One

 

June 1996

He took his time choosing the knives.  Of course. It was an important decision.  He didn’t want to get it wrong.  He slowly pulled the kitchen drawer open, using two hands, one to pull the handle, one to steady the drawer, not wanting to let it rattle or creak.  Inside the drawer lay a plastic cutlery divider.  It had already been there when they had moved in.  It was the colour of dirty vanilla ice cream, and each long compartment contained only a handful of the correct cutlery, all of it mismatched, all of it lying amongst the dust and the crumbs.  He looked down at the choices he had and it seemed a strange thing; how much thought and preparation he was willing to put into this.  He barely seemed to be breathing as he lowered his head slightly, running his eyes over the cutlery.  He was thinking one big one and two smaller ones would be the way to go.  There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to need more than one.  One would not be enough. What if he dropped it and couldn’t reach it again?  That would be it.  Game over.  A big knife was a temptation he knew he could not resist.  Something in fact he had been dreaming about for years.  But the small ones were easier to hide, he remembered.  Easier to disguise around his body.  The small ones would be the surprise.  The back-up.

His hand approached the silverware tentatively, like a child reaching into the biscuit tin without permission, and he licked his lips.  A noise in the other room alerted him to the fact that he was not alone, and needed to be careful.  His mind wandered slightly.  Was he really going to do this now?  Had it really come to this at last?  He lifted his eyebrows thoughtfully; had he always known it probably would?

He moved in stealthily, his hand curling around the black plastic handle of the biggest knife in the drawer.  It had a serrated edge.  Nasty, he thought, lifting it out and turning it over onto his other palm.  His hands shook so he placed the knife on the sideboard, and glanced back into the drawer.  As his eyes scanned the remaining knives, he considered what the act would make him, if he really carried it through.  A killer. The end justifies the means; he told himself and smiled stupidly for a moment, wondering where that had come from.  He had been talking to himself a lot lately, he realised.  On the face of things he guessed he probably seemed pretty normal on the outside, to those that knew him.  A little self-absorbed maybe, a little secretive at times, but he knew they would always allow him this.  On the inside he had been scarily alive, wired, buzzing with the voices in his head, the constant chatter and argument.  At the end of every lengthy and animated conversation he would nearly always fall asleep with the same thought in his mind; it doesn’t matter anyway, it just doesn’t matter, because nothing matters, nothing, nothing, nothing, so don’t worry.

It is true though; he nodded to himself now, picking up a second knife.  Kill someone, or don’t.  Go to jail, or have a life.  Die.  Live.  Whatever.  What did it matter?  So why are you doing it then? This was the only vaguely rational voice left within him, and it did not trouble him much.  Why are you doing it then?  Why?  Because, he shrugged, clutching the handle of the second knife, one he believed to be a cheese knife, because I want to, because I said I would, because he deserves it, because then it will be over, because it is him or me.

He sighed, decided on the knife as a good choice and placed it next to the first.  It was small and compact, he nodded, it could easily slip inside his sock, or up his jacket sleeve.  Then he remembered the main reason he had reached this point, and he told himself this to make himself shut up about it; because I don’t care anymore.  He looked back into the drawer and made a face.  Tricky.  Lots of bread knives.  No good.  Too blunt.  Another long knife with a serrated edge, but it was flimsier than the first one; he remembered it was useless to cut bread with.  He poked through them, taking care not to make a sound.

You had to think about these things, he reasoned.  You had to be prepared to a certain extent.  Okay, he wasn’t going to bother with bin liners, cleaning rags or bleach, because he had no intention of even running away once it was over.  He hoped it would feel like he imagined it would, and he pictured himself sat close to the body, breathing in his own existence while the life blood flowed from someone else’s.  Would it make him feel more alive? Would he find his own life with the taking of another’s?  Would it make him feel free?  Would it be over?  Or would it make him nothing more than another monster in human form, walking the planet, hunched and sorrowful, seeing no good in anything or anyone, rotting from the inside?

He opted for another short knife with a brown wooden handle.  It had a rusty edge, but what did that matter?  He laid it next to the others and pushed the drawer shut as carefully as he had opened it.  He placed his hands on his hips and released a puff of air upwards, which momentarily lifted his hair from his forehead.  They would know he had come prepared, obviously.  They would use that against him, if he did it this way.  There were other ways, of course.  He had lain awake imagining them all last night, the night he had finally decided what to do to end it all.  Make it look like a suicide or an accident, one of the voices had advised him.  Then he could still have a life for himself afterwards.

