Cruel Pink, Tanith Lee [universal ebook reader TXT] 📗

the crew, whatever they are, are assembled, limbering up. I get the blast of oxygen, and then that goes. Can’t risk oxygen with sparks about.

They had given me something, I assumed, to ease the pain, not that it had much, although maybe the something given it is which enables me to float free inside the pain.

The gang were energetic now. Everybody else in the world stood clear.

I hear a blast of sound, drill-like, or like a gigantic wasp, possibly. I shut my eyes, as I don’t want to watch.

I can see instead, under my eyelids, the stripper-girl’s blue stare, and Forrel’s wet unsober one, and my guardian in his paroxysm of rage screaming What have they done to you? And Max’s wife coughing with her bronchitis which, years ago, could kill people. I recollect the KGB girl with dark hair lurking outside the flats. And the tall young black man with the kingly face.

Pink for a girl. Pink sparks sizzle. Something hurts through the drug, axe-hard and razor-edged. And a man curses.

A waste of time, George said, inside my ear.

I’m not afraid as I slip the leash. “Good boy,” says George fondly, “good old chap.” And dog-like I sink into sleep. What a bloody relief.

Dawn:

98

I was thinking about Brighton—or was it Wales? Of course I can’t remember. I used to like Brighton. The Pavilion, and the pier, the old one, when it was there. Ben used to call Brighton London-on-Sea.

I called the doctor this morning. They said it was very difficult for a doctor to come out to see me. Patients really must try to go to the surgery. It saves everyone so much time. Except for the patients, I supposed, but didn’t say. I said I couldn’t. I was having trouble walking. They said they would see if it was possible he could make a call. When I was young they’d always come. All weathers, all times of day or night. I remember the doctor coming to see Ben. “I’m sorry, Mrs Tawstereries, but I do think your husband would be better off in hospital.” All the old ones knew, when I was a child, that hospital was the last port of call. You didn’t go to be made miraculously well, but to die. I resisted the doctor until it became frighteningly obvious I, and he, could do nothing else. They had oxygen at the hospital, too. It would help Ben to breathe. But it didn’t help him. The night they moved him in, about an hour after, he died.

There was so much they couldn’t do then, of course. Like dentists. I remember that first time I had to have a tooth out. They gave me a local injection—that’s what he called it. But I felt everything he did. Agony. And that was only a tooth. Oh dear.

Jean died too, of course. So did Susan. But I wasn’t with them, we’d lost contact. A niece wrote to me about Susan. I can’t remember with Jean. It’s funny, sometimes I wonder if I made them up, my friends. The way lonely children do. Imaginary friends… Jean and Susan. After I lost Ben. I know I didn’t make Ben up. Ben was real.

It’s afternoon now, and I’ve managed to drink some Marmite in hot water, which is always so comforting. I don’t want to do anything, only sit here. No doctor has come and no one’s called. Will I be able to get to the door if they do? All those stairs…

I keep thinking this same phrase over and over again. I don’t know why, or where it comes from. It’s about being on a train journey, or I think it is, where the train doesn’t stop at your own station, so you have to go farther on, to a bigger terminus, and then take another train back. ‘Unable to stop,’ the phrase has it, ‘having to go all the way in and then back out again’. Perhaps it’s from a book, or one of the short stories they read on Radio 7—no, it’s Radio 4 Plus now, (or is it 4 Extra? I can’t recall. It was easier when it was an entirely different number).

Seven, Seven and Susan. And Jean. And unable to stop, having to go in and then out again… Out again. Or in.

Irvin:

99

When my venerable physician returned next day there was enacted a scene worthy of King Lear, during which he ranted and raved and stalked the entire premises, bellowing for the landlady, who failed upon her cue and could not be found. “What possessed you, Irvin Thessaris, to abandon yourself in such a palsied and verminous stye? No wonder you have gained the state wherein I find you!” But I, being too weak to reply, he quit me, and I thought I should then be left in peace in my Hell to suffer. But no. Back comes he with an army: one to lay and light my fire, another to cook broth upon it. Well, then, only two, but by then their energy and actions filled up every mote of the chamber. There might as well have been two hundred.

“Pay heed to me, Thessaris,” next sternly said my doctor, “you are undone. By which I mean, and here I will not piffle my words, you have been poisoned.”

“I know it,” I said. Or thought I did.

Regardless he plowed on. “There is little I can do, sir, I am sorry to say. For I have seen you at the Obelisk, and though there are actors that better you, you are good enough at your trade, and once or twice you shine, sir, yes indeed, you have shone. I do believe they will not, at once, forget you.”

Although I knew quite well, as I had tried to assure him, I had noted Death’s bony thumb was pointed four-square at me, yet it is a chilling matter to hear some other pass your sentence. It has been only in