Page 86 of Dark Ink

He knew when he dropped all the charges against me that I’d be right where I was: watching the countryside slip past through my throbbing black eye, alone. He knew damn well that I’d run like I always ran, right into the only arms that never failed to embrace me. To find love where I could, because wasn’t that what we all wanted in the end? Just some fucking love.

Back in Dublin, I stood outside a house, shattered glass on the grass, windows boarded, roof littered with a decade of rotting leaves. Chained dogs barking down the street. Low black cars with tinted windows rolling slowly past.

I waited at the door, its screen hanging off only one hinge. I didn’t knock because only police knocked. Only people who weren’t supposed to be there knocked. Only people who hadn’t been there before made any noise at all.

The door inched open. A suspicious eye blinked out at me. I stared back. Hands in my pocket. Shoulders hunched forward. I looked the part thanks to Alan: bruised face, bloodied lip, a lack of light, of life behind the eyes. A man at the end of his rope. A pitiful thing at the lowest of his lows. And ready, eager, even, to sink lower still.

I didn’t have to say a goddamn thing for the stranger behind the door to recede into the murky darkness. To leave the entry unguarded. To invite me in in the simplest way possible: by getting out of the goddamn way. That’s all I would have needed, I thought as I stepped inside. Just someone in the way. Mason or Conor. Alan or Liam. Or…Eithne.

Eithne.

Eithne.

But I was alone. And steps away, there was a way to not feel alone. I hardly heard the door click shut behind me. I was too busy adjusting my vision to the dark. Too busy spying vacant, bleary eyes blinking slowly in distant corners. I was too busy remembering my past.

These kinds of places were all the same. Same horrible smell, enough to make you wretch. Same smoke lingering across the water-damaged ceiling like a fire was smouldering somewhere. Like everyone should evacuate even though no one ever would. Same push and pull in your chest: revulsion and desire, disgust and longing.

This place, or a place very much like it, had nearly ruined my life. Taken my life even. It’d taken years to come back from. Years to recover. It had me by the throat and it had been so tempting to just not fight it. To just let go. For a moment, there just inside, with the door handle within reach, I tried to cling to the life I’d climbed out of that hole for: my friends, Dublin Ink, my art, my city. But they all dimmed, my reasons, when it came, as it always would, to her.

Eithne,

Eithne,

Eithne.

My little Ragland Road girl.

And she was gone. I’d driven her away. I’d spoiled what was good and pure and lovely. I’d taken what was art and slashed it with a knife. She would never look at me the same after I’d pushed her to the mud. After I’d treated her just as her brother had. After I’d become just like all the rest of them.

The sunlight from that first autumn afternoon when I spotted her across the street was gone. I’d never get it back. Not in this life. But there was a place where I could close my eyes and still feel it.

I sank into an unoccupied corner in the dingy living room. I worked fast with the needle, the spoon, the lighter. Any hesitation was gone now. Any desire to be better was gone. Any will to be good was gone.

I wanted my sunlight.

I wanted my little Raglan Road girl.

I wanted it however I could get it, even if it would kill me…

Rian

Light stung at my eyes, sharp as a knife. It swallowed me whole, from my bare feet all the way up to my brow slicked with sweat. I couldn’t breathe in it as it refused to leave. I struggled against it like it was water, like if I just thrashed enough, I might be able to reach the surface. To gasp. To draw air into my burning, aching lungs. To live; to not feel like I was fucking dying.

But as I kicked my arms and legs, it was clear that the force was too much. I was too weak. The flood had hold of my wrists. My waist. My ankles. I moaned as the brutal light, the drowning water lifted me.

“No,” I cried, voice hoarse from disuse.

I wanted the light to go away. I wanted to stop drowning. I wanted the peace of non-existence. The calm of not knowing who the fuck I was, or where or when I was. Everything hurt as I fought with everything I had to escape. To return. To get away from the light.

But it only got brighter. I whipped my head back and forth, but soon a pressure came against my cheek. My face was pressed against something solid, something warm, something beating. I struggled again, but the pressure remained the same. I felt like if I had any air left in my lungs, I would have screamed when I was carried against my will into an even brighter light. But all I could do was gasp and choke. Squeeze my eyes shut against the stabbing pain. Struggle with increasing weakness.

There was a horrible sound of contorted metal. I moaned like a frightened child. I’d never heard anything so loud in my life. I was placed against a fabric that seemed to tear at my skin. The light dimmed enough for me to peel an eye agonisingly open. The vague shape of a car. The blurry motion of arms, of bodies. A boulder was placed across my chest. I swore I wasn’t ever going to be able to take another breath again. I heard a voice as nausea swept over me at the sudden motion beneath me.

“Breathe, Rian,” it said, too loud, too loud. “Breathe.”

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

With the last of my air, I whispered, “Let me go back. Please.”

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