89

 

            I wait for them to answer.  The music roars in my head.  And I forget just why I taste, oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile….I raise my fists, I pound and I hammer and I yell….I found it hard, it’s hard to find….oh well, whatever…nevermind….Finally she opens the door just a crack and finds me standing there, and I have succeeded in dragging myself into an impossible and unbearable state of grief, and rage.  I pull the headphones down, and I watch her blue eyes grow big, and round, before I kick the door from her grasp and push violently past her to reach the hallway.  She swings around, clawing at me, trying to pull me back out.  “No!  No!” she hisses at me. “He’s here!  He’s here!!”

            “I know,” I tell her, and I slam the door shut on all of us.  I look around, bouncing on my feet, feeling the knife up my sleeve digging its tip into my skin.  I feel bigger and taller than ever before!  I feel like my chest is all inflated, and puffed out, all pumped hard with muscle and threat.  “Oi!” I shout out, and spread my legs, claiming my space in the hall. “Oi!  You sick fucking bastard get down here!”

            My mothers hand flies towards me, panicked and talon like, grasping and digging into my arm, pressing the cold steel knife against my skin, her face horrified.  “Danny no!  No!  What’re you doing?  He’ll kill you!”

            I ignore her.  I face the stairs.  “Oi fuck face I’m talking to you! I’m down here!” I hear a noise on the landing, and then he appears, he slides into life.  His feet are bare.  He is wearing a black silk dressing gown.  There is a steaming mug of coffee in one of his hands, and his expression is murderous as he stares down at me.  I stare back in triumph.  I bet he wasn’t expecting to see me so soon again!

            “There you are you sick motherfucker!  Come on then!”

            He starts down the stairs.  “What are you doing here?”

            “I’m here to end this,” I nod at him, running my tongue over my dry, cracked lips.  I can feel the desire for violence pulsing behind my eyeballs and I like it.  I wonder if this is how he has felt, so many times before.  “Guess what?” I ask him.  “I’m not gonna’ take your fucking job!  I was lying to you!  I’m here to end all this!”

            “Danny please stop this, Danny look at me,” my mother is pulling desperately at my clothes, and my arm. “Please don’t be silly, please just go, go!”

            “Kay, you better pick up the phone and call the police,” Howard tells her coldly. “Look at him.  He’s on something.”

            “What?  How do you know?”

            “His eyes!  Look at his eyes!” Howard barks at her. “He’s out of his mind on something!  Call the police!”

            “I told you last night,” I say, grinning at him.  “I told you I was gonna’ call Jaime.”

            “Last night?” Mum shakes her head and lets go of me. 

            “Yeah last night,” I say, keeping my eyes on Howard.  He has reached the second to last stair.  “Didn’t he tell you about last night mum?  You want to know what went on last night when he got hold of me?  Here, check some of this out!” I use one hand to push back my jacket and my t-shirt so that she can see for herself, and I hold it there long enough for her breath to draw in sharply.  She backs off from both of us, towards the lounge doorway.

            “Oh my god Lee what have you done!”

            I drop my jacket back down.  “Go on Lee,” I hiss at him.  “Tell her then, tell her everything you did to me last night!  Let’s see what she thinks!”

            His eyes look smaller than ever.  They are gleaming back at me, like two perfect shiny marbles, sparkling amidst the reddening blaze of his face.  His head drops low, as if preparing to charge, and his top lip curls when he speaks.  “Kay,” he says slowly.  “I am very serious honey.  Pick up the phone and call the police.  He’s high on drugs and he’s dangerous.”

            “What did you do to him you bastard?” she screams back at him.

            “Go on then tell her!” I shout, my hands knotted into tight fists, the palm of the right one growing hotter against the end of the knife handle.  “Tell her how you found out where I live!  How you’ve been hanging around making threats trying to get me to deal drugs for you!  Tell her how you came last night, and smashed my dog into the wall, and then put me in your fucking car with my hands tied up!  Tell her then! Mum, look!” I thrust one arm towards her, yanking up my sleeve, not taking my eyes from Howard’s raging face.  Mum steps forward, examines the crusty rings of red around my wrist, and then she stares slowly up at her husband, her lips stretching back in disgust.

            “You’re an animal,” she tells him.  “And I want you out.  I want you out now!”

            He does not even give her a glance.  He takes another step down and looks me up and down with his piercing eyes.  “You better think again mate,” he warns me.  “Because if you do anything stupid, you’ll be going to jail.”

            “Yeah I know that,” I reply.  I let the knife slide down to my hand, I grip hold of it and pull it out and show it to him.  “I don’t care.  There’s nothing can happen to me that’s worse than what you’ve done.”

            “You’re wrong,” he nods at me calmly.  “Jail is not a nice place Danny.  Jail is full of men like Jack, you know.”

            “I don’t fucking care!” I scream at him, and I am dancing from one foot to the other now, and my rage is black and blinding, pushing tears of hatred into my eyes, as spit sprays from my lips.  “I know what he did, you fucking filthy bastard, I know, are you happy now? Are you happy you’ve ruined my entire life and turned me into this?  Yeah, I just pretended I was asleep, pretended I was dreaming, and you knew, you knew though, you fucking shitting bastard, you knew!”  I stop.  I try to swallow.  There is a massive lump stuck in my throat, and just behind it, an endless scream of pain that I do not want to give into.  I have to keep it back there.  I have to concentrate on now.  On doing this.  Howards eyes are searching my face carefully.  They dip down to focus on the knife, and then rise back up again. 

            “Call the cops Kay, I am serious for gods sake, look at him!  He has a knife!  He’s lost his mind!”

            “Because of you!” she bellows suddenly, losing control and rushing for him with her hands raised.  “Out!  I want you out!  Just get out!” She punches him in the middle, knocking his coffee from his hand and then she rains blows down upon his chest and stomach.  He takes a slight step back in surprise, and then pushes her away from him and knocks her wildly to one side with a blow from his fist.   The force of the blow sends her down to the floor, where she lays in a crumpled and silent mess, half in, half out of the lounge doorway.  Keeping his eyes on my knife, Howard steps down, and uses his foot to push her still body into the lounge.  He rolls her right in and then closes the door on her and faces me, puffing out his chest, flexing his hands, and smiling faintly. 

            “Well that shut her up didn’t it eh?  Just you and me now little man.”

            I wrap both of my hands around the knife handle.  “Yeah and you haven’t won, do you get that?”  I hold the knife up, and waves of repulsion shudder through me, one after the other, and I lick my lips compulsively, and blink away the sting of tears in my eyes.  “Because I’m never gonna’ do what you tell me do to, so you can never win!  All that shit last night?  Total waste of time Lee, ‘cause it didn’t work!”

            “Nice speech,” he responds, with a slight yawn.  He gestures at me then, with both hands, beckoning me forward.  “Come on then, no time to waste, what you waiting for?  Show me what you got you fucking little coked up shit stain!  Oh yeah, I know what you been up to, I can see it in your eyes!  It’s written all over your face!” He shakes his head at me sternly.  “Bad move.”  I step forward stiffly, tightening my grip on the knife handle.  My palms are sweating, polishing up a dangerous grease.  He smiles and gestures again.  “Come on then, come on Danny, come on then pal, come on mate.”

            I lurch forward suddenly, but I don’t thrust the knife at him, I take him by surprise by swiping at him with it instead.  I hear him cry out in pain.  He had put up an arm, either to grab me, or shield himself, and the knife has slashed into it, and a spray of red hits the wall behind him.  I try again, launching myself at him, but this time he is too fast, he knows what is coming, and he reaches for me, and grabs both of my wrists.  With a roar of pain and fury, he swings me around, and I hiss in pain when my back slams into the wall, but I hold onto the knife, I still have the knife…

            “You fucking little shit!  You little shit!” His voice is a storm inside my head, crashing and screaming, and he gets my wrists pinned to the wall, and then the monster is back, the monster is right fucking there, and upon me, and his face is sweating and fuming just an inch from mine, and his eyes bulge in the sockets.  I glance at the knife still in my grip, and I see the red rolling down his arm and onto mine.  He pulls my wrist from the wall and then slams it back again.  “You fucking shit you stabbed me!  In my own fucking house!” He is banging my wrist against the wall, again and again, until my hand goes numb, and I cannot hold the knife any more, and I feel it slip from my throbbing fingers, and it thumps down onto the carpet.  I look down at it, and then I look up into his glinting eyes.  “Well that’s that over with then,” he tells me.  “You pathetic little cunt.  And now comes the part where I am forced to kill my drug-crazed step-son in self-defence.” His eyes are smiling along with his upturned lips and he cocks his head at me.  “Are you ready?  Are you ready to die now Danny?  One last chance and you fucking blew it.  Now you are going to die.  And so is she.”

            He spins me away from the wall and hurls me into the floor.  He lifts a foot quickly, rams it viciously into my ribs.  I cry out, as the sharp pain echoes through my body, and I try to crawl towards the kitchen.  He is silent in his attack.  Like so many times before.  I have been down here before.  Me and the carpet, old friends.  He takes his time and considers where to aim each kick, and then he lashes out with no mercy.  He follows my crawl towards the kitchen, and he lifts his foot and brings it down on me, again, and again, and again.  I am being broken up.  I push myself forward, and every time I try to get my hand down to the waist of my jeans, or down to my boot, to reach the other knives.  I feel the ice cold smoothness of the kitchen tiles beneath me, and it is easier to crawl, and when he stops kicking me for one magnificent moment, I am able to free the small knife from inside my boot.  I grip the handle, tug it out, conceal it underneath me, slide forward, further into the kitchen, breathing harshly, dimly aware of the feeling of collapse within me.  I close my eyes and try to find the courage I had before, the anger, and I hear his feet padding in there after me, and there is another kick, right up my backside, and I choke on the pain, I curl up on it, and I clutch the knife tightly.

            He steps over me and kneels down next to me.  I am lying with my arms underneath my body.  My hand aches from holding the knife so tightly.  “You sorry little bastard,” he is telling me softly.  “You’re more of an idiot than I thought you were…fucked up completely now, haven’t you?”  I can feel him sliding his fingers slowly through my hair.  “Coming to my house, cutting my arm…thinking you can beat me.  I told you last night, didn’t I eh?  There won’t be any more chances now.  You’ve fucked up big time.  And to think, I was actually looking forward to us working together.  I actually believed you.  We could have been like father and son Danny.  Oh well.”  He grips my hair, lifts my head from the floor.  “No one can say I didn’t try to warn you.” His fingers tighten in my hair, and he rams my head, back down into the floor.  I feel it bounce up, then down again.  I muffle a groan and splutter, as my mouth and nose explode with blood.  He pulls my head up again and blood oozes from my nose, dribbles in thick clots from my mouth… “No one can say I didn’t try to help you…so many times, but you wouldn’t listen would you boy?  You didn’t want to know, did you?”

            He slams my head into the floor again.  For a moment, I cannot see.   I think my eyes are bleeding.  Or my head has split open and the blood has washed down over my eyes.  I feel unconsciousness wavering close.  I feel him pulling my head up again, and I think no, no, I am not gonna’ die like this, I am not gonna’ die with my head in pieces on his fucking kitchen floor, and I tell him this, but the words don’t come up properly.  Howard pushes his face closer to mine.  “What did you say?  What you trying to say?”  I open my mouth and blood pours out, but I look up, I stare right into his eyes.  I move my lips, push out words he cannot not hear.  He moves closer.  “What did you say?”

