by HJ Lawson
A wheezing metal-on-metal sound comes as Tyson tries to start the car. His head shakes vigorously back and forth, his baseball cap flying off with the momentum, revealing his shaved head.
Tyson turns—his face is shining with sweat from a mixture of anger over his car not starting and the fear of me coming towards him.
He is right to be fearful, I think, as I grit my teeth together and I step over Seamus’s corpse. Red blood oozes from his mouth, and his eyes have rolled to the back of his head. Kaylee shot him in the chest—looks as if she hit him right over the heart. As if that heartless scum ever had a heart.
Why did he have to come here? Out of prison early for good bloody behaviour and he had to come to my house. A red mist of rage rushes through my veins as if the sight of his lifeless body awakens something I have been hiding deep inside.
A deep growl comes from the pit of my stomach, and my nostrils flare. I run towards the Fiesta like a raging bull, seeing red.
Tyson’s body jolts sideways to the passenger side as I swing open his door. The car door groans as if expressing fear for the pain I’m going to inflict on his owner.
I grab hold of Tyson’s scrawny arm, trying to yank him out of the car.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” Tyson pleads for mercy as I pull him to try to get him out of the car. His bony body pushes down with every limb, trying desperately to stay inside as if he’s a trapped insect, trying to get out of a glass. Instead of wanting to get out though, he wants to stay in, but I’m going to drag every bloody limb of his body out of this frigging car.
“I didn’t know,” Tyson pleads again, with his head wedged awkwardly between the leather driver’s seat and the door. His eyes are sunken inwards with dark black shadows beneath them, giving him the look of living skeleton. There is a sickly green tone to his skin.
He’s obviously on heroin—he’s always been a frigging smackhead. I look down at the insides of his arms and there are fresh track lines—a trademark scar that all smackheads share.
The dryness in my throat disappears as a flood of saliva fills my mouth. I draw it back into my mouth and push it forward so it flies out of my mouth and lands on Tyson’s face.
“You frigging scum,” I say, gritting my teeth—my jawbone throbs from the pressure.
My hand wraps around the metal car doorframe. My fingers grip it firmly as I swing it forward, slamming it against Tyson’s head.
I don’t stop, I cannot stop.
Swinging it back and forth, pushing harder each time.
Every time the door reopens, I see Tyson’s head. His face is no longer the sickly green colour—now it’s swollen with blood splatters all over his face. His eyes look as if they are going to explode.
“You brought him to my home!” I yell as spit flies out of my mouth.
“Liam!” Blood-curdling screams come from my mum, and my mind hears her, but my body doesn’t, so I swing the heavy metal car door once more against Tyson’s head.
As my mind returns to my body, I stand gaping down at the bloody mess that was once Tyson’s head. New protuberances have formed an uneven landscape over his face—one of his eyes is swollen closed and the other is twice its size.
Bubbles of blood froth out of his mouth as he coughs and splutters at the same time.
He’s still alive.
My shoulders rise up and down as I gasp deeply, trying to compose myself.
“Liam, it's Kaylee!” Mum cries out.
Kaylee? I peel my hand off the door; it feels raw… all of me feels raw.
My trainers pound the ground, the pressure squashing the air beneath them, and my ears are ringing with fear.
“The baby is coming,” Mum says as I get closer.
Kaylee’s face is white, her trembling hands cradled around her belly as if Casey is going to fall out right there on the steps.
Her pants are a shade darker on the inside; her water has broken… Casey is coming. A Life for a life.
“Mum, call the ambulance,” I yell as she stands in the doorway, not knowing what to do.
“I killed him. They are going to send me to prison,” Kaylee blurts out.
I place my hands on her cheekbones; her skin is freezing cold as if she’s been standing in a walk-in fridge. I’m not letting her go to prison.
Her hair is sticky and clings to her face.
“You didn’t shoot him, I did.”
Kaylee’s eyes don’t flinch—they just stare out into the open.
I gently squeeze her face, trying to wake her from this living nightmare. “I shot him. Do you hear me?” I say louder, shaking her face, just enough to bring some life into her.
