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Bad Blood (from Trainspotting)
I first meet Alan Venters through the 'HIV and Positive' self-help group, although he wasn't part of that group for long. Venters didn't look after himself very well, and soon developed one of the many opportunistic infections we're prone to. In our culture, it seems to invoke some admirable quality. I think of the 'opportunism' of the entrepreneur who spots a gap in the market, or that of the striker in the penalty box. Tricky buggers, those opportunistic infections.
The members of the group were in a roughly similar medical condition. We were all anti-body positive, but still largely asymptomatic. Paranoia was never far from the surface at our meetings; everybody seemed to be furtively checking out everyone else's lymph glands for signs of swelling. It was disconcerting to feel people's eyes stray to the side of your face during conversation.
This type of behaviour added further to the sense of unreality which hung over me at the time. I really couldn't conceive of what had happened to me. The test results at first just seemed unbelievable, so incongruous with the healthy way I felt and looked. Part of me remained convinced that there had to be a mistake, in spite of taking the test three times. My self-delusion should have been shattered when Donna refused to see me, but it was always hanging on in the background with a grim resolution. We always seem to believe what we want to believe.
I stopped going to the group meetings after they put Alan Venters in the hospice. It just depressed me and, anyway, I wanted to spend my time visiting him. Tom, my key worker and one of the group counsellors, reluctantly accepted my decision.
"Look Dave, I think that you seeing Alan in hospital is really great; for him. I'm more concerned about you at the moment, though. You're in great health, and the purpose of the group is to encourage us to make the most of things. We don't stop living just because we're HIV positive..."
Poor Tom. His first faux pas of the day. "Is that the royal 'we' Tom? When you're HIV positive, tell me aw about it."
Tom's healthy, pink cheeks flushed. He couldn't help it. Years of intensive interpersonal skills practice had taught him to hide the nervy visual and verbal giveaways. No shifty eye contact or quavering voice from him in the face of embarrassment. Not old Tom. Unfortunately, Tom cannot do a thing about the glowing red smears which rush up the side of his face on such occasions.
"I'm sorry," Tom apoligised assertively. He had the right to make mistakes. He always said that people had that right. Try telling that to my damaged immune system.
"I'm just concerned that you're choosing to spend your time with Alan. Watching him wasting away won't be good for you and, besides, Alan was hardly the most positive member of the group."
"He was certainly the most HIV positive member."
Tom chose to ignore my remark. He had a right not to respond to the negative behaviour of others. We all had such a right, he told us. I liked Tom; he ploughed a lonely furrow, always trying to be positive. I thought that my job, which involved watching slumbering bodies being opened up by the cruel scalpel of Howison, was depressing and alienating. It's a veritable picnic however, compared to watching souls being wrenched apart. That was what Tom had to put up with at the group meetings.
Most members of 'HIV and Positive' were intravenous drug-users. They picked up HIV from the shooting galleries which flourished in the city in the mid-eighties, after the Bread Street surgical suppliers was shut down. That stopped the flow of fresh needles and syringes. After that, it was large communal syringes and share and share alike. I've got a mate called Tommy who started using smack through hanging aroung with these guys in Leith. One of them I know, a guy called Mark Renton, whom I worked with way back in my chippy days. It's ironic that Mark has been shooting smack for years, and is, so far as I know, still not infected with HIV, while I've never touched the stuff in my life. There were, however, enough smack-heads present in the group to make you realise that he could be the exception, rather than the rule.
Group meetings were generally tense affairs. The junkies resented the two homosexuals in the group. They believed that HIV originally spread into the city's drug-using community through an exploitative buftie landlord, who fucked hs sick junky tenants for the rent. Myself and two women, one the non-drug-using partner of a junk addict, resented everyone as we were neither homosexual nor junkies. At first I, like everyone else, believed that I had been 'innocently' infected. It was all too easy to blame the smack-heads or the buftie-boys at that time. However, I had seen the posters and read the leaflets. I remember in the punk era, the Sex Pistols saying that "no one is innocent". Too true. What also has to be said though, is that some are more guilty than others. This brings me back to Venters.
I gave him a chance; a chance to show repentance. This was a sight more than the bastard deserved. At a group session, I told the first of several lies, the trail of which would lead to my grip on the soul of Alan Venters.
I told the group that I had had unprotected, penetrative sex with people, knowing full well that I was HIV positive, and that I now regretted it. The room went deathly silent.
People shifted nervously in their seats. Then a woman called Linda began to cry, shaking her head. Tom asked her if she wanted to leave the meeting. She said no, she would wait and hear what people had to say, venomously addressing her reply in my direction. I was largely oblivious to her anger though; I never took my eyes off Venters. He had that characteristic, perpetually bored expression on his face. I was sure a faint smile briefly played across his lips.