            “I said fuck you…” I roll my body to free my arm, and thrust at him with the knife.  I feel it sail through silk, through flesh, and jar against solid muscle.  I slam it right in,  I get up on one elbow, shoving it in, ramming it through, get in, get in, get in there!  I push until the blade has disappeared inside of him, and his flesh is eating up the handle and then I let go and I move back, I move away, watching.  Howard falls back so that he is sitting on his ankles.  He moves in a slow and clumsy fashion, as if he is half asleep.  His mouth has dropped wide open, this massive chasm of disbelief, and his eyes rage huge with pain and shock, and his hands lift up and flutter hesitantly around the knife handle that protrudes from his chest.  I am on my hands and knees and I crawl backwards now, away from him.  I turn slowly, and reach out to the handles on the kitchen drawers.  I use them to pull myself awkwardly up to my feet, and I grip the counter with both hands, as the room sways and dips beneath me.  I put my hand to the waist of my jeans and pull out the third knife, the largest knife.  I hold it out in one hand, and look back at him, sat there.

            Oh what will I become?  I start to laugh.  He is sat there, drooling thin streams of blood and panting heavily, with his hand resting on the knife handle.  His face has gone completely white.  I start to smile.  “Look what you done!” he half screams, half gasps.  “Look what you done to me! You fuck!” I narrow my eyes at him.  I want to tell him how much I don’t give a shit.  “Call an ambulance,” he splutters.  “Call a fucking ambulance!”

            “Not yet.” They are only two small words, but they change everything for him.  He looks like he is going to cry.  I wave the big knife back and forth, and I move forward.  Suddenly, I cannot feel the pain any more.  None of it.  It has all gone.  Believe me.  I have never felt so alive.  I laugh and my shoulders shake with it, and I stare down at the man on his knees, and I feel ten feet tall and loaded with power.  “Look at this one Lee,” I say to him, moving the knife slowly through the air.  “Where do you want this one, big man?”

            “You’re insane,” he grunts at me, and his head slumps forward, his chin crashing into his chest, his eyes fixed manically on the knife.  His big smooth forehead is gleaming with sweat and fever.  “They’ll lock you up….idiot…throw away the key!”

            I laugh and step towards him.  “I told you, big man, I don’t care!  I’d rather be their prisoner than yours.  I’ll get out at some point.”  I smile and lick my lips and gaze down at the blood soaked man before me.  I have never seen him look weak before.  It is like his entire life is flowing out of that hole in his chest.  “I’ll still be alive,” I tell him, and the thought is wonderful and delicious and tingling in my mouth.  “I’ll be alive, and you will be dead.  And when I get out, I promise you this, I will go and piss on your grave.”

            He sucks air up into his nostrils with a noisy, gurgling sniff, and his mouth is a screwed up hole of agony, as he wraps his hands around the knife handle.  He grits his teeth, and he wrenches it free, releasing a wailing, hissing scream. Fresh bright blood pumps freely from the wound.  I got him a good one alright.  He reaches for the counter, as I did, and he grips it weakly, and starts to pull himself up, and I look on, watching curiously.  His face is deathly white, and dripping with sweat.  The knife dangles limply from one hand. “It’s not over yet….” he mutters at me.  “I’ll be the one…pissing on your grave…”

            I think differently.  I don’t think I’m gonna’ let that happen now.  Not now.  I lurch forward, jabbing at him with the knife, sticking it right into his side before pulling it back out again.  He throws back his head and howls.  It’s not easy, I think, stabbing someone.  Especially not someone with so much fucking muscle.  I stick him again, just to keep the momentum going, because I know he could overpower me in a single second, and that would be it.  Game over.  But this is my game.  This time.  He slips back down to his knees, one hand pressing into his side.  He stares at the wounds, and then he stares at me as if he just cannot believe it, and his movements as he sinks back down, they are juddering and stiff, and his face is a frozen mask of horror.  I kick the knife from his hands, and now he has nothing.  He has no one.  He is all alone.  He is at my mercy.  I am king of the fucking world!  I grin down at him excitedly.  “Well look at this Lee!” I sing out in ecstasy.  “Who’s the strongest now Lee?  Who’s the biggest?  Why don’t you tell me eh?  Is it me, or is it you?  You know what I’m gonna’ do now big man? I’m gonna’ make you regret everything you ever did to me!”

            I dance out in front of him.  I pull back my foot and boot him right between the legs.  I watch him go down, like a sack of shit tumbling.  I see his eyes roll up into his head, before he cracks it against the floor, and then he collapses sideways, curls up, hands between his thighs, rasping breath struggling from his pursed lips.  I step closer, sensing his weakness and relishing it.  “Gonna pay you back now,” I say to him. “Look at you now, not such a fucking hard man now are you?  Fucking evil cunt!”  I slash at him with the knife.  Once.  Twice.  Blood flies up into my face and I wipe it away.  I hear a noise in the hallway, this groan, this utterance of grief and horror, but I ignore it.  Howard can only moan and shiver on the floor.  I think, I should have done this years ago!  What the fuck was I waiting for?  Why was I such a weakling?  Why didn’t I fight back before? 

            There is a puddle of deep ruby red growing larger around him.  I take a risk and stand over him, one leg on either side, and I think about every time he did that to me, pressing his foot onto my chest, or my neck.  Bastard.  “Do you regret it yet?” I ask him.  I peer down into his screwed up face.  I want to locate a glimmer of regret in those beady dead eyes.  I kick at his head.  Once, and then again, and again.  It is like a rock hard football between my feet.  I roar at him with the knife.  I am slashing through silk to reveal torn up skin and bloody curls of flesh, and blood that just keeps coming.  So much blood.  So much.  “Do you regret it yet?” I am screaming.  Everything is insane.  Blood soaked, and insane.  There is a great black noise bellowing inside my head.  “You like that do you?  How does that feel you fucking bastard!”

            “Danny no!”  She is screeching at me.  I am dimly aware of her.  She is inside my brain.  I keep kicking and slashing.  I can’t risk leaving it undone.  What I came for.  What I wanted.  “Danny no!  No!  No!”  She is there now.  Pulling at me.  Wrestling me away.  I stand my ground, but I am growing weak. “What have you done?  Oh god what have you done?”

            “Say sorry!” I am calling out to him, but he does not listen, he does not speak.  “Say you’re sorry to me!”

            “No Danny, oh no, please no, what have you done?”  She has her arms around her middle and she wrenches me away.  She is pulling, and yanking, and shaking me awake.  I let her lead me away.  I give in to her.  I am shaking my head.  I am laughing and sobbing and stumbling away from her, and wondering if I will wake up soon. “Oh god Danny!” She is wailing at me.  “What have you done?”

            I turn to look at her.  “I think I killed him.” She was kneeling down beside him, the edge of her cream dressing gown draped in the puddle of blood.  She looks over at me.  I lean back against the far wall, next to the door.  “I came here to end it,” I tell her.  “I did it didn’t I?  I killed the fucker, didn’t I mum?”

            She is feeling for his pulse.  Then she pulls violently away from him.  He does not move.  He does not make a sound.  Silence swallows the room as we stare at each other.  She walks towards me slowly, her eyes huge, her head low, her hands shaking uncontrollably as they reach for me.  She finds my arms and grips them.  She stares into my eyes.  “I have to call an ambulance,” she says. “When they come Danny, I want you to tell them you did it in self-defence, do you understand?  You defended yourself.”

            “Did you check his pulse?”

            “What?”

            I roll my eyes and walk past her.  I walk back to where he lays and press two fingers against his neck.  “What are you doing?” she screams at me.  I straighten up and head back to her.

            “Checking. In case you’re wrong.  He’s dead though.  Yeah, he’s dead.”  I stumble past her, out into the hallway.  She follows me out there.  She watches as I pick up the phone from the table.

            “Danny?”

            “Gotta’ call the cops,” I tell her. “Don’t need an ambulance if he’s dead…Just need the cops to come get me…Tell em to take me away..I’m done.  It’s over.”  I am breathing hard now, my chest is rising and falling too quickly, pain coming in sharp waves every time I suck air in, and every breath I take does not seem to be enough to fill my lungs.  I drop the phone, suddenly overcome with a sick, dizzy feeling.  My knees buckle.  I find the bottom stair and drop down onto it, lowering my head into my hands.

            “Danny?”

            “You have to do it,” I whisper hoarsely.  “I don’t feel good…You have to do it..Call them.  Tell them to come and get me.”

            “Don’t say you did it,” she is hissing at me.  She is at the front door.  Pulling it open.  “They’re already here.” 

            “Oh.  That was quick.”

            I do not look up from my hands.  I can hear the sirens, many many sirens, wailing into the street outside.  The door opens, and footsteps hurry inside, and I can hear my mother weeping and babbling, and voices talking and shouting.  I hide behind my hands.  I am not here anymore.  It doesn’t really matter.

            People are running past me.  Calling for help.  Speaking into radios.  Crackling.  My mother sounds far away, and weeping, weeping.  Behind my hands my vision swims in and out.  My head is in a world of exquisite pain.  I glimpse life through my fingers and find a sombre, watchful face looking back at me.  That guy.  Heaton.  How funny.  You’re in the soundtrack to my life, I want to tell him, but I don’t, because it does not make sense.  “What happened here Danny?” he is asking me.

            The darkness rushes in on me, and I bury my head in my arms on my knees. “I killed him,” I say. I breathe out, slowly, steadily.  I feel my body relaxing into something, into nothing, into no one.  Is that what happens when you take a life?  You die inside.  My limbs are turning into soft jelly.  They can take me.  Bend me.  Yield me into whatever they want.  “I didn’t fall off my bike,” I am telling him as he sits there.  “I didn’t.”

            I fall forward, and he catches me.  “Need help over here!” he yells out.  I feel them taking my pulse.  I dip in and out of life.  I want to sleep.  “Hospital,” someone says.

            “Might be wise. Head injuries.”

            They pull me to my feet.  I open my eyes and look around.  “I killed him,” I say again, in case they did not hear me the first time.  “I came here to kill him.  Okay?” A wave of nausea washes over me, and my ribs are screaming, but I can smile.  Someone is pulling my arms behind me.  Reading me my rights.  There is an argument.  I loll against the door frame.  I am laughing.

            “Don’t be ridiculous, what are you doing? Look at the state of him!”

            “There’s a man in there, knifed to death.  He just said he did it.  I am only doing my job.”

            “We don’t know what’s gone on here.”

            “Look at this!”

            They are pulling at my wrists.  I want to tell them that I do not care.  Put the cuffs on me.  Arrest me.  Do it properly for fucks sake.  Take me out there.  Take me out into the bright sunlight, and I will be free.  I am limp, like a ragdoll, soft and boneless.  “I killed him, I killed him, I killed him,” I hang my head, stare at the floor and chant for them. “I came to kill him, I brought three knives, and I killed him, I killed him.”

            They had hold of me now.  They moved me on.  They were still arguing.  Muttering. Hissing at each other in scorn and anger.  Whatever.  Fuck it!  “I’m recording what he said,” someone is grumbling.  “He said he did it.”

