The Killing Hour

Something hard crashes into the back of my head.

My body has taken so much of a beating I don’t even know what the hell is going on any more as I fall to the ground. Cyris drags me back into the light, away from the shotgun, away from Jo. The wire has gone from her neck. On the ground ahead of her is his burnt black satchel, bulging in the middle. The material has taken on a plastic look and the zip has been gummed open. I try to kick him away as he secures the rope around my ankles. He claps the handcuffs back onto my wrists. I try to sit up as he pulls the rope dragging me across the ground. I try to do lots of things but I keep on failing. Roots dig into the small of my back, tearing open the skin. He throws the rope over one of the branches. He grabs it and pulls down. My feet lift into the air.

My world turns upside down. I claw at the roots and the leaves and the dirt, my fingers desperately trying to find purchase, but the ground is hard and offers no help. He keeps pulling on the rope. Soon I’m swinging back and forth in a small arc. My jacket falls over my head and hangs from my arms. The handcuffs stop it from coming off. My T-shirt bunches up around my chest. Now I’m the one swinging, I’m upside down. At least the noose is around my ankles and not my neck. Cyris moves to his satchel and a moment later a can of lighter fluid comes into view.

Oh, Jesus.

The new disjointed grin the fire gave him flashes at me in the moonlight as he points the nozzle at me. Monster or merely a man, nothing human is there for me to lock my eyes onto.

‘How does it feel?’ he asks.

Cyris is holding the ten-thousand-dollar Glock. He throws me another fragile grin. There’s blood on his teeth, and flecks of sand and dirt. His damp hair has been swept back, combed dry by the wind. It’s shorter than before because some has been singed away. His rough beard has melted: the shorter hairs have burned into his skin, the longer ones have formed waxy clumps. The skin on his face has blistered, red in most areas, white in others. His eyes are dark with violence. His eyebrows have gone, leaving two slug-sized patches of rawness. His cracked lips look puffy and charred. His clothes are stained by the fire and by seawater. They are covered in leaves and dirt and sand. Cotton patches that look like medical gauze have been badly sutured to his skin. The handcuffs are gone: he must have a collection of keys somewhere.

I don’t answer. He begins dousing me. I reach out but can’t manage to knock the nozzle away. The fumes make my eyes water. When I look over to Jo she’s just a blur. I bring my hands up and use my hanging jacket to wipe away some of the tears. When the world comes into focus, all I can see is Cyris, and all I can focus on is the joy in his eyes at what is coming.





51


Yeah, he likes it out here, yeah, he likes it out here a lot. That’s why he’s come back, to the home of his failure, the home of his nightmare — to right the wrongs and, this time, this time, there will be no wrongs. He likes it out here, yet he hates it too, because it represents all that’s bad in his life: the wound to his stomach, the headaches, the money that he lost. His mind isn’t operating the way it ought to be; his thoughts aren’t balanced — or are they? Hate and like balance each other out, don’t they? He isn’t sure, and this ought to really scare him, but the night is warm, the wind has died down, the paddock is silent and revenge is at hand. Life is good.

He’s been lucky, lucky, so lucky, and he knows it, really knows it. He’s never believed in luck before, not really, because life is what you make of it, not what it makes of you. It’s skill he believes in, skill he’s lived with for all his years. But it feels good to have something go his way, it feels good to know that something was meant to be, because what is luck other than destiny?

Only problem is his headache is back, it’s back and raging out of control and it’s all Charlie Feldman’s fault. Charlie is really going to pay — big time. He’s going to wish he was dead and he’s going to keep on wishing that. Death lasts a long time, yeah, a real long time, but for Charlie the dying itself will last for ever.

His body is fucked up and he doesn’t know what he’ll tell his wife, because she’ll nag him until he comes up with an excuse, so maybe he’ll have to kill her. But he doesn’t want to, he loves her, loves her more than anything – but not more than her nagging.