"That was a very brave thing to say, Davie. I'm sure it took a lot of courage," Tom said solemnly.
I shrugged.
"I'm sure a terrific burden of guilt has been lifted from you," Tom continued, raising his brows, inviting me to come in. I accepted the opportunity this time.
"Yes, Tom. Just to be able to share it with you all. It's terrible... I don't expect people to forgive..."
The other woman in the group, Marjory, directed a sneering insult towards me, which I didn't quite catch, which Linda continued crying. No reaction was forthcoming from the **** who sat in the chair opposite me. His selfishness and lack of morality sickened me. I wanted to take him apart with my bare hands, there and then. I fought to control me senses, savouring the richness of my plan to destroy him. The disease could have his body; that was its victory, whatever malignant force it was. Mine would be a greater one, a more crushing one. I wanted his spirit. I planned to carve mortal wounds into his supposedly everlasting soul. Ay-men.
Tom looked around the circle: "Does anyone empathise with Davie? How do people feel about this?"
After a bout of silence, during which my eyes stayed trained on the impassive figure of Venters, Wee Goagsie, a junky in the group, started to croak nervously. Then he blurted out, in a terrible rant, what I'd been waiting from Venters.
"I'm glad Davie said that... I did the same... I did the fuckin same... an innocent lassie that never did a fuckin thing to nobody... I just hated the world... I mean... I thought, how the fuck should I care? What have I got from life... I'm twenty-three and I've had nothin, not even a fuckin job... why should I care... when I told the lassie, she just freaked..." he sobbed like a child. Then he looked up at us and produced, through his tears, the most beautiful smile I have ever seen on anyone in my life. "... but it was awright. She took the test. Three times over six months. Nothin. She wasn't infected..."
Marjory, who in the same circumstances *was* infected, hissed at us. Then it happened. That **** Venters rolled his eyes and smiled at me. That did it. That was the moment. The anger was still htere, but it was fused with a great calmness, a powerful clarity. I smiled back at him, feeling like a semi-submerged crocodile eyeing a soft, furry animal drinking at the river's edge.
"Naw..." wee Goagsie whined piteously at Marjory, "it wasn't like that... waitin for her test results was worse than waiting for my own... you don't understand... I didn't.. I mean I don't... it's not like..."
Tom came to the aid of the quivering, inarticulate mass he had become.
"Let's not forget the tremendous anger, resentment and bitterness that you all felt when you learned that you were anti-body positive."
This was the cue for one of our customary, on-going series of arguments to shunt into full gear. Tom saw it as 'dealing with out anger' by 'confronting reality'. The process was supposed to be therapeutic, and indeed it seemed to be for many of the group, but I found it exhausting and depressing. Perhaps this was because, at the time, my personal agenda was different.
Throughout this debate on personal responsibility, Venters, as was typical on such occasions, made his customary helpful and enlightening contribution. "Shite," he exclaimed, whenever someone made a point with passion. Tom would ask him, as he always did, why he felt this way.
"Just do," Venters replied with a shrug. Tom asked if he could explain why.
"It's just one person's view against the other's."
Tom responded by asking Alan what his view was. Alan either said: I'm not bothered, or: I don't give a fuck. I forget his exact words.
Tom then asked him why he was here. Venters said: "I'll go then." He left, and the atmosphere instantly improved. It was as if someone who had done a vile and odious fart had somehow sucked it back up their arsehole.
He came back though, as he always did, sporting that sneering, gloating expression. It was as if Venters believed that he alone was immortal. He enjoyed watching others trying to be positive, then deflating them. Never blatantly enough to get kicked out of the group, but enough to significantly lower its morale. The disease which racked his body was a sweetheart compared to the more obscure one that possessed his sick mind.
Ironically, Venters saw me as a kindred spirit, unaware that my sole purpose of attending the meetings was to scrutinise him. I never spoke in the group, and perfected a cynical look whenever anyone else did. Such behaviour provided the basis on which I was able to pal up with Alan Venters.
It had been easy to befriend this guy. Nobody else wanted to know him; I simply became his friend by default. We started drinking together; him recklessly, me carefully. I began to learn about his life, accumulating knowledge steadily, thoroughly and systematically. I had done a degree in Chemistry at Strathclyde University, but I never approached my studies of that subject with anything like the rigour or enthusiasm with which I approached the study of Venters.
Venters had got HIV infection, like most people in Edinburgh, through the sharing of needles while taking heroin. Ironically, prior to being diagnosed HIV positive, he had kicked the junk, but was now a hopeless pisshead. The way he drank indiscriminately, occasionally stuffing a pub roll or toastie into his face during a marathon drinking bout, meant that his weakened frame was easy prey to all sorts of potentially killer infections. During his period of socialising with me, I confidently prophesied that he would last no time.