            “Yeah I did!” I laugh at him.  “I killed the bastard!  Yes!  Thank fuck!”

 

            We go outside.  It is a morning, bathed in gentle heat.  Everything has that soft orange glow to it, as the sun rises up from the ocean.  I can hear birds singing.  I let them move me along.  I watch the ground moving beneath my feet.  I do not lift my head until I hear them calling out my name.  I can see them on the pavement.  There they are.  Anthony, Michael and Lucy.  There are police officers everywhere, holding them back, stringing up tape, talking into radios.  Squad cars rolling in, one behind the other.  I squint, the sun is in my eyes.  I can see Lucy, and she is nodding at me, just nodding, and I can see she has my letter, grasped in her hand, and in it, I asked her to forgive me, I asked her to understand, I hoped I would see her again one day.  Anthony is holding onto Michael.  He is struggling against him.  He is torn up.  He doesn’t understand it.  “Why’re you arresting him for?” he is bellowing out at them.  “What’re you taking him for?  For fucks sake!” I see them all and I wish I had the strength to call out to them, but I don’t.  I want to tell them not to worry about me anymore, I want to tell them that it’s over, I ended it, and I will be back one day.  I am pulled away, led over to one of the ambulances.  The darkness falls over me again and I feel myself going down, and down.  It swamps my mind and my body, it is too thick to claw my way back out of.  I feel a numbness spread through me, and I welcome it.  I see the floor of the ambulance rushing up towards me, and people are calling out my name, and I open my mouth.  “It’s okay,” I tell them.  “I’m okay.”

 

 

 

 

88

 

 

            From the bottom of the stairs, I could hear the music playing, and that was the only thing that mattered. I grinned in relief, because it held a hand out to me and guided me up towards safety.  Slide away, and give it all you got…my today fell in from the top…I dream of you, and all the things you said…I wonder where you are now…They were either side of me, Michael and Anthony, helping me up, and I think I was smiling and singing as we climbed up the stairs.  I could feel the fire inside of me growing stronger, and stronger, and stronger.  I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe it was happening, and it was making me feel so happy. “Hold me down, ‘cause all the world’s asleep…I need you now, you knocked me off my feet…I dream of you, we talk of growing old..but you said please don’t!”  The flames were inside of me, alive, and licking and reaching, and the heat was intensifying with every breath I took.  “I love this song!  Come on…now that you’re miiiiine…we’ll find a waaaay!  Of chasing the suuuuun…oh let me be the one, who shines with you…in the morning, we don’t know what to do!” I felt like my head was on fire with it all, and my heart was pounding and leaping, fanning the flames inside my chest. 

            Once we were inside the bed-sit, Anthony closed and locked the door, and I pulled away from Michael, to scoop Kurt up from the floor.  “Danny, you’re bleeding…” Michael sounded like he was going to cry.  I didn’t look at him.  I buried my face in Kurt’s fur, and he covered my beaten face in kisses.  “You’re back, your back is bleeding!”

            “Mike, calm down…”  Anthony told him. “We found him hiding under the bed Danny…he’s okay. Limping a bit.  Where the hell have you been?”

            I placed the dog carefully onto the bed and staggered towards the bathroom.  “Danny?” I heard Michael calling after me.  He sounded awful, desperate and terrified.  I couldn’t even look at him.  “What the hell happened?  What should we do?”

            “In a minute,” I replied, in a flat tone.  “Roll me a fat one, would you.”

            I slammed the bathroom door behind me, shutting them out.  I faced myself in the cracked mirror that hung on the wall over the sink.  I saw this strange version of myself snarling back at me.  My hair, flattened by the rain at the cliff top, covered in sand, and caked in blood along the hairline.  There was a gash on my forehead, and all the blood had run down onto my face, into my eyebrows, and eyelashes, staining them all crimson.  My nose and my lips were swollen and scratched from hitting the wall.  I turned on the taps, staring back at myself.  Then I grabbed the bar of soap and lowered my face into the flow of water.  I used handfuls of soap and water to rub at my face, and I felt like I was rubbing it all away, and this time it would be gone, because it was never going to happen again.  I washed until the water ran clear.  Then I lifted my head, grabbed a towel and dried myself off.  I examined myself again.  I saw dead blue eyes glaring back at me.  I saw a face that I wanted to pummel into mush.  I saw a head that I wanted to smash against the wall, until all the memories were gone.  I put one hand into my pocket, where I had stashed the bag from Jaime.  I stared at myself, and listened as all the voices inside my head, as all their incessant and distorted chattering, finally began to join up, and make sense.

            Anthony had rolled the joint.  Michael had just hung up the phone.  He looked so miserable, so forlorn, and childlike that I could not even bear to look at him, let alone talk to him.  “Lucy,” he told me.  “She’s been worried sick.  I just told her you’re back.” I did not answer him, because the noise in my head was too loud.  I did not look at them.  I loved them, but I had to move away from them.  It had to be done.  So I climbed onto the bed and pulled the blankets over me, and Kurt.  I curled into a ball, rested my head on the pillow, and I did not look at Michael as he cautiously approached the bed.

            Anthony was sat on the sofa.  “Danny,” he said sombrely.  “You gonna’ tell us what happened?  It was Howard.  Wasn’t it?”

            Michael looked at his brother for a moment, and then sat down warily on the edge of the bed, close to my feet.  I could feel their eyes upon me, waiting.  I put my hands together and rubbed one wrist against the other.  I watched the dried blood flaking off.  I used my nails to scratch away at it.  It looked like rust red snow, falling from my skin.  “What happened?” Michael prompted, when I did not speak.  Anthony got up then, came to the bed, lit the joint and held it out to me.  I took it down with me, and smoked it like that.

            “I’ll call the police,” he offered, with this sad and shabby shrug.  “Whatever happened Danny, whatever he did, you can tell us.  Tell us, and we’ll call the cops right now.”

            I took long, deep drags on the spliff, and felt my mind easing into a gently, cushioned state.  The edges were softening, and my heart was slowly down.  I could hear my breathing getting slower, and slower, and I could not prevent my eyes from closing.  “Danny?” I heard Michael saying again.  “Danny, what happened?  Please tell us.  Don’t shut us out.”

            “Talk about it tomorrow,” I murmured.  “Need to sleep.”  I lifted the joint twice more to my lips before holding it out to Michael.  I got hold of the blanket and tugged it up until it covered my face.  There, I relaxed gratefully into the darkness and the silence, and I could hear my ragged breathing getting slower, and quieter.  My face ached against the pillow.  My back burned, and I was glad of it.  There were voices, taking up their chatter in my mind again, and I whispered back to them, colluded with them, agreed with them… “Know it’s over,” I muttered as the darkness began to carry me away. “Know it….it’s over.”

 

            I slept deeply, for a while, and then I woke up, and I was done with it.  Michael and Anthony snored on, breathing, and twitching and murmuring in their sleep.  I lay there, awake for hours.  I only eased myself from the bed when the first glow of yellow sunshine stole in from behind the blankets pinned to the windows.  I stood up, and walked slowly to the bathroom, the welts on my back stretching and screaming to life.  I shut myself in, had a piss and then took out the little bag Jaime had given to me.  I took the mirror down from the wall and balanced it across the top of the sink.  I sprinkled two lines of powder onto it then used my fingertips to pinch them into longer, thinner lines.  I stooped over, closed one nostril, and sniffed them up.  I blinked, rubbed my nose, sniffed again, and hung the mirror back up.  I came out of the bathroom, found my old battered Nirvana t-shirt lying on the floor close to the bed and picked it up.  It smelled.  It smelled of old times.  I pulled the blood stained one I was wearing up and over my head and tossed it to the floor.  I pulled on the old one, and noticed it was getting a bit small for me now, but it didn’t matter, did it?  Not today.  I pushed through the beaded curtains and begun to look for a knife. 

 

            So that brings us up to speed.  Here I am now.  Whoever the fuck I am.  Not sure what is left, to be honest.  Not much.  I have written the letters, one for Lucy, one for Michael and Anthony, and one for Jaime.  I have slid his twenty pound note inside the envelope. Nevermind is playing on my Walkman, in my ears, in my head.  I am lost inside the music of yesterday.  I have picked Kurt up, kissed him and put him back on the bed.  I take my battered old denim jacket down from the hook and shrug it on.  I turn to look at my sleeping friends, just once, before I go.  I remember hanging onto that one verse from Teen Spirit, all that time ago, at the party we had at Michael’s house and I hear it now inside my head and it’s like a knife to the heart, so much pain, I cannot breathe…I’m worse at what I do best and for this gift I feel blessed…our little group has always been, and always will, until the end…I smile this bitter, rigid smile, at the memory of four teenage boys, leaping around the kitchen, their long hair swinging, holding onto each other, holding onto the music that was ours, the music that meant so much.  There is a single stinging tear, and I wipe it from my eye, turn around and close the door softly behind me. 

            I head for the bust stop.  Jaime’s drugs are starting to take hold.  This is a good thing.  My heart rate is accelerating, forcing the blood through my veins, feeding the fire.  I climb onto the early bus and pay my fare.  I feel the weight of the weapons on my body, and my breathing is getting faster and harder.  Some sort of strength, and belief, is flooding me quickly and surely.  It feels so good.  I get off the bus along Somerley road and begin the trek towards the house on Cedar View.

            As I trudge past the old house, I make myself look over at it.  The memories besiege me, but this is good, as they only seem to strengthen my resolve.  I march on, past the Andersons house.  It’s rented out to a family now, you can tell.  There are terracotta plant pots around the door step, and brightly coloured plastic windmills spinning in them.  I remember how we always used to go around to the back, and throw stones at the windows.  I put my hands in my pockets, I think about the knives, and I walk on.  I head through the park, and up the hill, and I think about the base, hidden in the woods, and how important it had once been to us.  It had never felt the same though, after Howard caught me there when I tried to run away.  Horror had tainted its walls.  Fear clung to every part of it.  I wondered if other kids had discovered it yet.  If another group of misfits sat around the lop-sided table to smoke roll-ups and drink stolen beers.  A small smile passes my lips. 

            Cedar View rolls into sight.  It dazzles me on a bright June morning.  I snap my mind back to the present, grit my teeth, lower my head and walk on.  I glare at the pavement and watch my boots tramping along.  As I get closer to the house, a paralysing fear seems to take me over, and my teeth start to bang against each other, and my spine tingles with it, and I have to open my mouth up wide to suck in enough air to force my feet to keep moving.  I stalk up to the door and I feel sick.  There are tears in my eyes, and for a moment, I doubt it, I doubt everything, and I am just weak, barely human, barely alive.  My fists hang at my sides and I stare at the door, and my bones feel tight and stiff, and it is agony to move, and I lift one hand and wipe at my dry mouth.  I am not sure if I can do it.  I am not sure if I can do what I lay awake and thought about all night.  Can I really do it?  Throw myself through that door and hold a knife up to my enemy? 