Again, it amused him how much thought he had given it already.  It had always been there of course; the urge to kill, the desire to rid the world of one’s enemy, but it had never festered into a lifelike thing until last night.  It had never materialised into a plan of action.  The trouble is, he thought, tipping his head to one side to gaze at the knives before making his final decision, once you start to think about killing someone, once you start to really imagine how much better you would feel without them on the planet, then it is hard to stop thinking about it, it is hard to get it out of your head.  He knew the thoughts had consumed him day and night, building force and momentum within him, gathering a level of reality, or possibility as they tumbled along inside.  They had strengthened, and they had had good reason to strengthen.  It had been a battlefield lately.  Last night had tipped him over the edge. He laughed softly under his breath, shit; it had been a fucking war.

Well, he thought, crossing his arms now over his chest, wars all have to come to an end eventually, wars all reach their bloody climax one way or another.  Wars have winners and losers, bloodshed, and ultimately death.  Okay then.  His thoughts were increasing now in speed, and he found himself licking his lips again, as he imagined the speed of the cocaine he had taken hurtling through his bloodstream, waking up his sleepy veins, crashing into cells and setting them on fire.  He smiled a slow, delicate smile and welcomed the tingling through his limbs.  The knives shone back at him on the sideboard, pushing out his chest, filling him with fight. Fight, he thought and mouthed the word dragging his top teeth backwards across his bottom lip.  Fight.  And who had taught him to fight anyway?  He shook his head at the knives as if to say oh dear, who will be sorry now? Dear, oh dear, not the way you thought it would go eh?  He wanted to laugh, but he did not want to wake anyone.  Fight, he mouthed again, and it was you who fucking started the fight, it was you who fucking started it.

He knew he did not have much time to organise himself.  He had time to reconsider of course, he had a chance to back out of it, but so far he was not letting himself be swayed that way.  He marched on instead.  He took the small knife and pushed it down the inside of his sock, and then he squatted down and pulled the laces of his boot tighter around it. He straightened up and examined it.  You could not see it was there.  Satisfied, he picked up the other small knife and held it in one palm, blade against his forearm. He would wear his denim jacket and keep it tucked inside the sleeve.  Slightly dangerous, he reasoned, flexing his arm and feeling the point dig into his skin.  A rustle of bedclothes in the next room reminded him that he did not want to get caught.  He grabbed the biggest knife and pushed it inside the waistband of his jeans.  It would do for now.  He had the letters to write and he didn’t want the coke to start to wear off any time soon.

He had placed his notebook on the side with a pen already.  He tore out a page and stuck the end of the pen in his mouth.  Christ, what to write?  Where to start?  A creep of panic tickled his spine and sweat broke out on his forehead.  He lowered his hand to the paper and nothing came out.  He bit his lip, tried to concentrate, felt like a twat and realised he should have written the letters before he took the coke.  Fuck, where to start?  What to say to them?  How to explain?  His eyes were drawn to his own wrist, to the dark crust of blood that circled it, and he thought, how do you tell people about things like that?  How do say those words?  How do you speak the horrors that have been only yours?  How do you explain what it all means?

They will understand one of the voices assured him gently but firmly, don’t doubt them for fucks sake, they will understand, more than you realise.  They are your friends, your friends. He smoothed the notepaper out with his palm, accidentally smearing his own dried blood across the page.  He screwed that page up, threw it to one side and tore out another.  My friends, he thought and sighed into one hand, pen poised above paper in the other. He didn’t like the way he felt when he thought about them; like he was slipping down somewhere, fading away somehow, losing himself and in danger of losing the moment with it.  He had to hang on to now.  I’m not the same person anymore, he shrugged, I’m gone already, or I will be soon enough, I’m no good to them now anyway, no good.

Get on with it, the coke fuelled voice urged him, commanded him, get it over with.  He stuck his tongue out between his teeth, leant down towards the paper and wrote; Dear Michael, he laughed then, thinking what he really wanted to write was something like; the first time I met you all I really wanted to do was smash your fucking face in!  He chuckled softly, one ear strained to the next room, ready to sweep the paper onto the knives should anyone suddenly start to stir, or wake. Get on with it, he told himself; it doesn’t have to be a fucking essay, does it?  Just tell them what you need them to know, and get out of here.  That voice was the strongest, he realised, and he knew it had been radically encouraged by the ingestion of a shitload of cocaine. That voice had rubbed its hands together in bloody glee, hadn’t it?  Yes, oh yes, more of that please; we’re going to need that where we’re going.  He started to write then.  He started to let the pen move swiftly across the paper, trying his best to keep his wrist aloft so that the crusty blood would not rub against the page again.  The pain in his wrists was a good thing though, he remembered.  He remembered that he needed that pain to spur him on, to keep him going, and to keep him marching on to war.  Something had snapped in him the previous night, in the midst of horror and fear and a thundering, galloping kind of rage.  Something within him had snapped, and now lay broken.  He could almost feel it if he paused long enough to consider it.  It broke his heart but it was true.  Something had gone.

