Shooting in the Dark

pavement. He tried to lift it again, this time with his other hand, but the pain was just as bad.
    ‘Still giving you some trouble, is it?’ said a voice he recognized. It took him a few moments to put the voice and the face together, though. The doctor, whatever he was, who’d carried his bag to the pub. Must be a doctor. What the hell was he doing here?
    The guy came up close. He looked at Ralph and squinted. ‘You know that dressing’s coming off your forehead.’ He shifted Ralph’s bag with his foot. ‘Let me fix it.’
    Ralph bent to allow him to stick the dressing back in place and as he did so he felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck. Could’ve been a bee sting, something like that, except you don’t get bee stings in the dark in the middle of winter. Must be one of those goofy nurses’d left a pin in his shirt collar.
    As he drew back something flashed in the doctor’s hand. Ralph focused on it for what seemed like an age before he saw that it was a syringe. He wanted to protest, tell the guy he didn’t need no injection, and still time went by until he realized there was no point in saying anything: the guy had already given him it.
    Then he fell over. Thought the guy must’ve pushed him. Hell, no, not another kicking. But it wasn’t the guy pushed him over, his legs had refused to hold him. He couldn’t move his arms, either. His head was at an awkward angle, his neck twisted to one side, but he couldn’t do anything about it. It was as if he was paralysed.
    The doctor dragged him through Geordie’s gate and down the side of the house into the back garden. Then he disappeared for a while and came back with the bag.
    The guy was kneeling by him now. Ralph wanted to ask for help. He wanted to say, Come on, you’re a doctor, you can help with this. I don’t want to be paralysed for the rest of my life.
    The guy had the syringe. Ralph couldn’t tell if it had anything in it. Leant low over Ralph, put his mouth next to Ralph’s ear. He said, ‘You shouldn’t have sent the note.’
    Ralph felt the needle go in again. He would have flinched if he could have moved at all. Whatever it was, he felt it enter his bloodstream as the guy depressed the plunger on the syringe.
    Then he was gone.
    Ralph realized he was completely alone. He couldn’t shout for help and he couldn’t move. Where he lay, just off the path, it was dark and cold. He thought he might have to lie there all night, but then his heart missed a beat, and another one. It started up again, but he couldn’t get his breath. His mouth filled with saliva and the saliva ran down his throat.
    The next thing he knew the man was hauling him to his feet. Ralph couldn’t stand, none of his muscles would respond. The doctor hitched him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him to a tree next to the shed. Ralph was half-placed and half-flung against the trunk. The skin on the back of his head split open as it cracked against the rough bark. The pain set up a throbbing in his temples. The drug had killed his ability to move or protest but it in no way affected his ability to experience pain.
    The doctor appeared from behind him. He smiled at Ralph. He produced a couple of six-inch nails and a hammer. ‘This won’t take long,’ he said, stretching Ralph’s arms out as though he was on a cross. ‘We don’t want you falling down, now, do we?’
    The few stars that Ralph could see in the early evening sky seemed suddenly much closer than he had ever imagined. Off the Great Barrier Reef, he remembered, the stars had seemed huge, but never as close as this.
    He’d been a sailor, that was his last thought before the agony began; and sailor the last word, only the silent screaming that ran through his body had obliterated the last syllable. I was a sail...
     
    I watched him go with the prostitute and he looked perky enough then. I presume her pimp gave him the beating. The prostitute was a small, even frail woman, and I cannot imagine her inflicting those injuries on him even if he begged her. He was the kind of man who would not appreciate the joy of pain; he would only understand its role in the acquisition of power.
    The master/slave relationship is probably as old as prostitution and each of them would be poorer without the fertilization of the other. If it ever comes to it, Miriam will make a fine whore. She understands the theory and practice of libido with her body. I have always discounted Lawrence’s musings in