Tag Archives: JD Stockholm

Last Day Free

by

6

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Free Today, Last Day Today!!!

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Mr. Ted holds the hand of his six-year-old friend as they share more of his deepest secrets. Poignant and bold, the boy’s courageous words are detailed and real. He takes you farther into his abusive life and broken mind as he survives the tangled deceit and lies of his everydays. Sit alongside him. Hear his voice and listen with your heart as he opens it up once more.

 

His story continues…

Alley Kid Eleven

by

8

I can feel the phet beginning to clear away as the light of a new day comes in. It washes away the dark and takes it from the outside and puts it on the inside, like a dirty puddle in my mind.silhouette of man/male on wall, cast by orange light /sunset.

The lightness from the phet inside my head gets replaced by darkness. I can feel it; a weight behind my eyes. Suffocating me. Dying on the inside once more. Often, I wish I could close my eyes and never open them again. I don’t want to die; I just want to make it all stop. Something to fill the gaping hole inside.

Karla is in the bathroom while I get dressed in the bedroom. I wonder what I’m doing. Why I’m doing it. I have no desire to be with Karla, but then I have no desire to be with anyone.

I have to leave before someone in her house wakes. She lives with her parents. I don’t want them to catch me. I don’t want them to know my face; to familiarise themselves with who is sleeping with their daughter.

Part of me wishes she would leave me alone. She wants more than I can give. More than I am capable of. She wants the world and I am nothing more than a waste of her time. Yet I cant end it. Part of me craves the fact that she wants me. What if I was to leave fully and it was a mistake?

Karla comes back out of the bathroom and I tell her I have to go.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” She asks. I don’t really know. I give a non-committal nod. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow. I just want to go home.

I say my goodbyes, but I don’t end it with a kiss. She waits for one. I feel it. But she’s just like everyone else, waiting for what she wants and not seeing what it is I want. Not that I know. Everything feels pointless.

I get back to our flat and Joanne says nothing as I get in and it’s after 6am. She doesn’t care either. A quick stop off at the fuelling station on my way home for cigarettes and she’s happy. Of course when I walk through the door it’s as though she didn’t notice I was gone. The place is spotless. She and Angela are sat smoking and chatting. The overflowing ash tray sits on the table. I throw her a new pack as I pop my head around the door before going to my own bedroom to gain my happiness again.

Its almost an instant lift as I take the phet. Like pressing a button inside my mind and everything feels great again. The adrenaline up along my spine clears away the darkness and I feel normal once more. Normal enough that I go and join Joanne and Angela. Normal enough that I can sit and talk and I don’t really care what we talk about. Usually men with Joanne. She laughs and jokes.

Between the chaos, the days just go passed. It feels as though we have sat there the entire time. I haven’t seen Maz, but that is not unusual either. She takes days of rest, days away from this life where she sleeps. I don’t blame her. Sometimes I wish I could do the same. To close my eyes and sleep the days away.

Five days I have been going on the phet. I can smell it on my skin. My body sweats it out. We just have a little left now. The money is all gone. Woody came around and gave us what we needed. He went away pleased with almost three hundred pounds in his pocket. I have cigarettes and phet, I don’t need anything else. Will is still at his mother’s. Colin is with us and he doesn’t seem to mind that we have been awake the entire time. Mark has been a few times to take his brother out. Part of me gets on edge when I see him. Maybe today will be the day the police catch him here. I haven’t seen Phil or Becci. I wonder what he thinks of his car.

Joanne and I sit in the lounge. It’s morning. That itself always feel strange to me. When I have been awake all night and we watch the new day come in, it feels as though I’m outside of the world. Like I am watching people on the inside get up and do normal everyday things. They missed the new day come in. How strange for them. They went to bed and when they wake, it’s all different.

“We have a bit of money left,” Joanne says. “Shall we get some more phet?”

My mind screams yes, I want to. I don’t want to feel the darkness. But I know I need to rest. Five days, my jeans are loose. I can feel my bones. Maybe another day and it could fix everything. Fight away the dark. Not listen to my father tell me I am fat.

I sit on the sofa and turn on the television. The week’s daytime television is just beginning. I can hear my cat, Sooty. I haven’t seen him for a few days. He’s crying in the hallway. Joanne is on the sofa opposite putting on her shoes. l go to get the cat while she goes out for more phet. But I turn to stand and he is there. Behind her.

I lose control in that moment. He’s right there. I see his face. Just as I did when I was a child. The bad man. The man of my nightmares. The one who came to my room every night. I scream and back myself away as fast as I can. Joanne stands up. She is screaming at me, but I’m not looking at her. I’m looking at him. His eyes, his smiles. The darkness that is there, it holds his intent. No one can help me. He’s blocking the door and I can’t get away.

