The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  It were about two in the morning when Phil collapsed. First I knew about it was his gellfriend freaking out. The clubbers round him drew back like he was throwing out a wind what’d blew them away. Julia was flapping and screaming and shouting for help. The way she was reminded me of Mrs Ivanovich’s daughter, all them years back. I came over all dizzy then, a bit too much Bacardi in me, and had to go outside. I came out the door and stood on the Hockley pavement. People buzzed round me, some of them shouting or swearing. There were a couple of lads braying for a fight a bit further down the street. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I stayed still but the world span round me and I thought I was going to fall over. I didn’t like this feeling, being drunk. Couldn’t see or think or walk or talk proper. It wasn’t nice at all. Mark should of let me take some ecstasy. My head would of been much clearer if he had.

  I opened my eyes and stared hard at the sky. The world stopped spinning as if my eyes were holding it still. I gritted my teeth. The sky was hardly dark at all, more of a blue-grey colour, washed out by the lights in town. There wasn’t no clouds and the stars winked at me like they knew what I were on with. I could see the whole of the moon and it were that clear you could see craters and all that on the surface. It looked like it were floating, like I could reach out and pick it from the sky, take it home with me. It struck me then that it were a pity I wasn’t pilled, that I’d appreciate it all a lot better if I’d got some MDMA pulsing through me. It struck me as dead weird that most people went out every Saturday with the sole aim of feeling like I did then, sick and dizzy. To make everything blurred at the edges.

  An ambulance turned up then, filling everything round me with the squeal of its siren. It were like slow motion. The paramedics must of been rushing like mad. They must of ran into the club but it all slowed down when I watched it, six-million-dollar-man style. They came out a bit later with Phil on this stretcher and his woman following. She had her hand on her chest and was jabbering, just kept going on to her-sen about how it’d be all right, he was going to be okay. But it wasn’t going to be all right. Nowt’d been all right for ages, not for me. There wasn’t no reason Phil should walk away from that scot free.

  The ambulance swallowed the stretcher, then the gellfriend, then wailed into action again, swerving off down the street. That were a job, I thought, driving one of them fuckers. I wouldn’t mind doing that at all. Being allowed to drive fast as you like and everyone having to move out your way. When the ambulance was far enough away so’s I couldn’t hear its siren no more, I breathed in deep. I let me-sen slide down the wall to the floor and sat on the pavement. Then I was sick all over my legs. I curled up in a ball and saw Mark coming out the club, striding towards me on a mission.

  THIRTEEN

  Phil was in a coma for months. When I saw them stretcher him out the club, I’d assumed the speedball’d done for him but it wasn’t that. Mark hadn’t even given him a speedball. He’d melted up a couple of them PMA pills and injected them.

  I went to the hospital to see him. This was Mark’s idea, like everything else. Told me I should go and tell Phil how it were me what did it. Else it’d all of been a waste of time. So I went to Queen’s and lied my way into the ward, saying I was Phil’s little sister. It’s not like they were going to ask for ID or owt. I stood round and waited, watched his mam and that Julia go off to get some coffee or dinner or summat, and made me move. I used her name, Julia’s, mentioned I’d just seen her walk off with my mam. Made my voice sound posh as I could and got away with it.

  I walked over to the bed. It were surrounded by machines and stuff beeping and ticking, just like they show on the telly. I thought for a minute about switching off the machines but knew straight away it wasn’t worth the hassle I’d get. I could see just looking Phil wasn’t going to get no better. His face, pale as the wings on a cabbage white. Blood was dripping from his nose, there was a dribble at the corner of his mouth too. I whispered summat in his ear. Told him what’d gone off and that he wasn’t waking up. When I moved my face away there was blood coming out his eyes like he was crying it. I took this as a sign he’d heard me. Bright red it were, the trail it made down his face. Against the pale as corpse skin, the red looked so pretty. I didn’t cry. Not this time. I’d spilled enough of my own blood and tears for this nob. I hadn’t meant to kill him, that was the truth. Mark’d gone too far. I wouldn’t say I was glad Phil was dying, but I wasn’t sad neither. I can’t lie about it. Seeing him lying there on his way out wasn’t exactly the best high I’d had for ages but it were comforting. It were justice.

  I turned then and saw Julia at the door. She looked tired, and twice as old as the last time I’d seen her. Her face was mottled red so I knew she’d been crying loads.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she said.

  ‘He used to teach me,’ I said. ‘I lied to the nurse so’s I could say goodbye proper.’ Course, she didn’t know what I meant by this so her face softened. ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. That’s sweet. Good to think Phil’s life had an impact on people,’ she said.

