None I Can Shed

NONE I CAN SHED
by Kevin Patton

I am the Angel of Death. Full blown - Touch of Annihilation and
everything. I scorch
the path I walk on and part the clouds with my breath. Not that you'd
know to look at
me, of course. Basically, I'm just a guy - two arms, two legs and a
full set of teeth. I
eat, drink, salivate and fart, same as everyone else. Except I'll
probably be doing it for
ever, a permanent purveyor of demise; pariah, not Messiah. There's no
pleasure in it.
It's a curse. Fate took me inevitably to it but I hate it.
Talk to me and you die.
Word soon gets around. 'Watch out for him,' people say. 'He's bad
news.' Huge
spaces organise around me, wherever I go. Folk move away if I sit at
their table and
shop assistants avoid my gaze when they serve me. Sure, I always get a
double seat on
a bus or train, and rarely have to queue, but? but, sometimes, I long
for a tussle. Or a
hug.

Her name was Vera. I met her in a caf? in Watton, a small town in
Norfolk, somewhat
incongruous in her crimson hair and rapier-length fingernails. The
place was packed,
probably because it was pissing down and everyone was desperate for
shelter. It was
the only seat left.
'Is this taken?' I said. She shook her head. I sat down, spilling some
of my
cappuccino into my saucer. 'Shit,' I muttered, under my breath.
She grinned, her eyes green and piercing. She looked me up and
down,
unashamedly, making me starkly conscious of my drab appearance. Not my
fault, I
wanted to tell her. I'd been for an interview, so was wearing my older
brother Jack's
suit. And, no, I didn't get the job. But, hey, I'd never wanted to be a
Bible salesman
anyway.
'Cool bruise,' she said, pointing to the back of my hand. I quickly
shoved it
under the table. She smiled again and took a big bite of her Eccles
cake, spraying
crumbs across the table. Instinctively, I covered my cup and she
grabbed my wrist and
looked again at the bruise. 'It's like a Spirograph pattern,' she said.
'All purple and
black. My favourite colours.' I pulled my hand away and sandwiched it
between my
knees. 'How did you do it?'
'Fell against a wall,' I lied.

I often come here to the library. It's safe, with little pressure to
make conversation. On
the contrary. This is the nearest I have to respite; aisles of
permitted solitude, huge
volumes of distractions and diversions.
When I first found the place, I used to scour the books on witchcraft
and
wizardry, hoping to stumble on a spell to separate me from my destiny.
I knew there
wouldn't be one but it didn't stop me looking. Ultimately, everything
is pointless.
Today, I'm researching CJD, and that's pointless because I don't need
to know about
it, just as I don't need to know how to manufacture steel to use a
knife and fork. But
how else do I fill infinity? Learn every word in every dictionary in
the universe? Read
War and Peace over and over again; and over and over; and over and
over? Watch
history being made and forget I've seen it all before?
There's a pleasant smell in here - of space and achievement, latent
decay, wet
bedrooms and kitchen tables. Every page has been touched. If I squint,
I can see the
skin cells, the ketchup stains, the spilled coffee?

I don't want to go another night without pain. I miss it. Please wrap
me in a duvet of
spikes and pull it tight. Set your flame to my paraffin-soaked
fuse.

She didn't speak; just ate her Eccles cake and gawped. I shuffled about
a lot and tried
to finish my cappuccino as quickly as possible, but it wouldn't cool
down. It was ages
before I noticed everyone else had stopped moving.
I thought I saw little movies in her pupils, but I guess they were
reflections. The
air was treacle, coagulating in my nostrils. She kept smiling and I
kept smiling back,
until I realised her grins weren't intended for me. She was looking
through me.
'Prozac?' she said.
'Sorry?'
'Sertraline?'
I twisted my face but she kept looking at me, expectantly.
'I was on Diazepam a while, but it made me?'
Her grin broadened. 'Razor blade or Stanley knife?'
'Sorry?'
'Did you write a note? I like notes. They're so full of spite and
anger.'
'No, I?'
'What did you write? Who did you blame?'
'I don't know what you're on about?'
'How did it feel?'
'What?'
She poured tea from her pot and sipped, delicately, from her cup.
'Have you
seen the darkness?'
'Darkness? Well, yes, of course. Every night. Several times, to be
honest. Most
nights, I?'
'Have you seen the darkness?'
'I was just saying?'
She stared. I hesitated.
'Oh, I get it. It's a trick question. Like, you don't see darkness
because there's
no light to see it by. Is that what you mean?'
Either her eyes were brighter than before or the room was darker. She
clutched
the edge of the table so tightly, I thought her knuckles would push
through her skin.
'It's like asking "Have you heard the silence?" isn't it?' I said, my
discomfort
rising exponentially with the narrowing of her eyes.
'Have you seen the darkness?' she said again.