I can’t breathe. I clutch my chest. It is tight. Joanne grabs my arms. She shakes me. Asks me what’s wrong. I pull away from her. I have to get away. I look at the door he has gone. I can’t hear sooty. Maybe he killed him. I remember the cat. The one in the woods. Just the same. Its black and it can’t get away and the man killed him.

I move back from Joanne. I can’t get the air in. I’m going to pass out. I know it. I can’t breathe. “I’m calling an ambulance,” she says as I clutch my throat to try and get air. I shake my head and tell her no. They can’t come. They’ll know about the phet.

“What’s wrong?” She yells at me.

I’m shouting. She can’t understand. I can’t get the words out enough for her to get them. I gasp for breath. I shout. “He’s there, and point at the hallway. No one is there.

I get to the window and open it. Joanne yells at me again. “What are you doing?”

“He’s here,” I shout. I can’t shout hard enough to make him go away. I can’t make Joanne understand that he is there. I can see him. In the shadows out in the hallway.

“I’m going to call the ambulance,” she says to me again as I try and hold myself up. The room is spinning. I need air, but I can’t get it. My throat is closing. I can’t breathe deeply enough. Joanne gets the phone and I take it off her.

“No,” I say. I smash it down onto the table so she can’t call. She can’t call anyone. I watch for him at the door. The bad man. I can see him.

“I’m going to get Maz,” she yells at me. She is crying. “Stay here.”

Joanne leaves, but I can see him there. His eyes in the darkness. The silhouette of him. Like in the dark when I was little. The way he stood at the end of my bed before he got me. When I was little and couldn’t fight him off. When he did what he wanted and no one came.

I’m crying and screaming and yelling at him to leave. He doesn’t move. I open the window more and get my foot out of it. I don’t care that it’s the top floor. I need to get out, I won’t fall. It’s a big ledge. I’m half out the window. I can hear him. He’s making sounds like before. Like a growl.

I hear all the noises in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is. I get more out of the window ready to jump. No one can get me if I jump. It’s better than him. Better than his nails and his teeth and the things he’ll do to me.

Maz runs into the room. She doesn’t come very close. She shouts my name, but I can’t come in. But he’s gone. I can’t see him now. Maybe he is hiding. Maz walks slow to me. She puts her hands out. She is crying too. “Please don’t move,” she says to me. Joanne is with her. She stays behind.

Maz moves forwards. She grabs my hand and pulls me in. She wraps her arms around me. I can’t breathe still. She sits me down, she doesn’t let go. She lies down with me and wraps herself around me.

“He was there,” I try and tell her, but my words don’t come out.

“Don’t try to talk,” she tells me. She runs her fingers through my hair. I close my eyes and let go. “You’ve overdosed.”

Release

by

1

I want to thank all who purchased my new book, “Stupid Boy”, or helped to promote it by sharing links to it, for me. Release day is always an emotional rollercoaster for me. Not because I am thrilled or overjoyed, but because I am afraid. Not only am I putting myself out there to the world; a world that is often judgemental and not always for the better, but because I am telling.

I am telling the real secrets I have held onto for 20 years or more. I am putting out into the world, a view of my parents that I do not actually hold, but one that those who read it, will form.

My father is still in my life, when I see him it makes the guilt more when I know what I have said about him. I feel like a child in these moments; of perhaps, facing my father and thinking who is going to believe me.

He is well respected. He has friends; he is liked. People seek him out for help and advice. He cares. His own daughter idolises him yet, here I am making him out to be some kind of sick monster with my words. Knowing how the world sees him and knowing what I know, I always feel like a liar. Even though my words are the truth, in my father’s world, I would be the liar and he would never do such things.sb cover final

It makes me question. I ask myself if things are real. Did I make them up? Did they really happen? I question my sanity. Perhaps, I am insane and these are just the visions from a psychotic episode. I detach and the events seem like a dream.

The guilt I feel is tremendous, yet each time, I sit to write. Each time, I let that little boy inside, have a voice. I feel better.

People often ask me how I can bring it all back up again. How I can relive it. They assume writing it is painful for me, but it is not.

Not writing it, is what hurts. Denying that boy his voice and his right to tell, leaves me lost. He thrashes around inside with all these things he wants to say and when I don’t let him, my dark days come.

It does not make a person sick when they take the poison out, it is when you try to hold it in that it devours you.