  I could of bust out laughing then, it were so full of crap our conversation. Yeah, Phil’s life definitely had an impact on me.

  I felt sorry for her though. Not cause she’d lost Phil. He wasn’t worth owt to no one. But cause of what she thought she’d lost, this bloke what was worth having and ever so nice to her and with all this good stuff going off in his life. It made me sad that she didn’t know the first thing about him. But I felt a twinge of jealousy too. To live like that, not knowing, she’d been lucky. Phil’d loved her enough to lie about stuff. That sounds crap but it’s true. The way he was so honest with me wasn’t a nice thing. ‘I better go,’ I said. I made for the door but she was standing blocking it and didn’t move.

  ‘He’s drowning in his own blood,’ she said, staring past me at the mess what used to be her boyfriend. ‘Sick bastards fed him too much E and look at him.’

  ‘It wan’t ecstasy,’ I said, before I thought about how this’d sound and could stop me-sen. Julia’s eyes opened wide as they could. ‘I just mean it cun’t of been. It dun’t do that to yer.’

  ‘Do you know something?’ she said. I just looked at her. It almost made me laugh that she thought I might admit owt if I did. ‘If you know something you should stay and talk to the police.’

  I made for the door then, the minute she said police. She tried to block my way but I pushed her hard. I heard her yelp as she cracked her head against the door frame. I didn’t run. That would of been the easiest way to get me-sen stopped. I walked double time and dived into a lift as the door snapped shut, making the woman inside tut loud. I gave her a right filthy look and she recoiled like I’d put a hand up to smack her. I was getting good at them looks.

  I went outside and stood calm as you like at the bus stop. If anyone was looking for me they couldn’t of expected me to do that, stand like nowt’d gone off waiting for a bus, cause I wasn’t approached. I got the next bus into town and went to score some pills.

  Phil’s death made the papers. There he was, under the headline, staring out at me like some perfect version of a human being. They’d chose a photo what glowed full of the potential they said’d been cut short by the evil of drugs. It made me laugh. They said ecstasy’d killed him even though the post-mortem couldn’t of found nowt of the sort inside him. They didn’t know fuck all about what they were saying. One paper printed all this shit called ‘ten things you should know about ecstasy’. I wanted to scream at the paper, shout about how stupid they were and how wrong they’d got it. I wanted to cross out the headline on every bloody copy and write in huge red letters across the Council House that Phil would of been right as rain if he’d had proper MDMA, what good Es are made of. How I knew people who took four or five hits of it regular and it didn’t do them no harm at all.

  The whole fuss hit our business, specially being as it happened in Nottingham. People were scared off and we couldn’t do nowt to talk th
em round. What would we of said? That we knew Phil didn’t take E cause we’d given him summat else instead, deliberate? That’d hardly help them trust what we sold was safe. So we kept quiet and went with the lull. Sold other stuff instead, speed and acid and coke. Made me laugh, that. People taking these drugs instead of ecstasy like it were safer or summat. The whole thing did me and Mark’s reps some good though. People in the know, the other dealers and them off the estate, they knew what’d gone off. They knew me and Mark’d done for Phil and they knew the tosser deserved it. That, put with the Danny Morrison campfire, made us untouchable. No one would of dreamed of trying it on over owt.

  It were good, to feel that safe. People crossed the street when we were walking towards them, stared at the concrete like the secret to life, the universe and everything was written on it. We were everyone’s favourite horror story on the estate. When I was little and Mam gave a shit, it were the ten o’clock horses she used. ‘Go asleep or the ten o’clock horses’ll come,’ she whispered, brushing hair back off my face. When I asked what the ten o’clock horses were, what they’d do, she’d hush me and tell me ‘just go asleep’. There was no story, nowt I was told to make me afraid of them horses but that frightened me more. Like it were too bloody nasty to speak out loud what they’d do. So it were with me and Mark. Rumours spread fast as water fills a hole you’ve dug on the beach.

  In the papers there was this quote from the police chief, David summat or other. He said he was ‘pulling out the stops’ to find the ‘evil dealers who are preying on our kids’. It made me laugh cause what they should of known was about Phil. Talk about preying on kids, he’d teach them a thing or two. I knew they couldn’t prove nowt about us and Phil dying.

