Being
Page 25
But I didn’t.
Dying wasn’t enough for him.
I wanted him to live – to live without ever knowing what I was. That was his death: to live without knowing.
I lowered the pistol and set about leaving.
There was nothing inside me as I moved around the flat, stuffing things into my pockets. I had nothing left. I was empty. Finished. Disconnected. Something knew what I was doing, and where I was going, and what I was going to do when I got there, but it wasn’t me. I had no self any more. I wasn’t Robert Smith. I was just a thing – looking for my passport, pocketing some cash, picking up the keys to Eddi’s motorbike.
I didn’t look at Eddi on the way out.
I couldn’t look at her.
She wasn’t there.
Nothing was there.
∗
Downstairs, everything was quiet. No fireworks, no voices, no sign of the Garcias or Chico. I walked along the darkened hallway and opened the door to the Garcias’ kitchen. Chico was lying dead on the floor, a bullet hole in the back of his head.
I closed the door and went back down the hallway.
I was nothing now. Timeless. Placeless. Thoughtless. My head was dead, the things inside it black and distant. Eddi Ray. David Ryan. Living things. Dead things. Robert Smith. The things I should have done, the things I shouldn’t have done. The future, the past. Memories: a fat man in a cheap red suit, jellies, sweets, a long table and benches; the smell of disinfectant; the sound of laughter; faces, figures, unknown voices; childhood dreams of whirling winds, whirling waters, spinning me round and round, sucking me down into the darkness…
The past…
The future.
Now.
I was empty.
I was just whatever I was, wherever I was – an empty thing in an empty house, walking slowly down an empty hallway… opening the front door, looking around, gazing up at the clear night sky…
The stars were out.
Twinkling brightly…
I didn’t stop to wonder what they were.
I went back into the house, wheeled out Eddi’s motorbike, and rode off into the darkness.