 

Stupid Boy

by

6

Finally, I am pleased to announce that Stupid Boy, will be released tomorrow. The third book in the Dear Teddy series.
” I am a stupid boy, with stupid hair and stupid clothes. I am always stupid, forever. My badness comes out and makes it all stupid. I don’t tell Mr. Ted though. He is my friend. We go outside and we get to play. We chop up all the bad people with our swords. We play with Andrew too. He is magic, he is invisible. He doesn’t know that I am Stupid Boy. Nobody ever wants Stupid Boy.”sb cover final

Stupid Boy is the third instalment of Dear Teddy, and continues the pain-filled journey of a seven-year old boy through his horrific childhood of abuse. In his own words, he shows you his scars and tells you the lies that he believes; every page an accounting of the deliberate destruction of a child by those he loves and the strangers he is forced to please.

His gentle spirit will reach out and amaze you with its strength. Wrap your arms around him as he opens his heart once more and shares his life with you.

His story continues…

A review from a dear friend, Cyn, who beta read Stupid Boy for me 🙂

Have you ever felt such deep anger and hatred for two total strangers that you would happily hunt them down and cause them great physical harm? Well, this is how you will feel when you read JD Stockholm’s third book of the Teddy series. Any parent who can subject their child to the horrors that these people did should be made to undergo the same kind of torture. And worse. Because they deserve it. Their innocent child did not.

After reading the first two books, Dear Teddy and Telling Teddy, I remember walking around in a haze for days after. The books had shocked me and affected me so profoundly that it seemed I could think of nothing else. At home, at work, in the car. My own problems suddenly seemed dreadfully small and insignificant in comparison. The thing is, I knew about child abuse…but I didn’t actually “know”. These books open your eyes to a nightmarishly harsh reality that you wish did not exist and make you realise that, as a society, we are not doing nearly enough to help these innocent, helpless children.

I thought I had read the worst of it and that things could not possibly get any worse for our little hero in Stupid Boy. Unfortunately, I was so very wrong. This third book serves to illustrate just how deep his parents’ depravity runs. It will leave you frozen in horror and rage. Despite having realised from the first two books what kind of monsters we are dealing with, these people’s actions still succeed in shocking you into speechlessness.

The seven-year-old little boy still longs for his parents’ love and acceptance. He still desperately wants to be able to live with them because he needs them in his life. It is heartwrenching to see his sadness and despair for these undeserving people. He is like every other child who adores and even idolises his parents and craves their love and approval in return. But these are not normal people or parents worthy of his love. They do not even deserve the titles “Mum” and “Dad”. However, this is not something an innocent little boy’s mind can grasp or understand. He still believes that everything bad that happens to him is his fault and that it is because of “the evil” inside of him.

The role his mother plays in his sexual abuse, which is made much clearer in this book, is deplorable. You are appalled by her abominable behaviour and outraged that she could reject and maltreat her young son in that way. His father’s neglect and barbarity continues to be just as contemptible as it was. However, what shocks you most is how far these people’s mistreatment of their son eventually goes. The actions of his parents in this book are shockingly heinous. They are perverse throughout the book but I literally felt as if my heart had been ripped out at what they allowed him to be subjected to in the end. It is impossible to relate to their inhumanity and their complete lack of compassion or parental instinct.

It is ironic how this young boy tries to protect his mother in one instance in the book, when it should be the other way around. She should be trying to protect her child but she has done nothing remotely close to that. In fact, she has allowed the exact opposite to occur. Even here she pushes him away, rejecting his help and him once again. It tears you up inside and makes you hate her even more. As for his father, you seriously question whether he has any humaneness or any sense of decency in him at all. Whether he is even human.

The story is made even more effective by the way the writer has us see it from a little boy’s perspective. His childlike mind and speech make him totally loveable and his innocence is utterly endearing and heartrending. At one point, his benevolence and kind-heartedness even has him worrying whether he may have caused hurt or discomfort to the very people abusing him. This is one of the things that makes this entire tragedy even more saddening.

Another thing that breaks your heart is how he believes he is so bad that not even God wants him in heaven. All this, after he has just survived another case of brutal abuse. He wonders why he did not die and comes to the conclusion that he is not good enough for heaven. Also upsetting is the fact that he says and thinks this with such acceptance. He believes he is responsible for and deserves all this atrocity. Atrocities that will make you shudder and cry.

Stupid Boy also broaches a much debated and predominant issue in today’s society. How and why a child can turn to self-harm, imaginary friendships or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. How it can engender a false sense of alleviation or relief for a child.

JD Stockholm is an extremely talented writer and has again done an amazing job in making you experience the boy’s anguish, terror and despondency as if you were there with him. You feel it so deeply that you wish you could climb into the pages of the book and pull him out of all the dreadfulness. The author should be applauded for his courage to write these books that talk about such painfully horrendous experiences. They have served to open our blind eyes and urge us to act. They urge us to stop looking the other way and acknowledge a grisly truth that we would rather deny.

