Read Online Silent Voices by Gary McMahon - Free Book Online Page B

them could not be more different, and yet back then, when they’d been children, they had been like brothers.
    Sometimes memories acted like a wedge, coming between people and pushing them apart. Time broke your heart and skinned you alive. It was a madman with a flensing knife, grinning as he stalked you from behind, drawing incrementally closer to his prey with each passing moment.
    The shower was hot; the water prickled his scalp, burned the tops of his shoulders and sent a shiver of pain down the back of his neck. The spots and buboes across his back and shoulders at first flared up, and then the hot water began to soothe them. It drew out the sting of pain, made him feel for a moment that he wasn’t suffering from this dreadful acne, that his flesh was fine and unblemished instead of ravaged by infection.
    Brendan reached over his shoulder and gently patted the wounds. They were always wet; they never seemed to dry out. But this time, under the shower jet, it was a clean wetness. The water washed away the vile yellowish ichors which had bled from the burst pustules and crusted over the top like a fine honeycombed layer of cinder toffee. The skin around the infected areas felt smooth and clean. Brendan closed his eyes and pretended that he was healed. That he was normal and healthy, that he was like Simon Ridley.
    Sometimes he was certain that the damaged flesh could hear his thoughts, that it knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was displeased. The response would be a massive flare-up, where the blisters would rise, and burst, and bleed... sometimes it felt like he were being punished, but he had no idea what his crime might have been, or when he was supposed to have committed it. He tried to be a good man. His only vices were alcohol and self-pity.
    Just as he was dabbing himself dry with a towel – one of the ones only he was allowed to use, because they got dirty quickly from his back – Jane knocked on the bathroom door.
    “Are you decent?”
    “Never,” he said, rubbing his leg with the towel.
    “Well, I’m coming in anyway, so you’d better put that weapon away.” She was smiling as she pushed open the door and walked into the small, cramped room. “Here, let me.” She took the towel from his hands and finished drying him off. “They look a bit better than they did this morning,” she said, standing behind him as he leaned against the shower glass.
    “They always look better just after a shower. They’ll be clogged and clotted again in an hour.” He closed his eyes and wished that he didn’t need his wife to do this. He knew Simon didn’t have open sores on his back; his skin would be toned and tanned. It would be flawless.
    Jane hung up the towel on the hook and moved to the sink, where she opened the door of the cabinet on the wall – the one that was mounted too high for the kids to reach. She pushed a few bottles of pills and mouthwash out of the way and then brought out the tub of benzoyl peroxide ointment. “Here we go,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror. The smile lit up her face, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She washed her hands with disinfectant soap, using her elbows to turn off the taps, just like Brendan had seen actors do in Saturday night hospital dramas. Then she walked back over to where he was leaning against the bathtub, his forearms resting on the edge of the tub and his knees pressed into the cool tiled floor.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, wishing that things could be different – that she didn’t have to do this for him.
    “Don’t be silly.” Her hands were shockingly cold – the lotion was smooth and clammy against his inflamed skin.
    Brendan closed his eyes. He pretended that there was a stranger tending to his needs, and not his wife. He often did this; imagined that she didn’t have to see his wounds. He wished that someone else could do this in her place.
    “You’re right. They’re really bad today, babe. The worst I’ve seen them for a while,