Cracking Up Read Free Page B

Young Offenders Institution, he told us all about it: “Them screws, man. Fucking cunts. They think they’re hard coz their wearing a fucking uniform and mob-handed. One of them walked up to me and tried to boss me around like I was some fucking no mark. Talking down to us, he was, like I was a soft cunt. I called him a fucking bastard straight to his face. He shoved us into me cell because there’s CCTV on the landings, grabbed us by the throat and rammed the back of me head into the wall. Me nut felt like it was going to explode. Then two of his mates piled in, grabbed both me arms and bent them up round me back. Next thing: Cuntie steps in front of us and gives us a dig on the chin.”
    “One of them holding us back shouted: Just the body! Smack! Smack! Smack! The screw using us as a punchbag pummelled us in the chest a few times and belted us once in the guts. I threw up blood and puke on the cell floor and one of them called us a dirty fucking bastard. Forced me down on to me hands and knees, and pushed me face into the chuck-up. This’ll teach you a little lesson, cocky Scouse cunt. Plastic gangster, playing us up. They rubbed me face into it like I was a fucking dog, then stuck the boot in while I was down. Blood was coming out of me nose and mouth, everything was spinning and I blacked out. Then the cheeky cunts claimed I’d had a bit of a funny turn and tried to smash out of me cell using me barnet. Fucking clowns! They told us they were in charge of the nick and to behave me-self and keep me fucking trap shut, or I’d get another fucking doing.”
    The telly was switched on and he was watching some shit TV: Jeremy Kyle.
    Nothing was said. We just sat there, watching the show. Jezza was gobbing off at some blurt, demanding he take a drugs test.
    He broke the silence. “So … you got any gear on you, then?”
    “Hold on a second; let me have a look,” I said, rummaging through me trackie pockets and digging out a snap bag with the brown powder in it. “Knock yourself out!”
    “I ain’t got no money,” he said. “I’ll have to have it on tick.”
    “I don’t want your money,” I said, keeping it simple. “I want a favour!”
    “What’s that then?”
    “Laters. Have a dig up first.”
    I handed it over and he fannied about, organising his doings on the cluttered coffee table in front of the couch. Amongst the toxic debris of used drug paraphernalia such as dirty needles and blood splatters was a batch of newly-acquired squeaky clean 1ml syringes, cookers and water ampules from the needle exchange at the drug agency.
    He poured water into the tiny tin-foil cooker, then tipped the brown powder into it and heated it up with a plastic lighter until the brown mix was bubbling. He put a needle into the liquid and sucked it up into the syringe, found a vein in the crook of his elbow and pumped it into his system. Sitting back on the couch, he made himself comfortable and felt the gear kicking in. “Yeh, that’s nice, that is. Nice as fuck, that is. Top gear, that is.”
    He was crashed out, getting into the buzz of things. He couldn’t keep his eyelids open, they were heavy as lead and he was nodding off. Going into himself, monged out and disappearing into his own little druggie dreamscape. Sitting there, in a dingy doss-hole, with his head so far up his own arse I doubt he even knew I was still there. No worries now, nothing to stress about until the next toxic craving. Just chilling out in the front room and floating dreamily on an opiate cloud. The shit-stem was still out there, still horrible but, for the chemical moment, it didn’t have him by the bollocks.
    He’d been a proper tasty fucker before he’d been sent to the rubbish heap. He wasn’t one to be crossed and sworn enemies shat in their kecks when they saw him coming. But the shithole had left its mark on him and he’d gone down the banks inside HMP Altcourse. “It’s fucking dread in there, Ow-wee lad. I got thrown into some