I highly recommend read this book, as well as the first two if anyone has not already read them. A definite five-star rating.

Whatever

by

19

Whatever.

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(Sometimes I just write to get things out, this is one of those times.)

I want to hurt because it’s there. I want to scratch it out and make it go away. I want to make me go away. I want to turn it all off. I can’t cry it out enough, shout it, say it, or do anything to get it all out and gone.

It’s anger and aloneness, all at the same time. I want to curl up so it will go away and leave me alone. Then I don’t have to feel it any more.

I want him to take it away, say he was sorry, and know what it feels like. I want him to feel it so he really does feel sorry, not just words, but for him to understand. I want him to go back and fix it.

I want to be normal, go back, and make me be normal then. Why couldn’t I have proper things like food or clothes or just to feel safe? I do not know whose fault it is. It’s a mess.

I can’t think. It makes me want to put my head through a wall. There doesn’t seem to be a point. I can’t undo any of this. I just hide. It’s all a secret. People think I am one thing and really, I am something else inside.

My brother said when he moved out of my father’s house that it would be the end between them, but instead, he gets a normal relationship. His father coming to his house to help with DIY projects. My brother pops to our dad’s for things, he has a key, and he just walks in like a normal son. He gets everything and I have nothing.

I keep my dad away and I feel bad for it, but if I don’t, then it doesn’t change. He touches me, he hurts me, he leers at me and reminds me it’s all my fault because I was a ‘nice’ child. It was me. I turned him on. I flirted. I was the one with the smile and the face that promised more.

That is how I get everything.

That is all anyone ever wants.

It was me who climbed into his bed and I never said stop, not when he started to remove my clothes. I could have. I wasn’t afraid. I could have got out of the bed but I didn’t because I wanted that and he knew it. He knew it all the time. When I would come home from school and get changed; the way I got changed and that he could see me, made him want me. When I took a shower or a bath and walked passed him in just a towel.

It was all me, not him. Not him, because he didn’t make me. I got him to do those things. Not him. Me. It was me.

That’s why I don’t get things, because I’m the bad one and my brother is innocent. I am hard faced and I don’t feel anything and I don’t care. I am bad.

 

New Therapy

by

9

New Therapy.

I met with a new therapist today. He was pleasant enough and direct which I think is what I need. Not someone that will aww and pacify me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not for me.

It was very hard to talk and tell him the things I did. He asked me if I wanted justice and my answer was no. I don’t. I don’t see the point. My father is sick, what would ripping a family apart to label him whatever achieve?

Then my therapist explained it and I’ve never had it explained before. He said if I sought justice it’s more symbolic. The blame gets given to him. The words are said out loud. It would officially not be my fault.

What a thought. I can’t even begin to explain how it feels. That maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t make him do it like he said.

There’s a child inside down on his knees crying because maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he wasn’t bad inside. Maybe he was really loveable. Maybe he wasn’t made evil. Maybe he didn’t make them do it. Maybe it wasn’t the way he was made.

Maybe it wasn’t his fault at all.

And the adult on the outside, I feel such anger and frustration, I can’t ease those feelings. I can’t bring myself to gain justice for that child. All I can do is watch the child suffer and not be able to put it right.

I keep him where his father put him.

I wish it had been someone else and not my father. I wish it was just a no one that treated me badly all the time, maybe then I could hate him enough to not care.

There isn’t anything I can do.

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Alley Kid 10

by

6

I follow the police into my lounge, the anxiety in my chest feels almost too much. I’m sure the moment they walk in they will see the phet like and hone in on it. I promise myself no more. Just this last one and if they don’t see it, no more. I’ll be done with the drugs. I realise what I’ll lose if they find them. I think about Will and him at his mothers, I can’t give him up for the drugs; I’d have nothing left at all. I think about Maz’s words, what I promised her. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it to my son and let him suffer for my choices. That would make me no better than my own parents.BaseballBat

I look down and the phet is gone. I’m relieved but I’m afraid Joanne has it on her and they will search us. The police look everywhere. They lift up the cushions off the sofa, take out drawers, I have no real clue what they thing they are going to find, but it isn’t anything I have that they would want. The police finish, but they don’t clean up and the flat is a mess.

They leave but don’t really say anything to me and I sigh at yet another invasion from them. Its beginning to get to the point that I fear each time I open the door it will be them, many times it is, mostly they are looking for Mark, and usually they have just missed him. I am glad of that, but I know if he is there and he is caught, I’ll hand him over, maybe that makes me a coward. But I don’t care. I put my child before Mark and if that means I become a grass I don’t care.

