"If you fucking die on me, I swear t'God I will kill you, Pris!"
That was some ridiculous logic, and so she felt it obvious that Murdoc was talking to her, although she couldn't quite find the strength to open her eyes to ascertain it. She felt a colour, a heat over her eyelids, sharp and unexpected and unpleasant as sunlight rippling over the leathery wings of a sleeping bat.
"Murdoc," she blubbed.
"It's O.K.," he squeaked, and how melodic his voice sounded then, the sound of wind chimes, sparrows, summer rain. "I'm here."
She was then acutely aware that they must've had the hardest fuck of her life. Her legs felt repulsively sticky and hot and her ladybit was absolutely throbbing in pain that was rhythmic and huge, and she tingled as though she'd been bitten and sucked and pulled open, wedged open. She knew this kind of pain very well – Hannibal always liked it that way and particularly used to revel in the way the colour of her inner flesh changed depending on his actions, like a red-based colour wheel he could scratch and pinch and coo into crimson, rose-pink, bruise-purple, he could break capillaries and sometimes even turn her a sickly kind of midnight mauve. But this was different somehow, maybe Murdoc had other methods, maybe it had been so good (or bad) she'd had some kind of brain haemorrhage. She ran her fingers down towards her thighs and then winced.
"Did you fall?" Murdoc asked, high-pitched – was he crying?
"I don't know."
"I've just got back, you've been lying here – Pris, open your eyes – there's blood everywhere, I've called the ambulance, they –"
"Oh fuck no, Murdoc."
"What the fuck else do I do? This is like a red Mississippi!"
"What happened to me?" she managed.
"I have no idea, you were just lying here, there's blood – oh God, Pris."
He made an odd, elongated noise then, sort of like a very long pig squeal, and Pris opened her eyes. He was hovering over her, one hand propping himself up, the other on the side of her face, his tears sliding down his nose and breaking on her forehead, dampening her hairline.
"Is it really that bad?"
"I think the baby's dying, it's something about the baby, it's coming from your... area."
Pris rolled her eyes and attempted to sit up, but then screeched in pain.
"When's the ambulance arriving then?" she insisted. "I just want to get this over."
The baby's dying. Surely she was about to condemn her soul to an eternity of torment, of suffering, but she didn't care. She hoped that it was dying, and she hoped that it died. She hated the thing, finally all of the starvation, the endless nights crying and burning her abdomen with fag butts, the endless days of forced vomiting, that second overdose, drinking herself to sleep, those few shards of broken glass she'd mixed in with the dry formula milk powder Hannibal had bought, finally it was over – she would be free, and the baby could just continue to be small, numb, stupid, and continue to rest in peace.
"It should be basically any minute now," Murdoc whispered. He leaned down and pressed a very light, apologetic kiss onto her temple. "Fuckin' hell, don't die, for fuck's sake."
"Well, I'm not going ta die, Jesus you're a drama queen," she smiled tiredly. He smelt like the sweet shop around the corner, like chocolate coated peanuts.
"If you die," he growled, "and we haven't had sex, I am never going to forgive myself."
"Really, you're thinking about sex now?"
"I – I love you."
She blinked, dumbfounded.
"I'm sorry but, for God's sake, you know I do."
She didn't know how to respond, and the pain was starting to take her breath away. Murdoc placed both of his hands either side of her face and stared deeply into her, and his dark eyes, she suddenly realised, were reflecting her terrified little face in them like she was a B-Movie star in a slightly sexually charged death scene.
"I've never loved anything before, not properly, not really," Murdoc hissed. His fingers started slowly touching the hair just above her ears. "Can I kiss you? At least that?"
She was about to say yes, but then there were sirens and blue lights and people all running about and pretending to be calm, and barking things into these little walkie talkies and then she was being hurled up onto some sort of stretcher, and then the pain was too much again, and Murdoc's voice was babyish whining and sounded far away and heavy and filled up, as though her head had been dunked deep into water.
Hospitals, he found, were oddly comforting places. He couldn't quite put his finger on why that was – it certainly wasn't the colour scheme or the temperature. He looked into the glassy surface of wall tiles. Against the white wash he looked sickly, and his eyes seemed to hold no light whatsoever, like a cheap children's teddy bear with those black, plastic buttons sewn on badly. He noticed with a wince that he had a tiny red mark on the side of his face, a little splodge of blood. He touched it carefully, and then gulped when he noticed it had dried on.
