The Killing Jar

Home > Other > The Killing Jar > Page 7
The Killing Jar Page 7

by Nicola Monaghan


  ‘Afternoon,’ Mark said, pointing the knife right in his face. Danny moved to slam the door but it were too late. Mark was in and had hold of him. He pulled Danny kicking and screaming into one of the bushes I’d noticed before. No one came out the house looking.

  Mark opened up his rucksack and took out another pop bottle, but this one was filled with petrol. He poured it onto Danny. I held my breath. I didn’t believe Mark’d do what it looked like he was going to do. He took matches out his pocket. Danny wet his-sen, and was whimpering and pleading. I think that was the worst thing, the way he shivered and stuttered and begged for mercy. Mark was having none of it. He lit a match and threw it. Flames crawled across the surface of Danny’s skin. He lit up proper then, and looked like an orange angel. We turned but didn’t run, just walked up the road like it had nowt to do with us. There was a smell in the air like bacon on a grill. The drugs were kicking in. My stomach’d gone a bit funny and I could feel my jaw tighten, my face tingle. Mark held my hand, rubbing his fingers all gentle on my palm.

  ‘You are too young, yer know. I should get a gellfriend me own age,’ he said. Then he looked down at me and touched my chin, checked I wasn’t crying or owt. That was the thing about Mark, he was either a psycho bastard or tender as hell and there was nowt inbetween. I grinned up at him. I couldn’t of done owt else cause my face was set that way, and my head was flying. I walked away thinking how pretty the flames looked, how lovely the sky was.

  EIGHT

  Mark didn’t regret the twenty quid he’d laid out for that first pill and we went out and bought a load more in the next few months. It were still expensive even though the price dropped a bit, but back then one or two’d do for a night, so’s it still compared well to going out drinking. To me, it were so much better. Alcohol fuzzed up your head and made you feel sick. With MDMA, which were what the pills was made of, you got a clean high. A feeling that all were well with the world, everyone was as nice and shiny happy as you felt. It kept you up all night too, gave you energy from God all knows where cause you didn’t need to eat or drink ner nowt.

  Sometimes when we took stuff we’d go out dancing. The pills made you want to dance like nowt else I’ve known – disco biscuits some people call them on account of this. It were a while before the proper house scene came along and the exact right kind of music for them, but everything sounded better on pills. Our favourite place was this club called The Garage over Hockley way. It weren’t all lights and nonsense like the other clubs in Nottingham and the music was different too. Dance music from the States, acid house and that kind of stuff instead of layers and layers of cheese. It were there I heard The Happy Mondays and KLF for the first time and got hooked right off. We used to go down most Saturdays. I was only about twelve when I started going but well developed for my age so’s with a bit of make-up I could pass for a lot older and got let in. Clubs are always softer with gells that way anyways. This place wasn’t a meat market like most of them in town – it were all about dancing – but when men did make moves on me Mark cleared them off. He really looked out for me.

  One thing the drugs do to you is make you all touchy feely, and Mark and me snogged a few times. He didn’t try to take it no further though. It were like he’d made a promise to his-sen about that. I’d of let him, I spose, so it were good that he’d gone all chivalrous over me. I don’t totally buy all that Harry met Sally bollocks, but I do reckon friendships between gells and boys have to go through that stage where sex comes into it, and can come out the other side sometimes and be summat better. And I reckon, back then at least, that were what’d happened with me and Mark.

  We partied every weekend and sometimes did what Mark called a ‘midweek effort’. My mouth was always aching with the strain of laughing and smiling so much, as well as the jaw lock what went on along with taking ecstasy. That could be a pain. You chewed up your mouth and got sores if you weren’t careful but we’d usually have gum or a dummy to chew on and that helped loads. All the missed sleep and chemicals in my body made school hard for me. I wasn’t a bad attender, cause going in were a source of income for us, but my behaviour was erratic down to me being sometimes hyper and sometimes tired out and mardy. Tuesdays or Wednesdays were the worst. ‘The Tuesdays’ they call it now but it wasn’t so well known about back then. All’s I knew was I felt miserable, and I’d take it out on Mam and Jon and Mark when he was about. And of course the poor sods what had to try and teach me. I got in a load of trouble, and they suspended me a couple of times. Most kids’d of got done by their mams about that but mine didn’t give a shit. In her own little world by that stage, and didn’t even bother reading the letters what the school sent. Course, when I got the Tuesday blues, Mark’d be feeling the same and we had some cracking rows. It took us ages to work out what was going off. After we did, the rows’d still start but we’d clock our-sen doing it and one on us’d smile. Before you knew it then we’d be laughing and saying in loud voices about how it were Tuesday or Wednesday.

