The Last Hiccup by Christopher Meades

been observing this child day and night for well over a year now, noticed something for the first time. For an instant — and only an instant — a wicked gleam formed in young Vlad’s eyes. Sergei saw in Vladimir what Markus had described. He saw not a child but a creature, an evil spirit bathed in malice. In the distance, a crackle of thunder sounded. The rain began to pour. It coated the streets and turned the snow on the ground into sopping-wet piles of slush. The storm enveloped Sergei and his gaping disbelief. He could deny it no longer.
    Vladimir, his prized patient and a child not yet ten years of age, was a monster.

six
    Sergei spent much of that evening sitting quietly in his study, deep in thought. He brought his grandfather’s pipe out from its casing, dabbed some tobacco in the bowl and lit the pipe for the first time since medical school. There he sat, alone in the dim candlelight, smoking and brooding for hours. Eventually he decided he’d lingered long enough and turned in for the evening at the early hour of 8 p.m.
    He knew he’d have trouble falling asleep. Ever since his divorce, Sergei found the process of drifting into unconsciousness a most frustrating experience. Lying quiet and alone in a dark room was an open invitation for sadness and rage to meander into his mind. For a fortnight now, when he placed his head on his soft satin pillow, his ears would ring with the slight laugh his ex-wife had emitted when she saw the slacks he purchased on discount from Slavov’s Men’s Emporium. Over and over again the laugh transformed from girlish and inadvertent to condescending and deliberate. With her cackle drilling a hole in his soul, to the front of his mind soared the evening under moonlight when she refused his embrace. He remembered the indifference in her touch, how she’d moved to avoid his hand against her back. Each night Sergei would eventually grow so frustrated — with his ex-wife, Asenka, and what she’d done to him, but more with himself for not having the fortitude to move past the aching hurt of her abandonment — that he would stand up in a huff and pace his study, knock over random objects in sudden stabs of fury and reminisce about his childhood, a time when sleep flowed like a river, the dreams liquid, the slumber a cage of ecstasis from which he dared not escape.
    This evening was different. Sergei couldn’t sleep, but it had little to do with Asenka. Lying awake, he stared at the ceiling, careful not to touch his ex-wife’s side of the bed, his thoughts occupied by Vladimir, the hiccups and what horrendous thoughts he could only imagine were running through his patient’s troubled mind. He tossed and turned for an hour before giving up. Briskly, Sergei climbed out of bed and walked into his study. He picked up the telephone and called Alexander. An older woman’s voice answered.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œIs Alexander there?”
    â€œI’m sorry but the doctor is out for the evening. Would you like to leave a message?”
    â€œWho is this?” Sergei said.
    â€œI’m the maid. Doctor Afiniganov is out for the evening.”
    â€œYes, I know. You already said that,” Sergei said. “Where is he?”
    There was silence on the other end.
    â€œI’m one of his colleagues from the hospital,” Sergei said. “It is imperative that I get in contact with Alexander immediately.”
    â€œIs this an emergency, sir?” she said.
    â€œYes, of course it is. Do you think I would call for any other reason?”
    She paused. “No.”
    â€œDo you take me for an idiot?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    Sergei’s voice raised. “I am an important man. I have performed open heart surgery and devised treatments that abated a plague of leprosy,” he said, unable to contain himself. “My professional opinion is held in such high regard that heads of state come to me