            I have to do it, I have to do it, I have to end it, it has to end…I close my eyes.  I push the clouds away and I force myself to remember everything.  It floods in.  It is a gory human landslide of punches, kicks, belts and fags, it stinks, it reeks of agony and blood and snot and piss and vomit, and it turns over like a violent wave inside of me.  I remember everything.  I remember the things I denied even to myself.  I remember dark nights, curled under blankets, and I remember rough hands where they shouldn’t have been, and I remember heavy breathing choked and thick, and I remember thinking it is just a dream, just a dream, and I remember not being able to move, and I remember last night on the cliff top, and I remember the black swell of waves lurching up to meet me.  He should have thrown me in.  It would all be over now if he had ended it last night.  I remember him telling me this is my last chance, the last time, and I open my eyes and I am insane with anger and grief, and  I lift up both my fists and I hammer them upon the door.

 

87

 

 

            I didn’t realise for a while where he was heading.  I didn’t realise until he swung his car into the road that led up towards Chaos.  I remained pressed up to the window, too lost within my own pain and horror to realise where we were.  On the drive over, I’d slipped into my own little world of grating pain and soothing music.  I told you that before didn’t I?  That wherever I go, whatever I do, music is with me, drumming and thrumming inside my brain, like a constantly changing soundtrack.  I have no control over it, it just happens, the songs just come, they make their own way in, and out, they do what they want.  I had Lithium in my head, all that time, all that way, while the car swerved corners and trundled across bridges.  You might not know that song.  You might not give a shit about that song.  Or any songs.  But it was there, so that makes it part of everything…I’m so lonely, it’s okay I shaved my head…No I’m not sad, and just maybe, I’m to blame for all I’ve heard…I’m not sure…I’m so excited, I can’t wait to meet you there…I’m so horny, that’s okay my will is good…When the car stopped, he killed the engine, and I moved my head slowly and rubbed at the steam on the window, and that was when I knew he had driven me home.  I looked at the door handle and thought about wrenching it open, tearing down the road and screaming for help.  But my body ached and cried out at even the thought of it.  It felt wrecked and ruined and weak and slow.  My back screamed in agony with every muscle I twitched, and my legs didn’t even seem to be with me.  I like it, I’m not gonna’ crack…I miss you, I’m not gonna’ crack…I love you, I’m not gonna’ crack…I kill you, I’m not gonna’ crack…

            There was a build-up of tears behind my eyes.  I was too tired to give into them, and as I gazed through the hole I had rubbed on the steamed up window, I felt sort of numb, and detached from it all.  I wondered blankly and calmly what would happen next.  During the drive, I had felt the fear ebbing away.  It dissipated, it broke up and floated away, because, I reasoned, it didn’t really matter anyway.  It didn’t really matter what happened next.  Or who won.  Nothing mattered.  You lived, or you died.  You took it, or you fought back.  You cared, or you didn’t.  Now that it had dawned on me where we were, I felt a little confused, and uneasy, but at the same time, I felt perhaps the first tender sparks of anger, deep within my body.  I turned my face slowly to look back over my shoulder at him.  He appeared in a daze, staring straight ahead, at the windscreen.  “So what now?” I asked him.  “You’re just gonna’ let me go?”

            “I haven’t decided yet,” he turned his head to look at me, and his eyes looked glassy and strange.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe we’ll drive somewhere else.  I haven’t made my mind up.”

            “You really want me to work for you?”

            He nodded slowly.  “That was the deal.”

            The concept seemed to stun me for a moment or two.  I just stared and blinked at him, open mouthed, and teetering on the verge of nervous, disbelieving laughter.  The sparks of anger gained a little more hold then.  I could almost picture the match inside of me, sparks flying, the flame not quite taking hold, yet.  “But you really, actually want me to work for you?” I swallowed and asked.  My mouth was paper dry, and I would have killed for a decent drink.  He nodded at me, a slight crease appearing across his forehead. 

            “Hope you haven’t forgotten our conversation already,” he said.  “It will do you good.  I’m giving you one last chance Danny, that’s what I’m doing.”

            I ran my tongue slowly back and forth across my lower lip.  I could taste tears, and sand, and blood.  “I’m just a bit confused,” I said softly, cautiously.  “You want me to work for you, when you hate me?  When you’ve always despised everything about me?  That’s the bit I don’t get.  I would’ve thought you’d be happier with me gone.”  His face darkened and his head lowered on his shoulders.  I glanced at the door I was huddled against, and then looked back at him.  “Come on,” I said.  “Level with me.  What the fuck was all this?  Missed having your favourite punch bag, did you?  Punching mum not quite the same for you? Scared you’d lost control?  Had to come and show me who the big boss man is, all over again, right?”

            “You needed showing!” Howard snarled, spittle flying from his lips as he thrust his big head towards me.  “Sneaking round to my house!  Encouraging her to leave me!”

            “And if I’d stayed away, you wouldn’t be doing this now? It was her who begged to see me! I would have been happy never to set eyes on either of you again, to tell you the truth, but she begged Lucy, she told Lucy she needed to see me.”

            With one meaty arm looped over the steering wheel, Howard leaned closer to me.  “You ought to be grateful to me,” he sneered.  “You ought to be grateful that I care about you!  That I’m trying to help you!”

            Again, I was stunned into silence.  I opened, and then closed my mouth.  I shook my head as if to clear it.  I didn’t even know where to begin, or if I should even bother.  The man was dangerously deluded.  Did he truly believe he could be a force for good in my life?  Or was he simply seeking ways to justify his lust for constant violence he could get away with?  I lifted my bloodied hands and dropped them again.  “I’m supposed to be grateful?” I asked him.  “Really?  I’m supposed to be grateful for what you just did to me? Grateful to you, for dragging me away from my own life, and fucking it up all over again? I’d only just got you out of my head you know!” I stopped myself then, clamping my lips over my teeth, recognising the anger building in his face. 

            “What have we just been talking about?  Have you forgotten already?  You said you were going to behave!”

            I dropped my head into my hands.  I didn’t know what else to do.  I felt so close to laughing at him it was scary.  I scraped my fingers back through my hair, found my scalp and scratched at it viciously, whilst shaking my head from side to side.  “So what’re you gonna’ do?” I asked, keeping my head down.  “Come and find me every time you feel like you wanna’ beat someone up?  Every time you wanna’ remember how fucking big you are? Do you know how fucking warped that is?” I looked up again, in curiosity. “How do you know I won’t go right to the police right now?”

            Howard snorted in derision at the comment.  “You never have before, and besides, it’s your word against mine, and they won’t give a shit.  And if you behave like you are supposed to, there’ll be no need for me to be tough on you! I’ve told you that so many times!”

            I blew my breath out over my teeth, risked a smile and shook my head in pity. “You really haven’t thought this through, have you?  Why the hell would I let you back in my life?  I ran away from you Lee.  You should have just left me where I was.”

            He leaned even closer, right over my seat, with one hand gripping the steering wheel. His breath was coming in short, furious bursts through his nostrils. “I thought we just had this discussion Danny?  Eh?” I looked him in the eye.  I could feel the rage throbbing from him in waves, building up again steadily.  As his face jutted closer, I moved back instinctively, only for his big hand to shoot out and grab hold of my face.  I tried just once to wrench free, and then I gave up.  I had barely anything physical left to fight with, so I let my shoulders slump and stared back at him dully, while his fingers crushed my cheeks.  “You’re worrying me now,” he hissed, spit from his curled lips splattering my skin.  “I thought I’d got through to you back on the cliff.  Maybe I ought to take you back up there?  Maybe I should have ignored you when you were screaming and begging?  You said you were going to do what I told you, you said you were going to be a good boy, so were you fucking lying to me?” he let go of me, dropped his hands between his thighs and raised his eyebrows at me.  “Or maybe I should give Jack a call after all, eh?  Shall I do that?  Is that what you fucking want?”

            “No it’s not what I fucking want.”

            “I ought to call him right now, see if he wants to come back and have a date with you eh?”

            I fixed him with a cold, hard stare.  In that moment I understood that it was possible to hate someone so much that you wanted them dead.  Stone, cold dead.  Dead and in the ground.  In the ground so I could piss all over his grave.  I didn’t just want him dead, I longed for him to be dead.  I scowled at him.  “Why don’t you save him the trouble and fucking do it yourself?  You obviously really get off on the idea, you dirty fucking bastard.”

            He snarled and lashed out, his hand slapping my face so hard I fell back against the window.  I laughed at him, I laughed at it all.  I winced and gasped from the pain in my back, and laughed out loud.  “What the fuck is so funny?” he bellowed at me.

            “I’m tired of this…” I murmured, smoothing my hands out across my face and shaking my head behind them, as gentle, exhausted, close to hysterical laughter rocked through me.  “This has to end…one way or another…”

            “I’ll be the one who says when it fucking ends!”

            “Control freak, aren’t you?” I said from behind my hands.  “Is your dad like that too?  Is that where you get it from?  Are you trying to be like him all the time, and failing?  Because one, I am not your son, and two, I fucking loathe you and want to kill you and nothing you can do or say will ever change that?  You need help, you know.  You really need help.” I moved my hands, and shrank slowly back against the car door, keeping my eyes on Howard.  His face and neck had reddened to a dark shade of crimson, and his eyes bulged out of his face.  I sighed at him.  “You should have just left me where I was.”

            “You’re trying to help Kay leave me!”

            “That’s her decision!” I cried back, sitting up straight. “I’m not helping her do anything Lee, John’s helping her, and it’s nothing to do with me! She wants to leave you because you’ve been beating her! Why do you do that?”

            “Oh I see the old you coming back now,” he grumbled, his top lip curling up, and his hands rolling into fists between his legs.  His chest was trembling.  It was all there, under the surface, the tumbling waves of violence, desperate to burst out.  I watched his fists and knew I had to be careful.  I didn’t think I could take any more.  “Same as ever eh?  One minute it’s all please, please don’t hurt me, I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good! Then the next you’re trying to fucking push me again!  I think you like it, that’s what I think.  I think you enjoy winding me up.  That’s how it’s been with you the whole time, isn’t it?  I’ve given you so many chances, so many times, and you fuck it up every time!”

            I licked my lips.  Took a breath.  Wondered if I should keep pushing him.  Let him do it.  Let him kill me.  Whatever.  Did I give a shit anymore?  Really, did I?  “I’m just wondering what the fuck your parents did to you,” I said slowly.  “I mean, really, what the fuck did they do?  To create this insane, delusional, monster, who can only see things his way. Come on,” I shrugged at him.  “You can tell me if you like.  You can share it.  Might make you feel better to open up.  You think it was okay your old man hit you with a belt and shit, don’t you?  But it’s not, it’s not okay, it’s not okay to do that to people…Did he burn you with his fags too?  I’m just curious.  Or is that your own little twist on things?  Something you get a kick out of?  And what about Jack eh?  He’s older than you, isn’t he?  Did your dad arrange that too?  Did he get Jack into your life?  Come on, you can tell me.”

            “You better shut your mouth.”  He could barely look at me.  His face was going purple.  The skin on his cheeks was trembling.  A massive vein was throbbing in his neck. I glanced back at the door handle.  “You didn’t sound like this up on the cliff…”

            I cleared my throat.  “Thought you were gonna’ throw me off.  I really did.  But now I see you were just trying to scare me.  Just playing games.  Just getting that control back again, because it makes you feel so good.  But maybe now, I’m less scared, now I’m sat here with you.  I remember exactly what you are.”