  There was this one time we were out dancing when it all came on a bit too strong for me. We’d got these new pills from a bloke down Radford flats. The pills we bought came in different shapes and colours, with different pictures and stuff on so’s we called them different things, Mickey Mouses or Mitsubishis or whatever. The ones what made me go funny this time were these red speckled things with a playboy symbol on them. My heart was going like mad and I felt like I couldn’t hardly breathe. Mark was distracted by the music and just kept dancing, his eyes all over like he was looking at stuff what wasn’t there. I felt like the floor was moving away from me. When he clocked summat was wrong he panicked a bit and was flapping round like a gell. This black bloke came over to us.

  ‘She’s just rushing,’ he told Mark. This was way before the time of chill-out areas in clubs or Leah Betts-style media panic. The man pulled me off to the quietest corner he could find and sat me down in front of him. He pushed my head and neck forward and rubbed them hard and nice all over. It felt amazing, and all the muscles in my face and shoulders relaxed at the same time. I let me-sen flop forward and enjoy the shit going off inside my head.

  ‘You trying somethink on, mate?’ Mark said to the bloke.

  He looked up at Mark and shook his head, throwing out this big white grin at the same time. ‘No man, I’m just meking the gell feel better,’ he said. Mark sat down beside him, just in case I guess. The bloke got up and indicated down at me with his hands, telling Mark to take over. He sat down behind me then and started rubbing, but it didn’t feel half so nice. The man stood round, though, giving Mark tips and instructions till he knew what he was on with. Then the bloke was off into the crowd. I never did see him again to thank him for doing what he did, but that’s the way shit goes. It wasn’t very long before I was up and dancing again, and feeling like I wasn’t never going to die.

  Mark and me did a pill round at his when his mam were away for the weekend, and decided to have a bath. I kept my underwear and a T-shirt on, cause I didn’t want to be locked in a bathroom on my own rushing my head off like I had been at the club but, at the same time, I was too shy to get all naked in front of Mark. I looked like a fully grown woman underneath my clothes and was still at the stage where that embarrassed me. I got changed, and Mark got the taps running and put all these candles round the room. It looked like a grotto when I walked in. Mark was already in the bath, not shy like me but bare as the day he was born. It were the drugs that. They take your inhibitions away as good as owt else. This effect meant it didn’t worry me him being naked, though I did stare a bit. I’d never seen a naked man and Mark more or less was full-grown by then. He smiled at me staring but didn’t say owt.

  I climbed in the bath and sat down. Your skin goes all crawly and goosebumped when you’re pilled, and every little touch or texture feels twenty times as intense as it normally would. The drug turns nice into perfect. As the hot water covered my feet and shins it felt like it were honey and I could taste it through my skin.
I sat down and the same feeling slipped it-sen all over my thighs and hips. Mark grabbed me and turned me round so’s I had my back to him. I sat against him and he lapped water all over my shoulders and neck. I sighed with my whole body and settled into the feelings. All’s I could think was about how good it felt. There just isn’t a word to describe the way I felt, cept ecstasy.

