“Come on, Hamal,” I whispered and he quickened like a sewing-machine needle, his soft breaths growing staccato.
That meant I could place the palm of my left hand firmly across his mouth and I grimaced a further “ssh”. I could feel him expand in me and I pushed my hand forward as I cupped his mouth, as if lost to the moment, raising his chin and forcing his face away from his neck. He began to shimmer and shake and his thrusts became stabs. I reached into the gap beside the bed. The duct tape came away with a rasp and the wood block flipped up against my knee. I cupped the thick end in my palm, its fashioned point running down my wrist.
Doctor, doctor, will I die? Count to five and stay alive . . .
I wish I could say that I can watch myself in that act objectively now, rationalise it, tell myself I did what was necessary. But I still look through the same eyes and I see it. And I can feel the ungainly sex that set the stage for it. And I remember the crystal-clear concentration of making the cleanest cut, like a Halal butcher. Like the execution of a prince, there could only be one blow.
I raised the stake to shoulder height, in the fisted gesture of the revolutionary. I brought it down as one might the handle of a spade, just above the ball of his clavicle and below and to the right of his Adam’s apple.
The point of the thin blade entered his neck like a sheath and further and quicker than I could have imagined possible. His arms shot up my chest and grabbed at my face. He bucked as I rode him, pushing into him as he pushed into me.
So I leaned in hard with my left arm, swivelling the palm of my hand to push with all my body weight against his chin, I suppose in some frantic hope that his neck would break.
It meant too that I never saw his eyes. He convulsed under me, expelling an extended snort through flared and bloodied nostrils. His left arm suddenly flailed away to the right of the bed, hitting the wall with a thud that could have alerted the Troll.
In that twist, his neck moved aside and around on its axis as if pulling away from the impaling and that afforded a chance to yank on the butt end of the makeshift stock, pulling it to one side as if trying to free it. Something gave and a dark fountain splashed over my forearms, his second discharge.
Then he was still.
But still stiff, one arm straight out to the side, fingers cupped in supplication and his legs quivering as his manhood withered. I held him there for more than a moment, listening to the sounds of the room, a pounding silence, my ratcheting breaths, the gurgle in his throat accompanying the bubbling up of lifeblood, the stream a dark maroon in the moonlight, crude oil bubbling from a well.
I took my hand from the stock and it lay like a great goitre at the base of the neck. I dismounted and stood by the bed and tried to still my breathing to hear whether the door was being tested or banged on.
Nothing, so far as I could tell through a strange tinnitus that was crackling in my ears. I pulled a length of the candlewick bedspread from beneath his calf and wiped globules of thick blood from my arms, another to wipe the stickiness from my thigh.
One, two, three, four, five . . . I’m alive . . .
With a struggle, I began to focus forward again, on what must happen next, wiping each finger quickly, then with a fast and steady hand felt for his upper left pocket and tore back the felt fastening.
There was a lined second pocket and for a moment I could feel the shells through material but couldn’t reach them and, in an instant of frustration and revulsion, my upper legs filled with a soiling sensation of panic.
Steadying myself with a deep breath, I took my hand out and found the deeper rear pocket and felt the cool metal and removed the clip, dropping one of the bullets and having to wipe blood away again.
I took the gun from the wall and slumped cross-legged to the floor, the weapon across my lap. I found the loading flap and pushed a round through it.
The flap just swung lazily, no sprung resistance and the cartridge didn’t locate and just flopped out. Again, a nervous chorus in my thighs.
I forced concentration, lowering my forehead and breathing heavily. So I pulled back the cross-hatched thumb switch. There was a snap and I tried again. This time the chamber was alive with sprung resistance.
The first round clunked into place; the second harder to push, but then swallowed crisply into the maw. I laid it gingerly on the carpet, stood and glanced at the body of the Boy on the bed as if I feared it would move. I felt nothing at all. It was if it had nothing to do with me, as if I was observing the body from a distance. It was resolutely still and dark, but for the luminescence of the flaccid fish extending from the trouser zip.
Dragging myself back into the moment, I started to pull my trousers back on, hesitated, pulled them off again and grabbed one of the linen cloths on the bucket, wiping as much blood as I could from my legs.
Think, girl!
Then I pulled on the white Arab day-wear, standing away from the widening pool of blood and wiping my feet harshly on the rope carpet and a linen towel. The under-trousers and smock first, then the shawl at the shoulders.
Picked up the gun again, held it in both hands firmly, pulled back on the handle.
