Epilogue

 

 

Extract from the Bournemouth Echo-June 20^th 1996

Fatal Stabbing In Redchurch-16yr old boy is held

“Mystery and shock surround the tragic events that unfolded yesterday, in the quiet, seaside town of Redchurch. Police have now confirmed that the body of local nightclub owner Lee Howard, 42 was removed from his Cedar View home, where it appears he was stabbed to death in the kitchen.  His wife, Mrs Kay Howard was home at the time of the attack but was not harmed.  Very little is known about the nature or the motive of the attack which took place in the early hours of yesterday morning.  A sixteen year old boy was taken into police custody.  Police are appealing to anyone who may have further information to contact them in confidence” Caroline Haskell

 

Letter dated July 16^th 1996

Dear Danny,

            Hope you are well?  Hope they are treating you okay in there? It’s so fucking wrong you are even there.  We’re just hoping it will all come out in court and then people will know the truth.  The rumour mill has gone into overdrive around here. Had reporters at the door and everything!  Getting pretty close to punching someone’s lights out to tell you the truth.  They’re all talking crap when they don’t know anything about it! We’ll all be there in court mate, don’t you worry.  Your man Stanley doesn’t think we’ll be allowed to give character references though, but he is going to see if he can get some of us called up to speak in your favour.  He says this is unusual, but he’ll push for it because of your age.  We’ll be able to tell them about your state of mind and stuff, what life was like when Howard turned up, that sort of thing.  I’m really hoping this happens.  I want to get up there and tell them how it really was! They all think you got coked up and stabbed him to death, something to do with drugs, fuck me, it’s driving me crazy mate.  He’s good your man though, I like him, he’s been through it with us loads, and he’s got a lot of evidence building in your favour.  I suppose you know all this already.  Like Jake going to the cops that time, it’s all on record and stuff.  So that’s good.  And your mum calling the police the day before it happened.  Should count for something right?  He wants to get the sentence pushed down to manslaughter, because of the mitigating circumstances.  Think that’s what they call it?  He wants the admission you made on the scene thrown out before the jurors even get to hear it, because it can’t be trusted, because you were badly injured and in shock and that.  So don’t fuck it up and say it again Danny.  Your mum thinks you will.  Even if you did intend to do it mate, don’t fucking admit it, don’t tell them that. I really need to see you Danny.  I will come and see you regularly if you let me.  You’ve no idea how shit I feel.  Should have woken up that morning, then we’d have stopped you.  We should have made you talk when you came back that night.  I wish so many things.  At the end of the day mate, you lost your mind a bit and who can fucking blame you, you did what you had to do, and we all know that.  Please write back when you can.  When you are ready.  We all miss you.  We can’t play the music without you.  Hope to see you soon, your brothers,

Michael and Anthony

 

Letter dated July 20^th 1996

Dear Danny,

            You probably won’t wish to hear from me, and who can blame you?  I will be there to support you in court, though.  I don’t know what to say to you.  This is a pretty hard letter to write.  There are no words to express the shock and confusion I am feeling.  It won’t mean much to you now, but please believe me when I had no idea what was going on between you and Lee.  I blame myself for this.  I did not stay in touch, I went to Leeds and concentrated on my own life.  I didn’t look back.  You would never speak to me on the phone, or answer my letters, so I guess I gave up trying.  Thought maybe you and I would get on in the future, when you were older.  I regret this so much.  I really thought that your behaviour was just some teenage rebellion, and the usual dramas with mum.  I wish you had phoned me and told me.  I wish you had trusted me to help you.  I would have believed you Danny, if you’d told me.  I would have helped you.  I would have helped you get away, I would have done something!

            I don’t understand why you didn’t tell the police, or the school. I know I don’t know the full story, but did you really think no one would help you?  I am meeting with mum every now and again, to try to piece it all together.  She blames herself of course, and I blame her too.  Once this is over, I won’t be calling her my mother again.  I cannot understand how she didn’t know, I cannot believe she allowed all of this to happen.  She says that you have forgiven her, and that she sees you once a week.  Well, if this is true, you are a better man than I will ever be, and I mean that.  You are still my brother.  I know we have never been close, but I do love you, always will.  I will stand by you, whatever happens.  Let me come and see you, and please answer my letters.  There is so much unsaid between us, and I don’t want it to stay like this.  Take care of yourself Danny.

            Your brother, John.

 

Letter dated August 12^th 1996

My dearest Danny-boy!

            Thank you so much for my letter!! Finally!! You don’t know how happy it made me to receive it!  Please, please, do not leave it so long from now on.  Please write back to me right away!  Please, please let me come and see you, send me a pass!! I am just so desperate to see you.  We all are!  I will see you in court baby.  Please look my way and let me know you have seen me.  They are saying that me, your mum, Jake and Michael, will be able to give factual evidence on your behalf. Fingers crossed.  They say it’s unusual but it’s because of your age, and they want the jury to consider events leading up to the crime.  We can all speak about what happened in the years before, what we saw, or knew, or whatever.  But baby, I don’t believe this, but they say you want to stick to your guilty plea? They are saying if you change it to manslaughter, or self-defence, it would be an open and shut case. You took the knives for protection, not to attack.  They will discount what you said at the scene!  You know all this Danny. They say you want to plead pre-meditated murder.

            Please, please, please, I am begging you, do not do this baby!  You were not yourself that day, you were out of your mind, thanks to him!  Please believe me that you deserve some happiness.  Please please, listen to me, I am begging you to think again.  I am waiting here with Kurt.  Michael and Anthony are moving again, so I am looking after him for now.  He needs you back and so do I.  That man already took so much from you Danny, you cannot let him damage your life any more.  Come back to us, and life will be so good.  Please think about me, and your friends, who all love you so much.  Please let me visit!  It is killing me not being able to see you!! I will never give up asking and sending you letters, so you will have to let me come sooner or later! I love you so so much, I always have, and I always will, forever. It is too quiet here without you.  We cannot listen to a single song xxx

Your loving girlfriend forever, Lucy xxx

 

Extract from the Bournemouth Echo-October 22^nd 1996

Rechurch Murder Trial- drug dealing and child abuse uncovered in seaside town

“As the case continues against the sixteen year old local boy who stands accused of stabbing his step-father to death, increasingly unsavoury accusations about the deceased, are coming to light.  The defendants mother, Kay Howard, wife of the deceased, took to the stand yesterday and told the court she knew her husband to be a ‘violent drug dealer’.  Mr Lee Howard, 42 was the owner and manager at ‘K’s nightclub in Redchurch town centre.  He was a prominent businessman and well known figure in the town.  He was discovered dead at his Cedar View home on the morning of June 19^th 1996.  His sixteen year old step-son, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested at the scene and is currently standing trial for murder. 

The defence are currently attempting to plead diminished responsibility.  The core of their defence appears to be the defamation of the Mr Howard’s character.  Extraordinary scenes unfolded in court yesterday when Mrs Howard described how she had been in the process of leaving her husband.  She even called the police station the day before the murder, to ask for their help in leaving her violent spouse.  She went on to explain that her son, the accused, had run away from home almost a year before, because he was afraid of his abusive step-father.  She then went on to accuse her husband of ‘abducting and torturing’ her son, the night before the murder took place.  The prosecution warned Mrs Howard that the accusation would not be upheld as there was no evidence to support it.  Mrs Howard proceeded to ignore the warning, and attempted to influence the jury by claiming she knew her husband had pushed her son to the brink.  In an emotional tirade, she then went on to accuse her late husband of being a child abuser, wife beater, and drug dealer.  She was held in contempt of court and removed from the stand.

The jury were then reminded that they were not present to determine the character of the deceased, but to decide whether the defendant was guilty of pre-meditated murder, or whether he had acted under the grounds of diminished responsibility. 

This newspaper can reveal that the picture painted of the late Mr Howard as a rather shady character, has come to no surprise to locals who knew the family, and were prepared to talk to us outside the court;

Michael Anderson aged 17, had this to say; “The defendant was in fear of his step-father from the age of thirteen, and he was pushed too far in the end.  He acted in self-defence as far as I’m concerned. That man, and another man, whose name will also come out in court, deliberately enticed him into drugs so that they could abuse and control him.  Everyone knows this! All this has bearing on the case! There is a long story behind what happened that day, and people need to be able to hear it!”

Jake Miller, aged 17: “I reported the deceased to the police when he attacked me for no reason in an alley way because he wanted t know where his step-son was.”

Terry Swain, aged 46; “The defendant worked very hard for me in the record shop. He even worked for free for a while, trying to convince me to give him a job.  When he left home, his step-father came into my shop several times, threatening me and him.  That is a good lad, and he can come back to work for me when this is all over.”

It is also alleged that the defendant consumed Class A drugs before he left his bed-sit in nearby Belfield Park, on the morning of the attack.  He then made the journey on bus, and on foot to the house on Cedar View.  What the jury need to decide, is whether he went there with the sole intention of murdering his step-father, or whether he went there to help his mother, and killed the deceased in self-defence.  The trial continues.”

Readers Comments page 22.

Anonymous 27; ‘Howard got what was coming to him.  Anyone who knew him thinks that.’

Mary Jenson 54; ‘Very tragic case, has touched the entire community.  People are extremely shocked round here. I wonder where the mother was in all of this.  If her son was being abused, what was she doing to protect him?’

|Brian Hooper 61; ‘If it’s true he was abused then I feel sorry for the boy, but we still cannot allow people to take the law into their own hands. He should have gone to the police and allowed the judicial system to deal with Mr Howard’

Donald Madison 45; ‘I have known the defendant for years, as he is good friends with my son.  I hope he gets the justice we all know he deserves. If a child is bullied and tormented for so long under our very noses, we need to ask ourselves as a society if we are not also to blame, when that child fights back?’

 

Letter dated November 19^th 1996

Dear Danny,

            So they moved you then! Finally got my visitors pass in the post!  Can’t wait to come and see you mate!  Anthony is pretty gutted, but hopefully he’ll get the next turn.  Well I’ll have so much to tell you when I come to see you, but I had to write first, to tell you how fucking sorry I am.  You should have walked free of that court with your head held high.  With everything your mum, and Jake and me said to them, you’d think they’d have known it wasn’t your fucking fault.  Fuckinghell mate.  I still can’t believe you stood up there and pleaded pre-meditated murder.  Lucy was destroyed mate.  She’s in pieces.  She had her heart set on you getting diminished responsibility and getting out.  We tried to warn her, but you know.  Let her come see you, and be patient with her.

            You gave the judge and jury no fucking choice, but I can kind of understand your reasons.  Well, Anthony has tried to get it through to me, anyway.  You know what he’s like.  He always gets you.  He says you were being true to yourself.  Standing up there and telling the truth, exactly how it was, exactly what it was, and why.  He says you wanted to accept the consequences. I don’t really get it.  Wouldn’t you rather be free?? It kills me so much I can’t sleep at night.  I’m just pleased you are finally letting us come to see you though.  Feels like we have got you back, in a weird sort of way.  Some of it served you pretty well to be honest.  Everyone knows the truth about Howard and about Freeman.  Their names are dirt around here now.  Shit sticks, and people love a good gossip.  Still keep getting this one reporter at our door.  Keep telling her to fuck off but she must have a thick skin!

            The rumour is that Freeman got arrested, but they won’t tell us anything.  Maybe he’ll do time, who knows?  Have you seen all the fuss in the media? Shittinghell mate!  Fucking debates on daytime TV!! You’re famous mate!  Well you didn’t get the justice you deserved, but I guess I feel like Howard and Freeman got what they deserved.  And you are right.  It is over.  Well I guess I will see you soon Danny.  Billy and Jake and Lucy all say hi, and they all have stuff they want to give to you.  Take care of yourself mate.  Listen to some music.  Tell us how good it is.  We’ll prove them all wrong yet, won’t we? 