  We started dealing the stuff soon after that. I mean, it were always going to happen cause that was our business. Just as soon as we got a wholesale source it were part of our menu. I offloaded plenty at school, and watched as the classroom manners of them round me went running off into the hills. I spose what we did helped close that school down but, the way I see it, if it hadn’t of been us someone else would of done it. We took it to The Garage as well, and sold it to the dancers. We’d already been selling acid there, when we could get hold of it, and the clubbers were into that. But more and more people were looking for pills. It were a risky business, dealing in clubs, and a subtle one at that. You had to try and catch people’s eyes. And if they clocked you, and knew how the game worked, they’d give you a certain type of look. It’s hard to pin down, the way people show you they’re after scoring, but it’s obvious once you know what you’re on with. Once or twice when I was a beginner I made eyes at other dealers in the wrong way so’s I looked like a punter and when we had a chat we’d laugh at the misunderstanding. But it wasn’t long before that never happened at all. Mark and me got some regular clients there too, lads most of them, who knew who we were and what was what and passed the word out too. We still weren’t exactly bigtime but we were making enough.

  We were taking enough as well. We’d graduated to at least a couple or three pills, even on a quiet night. Mark’d often drop four or five, and this one night he took eleven. You couldn’t OD on the boggers, it seemed, and it were all good. ‘Rolling’ we called it, the way you got, cause it wasn’t like owt else so you couldn’t call it tripping. We discovered there was no such thing as a bad roll. We were high as kites all the time for months on end after that. And best mates who looked out for each other and were never apart. Drug brothers, like Mark’d said when we’d split that very first half. I loved him, even then. I didn’t know it, or the danger it put me in, but we’d bonded hard thanks to the MDMA. A chemical bond, you might say. Sometimes we took stuff and went out clubbing, sometimes we sat round at home, or danced to our own records. Sometimes we wandered round the estate off our faces, spray-painting walls or smashing things up. Whatever we got up to, the pills made it better, put a rose-tinted glow on it all.

  Mrs Ivanovich’d taught me about chemical bonds before I could hardly write. They’re the kind of bond you get when you heat the right stuff up together. The kind of bond what needs summat really strong to break it open. But things only bond if they match and are meant to. Sometimes you can mix up the wrong things and everything explodes and makes a right old mess. It wouldn’t be long before I found that out for me-sen.

  NINE

  Phil Tyneside was a right wanker and I can say this with authority cause I’ve seen him masturbate. He was a student at the university, and his family lived down London somewhere. He was at my school doing some kind of community service, stuff he could shove on his job application forms when he’d done at college. He was helping out in the science department, and I caught his attention cause Mrs Ivanovich’s efforts with me hadn’t been wasted. I was good at the subject. He fancied his-sen as a poet an-all, God knows why. Maybes all that was just an angle. He told me I was like the bud of a flower, fully formed and moist and fun to peel open but ruined once you had. He said being with me was like walking through wet grass just after the dew came down. And I let him away with all this shit cause of his pretty words.

  The first time Phil spoke to me I was trying to set up apparatus to do a distillation. We’d fermented orange juice the lesson before and this was in a jug. I was about the only person in the room took it serious. Some people’d drunk the foul liquid they’d made. Sad, I thought, to be interested in drinking the yeasty juice, even if it did have a bit of alcohol in it. Nowhere near enough to get you drunk anyway. One lad was poking at everyone with one of them tripod things. The teacher was running round the room trying to make sure we didn’t smash too much, and no one got cut by anyone. I was lucky really, that this woman even tried to do experiments with us. The sane teachers would never of had it the way we went on. I was also lucky that who I was went before me so’s I could take the lesson serious without anyone giving me stick. No one was going to mess with me cause of what happened to Danny Morrison. He was scarred so bad you couldn’t look him in the eyes. When I saw him on his own in the yard, it made me feel sorry for him, till I remembered that crack he gave me round the head, and how it felt to lie there bleeding in the snow.

  I was bunging corks in the test tubes all over cause I didn’t want to lose any of the liquid as it boiled off. I heard Phil come up behind me. He was good looking, Phil, and he knew it. Had the kind of eyes what hit you in the clit.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he told me. I turned towards him. My top two buttons were undone, my tie hung low below my open shirt and just above was where he was looking. My skirt was hitched up short too. I was thirteen going on twenty and I knew I was fanciable, had just begun to realise what that meant to blokes. I loved the reflection I could see of me-sen in Phil’s eyes right then, but the way he looked at me frightened me as well. Just like it had with Mark.