I asked Joanne where she put the phet and she gives me a smile like she knew I was worried. She reaches down into the box that holds Wills toys and pulls out one of his bears, such a classic place for drugs but the police didn’t look there. I guessed they weren’t looking for those.

We all clean up when the police leave and in a way the place looks better than it did before. Maz comes back with the phet and my earlier promise is soon out of the window. I have every intention of not taking more, but it’s just this time, while I have the money. I have to be ready to quit I tell myself. A fake promise I know, but I still believe it. I have to quit, but not today.

I take the phet to the bedroom. Maz comes too. It’s not a big room; it fits the double bed and a single bedside table, that’s it. The window has a large crack through it, but it has tape across it, not that its much use, it still lets in a draft. We don’t have curtains, we can’t afford them. Joanne has tacked an old towel across the window to keep the privacy, but it doesn’t bother me. I feel better when the window is open and the curtains aren’t back. I don’t feel trapped when it’s like that, but she likes it dark.

Maz sits on the bed, but she doesn’t say anything as I prepare the phet and inject it. She does the same with her own concoction of things. She gets onto the bed properly and leans against the wall, crossing her legs at the ankle. I put the things away, light a cigarette and give it to her and then light one for myself. She doesn’t say anything when I climb on the bed with her and lay my head down on her legs.

She runs her fingers through my hair and sometimes I think I could stay there forever when she does that. We talk about the baby, about Froggy, about me working for Lorraine and a million other things that I can hardly remember, but we just talk. Putting the world to rights in our own little ways, with dreams of what we could do if we were able. And when it reaches midnight I wonder where the time has gone, me and Maz have hardly moved and save for a few disturbances from the others mostly we were alone.

I tell Maz I have to go out.

“Karla?” she asks.

I nod my head and smile.

“I’m surprised Joanne hasn’t caught you yet,” she says.

“I’m sure she doesn’t give a shit.”

“If you were mine I’d kick your arse,” she tells me and I laugh.

“If I was yours, I’d be dead.”  I sit up properly and lean to her and kiss her. It’s what we do. We don’t even hide it. Froggy and Joanne never seem to complain, they do similar. I wouldn’t care what Joanne did with Froggy.

“I love you, you little shit,” she says to me and I grin and put my arms around her to say goodbye.

“I love you too,” I tell her. She’s the only one I can say it too and feel happy about it. I hold onto her for just a second. “I’ll be back soon.”

I don’t tell Joanne as I leave the flat and race down the steps, I’m not even sure she is in herself. Colin is in bed I noticed though.

Karla is already finished when I get there. She’s sat on the counter with her small black coat on, hair done and a smile on her face. She jumps down and wave’s goodnight to her colleagues. She comes outside and flings her arms around my neck.

I take her hand and lace my fingers through hers. “Where are we going?” she asks me.

“I have something to take care of,” I tell her and then she starts to tell me about her day. I’m not listening so much, my mind is racing and alive. Most people bore me, Karla is one of them, but for some reason I keep her in my life. I’d say it was for the sex, but I can get that anywhere and most of the time, I’m on the phet, it makes the sex part hard.

I walk us all the way to Phil’s house. Not where he lives with Sarah, but where he keeps his car. Silly idiot keeps it at his other place in case Becci ever drives passed. I know where he keeps his bat too. I give Karla and cigarette and tell her to wait there.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“You’ll see,” I tell her, then I duck down the side of the building that Phil pretends to live at, go into his shed and pull out his baseball bat. I’m hardly thinking as I do it, it’s been cooking in my mind since the moment I realised who had called the police.

I don’t feel bad as I charge back to where his car is and launch the bat into the driver’s side window.

“What the hell are you doing?” asks Karla, startled at my attack on his car, but he deserves it.

“Pay back,” I tell her and then I knock out the back window on the same side.

Karla comes at me; she grabs my wrists of the hand that holds the bat. “Someone’s going to come and hear you,” she says.

I shrug. “What are they going to do?”

“Call the police.”

I raise the bat to take out the rear window, slipping my wrist from her reach; she folds her arms and stares at me, waiting for me to make my decision.  I pause with the bat ready to strike. A light comes on in a house over the road. “Fine,” I say and then I throw the bat into the car through one of the already smashed windows. “We’ll go.”

 

 

 

I can’t reach.

by

10

Some days, like today feel as though I have just come out of a hole and the whole world moved on and I didn’t recall it happening. It feels like it’s been weeks, not just days since I have posted here, or written anything at all. I thank all those so much that did reply to my two forgiveness posts. I will reply to you, because the support I feel I get is so huge. I wish I could show each of you.

