name is Naoise. She's pretty special,"

"Naoise? I always thought that was a bloke's name?"

"Don't let her hear you say that. It's been used as a girl's name for a while. Do you not think it sounds more girly?"

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" Gerald agreed, nodding. "So, what do you do for a living?"

"Not much," Conán snorted. "I'm an odd-jobs man, but there's been absolutely no work whatsoever at the moment. The last job I had was just a lighting problem, and that didn't pay much."

"So how do you keep this place?" Gerald asked, signalling around himself at the flat, the things in it (most of which was new, thanks to Conán's discovery on one of his victims), and the whiskey.

"I came into a bit of money," Conán said vaguely.

"Family member die?"

"Family friend."

"That was lucky, in a strange way."

"I didn't really know him, though I'm grateful to him for the money," Conán found the lying very easy.

"A bonus if you didn't know him. That way you don't have to be sad."

"That's one way of looking at it. Though you've got to wonder why he left so much to me when he never knew me."

"Are there many others in your family?"

"No. That's probably why, actually,"

The TV was on, and the brief silence came just as the story of the latest disappearance was playing.

"Gardai claim that the recent disappearance of twenty-seven-year-old Jack Donnelly is related to the other similar disappearances and murders currently taking place in the city. Despite a campaign since the disappearance of Andrew Meehan, twenty-nine, there have been no leads to the culprit. Garda Cillian McAfee, who is leading the investigation, had these shocking words to say only moments ago:

"'It is a regret to see another disappearance coming so close to the many others like it, and now we are forced to accept that the murderer and abductor is the same person. The culprit displays the characteristics of a serial killer, and so we have reason o believe that he operates alone. Again, I cannot begin to emphasise how important it is to take necessary precautions. Do not travel alone. Do not travel at night unless it's absolutely necessary, such as in an emergency, and bring someone with you, or take a car. The culprit is a highly dangerous person, probably male, and has proved his capability to operate without detection. Please, do not become another number.'"

Conán's eyebrows were slightly raised as the story ended, his heart fluttering excitedly under his ribs. The whole thing thrilled him greatly. Just the mere thought that a whole city was beginning to tremble with fear because of him was as good as ecstasy in his eyes, though there was still the tiny voice at the back of his mind which told him to not get full of himself, to be careful, don't let it get to your head. Enjoy it, but don't believe your own ego …