Within a few minutes, I am bare-chested and restrained. She doesn’t ask me if I am ready, because she knows I am.
‘Thank you,’ I say, but she doesn’t respond.
Instead, Laura plunges my head under the water as the cold takes my breath away. And soon, she will claim my last.
Chapter 97
Damon
The images flow as fast as the water that floods my lungs. I retread old ground, ashamed to watch the moments play out when I hurt people who didn’t deserve it. I also relive my most recent killings: the man in the car park, my beautiful Melissa and Adrienne dying before me. Then something unexpected occurs, something that hasn’t happened before. Instead of reliving the past, I begin to reshape it. I am rewriting my history to create alternative futures and new possibilities for me and the others I have impacted with my actions. I see what we could have been, not what was.
Imagined snippets run in a random order, beginning moments before I died for the first time. I’m swimming behind Melissa off the Brighton coast in the direction of the yellow swim buoys bobbing up and down in the swell of the sea. We take a moment when we reach them, before swimming side by side, fighting against the waves until we return to the shore. And once we’re back on land, we tiptoe across the pebbles, then wrap ourselves tight in large towels, and start planning next month’s challenge. It’s my turn to decide.
Next, I see myself as a teenager walking along a brick pathway adjacent to a reservoir. Mum and Dad are with me, a few stepsahead. I can’t see their faces but their joined hands suggest they’re still a couple. My brother Bobby runs towards me with a net on a stick in one hand and a red plastic bucket in the other. His brown eyes are as wide with wonder as they are with kindness. ‘Come on, Damo!’ he shouts. ‘Let’s catch fish!’ This is the first time I’ve given him a voice. I follow him to the water’s edge, we slip off our socks and trainers, and wade in no deeper than our knees. He giggles as I demonstrate how to swoop the net back and forth under the surface. He beams with delight when he catches two mottled sticklebacks.
More illusory moments arrive. Me dressed in a smart pair of trousers and a shirt, with the words ‘Deputy Manager’ printed on a badge pinned to my jacket. I’m wandering up and down the aisles of the supermarket where I work, using a tablet to stock-check. Jason approaches me and asks if I have plans tonight. I apologise, I need to be home. Then I’m inside my car pulling on to the driveway of a modern townhouse. I let myself in with a key, and a small, enthusiastic Border Terrier bounds towards me. I kneel and allow him to lick my cheek, catching the name Oscar on a silver tag attached to his collar. Moments later, my wife comes down the stairs and kisses me and wishes me a happy anniversary as I hand her a bouquet of white daisies. What else could I have bought my childhood sweetheart?
Now, my grandmother is with me. She holds a walking stick with one hand, and her other arm is looped within mine. Her face is softer and alight with joy. My father accompanies us as we follow a line of people snaking through Buckingham Palace courtyard. We’re all offered over-ear headphones and she appears fascinated by what we’re learning from a recording about the history of the building. She squeezes my arm as if to thank me.
My mid-twenties follow and I’m sitting on a wooden bench in a pub garden with my friends when Callum returns from thebar with a tray crammed with pint glasses. He is now the man I robbed him of becoming. His red hair is scraped into a top knot and his beard is neatly trimmed. Symmetrical white teeth replace the black hole of a mouth that frightened me for so many months. For the first time, I realise I could’ve been a part of this group, not a spectator. I realise there is nothing wrong with feeling different from them. We are all different, and in being so, we are the same.
And now I’m two years in the future and kneeling on the carpeted floor of Melissa’s lounge, supporting our toddler son as he takes his first few steps in the direction of his mums. To his delight, they clap and cheer as he reaches them. He turns to catch my eye, a huge grin enveloping his pink chubby face.
I skip forwards again, and Melissa, Adrienne, my mum, and Daisy and I are at our son Samuel’s university graduation ceremony. It has certainly taken a village to raise him. Mum is an elderly woman beaming at me with pride as her grandson collects his diploma and waves to us from the stage. She wears a hospital identity bracelet, and it’s only when I look at her properly that I realise how poorly she is. ‘I wish your dad could’ve seen this,’ she whispers in my ear as she places her hand upon mine.
All of these different paths they might have taken – if not for me.
Two twelve-year-old Callums appear in my final image. One lies dead on the path where I killed him, my handkerchief stuffed in his mouth. The second stands next to me, staring at the first. He turns his gaze to me.
‘You did this,’ he says in an even tone. There’s no malice in it, nothing accusatory. He’s simply stating a fact.
‘I did,’ I reply. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’ And I really mean it.
He steps over the boy on the floor and begins to walk away, up along the path.
‘Are you coming then?’ he shouts over his shoulder.
I hesitate before I nod and follow him. The waters that once choked me are no longer dark, cold and murky. Now they’re warm and clear as day, like the ones I swam in at the hypnotherapist’s. And as they sweep me towards him, I know that in death, I am going to be the person I ought to have been in life.
Something jars this vision of what could have been. A voice. I can’t be sure if I’m imagining it or if Laura is talking to me, because what she says doesn’t make sense.
‘First your mother and now you. I got you both in the end.’
Then I feel something soft planted on my lips, like a breath or a kiss, before the images fade into darkness.
Part Four
Beyond
Chapter 98
Three Weeks Later
Laura
She likes to think of herself as an educated, articulate woman. But Laura struggles to put into words the emotions she feels watching somebody die and knowing she is responsible. It’s a more intimate experience than sex, more profound than offering your body to someone who is craving the same pleasure as you. She feels more connected to a person she barely knows in their final throes of life than she does her own daughters. And the second she can inhale their last, desperate breaths is like no other sensation. It’s more powerful than the most intense of orgasms, or the moment you realise you are hopelessly and completely in love. Or even the first time you feel your newborn child pressed against your chest. It’s why when Laura holds their last, treasured breaths inside her, it’s like she’s protecting a precious jewel in a vault.
People in pain, like Damon, place themselves in her care because she understands them better than anyone else in the world. She knows what’s best for them. She alleviates their suffering andbrings all that is bad in their lives to an end. She will save them from themselves. She truly is a Good Samaritan.
