The Madness of Mr Meretrine: Chapter 3, Part 1

Hey, guys. I've been off saving the world for about a month and haven't really posted anything, but I'm back with a new installment of the novel I'm working on. Enjoy (I hope)!

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“What lesson you missing?”

Max kicked a dirty football in my direction, which I steadied with my even filthier trainer.

“Dunno, I’ve stopped checking,” I mumbled back, booting the ball back down to him.

This simple, eight word exchange should tell you all you need to know about the state of my educational life by the time I was eleven.

“When’s the last time you went to school, anyway?” Max shouted back at me, because I’d kicked the ball straight past him, right over the wall of the grubby field.

“Not sure,” I said when he returned, “Could’ve been last week, maybe the week before.”

“Aren’t you worried about your A-grade predictions?” he mocked, grinning.

“Clearly,” I said sarcastically, kicking the ball way down the end of the field once again, causing him to yell at me to stop booting the ball so far.

I didn’t give a toss about grades, and, after spending about a week in that school, I quickly learnt that I’d probably learn more by hacking my own legs off than going to the lessons – it was about the only thing I did learn during my time there.

Still, it wasn’t like I listened much. The lessons were generally too chaotic to hear anything anyway, but I wasn’t exactly eager to expand my knowledge. I knew that life was a bitch whether you could recite the periodic table or not, so I didn’t really see the point of schooling, especially not in a school as piss-poor and rough as that one.

Put it this way: by the end of my first day I’d already told a teacher to fuck off. She sighed over me like I’d told her I’d forgotten my exercise book, not verbally attacked her. Such occurrences were so common in that school that they had little to no effect.     

The school’s inmates weren’t much fun to be around either, for most of the pupils either didn’t show up at all or just sat around yelling abuse in lessons, paying even less attention than me, only there because they wanted to keep their parents off their backs.

I had no parents to worry about, so I joined the truanting crowd.

I didn’t see or talk to my parents much anymore – I only came back to the house if I needed to sleep, sometimes not even then. They never cared about my absence – they probably liked it – so I hadn’t much incentive to return.

I’d expected being out of their company to change me – I’d thought that once I found a person that actually paid me attention (like Max) the veil over my life would lift, that it’d all start to mean something.

It didn’t.      

Anyway, so there I was, in an abandoned field, kicking a battered football around with Max. Max himself hadn’t gone to school for about two years, but he still managed to get by in a flat on his own, so I didn’t see why I wouldn’t be able to when I got to his age. Granted, he had a pretty easy, non-academic way of getting money, but I was heading for that kind of job myself.

I knew he worked in a takeaway on Saturday nights, dishing out kebabs and chips and pizza, occasionally chucking me a slice or two if I hung around long enough, but also knew that such a job was only worked for a bit of spending money. His steady income came from his drug dealing, something he only really managed due to a friend of his. Max didn’t talk much about it, because, naturally, your dealing career isn’t really the thing to include in chit-chat, but, as I understood it, the friend – Josh – was able to get his hands on a reasonable array of drugs, would give them to Max to sell, and after doing so they’d split the money and Max would live on it.

“Tesco gives cakes to fat people, I give drugs to addicts” he said, shrugging. “Same principle. Got to get by somehow, right?”

At first, he wouldn’t let me hang round him whilst his selling was going down. It took place under one of the bridges, and he’d tell me to push off when he started to make his way there, saying that his regulars were paranoid enough when they were on their own, let alone in the company of two. However, as the weeks passed and he started trusting me a bit more, he let me hang around outside the bridge whilst he sold, until he eventually let me stand with him during his exchanges. He told me it was because the nutters who bought from him were eventually going to fly off the handle, and he wanted backup when they did (and with one look at the wide-eyed, twitchy addicts he regularly attracted, I didn’t blame him). The moment I began entering close proximity with his screwy customers, he gave me a knife to keep about my person, and it never left my jacket.

If you hung round with Max, it’d never have left yours either.

It was a smallish knife, with a blunt blade and a black handle that didn’t sit comfortably in my palm, so I often mimicked Max and held the knife in my fist so the blade protruded from between my fingers. Not that I ever used it much, unless you count carving the loose floorboards in my bedroom on the nights where I couldn’t sleep (most nights).

I only saw Max use his knife once, though I could tell he must have had experience with it from the stylish way in which he handled it. On this one occasion, I was waiting outside the bridge, watching in on him and his drug exchanges, and a guy – who’s brain was screwed, by the sound of him – started playing up, demanding that he was entitled to more drugs than he was getting.