That was how it turned out; a number of infections were soon coursing through his body. This made no difference to him. Venters carried on behaving as he had always done. He started to attend the hospice, or the unit, as they called it; first as an outpatient, then with a berth of his very own.
It always seemed to be raining when I made that journey to the hospice; a wet, freezing, persistent rain, with winds that cut through your layers of clothing like an X-ray. Chills equal colds and colds can equal death, but this meant little to me at the time. Now, of course, I look after myself. Then, however, I ahd an all-consuming mission: there was work to be done.
The hospice building is not unattractive. They have faced over they grey blocks with some nice yellow brickwork. There is no yellow brick approach road to the place, however.
Every visit to Alan Venters brought my last one, and my final revenge, closer to hand. The point soon came when there was no time left to try and illicit heartfelt apologies from him. At one stage I thought that I wanted repentance from Venters more than revenge for myself. If I got it, I would have died with a belief in the fundamental goodness of the human spirit.
The shrivelled vessel of skin and bone which contained the life-force of Venters seemed to be an inadequate home for a spirit of any sorts, let alone one in which to invest your hopes for humanity. However, a weakened, decaying body was supposed to bring the spirit closer to the surface, and make it more apparent to we mortals. That was what Gillian from the hospital where I worked told me. Gillian is very religious, and it suits her to believe that. We all see what we want to see.
What did I really want? Perhaps it was always revenge, rather than repentance. Venters could have babbled for forgiveness like a greetin-faced bairn. It might not have been enough to stop me from doing what I planned to do.
This internal discoursing; it's a by-product of all that counselling I got from Tom. He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. I didn't believe that at the time, but now I do. By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.
The nurse at the hospital looked a bit like Gail, a woman I'd once gone out with, pretty disastrously, as it happens. She wore the same cool expression on her face. In her case she had good reason, as I recognised it as one of professional concern. In Gail's case, such detachment was, I feel, inappropriate. This nurse looked at me in that strained, serious and patronising way.
"Alan's very weak. Please don't stay too long."
"I understand," I smiled, benign and sombre. As she was playing the caring professional, I thought that I had better play the concerned friend. I seemed to be playing the part quite well.
"He's very fortunate to have such a good friend," she said, obviously perplexed that such a bastard abomination could have *any* friends. I grunted noncommittal and moved into the small room. Alan looked terrible. I was worried sick; gravely concerned that this bastard might not last the week, that he might escape from the terrible destiny I'd carved out for him. The timing had to be right.
It had given me great pleasure, at the start, to witness Venter's great physical agony. I will never let myself get into a state like that when I get sick; fuck that. I'll leave that engine running in the lock-up garage. Venters, shite that he is, did not have the guts to leave the gig of his own record. He's hang on till the grim end, if only to maximise the inconvenience to everyone.
"Awright Al?" I asked him. A silly question really. Convention always imposes its lunacy on us at such inappropriate times.
"Not bad..." he wheezed.
"Any pain?" I ask hopefully.
"Naw... they got drugs... just my breathin..." I held his hand and felt a twinge of amusement as his pathetic, bony fingers squeezed tightly. I thought I was going to laugh in his skeletal face as his tired eyes kept shutting.
I watched, stifling smirks, as he groped for breath.
"S awright mate. Ah'm here," I said.
"You're a good guy, Davie..." he spluttered. "...pity we never knew each other before this..." He opened his eyes and shut them again.
"It was a fuckin pity awright you trash-faced little ****..." I hissed at his closed eyes.
"What? ... what was that..." he was delirious with fatique and drugs.
"I said, it's a shame we had to meet under such circumstances."
He groaned contentedly and fell into a sleep. I extracted his scrawny fingers from my hand.
The nurse came in to check on my man. "Most anti-social. Hardly the way to treat a guest," I smiled, looking down on the slumbering near-corpse that was Venters. She forced a nervous laugh, probably thinking it's the black humour of the homosexual or the junky, or the haemophiliac or whatever she imagines me to be. I don't give a toss about her perception of me. I see myself as the avenging angel.
Killing this shitebag would only do him a big favour. That was the problem, but one which I managed to resolve. How do you hurt a man who's going to die soon, knows it, and doesn't give a toss? Talking, but more crucially, listening to Venters, I found out how. You hurt them through the living, through the people they care for.
The song says that "everybody loves somebody sometime", but Venters seemed to defy that generalisation. The man just did not like people, and they more than reciprocated. With other men Venters saw himself in an adversarial role. Past acquaintances were described with bitterness: "a rip-off merchant," or derision: "a fuckin sap". The description employed depended on who had abused, exploited or manipulated whom, on the particular occasion in question.
