‘Yeah, deadly,’ I said. I wasn’t in the mood to indulge Kearney — the image of him riding an eager Jen kept intruding on my mind, more so as my stone deepened. I wanted to butcher him. I decided that I’d fuck Kearney up. I didn’t know how, but I would do it. Meanwhile, I said, ‘Fair play to ye, ye killed him. How did ye do it, then?’
‘Ye don’t believe me. But I did. I poisoned his drink. He’s not there any more. I’ve been in to check a few times. The fucker’s dead.’
He sounded triumphant. I began to consider that, just possibly, he wasn’t making it up. ‘Wait, so tell me: you’re sayin ye went into town and put poison in this guy’s drink, and now he’s dead?’
‘No, I brought the drink in meself, with the poison already in it. Rat poison. I gave him a few cans first, to get his trust and make sure his judgment was cloudy, then I gave him the poisoned bottle of wine. Not that I had to do that: the fucker would’ve drunk a carton of AIDS piss if I’d told him there was a shot of whiskey mixed in.’
‘And then he died?’
‘I’m fairly sure he did, yeah. I didn’t stick around to see it happen, it would’ve been too dodgy. But he was gone the next day.’
I said nothing. I puffed on the joint and watched him. ‘Jesus,’ I said, experimentally.
Kearney laughed. ‘Now don’t say a fuckin thing, okay?’
I kept looking at him. Suddenly I felt way too stoned.
‘I mean it. Don’t say a word. Jesus, it was some rush, though. Nobody’s goin to give a fuck. Who cares if some old wino is off the streets? People would be delighted if someone wiped out all the alcos and junkies and all the rest of them.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well I do know. At the very least, nobody gives a fuck. So I’m goin to do it again. I’m goin to kill a junkie.’
I stared, amazed that this was the conversation we were having. I tried to read Kearney’s face for signs of a joke. I could decipher nothing. I said, ‘Are ye serious, Kearney?’
‘Yeah. I’m serious.’
Abruptly, I shook my head. I exhaled smoke, waved a hand and said, ‘Cop on, Kearney. You’re talkin bollocks. Ye didn’t kill anyone. But leave it before ye really do go off and do something stupid.’
The words sounded unnatural in my mouth, like they only belonged on telly or in films.
‘It’s a buzz like ye wouldn’t believe,’ said Kearney. ‘I’m telling ye. Ye don’t have to believe me. I’m goin to kill a junkie scumbag. They’re better off dead. They are dead. Dawn of the Dead, it’s like, when ye see them in town. I’m doin it in a few days, after I get the plan sorted out. Stall it in with me.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not? Ye don’t have to do anything, just come along for the craic. Look, let me just show ye how easy it is. We don’t actually have to do anything. If ye think it’s goin too far, I’ll stop and that’ll be that. It’ll be more of a recon mission, just to show ye. Alright?’
I wanted to say something, say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. What was this magnetism Kearney had, this weird new power? I felt like I should go along with it, even if only to impress him. For some reason, that was important now. But also there was the excitement, the wanting to see how far it could go, how deranged it could get.
While I was wavering, Kearney said again, ‘Stall it. I’m tellin ye, it’s only a bit of a buzz. Ye don’t have to do anything. We don’t actually have to, like, execute him. We can go right to the very edge and stop there, if ye want to stop there. I just want to show ye what it’s like. I’m tellin ye, the buzz is like nothing ye’ve done before.’
We were silent for a few moments. Then I said, ‘Alright. Fair enough. I’ll stall it in. Just to see. I know you’re talkin rubbish, though.’
Satisfied, Kearney turned back to Kill-Tech: Obliteration, picking up the joypad from the carpet. I looked out the window again, over at the darkening red-brick walls and fences of the girls’ school, and the rows of houses and chimneys behind it, sullen and identical.
40 | Rez
Problems with Reality: Rez is on Drugs and they’re Messing with his Head!
In his rare moments of lucidity, Rez saw that the medication the doctors had put him on, the way it affected his outlook, was yet another falsity, an airbrush job on the true face of things.
He liked how the drugs made him feel, though: warm, satisfied, oblivious. This must be what it’s like to be a junkie or a cow, he thought dozily, sitting at home bathed in the amiable glow of the TV, his mother hovering ever-near, watching him even when it seemed she wasn’t. Or it was as if he was enlightened, like the Buddhist monks he read about, as if he had attained a state of pure acceptance of the world. The medication made everything benign, friendly; it rendered all the razor-blade thoughts that cut into Rez’s in-growing brain soft as butter. In fact, he didn’t think very much on the medication at all. He was content to sit there in the softly lit living room, passively hearing the anxious whispers and murmurs of his parents, sister and brother.
Days passed. Rez convalesced, if that was what you could call his state of drug-zapped torpor. Nourishing meals were prepared for him at regular hours. Films were rented, books bought and a PlayStation 2 borrowed from one of Michael’s friends, all for Rez’s amusement. I should have done this sooner, he told himself during one of the intervals of clarity that briefly appeared, only to be swallowed up again by the dreamy water-world of Xanax and diazepam, annulling all sardonic thought, all humour in general. The medicated world was a humourless one, like a totalitarian state. But Rez didn’t mind; he accepted everything. Everybody’s happy nowadays, he thought wryly, when he was capable of wryness and bothered enough to think.
Nothing happened. Time flowed on, the great lazy river. This, too, was fine with Rez, who, medication notwithstanding, remained convinced that the causes of his despair were fundamental and insurmountable. He kept this conviction to himself.
‘You’re not goin to do it again,’ his mother said.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. A bowl of barely touched cream-of-vegetable soup steamed its heat away between Rez’s elbows. Rez didn’t know if he was being asked a question or given an order.
She repeated, ‘You’re not goin to try it again.’
Rez decided it was a question. ‘No,’ he answered; even such a succinct response cost him tremendous effort. He wanted to be extricated from this conversation, planted back down in front of the Enlightenment Box, left alone to bask in its stupid radiance.
His mother was silent, looking probingly at him. He noted that there were lines around her eyes. Crow’s feet — he recalled that that was the name for them: the results of age and decay and therefore not Rez’s fault. She was in her pale-green dressing gown, makeup washed off. She seemed withered with anguish, helpless and perplexed. That was how she seemed. Rez was not taken in.
Rez thought, No doubt she thinks she’s worried about me.
Rez thought, No doubt she believes that she really cares about me.
Rez knew better. He knew she was merely playing the part of someone who loved another person. It was a decent performance, he conceded, probably enough to move someone who bought into all that shit, someone more naive than him. It didn’t touch Rez. Love was not something that existed any more. Love was the dodo or the velociraptor or the Mayan civilization.
His mother was crying now, sobbing and shaking her head, not knowing what to say. A fluttering something — pity, anguish — arose from inside Rez and floated for a moment in the space between them. It was faint, tremulous and delicate, and lasted only for a moment; then Rez snuffed out the sentiment and denied it had ever been there.