Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [83]
As they lowered his body Vincent saw that there was a big sheet of plastic spread across the floor of the car port. Standing at the centre of it was a tall grey barrel.
It was the last thing he saw before the drug began to encroach on his field of vision. He lay there on the plastic sheet with the darkness coming in from all sides. But he could still hear the boys talking as they worked on him.
‘Somebody cut off his underwear.’
‘Let Guthrie do that. He’s a homo.’
‘Shut up, Warren.’
Sleepily, distantly, Vincent felt his bowels let go.
Distant voices ran musically in the darkness.
‘Gross.’
‘Shut up, Warren. Careful with that gel.’
A sensation of being lifted. Being placed naked into the barrel. The gel inside the barrel closing over his body, over his mouth and nose. Over his eyes. It wasn’t at all an unpleasant sensation. Then he heard the lid being sealed over the rim of the barrel. It echoed through the liquid that covered his ears. The rim of the barrel had a curving inner lip that collected moisture and the last thing he heard was the sound of liquid dripping from that lip. Droplets hitting the surface of the gel and transmitting heartbeat sounds through the thick mixture to his ears.
A restful sound.
The sound of liquid dripping.
Steady dripping.
Now he was hearing that sound again. Irregular splashes of liquid on liquid.
Deep in his sleep in the barrel Vincent heard the droplets gather, wait, fall. Whatever drug they had given him suspended his vital processes in an interesting way. He found that he was still dimly conscious, floating in the gel. It was the sort of fleeting consciousness you have between dreams in deep sleep. And the dreams came, too.
Some of the dreams were unpleasant.
Other dreams were comforting and cheerful. Like this one.
Vincent was dreaming he heard a dripping sound and that when he opened his eyes he wasn’t in the barrel any more. He was in a bathtub full of warm water. In a big old bathroom with a glass shower stall against the far wall. Someone was in the shower, just a pale shape through the misted glass. The person in the shower was singing. A girl.
It was very nice dreaming that he was out of the barrel. Dreaming that he was sitting here in the warm water, listening to the girl sing. But he was terribly sleepy. Time to roll over and find deep, restful sleep. Leave all the dreams behind forever.
Vincent let himself lay back in the warm bathtub, easing his legs further down. He dreamed that his face went under the water.
He dreamed pretty bubbles rising up in front of his face. And he dreamed the warm water invading his lungs.
* * *
When Ace had finished washing the goo off herself she took the handshower and aimed it at the floor of the stall. She used the spray to wash it clean. All around her feet there was a thick clinging layer of the coagulating gel. Ace drove it down the drain with needles of water. Her toes were completely numb, as if they’d frozen standing in the gel that floated in the warm runoff. She hung the shower head back on its fixture and slid the glass door open.
The first thing she then was the front door closing downstairs, a boneshaking vibration transmitted through the sturdy joists of the house.
The second thing she heard was the boy in the bathtub drowning.
* * *
15
Vincent was having a new dream. The old dream kept trying to come back, the warm bathtub and the choking water, but it was growing more distant. Floating away into vagueness. Now Vincent had a dream that he was back home in his bedroom. It was Saturday afternoon and his mother had just gone up the road to have a few beers with Mrs Kielowski. She’d be gone for at least three hours. As soon as she was out the front door, Vincent went upstairs and locked himself in