Jacintha looked helpless. He craved to follow
her counsel. He wanted to - he frantically wanted
to -
"take her". Yet he knew her blood
was being fouled by something awful, by the
poison she had swallowed. Some insidious venom
was invading her, wounding her flesh and with
each second that passed those wounds were deepening.
Yet his lust for sex was heightened at the thought
of inflicting his passion upon a dying woman.
He felt horrified and fascinated at his own
reaction. Was this some perversion? Was this
necrophilia? Would this depraved evil make him
stronger? Perhaps he would emerge god-like with
her life joining forces with his! He hovered
above her, frozen. Sweat dripped from his forehead
and formed little beads on her pale skin.
Her breathing was growing erratic.
She wanted to die! What could be the problem with death?
Would the cosmos tear itself asunder without her form orchestrating its fate?
Would savage nature grieve? Perhaps the tapestry of space-time would unravel
and the sparkling fabric of galaxies would be snuffed out as her sweet body
smoked in a funeral blaze. He remained still, poised over her, locked in dire
turmoil.
He took his eyes away from her flushed face. For the first
time he surveyed the room. It was bare compared to his autumn visit. What
few possessions were arrayed around the room were placed with military precision.
Such control over her environment from one that did not care if she lived
or died! That little thought, the first casual thought since he had arrived
at Donovan Hall, catalysed his resolve. What was he doing? He was debating
having sex with a dying woman!
He pulled away from her in horror, now lucid in mind. So
he didn't get his fuck! So what! She was fucking dying; she needed him now
more than anyone had ever needed him before. Indeed in life it seemed that
he was never needed by anyone and now this dying angel was in his possession,
she was in his charge! Panicking he leapt from the bed and tore into the corridor.
Naked, he thumped on doors screaming for a doctor.
'I'm a medic. What is the problem?' came a calm but clear
voice behind him.
'Help! Follow me! She's taken an overdose,' babbled Howard.
'What did she take?'
'Pills!'
The young woman, of firm build and assertive manner followed
him through a small gathering crowd. She gave instructions to the crowd, in
his daze Howard didn't follow her words, but did catch something about an
ambulance. Several of the students nodded sternly and hurried away. Howard
ushered the woman into room 2192 and slammed the door behind them. On the
bed was the ashen, naked form of Jacintha in the same position he had left
her. Her eyes were closed and her small mouth gawped as if paused at some
shocking thought.
The woman tilted back Jacintha's pale chin and put her mouth
over her open lips. She placed her hands upon an area of Jacintha's chest
around her sternum and pressed. As he watched these actions earnestly iterated
he repeatedly buried his head in his hands and punched himself in the side
of his abdomen. Flashes of recalled first aid classes from school seethed
through his brain: the stuff with the dummy that he had never paid serious
attention to. He would learn it now! He looked on helplessly and squirmed
at how he had failed her. The room shrank around him until there was just
him. There was no air. If she was not breathing, then what wanton right had
he? He held his breath and shook his head as the agony quickly defeated him.
He wanted to help. The woman seemed to know what she was doing. She continued
to blow air into Jacintha's pale body. His mind dredged up that first aid
lesson at school and how the teacher droned that when breathing stopped it
didn't take long for the heart to be starved of oxygen. What her heart had
needed was love. If it had had love then it would not be wanting for oxygen.
He had given her no love. He had loved her deeply, yet he had not
given
her any. He had tried to take her body and had ended up taking her life. His
fingers clenched as he watched the kissed expirations of the medical woman's
attempts at resuscitation.
He remembered he was naked, found his trousers and pulled
them on. The woman was moving efficiently. She bent Jacintha leg and crossed
her arm over her breasts. The other arm was placed away from her body, which
was rolled onto its side.
Hope. They didn't put corpses on their sides
did they? Wasn't that the recovery position?
He stared into Jacintha's face. At least by her standard,
she looked awful, as if all her natural beauty had been spoiled by some great,
murderous desolation. It seemed to him that this was not the face of one that
slept but one that had abandoned life. The girl that was helping her looked
at Howard and breathed a sigh of relief. Howard did not share her optimism.