My nights have been long this last week and filled with nightmares, more than I am used to. One night I even woke screaming and I was sure that I was a child and I was in my room and the man, I named in my books as the bad man was there. He was so real to me, although his face and identity still remains hidden.

Perhaps some part of my mind wants to show me something. I have never had nights as bad as these all night and every night. I wake and I am little in my mind. He’s there and it’s taking me a few minutes to realise, no he isn’t and I am safe.

Safe.

I wish I knew what that actually felt like. I can tell myself I am safe, that I am an adult and he can’t get me.  I feel like I am going crazy.

I have many people to apologise to, so many since my last posts on here that I still haven’t got myself to talk to properly. I’m finding it hard to talk. People want to chat about the ordinary things and all I can think is why does any of it matter? But then who am I to ask that?

My self harm hasn’t stopped, twice today. I can’t dig in deep enough to cut away what it is I’m trying to remove. I don’t even know what it is that I am trying to reach. I can’t get clean. Not in the germ dirty sense, but somewhere inside I feel something. I can’t wash it away, I can’t cut it away. It’s driving me insane.

Talking here, or talking to anyone, I just want to tell myself to shut up. None of it matters.

 

Alley Kid Part Nine

by

8

 

Colin eats his breakfast as though he hasn’t eaten for a week. I wish Will was with me. I wish I could shower him this way, with food and the things he needs instead of starving, and the deprivation he receives being my son. I chase away the pangs of guilt. I tell myself I am doing my best, but I know I am not. I’m failing him. He just doesn’t know any better and doesn’t complain.

Joanne eats her food, too. I smile at her enthusiasm over the money and what we can do with it. She runs off all her excitements in such fast succession that I am not sure I can keep up. I know her though; these are nothing more than pipe dreams.  She, too, has thought about filling the cupboards but, of course, our first thoughts are going to Froggy and scoring for the weekend. What a great time we will have. I agree, I can hardly wait. Anything to take away the inner gloom that plagues me constantly.

The time ticks by and I wait for Phil to come back. I know he will come back. I trust him that much, but not much else. Even so, some part of me is relieved when I see his car approaching and then he pulls onto the forecourt to the café and comes in. the hammering in my chest threatens to break my ribs and I let out my relief.

Phil comes in and his grin is huge. He sits himself down and orders too, for him and Becci. I want to ask for my money. I can feel myself reaching out for it and being able to touch it, but he doesn’t say anything. I am waiting with baited breath for him to put it in my hands and relieve the anxiety I didn’t know existed.

I know he’s teasing me. He knows I want the cash and is waiting for me to ask on purpose. I’m thankful when it’s Joanne who asks him.

“What makes you think I have it?” He tells her, and Joanne doesn’t believe him. She holds her hand out waiting for it.

“You have the money?” I ask him myself, in the end, he keeps grinning as if he is debating on what to say and then he laughs.

“Look at the scared look on both your faces.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out some cash. I take it from him before he has chance to take it back and tease me some more. I can hardly believe it’s there.

We finish our food off and then Phil says he’ll give us a lift back to our flat, but he can’t stay. He is on curfew and wants to be home. Poor Becci thinks he means home to his place, but he means his other girlfriend, Sarah, and I wonder how he keeps up with it. Sarah has a daughter and Becci is pregnant.

Sometimes, I have been with Phil and Sarah and if we go to see Becci, I slip up and Becci scowls at me. Part of me thinks she must know, maybe she just doesn’t want to see it.

We go back to my place and Joanne says she needs to go out and get some smokes. She’s going to get them cheap from her mate. “I’ll be a couple of hours,” she says, “Are you going to Maz’s?”

“Yes,” I say. “I promised her I would do.”

There’s a figure sat on the steps leading up to our door when we get there. Colin recognises him right away and  is over everyone and out of the car so fast  to go into his older brother’s arms.

“Do they know you are here?” I ask.

Mark smiles and shrugs. That means no, I guess. I don’t say anything, but I wish he would stop it. He’s going to get me caught and I have no desire to end up behind bars.

“I thought I’d take Colin out for something to eat,” he tells me.

“He’s just eaten.”

“No worries, we’ll find something to do.”

“Can I? Asks Colin and there isn’t a way I can say no, not that I think he would listen to me even if I did refuse and I would have no grounds to stop him. I nod my head and Colin forgets himself for a moment and hugs me too. I watch as they walk off down the alley way together.

Joanne leaves too and I tell Phil and Becci thanks and then go to see Froggy and Maz.

