When You Wake up and Scream

He had spotted her in the park. It had been the middle of the night and no one had been around. He knew what had drawn him to her – she looked like his mother. Conán would never forget the rage he felt as he saw the same lank mouse-coloured hair and grey eyes that had looked upon him with disdain. Conán had been homeless at the time, and looked filthy and shabby when she had seen him. Chances were she was a hooker, but she still had looked better kept than Conán did.

Conán had walked slowly as she walked towards him, looking uneasy about having to pass him. He had stepped to the side to let her pass, and as she dodged round him with a half glance and a slight shudder he had made his move. He had stepped out behind her from where she walked on the leafy path between the lines of trees and grabbed her from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth. She had struggled hard, Conán remembered clearly how difficult it had been to keep a hold of her and pull her behind the trees and into the shadow of the leaves and bushes. There, he had pulled her down and hit her with a large rock until she fell to the floor, dazed and no longer screaming.

He had looked at her for a while, marvelling at how like his mother she looked. She had looked fearfully up at him the whole time, her eyes teary, but it had stirred no emotions in Conán.

"What do you want?" she had asked, her voice strangely high and blood running down her face from where the rock had cut her head.

"Shut up." Conán had muttered. He didn’t want to speak to her. He hated her.

"I haven't done anything!"

Conán had hit her again with the rock, and she had screamed. Conán clamped his hand over her mouth and shook her.

"SHUT UP!" he barked.

"Why are you doing this?" she had whimpered, when Conán had moved his hand.

"You look awful like someone I used to know," he had told her, and she had shaken her head.

"I don’t know you! Please, let me go!"

"I know you don’t know me, but in my head I'll settle the score, eh?"

She wouldn't have had a single clue as to what Conán had been on about, but this hadn't mattered to him. He understood what he meant, and that was all that mattered. She knew that her begging wasn't making any impact on Conán, and so she had started to scream and struggle again. Conán had hit her again, before he had had enough of her begging and whimpering. He had dropped to his knees beside her and pressed her to the floor, clamping his hand back over her mouth as she tried to scream again. She had kicked out at him then, narrowly missing him and succeeding in biting his hand, which only angered Conán more. Having pain inflicted on him by someone who looked so much like his childhood tormentor had pushed him over the edge, and he had angrily pressed his right hand down against her throat and held it there until her struggles had become weaker. Then, when she was unable to scream, he had moved his other hand onto her throat as well, and he had squeezed until he felt her head fall limply towards the ground, and the hand that had been gripping his arm thudded to the floor.

Conán had sat there for quite some time looking at the dead girl. She looked peaceful, just as though she were asleep. The only evidence suggesting otherwise was the fact that her cheeks were wet with tears. Tears of sheer terror.

He remembered watching the light go from her eyes, and he had gotten a strange rush from it. He had only realised hat he had been holding his breath, and he let it out in a shuddering sigh, breathing heavily, and then he had smiled.

This had been Conán's first murder. He had been seventeen years of age.

*

Conán didn't have work the next day. He was only an odd-jobs man, and his work was usually little and often. However, it was becoming a lot more infrequent now. He didn't really care. He was prepared for anything in life, and his landlord wasn't exactly with it. The man was elderly and slightly bonkers, and Conán could usually fool the old man into thinking he had already paid, or owed him less that he did really.

Today meant, then, that Conán could do what he liked to do best in a day – steal some whiskey and dander around the city getting drunk and watching the world go by.

An expert shoplifter by now, as he had been stealing food since he was knee-high and alcohol since he had been about six, Conán had thieved the alcohol in record time from a nearby shop and walked casually down the street, taking it out of the inside of his jacket when he reached the crowded O'Connell Street, where he had scared the wee girl from earlier.

The bottle was only a half-bottle of Power's, but it would do him, as he hadn’t eaten for the past couple of days. Eating wasn't something that interested Conán, and he had been known to go for periods of five days without eating a single bite. Even longer, on one occasion: just after moving into his tiny flat he had caught once of the worse cases of flu that, in his opinion, mankind had ever experienced. He hadn't eaten for two weeks, and had been in a state of unconsciousness when his landlord finally let himself in and phoned an ambulance for him. The doctors said that a day or so more and Conán would have been dead, as he had no strength, but this hadn't bothered Conán. Dying wasn't something that had ever bothered him. It fascinated him, if he were honest.