At that moment he knew that Jacintha had let go. Bewildered, he mechanically
reached for the remainder of his clothes. Then, when the girl returned her
gaze to her patient, she jolted to her previous mode of urgency. She firmly
returned Jacintha onto her back and again breathed into her upturned mouth
and pressed her chest. Howard noticed the efforts, though controlled, seemed
to be taking on an increasing desperation: a grim desperation. Finally, she
seemed to be going through the motions, as if she was doing all she could,
but without hope.
'Find a doctor!' shouted the girl at Howard as she compressed
Jacintha's chest.
'She's dead isn't she?'
The girl repeated her request, but there was something in
her livid voice that replied,
yes.
Howard took one last look at Jacintha's fallen face and
dashed from and left the room. Outside, assembled students jumped out of his
way. To his right, a couple of students were dashing up the corridor, followed
by a white-clad ambulance crew.
There was no rush now. He turned his back on the medical
team and walked away.
***
*****
***
It was dawn by the time Howard returned to the house and
staggered to his room. The entire time he had been walking he felt numb. It
took several more hours to find sleep. A few times he awoke in a feverish
state and lay fretting for interminable time.
As a token of self-reproach he bathed in cold water. Emerging
from the chill he felt strangely invigorated and this odd sense of pleasure
enhanced his feelings of guilt. In the hallway there was an unpleasant, musty
smell, but of the carcass of the black cat there was no other sign. In the
kitchen he gently placed a couple of rounds of stale supermarket white on
a sausage-fat filled grill pan and lit the grill. He miserably watched it
brown, imagining Jacintha on a funeral pyre. As he chewed he listened to the
mirth that emanated from the lounge. After half an hour of silent, joyless
contemplation he joined the company.
He had half expected a silence to fill the room upon his
entry, as if everyone would subconsciously or even psychically pick up on
what had happened. But no one behaved as if they had missed him; they were
so animated they hardly seemed to notice his presence. He sat down, quietened
the gabbling students and bitterly told a joke about a nun, a priest, an actress
and God.
'OK, right!' screeched Karen, cutting in at the moment that
he had delivered his punch line, depriving him of an audience reaction. 'Actually,
if there's no god then frankly one has to ask what made all this,
you know,
us and, like, the world and stuff? What thing sort of
caused it?'
'Who gives a flying monkeys?' boomed Greg.
'Tell me, what is the
cause?' said Dominic. 'One
might ask, does the deuced shadow of a firing gun cause the shadow of the
victim to fall?'
Gallie had locked onto Dominic's eyes and he seemed deeply
affected. He paid scant attention to Karen as he bestowed his take on the
philosophy of determinism. He explained the arguments for and against and
the implications for freewill.
'There is no determinism as we think of it,' ordained Howard
determinedly. 'Heisenberg and quantum mechanics put paid to
that.'
'Erm, so indeed,' said Dominic. 'That would indicate that
there
is free will.'
'Definitely not. If everything that happens is caused by
rolls of dice, we're not masters of our actions. We could be machines involuntarily
mapping our behaviour onto things that happen to us. Passively. Just because
we think we are making choices doesn't mean that we are. Not really. If you
look out for traffic before you cross the road, that isn't because you are
making a choice based on freewill. It just means that you are involuntarily
taking precautions to avoid danger.'
'It's a bally observation, Howie, but how can it be true?'
asked Dominic. 'You are arguing against freewill! Are you saying that the
blind actions of molecules are causing you to discuss the existence of freewill?'
'It is such a complex process that our minds cannot comprehend
it. So we attach a comforting belief, the belief that we are in control, as
a substitute for understanding.'
'So we are not responsible?'
'No!' declared Howard angrily. 'If I killed you then I would
have done so not out of choice, but out of fate. Everything that happened
in the Universe conspired to cause me to kill you. It wouldn't be my fault.