            He leaned in dangerously close. “I’ll take you back up there you little shit!”

            “Maybe I’d prefer that,” I shrugged again, eyeing him warily.  “Maybe I’d prefer that to working for you.  If that’s the only choice I’ve got.”  I shut up and waited.  I expected his rage to erupt upon me once again, but he appeared frozen to his seat, his position solid and unmoving, his eyes fixed on mine.  I watched his face carefully for a few moments, before pulling my feet slowly up onto the seat, and resting back against it.  I lurched forward again as soon as I made contact, tears of pain springing into my eyes, swearing under my breath at the sting across my back.  He chuckled at that. 

            “That’ll teach you,” he said, like a child.  He was one big fucking child.  I winced and shifted my arse on the seat, holding myself in the centre of it.

            “I could use a drink,” I said.  “Any chance of that?”  I had just remembered my cigarettes, and slid my hand into my pocket to retrieve them.  The pack was squashed and soggy, but there were one or two smokes that appeared to be intact.  I shook one out, stuck it between my teeth and lit it before he could react.  “How about it?” I prompted him.  “You got anything?” He grunted and his eyes shifted to gaze out at the dark street beyond the car.  “A nightcap, what do you say?” I urged him, almost desperate for one now.  “To toast this new business arrangement of ours? Then you know what?  I’ll promise to go home like a good boy and not say anything to anyone.  I’ll tell them I had another accident, how about that?”

            He looked at me, his small eyes squinting down to slits. “I don’t think I can believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”

            I laughed incredulously. “Come on, what am I gonna’ do?  I can’t even fucking walk!  You’re the biggest Lee, you remember?  You’ll always be the biggest.  I’m not gonna’ call the police, come on.  I tried that a few days ago.  They don’t give a shit.”

            “Jack Daniels,” he nodded abruptly at the glove compartment in front of me.  He slipped his hand towards the gear stick and picked up his own cigarettes.  I leant forward stiffly, pulled open the compartment and plucked out the bottle of whiskey.  I sat back, unscrewed the cap, and lifted the rim of the bottle to my swollen lips.  I took a long mouthful and swallowed, and closed my eyes.

            “That’s good,” I murmured, and drank some more.  Howard gestured for the bottle so I passed it to him, and sucked on my cigarette instead.  I wrapped an arm around my knees and rested my chin on it while I smoked.  The pain throbbed steadily across my back, and in my head, in my brain, and I just smiled at it.  I still remembered how to claim it, how to make it mine, and not let it panic or consume me.  I thought about my friends and wondered what they were doing up there without me.  Would they even be worried?  Would they just think I was at my mums’, or with Lucy?  Howard nudged me and handed me the bottle.  “So what’re you gonna’ tell mum?” I asked him then, taking it and swigging from it hungrily.

            “What?”

            “What’re you gonna’ tell her?  That you and me made up?  That we’re best of buddies now ‘cause you had a little word with me?” I grinned at him, took another big swig of whiskey that burned my throat raw, and passed it back to him.  “’Cause once she finds out how you got me to change my mind, she’s gonna’ be all over you like a rash, right?”

            Howard glowered at me darkly.  “Always with the smart remarks eh?” he said, smoking with his elbow resting against the window.  “From day one.  You know what I thought when I first met you?  Arrogant, smart mouthed little shit.  I thought there’s a kid that needs taking down a peg or two.”

            “Well yeah, you did that alright.  Couldn’t have taken me down further.”  I took back the bottle and poured it down my neck.  It was setting me on fire, but I loved it, I needed it. I swallowed, and wiped my mouth on my arm, and it was like the whiskey was fuelling the fire in my belly.  I felt this strange sense of calm.  “So couldn’t you find anyone else to replace Jack?” I asked him.

            “It’s not just about that,” he looked at me and sighed.  “I’ve told you a million times Danny, I’m trying to help you.  To give you an opportunity.  We could run a family business if you play your cards right.”  He was looking at me intently, his forehead furrowed with his own private frustrations.  I didn’t understand.  I would never understand.  I found it almost painful to look back at him.  There was something in his eyes more disturbing than the blatant lust for violence I was so used to seeing there.  He looked like a man torn between doubt and conviction, hope and frustration.  And then he said something that chilled me to the bone.  “I could be a father to you Danny.  That’s what I’ve always wanted.  We could put all this behind us.  We could work together, and make the business a success.”

            I felt choked with horror and disgust.  I swallowed, but the lump in my throat would not budge.  “You really think I want to be like you?” I asked him.  He jerked an angry thumb towards the darkened buildings outside. 

            “You really want to end up like your loser friends?”

            “They’re not losers,” I shook my head.  “They helped me get away from you. They’re the only people who’ve given a shit since I was thirteen.”

            “Yeah?  Bunch of long-haired fucking druggies, drunks and ex-cons?” he replied distastefully.  “You’d be better off without them.”  He lifted the bottle of whiskey up to his lips and drank.  His eyes appeared hooded and dark as he sloshed a double measure down his throat. 

            I opened the ashtray on the side of the door and tapped my cigarette into it.  “Let me ask you something.”  He looked my way.

            “What is it?”

            “When Anthony got arrested that time, when the cops raided their house?  That was you, wasn’t it?  I mean, I’ve always known it, but how?  How did you do it?” I smoked and kept my eyes on him.  I watched his eyes widen and shine with a glitter of pride that sickened me, and he snorted in reply.

            “That was easy.”  I waited for more.  I could feel adrenaline moving through me and picking up speed.  Something rearing up wild, and untamed and primal, stirring to life inside of me, and somehow the horrible pain was subsiding and the sudden and bloody desire for revenge was stamping all over the fear and making a mockery of it.  “Jack did it.  Just broke in and planted it there.”  He smirked a little at the memory and shrugged at me.  “Easy.  The back door was knackered.  I made the call.  The punk deserved it for threatening me.  Giving it the big I am.”

            I nodded slowly and gazed down at the floor.  “So you got Jack here on purpose?  To do that for you?”

            “He was at a loose end.  Plus, he owed me.”

            “Oh I know why he was at a loose end.  So, you got him here to get rid of Anthony?” I looked back at Howard and tried to determine what I saw before me.  A huge, physically dangerous man, who looked proud and arrogant, but at the same time nervous and twitchy.  Did he feel guilt, I wondered?  Did he ever feel sorry for the pain and fear he inflicted?  “Then Jack starts being nice to me,” I spoke up.  “At the club.  Buying me smokes and drinks.  I was lonely I guess.  Staying away from my friends because I didn’t want them to end up like Anthony.  He started letting me go to his flat to get high.  So what was that then?  Some perverse little favour you owed him?”

            “No.  He owed me, I told you.”  He seemed to thrust his chest out a little then, drank more whiskey and dragged a hand across his wet lips before breaking into a knowing smile.  “He owed me shit loads, let’s put it that way.  He owed me favours going back years.  He owed me for every time I turned a blind eye to his sick little crushes.  And believe me, he had plenty of them when he used to hang around my old man’s gym! He even has a fucking type, you know?  He has a type, and you were it.” He sniggered then, his eyes flicking all over me as I stared back at him in horror.  “He was pretty much in love with you, you know. Pathetic, eh?”

            I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray behind me.  “So why didn’t he try anything before?” I asked.  I don’t know why I asked the question, when the whole business was making me feel sick and queasy in my stomach.  I licked my dry lips, then used my teeth to scrape at the dried blood I could feel on them.  Howard was shaking with soft mocking laughter.  He looked right at me, cocked his head and smiled.

            “How do you know he didn’t?”

            “What?”

            “Come on, don’t make me fucking laugh…all those times you were round his flat, off your fucking head?  How do you know what he did, or didn’t do?  Could’ve dropped a fucking bomb on you sometimes and you wouldn’t have woken up!”  He was grinning at me like a shark, all small neat teeth and shaking shoulders, obviously finding this distressing scenario pretty amusing.  I breathed in through my nostrils, felt the hatred pumping through me, and I exhaled it again slowly, steadying myself, staying calm. 

            “Pair of sad, sick bastards,” I whispered.  “Pathetic.  Disgusting.  You make my skin crawl.  Pair of sad bastards who can only get their kicks torturing people who are weaker than them.  And you!  You are worse than him!  And I am so fucking bored of all of this…” I turned my face to the window and sighed with exhaustion.  I gazed at the dead street beyond the car, and I craved sleep, and a chance to think…

            “Bored?  Bored are you?”  I wouldn’t look at him as he leaned over me again.  “I’ll make sure you’re not fucking bored!” he was hissing at me. “You brought it all on yourself Danny, you remember that!  You made an enemy of me from day fucking one!  You decided to mess with me, not the other way around!  You tried time and time again to poison Kay against me.  It would have been different otherwise, if you’d been a nice, normal kid!  We could have been like father and son from the start!”

            I puffed breath against the glass and shook my head.  Then I turned my face and sneered back at him over my shoulder.  “Stop saying that.  Do you know how fucking sick that makes me? It’s a good thing you never had your own kids!  You’re a monster!”

            His hand clamped down upon my arm.  I felt the power like a shock wave, and my body wanted to recoil and shrink down to nothing.  I looked into his eyes and they were ablaze with fresh anger.  “Maybe I’ve changed my mind,” he said to me.  “Maybe we’ll go somewhere else.  I better take you back to mine instead.  Tell your mum I picked you up off the street, totally wasted.”

            My eyes travelled down to the door handle.  “Alright, I’m sorry.”

            “You don’t mean it.  You’re not sorry.  You just say sorry when you have to.  It doesn’t mean anything.”

            “I’ll take the job,” I told him then.  “As long as you promise that’s the last time you pull this shit on me?”

            “I don’t think I believe you.”

            “We have a deal,” I gritted my teeth and told him.  “If you don’t pull this on me again.  I’m not gonna’ work for you and be your fucking punch bag too.  I mean it.”

            “I wouldn’t have to get tough, if you behaved yourself.”

            “Yeah, okay, I get it.  I can get out here then.”

            He looked like he was considering it.  But his hand held tight.  “I don’t know if I can trust you little man.”

            “I’m telling the truth,” I urged him. “I’ll take the job.  I don’t have a fucking choice, do I?  I’ll take it, I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever you want, just as long as you keep your fucking hands and your fucking belt to yourself!  That’s the only way!  The only way!”  For some reason there were tears in my eyes again.  I didn’t feel sad though.  Far fucking from it.  But I was glad of the tears.  They looked convincing, and he fell for them.

            “I’ll have to trust you then,” he said slowly and thickly.  I nodded.

            “You can trust me.  But that’s the deal.”