Maz is sat on the step in the hallway of the building her flat is in. She’s been crying. She is smoking a cigarette.

She starts rambling and I don’t really know what she is saying. Mikey and Froggy. How she hates the drugs but she took them anyway. She shows me her arm, swears at it, shouts and tells me how bad she is, and that she won’t ever get her son back. Soon, she’s going to lose this baby too. She points to her stomach. There isn’t anything I can say. I put my arms around her and we just stand there for as long as she needs while she cries.

“Promise me something,” she says.

I nod my head.

“Don’t ever let them get Will. Pick him first.”

That’s easy. “I won’t,” I tell her.

She pulls back a little to look up at me. I wipe her face dry and kiss her as she wraps her arms inside my shirt. In that moment I feel at peace.

The door opens and Froggy comes out.

“I thought I heard your voice,” he says to me and tells me to come in.

Maz doesn’t move, but I put my hand round hers and drag her behind me.

Froggy already has my phet ready and good to go. Seems he knows me too well. I take the bag and hand him over, one hundred pounds. Froggy gives me one of his needles and I use their bedroom to take it. Although, it’s only been hours, as the phet takes hold, it feels as though everything gets washed clean away and I can live.

Joanne pops in for a moment to tell me her and her mate are going back to our house. I figure I need to go too. Colin will be back soon and, no doubt, Mark would have to get back to the farms.

Maz comes with us. Joanne has two girls with her. Lauren doesn’t stay so long. Her boyfriend comes and picks her up, but the other girl, Angela, who doesn’t look more than fifteen, I have never met

“Angela needs some where to stay,” Joanne tells me when she takes me into another room.

“We already have Colin,” I say.

“Exactly, so we can have Angela too. She’s fourteen and she won’t be a problem.”

“How come?” I ask.

Joanne tells me Angela’s parents don’t want her. They live the other side of the country and have thrown Angela out. Angela, who has clearly been listening, knocks and comes into the room.

“You can call and ask if you want.”

I look at Joanne and she nods at me. It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice other than to take another in. I can’t exactly turn a young girl out onto the street now can I?

The rest of the night goes fast. Colin comes home and goes straight to bed. His brother stays only long enough to steal a cigarette while Joanne shares her phet with Angela and I sit and talk with Maz.

Daylight creeps in the next day and the phet is almost gone. “Can I get some more from Froggy?” I ask Maz. We haven’t seen him since the day before.

“Sure,” she says. “If not, I’ll ask Woody,” she says before she leaves.

Woody lives next door to them; he deals too.

Joanne has just set Angela up on a spare mattress in Will’s room with Colin, when someone knocks on the door. I think its Maz again, but Joanne answers it and its the familiar sound of the police.

“We have a warrant to search the premises.” It reads.

One of the officers hands me a copy and I hardly have time to read it before they begin to look inside everywhere and turn everything upside down.

I don’t care about the warrant. My mind is at the bag of phet in the lounge and how I will get to it before they see it. Joanne has the same idea. She gets there and removes it before they see it.

The officer says they were told Mark had been here. I deny it of course, but I don’t need to ask who told them. I already know it was Phil. I’ve seen him play these tricks a dozen times, perhaps, this was karma for the times I have laughed when he has called the police out in jest on another friend.

Alley Kid Part Eight

by

10

Phil arrives but he doesn’t come in. He sits outside in his car and sounds his horn. I tell Colin to hurry up and get his shoes on

“You don’t have to do this,” says Maz, again. I don’t know why she is worried. I’m not, iI’s a fool-proof plan.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.” I tell her and then I kiss her and she puts her arms around me.

“You better come to mine when you get back so I know you’re okay.”

I swear I will, and I shout Colin one more time to get a move on. Phil isn’t one to be made to wait. I stand by the door and wait for Colin and he runs out passed me, to the car. Joanne comes too. Becci is sat in the back of the car. She doesn’t look at me or Joanne. Colin climbs in and over her. Joanne goes around the other side.

“Move up you stupid cow,” Phil says to Becci, and none of us look at her.

 I feel her embarrassment inside. I don’t want to see it reflected on her face. I have already noticed the tears in her eyes as she tries not to look at any of us.

We get in and before I have a chance to put my seatbelt on, Phil puts his foot down, and the car slides as he wheel-spins it. He laughs at the look on Becci’s face as he glances in the rear view mirror.

“Cheer up you miserable git, or get out.”

She doesn’t smile, nor does she look at him. He slams his foot down and stops the car, and stares at her, waiting for her to make a decision.

She sits forward, and I open my door, and get out of my seat so that she can climb out of the back of his two-door car. She puts her hands on the back of the front seat to steady herself and Phil swings and lands his fist in her face.

