Reckoning Point, стр. 32

But I digress, so I moved in with Mark. Nothing really changed, except when I'd finished working I sat down in his chair instead of going home to my mother’s. We would crack open a beer and watch some television, Mark would sit next to me, sometimes he would put his arm across the back of the sofa and I'd fall asleep to the touch of his hand on the back of my neck. It was surprisingly gentle, his touch, not a rough manly pat or slap that I was used to from my Irish friends. At some point in the night he would go off to his bed and I would remain on the sofa. I never saw him with any other house guests, not until about two weeks after I'd moved in.

I came home late, around 11pm, from doing a drop at the Spoor. The house was in darkness, but I saw the small lamp on in the lounge and I barrelled in to give Mark his money.

There was a guy on the couch and Mark was stood in front of him, leaning forward, looking intently at the strange man.

“Sorry, I didn't realise …” I paused; something was off. I meant to reverse out of the room, but my feet kept moving forward until I was stood next to Mark.

“What's wrong with him?” I whispered.

Mark didn't answer, so I too leant forward and peered at the man.

He was young, blonde, tanned and muscled. He looked like a surfer. He was everything I wanted to be, and never would be.

But his gaze was blank, he stared at a fixed point on the wall behind us, and a thin ladder of saliva hung from his Cupids bow lip.

Then I saw the blood, a tiny trickle that made its way down the left side of his face. I moved further around; saw what looked like a bullet hole above and behind his ear.

“You shot him?”

Mark straightened up and looked at me and I shrank back.

“Of course I didn't fucking shoot him,” he snapped. “What do you take me for?”

“But … but, his head …”

Mark smiled, suddenly and he drew me forward, closer to the thing on the sofa. “I'm trying something,” he said, and gestured to the side table.

I looked over at the small table. I saw a drill, a syringe, three metal dishes and a wad of bloodied tissue.

“I'm trying to see if I can keep someone subdued but alive, compliant, if you will.”

His tone was conversational, horribly out of keeping with the way he wiped at his fingers – which I saw now were stained with blood – with one of the tissues.

“Why?” My voice was a plaintive whine, I could hear it, but I couldn't stop it.

He didn't reply and briefly I thought about leaving the room and going quietly into the kitchen where there wasn't a still, almost-dead thing. But I was curious, it was almost like being back at the Halel chicken factory again. A sick fascination.

“What's his name?”

“What do you want it to be?” Mark roared with laughter at his own joke. I'd never seen him even show his teeth when he smiled before, let alone throw his head back and laugh hard.

I blinked, averted my eyes a little so I wasn't looking straight at the sickly thing.

“His name is Smith,” Mark said, quieter now as he studied me.

I nodded, tried for a smile and held out the envelope of money that I'd got from the drop.

Trying for normality, still with my lips peeled back in a macabre grin, I left the room.