            He kept hold of my arm.  I opened my mouth to breathe.  The air in the car was stale and cloying.  He reached out with his other hand, turned the key in the ignition and unlocked all the doors.  I took a breath.  I moved my free hand and tried the door handle.  I pushed it down, and I felt the door give way, just a little, behind me. I looked back into his face, just inches from my own.  “Well I know where to find you,” he said to me softly. “And if you let me down this time, it’s over little man, do you understand that?”  I nodded silently.  Pressed my tender back a little harder against the door, and felt it move again.  Howard kept hold of my arm and slipped his other hand inside the breast of his denim jacket.  I watched him silently, as he pulled out a slick, shining blade.  He held it up by the stubby wooden handle and then swished it dramatically through the air, and I cringed away from it, just to please him, just to really knock him out.  I could feel cool air teasing my skin from outside the car.  I was so close to freedom, yet still locked in with a madman.  He took the knife and pressed it up under my chin.  I closed my mouth.  I did not breathe.  His tiny eyes were right in front of mine.  “This is the very last time I warn you,” he said to me.  “I won’t be giving you any more chances little man.  If you fuck this up, if you let me down, I’ll come looking for you and I won’t stop until I find you.  You know what I’ll do then?”  I shook my head just a little.  He growled very softly and pressed the knife harder into my skin.  “I’ll take you home to your mother, and I will slice that bitch from her cunt to her throat and the two of us will sit and watch her bleed to death slowly.  And then I will do the same to you.  Because I am not going through this again, do you hear?  This is it.  Final chance.”  He moved the knife away, dropped my arm and pushed the blade back inside his coat. 

            I lowered my feet to the floor and pushed the car open just a little. “I think I get the message,” I told him quietly. 

            “Good,” he said.  “I’ll come and pick you up tomorrow.  There is no time to mess about.  That Lawler prick needs a kick up the arse to start with.”

            I slipped one foot from the car, down to meet the road outside.  The fresh air circled around my ankle, cold and soothing against the wet leg of my jeans.  “I need to call him actually,” I murmured wonderingly.  Howard leaned forward.

            “Do it.  Tell him he’s working for you now and see how he likes that.”  He laughed a little and put the car into gear.  I lowered my other foot to the ground and eased the rest of my body out into the night.  I felt odd.  Dazed, and dreamlike. 

            “Yeah, I need something,” I said, and raised myself up onto my legs.  They seemed to be able to hold me.  I felt like I had climbed out of a hole.  I felt the ground beneath my feet and tested it warily.  I put weight down on them, and straightened out my spine.  My entire body began to shake violently in protest.  I knew one thing.  I needed to call Jaime.  That was true.  I needed to call Jaime, and then I could get some sleep….and then….I looked into the car and my eyes met Howard’s as they peered out at me.  I swear to god I felt it go.  I felt it.  Something, grew hard and taut inside of me, and then snapped.  I swear to fucking god I felt it happen.  I turned around, turned away from him, shuffling footsteps like an old man, my feet unable to pick themselves up. I remembered all the other times both my mind and body had been crushed beyond repair.  You could only pick yourself up so many times.  You could only do so much with the damage before it got too late.  It was too late.  It’s alright though, I told myself, glancing back one more time at the man who was responsible for all of it.  The man who held the puppet strings.  The man who was never going to let me fucking go.  He stared back at me, hard slits for eyes, and a tight-lipped mouth turned up at the corners.  He looked calm again, not twitchy anymore.  He looked like he knew he had won.  He nodded once, as if everything was now well, and understood, everything was as it should be.

            “Make contact with Lawler and see how that goes,” he called out to me.  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow and we’ll go to the club.  Talk properly in the office.  Stay out of trouble, you hear?”  He gave a strange little laugh and leaned across the passenger seat to yank the door shut.  Then he put the car into reverse and screeched back down the road. 

            I remained on the pavement for some time, just staring.  I was thinking about Howard rather calmly, and thinking that really, it was all easy to understand, because we were all just humans, and underneath it all humans are just animals.  They fight and snarl and wreak havoc to get what they want, they destroy each other on a daily basis, so why be surprised by any of it?  I realised then that my trouble had always been that I cared too much.  I felt too much.  People like Howard, and Freeman, they did not care.  They did not feel.  They merely stomped through life like giants, stepping and stamping on anyone who got in their way, picking people up like toys, using them and tossing them away again.  I turned and limped awkwardly down the road, towards the call box on the high street. 

            I went inside, lifted the receiver, found some coins in my pocket and fed them into the slot.  I punched in Jaime’s number and it rang six times before his groggy voice answered it.

            “Yeah?”

            “Jaime.  It’s Danny.”

            “Danny? What the fuck mate?  You’re friends have been out looking for you.  They’ve called me like twenty fucking times!”

            “I’m okay.”

            “Where you been then?”

            “With Howard.”

            “Fuck! Shit! You okay mate?”

            “Nah, not really.  I really need something Jaime.  Can you help me out?”

            “Yeah, what do you need?”

            “I tried coke a few times,” I remembered, pressing my aching head against the cold glass of the telephone box.  “Does it always make you feel really fucking full of yourself?”

            Jaime laughed at me.  “Yeah, basically, either that or it just makes you talk shit all night.”

            “I need to feel really fucking full of myself, alright?  I need to feel like king of this shitting world, yeah? I need to feel invincible.”

            “Ah, are you sure you’re okay mate?” he asked me then. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

            “That’s good, ‘cause I don’t want to be myself anymore.  Can you help me out Jaime?”

            “Um…” he sighed deeply on the other end of the phone.  “I dunno mate…I don’t think you’re friends would be too happy with me, to be honest.”

            “Don’t worry about them! Come on man, I don’t want to beg you.  Listen to me, that bastard just totally fucked me up, and if I don’t get hold of something to make me feel better about it, I’m gonna’ do something stupid, I’m serious Jaime!” I paused, and gulped, and stared through the glass at the deserted street beyond the phone box.  All the shops stood in neat rows on either side of the street, black and silent and watching.  “I’m serious.  If you can’t help me out really quick, I’m gonna’ go throw myself off a bridge or something…I really mean it Jaime.”

            “Alright, alright,” he said quickly, sounding alarmed.  “Calm down mate, just chill out a minute yeah?  I get what you’re saying.  Look, I’ll drive you over something to calm you down, yeah?  Where are you?”

            “I’m outside home.  In the phone box.  But I don’t want something to calm me down Jaime, I want something to fire me up.”

            “Right.  Okay.  Sorry.  Just sit tight then mate?  Don’t do anything silly, okay?  I won’t be long.”

            “I’ll be here,” I replied and hung up.  I felt my broken body weakening against the side of the phone box.  I let myself slip slowly down to meet the floor.  It reeked of piss, and I could see a used condom in one corner, coiled and pink like a piglets tail.  I didn’t care, and I couldn’t have moved if I did.  I crossed my arms over my knees, rested my head down, and closed my eyes as tightly as possible.  I invited in and embraced the darkness, the ugliness inside of me, and I listened to the embers of the fire, crackling and hissing.  The match had been struck, I thought to myself.  I could feel it.  I could really feel it.  I kill you…I’m not gonna’ crack… I could feel it burning.  It was burning, but I just needed a little more fuel to add to the fire…to keep it going.

 

            I had no idea how much time had passed between my call to Jaime, and the screech of tyres further down the road that let me know he had arrived. I lifted my head and squinted through the darkness.  I could see his tall, gaunt figure loping up the street towards me, moving in that jerky, shifty way he had, his head held low, and yet whipping from side to side the whole time.  I wanted to get to my feet to greet him, but I couldn’t do it.  My body felt like mush.  He hesitated for a second outside, and then grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.  “Danny?” he sounded unsure.  I looked up at him and grimaced.

            “You bring me something?”

            He nodded, and crouched down beside me, a frown lining the face under the crammed on baseball cap.  “Bleedinghell mate, look at you.”

            I nodded at him.  “I told you.”

            “That fucking insane bastard, what did he do?”

            “He wants to own me.”  I tried to shake my hair from my eyes, but it was all sticky and clumpy with blood, and rain, and sand from the cliff, and it wouldn’t move.  So I lifted a hand and smoothed it to one side.  Jaime gasped.

            “You’re head’s all cut mate.  You should go to hospital!”

            “This was his way of convincing me.  He won’t stop, you know, he won’t ever stop.  Not until one of us is dead.  He thinks I work for him now.  His fucking errand boy.  If someone did this to you Jaime, would you do what they wanted?”

            Jaime seemed to flinch and squirm at both the question I asked and at the state of me, slumped in front of him.  He shrugged his bony shoulders.  “I dunno mate.  I dunno what to say to you.”  He shook his head and whistled through his grey teeth.  “Suppose that’s up to you to work out.  Shit, I knew that bastard was nasty…whatever happened to Freeman, do you know? One minute he was here, barking orders at me, then suddenly he’s vanished, and no one knows where the fuck he is!”

            “I stabbed him, so he left town.  That was ages ago.”

            His mouth fell open.  “Are you fucking serious?  You stabbed him?”

            “Yeah.  Had to.”

            “Jesus fucking Christ!  Well you learn something new every day!  Guess you had your reasons….are you okay mate?  Can you get up?  Shall I call Anthony and Michael down?”

            “No,” I shook my head at him.  “I’ll be okay in a minute.”  I stared down at my trainers, sodden and crusted with sand.  “I thought he was gonna’ kill me up there.”

            “Up where?”

            “The cliffs.”

            “Shit!  Fuck me.  Looks like he had a damn good try anyway…”

            “Yeah.  What did you bring me?  I haven’t got the money on me.  It’s up in the bed-sit.”

            “Don’t worry about it now,” he shook his head at me, dug around inside his tracksuit jacket and pulled out a plastic bag.  “Coke,” he told me and looked into my eyes.  “You sure you’ve done it before?  It’s a bigger deal than speed you know.”  I nodded that I had.  “Okay then, here you go,” he placed the bag into my outstretched hand.  “I don’t exactly feel good about giving you this, you know.”

            “You’re helping me out,” I told him, closing my fingers over the bag.  My head felt so heavy and full, close to exploding with everything.  “If I don’t get some way to feel strong right now, then that’s fucking it, I’m done…I’ve had enough, you know.  What’s the point?  What’s the point in anything Jaime?  Do you know?”

            Jaime just reached out and patted my shoulder clumsily.  “Don’t ask me mate.  I don’t know a fucking thing about anything.  You’ll be okay.  Take that and feel better then.  Maybe call the old bill tomorrow, eh?  That bastard needs stopping.”  He got to his feet, stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and glanced around him nervously.

            “Yeah he does,” I agreed with him.  “He has to be stopped.”

            He looked down at me worriedly. “You’re not gonna’ sit in there all night, are you?”

            I shook my head.  “Help me up?”  I held up a hand, he took hold of it and pulled me to my feet.  I closed my eyes against the pain, and my back took up its persistent drum beat once again.  I stepped out from the phone box and leant briefly against Jaime, took a deep breath, opened my eyes again, and felt ready.  “Okay,” I said.  “Thanks.”

            “What the hell did he do to you anyway?  Jesus!”

            “Doesn’t matter,” I breathed out heavily as we started to walk slowly and jerkily towards my building.  “Just listen, just don’t ever mess with him Jaime.”

            “God, I won’t.  I don’t.  Just keep my head down, I do.  Do what I’m told.”

            “Jaime, can I ask you something?”

            “What is it mate?”

            “When I first met you, you know, at the club?”  Jaime nodded in reply.  “Was it Howard or Freeman who told you to deal to me?  Who did it come from?”