Night's interminable. Go to sleep, wake up, back to sleep for a short
while, wake up
again?
I've always had a death wish, but I intended it for myself, not
others. I never
wanted to be the hand that took breath from the premature baby, the
father of six, his
neurotic wife, their schizophrenic son, the local physician, the
neighbour on whom the
crippled pensioner depended, the popular bus driver, the friendly
postman?
I wanted to see blood on the sheets, gathering in puddles on the
living room
floor, filling the kitchen sink? but I wanted it to be mine.
I still want it to be mine.
But now I have none I can shed.

She's a new trainee. Her badge says 'Emma Wright'. I've seen her a
couple of times,
but not to speak to. She's young, early twenties, long black hair,
round face, petite;
one blue eye and one brown - disconcerting, but not unattractive. She's
watching me,
pretending not to.
I walk past Large Reference, towards Fiction. She's following. Doesn't
she
know she's not meant to? She ducks behind Handicrafts. Maybe she thinks
I'm a
thief, or that I'll inject myself with something illegal in the
Children's section. It's the
hair that does it - the turquoise highlights, tinged with burgundy; the
close-cropped
spikes.
I sweep past G-K and make my way towards B. Burroughs, Bradbury,
Banks?
I press close to the shelves, out of her sight, and she's suddenly
there, flushing red as
she finds me waiting for her.
'Yes?' I say.
She looks down at the ground, up again, down again. 'Nothing.'
'I'm only looking. You can search me, if you want.'
'It's okay. I didn't mean to?'
'I'm a regular. The usual librarian - Mrs Thompson? - will vouch for
me.'
'Sorry. I just?'
I smiled, but it was insincere. We'd had a conversation. She was
doomed.
*

I started actually inflicting pain on myself when I was fourteen.
Cirrhosis had killed
Dad a year or so earlier, Mum had driven off a cliff in the Vauxhall
Nova she'd
bought with the insurance on his life and their conjoined genetic
legacy had begun to
ripen within me. Sometimes the anguish was so severe, I had to render
it physical to
take away its sting.
Nothing too damaging at first - fists punched into walls, pins pushed
through
my palms and out the back of my hands; clobbering my head with whatever
was
nearby? I sought those accidents-waiting-to-happen that never seemed to
happen to
me.
In the end, it was probably the pursuit of my death wish that kept me
alive.
Ultimately, it sentenced me to perpetuity.

'Can we meet?' Emma says, clutching her clipboard to her chest,
glancing over her
shoulder to see if Mrs Thompson is watching. 'To talk,' she adds. She's
looking
straight into my eyes, frowning slightly, probably wondering what she's
seeing. The
pupil of her blue eye dilates more quickly than that of the brown,
further dividing her
face.
'Now?' I say.
'When I finish work.'
'That's no good. You won't show up.'
'I will.'
'You won't. Something'll happen.'
'That's a bit pessimistic.'
'Realistic. I can't explain, but? I wouldn't make any long term plans,
id I was
you.'
She frowns. 'Are you saying I'm done for?'
'Something like that.'
She shakes her head. 'I'm not that lucky,' she says.