“Kaylee, I shot him,” I say warmly to her as I place my lips in front of her ear. “I shot him.”
“Liam, get out of here before they come. Someone will have called the police by now. What shall we say?” Mum says. Her hand fumbles around her mouth as the need for nicotine to calm her nerves takes over.
“Tell them I never came home. That you heard an argument and the voices were muffled; you heard gun shots and hid. Then you saw him,” I say, looking down at the corpse on our path.
Sweat pours down my neck—it’s as if the back of my spine is dissolving into nothing.
I pull Kaylee’s face towards mine and kiss her salty, tear-stained lips with a passionate need to stay here with her. If I do though, I may as well just walk into prison, never to be seen again.
“I did it, not you—he came for me. It’s my fault. Look after Casey,” I say as I rest my hand on Kaylee’s belly for one last time.
Kaylee breathes in deeply. “I love you.” Those three tiny words rip through my heart as if she’d shot me, instead of Seamus.
“I love you too,” I say, pushing back the emotions inside me.
Tears well up in Kaylee’s eyes.
Then another look enters them—pain. She breathes quickly in and out as she leans forward with both hands flat on the wall to stabilise herself as she pants for air. She’s having contractions.
“I will find you. Don’t let her go to prison, stay with her,” I say to my mum. I take her hand from her face and kiss the back of it.
“I’m sorry…” I say as I close the front door behind me.
Casey’s coming and I am going—will I ever see my daughter? Yes, I think to myself, I promise I will.
PART TWO.
I look down at Seamus’s body as blood seeps from the gunshot wound to his head. Pouring onto my mum’s garden path, the one that takes me both to the life I have to leave and to the one that I will have to lead, perhaps staining it.
Why did Seamus have to come here today of all days, the day Kaylee is going into labor with Casey? The normal life that I had dreamed for my daughter has been washed away, just as Seamus’s blood will be when the rains come. I want to kick him as I step over his body, but there is no point; his life has been taken as a new one enters the world. A world that I can’t protect her from if I stay — but who will protect her if I leave?
I turn back, and my mum is standing by Kaylee at the living room window. Mum’s arm is around Kaylee, supporting her; they are watching me leave, just as I watched my dad leave from the window above them. Seamus’s dad destroyed mine, and I’ve let his son do the same to me. I didn’t pull the trigger — Kaylee did — but I didn’t need to in order to be responsible for his death. I may as well have put the gun in Kaylee’s hand — I handed Seamus to our family. If only I could go back and not follow the path my dad had taken. Even though the man left fourteen years ago, he still molded me into the man which I’m today, a man who brings a shadow with him wherever he goes.
The dark clouds above me part for a moment, allowing a sliver of sunshine to illuminate the devil that brought Seamus here — a red Fiesta with my cousin Tyson in it. I’m surprised and not pleased that he’s able to move after the beating I gave him.
There is a shriek of metal on metal, then a hum from the car engine. I need a car. I run towards the car. I
need it to get out of here.
A mixture of blood and sweat drips down Tyson’s face as he sees me, then the car starts to move forward, and the fear in his face turns to relief. “Wait till my dad hears about this!” he yells as he speeds away, leaving me with the car fumes and body.
“Liam, you’ve got to go, the police will be here!” Mum yells through the window. I know she’s right; I can see the twitching of the neighbour’s curtains. Gossip on the estate travels faster than a speeding bullet. Everyone will have known, even before Seamus’s body hit the ground.
I take one last look at Kaylee, now doubled over and panting through contractions, and take off sprinting, away from my family. Where do I go? I have nothing but the clothes on my back; a T-shirt, shorts, and my white Nikes that are no longer white. They are splattered with the blood of Seamus and Tyson. I need to get rid of them. I need to make money fast.
Racing to the end of the road, I make a right. I’m no longer on the estate’s edges — I’m going to the heart of it. The place where people don’t care what you’ve done, as long as you can do something for them. The rules don’t count here. Once the estate gets you, it drags you in and keeps hold of you, stripping everything good inside of you.
