| Harmin slipped back into wakefulness.
It was light outside, brilliant sunshine
streaming in through the holes in the ragged
curtains, brightly illuminating the dust particles
that drifted weightlessly in the random eddies
and imperceptible air currents. He could feel
the shafts of light, warm on his exposed skin,
the sheets kicked off in the throws of last
night’s passion.
Harmin cracked open an eyelid and examined
his bleary surroundings.
Stale, dry, warm air; deep shadows, caused
by the hard light that was forcing its way
in; there was a feeling of age, of the start
of decay. The room was well used, well worn,
its fittings and furnishings bearing the scratch
marks and dents of excessive use; the smooth
patches of wear and tear caused by nothing
more complex than time.
It was a cheap motel room.
Harmin didn’t know which one. He couldn’t
remember. After a while they had all begun
to seem the same, although after longer still
he had begun to recognise the strange quirks
of those he awoke in most often, but this
one was totally unfamiliar to him.
He rolled over onto his back and stretched
out an arm to his right. There was no-one
there. He continued rolling and then sniffed
the pillow. The heavy, cloying, tar smell
of a million cigarettes and thousands of cheap
laundry visits filled his nostrils. But there
was another scent too. The stench of cheap
perfume. A heavy, rose scent. The smell of
a hooker.
Of course, she might not have been a hooker
– she could have been a stripper, or
maybe he was doing a huge disservice to the
woman that had shared his bed last night,
maybe he’d gotten lucky and managed
to pull a normal woman. Not that he’d
ever encountered a normal woman in the kinds
of dives he frequented, but it was always
a possibility. Stranger things had happened.
Harmin rolled back and reached across to
the bedside cabinet. His hand brushed against
something hard and he heard a scraping noise,
then the soft thunk as a bottle of booze fell
onto the threadbare carpet. He listened for
the overly familiar sound of liquid glugging
out, but it did not come. The bottle had been
empty. More’s the pity, he thought and
continued idly feeling around on the surface,
not bothering to look round.
Eventually he found what he was looking for
and extracted one of the long, thin tubes
from its cardboard prison; freeing it, allowing
it to see the light of day, before placing
the yellow butt in his mouth and flicking
his Zippo lighter open. He smelt the sharp
wisp of its petroleum based contents and then
flicked the flint, a feint whump and a burst
of heat telling him it had lit the first time.
His trusty Zippo. It had never failed to
light the first time. And if it ever did,
he had promised himself that he would stop
smoking. He had told himself it would be a
sign – that when God wanted him to stop
smoking he would take away the capacity for
him to smoke. If and when that day came, he
would know it was time to stop.
But it never came. The lighter always worked
perfectly, and he was glad of it. Harmin lit
the cigarette and drew deeply upon it, pulling
the noxious fumes into his mouth, tasting
their stench, revelling in them, like the
addict he was. The feint crackle as the chemically
treated tobacco burnt, producing its lethal
drug, filled the silent room. It was like
music to his ears.
Harmin inhaled, pulling in the deadly contaminated
air, sucking it deep into his lungs, the hot
tar collecting, coating them in a livid black
oil, cancerous and damaging. The nicotine
rushed into his system, sating his physical
and psychological needs. Harmin held the breath,
revelling in this most lethal of legal past-times.
He exhaled in a great gust, the smoke billowing
out, cascading across the room, occasionally
illuminated by the thin shafts of bright light.
To Harmin it looked like the plumes of some
great city on fire; or like the smoke of an
exploding volcano that, having reached its
maximum extent had come crashing down in a
hot, burning, pyroclastic flow, sweeping all
before it in a burning hail-storm of ash and
heat and debris.
Harmin allowed himself a brief smile and
then sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
On the bedside cabinet were the keys to the
motel room, his wallet and his gun. He examined
the wallet first. It was empty. So much for
the possible virtues of last night’s
company – she had cleaned him out. But
it did not matter. He could afford it. He
could afford many such misadventures, for,
despite appearances to the contrary, despite
the way he dressed, the way he lived, where
he lived, the people he associated with, Harmin
was wealthy. Wealthier than that sort of cheap
tart could even dream of, probably.
If only they stayed around, stuck with him,
maybe he’d have been willing to share
some of it with them. Instead, they all seemed
content to empty his wallet of the easy two
hundred dollars he kept there; to take the
first temptation and run. They could not see
past the big green dollar signs. Harmin figured
she’d probably already met with her
dealer and stuck it all in her veins, or up
her nose; hell, she was probably lying on
some mortuary slab right now, just another
OD in this neighbour of victims and fools.
Harmin smiled again, but there was no amusement
here. It was a smile of resignation, of acceptance.
Things did not change – they never would,
how could they? There would always be victims.
His gun was still there. Of course he never
kept it loaded, so it was not dangerous as
such, but it would have been worth a pretty
penny in the right pawn shop, where some lowlife
could get his hands on it and use it for ill.
At least that was something. At least she’d
had the decency not to put something so lethal
in the hands of someone with the stupidity
to actually want to use it.
In reality it was academic, of course. The
gun had a special fail safe device that he
had designed himself. Unless you inserted
a small piece of metal that he kept on him
at all times, the gun was effectively useless,
it’s firing pin disconnected, unable
to be used.
But thank Heaven for small mercies, he thought.
It was a pain in the arse machining them,
and he should remember to be more careful.
It was one thing to tempt them with an easy
buck, it was quite another to wave a gun under
their noses.
Harmin sucked the last dregs from the cigarette
and stubbed it out on the dirty wood of the
bedside cabinet. He went to get a shower. |