Women fell into two indistinct categories. They either had "a fanny like a fish supper", or "a fanny like a burst couch". Venters evidently saw little in a woman beyond "the furry hole", as he called it. Even some disparaging remarks about their tits or arses would have represented a considerable broadening of vision. I got despondent. How could this bastard ever love anybody? I gave it time, however, and patience reaped its reward.
Despicable shite though he was, Venters did care for one person. There was no mistaking the change in his conversational tone when he employed the phrase: "the wee felly". I discreetly pumped him for information about the five-year-old son he had by this woman in Wester Hailes, a "cow" who would not let him see the child, named Kevin. Part of me loved this woman already.
The child showed me how Venters could be hurt. In contrast to his normal bearing, he was stricken with pain and incoherent with sentiment when he talked about how he'd never see *his* son grow up, about how much he loved "the wee felly". That was why Venters did not fear death. He actually believed that he would live on, in some sense or other, through his son.
It hadn't been difficult to insinuate myself into the life of Frances, Venter's ex-girlfriend. She hated Venters with a vitriol which endeared her to me even though I wasn't attracted to her in any other way.
After checking her out, I cruised her accidentally-on-purpose at a trashy disco, where I played the role of charming and attentive suitor. Of course, money was no object. She was soon well into it, obviously having never been treated decently by a man in her life, and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.
The worst part was when it came to sex. I insisted, of course, on wearing a condom. She had, prior to us getting to that stage, told me about Venters. I nobly said that I trusted her and would be prepared to make love without a condom, but I wanted to remove the element of uncertainty from her mind, and I had to be honest, I had been with a few different people. Given her past experience with Venters, such doubts were bound to be present. When she started to cry, I thought I had blown it. Her tears were due to gratitude however.
"You're a really nice person, Davie, do you know that?" she said. If she knew what I was going to do, she wouldn't have held such a lofty opinion. It made me feel bad, but whenever I thought of Venters, the feeling evaporated. I would go through with it alright.
I timed my courtship of Frances to coincide with Venter's decline into serious illness and his attendant incapacity in the hospice. A number of illnesses were in the frame to finish Venters, the leader of the field being pneumonia. Venters, in common with a lot of HIV-infected punters who take the junk route, escaped the horrible skin cancers more prevalent amongst gays. The main rival to his pneumonia was the prolific thrush which went into his throat and stomach. Thrush was not the first thing to want to choke the living shit out of the bastard, but it could be the last unless I moved quickly. His decline was very rapid, at one stage too rapid for my liking. I thought that the **** would cash in his chips before I could execute my plan.
My opportunity came, in the event, at exactly the right time; in the end it was probably fifty-fifty luck and planning. Venters was struggling, no more than a wrinkled parcel of skin and bone. The doctor had said: any day now.
I had got Frances to trust me with the babysitting. I encouraged her to get out with her friends. She was planning to go out for a curry on the Saturday night, leaving me alone in her flat with the kid. I would take the opportunity presented to me. On the Wednesday before the big day, I decided to visit my parents. I had thought about telling them of my medical condition, and knew it would probably be my last visit.
My parents' home was a flat in Oxgangs. The place had always seemed so modern to me when I was a kid. Now it looked strange, a shanty town of a bygone era. The old girl answered the door. For a second she looked tentative. Then she realised it was me and not my younger brother, and therefore the purse could be kept in mothballs. She welcomed me, her enthusiasm generated by relief. "Hu-low stranger," she sang, ushering me in with haste.
I noted the reason for the hurry, Coronation Street was on. Mike Baldwin had apparently reached a point where had had to confront live-in-lover Alma Sedgewick and tell her that he was really into rich widow Jackie Ingram. Mike couldn't help it. He was a prisoner of love, a force external to him, which compelled him to behave the way he did. I could, as Tom would have put it, empathise. I was a prisoner of hate, a force which was an equally demanding taskmaster. I sat down on the couch.
"Hello stranger," my old man repeated, not looking at me from behind his Evening News. "What have you been up to then?" he asked wearily.
"Nuthin' much."
"Two million Chinkies. Two million of the buggers. That's what we're gonna have over here when Hong Kong goes back to China." He let out a long exhalation of breath. "Two million Wee Willie Winkies," he mused.
I said nothing, refusing to rise to the bait. Ever since I'd gone to university, jacking in what my parents habitually described as "a good trade", the old man had cast himself as hard-nosed reactionary to my student revolutionary. At first it had been a joke, but with the passing years I grew out of my role as he began to embrace his more firmly.
"You're a fascist. It's all to do with inadequate penis size," I told him cheerfully. Coronation Street's vice-like grip on my Ma's psyche was broken briefly as she turned to us with a knowing smirk.