Jack was more than a brother. We'd been through a lot - Dad, Mum, a
succession of
homes? We'd played football together, even when we were living with
different
families. We'd listened to music in his bedroom with the lights out,
looking at the
stars through his window, trying to guess the names of constellations
and inventing
some of our own - The Headless Horse, The D-Minor?
Vera told me not to contact him. She even told me why. But I still
did.
'Ben. Where the bloody hell have you been?' he said, hugging me like
he used
to when we were toddlers.
'Hi.'
'What happened on Tuesday? I waited ages.'
'Sorry. I had a bit of a turn.'
'What? Are you all right?'
'I don't want to talk about it.'
'But?'
'Please,'
He shrugged. 'Did you get my card and present?'
'Not yet.'
'I left them round your house. I must have been there about ten times
since
Tuesday. Your foster mother reckons you've buggered off. You know, now
you're an
adult.'
'Look, I?'
I took him to The Red Lion, bought him a couple of pints, never took
my eyes
off him the whole time.
'What have you done with your hair?' he said, but I explained
nothing,
understood nothing, was still trying to rid myself of the mouldy taste
in my mouth.
We spent about an hour together. I didn't want him to go but he was
meeting his
girlfriend, he said. He left the pub, turned back to look for me as he
stepped onto the
road, and was hit by a bus.
He was my fourth. I'd only been doing the job for two days. But the
fleeting
palpitations were already becoming familiar.
It should have been my worst ever moment, but it wasn't. The Angel of
Death
job comes with an attitude, not of apathy - I still care, for God's
sake - but of
resignation; a 'big picture' perception that alters context as surely
as it nails mortality.
So it didn't feel as bad as it should have done.
My worst ever moment had come much earlier.
There was no obvious cause. There often isn't. Depression stimulated
by
external tragedy is profound enough, but that from within carries the
additional
complication of being impossible to understand or explain. 'What's
there to be
miserable about?' people say. 'There are lots of folk worse off than
you.'
'Yeah. Of course. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks. Suddenly I'm
cured.'
Maybe it was a biorhythm thing, a conspiracy of moon phase and
hormones; or
maybe it was inscribed into my genes. Whatever, I felt like shit, like
shit shoved
through a liquidiser and fed back to me, like a claustrophobic in the
cupboard under
the stairs, facing the choice between excruciation and extinction,
given the gun and
bullet but wanting to use the knife instead.
It started so innocuously - fatigue, nausea, withdrawal; my head
wrapped in
black tissue paper, so everything was muffled and dim. No
anthropomorphosis. I
didn't see demons, just tangible emptiness. The tissue paper became
cloth, the cloth a
lead-lined casket. The energy that had drained from my physique soaked
into my
spirit and pummelled me with blades, barbs and whirring saws. 'Lance
the chancre,' it
howled. 'Excise the growth, obliterate the oblivious screaming
voices.'
I reached for the junior hacksaw in my dad's old toolbox, hesitating
over the
hammer and set of chisels. Part of me wanted to hit out; the rest to
cut and slice. I was
a strip of waste ground and all the world's nasty children came to play
on me, pulling
the wings off giant hornets and the heads from beggars. The rusty blade
crunched
through bone, blood poured like the tears I couldn't cry, but there was
no pain; no
agony sagacious enough to snuff out the black light of distress.
Squash me into a casserole dish and turn on the oven. Wrap me in
underwear of
broken glass and outer clothing that shrinks.
Bits of my body lay separately on the kitchen table. I felt nothing
for them. I
watched instant movies of the past and future and there was no
difference between
them. A prickly black mist swallowed me whole.

'Yes, I've seen the darkness,' I said.
She smiled. Her fingers stroked the bruise on the back of my hand. Her
touch
was cold. 'We should go somewhere else,' she said, 'where we can't be
seen.' She
stood up. I copied, obediently. We walked in slow motion from the caf?
and the other
customers started to move again.

