Fearsome Dreamer Read Free Page B

the other children’s favourite nickname for him was ‘jesus freak’. He didn’t even know what a jesus was – he’d had to look the term up in Life’s historical files. It had made him angry when he understood what it meant. He and his mother were
not
religious. Religion was for crazy people; everyone knew that.
    He’d tried explaining this to his stupid, pathetic peers, but somehow he could never find the right way to say it, and they just laughed at him and screamed ‘look at the jesus freak speak!’ in the rhyming way some of the older ones liked to do.
    Sometimes he had caught the looks on teachers’ faces as they watched him, before they managed to lower their gaze hurriedly. If adults could react in such a way to what he was, then that meant that they felt there was also something wrong with his mother. And that meant that his mother could be wrong. And that led to thoughts he didn’t want to have.
    The door clicked.
    He twitched, a tic he had developed in unconscious reply to the very particular sound of that door click.
    He would be strong, this time. There was always another time, another chance to redeem himself. It wouldn’t be like the last time, nor the time before that. But his body had chosen to deal with these visits without his input, and before he could stop it, his voice broke into its regular litany.
    â€˜Please please please,’ he said in a babbling rush. Then, ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want.’
    Good Man crouched next to him in his customary position. His hands were locked loosely between his legs, his eyes kind.
    â€˜I’m trying to help you,’ said Good Man earnestly. ‘I’m the only one that can. You know this. I hate watching you suffer.’
    He believed Good Man. He’d even seen tears running down Good Man’s cheeks before.
    â€˜Please,’ said Good Man. ‘I’m begging you.’
    No, no. I’m begging
you
, he wanted to say. You’ve got this the wrong way round. What kind of torturer are you?
    â€˜Only dogs beg,’ said the other, Bad Man. He was in a corner, in his customary shadowed position. Good Man’s face was earnest and sweat-streaked. Bad Man could have had the face of an elephant for all he knew – he’d never seen it. Bad Man never came close.
    He hated Good Man, quite a lot more than Bad. In the earlier, more lucid days, he had wondered if it was because Good Man was real and close to him, and so gave him something to focus his hate on; or whether it was because Good Man seemed human and kind, in spite of what he was doing.
    â€˜What I want to know is,’ said Bad Man from his corner, ‘why don’t you just leave? Why can’t you just disappear, like you’ve done before? They tell me it’s the drugs they give you, and the cold and the hunger. But I don’t believe it. I believe it’s instinctual, like a dog when it needs to hump something. It’ll come out, and there will be nothing you can do to prevent it.’
    Later, in his mind, they would pay. Later, he would run fragments of the conversation through his head and reply in the way he should have, with a cool, collected
screw you
. In his perfect version of events, there would be violence, and he would be powerful.
    But here and now and out loud, he was a child again, frightened and begging.
    â€˜I can’t do that!’ he said, hating the plaintive whine in his own voice.
    Good Man grabbed his arm, gripping it at the shoulder joint. ‘Your hand is fading.’
    White looked down. His wrist was very dirty, he realised. When was the last time they had washed him? Washing in this place consisted of shoving him, naked and grime-streaked, into a Hot ’n’ Dry, a hideously ancient contraption that blasted dirt from you with chemically treated, moisture-heavy air. He hadn’t felt the soothing, cleansing touch of liquid