"Don't talk bloody nonsense. I've proved *my* manhood son," he belligerently replied, digging at the fact I'd managed to reach the age of twenty-five without obtaining a wife or producing children. For a second I even thought that he was going to pull out his cock to try and prove me wrong. Instread he shrugged off my remark and returned to his chosen theme. "How'd you like to million Chinkies in your street?" I thought of the term 'Chinky' and visualised loads of aluminium cartons of half-eaten food lying in my road. It was an easy image to call to mind, as it was a scene I observed every Sunday morning.
"It sometimes seems like I already have," I thought out loud.
"There you are then," he said, as if I'd conceded a point. "Another two million are on their way. How'd you like that?"
"Presumably the whole two million won't move into Caledonian Place. I mean, conditions are cramped enough in the Dalry ghetto as it is."
"Laugh if you like. What about jobs? Two million on the dole already. Houses? All they perr buggers livin in cardboard city." God, was he nipping my head. Thankfully, the mighty Ma, guardian of the soap box, intervened.
"Shut up, will you! I'm trying to watch the TV!"
I decide not to mention my HIV. My parents don't have very progressive views on such things. Or maybe they do. Who knows? At any rate, it just did not feel right. Tom always tells us to keep in tune with our feelings. My feelings were that my parents married at eighteen and had produced four screaming brats by the time they were my age. They think I'm 'queer' already. Bringing AIDS into the picture will only serve to confirm this suspicion.
Instead I drank a can of Export and quietly talked football with the old man. He hasn't been to a game since 1970. Colour television had gone for his legs. Twenty years later, satellite came along and fucked them up completely. Nonetheless, he still regarded himself as an expert on the game. The opinions of others were worthless. In any event, it was a waste of time attempting to venture them. As with politics, he'd eventually come around to the opposite viewpoint from the one he'd previously advocated and express it just as stridently. All you needed to do was put up no hard front for him to argue against and he'd gradually talk himself around to your way of thinking.
I sat for a while, nodding intently. Then I made some banal excuse and left.
I returned home and checked my toolbox. A former chippie's collection of various sharp implements. On Saturday, I took it round to Frances's flat in Wester Hailes. I had a few odd jobs to do. One of them she knew nothing about.
Fran had been looking forward to the meal out the her pals. She talked incessantly as she got ready. I tried to respond beyond a series of low groans which sounded like 'aye' and 'right', but my mind was spinning with thoughts of what I had to do. I sat hunched and tense on the bed, frequently rising to the window to peer out, as she put her 'face' on.
After what seemed like a lifetime, I hearded the sound of a motor rolling into the deserted, shabby car park. I sprang to the window, cheerfully announcing: "Taxi's here!"
Frances left me in custody of her sleeping child.
The whole operation went smoothly enough. Afterwards I felt terrible. Was I any better than Venters? Wee Kevin. We had some good times together. I'd taken him to the shows at the Meadows festival, to Kirkcaldy for a League Cup tie, and to the Museum of Childhood. While it doesn't seem a great deal, it's a sight more than his old boy ever did for the poor wee bastard. Frances said as much to me.
Bad as I felt then, it was only a foretaste of the horror that hit me when I developed the photographs. As the prints formed into clarity, I shook with fear and remorse. I put them on the dryer and made myself a coffee, which I used to wash down two valium. Then I took the prints and went to the hospice to visit Venters.
Physically, there was not a great deal left of him. I feared the worst when when I looked into his glazed eyes. Some people with AIDS had been developing pre-senile dementia. The disease could have his body. If it had also taken his mind, it would deprive me of my revenge.
Thankfully, Venters soon registered my presence. his initial lack of response probably a side-effect of the medication he was on. His eyes soon fixed me in their gaze, acquiring the sneaky, furtive look I associated with him. I could feel his contempt for me oozing through his sickly smile. He thought he'd found a sappy **** to indulge him until the end. I sat with him, holding his hand. I felt like snapping off his scrawny fingers and sticking them into his orifices. I blamed him for what I had to do to Kevin, as well as all the other issues.
"You're a good guy Davie. Pity we didn't meet in different circumstances," he wheezed, repeating that well-worn phrase he used on all my visits. I tightened my grasp on his hand. He looked at me uncomprehendingly. Good. The bastard could still feel physical pain. It wasn't going to be that kind of pain which would hurt him, but it was a nice extra. I spoke in clear, measured tones.
"I told you I got infected through shooting up, Al. Well, I lied. I lied to you aboot tons of things."
"What's aw this, Davie?"
"Just listen for a minute, Al. I got infected through this bird I'd been seein. She didn't know that she was HIV. She got infected by a piece of shite that she met one night in a pub. She was a bit pished and a bit naive, this wee bird. Y'know? This **** said that he had a wee bit of dope back at his gaff. So she went with the ****. Back to his flat. The bastard raped her. You know what he did, Al?"
