Free Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris Page A

door slam. Warily, he opens his eyes and sees that Midnight Blue has gone. Even so he waits until he hears the sound of Midnight’s car setting off down the driveway before slowly, carefully, standing up and going into the bathroom to investigate the damage.
    What a mess. What a fucking mess.
    Poor blueeyedboy ; nose broken, lip split, blue eyes blacked and swollen shut. There’s blood down the front of his shirt; blood still trickles from his nose. The pain is bad, but the shame is worse, and the worst of it is, this isn’t his fault. In this case, he is innocent.
    How strange, he thinks, that for all his sins, he should have escaped retribution so far, whereas this time, when he has done nothing wrong, punishment should descend on him.
    It’s karma , he thinks. Kar- ma .
    He looks at his reflection, looks at it for a long time. He feels very calm, watching himself, an actor on a small screen. He touches his reflection and feels the answering sting from the abrasions on his face. Nevertheless he feels strangely remote from the person in the looking glass; as if this were simply a reconstruction of some more distant reality; something that happened to someone else many, many years ago.
    I mean it. I’ll kill you –
    Not if I kill you first , he thinks.
    And would it be so impossible? Demons are made to be overcome. Maybe not with brute strength, but with intelligence and guile. Already he senses the germ of a plan beginning to form at the back of his mind. He looks at his reflection once more, squares his shoulders, wipes blood from his mouth and, finally, begins to smile.
    Not if I kill you first –
    Why not?
    After all, he has done it before.
    Post comment :
    chrysalisbaby : awesome wow was that 4 real?
    blueeyedboy : As real as anything else I write . . .
    chrysalisbaby : aw poor blueeyedboy i just wanna give him a great big hug
    Jesusismycopilot : BASTARD YOU DESERVE TO DIE.
    Toxic69 : Oh, man. Don’t we all?
    ClairDeLune : This is fantastic , blueeyedboy . You are finally beginning to come to terms with your rage. I think we should discuss this further, don’t you?
    Captainbunnykiller : Bitchin’, dude! This fic pwns. Can’t wait to see the payback.
    JennyTricks : ( post deleted ).
    JennyTricks : ( post deleted ).
    JennyTricks : ( post deleted ).
    blueeyedboy : You’re very persistent, JennyTricks . Tell me – do I know you?

11
    You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy .
    Posted at : 01.37 on Friday, February 1
    Status : restricted
    Mood : melancholy
    Listening to : Voltaire : ‘Born Bad’
    Well, no. It wasn’t quite like that. But not too far from the truth, all the same. The truth is a small, vicious animal biting and clawing its way towards the light. It knows that if it wants to be born, something – or someone – else has to die.
    I started life as a twin-set, you know. The other half – who, if he had lived, Ma would have christened Malcolm – was stillborn at nineteen weeks.
    Well, that’s the official tale, anyway. Ma told me when I was six that I’d swallowed my sibling in utero – most probably at some point between the twelfth and the thirteenth weeks – in the course of some dispute over Lebensraum . It happens more often than people think. Two bodies, one soul; floating in Nature’s developing fluid, fighting for the right to live –
    She kept the memory of him alive as an ornament on the mantel-piece – a statuette of a sleeping dog, engraved with his initials. The same piece, in fact, that I broke as a boy, and tried to lie about to protect myself. For which I was thrashed with the piece of electrical cord and told that I was born bad – a killer, even in embryo – that I owed it to both of them to be good, to make something of my stolen life –
    In fact, she was secretly proud of me. The fact that I’d swallowed my twin to survive made her believe that I was strong. Ma despised weakness. Hard as tempered steel herself, she couldn’t stand a loser. Life’s what you