Both of these things also stemmed from his awful childhood. His mother had delighted in starving him, and it was her sadistic pleasure that had led her to eating full meals in front of her skinny son. Conán knew the price for scrounging food out of the bin, as well – a hefty beating. Dying was another thing he had come to accept from a very young age – ever since he had wished he could murder his mother. She was forever talking about death to her son, either wishing him dead or telling him that he would be going straight to Hell. Hell didn't bother Conán – it was built into him that he was going there and to be quite honest, he didn't care. Bring it on, was Conán's philosophy in life. Thinking back to his childhood, Conán couldn't count the times he had come directly into contact with death himself. Three of his mother's boyfriends had died in the house because of an overdose, and Conán had either been in the room when it happened or discovered the body. This had lead his mother to believe that Conán was the devil child, and every single time this had happened Conán had been forced into a bath of freezing cold water and scrubbed to within an inch of his life with a scouring pad. He still had scars on his back. It had always been worth it, in Conán's eyes. He had secretly enjoyed finding the bodies. He had liked to stand over them, and pretend that he had killed them.

People were giving Conán dirty looks as he walked down the street swigging from his bottle of whiskey. He didn't care. He liked to childishly stick his tongue out at them and watch the outrage on their faces. He envied the children – their mothers herded them away from him so they obviously were looked after. This was something Conán had never had.

'Hello,' Conán muttered to himself, as he looked up ahead of him again. There was someone very familiar sitting under the portico of the General Post Office just ahead of him, and although he had seen her only briefly and in the dark, Conán never forgot a face. It was the girl he had seen the night before. He didn't know what it was, but something was drawing him towards her. She looked up when he stopped by the column she was sitting on the base of. There was a brief moment where her eyes were blank, and then recognition flickered across her green eyes and she frowned.

"It's you." she stated, flicking her auburn hair over her shoulder. It was a dark shade of auburn, and very curly. With her green eyes, she looked exactly like how a tourist would picture a stereotypical Irish girl. Conán laughed at the thought and she looked at him weirdly. "What are you laughing at? Oh! You're drunk, aren't you?" she said it with disdain as she spotted the whiskey bottle in Conán's hand.

"Nice to see you again too, lass."

"What do you want?"

"Just making sure you're still alive after your early morning gallivanting." Conán grinned. "I heard that there was trouble."

"That's no grinning matter, is it, a murder?"

"Depends on who's killed."

She looked horrified.

"That's an awful thing to say!"

"Not really."

"I think I'm going to go now."

"You're not even going to tell me if you've a pretty name to match that pretty face?" Conán sniggered. She rolled her eyes and snorted rudely.

"Please!" she muttered, picking up several shopping bags and standing up. Conán trotted along beside her, knowing he was being infuriatingly annoying, but not exactly caring. He enjoyed her annoyance.

"Go on. What's so bad? A stranger's only a friend you haven't met yet."

"That's the biggest load of crap I ever heard."

"That's not nice."

"Would you mind not talking? You stink of whiskey."

Conán breathed out on her and she stopped, dropping one of her bags as she slapped him. Conán backed off a bit, laughing.

"Feisty, aren't you, cailín?"

"Damn right I am, and next time I'll kick you where it hurts."

He let her walk a few paces away, and then he caught up with her again, falling into step beside her.

"Would you go away? I don't want people thinking that I know you."

"You do know me!" Conán said, loudly and clearly, as they passed a small group of elderly folk chatting. They looked disapprovingly at the young girl. She rolled her eyes.

"I don’t know him." she told them. "He's just an annoying drunk." She glared at Conán as she said the words.

"She loves me really."

"Urgh!" she exclaimed, stalking off. She got a head start on him as Conán had to wait for a bus to drive across the road before he could follow her. As he reached the other side of the road, he could just see the top of her head, made clear by the sun catching her hair and making it shine a vivid red for a second, before he saw her disappear through the archway into the grounds of Trinity College.

"Damn it." he muttered. His fun would have to be over for now.