"Davie... what is this..."
"I'll fuckin tell ye. Threatened her with a fuckin blade. Tied her down. Fucked her fanny, fucked her arse, made her go down on him. The lassie was terrified, as well as being hurt. Does this sound familiar then ****?"
"I don't... I don't know what the fuck you're on about Davie..."
"Don't fah-kin start. You remember Donna. You rememeber the Southern Bar."
"I was fucked up man..." "You remember what you said..."
"That was lies. Bullshit. I couldn't have got a fuckin root on if I knew I had that shite in *my* come. I couldn't have raised a fuckin smile."
"Wee Goagsit... mind of him?"
"Shut your fuckin mouth. Wee Goagsie took his fuckin chance. You sat there like it was a fuckin pantomime when you had yours," I rasped, watching drops of my gob disseminate into the film of sweat which covered his shrunken coupon. I composed myself, continuing my story.
"The lassie went through a heavy time. She was strong-willed though. I would have fucked up a lot of women, but Donna tried to shrug it off. Why let one spunk-gobbed **** ruin your life? Easier said than done, but she did it. What she didn't know was that the scumbag in question was HIV positive. Then she meets this other guy. They hit it off. He likes her, but he knows that she's got problems with men and sex. No fuckin wonder, eh? I wanted to strangle the perverse force which passed for life out of the ****'s body. Not yet, I told myself. Not yet, you doss ******." I drew a heavy breath, and continued my tale, reliving the horror of it.
"They worked it out, this lassie and the other guy. Things were barry for a bit. Then she discovered that the rapist fuckbag was HIV. Then she discovered that she was. But what was worse for this person, a *real* person, a fuckin *moral* person, was when she found out that he new felly was. All because of *you*, the rapist ****. *I* was the new felly. *Me*. Big fuckin sap here," I pointed to myself.
"Davie... I'm sorry man..." "what can I say? You've been a good mate... it's that disease... it's a fuckin horrible disease, Davie. It kills the innocent, Davie... it kills the innocent..."
"It's too late for that shite now. You had your chance at the time. Like Wee Goagsie."
He laughed in my face. It was a deep, wheezing sound.
"So what are you... what are you gonna do about it? ... Kill me? Go ahead... you'd be doing me a favour... I don't give a fuck." His wizened death mask seemed to become animated, to fill with a strange, ugly energy. This was not a human being. Obviously, it suited me to believe that, made it easier to do what I had to do, but in cold light of day I believe it still. It was time to play my cards. I calmly produced the photographs from my inside pocket.
"It's not so much what I'm gonna do about it, more what I already have done about it," I smiled, drinking the expression of perplexed fear which etched onto his face.
"What's this... what do you mean?" I felt wonderful. Shock waves tripped over him, his scrawny head oscillating as his mind grappled with his greatest fears. He looked at the photographs in terror, unable to make them out, wondering what dreadful secrets they held.
"Think of the worst possible thing I could do to make you pissed off, Al. Then multiply it by one thousand... and you're not even fuckin close." I shook my head mournfully.
I showed him a photograph of myself and Frances. We were posing confidently, casually displaying the arrogance of lovers in their first flush.
"What the fuck," he spluttered, trying pathetically to pull his scrawny frame up in the bed. I thrust my hand to his chest and effortlessly pushed him back home. I did this slowly, savouring my power, and his impotence in that one gorgeous motion.
"Relax, Al, relax. Unwind. Loosen up a little. Take it easy. Remember what the doctors and nurses say. You need your rest." I flipped the first photo over, exposing the next picture to him. "That was Kevin that took the last picture. Takes a good photo for a wee laddie, eh? There he is, the wee felly." The next photograph showed Kevin, dressed in a Scotland football strip, on my shoulders.
"What have you fuckin done..." It was a sound, rather than a voice. It seemed to come from an unspecific part of his decaying body rather than his mouth. The unearthliness of it stung me, but I made the effort to continue sounding nonchalant.
"Basically this." I produced the third photo. It showed Kevin, bound to a kitchen chair. His head hung heavily to one side, and his eys were closed. Had Venters looked at the detail, he may have noticed a bluish tint to his son's eyelids and lips, and the almost clownish whiteness of his complexion. It's almost certain that all Venters noticed were the dark wounds on his head, chest, and knees, and the blood which oozed from them, covering his body, at first making it hard to note that he was naked.
The blood was everywhere. It covered the lino in a dark puddle underneath Kevin's chair. Some of it shot outwards across the kitchen floor in squirted trails. An assortment of power tools, including a Bosch drill and a Black and Decker sander, in addition to various sharpened knives and screwdrivers, were laid out at the feet of the upright body.
