When You Wake up and Scream

Conán Connolly quickly gained a reputation as “highly dangerous” in the weeks leading up to his trial. No one knew why the serial killer – who had been calm and co-operative at the beginning of his ordeal with the law – had suddenly turned into a psychopathic maniac who needed to be restrained whenever the slightest task was to be performed and had to be strapped to a chair in interviews with psychologists and even his own lawyer. Only Conán knew the truth, and this truth, though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, was the fact that this was the only way he could cope with the guilt that was threatening to tear him apart from the inside. However, there was a part of him that he couldn’t ignore, which wasn’t acting. This part (he reckoned that this was the same area of his mind that had fuelled the urge to kill in the first place) was actually proud of his achievements. It bragged about the fact that he had eluded capture for four years, it taunted the police and the psychologists and it went out of its way to terrify anyone who came into his path. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this man was capable of getting to his twenty-fourth victim if he were left alone long enough and in the right circumstances. That was the terrifying thing about a murderer who favoured his own hands as a weapon of choice.

"It’s all you ever ask me," Conán was saying to the latest poor psychologist who had the misfortune of having to work with him. Dr. Carroll had seen his fair share of murderers, having done a stint of work in a maximum-security prison in America, but he had never seen anyone quite like Conán Connolly. "It’s all I ever hear. Why did I do it? Because I wanted to. That’s it. That’s the big secret, yeah? I killed some people, so what? You only have to close your eyes, and just do it. Just keep holding on until they’re dead, yeah? It’s just a life, it’s in your hands, take it if you want, and do with it what you will."

Conán’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, but apart from that he was unrestrained. Conán hated the handcuffs, and they were known to be effective against the violent young man. However, Conán had devised a plan and he had put it into effect that day. By positioning his hands in a certain way that morning he had managed to cause the handcuffs to be slightly looser than they usually were, and he had been tensing and relaxing his hands for the entire interview, unseen behind his back. This had been about an hour and half so far, and now he had worked up a suitable amount of sweat on his hands to begin to think about getting his hand through. He could only need to free one of them.

"You all think that there was some great event which turned me into a killer. Well, there’s not. I used to fantasise about killing my mother when I was freakin’ four years old. So perhaps it was the mother, yeah? But I was probably always going to be a killer. That’s just what I was born to do, cloche as it sounds. I was born to kill. So why don’t you lock me up and throw away the key so I can top myself in peace, then you can throw me in the hole already and be done with it."

This was getting painful, Conán thought to himself as he moved his hands around as inconspicuously as possible. He was getting there, slowly, but some skin felt like it was going along with it.

"Youse just don’t get it. I don’t want to be thrown in a loony bin for the rest of my life getting drugged up and getting ECT and all that rubbish. I murdered twenty-three people, yeah? I need to be locked up, so stop messing around with all these stupid excuses and throw me in the prison cell where I belong."

"So you think you’re normal, eh?" Dr. Carroll asked, raising an eyebrow. "You think that murder and thoughts of murder is perfectly fine, no questions asked?"

"It’s not normal, but it’s not insane. You name me one person who’s never sat back and wondered what it would be like to kill someone?"

"But to go ahead and do it?"

"That doesn’t take insanity, it takes balls."

Conán laughed loudly, his signature laugh that had sent shivers down many a person now. Conán was laughing with the comment, but also with triumph.

The guard outside, who had spent a lot of his time outside Conán’s cell, heard him laughing as well and rolled his eyes. He was fed up of the killer messing around with everyone and thinking that he was someone special. The notoriety had gotten to his head and he seemed to be believing it all, even though he was the one who was supposed to know the truth about such things. He loved reading the details of his crimes and he grinned with pride whenever he was compared to another notorious serial killer.

The guard was just about to descend into his usual thoughts of gagging Conán for a while when he suddenly heard a lot of commotion from inside the room, and without hesitation he yelled for backup and threw the door open.

No sooner had he done so, then two armed Garda officers joined him. They were always on standby when dealing with Conán Connolly, and it was only now that their value was truly appreciated. Upon entering the room, Conán had already darted over to Dr. Carroll, who had been taken completely by surprise, and leapt on him. Seeing that he was already outnumbered, he had grabbed his victim and held him in such a way that they wouldn’t be able to shoot without hitting the doctor. The most terrifying thing about this position was the fact that Conán’s arm was still in a prime position to strange the poor man to death without being able to be shot at. Conán smirked triumphantly when he saw that they had spotted their disadvantage.

"Come on, lads," he said softly. "Let’s put the guns down, shall we?"

"Drop him, Connolly."

"Or what? You can’t shoot me without killing dear old Doccy here."

"We have ways, Connolly, now drop him!"

Dr. Carroll made the mistake of moving even slightly and Conán instantly tightened his hold around the man’s neck. Dr. Carroll made a strange spluttering noise and Conán grinned.

"I forgot how good this feels, you know? I was an idiot for giving it all up."

"You’ve got until the count of three, Connolly."

