John Marsden - Incurable

I threw myself on him with such force that I knocked him off the waist of the statue. That was good. He didn’t belong there anyway. Neither did I maybe, but he definitely didn’t. We rolled down into the water. I no longer felt the cold. Weird. It had no temperature at all. Perhaps he had already stabbed me and killed me and I just didn’t know it yet. But if I were dead, my eyes were still working. I see therefore I am. I saw his arm lifting to bring the knife down into me. We had this much in common: we both wanted to be locked together, him so he could kill me, me so I could kill him. I decided attack was the best method of defence and launched myself up at his arm, as fast and hard as I could, but not as fast or hard as I would have liked, seeing he was trying to cling to me. I knocked his hand at the base, next to the wrist. He kept his grip on the knife. I really wanted him to lose that knife. But he was thrown off balance. He swung around sideways and had to change his position quickly to get his balance back. I drove in hard at him and he went down. The trouble was that I went down with him. We were well and truly in the water now. I still didn’t feel any heat or coldness but I had a problem with the weight of the water. It slowed me down all the time.

I could see the knife and I had another dive at it but he twisted away and then stabbed up at me, a short sudden attack out of nothing and nowhere. It was clever of him because I had thought he was too off balance. I recoiled but he got me all right, to the left of my belly button. I saw a bit of blood appear, not much, and no pain, just a thudding sensation, like I’d been punched there, and not even very hard. But it was shocking, really shocking. I gasped for breath, then realised I had to focus on what I was doing, killing him. I couldn’t allow other thoughts or feelings. I kicked at the knife, knowing I wouldn’t connect but just to give him something to think about, and at the same time with my right hand punched in at his face. I didn’t connect with either my foot or my hand but already I’d followed that up by diving in on top of him. Now I had some advantage. He was quite light and I’m heavy enough and he was under water. Water that had my blood trailing through it.

I might have knocked his head on the bottom of the pool. I wasn’t sure about that. Not very hard anyway. Not as hard as I would have liked.

The knife arm was on its way around again, strong and vicious. I leant sideways to push it away and this time tried to bang his head on the bottom. It didn’t work. I felt like the knife had made contact again, but I didn’t know exactly where and I didn’t know how far it had penetrated. I decided to strangle him and drown him at the same time. I got my hands around his throat and leant forward, pushing down on him to make sure he couldn’t get up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his arm lifting. I realised this wasn’t going to work, that he would be able to stab me many times before I could drive the life out of his body.

Until the knife went flying. Its silver shape spun through the air like a metal boomerang. A boomerang that wouldn’t be… yeah, well, the ‘delete cliche’ button won’t let me finish that sentence. But Gavin had arrived. The pocket commando, splattered with his own blood, had smashed the guy’s hand with something, I didn’t know what, couldn’t see, and now I was free to concentrate on killing him. God these words, they flow so easily out of my brain but I shut off, fiercely and totally, the awareness of what they mean, otherwise I could never write them. I used my weight on his body and my arms around his neck to stop him breathing ever again. He started to kick and convulse. The force of him was frightening and I didn’t know if I’d be able to hold him down, although Gavin piled in on top of me then and the extra weight did help.

The man suddenly went limp and I almost relaxed but something told me it was a trick. He still felt too tense. I made my grip even stronger, which was easier now that he had stopped fighting. God it was awful. I feel sick as I remember his throat, his neck. There was bone in it, but mostly it felt like muscle, although I don’t think that can be right. And I’m never going to ask a science teacher. He had quite a scrawny neck and the first part was just all fleshy, or rather like the wattles under a turkey neck. Then there was the part that felt like muscle and then the bone was way back there somewhere. That was the part I was trying to reach. I pressed even tighter, wanting to have nothing but bone in my hands. And yeah Homer, go ahead and laugh at that but I’m not changing it.

I was right about the bluffing because suddenly he came back to life again and now he was desperate. He went crazy on me, like a fighting fish. Or a crocodile. Don’t know, haven’t caught one of those lately. He even got his head out of the water for a moment, but I’m sure he didn’t get any air as my grip was too strong. His face was horrible, grey, and his eyes were staring at me and for the first time they were wide open but he didn’t see me or anything else.

I got him under again and this time he went limp for real. I could feel the difference right away. I still didn’t let go. I figured if I did, his reflexes would take over and breathe for him. He’d come back to life. I didn’t want that. Then the cop grabbed me from behind and pulled me away.

Someone had seen us at last and called the police. The cop had to work hard to get my hands off the guy’s throat though. I wanted to let go, in one part of my mind anyway, but I guess another part was pretty committed to killing him. The cop kept yelling, ‘Relax! Relax your hands!’ at me but it’s a paradox to yell ‘Relax’ at someone. It wasn’t till Gavin shook me and patted my hands that I finally disconnected. By then they’d half dragged me and the man out of the pool. I found myself stretched across the little wall around it. The stone was digging into my back. They dragged the guy a bit further, till he was on the footpath, on his back, and then they went to work on him. Boy did they work. They were efficient too. They’d obviously done it before. Like, a thousand times. One cop, the guy, was at his mouth pumping away into that through a little black plastic thing. The other, the woman, went for the ribs. I crawled further out of the pool, so I could get away from the uncomfortable wall. It had taken me that long to notice how uncomfortable it was. My senses were starting to work and I could hear two separate lots of sirens, coming from different directions. I half sat, half lay on the ground watching the cops trying to undo what I had done. It was strange, they were putting so much effort into it, and just a minute earlier I had been putting so much effort into killing him.

The guy suddenly convulsed and twisted to one side, away from me, thank God, and started vomiting. I could hear the kind of retching you get outside a Wirrawee B amp;S as early as nine p.m.. By eleven o’clock you can hear it inside.

The cop doing the heart massage climbed off the guy, wiping her hands on her trousers and looking fairly disgusted. I decided I wouldn’t become a police officer. The guy twisted over further onto his hands and knees, spewing out water and other stuff. In the distance I saw an ambulance officer, then another one, running towards us. I didn’t know why they hadn’t driven right up to the fountain. The police had, well nearly.

Then the cold hit me. Like a blizzard inside and out. I actually gave a half-scream with the impact of it. I was incurably cold. I would never get warm, could never get warm. I had iced up inside. And no-one cared. This was the worst cold of all. The cops were holding the guy on the ground, trying to get him into a better position. The ambulance officers were heading straight for him. I didn’t exist. The guy who wanted to end my existence was the star of the show. Everything was for him.