"Naw... naw... Kevin... for god's sake naw... he done nuthin... he hurt nobody... naw..." he moaned on, an ugly, whingey sound devoid of hope or humanity. I gripped his thim hair crudely, and wrenched his head up from the pillow. I observed in perverse fascination as the bony skull seemed to sink to the bottom of the loose skin. I thrust the picture in his face.
"I thought that young Kev should be just like Daddy. So when I got bored fucking your old girlfriend, I decided I'd give wee Kev one up his... eh... tradesman's entrance. I thought, if HIV's good enough for Daddy it's good enough for his brat."
"Kevin... Kevin... he groaned on."
"Unfortunately, his arsehole was a bit too tight for me, so I had to extend it a little with the masonry drill. Sadly, I got a wee bit carried away and started making holes all over the place. It's just that he reminded me so much of you, Al. I'd love to say it was painless, but I cannot. At least it was relatively quick. Quicker than rotting away in a bed. It took him about twenty minutes to die. Twenty screaming, miserable minutes. Poor Kev. As you said, Al, it's a disease which kills the innocent.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He kept saying "no" over and over again in low, choking sobs. His head jerked in my grip. Worried that the nurse would come, I pulled out one of the pillows from behind him.
"The last word wee Kevin said was 'Daddy'. That was your bairn's last words, Al. Sorry pal. Daddy's away. That was what I told him. Daddy's away." I looked straight into his eyes, all pupils, just a black void of fear and total defeat.
I pushed his head back down, and put the pillow over his face stifling the sickening moans. I head it firmly down and pressed my head on it, half-gasping, half-singing the paraphrased words of an old Boney M song: "Daddy, Daddy Cool, Daddy, Daddy Cool... you been a fuckin fool, bye bye Daddy Cool..."
I merrily sang until Venter's feeble restance subsided.
Keeping the pillow firmly over his face, I pulled a Penthhouse magazine off his locker. The bastard would have been too weak to even turn the pages, let alone raise a wank. However, his homophobia was so strong that he'd probably kept it on prominent display to make some absurd statement about his sexuality. Rotting away, and his great concern is that nobody thinks he's a buftie. I set the magazine on the pillow and thumbed through it in a leisurely manner before taking Venter's pulse. Nothing. He'd checked out. More importantly, he'd done it in a state of tortured, agonised, misery.
Taking the pillow off the corpse, I pulled its ugly frail head forward, then let it fall back. For a few moments I contemplated what I saw before me. The eyes were open, as was the mouth. It looked a stupid, a sick caricature of a human being. I suppose that's what corpses are. Mind you, Venters always was.
My searing scorn quickly gave way to a surge of sadness. I couldn't quite determine why that should have happened. I looked away from the body. After sitting for another couple of minutes, I went to tell the nurse that Venters had left the stadium.
I attended Venter's funeral at Seafield Crematorium with Frances. It was an emotional time for her, and I felt obliged to lend support. It was never an event destined to break any attendance records. His mother and sister showed up, as did Tom, with a couple of punters from 'HIV and Positive'.
The minister could find little decent to say about Venters and, to his credit, he didn't bullshit. It was a short and sweet performance. Alan had made many mistakes in his life, he said. Nobody was contradicting him. Alan would, like all of us, be judged by God, who would grant him salvation. It is an interesting notion, but I feel that the gaffer in the sky has a fair bit of graft ahead of him if that bastard's checked in up there. If he has, I think I'll take my chances in the other place, thank you very much.
Outside, I checked out the wreaths. Venters only had one. 'Alan. Love Mum and Sylvia.' To my knowledge they had never visited him in the hospice. Very wise of them. Some people are easier to love when you don't have to be around them. I pumped the hands of Tom and the others, then took Fran and Kev for some de luxe ice-cream at Lucas in Musselburgh. Obviously, I had deceived Venters about the things I did to Kevin. Unlike him, I'm not a fuckin animal. I'm far from proud about what I *did* do. I took great risks with the bairn's well being. Working in a hospital operating theatre, I know all about the crucial role of the anaethetist. They're the punters that keep you alive, not sadistic fuck-pigs like Howison. After the jab puts you under, you're kept unconscious by the anaethetic and put onto a life-support system. All your vital signs are monitored in highly controlled conditions. They take care.
Chloroform is much more of a blunt instrument, and very dangerous. I still shudder when I think of the risk I took with the wee man. Thankfully, Kevin woke up, with only a sore head and some bad dreams as a remnant of his trip to the kitchen.