If we don't kill one another it is only because we are scared of being punished
by society. If we were free from the threat of retribution then we would not
be so moral. We are mindlessly following laws to avoid danger and have sex.'
'Ha ha, Howie,' said Greg. 'This weed is really chewing
up your bleeding noggin eh?'
The phone rang. Karen answered. Howard started at the cutting
sound of that bell. His mind shot back to Jacintha's last call to him.
'Greg,' chanted Karen in a musical tone, 'there's a
Lizzy
on the phone for you!'
Greg barged of the lounge.
'
Sodom and Gomorrah!' he said shortly after. 'Well,
have to dash. She's up for some frigging serious knobbing du jour. Catch ya
later, knuckleheads!'
'Oooh Greg, don't be
too naughty with this
Lizzy!'
chuckled Gallie.
'Galliebabes, we can't
all be good and squeaky clean
like you, sweetheart!'
'I must shoot too,' said Howard. He returned to the solitary
confinement of his tiny room. Knobbing was not on
his agenda. As he
climbed the stairs he muttered to himself about how freewill was a nonsense
concept.
***
*****
***
It was a lovely day, a gorgeous day. Howard's misery lifted
a notch. He entered the corner shop for frozen pizza and crisps. A pile of
copies of the local newspaper, the
Redater Star, lay on the cashier's
desk. On the right hand side of the cover was a large, fuzzy picture of Jacintha.
His already-pummelled emotions were smashed once more. He bought a paper
along with the food. Forgetting the food, and oblivious to the calls of the
shopkeeper, he took the newspaper and walked brusquely into the blinding sunlight.
Finding a bench with some privacy outside the Albert Tavern he read the dreadful
news. It was news, but to him it was old news. He had known her to be dead.
The final time he had peered upon her face, it had been a mask, a mask that
had been abandoned by its owner. However, the newspaper offered a certain
closure. He had believed her dead before, and so his mind had clung to the
faint, nagging hope that he had been fooled again. But there it was, in print.
She had gone. She had been granted the headline story on the front page. Even
in his state of saturated shock, Howard found room for cynicism. Even though
her photograph was blurry it was obvious that she had been pretty, very pretty
indeed. The newspaper also reported she had been a "brilliant" student. The
combination of beauty, brilliance and death was irresistible to people and
hence to newspapers that sought to manipulate them. As he read the article
Howard knew that this would have caused twinges of pity within him even if
he had not known her.
The article mentioned in sombre yet sensational tones that
a "heroic" medical student had discovered Jacintha and had bravely done everything
in her power to save the poor girls life. The article portrayed how the ambulance
crew had arrived as fast as they could and had tried to save her but by the
time they arrived at the scene it was already too late. Tragically, she was
dead on arrival at the hospital. Her family were described as
too distraught
to comment.
The paper presented the medical student as "heroic". And
so she had been. With inestimable bitterness Howard once again considered
the facts in his mind. Jacintha had phoned him, a damsel in distress. He had
rushed to the scene. He could have saved her, but he had been too interested
in... there was no more appropriate way of putting it: he had been too interested
in
fucking her. It was true that he had not, in the end, fucked her.
But he had hesitated for what was probably not much more than a dozen seconds
or so, but it had seemed like an eternity. If only she had been treated a
few moments sooner... He had not fucked her: but he
had killed her.
He,
Howard, could have been the hero in that story, if only he had done the right
thing. He felt enraged and indignant. Even if he had not been the hero, he
had been
part of that story. The newspaper had not mentioned
him: the male student that had been summoned to be with her as she died. They
had only told half the story. He too had a story to tell. But it was a story
of guilt, betrayal, cowardice and failure. His story was the very opposite
of heroic. He didn't save lives. He lost them.
No one knew his involvement, what he did, it
made him think his story would never be told.
He had killed his grandmother and now he had
killed Jacintha. And no one seemed to care.
Like a toxic microbe, he was an invisible killer.
He hit himself in the abdomen with the edge
of his palm, and only stopped when he noticed
passers by were giving him odd looks.
 | | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2003-04-23 17:04:14 |
| | | | |
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