The Blood That Stains Your Hands Read Online Free PDF Page A

made some incredibly unprofessional agreement that she would sign off on my well-being, and we could go about the business of never seeing each other again. Like ever.
    If I kill someone in the course of my duties, and there's an investigation into why I was allowed back, she's going to look pretty fucking bad.
    Had a brief relationship just after returning to work. Met a girl, had some sex; soon enough, she was my ex. How many times could I sing that to myself? She was working downstairs in records, some shit like that. I never even bothered finding out.
    After the whole Plague of Crows bullshit, and my five-month absence, I suppose there must have been some talk about me. All those who'd been at the station when it happened would have known that I was a worthless, wasted, alcoholic fucktard, a sideshow curiosity, a walking car crash. However, those few who arrived in the time I was on sick leave were bound to be curious. Especially the women.
    No, seriously. I'm not talking myself up, or any shit like that, but really, you find out some guy you've never met before has had sex with a bunch of women in the same workplace, you're going to be curious, no matter the amount of bad things you hear about him. It's human nature. Curious as to what the attraction is. Curious to know why so many women ended up with this unattractive, deadbeat arsehole.
    Then I came back to work, and I looked like this. Hadn't touched a drink for three days – ha! three fucking days! – eyes were clear, had lost some weight, and I had that look about me. Lost. Haunted. Alone. Filled with melancholy, yet not pathetic. Not desperate. Looking like the last thing I wanted was help from anyone. Strong, yet consumed by remorse, consumed by the past, weighed down by something so great it was hard for others to imagine what it might be.
    If you could bottle that look for men, each and every one of us would be sleeping with a different woman every night. Women love that shit. They want to know. They want to help, precisely because they can tell I don't want to be helped.
    Of course, back at the station this only worked with the newbies. The women there that knew me, well they might have recognised the look, but on the other hand, they also knew that I was beyond repair, utterly unreliable, and as likely at the crunch to be unpleasantly not worth it as I was to be enigmatically melancholic.
    So they all steered clear, and the new girl had a free hand. She spoke to me at the coffee machine a couple of times. Maybe she planned it, I don't know. People plan these things. How does anyone ever know if a little coincidence is what it seems? Not that it mattered in this case. She wasn't a psychotic knife-wielder after all. She was just curious, wondering whether or not she should be attracted, and presumably not caring that she might be joining a list.
    Went out for dinner one night. Back to my place. Fucked her. She was good. Been around. At some point I had the thought that I was getting added to her list, rather than the other way round. Which was fine, as it meant there was little chance of anyone's bunny taking a bath in boiling water.
    We got on all right, although at no point did I feel my emotions get off my own one-yard line. Didn't care. It was just what was happening at that point.
    The third time we had sex – third time in a week – she asked me if I wanted to do anal. That was unusual. I said no. She said she loved it, so don't think I'd be taking advantage of her or anything. I said, no really, I don't want to. I might have used the word minging . Think I was a bit drunk. We moved on, finished having sex, but that was the changing of the tide.
    I wondered if she gauged a man by whether or not he wanted to have anal sex. Funny way to gauge, but each to their own. And that was the last time we saw each other out of work. So, actually the tide didn't just change, it turned in a moment and said, 'fuck this, I'm off,' disappearing out to the