 “Sit down,” he says. He looks up at me, “I can’t believe you were going to let her get out of the car.”

I shrug; there isn’t much I can say to him, he’s in that kind of mood. It’s easier to be quiet. I get back in the car, put my seatbelt on, and we set off again. Phil, wheel-spins the car once more, but no one says nor does anything. He doesn’t stop, and we drive towards the main industrial estate where the store is with the television. All the time, my mind thinks about Maz’s words about the money and what I could do with it. It would be nothing for me to just sell sex that way. What did it actually matter? They were just strangers, and it was nothing. I wondered if Joanne would mind. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t if it got us some money.

We pull up outside the store, and the television we need is in the window. Phil gives me some paperwork and I read it.

“It has my name on it,” I say to him, “I thought I was using someone else’s details.”

“I couldn’t get them, but my uncle said we could do it this way, it’s all the same. Your credit’s clear right?”

I want to say no and get out of the car and go home. It doesn’t feel right now, but I can’t spend more days with no phet. I already feel the dread and darkness within. I know I won’t survive until Tuesday when my social security comes in. I don’t have a choice.

I get out of the car and we all go into the store. I stare at the television like it’s going to come out and bite me. I don’t know if I have it in me to ask and say that I like that one. I tell myself it’s five hundred pounds and think about what I can do with that.

A sales assistant notices us, comes over, and I smile at him.

“Can I help you?” He says. I stammer my words. My mind isn’t working, and I feel hot.

“We’re looking at this television,” says Phil to the assistant. “It says a year on credit.”

The assistant nods. “Yes,” he says.

“We’ll take it,” says Phil, without hesitation.

“Do you have an ID?”

My hands are shaking as I tell him yes and try to unfold the papers to give to him. Utility bills with my name on them.

“Do you have anything else? Passport?”

“Driving licence?” I offer.

He nods yes. I pull it from my wallet and give it to him. He tells us to wait a moment and then he’ll be back.

I try not to stare at him from across the store as he loads my details in his computer, and calls someone for a credit check. I know my credit is clean. I’ve never used it. It doesn’t take long for him to come back, but already Colin is growing bored.

“Take him outside,” says Phil to Becci.

“It’s freezing out there,” she says, but he doesn’t care.

He stares at her and waits. She sighs and takes Colin’s hand and leads him outside.

“Great news,” says the assistant. “I just need your bank details and we can arrange delivery.”

“Can’t we take it with us?” Asks Phil right away.

The assistant eyes us oddly as though he doesn’t get that often.

“Of course, if you want to,” he says. “This way.”

We follow him and Joanne is silent as she comes with us. Part of me wishes to hold her hand, not because she offers me comfort, but because I need something. My insides have done nothing but turn over, and I fear in a moment I could vomit from the nerves and the anticipation of my next fix. I wish Maz was with me.

It doesn’t take long to fill everything in. The assistant offers me a print out and tells me to read it. I stare at the words. None of them make any sense. They are nothing more than black marks on the paper. I sign anyway. It doesn’t matter. I pull my bank book from my pocket and pass it over him. He copies down the details and asks me to sign for payment.

It’s as easy as that, and I wonder why I was worried.

“If you want to bring your car around back,” he says to us, “then we can load the television, and you can be on your way.”

I thank him and shake his hand, then I follow Phil. He’s already stood up and left. I can’t keep from smiling at how easy it is. Soon the money will be mine, and then everything will be right again.

“What about paying it off?” I asked Phil when I catch him up. “He took my bank details.”

“Don’t worry,” Phil reassures me. My Uncle will write you a letter to show you lost your job; they have insurance to cover these things.”

 I calm a little at his words. I never knew that. I have never taken anything out on credit before.

We drive around back and two warehouse workers bring the television, and load it into the boot of the car. It’s massive. I wonder how all of us, plus it, will fit inside, but I don’t say anything.

Once it’s in, one of them gives me more paperwork to sign to say I received it, and they go back inside, leaving us to squash up. We have to have the rear seats wedged forward, and Colin sits on my knee in the front of the car.

“I’ll drop you at a cafe around the corner,” Phil says. “Then I’ll take the television to my uncle and meet you back there.” He hands me a twenty pound note to buy some food.

It’s nice at the cafe. I feel happy as I order myself a decent dinner and tell Colin he can get what he wants. Joanne orders a burger, but Colin’s delight makes him loud, and he can’t choose. I order him a milkshake and burger too.

I watch the smile on his face. Maz is right; I’ll call Lorraine in the week. I’m sure nothing can break my mood as we sit and wait for Becci and Phil to come back with my money.