When You Wake up and Scream

He was watching TV with his bottle of Vodka when he heard footsteps on the stairs, and the murderer within him knew instantly that it was the police. Conán almost felt the killer in him come to the surface – he was the guy Conán needed to be able to get away with what he had done. Conán the average guy would slip up. Conán the killer was cool, calculated, an excellent liar, he wouldn't slip up.

Conán answered the door straight away when it was knocked upon. He raised his eyebrows when he saw that it was Detective McAfee himself, along with a few others.

"So, to what do I owe this pleasure?" Conán asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Come to check out the crib?"

"That's exactly it, Conán," Detective McAfee replied, unfazed. "I'm sure you'll have nothing to hide."

"Nothing at all, though I'm sure you'll have a search warrant? Because I'm not letting you in otherwise."

Detective McAfee showed Conán the relevant document, and, slightly disappointed that he couldn't keep them on the doorstep, Conán moved aside and let them in.

"It shouldn’t take you long, I don't have much," Conán called to them, sitting casually on the sofa again. One of the officers stayed with him, keeping an eye on him, but it soon became apparent that the young man was very relaxed.

It wasn't long until Conán knew that he was in for a bit of questioning, but he had prepared in advance, almost knowing what was going to happen that night. Upon entering the bedroom, the first thing that Detective McAfee noticed was the two skulls sitting in plain view on the bedside cabinet. He was unaware that Conán had only moved them there half an hour before, so he didn’t know that they had previously been hidden in he chest of drawers. He stopped and looked at them in amazement for a brief second.

"You all right, Cillian?" his colleague asked him.

"Look at that," Detective McAfee said slowly, pointing towards the two skulls, sitting side by side.

"Jesus, you don’t reckon they're real, do you?"

"Even if they're not, why would anyone have two skulls sitting in their bedroom right beside the bed? It's not what I'd want to fall asleep and wake up looking at!"

Detective McAfee walked over to them, but he saw that there was something not quite human about them. They were too smooth and much too shiny, and as he got closer he realised that the black lines on them were not cracks, as he had first thought, but carefully drawn and neat black ink lines. He carefully picked one of them up and had a look at it. It was unnaturally clean.

"Let's go and ask our friend Conán about this, shall we?" he asked, carrying the one he was holding out of the room.

Conán looked up expectantly when he re-entered into the main flat.

"Find anything interesting?" he asked, as though addressing a best friend.

"You have a strange choice of decoration, don't you, Conán?" Detective McAfee asked, holding up the skull. He observed Conán's face, but it aroused no suspicion. Conán smiled, as though someone had just found his favourite book after it had been missing for a while.

"Ah, look at that. It's interesting, isn't it?" Conán got up and took the skull from Detective McAfee's hands, holding it up and looking at all the lines on the top, drawn on so smoothly and carefully that it looked as though a machine had done it. "They're Naoise's," he explained. "For her Psychology."

"Why do you have them?"

"I love them, I think they're fascinating. Look at this one here, see the mark on the back? It's meant to look like he's been in an accident, see where the material looks fused? That represents a near-fatal accident. If you look at the other one in there, there's no mark at all on the back. She uses these lines across the skull – they represent the areas of the brain – to write a piece on how it would affect the mind. You can see here that memory would be affected, Naoise told me this line here represents an area of the brain which deals with your long-term memory, and here she says there's an area which almost sorts the information out … the hippocampus, or something. She said it's proved to have something to do with memory, so chances are he'll be introducing himself every ten seconds for the rest of his life."

Conán knew before he had finished speaking that he had pulled it off. He handed the skull back to Detective McAfee. Conán knew that the detective suspected something, but he had deliberately prepared the skull so there was no proof whatsoever to assume it was human. It had a shiny, glazed look to it, as Conán had used varnish on it, and it gave the skull the impression of looking almost as though it were made out of plastic. There was no trace of anything human left on either of them, all of the flash and blood and brains had been cleaned away, leaving them in prefect condition. Conán was proud of his work, it hadn't been hard the fake enthusiasm when he had seen it.

The rest of the search passed uneventfully, and Conán sat on the sofa, privately basking in his victory, smiling on the inside at the fact that they were sitting in a room with a young man who had killed thirteen people, eleven of them in the past few months, and there was nothing they could do about it.

"You done yet?" he asked casually, when he was sure that there was nothing else to be checked over in the flat.

"You're not making it easy for us, are you, Connolly?" Detective McAfee asked.

"Connolly now, is it?" Conán chuckled.

"Yes, it is, Connolly. I don't know what game you think you're playing, but you'd better give it up, yeah? You're hiding something, and I'm going to find out what it is."

Conán stood up and glared at him.

