Braying laughter. It was the group of teenagers from before. They stood around the flower display on the war monument, laboriously moving the tubs and planters into a crude cock and balls arrangement. They had plenty of material to work with. Somehow there were even more flowers today than yesterday. The same boy who’d jumped out at me and yelled on my first visit was snarling my way, surrounded by his court of lanky, pallid mates.
Him.
That high-pitched noise screamed in my ears. It was as if my body had been taken over by another force. I stepped out into the road, causing a car to screech to a halt, horn blasting the air with annoyance. I marched across to the boy and his friends. I saw his expression freeze slightly. Was I blinking? I don’t think I was blinking. The high-pitched buzz pounded in my ears. The teens laughed nervously around him.
“What do you want?” he said, all puffed up insolence.
I realised up close, he wasn’t that big at all.
Good.
In my pocket my hand closed around something long and sharp: the curved needle from the basement attached to my keyring. I envisaged myself plunging it deep into his cocky sneering eyes. One-two, pop-pop. Like two jellied balloons. Like a staple through Fergus’s hand. Like a hammer through the unce-unce-unce flat-owner’s skull.
“What?” the kid demanded, though his fear was palpable now.
Delicious.
My fist trembled around the needle.
Stab him in the eye stab in the eye stab in the eye cocky little shit little shit stain little fucker little twat little no-eyed twat.
“What?”
Do it!
No.
I pushed the needle through my hand. A stark blooming flower of pain.
Then I leaned right into his face and barked.
He startled backwards and fell right into the shaft of the cock and balls flower arrangement. I didn’t stop. I barked, loudly, madly, like a rabid dog, a woman possessed, right there in the street. I didn’t have the words anymore. Only sound. Only the great animal fuck-you and leave-me-alone uproar, exploding from my lips and leaving my throat ragged. I stopped only when I ran out of breath and coughed.
The high-pitched buzzing sound in my head had stopped.
“What the fuck?” One of the other teens stared at me, the whites of her eyes bright.
Over my shoulder I saw people coming out of the café, ready to intervene, to help, to stop the danger.
To stop me.
Before anyone could say or do anything, I straightened my back, looked away from the onlookers and marched over the bridge and out of town in the silence I had made. I took my hand out of my pocket. The needle had punctured the webbing between my thumb and forefinger, key dangling on the end. An impromptu piercing. A self-maiming. Flesh throbbing, the adrenaline kept the pain at bay.
I slid it out in one short, sharp movement. Then I tucked the needle back in my pocket and kept walking.
CHAPTER 35
About halfway from Carlinsrest to the Sgàthan Sìth cottages, the wind changed. I barely noticed at first, I was so wrapped up in my anger and the growing pain in my hand.
It blew from the north, bringing cold Highland air down into the Lowlands. The earlier humidity of the day seized up in the rapid chill, wreathing the trees and hedgerows with a fine mist. The blue skies paled into bright white clouds. It wasn’t long before they descended, and the previously shimmering roads disappeared behind a veil of cool white fog.
It was suddenly very quiet, as if all the birds in the trees could sense the change in the air and went hiding in the places they flew to when it stormed or hailed.
The tumult of my mind fell into a rare silence. As I marched on, I took my hoodie from around my waist and wrapped it around my shoulders. Then I put it on properly, pushing my arms through the sleeves, gently tucking the cuff around my fresh puncture, cold now with the hanging damp in the air.
The mist drew closer, until I could barely see a few feet ahead of me. I worried about passing cars. There was no way they’d be able to see me in time in this weather.
Would that be so bad? I thought. No one would know. The driver would think you were a deer. You’d barely have time to realise what had happened. One sharp shock and it would be over.