  ‘Why not?’ I said, smiling at him.

  ‘Water pressure’ll build up and it’ll explode,’ he said. And he leaned over me, his chest against mine, as he sorted the equipment for me. ‘You’re good to go now,’ he said, and he wasn’t wrong.

  I put on the Bunsen burner and after a few minutes the orange muck made spluttering noises.

  ‘This stuff’s shit, what we’ve made,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. We both watched the liquid heat up.

  ‘You work hard Kerrie-Ann, and you can do this subject. You thought about going to college?’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘Call me Kez,’ I said. ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘Okay Kez,’ he said. And he held me in his smile as the sticky brew began to boil and bubble and the pipettes and tubes filled with steam.

  The next time I spoke to Phil was in the yard. I was selling whizz, and kids were walking off looking pleased with their purchases. At school I sold it by the gumful and kept the wraps me-sen. Made more that way. I was rubbing my finger in some kid’s mouth when I felt this tap on my shoulder. I thought it’d be another one after a hit and when I turned and saw Phil I froze.

  ‘Naughty girl,’ he said.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  His eyes glinted at me, and he didn’t move. I knew I’d be out of school in half a minute if he let on what he’d seen. They’d call the police an-all.

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll not say anything if I get a freebie,’ he said.

  I held the wrap out to him. He put his finger in slow, then brought it up to his mouth. He pulled his finger in and then out, pop-goes-the-weasel style, and grinned at me.

  ‘Thanks. But that wasn’t what I meant,’ he said.

  I raised my eyebrows at him but didn’t say owt.

  ‘I’ll come back for what I really wanted another time,’ he said, and winked. Then he walked off.

  The next time I saw him was in this crappy little nightclub called New York, New York. We only went there if we couldn’t get in nowhere else, cause they never checked ID. Mark was upstairs, chatting up some tart a bit older than me who he’d heard would ‘go’. I stood at the bar getting a drink. I heard some bloke breathing next to me and turned, and there was Phil.

  ‘Can I get you drunk?’ he said. I grinned, then nodded and he gestured to the barman. I asked for a blue drink, said I didn’t care what but it had to be blue. He walked off to find summat and Phil smiled.

  ‘I love that, ordering a drink by its colour. You here with Scotland?’ he said, looking wary
about it.

  ‘Yeah. He’s on the pull somewhere,’ I said.

  Phil stared at me as if he hadn’t heard me speak. ‘You have amazing eyes, you know. They look like they can see into another world,’ he said.

  I snorted. ‘Yeah, I bet that’s what you mean,’ I said. He assured me it were, and the barman came back with the loveliest coloured fluid – it looked like summat out of a test tube from a TV version of Dr Jekyll’s lab.

  ‘Better than orange wine,’ he said. I nodded.

  ‘Just a bit,’ I said.

  ‘You’re very special,’ he told me then, and I snorted even louder.

  ‘Yer don’t mean that neither. You just want ter shag me,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a problem with that?’ he asked.

  I shook my head no. Maybes I fancied him more than Mark, or maybes I was just ready, I was older after all. I wasn’t going to risk losing a lad like Phil by holding out on him. His posh voice and fancy manners impressed me, see, and all’s I can say about that is I was young. Perhaps it were the blue drink and the small white tablet I’d had before what put me in the mood.

  Phil said ‘good’ and put his hand on my waist, making a clicking sound with his tongue. He pulled me onto the small sweaty dancefloor. His face was wet and shiny under the sticky lights. The music playing was screaming on about acid, a drug I hadn’t tried, but the E I’d dropped made me appreciate the beat anyway. I wanted to wave my hands in the air and dance but Phil had other ideas. He put his hands on my arse and pulled me close, as if they were already playing ‘Time of My Life’ or ‘Careless Whisper’. He didn’t want to waste his time waiting for the music to catch up with his mood. He squeezed me against his dick and it burnt hot as a Bunsen through his jeans.

 

‹ Prev