The joke shop and Humbrol enamel paints provided the wounds. I worked wonders with Fran's makeup and talc for kev's death mask. My greatest coup, though, was the three plastic pint bags of blood I took from the fridge in the path lab at the hospital. I got paranoid when that ****** Howison gave me the evil eye as I walked down the corridor past him. He always does though. I think it's because I once addressed him as 'Doctor' instead of 'Mister'. He's a funny ****. Most surgeons are. You'd have to be to do that job. Like Tom's job, I suppose.
Putting Kevin under turned out to be easy. The biggest problem I had was setting up and dismantling the entire scene inside half an hour. The most difficult part involved cleaning him up before getting him back to bed. I had to use turps as well as water. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up the kitchen before Frances got back. It was worth the effort however. The pictures looked authentic. Authentic enough to fuck up Venters.
Since I helped Al on his way to the great gig in the sky, life has been pretty good. Frances and I have gone our separate ways. We were never really compatible. She only really saw me as a babysitter and a wallet. For me, obviously, the relationship became largely superfluous after Venter's death. I miss Kev more. It makes me wish that I had a kid. Now that'll never be. One thing that Fran did say was that I had revived her faith in men after Venters. Ironically, it seems as if I found my role in life —— cleaning up that prick's emotional garbage.
My health, touch wood, has been good. I'm still asymptomatic. I fear cold and get obsessive from time to time, but I take care of myself. Apart from the odd can of beer, I never bevvy. I watch what I eat, and have a daily programme of light exercises. I get regular blood checks and pay attention to my T4 count. It's still way over the crucial 800 mark; in fact it's not gone down at all.
I'm now back with Donna, who inadvertently acted as the conduit for HIV between me and Venters. We found something that we probably wouldn't have got from each other in different circumstances. Or maybe we would. Anyway, we don't analyse it, not having the luxury of time. However, I must give old Tom at the group his due. He said that I'd have to work through my anger, and he was right. I took the quick route though, by sending Venters to oblivion. Now all I get is a bit of guilt, but I can handle that.
I eventually told my parents about my being HIV positive. My Ma just cried and held me. The old man said nothing. The colour had drained from his face as he sat and watched A Question of Sport. When he was pressed by his wailing wife to speak, he just said: "Well, there's nothin to say." He kept repeating that sentence. He never looked me in the eye.
That night, back at my flat, I heard the buzzer go. Assuming it to be Donna, who had been out, I opened the stair and house doors. A few minutes later, my old man stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes. It was the first time he'd ever been to my flat. He moved over to me and held me int a crushing grip, sobbing, and repeating: "My laddie." It felt a world or two better than: "Well, there's nothin to say."
I cried loudly and unselfconsciously. As with Donna, so with my family. We have found an intimacy which may have otherwise eluded us. I wish I hadn't waited so long to become a human being. Better late than never though, believe me.
There's some kids playing out in the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I'm doing to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. I'll be what the medical staff call a long-term survivor. I just know that I will.
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ead Cities, #7:Max? Antique Toy? (stupid tracklisting),#10: Glass? Yage?, and #12: Through Your Gills..?? are absolutely blissful.. while others are in-your-face, almost to a maddening point, such as the ever-too-popular We Have Explosive (#4). Despite it's over use (everything from MTV to Wipeout XL to a homemade action flick :-), it's quite well constructed, and very energetic. As a whole, the tracks seem a tad flimsy.. not as solid as your stereotypical IDM or as deep, but upon further examination it becomes apparent that it's simply the sound of it.. it's actually more complex than you'd think. It has a very menacing, apocalyptic cityscape theme.. and is very death oriented (read the track titles). It creates a pretty strong vibe. The end is especially effective, as #12's calm and melancholic piano ballad with guitar and a girl's innocent laughter is sickeningly cut off by a harsher, morbid melodic permutation of the previous track, called First Death In The Family: an unpleasant reminder of how quickly happiness can change to dread. It's a fairly eclectic collection: Track #9 leaves you gasping for air as you die drowning all alone in a dense quagmire (hence the name, if I've got the tracks right..), you meander through the dreamlike afterlife of #10, until you are resurrected in the airy, breathing #11. My favorite track is #3: Her Face Forms In Summertime.. good night! If no other song proves their genius then this one will! Beautiful guitar strums swimming in reverb go in and out as more washes and FX pop up and rush in suddenly as melodic accompaniment with drums added later in the mix. This song, along with #10, is one of those tracks that actually makes you feel something as opposed to just analyzing it. These songs hit some core part of you when you don't expect it, and give you the sensation that you're no longer listening to music but are rather drawn into a separate world that is both created by the artist, but also present in the deepest recesses of your subconscious. (Sorry about that incomprehensible babble). It's almost as if these types of songs are what remain flowing through your head while lying in bed after waking up from a weird dream. Man, I can't say enough good about this album. It's not immediately appealing, but if you give it time, you will be rewarded!