Read Online Sin by Shaun Allan - Free Book Online

one of simple sibling love.
Naturally it wasn't. Joy was joy and I, Sin, was sin. I found out
too late how closely we were connected. Too late to save her and,
perhaps, myself. But whip-de-do. At least she made sure I could
afford Dr. Connors' rates.
    I think, sometimes, I sound
callous and uncaring. I make light of the deepest, darkest
subjects, as if I couldn't give a rat's banana. That's not the
case, though. I might joke about my sister jumping off the Humber
Bridge to take a little dip in Pollution Central, but it doesn't
mean I think it's funny. It doesn't mean it didn't tear me apart.
It doesn't mean it doesn't still.
    Perhaps it's because that's
exactly what happened. It tore me apart, just as everything else
I've caused has done. The bus smashing into the post office. The
seagull ending up as if it had been supper for a pack of hunting
dogs that had somehow mistaken it for a fox. The boy, a young boy , driving his car into a tree. Each time something
happened, I was fed through the shredder, then stuck back together
with a great, hefty staple gun and a few rusty nails. With some
blu-tac and spit to make sure I didn’t come apart at the seams.
After so much of that you either deal with it or you end up
insane.
    No comments about my previous
residence, please.
    So that was my way of dealing
with it all. That was how I bit the big cookie. I took the piss,
just a little. It was either that or gouge my eyes out with a rusty
fork. They didn't give us metal forks, rusty or otherwise, in the
mental home, so I didn't really have that option. Humour, however
inappropriate, was my only course of action, my only weapon and my
only form of defense.
    So, I wasn't rich, not by any
stretch of the imagination, but I was comfortable. I couldn't buy a
twenty seven bedroomed, eighteen bathroomed, ten kitchened, six
garaged, one partridge in a pear treed mansion, not could I fork
out for a Ferrari or two to run about town. I couldn't afford eight
cruises a year. I couldn't afford one really. Well, maybe I could,
but Dr. Connors vampiric fees made sure I didn't take it. But that
was OK. It was all well and fine and dandy. I'd voluntarily
incarcerated myself into Hell's Kebab House and accepted the fact
that they'd bleed me like a leech, all nicely bloated and
disgustingly fat.
    It was a good job their
standards of care were right up there with the monkeys. I imagined
Dr. Connors performing lobotomies with a steak knife and a knitting
needle, giving the knife a quick wipe before he sat down for a nice
bit of sirloin, chips and peas, hold the mushrooms. Was I being
unkind? Perhaps. The good doctor might well use a clean knife for
his dinner. Was it deserved? Yes. It was. Dr. Connors was like
Stephen King's It. All smiles and happiness while he eviscerated
you.
    Apparently he liked Chianti
too.
    My problem was, although I had
money in the bank - assuming that it hadn't been totally siphoned
yet (and we know that assuming anything turns me and you into a
right donkey's arse) - I didn't have access to a bank. I didn't
even know if there were any banks around here, not knowing
precisely where 'here' was. I could have been in my home town, or I
could have been in Outer Mongolia. Both options were pretty much
the arse end of Nowhere to me, but at least Grimsby had its fair
share of banks, building societies and those cash-point machines
that rip you off a couple of quid every time you make a withdrawal.
I knew that Outer Mongolia had come a long, long way since the days
of Genghis Khan, but I was sure trying to get hold of any cash, if
indeed that's where I'd landed, would have presented me with one or
two wee problems. All I could do, in my current situation, was keep
walking and see where I ended up.
    I just hoped I'd end up
somewhere fairly soon. Dark clouds were looming ominously not too
far away. I could see them planning their attack on me, making bets
on which would manage to drench me the quickest. I wished I'd
brought me brolly.
    My