            “Freeman,” Jaime remembered.  We had reached the building.  I let go of Jaime and leant against the little red brick wall that cornered off our patch.  I stooped slowly forward over my knees to catch my breath.  Jaime brought out some cigarettes and offered me one.  I took it, and waited for the light.  “I met him there.  Actually he caught me dealing pills to some mates in the loos.  Thought he was gonna’ take me outside and give me a good hiding, but he was cool about it.”  Jaime lit my cigarette, and then his own.  “He was pretty friendly.  Suggested I went through him.  He wanted a local bloke he could trust, someone who knew everyone I guess.” He shrugged loosely and puffed on his smoke. “So I said yeah.  Made way more money through him.  Heavier shit though.  Always just sold grass and e’s before then.  That was it really.  I did the dirty work.  Made it easy for him.”

            “He told you to deal to me?”

            “Yeah, I knew he was mates with Howard.  Thought they were like, I dunno, business partners or something.  You could tell there was something going on between them.  You wouldn’t mess with either of them, you know?” He flicked ash behind him and peered at me curiously.  “Took me a long fucking while to realise he was your step-dad though.  That’s when I realised how nasty he could be, I guess.  Then Anthony shows up…starts sniffing around, asking me questions…Fuck, if they ever found out it was me who helped him…” Jaime shook his head and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as he sucked on his cigarette. “I don’t exactly feel good about any of this,” he admitted. “It’s all totally fucked up, isn’t it?”

            I blew smoke smoothly at the ground and looked up at him with a brave smile.  “You’ve done me a huge favour tonight,” I told him. “So don’t feel bad.  They just used you, like they use everyone.  To get what they want.  I sorted Jack out, you know.  Now I’m gonna’ sort my step-father out.  I just needed this to help me feel better, you know?  To help me feel strong.  So I can fight back.”

            Jaime frowned at me.  “Fight back?”

            “Yeah, I have to.  I’m not gonna’ let him win.  I’m not gonna’ fucking work for him.”  I took a few more drags then dropped the cigarette to the ground and stamped on it.  I looked up at the building.  “I’ll get that money to you tomorrow.  Probably give it to Mike to give to you, okay?”

            “Why?  Where will you be?  What’re you gonna’ do Danny?”

            I turned away from him and begun to limp awkwardly towards the door.  “Fight back,” I called over my shoulder.  “You’ll see.”  I did not look back as I arrived at the door.  I realised then that I had no keys.  I pressed the buzzer and waited.  My head was pounding with the music, so I nodded along to it, and thought it was okay, it was all okay, and I would just take it along with me, whatever I did, whatever happened, I would take the music with me.  I love you…I’m not gonna’ crack…I miss you…I’m not gonna’ crack.

86

 

            I dreamed.  I dreamed I was lying on my back, floating on a raft, in the middle of a vast, black ocean.  I know it’s over, and still I cling, I don’t know where else I can go…I could hear the fat man, somewhere, mumbling and muttering, jangling his cashing up bags.  But I couldn’t see him…only darkness.  Darkness, and The Smiths singing I Know It’s Over.  I was trying to get to sleep, but it felt like someone was trying to cut off my hands.  I brought them up to my face and peered through them, looking for stars in the sky, but there was nothing.  Just the black.  The ocean rocked beneath me, shushing and whispering, and the sky bore heavily down upon me.  There was pain.  Biting into my hands, my face, my head.  I tried to call out, to call to Terry, if he was there, but I couldn’t hear him now, he had faded away, and there was nothing, just darkness and an endless ocean and I was all alone.  I know it’s over, and it never really began…but in my heart it was so real…There was nothing.  Just the lapping waves, and the eerie dark, and The Smiths.  I wondered if I was dead.

 

            I woke up to the sound of my own coughing.  My throat was itchy and dry, coated with dust and stuffed tight with hot air. There was a massive pain in my head, right at the front, and I screwed my eyes up against it, battling with the weight of it, wondering what it was.  It throbbed relentlessly around my temples, and my forehead, and there was another pain, a bitter stinging around my mouth and nose.  I swallowed, and tasted blood, tangy and metallic.  I remembered, and the horror flooded me.  I blinked faster and faster, trying to clear a space in the darkness that surrounded me.  My eyes searched through it desperately, trying to work out where I was.  Was I dead?  If I were dead, how would I know?  It struck me then, that maybe this was what death felt like.  Just darkness, and pain, and confusion, forever.  I fought against the panic that was threatening to strangle me.  I realised that I was in a small, tight space.  My knees were right up next to my chin.  When I moved my head back, I found a soft, yet unyielding surface right behind it.  My face felt wet, but when I tried to wipe at it with my hands, I discovered they were tied together.  I lifted them up slowly, gasping in pure terror, my mouth falling open, my heart thundering away under my t-shirt.  I started to breathe faster and faster as panic set in.  I looked up again.  My eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to make out a window, up and to the right of me.  A car window.

            Fuck.  I was in the car.  Howard’s car.  I looked to the left, saw the other window. Straight ahead, the passenger seat.  I was squashed down in the foot well.  I didn’t understand.  I stared hard at the luxurious leather interior, at the green lighter laying on the drivers seat, and his pack of cigarettes resting in the space behind the gear stick.  The engine was off, and the car was cold.  Howard’s fucking car.  It was dark outside.  How long had I been out?  What had happened?  I clawed my way back through distorted memories to try to work it out.  I could remember the phone ringing, and Michael leaving, and Kurt scraping at the door to get out.  I stared around, gulping and swallowing air, following the light that reflected from the leather seats.  The light was coming from outside.  It took me a few more moments to work out that the light was coming from the moon, and when I stared harder at the passenger window, I could make him out, Howard.  He was stood there, leaning against the door.  I could even make out the grey swirls of smoke as they circled and rose into the air before him.  I tried to lean forward, straining my ears to try to pick up any sounds that might tell me where the hell we were.  I wondered if I could hear water running, or falling, but I wasn’t sure.

            Hearing a clock begin to tick inside my head, I looked back down at my hands.  They were tied with some sort of wire.  I lifted my wrists to my eyes to get a better look.  I moved my palms against each other, back and forth, trying to loosen it, but it was wound too tight.  When I moved my hands, the wire bit deep into my skin and I guessed that was the idea.  I felt a huge sob lurching up from my chest and swallowed it back down.  This was deep shit.  This was worse than I had ever imagined.  This could not be real.  Maybe this wasn’t real?  Maybe I was still dreaming?  I listened to my breathing getting faster again.  Panic was knocking, knocking really fucking hard.  I stared back up at the window, at the outline of the man, still leaning and smoking casually against the car.  He was just a man, I told myself.  I would be able to get through to him.  He was just trying to scare me.  He would see sense and let me go, I knew he would.  I’d do anything.  I’d do whatever he wanted.  I jerked my head to the left, but I was unable to tell if the door was locked or not.  I couldn’t make out if the knob was up, or down.  I tried to shift, I tried to move around in the tiny space, but my body was taking up all of the room.  As I stared at the door I knew it was my only chance of escape.  If I could get out of the foot well, if I could get that door open, I could run, I could run and scream for someone to help me.

            Just then, Howard moved from the door beside me.  I saw him throw his cigarette butt down.  I waited, fear gnawing at my guts, and then I saw my only escape route destroyed in a second, as he yanked open the drivers door and slid smoothly into the car.  He slammed the door shut, and our eyes met in the darkness, and I saw him smile, and I wondered how fucked I was.  The moonlight snagged on his teeth, lighting them up in their small, neat rows.  He rested one broad arm across the steering wheel, and shifted his weight to face me.  I recognised the gloating, euphoric glint in his eyes, the look that reminded me of a junkie getting his fix.  “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked him, my voice a trembling disbelieving croak, as terrified tears rolled down my cheeks. 

            “Thought you’d fancy a drive,” came the smooth, controlled reply.  He grinned at me as if we were sharing an inside joke.  I wanted to rip his face off.  I swallowed.

            “Where?”

            “At the beach,” he said with a small and casual shrug.  “Well the cliff top.  You know the bit that’s all roped off?  They had a bit of erosion up here last week apparently.  Big chunk of it fell off.  Yeah.  Fell right in.  Splash.”  His grin was bright and gleaming, his small eyes laughing in his calm face.  “Pretty deserted up here this time of night,” he added, with a slight nod.  “No one about for miles, and miles.”

            “Why?” My voice had crept higher, and quivered in terror.  “Why?  What are you doing?  What the fuck are you doing?”

            He shifted a bit closer, leaning towards me as if to share a great secret with me.  He pressed his finger against his thin lips.  “Shh,” he smiled. “Keep it down little man.  No need to shout.  It’s just you and me.”

            “You’re crazy,” I whispered, shaking so bad now I could barely think straight. I looked back at my hands and started trying to twist them free again.  I could feel the wire eating into my skin, opening it up, and a warm sticky wetness spreading, but I did not care.  “You’re completely insane,” I said, not looking at him.  “You can’t do this, you have to let me go!”

            “You’re gonna’ cut your own hands off if you keep doing that.”

            “Let me fucking go!” I looked up and screamed at him then.  There was an explosion inside of me.  I felt it, and it was telling me to get up, to get out, to get far away, to not let this happen, to fight back.  I struggled to get up, launching my body forwards and trying to use my elbows to hook into the seat for leverage.  Howard just sat and watched me, with this sleepy and slanty-eyed look of amusement on his face.  Finally, he reached for me, grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the foot well.

            “Been watching you for some time,” he announced brashly.  I landed sideways on the seat, and immediately tried the door handle with my hands, but it was locked.  I brought my feet up instead and kicked the door, and then the window.  I drummed my feet against them, while terrified tears squeezed free of my eyes.  “Okay, that’s enough of that now, that’s enough of that,” he said, pulling me back with my t-shirt and holding me in place, with a hand to my chest.  I squirmed and strained under it.  I was in a state.  Panicked, and out of control.  I lurched against the hand, tried to knock it away, brought up my knees, tried to twist away from him.  “Calm down,” he told me, “that’s enough of that!  I’m talking and you should be fucking listening!”

            I stopped struggling.  I wasn’t going anywhere.  I stared at the windscreen, breathlessly, with the weight of his hand on my chest making my guts wring out, and forcing vomit up my windpipe.  “You’re fucking insane,” I panted. “You’ve lost it.  You can’t do this.  You can’t do this to me.”

            He pushed his hand into my chest. “You better pipe down,” he said indignantly. “You might have been gone for a while, but you should remember the rules.  Shut the fuck up when I’m talking, or I’ll break your fucking nose.”  He stared at me.  I stared at the windscreen.  I saw him nod.  “Okay.  I had to bide my time you see.  Could have rushed in and taught you a lesson at any fucking time.  But you had all your homo friends swarming round you like fucking flies on shit.  Had to be patient and wait for the right time.”

            “They’ll be worried about me by now,” I told him through my gritted teeth. “They’ll have called the cops.”

            “They’ll probably think you’re with your mum,” he said cooly, and our eyes met again.  He nodded at me.  “Oh yeah, I know you’ve been sneaking around to see her for a while now.  And I know what the bitch is planning too, thanks to you.  Been putting ideas in her head, haven’t you eh?  Been trying to fuck things up between me and her, yet again, haven’t you eh?”

