Read Online Desolation by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online

job?”
    â€œIt’s not a job, it’s my way. And I have no idea. The urge has yet to take me.”
    â€œYou still have makeup on your face.” Cain was suddenly tempted to reach over and touch Magenta’s skin, wipe away the paint and feel how hot she burned beneath. But that would be far too familiar. The siren had once blasted him every time he touched something. It lasted for a week.
    â€œI’ll wash it off later. Cain, it’s been a pleasure, and now I have to go. I’ll get this.” Magenta stood and threw a five-pound note on the table.
    â€œHang on!” Cain had no idea why he was asking her to wait, or whether he even had anything to say. She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to continue. “You’re right,” he said at last. “Everyone’s scared of clowns.”
    She nodded and left, and he wondered just how much of himself he had revealed in that parting shot.
    Â 
    He remained in the café for a few minutes, finishing his cake and taking a few guilty bites from the slab Magenta had left on her plate. He hummed to himself, that familiar tune he knew but had never been able to name, and looked around as if expecting to find someone staring at him from another table.
    After paying with Magenta’s money, Cain bought a Mozart CD from a small music shop several doors away. He took his time walking home, still humming that tune, hoping against hope that Mozart would put a name to it but knowing that, as usual, it would remain a mystery.
    He had memories of a time when his father tried to operate on him.
    Cain is directed into a small room in the basement of the house, a place he has never been or seen before. It has a strange new feel to it, as if it has been added to the house or opened up only recently. Perhaps his father has just discovered this room. Its bright surfaces glare under the highwattage lighting, the walls polished and gleaming, ceiling white and reflective, the few pieces of functional furniture all chrome and plastic sheets. If the room has not actually been built as an operating theater, then it must have taken little effort to turn it into one.
    The furniture consists of an operating table—with channels for blood and fluids along either side and straps and buckles for tying the subject down—and a simple trolley covered with a surgeon’sparaphernalia. Cain sees scalpels and saws, probes and clamps, gauze and stitching. He also sees more esoteric equipment, such as several acorns sharpened to a point, a large feather apparently dipped in molten metal, and a selection of pickled eggs of various species. He has no idea what purpose any of these could serve, but they are mingled with other equipment as if a natural part of any operation. He goes to ask his father, but the old man is washing himself vigorously at a sink in the corner. Not only his hands but his face, neck and shoulders, his arms and chest, scrubbing with a chunk of rough soap, scrubbing so hard that the flesh of his saggy stomach and hips wobbles with each movement. His skin is red-raw where he has washed, and Cain is sure that the surface will split at any moment.
    Eventually, his father turns around, pink and glowing from the wash, hands held up, fingers splayed, and smiles down at his son.
    It’s all for the best
, he says.
Sometimes a process has to be accelerated. You have to be helped along. How can you gain Pure Sight when your eyes pollute your mind?
    He sends Cain into the next room to strip and prepare for the operation. (Cain—eleven years old then, maybe twelve—can remember that room in detail, even though in reality he is quite certain that none of this has ever taken place.) There is a gown laid out on a bench, paper underwear, a paper hat with a ridiculous painted smiley face, as if to grin away the terror. There is also a toilet in the corner of the room, unscreened and without a seat. Heneeds to go before the operation—the thought