Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

myself,’ he says, and the room is so silent she can hear the sound of him unsticking his tongue from the roof his mouth and swallowing.

‘Sir?’

‘Cox,’ he says, quietly. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

Cox has moved from the bed to the small plastic chair at its side. He’s fastened up his pyjama buttons wrongly, and the bandage covering his wound is peeking out from the great triangle of exposed skin. He looks just the right amount of pitiful. Anybody looking in through the reinforced glass would see a helpless figure. He’s pale; his eyes seamed red and dark beneath, and with a day’s growth of patchy grey stubble, he looks a lot more like a patient than a prisoner.

When he first began to suspect there was something unusual about him, Cox read a lot of academic textbooks on different forms of mental disorder. He read every book he could find on serial killers and investigative methods. He read books by criminal profilers and dry, academic tomes filled with case histories and insights. He read in the hope of identifying kindred spirits: of seeing himself reflected back among the endless pages of black ink. He found little that felt familiar. He doesn’t particularly enjoy categorization. He knows he isn’t a sex offender, though he will confess to an element of arousal during the deaths of his prettier victims. He feels no shame for it – the action is involuntary, and he has long since made the decision not to cheapen the experience of murder by turning it into an opportunity for sexual release. His pleasure is more tantric; more elemental. He folds the pleasure back inside himself and surfs the wave; existing in a state of residual bliss until the hunger for new experience begins to growl afresh. Nor does he see himself as a nihilistic beast: killing with a sense of futility and justifying his actions by pointing at the greater crimes of an unjust, hypocritical society. Cox is a believer. A religious man, in some sense. He finds the notion of God and devil infinitely more appealing than other explanations for existence, even while seeing in himself a perfect example of Darwinism. He has evolved into the perfect predator.

Checking that nobody is watching, he bends down, briskly, and picks up the two books that he has been ping-ponging between while waiting for the arrival of Miss Harris. One is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He has read it in three languages, but the English translation by Allen Mandelbaum is his favourite: unshowy and stately, seamed with the right amount of humour and violence. It never fails to leave him breathless. He is simultaneously reading The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. When he regains his freedom, he intends to see out his years without drawing attention to himself. He studies the book as if learning a new language: assessing himself every few sentences to see whether he is guilty of exhibiting the signs guaranteed to cause alarm. He believes himself to be a psychoanalyst of exceptional insight, but he still isn’t quite sure which label suits him best. He imagines a Venn diagram made up of at least half a dozen different circles, intersecting like petals of a flower with himself in the middle: a bee gathering pollen. He has elements of psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissistic personality disorder, dissociative personality disorder, depersonalization disorder and the comically named intermittent explosive disorder. He finds it ironic that the depression, anxiety, eating disorders and bed-wetting that plagued him as a child disappeared entirely as soon as he began killing people. He sometimes wonders whether he should write an academic tome espousing the psychological benefits of murder. He imagines there is a market for such a work.

There is a sound from the doorway. A changing of the lights. The sound of a key turning and then the muted chatter of the hallway forms into decipherable words as two lots of footsteps make their way across the floor. He feigns sleep, the books in his lap. Makes himself a sculpture of somebody so pitiable as to barely register as human.

‘Gary? Gary, are you sleeping? I’ve brought Miss Harris. How are you feeling? Can I get you some water, perhaps? Reading again, I see. Excellent. Good to see you haven’t been put off, eh?’

Groggily, Cox raises his head. Looks past Hussain to where Annabeth stands. She’s been crying. From the way she holds her hands he can tell she has suffered an injury. She didn’t wash her hair this morning. There are fibres of wool upon her white shirt. Did she sleep downstairs, he wonders? On the sofa, under a blanket? Or did she and her friend enjoy one another on a patterned rug? He ruminates on this, and more, as he looks up at his heaven-sent angel and allows his eyes to fill with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, holding back the sobs. ‘I’m sorry this happened. All I wanted was to write. To use my time properly …’

‘I’ll get you some water,’ says Hussain, quickly; trying to exude compassion and understanding. He hurries away towards the door.

‘You can stop that now,’ says Annabeth, her voice thin: breathy.

He sits up straight. Wipes snot and tears with the back of his hand. Grins and shakes his head, almost in wonder. ‘You got my message,’ he says.

Annabeth nods.

‘So you understand.’

She nods, lips pressed together. ‘What do you want?’ She looks sick just asking. ‘Money? Phone? Drugs?’

He stares at the side of her face. Forces her to meet his gaze. Then he holds it until he sees the colour in her cheeks change from red to white, and the black dots at the centre of her eyes to dilate and swell: ink dropped in water.

He shakes his head, a little disappointed in her. ‘Oh Annabeth,’ he says, sadly. ‘I want what everybody wants. I want my liberty.’

She looks at him, mouth twisted, already shaking her head. ‘No, you can’t expect me to do that, not even if you tell the world what you