"If you're going to come around here and start playing the blame game, then you can get the Hell out, all right? Do you get some sort of sick, sadistic satisfaction from this, do you? Coming in here and victimising me? Look around you! Do you not think my life is crap enough without you coming around here and accusing me of being a serial killer? If this gets out then I'll never be able to do anything – I need to be looking for a new job but with this attached to me, do you think I'll get one? Just lay off, all right, and go out there and catch the real guy, because he's laughing at you right now, boys, he's laughing at you!"

The young man who now stood before Detective McAfee was very different to the man who had stood before him when the door had been open. Conán's eyes were flashing dangerously, his fists were clenched by his side and he was breathing heavily, glaring at them all in turn. Detective McAfee could almost feel the anger radiating off the young man, and there was a part of the detective which told him that the face he was looking at had been the last thing several people had seen, and if the murderer's personality was anything to go by, Conán's face would have looked just like it did now.

"You need to calm yourself down, Mr. Connolly," he said calmly, not rising to the anger.

"I'll calm down when you get out!"

"If you give us a minute, we'll be on our way. I just want to ask you a few things, Mr. Connolly."

"What? Like where the bodies are?"

"You'll only incriminate yourself if you carry on this way."

"I've nothing to incriminate myself for."

"How many people have been killed, Conán?"

Conán spotted the trick.

"I don’t know. Loads of them are missing, what's to say that they're not still alive?"

"You were pretty much convinced the last time we spoke together that they were all dead. How many do you reckon it is?"

Conán worked it out.

"It could be up to eleven."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. If Naoise's told you about the stupid slip of numbers and you're trying to get something on me, you'd best give up, because as far as I know, it's eleven."

Detective McAfee was a little annoyed that Conán had sussed out what he had been doing. He hadn't realised that the young man was, in fact, clearly quite intelligent. He was certainly streetwise, at any rate.

"You know that if you are up to anything, Conán, we'll find out?" he asked the man in front of him instead, watching him with eyes that saw everything.

"On your bike."

"Just a word of warning. We'll be off now, but I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon."

"Have fun with that," Conán slammed the door shut behind them when they left, instantly grinning in triumph as soon as he was unable to be seen doing so. He couldn't believe his plan had worked!

He caught sight of himself in the mirror in the bathroom, and grinned.

"Now we're talking, Conán," he muttered to himself. "Now you're thinking like a killer."

*

Only a couple of hours after the police left the flat saw Conán standing in his living room, looking down onto the unconscious body of who was going to be his next victim. He was starting to enjoy dragging out the deaths now, making them as long as possible, to prolong the feelings of satisfaction and control he got from it.

The man, who looked only a year or so older than Conán himself and had identified himself as Daly before Conán had attacked him, was now beginning to stir ever so slightly. Conán twiddled the small hammer he held in his hand. It may be a small weapon, but with the force Conán had put behind the blow, he was surprised that the man hadn't been killed outright. Conán, seizing his chance while the man was still unable to defend himself, used an entire roll of tape to make sure that the man would be helpless when he came round, managing this by wrapping the tape around the man's wrists and the leg of the coffee table, so he was sitting against it almost as though he were handcuffed. Then, Conán sat in front of him, his arms hugging his knees and, dangling loosely from one hand, a knife, from the other, a half bottle of whiskey. He watched the blood that was still running from the wound trickle down Daly's face with interest, following it with his eyes and it curved around and down his face, dripping ever so thickly and slowly onto Daly's lap. He was still watching the trail of blood when Daly's eyes fluttered open and he groaned slightly.

"Welcome back," Conán muttered, not averting his eyes from the trickle of blood. Daly sensed a massive difference between the man who had lured him here and the man he saw sitting before him, and if Detective McAfee could have seen Conán's change in personality he would have remembered what he had seen earlier.

"What's happened? What did you do?" Daly demanded, but his voice was weak and slurred slightly from the head injury. He tried to move his arms, but quickly realised that they were secured behind his back. He looked at Conán in alarm. Conán, who had placed the whiskey down in front of him, twiddled the point of the knife gently against the tip of his finger and smirked at the young man in front of him.

"I hit you around the head, mate. You went down like a sack of potatoes, it was most entertaining. So, you're another idiot who goes home with the first person he sees, eh? Especially with all of the horrific murders going on …" Conán trailed off, shaking his head and tutting dramatically. "It's such a shame. You're all dying because of your naivety."

"What is wrong with you?" Daly asked, his eyes wide in horror at the killer.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Conán hissed dangerously.

"Of course there is! You're messed up! Killing people and leaving pieces of them all over the place – and the wee girl, as well! You killed a wee girl!"

