Page 43 of Dark Ink

He couldn’t.

And I didn’t want him to.

Rian

It was easy enough. Too easy. Really I should have been scared how easy it was to do. How easy it was to justify.

I lit a joint in the hallway outside the college’s administration office. I let it burn for a minute or two, resisting the urge to draw in a quick smoke. I balanced it on the lip of the old peeling white wainscotting. I entered the administration office under the guise of updating my information. The stern elderly woman behind the desk gave me a suspicious look that told me I’d picked the perfect person to dupe. I smiled kindly as she opened the system. I sniffed. I sniffed louder when it was clear that she hadn’t heard me. I turned my head toward the hallway. I frowned.

I asked, “Do you smell something?”

The woman looked up from her half-moon glasses perched at the end of her long nose. She sniffed when I sniffed.

“Smells kind of funny, doesn’t it?” I said. “I mean, I have no idea what it is, but—”

The woman pushed her chair back with a scowl.

“I have an idea,” she grumbled as she hobbled around the corner of the desk, past me and into the hallway.

All it took was a whistle, a quick mosey, a click or two, and there it was: Eithne’s address.

“Marijuana!” the woman snapped when I came up to her in the hall. “A menace! An absolute menace! The culprit must have run when he heard me coming, the little bastard.”

“The little bastard indeed,” I agreed.

“This has to be reported, Professor,” she said, glaring distrustfully at the smouldering joint held suspended between her pointer finger and thumb like a murder weapon.

“You know,” I said, rocking back and forth on my heels, “I was on my way to the dean’s office. I’d be happy to report it. Unless you wanted to walk all the way across campus yourself?”

She beamed at me. “You’re such a dear.”

I hardly waited till the old woman’s back was turned to me before drawing in deeply and exhaling merrily through my nose as I pushed open the doors into the waning sunlight.

It wasn’t that I was stalking Eithne. Or at least it was fairly easy to convince myself that I wasn’t stalking my student. It’s just that she hadn’t been to class since we fucked in the pottery studio. I was worried. Or obsessed. Hell, why not both?

I knew from the direction of the bus that she lived in a bad part of town. But it wasn’t until I was walking up the stairs that I realised my little Raglan Road girl lived in the bad part of the bad part of town. It made Dublin Ink’s neighbourhood look like it was gated. The sound of shattered glass seemed to come from all around me as I slowed my step, nearing the shabby door. A child would cry, a woman would shout, and somehow the silence that flooded back in was more menacing than either. A car alarm always seemed to be going off with no one to turn it off despite the fact that the cars parked along the pothole-littered road appeared undriveable.

A fierce desire came over me to take Eithne away from this place. Abduction isn’t abduction if it’s for the best, is it? If it’s done with love? Right, Judge?

A quiet knock to the front door caused the door to swing in. The revealed two inches was enough to peek inside. I checked over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching. It was a silly thing to do. There were no nosy neighbours tugging down blinds to squint between in this part of town. People had their own shite to deal with. And your shite wasn’t theirs. Ever. No matter what. People were on their own here. Eithne was on her own here.

Blinking into the dim light through the cracked door was enough to make my stomach drop. The place was trashed. I pushed inside without a second thought.

“Eithne!” I called, fearing the worst.

A burglary gone wrong. A home invasion. A man that followed her home. Forced himself on her. Laughed as she fought back. An actual stalker.

“Eithne!”

I ran through the overturned furniture, the drywall scattered across the dirty carpet, the broken pieces of dishware everywhere, ready to cut, to slice, to kill. Blinds were torn down and light from the streetlamps spilled out across the destruction like garish yellow paint. In the small dingy kitchen, every cabinet door was ripped from its rusted hinges. It made the dark space look cavernous, tunnels extending in every direction.

“Eithne!” I shouted, spinning around.

When the door down the end of the narrow hallway opened, I grabbed a cabinet door, ready to swing. If the man who stumbled toward me holding his head hadn’t looked so pathetic, I would have attacked him. But it was clear that, whoever he was, he would have been no match for Eithne.

“What the hell, man,” the stranger grumbled, his voice rough. “What’s with all the shouting?”

A peculiar thing for an inhabitant of a place to say. Perhaps something more like, “Who the hell are you and why are you in my place?” would have been more appropriate. I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at the haggard man as his torso disappeared behind the fridge door. No light came from the interior and he cursed. He didn’t bother closing the door as he turned around to riffle through the exposed cabinets.

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