It's 19:34 and I'm standing under the railway station clock, as
arranged. I didn't
expect her to show, but she's here, only four minutes late and full of
apologies.
'Sorry,' she says. 'Mrs Thompson was in a funny mood. I couldn't get
away.'
'You shouldn't have been able to get here at all. You should have been
struck by
lightning, or something.'
'What, again?' She laughs. 'That happened to me once, while I was
going home
from school. It was pretty scary. I think the metal buckles on my shoes
saved my life.'
Now, she frowns. 'Not that I wanted them to.'
I'm not sure if time is stretching or contracting, but everything's
suddenly
slowing down. The clock's hands have stopped moving and we are sliding
into an
envelope of distortion. Everything within - me, her and the Touch of
Annihilation -
are in sharp focus; everything without, like an impressionist
painting.
'Maybe we should?' I suggest, thinking this is not a good place. But
her
features are folding in on themselves. Her blue eye is looking into me
but her brown
eye is glazed.
'I know who you are,' she says. 'I know what you do.'
'Sorry?'
'I've read stuff, spoken to people? I've been watching you.'
'Emma. Look, you've no idea?'
'I'm up for it, you know. I can handle it. In a way, I actually want
it.'
There's a look of Vera about her, different in physical appearance but
sharing
certain mannerisms; a sense of destiny and purpose, an air of control -
things I never
had.
I recall lying with Vera on the floor of her poky flat in Watton,
counting the
cobwebs on the ceiling. We'd just made love - not well, not even
satisfactorily, but
part of the procedure, apparently. We lay there half an hour or more,
waiting for her to
die, knowing I had the touch and she no longer did. She told me things,
like to stay
away from Jack, to move towns, invent a history, redesign my
appearance? She said
her real name was Maria.
'Not Vera?' I asked.
She laughed. 'No. That's just my little joke. Vera Cad. It's an
anagram.' I didn't
work it out until much later.
There were silences, maybe part of the procedure too, rehearsals for
the
emptiness to come. She made no effort to fill them and I felt no urge
to do so. At other
times, we talked.
'You're special,' she said, 'but not unique. It's easy to be beguiled.
Power
without responsibility is as worthless as the other way round.'
'Why did you choose me?' I asked.
'I didn't. You chose yourself. Or else the choice was planted inside
you before
you were born.'
'Fated?'
'Yes. Destiny.'
'Sorry?'
'? listening to me.'
'Mm?'
'I said, "Tom, are you listening to me?"'
It's Emma. She's been saying things but I haven't heard them.
'Sorry?'
'You were miles away.'
'Yeah. Sorry. Responsibility,' I say. She narrows her eyes. 'Look,
let's go
somewhere less public. Like you said, to talk.'

My flat's more salubrious than Vera's, the walls covered with posters,
most of them
drawings from science fiction/fantasy novels, often featuring
big-breasted women
with rippling muscles and skimpy clothing. Emma and I are lying on the
floor, her
bare skin flushed and me ready for sleep. I've not slept for a long
time.
'Are you okay?' I say, resting my hand on her thigh.
'Yeah. Sure,' she says, but doesn't mean it. 'Will I? will I feel cold
like that?'
'Not to yourself,' I say.
She tries a smile but I know it's not that simple. 'I looked you up in
the library
records.'
'Yeah?'
'Tried to find out more about you.'
'There's nothing to know.'
'Your family, relatives and such like.'
'There aren't any.'
She half sits up. 'There must have been.'
'Might have been, but not now. Take it from me, you should think in
terms of
never having had any.'
She leans towards me, thinks of saying something, asking something,
then lies
back down. 'Tom Mopster's a funny name.'
I laugh. 'An anagram. My little joke.'
'Oh.' She clutches my hand and squeezes its three remaining fingers.
'How long
have you been??'
'Not long,' I say. 'I was never very good at it. Not that it matters.
Whether you
want it to or not, it won't last for ever. That's the way of it.'
The next silence stretches interminably. I feel a fatigue in my
marrow, slowly
seeping into the surrounding tissue.
'How? does it feel?'
'Now?'
'No. When you're??'
'I don't know how it'll feel for you. Vera said it was fulfilment,
like living out
all the weird dreams she'd had since childhood.'
'Yeah?'
'Until she got bored with it, of course.'
'And you?'
'I never really had dreams.' I sigh. There are gaps, spaces I can't
fill, voids I
don't want to fill, nor ever again experience. 'You've seen the
darkness,' I say.
'Yes. I told you.'
'Well, for me, it was like that. Only? all the time.'
There's another pause, this time shrinking from infinity to now. A
rush of
tiredness is galloping up my spinal cord.
'Oh,' she says as she fades.

1