And now someone had to pay.

Synopsis

‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’

 

Chapter One.  The novel begins.  June 1996.  A character is trying to decide which knives to choose, and it becomes obvious that he is planning a murder; ‘Something had snapped in him the previous night, in the midst of horror and fear and a thundering, galloping kind of rage.  Something within him had snapped, and now lay broken.  He could almost feel it if he paused long enough to consider it.  It broke his heart but it was true.  Something had gone.  And now someone had to pay.’

Chapter Two- April 1993.  DANNY  is thirteen years old. The thorn in his mother (KAY’S) side, (or so she often tells him.) With his older brother, (JOHN) nineteen, they have just moved to a new town. On the run from his mother’s previous boyfriend/turned stalker, they are trying to start again. But Danny worries about the company his beautiful mother attracts. His mother worries about his new, troublesome friends;

MICHAEL, neglected by his parents, brings himself up whilst waiting for his older brother ANTHONY to get out of jail.  BILLY and JAKE are along for the ride. Picked on at school for being different; they have joined forces as a gang with Michael as unofficial leader. They seek out trouble, fighting with their enemies at school, drinking and smoking and discovering music together;

“It’s his voice too,” Danny went on, feeling himself in danger of starting a rant, something he had been doing a lot lately where music was concerned.  “The quiet verses, I mean, I just want to drown everything out and just hear his voice, and then the loud chorus, the screaming! Fuck, I wish I could make noise like that!” 

“You’re hilarious.”

 “You’re right though, this song is enough on its own, enough forever, I mean,I kind of think of it as our song? Me and you and Billy and Jake’s? But the whole album then, every fucking song is a fucking classic.”  

With the help of his new friends, Danny wages war on the men his mother bringshome.  His behaviour is a constant headache to her.  He easily manages to chase off the first man she attracts in the new town. But the next one is different;

He pulled back, but Howard tightened his hold further, so he took a breath, forced his teeth together over his tongue, and said nothing.  Howard led him over to where his silver Mercedes was parked.  The grip on his arm was growing tighter by the second,and as they reached the car, he gasped and winced, and he knew that he was in trouble all right, and he remembered his face against the table that night, and he felt the panic roaring up inside of him

Danny has his work cut out for him trying to scare off local nightclub owner Lee Howard.  He is a man who knows what he wants, and nothing is going to stand in his way.  He is a dangerous control freak, addicted to violence, and having power over those who are smaller and weaker than him.  When John leaves for University, Danny is forced to deal with the reality that his mothers’ boyfriend is soon to be his step-father, and the man is capable of more than he ever feared. When Anthony tries to intervene, he is set up by Howard and his friend Jack Freeman, and whisked back to prison, and the boys know who is behind it, but how can they prove anything?  Danny attempts to protect his friends by keeping the reality of life with Howard away from them.  He increasingly relies on alcohol and drugs to help him escape his brutal home life, not realising that Freeman and Howard are pulling all the strings, providing the drugs in a bid to control and manipulate him;

He felt his mouth stuffed full of a million words he knew he would never be able to tell her, because it was all too late, too late.  He could always see the shadow of Howard behind her, and he knew that it was all lost, that everything was.  He was engulfed in a blackness that showed no signs of releasing him, and he knew that the only way to beat it was to find the man in the baseball cap and buy something else from him, but he was too scared to leave the house.

When Kay is called away to visit her sickly mother for a few weeks, Danny experiences a level of violence and fear that ensure he keeps his mouth shut for a long time to come, in order to protect himself and his friends.

I am going to die, he said to himself, as he helplessly considered the possibility of his organs rupturing, exploding within him under the force of those impossibly hard boots, I’m fourteen and I am going to die, I am going to die on my bedroom floor.  He could almost imagine his liver, heart and kidneys under attack with nowhere to hide, nowhere to go.

This is a story about being young, finding yourself in your friends, and your music, the music that is just for you, the music that frames your greatest moments and follows you around like a soundtrack to your life. This is a story about a young boy, who finds himself locking horns with a real life demon, who thrives on control and feeds on fear. A story about tentative, painful first love;

When he reached her, when he finally reached her, he could barely stand or hold himself up anymore.  The run from his house had wiped him out.  There was nothing left.  It was all suddenly too much, far too much, and he half collided into her, and they fell down onto the sand together, and her bag fell from her hand, her bottle of water rolling out from it.  Her face was alarmed, and she shook her head, and touched his face and pulled him close.  He buried his head in her shoulder, in her hair, and cried like a baby. 