I take a left down an alley that’s littered with empty beer cans, cigarette ends, and dog crap. Everyone is an animal here. The skies turn an angry grey — a normal color for here. Everything is grey, from the pavement I pound to the buildings and the residents’ worn skin, withered before they are old by the harsh English weather.
A drop from the sky plops onto my bare arm, and then another. The skies open up, and the rain is flowing. Seamus’s blood will be washed away within minutes; I wish his body would do the same.
I come to a stop in front of Darnell’s council house. His car is outside, which means he’s here. Everyone can afford a nice top-of-the-line car, but not a house to live in. If the cops had any sense, they would just go after the people with nice cars — they are all drug dealers. Even I had a nice one, which I sold to help pay for the house far away from here. Now I’ll never get to live in it, but Kaylee and Casey can. That gives me a little bit of hope.
“Darnell,” I say, a little breathless, as I enter his home.
“Hey Liam,” he says and leans forward to get up from his chair. He puts his cup of tea down before patting me on my back and flicking the ash off the joint onto the floor. The floor is like mine back in my bedroom: a camouflage of patterns, but instead of spilled drinks, his are joint ash and cigarette burns. His carpet is his ashtray.
“What brings you here? Not seen you for ages,” Darnell says, dropping back down into his chair. “Sit.”
I do as instructed. The whites of his eyes are clouded from the weed, and the room smells like he’s been smoking since this morning. He probably has been — I’ve never seen Darnell not on drugs.
“I need some quick money,” I tell him.
“Don’t we all,” he says, as he draws in the weed. “Want some?” he offers, passing the joint over to me, then pulls back and laughs. “Forgot you are all clean now. How’s Kaylee?”
“Good. Can I do anything for you?” I ask, with urgency.
“What’d you do?” Darnell shakes his head. “Wait, I don’t want to know.” He pulls down on one of his dreadlocks. “You want to do a grocery run? I don’t want to go out in the rain.”
“How much?”
Darnell doesn’t answer directly. He calls to his daughter, “Aaliyah, bring Daddy six bags of his groceries.” A rustle comes from the back room — Aaliyah’s playroom. “Watch this,” Darnell says. I look up at the clock that is no longer ticking, and it’s like Darnell reads my mind. “Hurry up!” he snaps.
“I’m coming,” Aaliyah yells in her little voice from the playroom.
“Women! Doesn’t matter if they are four or twenty-four, we’re always waiting for them, aren’t we?” He smiles, waiting for me to agree, but my eyes are fixed on the window. I’m waiting for a police car to drive by. They’ll surely be searching the estate soon.
I manage to grunt my agreement before Aaliyah comes bouncing into the room, cradling two bags of weed. “Here, Daddy,” she says as she drops the bags into her dad’s lap. “Hey Liam, where’s Kaylee?” She looks at me and then at the window, as if expecting Kaylee to be on her way.
“She’s at home,” I tell her.
“I can’t wait to meet Casey.”
“Me too.”
“Aaliyah, leave us,” Darnell says, but the little girl sticks one hand out to her dad, with the other on her hip. “What are you waiting for?” he asks.
“If he’s getting paid, I want to as well.”
“What the… She’s always on the hustle, just like her mum.” Darnell shakes his head. “Get out of here,” he spits.
“Dad, that’s not fair,” she complains.
“Life’s not fair. Isn’t that right, Liam?”
“Yeah. Get used to it, kid.” I look at the bags of weed that her dad asked her to bring him. What kind of life will Aaliyah have? Both parents selling drugs and using drugs; it’s all she knows.
“Dad,” she tuts.
Darnell’s hand connects with Aaliyah’s backside. She lets out a yelp of pain, then runs into the back room. “Darnell,” I snap, quickly rising to my feet. He’s at least three times her weight, so I don’t want this to escalate.
“Liam, we’ve been friends for a long time. Think before you speak,” he says firmly as he puffs on the joint.
