“Monster,” I said.
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I was a mess. They were right to feel uncomfortable around me. I would have felt uncomfortable around me.” He stopped. “I did feel uncomfortable around me. There was this one time, I was over at a friend’s place for dinner. Y’know, couples and wine glasses. That kind of thing. I don’t really come from dinner party people, so I was already on the back foot. Then, as I was opening a bottle of wine, the corkscrew I was using broke in my hand. The”—he twiddled a finger—“screw bit snapped right off, still stuck in the cork.”
I stifled a laugh at the image.
“Yeah, in retrospect it did look pretty funny. So, everyone laughed. Only I didn’t think they were laughing at what it looked like. I thought they were laughing at me. So, I threw the bottle at the wall. Red wine and glass everywhere. The laughing stopped. And so did any invites to my friend’s place. I was out of control, and it was horrible. It doesn’t feel great knowing people feel that way about you. And not really knowing how to stop it.”
He shook his head.
“Anyway, so after my ban, I was having to get the bus to work, like I was back in school again. I was so embarrassed about losing my license. I thought people could see I wasn’t a real adult, that I was still that kid struggling under his brother’s pin hold. I kept reading every look as a judgement, as ridicule.”
He stopped and picked at his fingernails. Then after a moment he continued.
“I was at a pub in Glasgow, visiting my sister. While we were chatting, I said to her that I would have to go catch the last train soon. I mean, I’d been drinking. I would have had to catch the train home anyway. But this guy in the booth next to us laughed. Young guy. Shaved head. Track suit. And, I don’t know why, but I just got it in my head that he was laughing at me. And my whole mood changed like that.”
He snapped his fingers.
I knew exactly what he meant. Though I didn’t hear it just then, that high-pitched buzz in my ear never felt far away.
“My sister saw it. I think she tried to stop me, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what she said. I couldn’t hear it. But I remember what I did next. Like it was in slow motion.”
Rowan placed his hand out, gently slicing the air as he marked each of his actions, as if cutting up a reel of film.
“I got up. I picked up the beer bottle in front of me. I raised it up as if I was taking it back. I remember thinking I could make it look accidental, like you’d see in a movie or a TV show. Y’know, where one of the main characters pisses off one of the other main characters and they”—he mimed a slap—“and they say ‘oops, didn’t see you there’. And the other character rubs their head, and the audience laughs and applauds. At least, I think. I don’t really know what I meant or what I wish I’d meant.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I got up and picked up the beer bottle, like I said, and then I swung it at the back of this guy’s head.”
A cricket sang in the grass close to us. Clouds rolled over the far hills. A fly landed on Rowan’s eyebrow. He sniffed and it flew away.
“I didn’t think I hit him that hard. I don’t think I’d meant to, but I’d been drinking so I probably wasn’t fully in control and… well, the bottle smashed, and I remember being surprised by the sound, like so surprised all my anger just left like it was never there. And everyone else in the bar stopped talking and turned to look. And the guy just folded over. He collapsed as if I’d hit the off switch and whatever made him human left and now it was just a machine of blood and bone. And his mates were staring at me. And my sister had her hands over her mouth. And I realised my hand hurt. One of the guys tried to rouse his friend and the other was getting his phone out. And one of the barmen was running over to me. And someone was yelling at me. And all I could think was I’d cut my hand on the broken glass and I hoped there wasn’t any stuck under the skin. Isn’t that stupid? I’d glassed a guy and all I could think about was glass stuck in my hand. All the way from the police turning up to court to prison, I was obsessed that there were shards of glass in my hand.”
He showed me his right hand. Running down from his smallest finger to his wrist was a pale white line.
“It’s because I couldn’t go near what I’d done. I couldn’t think about what that made me, or how every time I felt angry afterwards this cold wave would come over me. So instead, I thought about the glass in my hand. I swear I could feel something in there all the time. I’d lie awake imagining it floating around my body, a lost raft bumping about a river basin, with the potential at any moment to snag on some outcropping, maybe blocking up a vein in my lungs or my brain, or tearing a series of holes in my gut or my liver and like that, I’d be gone. Done. Those first few months I barely slept, waiting for this glass shard to pop out somewhere and kill me. I got the nurse inside to have a look once, but she couldn’t find anything.” He shrugged.
I felt the imprint of the needle in my pocket.
“Y’know, he hadn’t even been laughing at me. One of his friends had just shown him something on his phone.” Rowan looked up at me. “He didn’t die, thank Christ. But he was out for a while. Swelling on the brain means he has some permanent memory loss and, uh, issues with mood regulation. I think that’s what the doctor said at sentencing. I pleaded guilty. I mean, how could I not? I’d done it. And the loss of my license didn’t help make me look any more innocent. I was given four years, but I got out in two with some extensive anger management courses and counselling. I reached out once, not to the guy, but his pal. To see how he was doing. Took a while but I got a response back. The memory issues had cleared up, but he was still having trouble with his moods. He’s more irritable than he used to be. Gets angry easy.” Rowan looked at the ground soberly. “I don’t care what anyone says. It doesn’t matter how many doctors I go to, how many years I spent inside, how many trees I plant, nothing’s going to undo that. Just like that splinter of glass, it’s floating about out there, a timebomb, out of my control and completely my fault.”
He looked at me pointedly. My skin prickled. I suddenly felt alarmingly exposed sitting there in that clearing.
“Why are we talking about this?” I asked.
He looked at me with that expression I couldn’t parse again.
“It’s just… back then, I wish someone had talked to me, y’know.”
I frowned.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
He sighed. I realised what the expression was. It was pity.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to push if you’re uncomfortable, but—”
The alert on his phone went again. He silenced it, fingers faltering for a moment on the screen.
I forced a smile and laughed.
“I think there’s been a miscommunication here.” I felt my cheek flicker under the strain. “I must have made a terrible first impression to make you think…”