From 1993 to 1996, we follow the music and the exploits of Danny and his friends who bounce from one disaster to another.  Lee Howard and his drug-dealing sidekick, ex-cop Jack Freeman, a man with a seedy and murky past,  are not about to let a gang of scruffy long-haired kids stand in their way;

            Trailing the Anderson boys had been amusing for a few months.  He still liked to give them the odd scare whenever he could.  Drive slowly past them.  Ring the house and say nothing.  It made him chuckle when he thought about them inside that house, too scared to even skin up, too scared to breathe.  He had put the cops on them twice, just to appease Howard.  He couldn’t get in the place now; they had double locked all the doors and fitted locks to the windows.  Hilarious.  It made him choke on his Chinese when he thought about it.  Scared shitless they were. Holed up and helpless.  One wrong move and you’re slaughtered motherfuckers.  Stay in line.  That was what it was all about. 

 Finding himself up against extreme violence, and tangled in the mess of drug and alcohol abuse, things seem bleak for Danny for a while;

 Rebirth seemed a nice option, if such a thing existed.  He daydreamed about it sometimes, and it seemed a warm and wonderful thought to have.  Being born again, as someone else, someone new.  Someone better than he was, someone innocent and pure, and strong and good.  Sometimes he would look at his skin and feel the urge to scratch away the layers one by one, in case someone better was hidden underneath. 

Anthony, when released from prison for the second time, does all he can to help him.  He finds out about the disturbing past of Jack Freeman, and the three boys, Michael Anthony and Danny finally make a dramatic getaway to start a new life. Sharing a bedsit with his friends in the next town, and working in a record shop, Danny tries to put the past behind him, but Lee Howard is not about to let him get away that easily;

 “Still don’t believe you,” Howard told him, rising to his feet and yanking the kid up with him.  He used his body to back him up against the wall. He looked the kid up and down with a sneer.  He was bigger than Danny, but he was still no match for him.  He was a skinny, wiry, floppy haired little cunt.  Howard took his Swiss army knife out from the front of his tight jeans.  He flicked out the blade and laughed as the little cunts eyes grew even rounder.  He grinned, and then whipped the knife upwards, snatching a handful of the kids hair and hacking at it with the knife.  He presented a handful of brown fluff to the horrified face.  “Give this to him when you see him,” he said, pressing his face against the boys. “Tell him it’s just the start.  Tell him if he doesn’t come back home right now, I’m going to hunt down all his friends, including that pretty girlfriend of his, and I’m going to cut bits off of all of them.  Okay?”  He stuffed the knife back into his jeans, crushed the cut hair into the boys trembling hands, and let him go.  “Tell him that when you see him, okay?” The boy nodded dumbly, his lips quivering, his eyes shining with tears.  Howard felt better.  He felt refreshed and new.  He laughed to himself as he headed back down to where he had to himself as he headed back down to where he had left the car.

 In a dramatic climax, Danny realises that he will never be safe or free while Lee Howard breathes the same air as him.  After a bitter and violent confrontation during which Howard tries again to regain total control, he snaps, and seeks him out to kill him. The book ends with Danny killing Lee Howard and being arrested for pre-meditated murder. The book finally finishes with an epilogue, which starts with some newspaper articles and letters dated around the time of the arrest and the trial, and then continues to the present day,  dated October 2004, eight years after Danny was sentenced to prison. He finds his two closest friends and the girl he loves waiting for him on the outside.  Each chapter starts with a quote from a song, from the type of music Danny is into at the time.  Some of the quotes have similar themes to the content of the chapter they head, but some are just reflections of his mood and his musical interests.  At the start of the book he is heavily into Guns ‘N’ Roses, but is soon swayed by Billy into loving Nirvana, and both boys are devastated at the death of their hero Kurt Cobain in one chapter of the story.  As Danny grows older, he develops a love for The Smiths, The Clash, The Doors, Bob Dylan, The Stone Roses and Oasis and many more.

To me, the theme of the book is one of old fashioned good versus evil.  It is about young people dealing with almost impossible circumstances, against a gritty working class background.  The potential consequences of broken homes and absent fathers is also an important message for me.  The question that haunts Danny throughout the story, is should he fight back?  Should he stand up for himself and fight fire with fire, or is there another way, a better way? What happens if someone is pushed and pushed until their mind can no longer think rationally?  Is it possible to become addicted to violence?  Is violence contagious, and able to spread from person to person?  This is also a worry for Danny as the story goes on.  Will he turn into a monster too?