Awake

Chapter Two - A Marked Man

Jonathan stared at his mother, lying still beneath the sheets. He went downstairs. He poured himself some lukewarm water from the cracked ceramic jug on the windowsill. The little window box was flowering. He drank the water slowly, savouring it. The parched lump in his throat began to ease. He wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and wished it was his turn for a bath that day.

 Placing his mug down slowly, he turned and made his way up the groaning stairs. The room still looked the same: bare boards, broken table, threadbare rug. His own bed was pushed against the wall, unmade and unslept in.

  The ticking of the clock was unnaturally loud. It was the one luxury, that clock. The elegant silver frame, the patient face, the still-functioning clockwork...it all spoke of times long ago. It was a miracle that had never been forced to pawn it.

   Jonathan forced himself to look at his mother's bed, a thin, iron-framed affair with thin, flat pillows. She was still lying there. Was it his imagination or was her unmoving face a little paler than before?

  He approached, pressed two fingers to her neck. Nothing. Silence. Stillness.

"I can't find a pulse," he said aloud. "Oh, mother, I'm sorry, so sorry. I can't find a pulse."

He drew back the sheets and saw the evidence: a neat incision with surprisingly little blood to soak into her dress. It was a day dress, dusty blue. That made sense. He breathed in deep and smelled the familiar sting.

  Yes, she would have been killed elsewhere, before being placed in the bed and her spilled blood being scrubbed away. A marked killing. Clean and surgical. It was probably painless. This wasn't about her, or about horrifying him. This was simply a message saying, "We can take."

  Jonathan walked back down to the other room in their tiny apartment. It was one of many in the vast tenement block built to house widows and the destitute: a dark, crumbling building, crammed and thin-walled. Jonathan could hear the children crying below and the couple next door having sex. In the distance, he could make out the muffled oaths of the drunk along the corridor laying his fists again in his young daughter's face.

  There was nothing Jonathan could do about that.

How cruel that his mother, who had been so admired and had loved pretty things, had ended up dying here. At least they had cleaned up after themselves. She always kept the apartment neat and gleaming, almost in defiance of their meteoric fall.

  He felt numb. He kept waiting for the pain but it wouldn't come. It seemed impossible to comprehend that she would never again berate him for carelessness, never chide him to study, never wash and darn his ruined clothes with pursed lips, never exclaim in horror at his fresh wounds when he came home in the early hours. She was over.

  That didn't make sense. He had lost people before, the devil knew, but his mother wasn't part of that and she was just lying there...

  He tried to think. They were after him, so he must act first and fast. He had places he could stay, naturally. He was surrounded by brothers. The scars on his back would open doors everywhere, doors behind which would be friendly faces, floors to sleep on, alcohol to drink to wash away it all and safety. Even if he surfed from place to place, he would be fine.