Cruel Pink by Tanith Lee (uplifting book club books TXT) 📕

“I’ve got a couple of lagers here,” I said. “You care for one?”

“Yeah. All right.”

He was young. He looked about eighteen. The way I did, that afternoon. Perfect match. I’m often clever, that way, looking the right age before I even spot the quarry. Though I can, surreptitiously, grow a bit younger, or older, if I have to, when I meet them.

I went over and sat down on the broad, whitened root of the tree across from him. I handed him a lager from my not-very-full bag.

Bemusing me slightly, he twisted the bottle round in his hand, studying it, as if looking for a wine provenance label or something.

I said, “Cold day to be out.”

“Yeah,” he said.

I didn’t like him. That can sometimes be an extra incentive when it comes to killing. It can add a nice bright red-pink cherry to the cake.

“So, going to tell me your name?” I smilingly asked.

“Why’d you want to know?”

“Well, just so I can call you something.”

“Why’d you have to call me anything.” It wasn’t even a question.

“OK,” I said. Then, “Want a cigarette?”

“Nah,” he said. “They ain’t good for you.”

This made me laugh. Surrounded by ruin and chaos, he worried about smoking.

The method was already coming to me. After he had relaxed a bit, I’d get behind him. The fire was glowing under the smoke. In ten minutes it would be very hot and hungry.

“I had to come out,” I said. “My mum sent me.”

“Your mum?” He gaped at me.

God, he was stupid.

I handed him a Mars bar from the bag and previously from the Co-op freezer. Everything was so cold he might not mind. But he took the bar and turned it round and round in his other hand, (the lager now, still unopened, was in his left.)

“Do you want me to open the bottle for you?” I asked sweetly.

“Yeah,” he said, and handed it back.

I thought, next bottle after this one: I can brain him with it, pull him forward rather than push him from behind…

I undid the lager and handed it back to him. He took a swallow. No reaction. He stared down into the fire.

Was he on drugs? Of all the commodities left behind by Armageddon and the Apocalypse, drugs had remained available. He might be, then. He had that pasty, saggy face, spotty too, and lank hair. His leather jacket had holes in it that seemed to have been punched through by a machine, they were so regular. Even out in the cold he smelled nasty.

I let him have his drink. He was slow. All the bottle, go on, boy, drain it. It’ll help you when I do it, help me to do it.

The snow, so far shielded away somewhat by the crowded trees, began after all to flicker through. White moths swarmed to the cherry-red of the fire. Red was pink. Hunting pink.

I took out the second lager. (Still one left for me when I got home. I too turned the bottle in my hand. He was back gawping at the flames. And the cigarettes were in the bag. I didn’t smoke. Why had I taken them?)

Abruptly I said, “Are you expecting someone?”

“Eh?”

“Someone’s up there, on the higher ground.” (Would he know what ‘higher ground’ meant?) “On that hill-thing,” I amended. “Kind of waving—like,” I added, to assist.

I thought he’d look round. But he didn’t bother. He took another sluggish drink of the lager. He was probably only sixteen, in fact. It occurred to me he couldn’t read, hence his gaping at the bottle. He hadn’t recognised the colours, the signs, the omens of the label.

I stood up suddenly. “Fuck!” I gambled even he would react to my urgency, and my use of the still high-power word. “Christ!” I added, staring off beyond him over his shoulder, looking terrified and confused.

And he did at last respond. He tried to turn and look and get up all at the same moment, and, losing balance and purchase, he skidded on the snow.

The crucial instant had arrived. I had the unopened bottle, the liquid adding weight. I must smash him on the head and pull him down in the same second. Straight into the fire. I could do that. I had done things like that before. The burning warmth of the flames was so close. The burning close happiness of fulfilment strengthened and steadied me. And I reached forward and—

80

And I reached forward and

and

and I reached forward

and

81

And I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a physical difficulty. I was agile, and it was quite simple. But my brain couldn’t give the order to make my body move. Instead I let him slither, and right himself, and turn round in a rage on me.

“Wha’s the fuckin’ problem yer fuckin’ ol’ bitch?” he yelled at me. Oh, he was awake now.

I said hoarsely, “I have to go.”

“You go, you ol’ fuckin’ cunt! Gwon. Get off.”

I moved as fast as I could away from him, with my bag, and the second lager stupidly in my hand. I shambled off through the snow-bushes and reached the rubble and got over that, and on to the more solid remains of the bridge. I slipped and fell twice. Hurt my knees and one wrist. Kept going.

My heart hammered. My heart was screaming: Why? Why? Why hadn’t I done what I had had to do? I didn’t know.

When I was on the tow-path, tears were running down my face. I stumbled back along the slippery path.

I didn’t know why. Why I hadn’t done it. Had I gone mad? He had been mine. For me. The crows had shown me. Birds are messengers. I read their omens. What was wrong?

I don’t remember the rest of the journey. But I must have fallen again. There was red blood on my chin, and on both my palms, when I got in. Hunting pink. But I hadn’t killed. I hadn’t done what was there for me to do. And he had been mine.