This hysteria was a long time coming, that much was obvious from one glance - he had the look of a lost, starving dog; one that’s surrounded by so many cats that it has no idea which one to chase. His wild eyes kept darting in different directions, and, even from a distance, I could see the shrunken state of his blotchy skin, the matted texture of his grease-darkened hair, the stains on his ragged clothing, which hung on his frame so loosely that he appeared to be swaddled in tents. Just picture a stereotypical drug addict, and you’ll have a pretty accurate image. From the look on Max’s face, he’d been expecting the guy to fly off the handle for some time.

The addict drew his blunt knife so quickly that you’d think he’d been clutching it all along, and started advancing towards Max, hands trembling so much I doubted his ability to even hold the knife steadily, let alone inflict any damage with it. I saw Max’s eyes flit down in the direction of his opponent’s blade, and, with the casual look of an expert, he slammed his knee upwards into his foe’s crotch, whose legs buckled instantly from the shock, making me think of the demolition of building foundations.

In the fraction of a second in which the addict remained immobile, Max clenched his fist and appeared to aim a momentous punch at his blank face. At a first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d missed, for his fist barely seemed to skim the other’s skin, let alone deliver a blow.

However, when I heard the scream of pain escape the addict’s lips, it dawned on me that the glint of light in Max’s hand was not his ring.

It was a blade.

Max had arranged the knife so it jutted out from between his fingers, drew back his arm, and slashed the addict’s face, cutting so cleanly and finely that, prior to the sound of pain, you’d be clueless as to what he’d actually done.

However, the howl of agony wasn’t enough to mask the sound of blood spattering the concrete, or tearing flesh. For a second after, when the addict was lying motionless on the ground, I wondered stupidly if Max had torn his entire face off and killed him as a result. I knew that he hadn’t really, but I suppose I was kind of shocked; I’d never seen blood before, not properly – unless you counted that from my mother’s bust lips (a present from my father) or my dad’s facial fingernail scratches (a return gift). I was no stranger to violence, but blood wasn’t something I’d ever really encountered.

I’d sure get to know it later, though.

I saw Max lean over the body on the floor, grabbing the front of his shirt and lifting him so his slashed face was inches from his own.

“You come to me again; I’ll shove this knife,” he held it threateningly in front of the addict’s blood-smeared face, “in your neck.” I saw Max’s hand dive into the other’s jacket pocket and draw out a wad of waxy notes, which he flapped in the addict’s face, much as he had the knife.

“This can be your apology,” he said, stuffing the money in his own pocket. “Don’t let me see you around here again.”

With that, he thrust the addict onto the ground, leaving him to stare blankly at the bridge’s arched, dripping ceiling. Max spat in his direction before sauntering off, but the action didn’t seem to register on the other’s stunned face, which was stained with ink-dark blood, as bold and defined as if it had been drawn on with a marker pen.

That was the night he decided he wanted me as backup during his dealings, and gave me the knife.

“Chips?” Max offered, having returned from the local chippie with the greasy parcel that seemed to have become my breakfast, lunch and dinner. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if they tasted halfway decent, but, to me, they resembled plastic pouches filled with week-old grease and cotton wool.

I took a handful anyway, thrusting them into my mouth and swallowing heavily like a child taking medicine. Max seemed perfectly fine with them, but then I suspected he’d been living on the products of that particular chippie ever since he’d come to live here, and thus he was numbed to the God-awful taste. Not that I’d had a life of fine-dining – the majority of my meals came from the microwavable ready-meal section in Tesco, or otherwise a takeaway in town.

“How d’you live on this shit?” I asked, through a mouthful of chips.

“Any way I can,” he replied. He was partial to answering questions in that vague, film-like way – not really providing a straight answer.

“You dealing tonight?” I muttered, lowering my voice.

“Keep your voice down,” he snapped.

“I am – and no one’s listening, anyway.”

Max couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that other people really did not care what strangers did to earn their money – they were too busy dealing with their own problems. I doubted that anyone would stick their oar in and report him even if he proclaimed his drug dealing habits with a megaphone in the middle of a busy restaurant. Why? Because everyone would sit there thinking someone else would do it.

People accept that drug dealing happens, and that it always will happen. Most of us see locking dealers up as something similar to chipping away at an iceberg with a mini pickaxe.

“Fine,” Max said, “I’m not tonight – got things on.”

“What kind of things?”

“Josh’s having some kind of house party,” he said vaguely. “It’s a chance to get pissed free of charge, ain’t it? Who am I to decline?”

“Josh has a house?” I said disbelievingly.

“Not one like you’re thinking of. It’s just a boarded up old dump, really; used by squatters and druggies – people like Josh.”

