Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 by Sonia Paige Read Free Book Online Page A

banging on her cell door. ‘Nurse! Nurse! I want to see a nurse!’ Bang. Pause. ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ Bang bang bang. A longer pause. ‘You fuckers! Fuckers!’ Bang. ‘Where’s the bloody nurses? I need a bloody nurse!’ Bang bang.
    From her bed Beverly groans.
    Mandy stirs and looks out over her sheet. ‘It’s going to be one of them days.’
    Debs sits up, shivers and looks around. ‘Why don’t someone see to her?’
    Mandy pulls a face. ‘“I want never gets.”’
    I am still sitting on the floor facing the wall. In my hand I have the pale blue felt tip pen. I start drawing another spider’s web on the wall.
    From down the corridor the sounds continue: ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Bang bang bang.
    â€˜Go on then, Karina,’ Debs says to me. ‘You’re awake. Take our minds off it.’
    â€˜She’ll keep this up for hours now,’ says Mandy. ‘You OK, Bev?’
    From under the covers comes: ‘Just let me sleep. There ain’t nothing to wake up for.’
    â€˜Go on?’ I say.
    Mandy gets out of the next door bed in her clothes and climbs over my bed to look. ‘What you doing? What’s with the webs?’
    I can’t answer that. I drop the pen and slump back against the bed.
    â€˜Where’s the spider?’ asks Mandy.
    No spider. Just webs, stifling me. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her. ‘Spider doesn’t know where it is.’
    â€˜Great,’ says Mandy. She picks up the pen from the floor and writes the number two on the wall, adding the circle round it with a flourish. ‘Day Two, you’re still alive,’ she says. ‘So did you or didn’t you?’
    â€˜What?’ I say. Perhaps if I keep staring at the wall, the last few days will come back to me.
    â€˜The Greek boy. He wanted you to give him your body. Did you?’ Mandy goes back to bed and pulls the bedclothes around her.
    â€˜Oh, that.’ I climb back onto my bed. I have been hoping they might forget. ‘No. I fought him off. He didn’t fight very hard, it was a kind of ritual. I knew it from my time in Athens. Their honour required that they make an attempt. But they didn’t really hope to succeed.’
    Lefteris. He was a nice boy. I wonder who he is touching now. So many paths not taken, refusing happiness again and again. Twisted roads leading to here. And now I’ve lost another chance, it slipped through my fingers… No, I wrecked it myself. When I’m offered love, I turn away. I’m not happy enough to find happiness. Who said that?
    â€˜So what did he do then?’ asks Debs.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜The Greek boy. After you blew him out.’
    â€˜Lefteris? He took defeat in good spirit,’ I say. ‘We walked back down to the village. On the outskirts, by the cemetery, we passed an older woman dressed all in black. He greeted her and they chatted in Greek. I could see her looking me over from the corner of her eye. Then she went into the graveyard.’
    That was a strange encounter. I didn’t understand it. Perhaps we are doomed to keep re-telling what we don’t understand until we can make sense of it.
    â€˜I asked Lefteris who the woman was.
    â€˜â€œMy aunt,” he said. “She goes every day to talk to her daughter.”
    â€˜I looked round to see the daughter.
    â€˜â€œHer daughter, she died,” he explained. “Before five years. Now there is only bones. After some years, we dig the bones, we wash them and keep them.” He gestured towards his aunt, who I could see sitting in the graveyard, rocking to and fro, making a low moaning sound.
    â€˜â€œHer daughter was very beautiful,” he said. “She was ill and then her thread was cut. You understand me?” He made a gesture of scissors cutting. Then he stretched his hands down in a gesture of helpless despair. “The people here say: