The Perversion of Revenge.
You won’t believe the mess I’m in. Can’t go back now, not from what I’ve done, but it doesn’t matter. I needed to do it. It’s made me feel alive again, an expression that I needed to make, now people will notice me, remember me and talk about me. I can hear shouting and banging outside on the shutter doors, they’ll be in here in a few moments. That’ll give me time to tell you the story so far.
It was Sunday and I was getting ready to go out for a night on the town. It was late, nearly ten o’clock. But I wasn’t going out socially. I was going out for one last blow out. Like in the good old days when we used to go to the football and have a good old Barney with the away fans. It was all just fun. I know a lot of you cannot understand why on Earth grown men would want to knock seven colours of shit out of each other instead of watching the football, but to be honest it had fuck all to do with football. We used the rivalry and tribal nature of clubs to let the steam go. Violence was our pressure relief, that’s all. You know like how some guys like to fuck, or do drugs while others simply get drunk and black out. We fought and we did it well. That’s not to say that I don’t have my fair share of scars and aches. You only have to look at me to see that I’m no Brad Pitt, hell I’d make Seal look like a L’Oreal advert, but I don’t give a shit. It’s never stopped me with the ladies, well the rough trade anyway. But what else does a guy like me want a woman for other than a bit of fun. Use them and toss them aside, that’s all they are good for, that’s all men are good for. We are all just dirty, fucking animals underneath it all anyway.
I leave the house and make my way down to the local pub and wait. He’s in there you know. Derek is his name; friends call him Decka or Del. He’s an arsehole. A few weeks ago I was walking down the street and coming the other way was Del, for no reason he walked straight into me and sent me arse over tit.
“What the fuck?” I’d said from my position amongst the dog turds and fag ends.
He sniggered and carried on walking. That’s enough to anger me. He’s going to pay for that tonight. He’s known as a bit of a hard man, I guess he likes to think of himself as a scary character, but we’ll see, we’ll see.
And look over there at that fucking chip shop. Dirty fucking bastards. I only ate from there once and spent a week on the toilet recovering. Filthy people, like all people, filthy, dirty, bastards.
Here comes Del now. Time for justice. I’ll sit behind my bush here and jump out at him. That’s good old fashioned street attacking.
“Hey Del, remember me.”
“Jeez you fucking moron, you scared the shit out of me. No I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy you put on his arse the other day,”
“Go and fuck off you smack head, you high? I put a lot of people on their arses mate. You gotta be more specific.”
Fuck it I can’t be arsed chatting, “Say hello Del, to my mate.”
As I was saying this he was already on his way towards me, but he hadn’t gambled on who my mate was, my trusty fishing knife which I sunk straight into that bastard’s jugular. He spluttered and coughed and gargled for barely a minute. I just stood over him as he flailed around on the floor clutching at his throat. I remember thinking ‘Like his gnarled, stubby fingers are going to stem the flow of that claret.’
“NOW WHO’S ON THEIR ARSE?” I shout. He’s looking at me with the eyes of a small child, no bravery here, just fear, “SEE HOW IT FEELS DEL, NOT NICE TO BE SCARED IS IT?”
But there is no time to hang around and enjoy my creativity. The pub will be emptying soon, I’ve gotta dash. Off to work, I’ll bed down there for tonight. I’ve got business with the boss in the morning. He needs to be put straight too.
Seven AM and how the night has dragged. The constant fear of them coming to take me away,a group of heavy handed police officers, with dogs and tazers and batons. That’s coming though, for sure, or maybe worse.
The thoughts that rushed through my head after murdering Del almost proves to me that I am crazy, evil or both. Selfish thoughts especially. I don’t want to go to prison,I’d never last, besides I was just getting my own back. It was his own fault, he asked me to kill him the day he pushed me over, his death wasn’t without motive – no matter how flimsy the motive seems. He was a bad man. It wasn’t just about what he’d done to me it was about all of the terrible things he has done to people all of his life. I mean you should see his wife. A beautiful woman, ten years younger than he. Every time I see her she looks sad, covered in bruises and scratches that he must have given her, people like him make me sick, so arrogant, so psychotic and so selfish.
Thoughts of killing for the sake of killing keep occurring to me too. I mean why not? I’m a forty-five year old man; I’m never going to be free again after this. Might as well take out a thousand people and get life, than take out only one for the same punishment. I only have one life for them to sentence.
The boss is here, good old Mister Bickerstaffe I can hear his Audi. He’s always in around seven fifteen because he’s a sad fuckwit, a man whose wife is sat at home alone, all day. When she rises he’s gone and by the time he gets home at night she’s ready for bed. A complete and utter workaholic who has no social skills or the abilty to be fair, but a demonstrative man with the charm and grace of a pube in a soup course. At least she won’t miss him when he’s gone. How can she miss a man who’s never there? I’ll be doing her and her family a favour.
He walks into the warehouse oblivious to me of course. He walks towards me, but looks through sleepy eyes at his mobile phone. I pick up a nearby hammer, how convenient, and I walk towards him. My foot scrapes for a moment on the smooth painted concrete floor, making a loud squeak and this startles him. He looks up and gasps.
“Holy Christ, it’s you. What the hell are you doing here so early?”
Then he notices my blood soaked jumper and the hammer that I raise above my head.
“Say Good night,Mr B.” I whisper to him. He raises his arm and I smash the hammer down hard. It barely grazes his cheek but lands with a crash against his elbow.
“Aaaaaaagggghhhhhhh,” he screams.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I scream back.
He stumbles backwards trying to get out of the way, now frantically dialling at his phone I have to lunge at him. With another almighty swing I manage to take the phone out of his grasp and as a bonus I shatter many of the bones in his hand. The crunch was delightful.
“FUCK, Aaaaaaaggghhh!” He falls over and now raising his one good hand he pleads, “What do you want, please tell me, is it money? I can give you money, please don’t hurt me.”
I throw the hammer over my shoulder and it crashes on the floor behind me.
“I don’t want your stinking money old man. First thing I want is your fucking attention. Have I got that yet?” I reach into my pocket and take out my trusty friend.
“I want you to meet someone, a buddy of mine Mr B. He hasn’t got a name, but he’s certainly got an appetite. You see he likes rubbing against bones and not any bones, he’s a fan of spinal columns and rib cages and every now and again he gets to crunch against an eye socket or two.”
Mr Bickerstaffe was silent. There was a moment of nothing. We just looked at each other, only the ticking of the clock on the wall could be heard.
“It’s not nice is it Mr Bickerstaffe?” I paused after asking him this. I wanted him to answer.
“No, It’s not, what have I done to you…”
“Shut up,” I interrupt, “you just shut the hell up now. Don’t be giving me that bullshit. What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? Ha! You’ve done the same to me that’s what.”
“Are you crazy, I’m a businessman… I…” He stuttered as he replied, he seemed nervous, scared, upset all at once, It was like he needed permission to vocalise a response. That was a good sign, a very good sign.
“No, No, No, No, No! That’s your problem you see. You cannot grasp that treating people like subhuman creatures, with no respect, makes them act like this. You’ve made my life a living hell for the last three years, and now it ends. It ends today, I hope you’re ready.”
“What are you talking about…. Aaaahhh… my hand it’s agony, call me an ambulance. PLEASE!”
Pathetically I said, “OK… Mr B, you’re an ambulance.” Then I laughed for almost a minute. If he’d have been quicker he could have overpowered me because for a few seconds I was drunk on the laughter, almost high on it, I was beginning to enjoy this too much.
“PLEASE!” he pleaded with me.
That was when I heard the sirens approaching. His phone! Damn it. I walked over to where it lay and picked it up, his 999 call had connected, and they’d have heard everything.
“That call was the biggest mistake of your life.”
I turned, ran and jumped onto him. I’ll be fair to the guy he put up a pretty good fight with one hand. But it wasn’t long before I had him unconscious. I hacked at that fucker like an over-keen chef with the Xmas Turkey. I know his ears and part of his forehead came away because I remember throwing them with a splat against the units shutter door.
So that is my story. It’s not a very interesting one; it’s not a very good one. It’s just something I did to let off the steam today. The banging on the shutter doors has stopped, they must have realised that the side door where Mr B came in was open, damn it! I should really have gone and shut it, but I didn’t have time. But then who really does have time?
“ON THE FLOOR. GET ON THE FLOOR. DO IT NOW.”
“Why are you pointing those guns at me gentlemen, you can see I’m unarmed, I pose no threat to any of you, my friend is over there in his thorax.”
“LAST CHANCE, GET DOWN.”
Maybe it’s time to end this story once and for all. I’ll reach into my pocket with gusto. That should give us a nice tidy conclusion.
Santa Muerte
Holy shit, what a night I’d had. A special night at The Rock, with a Metallica tribute live band. Their rendition of Until It Sleeps was the dog’s bollocks. No it was the dog’s bollocks and cock. It blew the house away. But now my night of alcohol and euphoria have been brought crashing to the ground because my short cut has left me standing still, or to be more honest, falling down.
The cut through from Broad Street to Barclays Avenue is a path that twists its way through Santa Muerte churchyard and it’s always frightening but tonight it’s much worse. Because I’m standing here with my mate Simon looking at a corpse.
We almost missed it as we drunkenly sang and fucked around, pushing and shoving each other as we ridiculed each other for supporting Walsall and West Brom. But then I went arse-over-tit over the corpses outstretched leg. Simon thought it was hilarious, he held his stomach as he guffawed and almost went over himself, only a nearby wall saving his jawbone a collision with the tarmac.
I looked back after I had fell to see what the fuck had made me go over only to see the crumpled body, the neck clearly shattered, the head contorted, the eyes open, the gaze so shocking as Simon laughed comically in the background.
“Fucking hell,” I screamed trying to gain Simon’s attention, to no avail, his laughter went on and on like a sun-scorched record.
“He’s dead,” I screamed out and pointed. Simon caught this and stopped his ridiculous laughter. He looked over and simply said, “Shhhhhhh, you’re gonna wake that tramp.”
“Wake him!” I said, “If I could wake him, he’ be grateful! He’s fucked look at him.” I stumbled back to my feet as Simon stepped closer, offering me a hand to help me up that I ignore.
“What should we do?” I say.
Simon stepped closer and put his hand into the pocket of the man, “Maybe we should take his wallet, he’s got no use for cash now.”
I reach out to stop him but he grabs something from his pocket and backs away with it.
“For God’s sake, Si, can you put that back. We should call the cops.”
“You are such a pussy, no harm in looking!” he retorted. He opened the man’s wallet only to find a few coins, “What the hell are these?” he said. I walked over to him expecting to say ‘put them back and lets go and fetch the police’ only to realise they were not any coins that I’d seen before.
“They look like doubloons.” I said. I’d studied Spanish and Mexican history at university and should have been more baffled but seeing a dead body for the first time and now these shiny, gold coins I felt a little bemused, confused and a little uncomfortable. Because I had no idea what was going on.
“Well they are ours now,” said Simon who stuffed them into his coat pocket.
I wanted to ask him what he was doing but we were hit but a shadow that made a whooshing sound like a thousand crows swooping at the ground. We both tilted our heads and as the sound stopped we looked around us.
Several dozen figures stood around us. One of them stepped forward, his eyes red and his teeth white, sharp. He simply raised his hands above his head, then flicked a finger our way and said, “Feed.”