The meanest Flood

him tick. But there were no clues. Everything about him was small. He had short legs and a round little body. Made his head look big but Ruben reckoned if he measured it it’d be the same size as other people’s, maybe even smaller. He wore a dark grey suit made for a midget, a checked waistcoat and tiny, highly polished shoes, one on each foot. Gloves with itsy-bitsy fingers. The guy was a doll, and his dog was a doll as well, like a couple out of Toytown.
    What kind of life can somebody like that have? Ruben wondered. If he was any shorter he’d be underground. No woman is gonna look at him twice unless she’s running her own circus. Nothing ever changes for someone like that, it’s the same day rehashed time and time again. No guys would wanna be out with him; like imagine taking him down the boozer on a Friday night. What’s everyone gonna say? Hey, Rube’s brought his uncle out; can you make him walk the walk?
    This’s why euthanasia is such a good idea. Especially for little guys like him. Save all that suffering, all that pain and humiliation. Kitty’d say you couldn’t measure somebody else’s pain and, humiliation. You could never say for certain how someone else experienced existence. And the things that Kitty said, Ruben listened to them, he gave them serious consideration because she was a woman who was usually right. More right than wrong. He could hear her voice from somewhere beyond the grave, sticking up for the little guy, little people all over the world. Anything to do with prisons or with corporal or capital punishment, torture, anything like that Kitty would say it was wrong. You could guarantee it. If it was gonna hurt or someone was gonna end up dead, she’d have an argument against it. It was like a principle with her. Only Kitty had never actually seen the guy with the pooch. Maybe he would have changed her mind?
    Ruben drove up to the old mill building. From a distance it looked like it’d been restored but when you got close up you couldn’t see where any work had taken place for a long time. At least a hundred years. The place was still a ruin. There was a part of it towards the west end that had fallen down and was a heap of bricks and broken window frame. But the end nearest the road was more promising; if you were an optimist you might think people could live there.
    He knocked on the door and listened to the hollow sound that echoed back. He waited a few moments and knocked again, louder. There was a scuffling sound from inside and then that distinctive pad of bare feet on wooden boards. The door opened and the pale face of a girl, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, peered up at him from the dark interior. She had a silver stud above her right eye and a red stone in her nose. She had a blanket around her shoulders and was clasping both ends of it together under her chin. Abnormally long fingernails, could take your eyes out in a flash. Ruben could see she was naked under the blanket and her pupils were large in the light as if she had just been wrenched from sleep.
    ‘Pete Lewis,’ Ruben said.
    ‘He’s still in bed. What time is it?’
    ‘Half-eight, nine.’
    ‘Jesus. D’you wanna come back later?’ Her tongue was pierced and the silver stud clattered against her teeth.
    Ruben leaned on the door and pushed her to one side. He went inside and closed the door behind him. ‘Tell him he’s got a visitor,’ he said. He followed her along a dark corridor, the property smelling more like a barn than a place inhabited by humans. Rank body odours, stale cigarettes, sex and home-brewed wine. Ruben wouldn’t have been surprised to see a couple of chickens in there, a flock of sheep.
    At the end of the corridor she pushed open a large oak door and scurried over to a double mattress in the centre of the floor. Her clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor on one side of the bed and the guy’s clothes were on the other side, next to the bulge under the blanket.
    ‘Peter,’ she said, her hand on the bulge, ‘there’s a chap here. Someone to see you.’
    ‘Uh. Yeah.’
    But the guy’s breathing returned to normal and he remained under the blanket. The girl turned to Ruben and shrugged her shoulders. Tried a smile on him, the kind of facial expression which suggested complicity. We’re never gonna wake him, it said. Might as well let him sleep.
    Ruben took a couple of steps to the side of the bed. He grabbed the blanket and pulled it off the