Taking Pity by David Mark Read Free Book Online

be rich with snowdrops and bluebells in February but is colorless now.
    Home.
    Mahon opens the unlocked wooden door and steps onto the concrete flagstones of the hallway, followed by a swirl of wind, rain, and leaves. He shuts the door against the darkness outside, but it does little to stop the sighing of the wind and the fingernails of rain on the glass.
    It is cold in the house. It seems to grow colder with every step.
    Mahon switches on the hallway lamp, and the yellow of his vision becomes more pronounced. He turns and walks to the large, farmhouse-style kitchen and fills the deep sink with water from the cold tap. He removes his sunglasses, hat, and scarf, and places them on the wooden work surface. Behind him is a large granite-topped table. It supports a vase of bright yellow roses. In the corners of the room, drifts of dead rose petals pile up like dunes of autumn leaves. Their vivid colors have faded to brown and black, their scent a sickly-sweet decay, heavy on the air.
    Looking up, Mahon catches a glimpse of his reflection in the dark window.
    He has spent endless hours under the surgeon’s scalpel but there are still times when he sees himself as almost inhuman. One side of his face is still a hairless mess of white and pink flesh; a butcher’s window of raw and rotten meat.
    He looks away.
    Mahon places his hands in the icy water and leaves them there until the splashes of blood begin to lift from his skin. He has done this many times in his long life and knows the process cannot be rushed.
    Slowly, the water turns red. It is a gradual transformation, like milk being poured into strong tea, one drop at a time. Eventually, he rubs his fingers together, scrubs at his wrists, and removes his hands from the rose-red water. He dries them on his trousers, and walks across the concrete flags to the living room.
    For a time, still in semidarkness, he busies himself by the slate fireplace. Twisting kindling, stacking logs. Then he strikes a long-nosed match on one of the rough bricks of the mantelpiece and touches it to the dry paper. A soft, warm light grows into a red and yellow blaze as the kindling is devoured and the wood begins to crack. Satisfied, Mahon stands up, removes his coat, and sits down in the armchair facing the fire. He centers himself and settles back, retrieving an unfiltered cigarette from a crumpled packet, and igniting it with the cheap plastic lighter he has taken from the pocket of his black jeans.
    The room takes on the appearance of a cave. The light of the fire flickers and dances, pushes inward, then retreats like a tide. It exposes the drabness of the living room. Pale walls, mottled with damp, and patterned with patches of pink wallpaper that the scraping brush could not remove. A solitary standing lamp. Three-seater sofa, with only one flattened cushion. Wooden floorboards, stained and unvarnished. Almost black in the places where the blood has dried.
    The breeze hurls handfuls of leaves and twigs at the thick, old-fashioned windows. It is utterly black beyond the glass.
    “Feeling better?” asks Mahon.
    The thing on the floor was a man just a few nights ago. He was handsome and poised, well perfumed and elegantly dressed. Tonight he is a collage of bloodied silk and frayed flesh.
    Mahon leans forward and puffs some cigarette smoke into the man’s face. He is wreathed in mist; a demonic, half-made thing.
    The man tries to push himself into the floor. Wrestles with the blade that holds his arms still and only serves to further expose the tendons in his palms, bisecting the open wounds.
    Mahon has not bothered to gag the man. Was content to let him scream and shout and beg. Let him holler himself into unconsciousness while Mahon went up to the big house and gave Mr. Nock a report on the day’s wins and losses. Mr. Nock hadn’t asked whether the slick bastard in Mahon’s cottage had talked yet. Both men know that it is only a matter of time.
    “Wake up, bonny lad. We’ve got to have