Free The Killing Lessons by Saul Black

Ellinson when he’d arrived. In the absence of pills (the thought for
physical
pain had long since stopped being part of his scheme of things) the Scotch had presented itself as the only pain relief available, and he’d drunk the better part of the bottle. Now, therefore, on top of the screaming crisis in his legs, he had a brain-bashing hangover. He needed water. He was dying of thirst.
    The wood-stove’s fire had gone out, but there was a little radiant heat still left in its iron. His feet hadn’t, quite, frozen, but the rest of him was shivering, ludicrously. (Sylvia would have taken care of him had she been here, but not without humour. Once, having suffered a sudden onset of diarrhoea at a friend’s book launch and raced home in a cab, he’d shat his pants before he’d quite made it to the bathroom. Sylvia, in a black evening dress and globular gold necklace, had stood in the bathroom doorway, quoting from his press reviews: ‘… unflinching honesty and a richly ambiguous imagination…’ ‘… one of our finest writers…’ ‘… while lesser novelists are satisfied with cute entertainments, Greer is still going after the big stuff…’ while he’d flailed on the floor trying to divest himself of his soiled clothes, the two of them laughing like children. They had seen each other at their best and worst. It was a continuum. There was nothing of either of them love hadn’t found room for.)
    The question was: could he make it to the sink? He had to move. He had to have water. No matter what the pain said. And after that, somehow, he was going to have to make it to the car. To a phone. To a doctor. Which the pain was already telling him would be impossible. The pain was already telling him it would be a miracle if he made it to the sink.
    It nearly killed him. He had to crawl and pull himself up by the edge of the stove. The nerves in his right leg shrieked. He took as much of his weight on his arms as he could and stuck his parched mouth under the faucet’s icy stream (spring water, allegedly, it tasted fresh and stony) feeling goodness ease back into his cells with every gulp. He couldn’t tell how long he drank. It seemed like hours.
    But he still couldn’t walk more than three steps, even doubled over, even with the cane. On his hands and knees, working in increments that jammed his teeth together and brought tears back to his eyes, he loaded the wood-stove and got a fire going. It was another half-hour before he managed to struggle into his thermal jacket and hat, in the stubborn hope that by the time he got them on, he’d be able to walk.
    Which he could not.
    It was a joke. The car was on the other side of the bridge across the ravine, and the bridge was a ten-minute walk away even for an able-bodied person. But the only other pain relief available was the last fifth of Scotch, and with the best will in the world he knew that in his current state he wouldn’t keep a mouthful down. He wondered if he could knock himself out
manually
. Whack his chin on the edge of the stove. Wallop his own head with a skillet. It was a measure of how much pain he was in that the comedy of the idea was lost on him. All he could think was that he’d fuck it up and break his jaw and knock his teeth out. Sylvia, of course, would have laughed. It had brought the spirit of her very close to him, this absurd predicament. He could sense her smiling at the contrast, his soul’s drama reduced by his body to farce. She appreciated it. Irony had been her element.
    He decided to crawl to the door and look outside to see how deep the snow was.
    And though, when he’d got the door open, he saw what he saw straight away, it took his understanding a moment to catch up with what his brain had already unpacked.
    He was looking at the body of a little girl.

EIGHTEEN
    She was lying on her front on the edge of the porch, where the snow was thinner, one leg bent, arms limp, face turned towards him, eyes closed, the hood of her red