The Killing Hour

Complaining. I hunt through the satchel and find a small hacksaw. I know why he has it – it looks ideal for cutting off body parts. I find it’s ideal for cutting ropes too. They fall to the ground like a pile of intestines. Jo comes forward and hugs me. I let her hold on for a couple of seconds before pushing her away.


‘Don’t suppose you have a set of handcuff keys on you?’

She shakes her head.

I hand her the saw. ‘Try cutting the chain.’

She starts but spends only a few seconds on it before we both see it’s no use.

‘At least cut the jacket.’

She slices the sleeves and cuts my jacket away. It feels a hell of a lot better.

‘Take the hammer,’ I say. ‘I’ll take the stake and the torch.’

‘What about the gun?’

I scan the torch over the ground but can’t find it. It’s just the typical sort of messed-up bullshit that …

‘Got it,’ Jo says, bending down for the Glock. ‘Where do you think he is?’

We both hear a grunt. At the same moment something swings through the night towards my face. The kick knocks me into Jo, who is still standing. We tip over and I land on top of her. The torch lights up Cyris. My tyre iron is in his right hand. In his left he holds the knife. A bloody and shattered grin stretches over his face. He throws the tyre iron at me. It falls end over end and hits me in the side of my head. My legs become jelly and my organs turn to water. I raise my hands to my head but they flop down and land loosely on my chest.

I wonder why I’m lying on the floor of a forest. I wonder who it is I’m lying next to. Above me is a man dressed in black, and I try to ask this stranger for help. I hope he knows what’s happened. This man leans over me, and he looks awfully – like Death – serious. His face is broken and burnt and bloody, and I suspect the same thing that happened to him has happened – is happening – to me. I try to reach up but I can’t see my arms anywhere. Could be they’re buried beneath something heavy, perhaps even beneath the darkness. The stranger reaches down towards me. He’s smiling through his broken face, letting me know that whatever’s going on, things are going to be okay now.





55


His ears are ringing. Shooting stabbing pains travel from each of his broken teeth into his brain. He wants to kill somebody – everybody. He wants to feel death on his hands and doesn’t mind if it’s his own because it will make the pain of failure finally go away. His face is swelling and his mouth is deformed and the skin is burnt and all he has to live for now is revenge.

In his destroyed mouth revenge tastes like bile. He kicks Charlie, good old fucking Charlie, and he wants to kill him right now but he wants him to suffer too, and the best way to do that is to kill his girlfriend. He’ll do that now, do it now and get it out of the way, even though he wants to savour it, but it’s best, it’s best, he knows, to do it now, to make it a finality. His only problem is he’s seeing three of everything, sometimes four.

He wants to open Charlie up from sternum to eyeball with the knife, and he’ll do it too, he’ll do it soon, but he’ll open up the bitch first. She’s lying on the ground where he left her the moment he slammed his fist into the side of her face after Charlie hit the ground. He can already see how she’ll look with her limbs severed and her face all torn open. The thought does nothing to excite him, nothing at all. The entire process of killing her will be mechanical, but at least it’ll be over. Rather than messing around, rather than extending the moment and risking more failure, he picks up the knife and plunges it into her.

Her eyelids flutter open. He studies her face. For the first time he notices how attractive she really is. Why hadn’t he spotted that before? He decides it doesn’t matter. All he needs now is the memory of her pain. She’s looking at him, staring at him, and yet he still doesn’t feel good. He’s in too much pain.

He twists the handle in her stomach and he can feel her through it. He can feel her pain as her body moves beneath it. He has stabbed her in the same place Charlie stabbed him. It’s not fatal, not yet, but it will be. She is a different build to him, weaker. She will suffer first the same way he’s been suffering, but it won’t last long. Already he can feel her life slipping away. The satisfaction he feels is meagre. Meeting this woman and meeting Charlie and meeting Frank are the worst things that have ever happened to him. As he takes his hand away and touches the side of his disfigured face, he knows life will never be the same. He looks into her eyes and he can see her dying, he can see her slipping away. He clamps a hand over her mouth to feel her dying breath against his skin. It gives him strength. It makes the back of his neck tingle, it makes the muscles in his arms and legs quiver, but it doesn’t make the pain in his mouth go away.