I hesitate. “How much for the delivery?”
“You can keep what you sell. You’ve done me favours in the past,” he says, throwing me the baggies of weed. I stuff them into the pockets of my cargo shorts.
“Can I borrow your car?”
Darnell flicks his dreadlocks back and bursts out laughing. “Damn, you come here asking for money, nearly insult my parenting skills...” He drags on the joint, stalling. “...and now this. What the hell have you done?” Darnell waves the joint in the air, and ash falls to the ground. “No. I still don’t want to know.”
He continues, “You can take Fayth’s mountain bike. It’s out back. Oh, she’s going to be pissed off at you when you get back…” Darnell stares at me as I make my way to the back door. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
CHAPTER TWO
I got out of the estate without the police following me, I stayed clear of the wailing sirens. And with the rain pounding down on me, I don’t think too many people on the estate will see my form of a getaway car — Fayth’s bike. It’s a black mountain bike with a pink flash on it. We call it the pink witch. Darnell is right; she will be pissed when she realizes I’ve taken it.
My legs burn as I pedal uphill. Of course his delivery had to be at the other end of town, and the only way there is up the big frigging hill.
Before I met Kaylee, bikes were only for getting to work — back then, it was honest work, too. Kaylee had other ideas about when to use bikes.
“Have you made sandwiches?” Kaylee asks as she walks into Mum’s kitchen.
“I’ve made the manwiches.” I point at the tin-foil-wrapped sandwiches, which we call manwiches because they are huge. I don’t know how Kaylee manages to eat a full one.
“Sweet. I’m starving.” She goes to open the manwiches.
“Hey, wait till we get there. Here, have a pie instead.” I slide over a different package and tuck the manwiches into a bag.
As we wheel our bikes down the path running alongside my mum’s house, trying and failing to miss the plant pots scattered everywhere, Kaylee asks, “So you’ve never been on a bike ride before?”
“Well, not one like this, with a picnic and all that. Me and the lads used to ride in the woods.”
Kaylee laughs, and I frown. “What’s funny about that?”
“Not that. The photo your mum showed me the other day, with you standing by the gate with your BMX. All dressed up as a good Boy Scout.”
“Jesus, which photos hasn’t Mum sh
own you?”
“You know I love seeing photos of you when you were a kid. You were so cute, with your button nose. It gets me thinking what this little one will look like.” Kaylee smiles, rubbing her stomach.
“Kaylee, hush. Not yet,” I say alongside her, as I wheel the bikes onto the front of the house, propping them up against the old wooden fence.
Kaylee looks down at the pavement, and I cup my hand under her chin. “We will tell her once we get to three months. Like the doctor said, it’s too early to share the news, and once one person knows, the whole world will. And the last thing we need is for your mum to find out last.”
“She’s going to be pissed anyway,” Kaylee says, disappointed.
I want to say she won’t, but I know she will. “Well, my mum’s going to be excited enough for both of them. Are you sure you’re okay to ride a bike?”
“Yes. You were there when the doctor said so,” she reminds me.
“So where are you taking us?” I ask.
“Along the canal. There’s a nice spot where we can have a picnic,” she says with a smile.
Kaylee is right. The stop is nice; there’s a flat bit of grass by the canal, and it is so peaceful.
Kaylee lays out a picnic blanket, and we lay on it stretching out legs out. A break in the clouds lets the sun shine down on Kaylee, making her beauty glow.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Kaylee says, looking up at the sky. The grey clouds of the estate follow us everywhere.
“You’re right, let’s pack up,” I tell her. When she goes to pick up the tin-foil wrappers from the manwiches, I swoop in, kissing her firmly on the lips.
“What was that for?” Kaylee smiles.
“For taking me away from it all.”
“We’ve only been gone a few hours.”
“You know what I mean. Giving me a chance for a new life.”
“I’d say more of a different life, that’s all, and it’s going to be a wet one if we don’t get a move on.”
She’s right; the skies have opened up on us, and the rain has started to pour. We quickly grab our things and begin cycling along the dirt path.