            “Yeah, so what?” I shot back at him, pushing with my feet and shuffling my backside further back on the seat.  “She wants to leave you!  She hates you, you stupid bastard! And that’s nothing to do with me, it’s ‘cause of how you treat her! She contacted me, she begged me to come and see her, not the other way around!”

            “Oh is that so?”

            “Yes!” I screamed at him, shifting to face him, easing my back up against the car door.  He kept his hand on my chest.  I couldn’t get away from it.  “It’s your fault!  It’s over!”

            “Well,” he said, with a little tip of his head. “You are right about that, anyway. It’s over alright.  Come on then.”

            I shook my head at him, not understanding.  “What?”

            “Come on!  Look lively!” He sniggered, turned the key in the ignition and unlocked all the doors.  He reached over me and opened the door I was leant on.  He used the flat of his hand to shove it open, and I nearly went with it, but moved forward just in time.  “Come on, out you get!” he laughed into my face.  “Can you hear that?” he asked, cocking his head to one side.  I looked out of the door.  I could hear the stark and lonely sound of the waves crashing violently against the cliffs.  It was raining steadily.  I looked back at him.  His face had changed.  There was no humour now.  Only cold, dark malice.  “I knew you’d try to ruin things between me and her,” he growled, and shoved me out of the car.  I landed on my back, winded, but quick enough to roll over and get up onto my knees.  He appeared behind me, grunting, like a living nightmare, wrapping his bear like arms around my middle and tearing me to my feet.

            “What are you doing?” I screamed, thrashing wildly, kicking out with my legs, drumming my heels into his shins. 

            “Tried to ruin things from the start, didn’t you?” he was growling, as he heaved me away from the car, and towards the red and white tape I could see had been strung up along the footpath just ahead.  He half carried, half dragged me, and I did all I could, bucked and strained and kicked and screamed, but there was no way out, no release from the massive arms that held me.  “They ought to put a proper fence up, eh?” he hissed into my ear as he hauled me along. “Anyone could just drive up here and dump rubbish over the edge eh?  Thorn in my fucking side, that’s what you’ve been since day fucking one!”

            “What the fuck are you doing?  You can’t do this!” I tried to force my feet down into the ground, tried to plant them there and use the earth to hold me down, but he moved me on, dragging me closer and closer to the edge. 

            “Come on, come on, nearly there now, nearly there!” he was panting into my head. “Then it will all be over Danny!  You’ll see!”

            I didn’t want to see.  I twisted violently within his grasp.  I made it as hard as I could for him to move me, scuffing my feet into the sand, turning and jabbing my elbows back into his body, but it made no difference.  Finally I opened up my lungs and screamed; “Help! Someone help me!  Help me!” I could see the black waves down below, I could see them swelling and rising.

            “No one can hear you,” he told me. “We’re miles from anyone.  No one comes up here.  No one will hear you. I’d stop struggling if I were you, this is where the ground gave way, we might both go down together!”  He held me there.  We were at the edge.  His arms were tight around my chest, squeezing the air from me.  My feet dangled, just above the ground, my toes scraping uselessly at the wet sand.  I had no choice but to face the ocean.  I could see the white froth down below, gleaming in the moonlight as it thrashed and hurled itself at the rocks.  “Time to pluck that thorn out,” he whispered into my neck.  I heard him inhaling deeply, and I knew what he was doing, breathing in my terror, sucking it into his rancid lungs.  I tried to press my body back into his, tried to turn my head away from the blackness below.

            “Don’t do this, please don’t do this,”  I began to babble in a high pitched sobbing voice.  I couldn’t understand, couldn’t believe it had come to this…I stared at the sea and suddenly felt myself going, and a scream echoed from me, he had let me go, let me go, and  was falling forward, the big arms were gone, and he was laughing, and laughing and laughing behind me.  My t-shirt snagged up under my arm pits.  I held.  He knotted his hand in the material at the small of my back and that was all there was.  That was all there was between me and falling.  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, please, please, oh my god please don’t let go, please, please, please, whatta’ya doin’ whatta’ ya’ doin…”

            “Do you want to die today Danny?”

            “No!  No!  Please, please don’t let go, don’t let go…”

            “It’s about time you said please….”

            “Please!” I screamed into the darkness. “Please Lee!  Oh my god!” I could not tear my eyes away from the angry black waves that rolled and crashed below us.  The rain was falling heavier, plastering my hair to my skull, running in cold rivers down my back. My feet scraped pathetically against the fragile ground.  My t-shirt was pulled tight around my neck. I could feel his fist there, warm and solid in my lower back, holding me.  Oh god, oh god don’t let me go, don’t do it, don’t really do it…If my t-shirt tore, or if he let it go, there would be no stopping me.  There would just be falling, and the cold whoosh of air and rain as I plummeted into the sea.  “Please,” I said it again, my teeth chattering together violently. “I’m begging you, I’m begging you please, please…”  There was a horrible, and terrible pause, while I was forced to wait, and he didn’t say anything, he just breathed heavily behind me, as if he was thinking it over.  “Please,” I whispered again, shaking so hard I could barely see straight.  “Please Lee…”

            “You better let me hear some more of that,” he grunted finally, and stepped back, yanking me with him.  I closed my eyes, relief wracking my body with an explosion of noisy sobs, as I felt myself tugged down to the ground.  It shook through me, the disbelief, the horror, the fear..I felt like my mind was going to cave in, give up…I was on my stomach, my hands trapped beneath me, my face still just inches from the terrible edge, so I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see the awful, hungry blackness any more.  He was on top of me, his bulk pressing me into the sand.  The wet and the cold was soaking quickly through my clothes.  All I could do was sob, and moan, and tremble, my eyes squeezed shut, my face against the sand, just desperate to block out the sound of the angry waves, just desperate to block everything out.  Howard took me by the hair and pulled my head up.  “Look at that!” he snarled. “Look at that there! You don’t want to go down there, do you?  Do you?”

            “No,” I shook my head in his grasp.  “No, no, no, please no…”

            “No one would ever find you down there, would they?  You’d be lost forever down there, wouldn’t you?  You don’t want to be lost forever down there, do you eh?”

            I shook my head again. “No, please, don’t…”

            “Well you have to be a good boy, don’t you then?” He gripped my hair tighter, pulling my head up so hard and fast I thought my neck would snap.  “For once in your miserable little shit stained life, you have to be a good boy, don’t you?”

            I sniffed up my tears and snot.  “I will, I will, I will…”

            “You’ve never been very good at it, have you?” he continued to rage on.  “Never been any good at doing what you’re told, have you, you little bastard?”

            “Sorry…I’m sorry…”

            “You better be fucking sorry,” he pulled my head back even further, until all I could see then was the dense black sky.  I closed my eyes before they filled with rain.  “You better be sorry, and you better start being a good boy, because this is your last fucking chance, or you’re going down there, do you understand?”

            “Yes!”

            “You be a good boy or that’s where I’ll put you!  You say sorry for trying to wreck things!  For trying to get her away from me!”

            “Sorry!” I screamed and sobbed.  “I’m sorry!”

            He pushed his lips against my ear.  “She wants to leave me because of you, she’s lying and cheating behind my back, because of you!  She’ll stop all that if you be a good boy!  If you do what I say!  If you do as you’re told and be a good boy, she’ll be alright again, won’t she? We’ll be a family, won’t we?  Are you gonna’ do as I tell you and be a good boy?”

            I swallowed.  I opened my eyes and blinked in the rain, and in my minds eyes I saw the little bed-sit, with the bean bags, and the walls covered in posters, and the sagging bed, and the little tatty sofa that Anthony curled up on, and I nodded for him, I nodded.  I felt my ribs groaning under the weight of him and I just wanted it to be over, whatever it was. “Will you let me go?”

            “I haven’t decided yet.  I might.  If you’re lucky.  If you promise to be a good boy, and if I believe you.”

            “I will, I promise, I will.”

            “Fucking say it!”

            “I’ll be good!  I’ll do whatever you fucking want!”

            “Yeah, that’s right, you will, you’ll be good and you’ll take the fucking job I offered.  You’ll come and work for me and make amends.  Last chance Danny!”

            “I will, I will, okay…”

            He finally let go of my hair.  He sniggered into my ear. “Jack thought you were a good boy didn’t he?  He really did.”  I felt the cold sand against my cheek again, and closed my eyes against it all.  If he didn’t get off me soon, I would be dead anyway, and nothing would matter anymore.  “He really liked you a lot,” he went on, slurring his words into my brain.  “If you’re not careful, maybe I’ll give him a call and get him to pay you a visit eh?  You have no idea how much he’d like to get his hands on you.” He chuckled, and shifted his body against mine, as if to drum in the humiliation in, and he was laughing so softly, and I knew he would be licking his lips too, relishing every moment of the power he owned.  “I told you, didn’t I?  I told you not to leave.  I told you I would find you, if you did.  You should have listened to me, shouldn’t you?  You shouldn’t have run off with your scuzzy friends.  When you’re part of a family, you don’t do that sort of thing.  You stick together and you’re loyal.  You were a bad boy, doing that, weren’t you?  Naughty, naughty boy running off like that, weren’t you eh?”

            “Yes,” I replied quietly.  “I was.”

            He laughed out loud, and finally eased himself off of me, and stood up.  I could breathe again, but I was not entirely sure that I wanted to, now that I could.  I lay there, not moving, just breathing slowly in and out and questioning whether it was even worth it.  He grabbed the back of my t-shirt and hauled me to my feet.  I was soaked through.  I just hung there, head down and eyes glazed and mind fogged with terror, and then he marched me back to the car with his hand around my neck.  I had a feeling I knew what was coming, and I was right.  I didn’t put up a fight, and I didn’t say a word.  He opened the passenger door, pushed me down onto the seat and lifted my t-shirt up to my neck.  “Need to get you back in line,” he was grunting, and unbuckling his belt.  I turned my face to the side, my eyes dull and beyond caring.  He chortled to himself up above.  “I’m gonna’ fucking enjoy this,” he decided to tell me before the first strike came.

            I closed my eyes, I braced myself for it, I arched my back and hissed the pain through my teeth each time I heard the belt cutting through the air behind me.  Wow, I thought numbly, you fucking motherfucker, pulling out all the stops, all this, wow, what a show.  I tried not to cry, but in the end it was too much to keep down, and the sound of my tears seemed to slow him down.  I counted ten, and then he stopped, turned me over and unwound the wire from my wrists.  I just shook and tried to contain it all, I kept my eyes closed, and when he slammed the car door on me, I curled into the door, and brought my knees up to my chin, and wrapped my arms around myself, and refused to look.  I didn’t want to look, I didn’t want to see, and I thought maybe if I stayed in a calm darkness, then none of this would be real, maybe it was all just a nasty fucking dream. 

            The car rocked when he climbed in the other side.  I wondered what his agenda was.  I wondered what was next.  I wondered if it was over, or if it had just begun.  I screwed my face up, burying myself in my arms, and the pain was getting worse, growing and swelling with every passing second, layers of hot, electric pain smothering my existence.  He turned the engine on and pulled across his seat belt.  “Let’s go,” he said.  I kept myself turned to the window, my knees up, and my head down.  I recognised his voice.  Calm now.  All the anger had gone.  He was like a junkie getting his fix, and now he was as high as a fucking kite on it all, until it started to run out again.  We drove along in silence.