"Oh, come on, you think I’m a toddler."

"One."

Conán sighed and rolled his eyes as though bored, tightening his grip once more around the doctor’s throat.

"Two."

Conán snapped his eyes back to them and stared at them intently.

"Kill me, then," he said suddenly. "I don’t care! GO AHEAD AND KILL ME!"

"Three!"

Conán tightened his grip even more. There was a gunshot, Conán dropped to the floor heavily, and Dr, Carroll staggered away from him, dazed but alive. The guard grabbed him and pulled him from the room.

"Is he hit?"

"Not sure. Go slowly, keep your gun on him."

Conán Connolly was lying quite still, slumped in a heap, and the two officers advanced slowly, their guns clasped in both hands and trained on the still figure in front of them. He was still and his eyes were closed and free from flickering. With the other officer covering, the first officer bent down cautiously and opened one of Conán’s eyes. He didn’t twitch away or try to blink, but his pupil responded to the light. Before the meaning of this could be processed by the officer, Conán suddenly leapt at him and in a split second had the gun, the second officer fired instantly as it was pointed at his colleague and Conán went down again, but this time he was bleeding.

First thing was first – the gun was kicked away from him and he was handcuffed again, before the rolled him over to see where he was hit. He was breathing heavily, clearly in pain, but his eyes were the picture of hatred and fury. Looking into them, it was easy to see that they were the eyes of a killer.

"Keep still, Connolly!"

One of the officers moved Conán’s shirt up over where most of the blood was coming from, revealing a small, but relatively neat, hole just right of his belly button. It was neat but bleeding quite profoundly. Conán smiled thinly as he saw it.

"You missed my heart, you dumb bastards," he muttered, and then he closed his eyes and remained silent, slipping into unconsciousness.

*

The newspapers lapped up the story with much enthusiasm. It was a story made out of pure gold: Conán Connolly, the notorious serial killer, being shot for attacking two people and getting a hold of a gun.

Conán had been lucky, and the injury was easily patched up. He remained in hospital for a couple of days, however, during which he remained completely silent unless asked a direct question. It was another remarkable change of character – literally overnight the fight seemed to have gone out of the murderer and now he was once more the dejected and suicidal man who had come in on the night of his arrest.

"Suicide by cop, eh, Conán?" Detective McAfee asked him on Conán’s second day in the hospital. Conán grunted. "I’m disappointed. I thought you would have had more balls. You could have at least done it yourself."

It was unprofessional and uncharacteristically cruel of Detective McAfee, but the killer had angered him. All he wanted was to get the young man to trial and get him sentenced, and Conán was making it as difficult as he possibly could. He was getting no response, however.

"So, what now?" he pressed. "Are you going to start all of this carrying on again, or are you going to do something right in your life for once?"

Conán finally spoke.

"Have you not realised? I can’t do anything right. If I tried to hang myself the rope would snap."

"Conán," Detective McAfee sighed. "Conán, I just wish you wouldn’t make this so difficult. Why are you being so troublesome? You were so cooperative when you came in, you couldn’t do enough for us. What changed, eh? What’s happened?"

"I don’t know. I got angry."

"We all get angry."

"I got …"

"You got?"

"I got guilty," Conán eventually muttered, his voice a barely audible whisper. "And that’s why I played up. I thought that perhaps if I did it again and I could justify it, it would take my mind of it. Dr. Carroll was annoying me and those coppers tried to shoot me. I don’t know, all right? I snapped. Can you blame me? I can’t cope with this anymore. For the last month it’s been constant, talking about my murders. I don’t want to talk about them anymore, I never want to think about them again. I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear, and be done with it all. I feel sick when I think about any of it, and I feel even sicker when I think of Naoise. God, Naoise. I loved her so much, you know? More than anything in the world. And I even managed to throw that away. So I had enough talking about it. All I want is to go to trial, get sentenced and go to jail and forget about it. I won’t have to constantly go on and on and on about all these mistakes. My whole life was a mistake, and this is the sorry result. I don’t see any good coming out of dragging out all of these confessions and information. You know I’m going to prison and so do I, so can we just get on with it? I had enough and I got angry and I snapped, and then I didn’t care if I lived or if I was killed after that, so that’s why I let myself get shot. I didn’t really think I’d get the gun and even if I had managed to have time to use it I wouldn’t know how. I knew I was going to get shot and I just prayed that it was me head or my heart that it hit. But it wasn’t, and here I am. I’m done. Finished. I want this to be over. Can you get it over with?"

"We need you to cooperate, Conán! We need you to help us, and this could have been over and done with already, if not nearly done. Instead you’re in the hospital. If you just behave yourself we can get this done with, all right?"

"All right! I’ll just … I don’t know. I just want to be anywhere but here."

Conán’s eyes took on a slightly glazed expression and a small smile took over his young but tired features. Detective McAfee got the impression that, in his head, Conán was miles away. He was half-right. Conán wasn’t exactly miles away – no. He was walked through the dark city centre with Naoise, and they were laughing.