"She was a bitch," Conán spat. "She came to me, she came to me accusing me to all sorts …"

"So you strangled an eighteen-year-old girl?"

"And rest assured that you'll be going the same way in a wee while! There's nothing wrong with me, I'm what others made me, right? So if you had the chance to get out of this, you know what you should do? You should have done it already … see the kid walking down the road who's vulnerable and who's got nobody? Don’t gang up on him with your mates, just show a little kindness, yeah?"

"You're a psycho!"

Conán lashed out with the knife, catching him across the chest and cutting through his T-shirt. Daly yelped in pain.

"JUST SHUT UP AND LISTEN!" Conán screamed at him. "You people are all sick, you people who have it all! You're the sick ones! You're the ones in the wrong! You know why? Eh? You know why? Because it's people like you who make people like me! All you do is look down on others, look away from people who need you, people who have had any –" Conán slashed him with the knife again. "person –" Conán did it again. "In – the – world – to – give – a – crap – about – them!"

Conán slashed him with the knife between every word after. When he had stopped talking, both the lade of the knife and Daly's shirt were red with blood. Daly was still conscious, but moaning in pain. Conán moved back slightly, breathing heavily, his heart hammering.

"I don't even know you," Daly muttered through clenched teeth, the pain evident in his voice. "Why do you want to kill me?"

"Because you're just like the others." Conán hissed. "You're all the same."

Conán was making sense only to himself. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t need to explain himself, all he needed to do was satisfy the driving urge in him that was screaming with excitement now. He was past the point where he wanted to just strangle them … he wanted to make them feel the same pain and terror that he had been forced to feel so often, and so unfairly … when he was just a little child, unable to defend himself or make it stop … now he had control, now he had the upper hand, he was the one causing the pain and he had a victim who was helpless, just as he had been …

In his mind Conán saw every single person who had ever caused him pain, or distress, or humiliation, or fear … his mother, all of her boyfriends, the man who had nearly killed him, all the others who had tried to take advantage of him when he had been a street child, all of the teachers who had never helped him and who had ridiculed him, every single one of his classmates who had allowed him to slip off the edge into this world he was forced to live in now … he saw them all even though it was just Daly sitting in front of him, but Conán didn’t know that. All Conán knew was what he saw, and he succumbed to the unconscious rage he had come to welcome and to fear. When he came back to himself, Daly was not dead, but he was close to it, and Conán cut through the tape around his hands, catching the skin many times, and pulled the unconscious man free from the table. He kicked him several times again – the rage inside him still wasn't yet satisfied, and then he dragged him into the bathroom. Conán pulled him to the side of the bath and pushed him so he was slumped over it, and, still breathing heavily and not quite with himself, he knelt down behind him, holding his victim close against him by wrapping his arm around his throat. Conán held on until he felt that the moment of death was soon – he could always feel it – and then he loosened his grip and instead grabbed the knife, drawing it sharply across the man's throat.

There was a lot of blood. A lot more blood than Conán had anticipated, but luckily he was in the right place for it. Of course, as the blade of the knife had cleanly sliced the jugular, the blood wasn't just constrained to running out of the body, but it also was able to spray up the walls as well. Conán didn't care – he was beyond caring. He was still so angry and he just took comfort in watching the blood gushing out of the wound, watching it, unmoving, until it slowed down and began trickling out with less enthusiasm. Conán pushed his latest victim into the bath properly and stood over the body for a while, watching it, and thinking.

Eventually he snapped himself out of his dark and confusing thoughts, and knelt down beside the bath again. He felt himself beginning to sober, but he realised that he didn’t need alcohol to do what he was about to do before. He scared him as much as it excited him – he was becoming desensitised. The more sober he was, the more he would remember … the more he could enjoy later.

He replaced he knife where it had been last and cut the head off easily. He was practised now, and the incisions he made were clean cut and neat, compared to the jagged lines they had been on his first attempt. His hand moved easily with the knife, guiding it, knowing the right amount of pressure to apply, and he watched, transfixed, as he worked. Again, he took his time over it, enjoying the moment, feeling the rage finally run out of him as though it was the blood trickling down the plughole.

Conán used the shower on the body parts, something he had started doing as the jet of water got rid of any remaining blood, making it less messy when he was moving the pieces into bags for storage in the freezer. He knew he could only keep in there until they had frozen, though, he couldn't keep them in there for ages anymore, not now Sherlock was turning up unannounced.

"Well, take this, Sherlock," he muttered, picking up the head and looking down into the face. "You're too late again. Poor Sherlock. Working his ass off to catch me and look what he's accomplished. Nothing. He only frustrates himself."

Conán smiled to himself as an evil idea flickered across his mind. It was sick and dangerous, but he wanted to go further with this. He wanted more people to suffer.