Your best friend, Michael

 

October 2004

            When I come out, into the Autumn sun, it makes me blink, and smile.  I am moving stiffly at first, and I do not know what to expect, or what to hope for.  I have no idea what I am supposed to think, or feel.  My bag is on my shoulder.  All my possessions in this world are packed inside of it.  I stop to light a cigarette.  Seems like a plan.  You probably want to know what song is in my head, so I will tell you.  It goes like this; Where did our sweet love go?  Who stole away our time?  Why do the stars above, refuse to shine?  The harder I try to paint a picture, of the way it was back then, the more I miss the good times baby, let it roll again! You might not know it’s by a band called The Stone Roses.  They split up years ago but I still love them. It’s a good song to have with me, because it’s quite loud and aggressive and although the lyrics suggest things are not great, the chorus points you towards a belief that it will be!  Let the good times roll again. See?  I smoke, and smile, thinking about this, because it’s a good thing to think, a good way to feel.  I walk towards the gate, remembering  good times, and I remember as well, all the young men I have seen come and go through these gates.  I think about them, like I think about me.  They all have what I have; rolled up newspapers and old journals stuffed inside a bag.  A story.  I don’t know how I will feel, if she is not there though…

            The truth, is stuffed inside my bag, and stuffed inside of me.  I have told the truth, all along.  They asked me questions once.  They asked me if I regretted it, and I said no, because that was the truth.  They asked me if I felt remorse, and I said no. There is still no remorse, not yet.  I told the truth, and I stood by it, as I had during the trial, and throughout the years that had stretched ahead of me.  I could have told them what they wanted to hear, but it felt important to stick to the truth.  To take what came.

            The gates open slowly for me.  They scream out their goodbyes from rusted hinges, and the sound makes me flinch.  I look back over my shoulder, just once.  I realise that I feel a lot lighter walking out, than I had walking in.  I had been a person picked apart, and scattered about.  It had taken a long time to find all those pieces and put them back together again.  Years to assemble them into a person.  A decent enough person.  I hope so, at least.  I suppose if they are letting me go, then they must believe that I am.  I have no idea what will happen now.  How I will adapt to life beyond those gates.  To being an adult.  The only thing I have decided is that I will take each day as it comes, and do my best to be happy.  That is all there is.  That is all I can do.

            I can see the car now.  Parked along the road, just waiting.  A crappy rust red Ford Fiesta with the back number plate gaffa taped in place.  It is better than nothing though.  Better than catching the bus.  I am smiling, and I can see them hanging out of the windows, laughing and waving at me.  They look like twins, I think, waving back.  As I get closer I can see that their faces hold so much, all the promise of youth, all the anticipation for what is to come, all the relief of letting go what has passed.  It can barely be contained.  I grin, and my shoulders relax.  Their dark eyes are shining back at me.

            My body tenses again, and there is a hand clutching at my guts, because she is there too.  She gets out from the back seat.  She starts walking, then running towards me.  She is laughing and her face is wet with tears. I quicken my pace and my throat feels constricted and tight, no words there, no words anywhere, as I reach out for her, and she bumps into my chest, and I think uselessly, how much I have grown.  I can lean over and plant a kiss on her head, while she throws her arms up and around my neck.  She pulls me closer.  I can hear them hooting and yelling from the car.

            “Lucy…” I rub my face into her hair.  It still smells like the beach and brings back a thousand memories.  I squeeze her tight and lift her up briefly from the ground, making her squeal in surprise. 

            “Look I’ve got something to show you…” she says, so I put her down and kiss her nose. 

            “What is it?”

            “Look,” she turns to one side, holds back her long purple coat, and lifts up the edge of the dark green jumper she is wearing.  I help her out, tugging the material upwards to reveal her creamy flesh, and the little dark scrawl of a tattoo she has across her hip bone.  Danny-boy.  I step back to examine it, grinning and biting at my lower lip. 

            “You’re a nutter,” I tell her. 

            She tugs her top back down and finds my hands with hers.  “I had it done the day after the verdict,” she tells me.  “I needed you with me and this was the only way I could think of.  So you’ve been there, you see, all this time, right with me.”  She lifts one of my hands to her lips closes her eyes, inhaling me, before kissing the back of my hand.  “You’ll be there forever.”  I slip an arm around her shoulders, fight back the tears, and hold her close.  We walk on towards the car.

            “You know I’m gonna’ have to get one of those done now, don’t you?” I joke, looking at her, and at all that is to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End

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.”

 

 

 

 

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.