'I'm doing that already.'
'Good. Now leave me, please.'
He pushed Lucy towards me, his face suddenly hardened into a frown. 'I'll get you strapped up again,' I said. But Lucy was in the way, and I was walking around her when a sudden choking noise frightened me into stillness. It was Parker. Right in front of me, he had stuck the plastic spoon down his throat. He was jamming it, again and again, deeper and deeper into his mouth. For a good few seconds I couldn't move; the look in his eyes, the sheer pleasure of submission that played there, it rooted me to the spot. Coming out of the freeze, I simultaneously called for the guard, pushed Lucy aside, and rushed over to the bed. With one hand on his face, and the other forcing his mouth open, I tried to make him breathe, to breathe, to breathe again. His right hand had squeezed around my throat. Where the fuck was that guard? Behind me, somewhere behind me, and far, far away, Lucy was screaming.
I got home at eleven, dead beat and frazzled. Lucy was with me. She was showing all the tagging skills of a jetgirl. I shoved her down on the sofa. 'You sleep there,' I said. 'Don't think I'm giving up my bed for you.'
'I don't want to sleep,' she answered. 'It's the daytime. Will Parker be all right?'
'What's all right? We're keeping him alive against his wishes. Is that all right?'
'Maybe we should let him you know?'
'Don't even think that, right? I mean it, girl.'
I took off my gun and mask, and it seemed like I was taking off my skin, so long had I worn them.
'OK,' said the girl. 'This is a nice place. Wow, you've got a TV.' She said it like she'd never seen one before.
'It's off limits,' I told her. 'And I've got the password.'
'Sure. You live here alone?'
'Yes.'
'No husband?'
'I'm going to bed.'
'No boyfriend? Girlfriend?'
'Bye.'
I carried the mask and gun into my bedroom, stripped naked, fell slowly, blissfully into bed. I don't know what I dreamed of. It had been a long, bad night and morning, and I wish I could leave it at that, the night and the black sleep and the end of the story.
Some things you just can't wish for.
I woke up feeling worse than when I'd gone to sleep. I don't know what time it was. I had to shift through several layers of reality until I got the noise fixed in my head, the sound of a television far off in the distance. At first I thought I was fighting some killer ad along the shining pavilions of a golden arcade, Parker at my side; then I was thinking it was all a dream, and how glad I was at that realization; then I heard the sound of my spoiler gun firing in a long continuous burst of static, and I was back in the arcade once again, but only for a second as I caught the last thread of reality. The noise was coming from the living room, chased by a terrible howling.
The blind sight of my mask was staring at me from where I'd left it hooked to the wall, but the gun was gone. That stupid girl
I burst the door open, naked.
That stupid fucking girl was just sitting there, right in front of the TV. She had the gun in her hands, and was still firing it at the screen. The howl had gone from her now, replaced by a whimpering cry. I don't know how she broke the password on the set; that girl always was a mystery. And still she fired. Fired and fired at the golden stairway that travelled ever upwards, unrolling on the screen like an escalator to the sky.
Just kept on unrolling, right through everything the girl could hope to spoil it with.
Yeah. I saw it. I was naked, straight
from bed. And the mask was still hanging from the hook in the bedroom.
'Don't look! Don't look at it!'
Those were the last words I heard, and they seemed to freeze on the air like drops of ice. Everything froze. Everything froze for me.
'I'm sorry,' said Lucy. 'I tried to' 'What?'
'Come back to me, please!'
Moving through slow ice that melted, I came alive with my eyes tight on the screen, where a dancing elephant played gaily. There was no sign of the stairway. Everything seemed normal, perfectly normal. Me, a young girl, a television set. Almost a family. There were no feelings inside me, nothing I could touch.
'Oh God, I'm sorry.'
That's fine.'
'I was trying to kill it.'
'I said it's fine.'
I realized that I was naked in front of the kid. Walking slowly back into my room, all I could think about was getting dressed. I even put on the mask, I don't know why. I put it on first, as though it could still protect me. I went back into the living room, took the gun from Lucy's clutched hands, just as my bleeper went off.
'Muldoon, that you?'
'Yes.'
'You heard?'
It was Gumball, and I could hear his voice clearly, no sticky chewing sounds. I knew it was bad then. 'It's Parker?'
'Yeah. He found a way. You'll want the details, right?'
'No. No details.'
'Right. Look erm shit, I'm no good at this stuff. I'm sorry. Oh shit. Look, they got a partial trace on the killer trans, it's coming from the Ancoats area. We're doing a house-to-house. You up for it?'
'No. I'm going to the arcade.'
'The arcade? You're not on tonight. Are you all right, Muldoon?'