He hadn't been keeping track of time, but he had been stood outside of some room for a long while now, waiting for someone to let him inside. You can't go any further I'm afraid, they kept saying, and God, it seemed as though they were all reciting Pris' sexual mantra at him over and over. He sighed. He had no idea who to tell, who to call. Her Mother would almost definitely want to know, but would Pris want her to know? And he didn't know her number, and he could not leave this place until he saw her again, breathing. If she died he was almost certain he might die with her – or at least a part of him would. It was an incredible thought, but at the moment it seemed that Pris was connected to his whole centre of gravity, holding his balance, holding him in one place, and wherever she held him was where he wanted to be, it seemed the only place that had stable ground.
No-one had entered or left the room they had put her in for ages. And yes, he had thought of Hannibal – if Pris died he was almost certain that she would have simply allowed death to come to her for lack of energy and fucks to give about Hannibal. It would be an effective murder. He was starting to hate him. And yes, blood was thicker than water – but spunk was thicker than blood. And Murdoc had produced hell of a lot of it where Pris was concerned.
"Are you family?"
It was a nurse. He found her uniform deeply lacking in eroticism and was disappointed for a moment. Was he family? Technically speaking he was a blood relation to the child that she was carrying, but did that count? What did Pris see things as being? He said the first thing that came into his head.
"I – I'm the father."
The nurse stared at him incredulously.
"How – how old are you?"
"Sixteen," Murdoc lied. He felt a strange swell of emotion collect in his stomach – no-one need know the truth. Hannibal did bear a striking resemblance to him, who would know the difference? And besides, it looked much less weird if he were the father of the child rather than the uncle.
Who's this Pris? This is my baby-Daddy's little brother that I once nearly fucked, who violently masturbates over the memory and has developed an unhealthy obsession with myself and my pregnancy.
Just Father sounded much better. And playing out this little fantasy was undeniably going to be for a moment like living in a dream world. He couldn't take that from himself.
"Alright, Simon, yes?"
Simon? Who the hell was Simon? Why had she told them the father was called Simon?
"Yep."
"O.K. Simon, well, Priscilla has had a rather nasty fall. There's been a sudden drop in blood pressure in conjunction with complications with her pregnancy. We think they're likely caused by a lack of nourishment, or substance abuse. We need to keep Pris in hospital for at least a few weeks to make sure Mum and baby are both maintaining a proper food and fluid in-take, and do a few more tests. She needs some TLC."
"I can look after her, she won't like it here."
"Pris has agreed to stay in for now."
"Well – what the fuck – can I go in and see her?"
"She's asked that you go home and get some rest."
"No."
"I'm sorry, but you –"
"I'm not going to leave until I see her."
"She's in a very frail state and she needs time to –"
"To what, exactly? To break my freaking heart again?"
The nurse stares at him calmly. "Please, Simon."
He had to use all of his willpower not to simply roar in the silly bitch's face that he wasn't Simon and that Pris probably didn't even know a Simon – this was probably some joke she had with Hannibal, to lure him into this false sense of security, give him the idea he might just reinvent himself as Simon Niccals, father and husband and love of skinhead girl's life, to just rip it all out from under him like a hot waxing strip on his ballsack. Hannibal had this way of making dreams just crumble to dust. Murdoc suddenly remembered him picking the biggest reddest fattest strawberry out of the supermarket-bought tub of them Dad had got one summer. And Hannibal, like a merciful Lord back then, all tall and beautiful, and leaned down and placed the gloriously chubby, bold fruit into his fingers. You can have this one, he said kindly. And Murdoc, stunned and elated, turned it over in his hand to relish the moment – and then found the thing blackened and bruised, squished in one side, more like deep red insides of a squashed bird spilling out in the road than a sweet morsel of summer.
He simply sighed and turned away. Even if it was all just playing pretend, he was enjoying the game too much to admit the truth.
"Fine. But if you think I'm leaving this hospital you're fucking dreaming, love. I'll wait all night in the car park if I have to. Tell her that."
He walked outside. It was raining. Everything seemed to be glittering. It started washing Pris' blood off his face.
A/N: So, so sorry for such a long wait. It's been an awful few months.
I hope everyone enjoyed this instalment, let me know what you think!
Kisses and thanks to the lovely: TwentyFivePercentMelancholy, the amazing perfect cherry-magpie-x, and Guest. LOVE TO YOU ALL!