There was no beating around the bush with Max. Whether he liked you or not, he’d treat you as you were. I was a like-minded thief like he had been, so he treated me as such. Josh was a wild-natured crack addict, thus Max thought of him no differently. He liked us both, but he didn’t glorify us, which was kind of refreshing, really.

“How many people are there going to be?” I asked carefully.

“Dunno,” Max replied, “Tons, I should think; anyone who Josh knows that likes to get either stoned or wasted – which is everyone he knows.”

“Can I come then?” the words were out, sounding needy and childish, before I could stop them.

Max eyed me incredulously. “No frigging way, Daniel; you’re eleven years old!”

“So what, you’re concerned for my welfare now?”

“No, I’m concerned about the fact that you’ll make me look like a bloody idiot. I can’t have a kid tagging along with me.”

“No one will notice, ’specially if they’re all wasted. That’s your problem, Max – you think everyone’s got it in for you. Nobody even cares.”

“I bloody care, and I say you’re not coming,” Max snapped.

“I won’t even hang around you,” I said, changing tact.

“What’s the point of you coming, then? You’re a frigging lightweight – one beer and you’ll be on the floor; you can’t exactly drink all night. And you ain’t taking any drugs – Josh’s supplies are full of nasty shit, you’ll end up dead or something.”

I scowled. “What’s my alternative way to spend the night?”

Max looked at me like I was stupid. “Go round town?” he suggested, “Go home? Sleep for the night instead of lurking under bridges watching drug dealing?”

I rolled my eyes. “Go home? Seriously? No bloody way, Max” I said, and it was my turn to look at him like he was stupid. “And sleep? That’s a piss take – I spend more time carving up the floorboards than sleeping, ’cause I never can.”

It was true. As I’d got older, I’d begun to dread trying to get to sleep because every attempt was in vain. It became like a chore for me, having to lie absolutely still for hours on end before I finally slipped into some form of rugged unconsciousness, one that was matted with uneasy thoughts and abrupt stirrings. I never felt truly asleep, more like my eyelids were too heavy to lift and my thoughts weren’t in my control, always unsure where the skein of reality ended and the fabric of dreams began. Eventually I stopped trying and just sat in my room at nights, cutting up the carpet with my blunt knife, staring out of the window, carving the floorboards where the carpet peeled, until my body literally shut down and I fell asleep where I was. Sometimes I didn’t, and chugged on into the next day, but the general exhaustion of doing so usually meant I got some kind of rest the following night.

At my response, Max sighed. “Fine. We’ll get a bus at eight, but if you aren’t there I’m not waiting,” he warned. “Stay in the same room as me when we get there, right? ’Cause if you go wandering off and some weirdo nicks off with you, I’m the sorry ass who’ll have to get you back. Don’t do or say anything stupid, blend in, and if someone offers you anything remotely drug-like, do not frigging take it.”

“Alright, alright…anything else?” I said, shaking my head.

“Yes; cut your bloody hair before we go. If you show up looking like an eighties rocker, I’ll abandon your stupid ass there and then.”

I’d not cut my hair for about six years. Back when I was a little younger, it had been fluffy and tangled, the shade of ripened grain, but it had gradually darkened and grown into a long, coarse mess that almost brushed my shoulders, with a dirty colour like wet sand. Later that evening, I went home and hacked at it with my mother’s nail scissors, which weren’t the most efficient of tools, until it was a few inches shorter, a hanging at a length on level with my chin. I’d scythed away a would-be side fringe also – an uneven gash of hair that flicked over one eye. All in all, it appeared as though a horse had been grazing on my hair overnight, but the uneven messiness was still preferable to its previous lengthy style – the ragged cuts and edges almost suited the general every-which-way messiness of my untameable hair.

When I got to the bus stop at five to eight, Max raised his eyebrows.

“I’d ask your hairdresser for your money back,” he remarked, smirking.

“Screw you. You asked me to cut my hair, so I did,” I snapped back.

“What the hell did you use, a fork?” he sniggered. “Oh well, better to look scruffy than stupid.”

In all honesty, I could’ve sheared all my hair off and I’d still look scruffy, it wasn’t something I could shake off. Granted, the ragged, torn jeans and dirty coats didn’t help, but I reckoned I just had that air about me – always had. I was a kid with messy hair and small, judging eyes, and even if you wrapped me in a three-piece suit people would still look my way and think ‘that one’s headed for trouble’.

And they’d be right. 

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Reviews are appreciated, but please don't be tear-my-heart-out harsh; I'm a bit of a defeatist. I'll post part two up fairly soon. :)