  For a bit I thought Mark was a total genius cause I did feel better. Not just better than I’d been since the abortion but better than even before. Better than I’d ever felt. Like I’d had a shot of everything in Mark’s pockets, one after the other. Like I’d grown wings and flew off to suck nectar from flowers. Caterpillars have to lock themselves away in a dark sticky shell before they can bust out looking all beautiful. And I came out like a butterfly, going out loads, taking E or speed. I raved till the clubs closed then flew off to illegal parties in warehouses or on farms. I’d sit in the street E’d to the eyeballs looking up at the sky, talking it all through with Mark, everything that’d gone off. I was full of it. Phil’d done me wrong and I’d sorted it. It made me feel like nowt bad could ever touch me again. It made me feel tough as you like. Invincible.

  Phil even made the news on the telly, which was as wrong about what’d happened as the papers were. They called him a ‘promising young student’ and said ‘he was a thoughtful and loving young man who even carried out voluntary work in the local community’. They said, ‘No one will ever know why he decided to take drugs that night,’ like it were a one off and Phil’d never took owt before. They said his funeral’d take place at Wilford Hill that Friday, but it’d be a private affair for family and friends only. I figured that included me. I was the mother of his only kid for fuck’s sake.

  FOURTEEN

  I held back from the funeral procession. It wouldn’t of been good if Julia’d recognised me and started asking questions and mentioning the police again. I put on this red dress, the brightest bloodiest red I could find in the shops. Wilford Hill really is a hill and I walked up it fast, ending up breathless and wheezy at the top. I chose a grave at random and put flowers on it, tidied it up. Watched Phil’s friends and family commit him to the earth a dozen or so plots away. Julia leaned against some other young bloke and I wondered if he was just a mate, or if she’d found a replacement for Phil already. If he was just after a shag and’d use her upset to get in there. I liked that idea. I didn’t really wish her no harm but thought it’d serve Phil right if someone did that with his woman. Phil’s mam was sobbing and clung to his dad. His dad was more dignified and held his head up strong, even though I could see, far away as I were, red in his eyes and damp on his cheeks. I felt bad then, I spose. For doing summat that’d made these people so gutted. But there was nowt I could do. They were upset cause they had no clue what Phil was. Specially Julia. If she’d of known his secrets she would of never gone near him.

  I saw the priest bless the casket. People threw in soil and trailed by. Sobs got louder. And then they were gone. As the group trailed down the hill and turned into a black smudge by the gate, I went over to Phil’s grave. I took a bit of soil from the edge and chucked it in. Then I found a stone and wellied it one at the casket so’s it hit with a right crack. I’d attracted attention then but didn’t notice. I leaned over the grave and spat in it. My own special Kerrie Hill blessing.

  ‘Oi, you! That’s sacrilege,’ came a voice from behind me. I turned and saw a man running at me with a shovel in his hand. One of the diggers. I strode over the gaping mouth of Phil’s grave and made a run for it.

  I pegged it down the hill, gravity throwing me out of control past the graves and flowers and memorial benches. My arms and legs were light as air. It felt like I was flying. I ran through the gates and cut a line through the funeral party. I look back now and think of how it must of looked. This flying bit of red shooting through the black smudge like a knife was slashing into someone’s sleeve. I wish I could of watched it from the top of the hill.

  It were a few months after that when I caught my mam sneaking out the back door with a packed bag. I was fifteen and three months old. She looked like a kid who was running off. It reminded me of a story Mark’d told me, about how he’d fell out with his mam when he was ten and said he was going to leave home. She’d laughed at him and said, ‘Go on then,’ thinking he’d bottle it and storm back up to his room. He’d got a pound his uncle’d given him, and he’d spent it all on ‘Lucky Bags’, them things what you used to get with sweets and a toy in them. That was what the row was over. So he’d filled a carrier bag full of clothes and took his Lucky Bags and stood waiting on the road outside his front door.

  ‘What yer waiting for?’ his mam’d asked him.

  ‘A taxi,’ Mark’d said.

  We’d had a right giggle over this story when Mark told it me, that he’d thought he could pay for a taxi with a quid’s worth of Lucky Bags or summat. But it wasn’t funny finding my mam stood there in the back doorway, clutching a filled-up bin liner with a sheepish expression all over her sickly-looking mug.

  ‘Where the fuck you going?’ I said, blocking the door in front of her. I was on my way in from a rave and it showed how much notice she took of my comings and goings if she’d not been expecting this on a Sunday morning. She was out on it.

  ‘I’ve got ter go, Kez. The police is after us. They’ll have me up fer stuff you lot’ve done,’ she said.

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know where she could of got the idea the police were after her and I said so.

  ‘I just know it Kez, I can feel it in here,’ Mam said, touching her breastbone. I would of been tempted to believe her if I thought she had owt resembling a heart where she was pointing. I faced up to her and made me-sen big as I could, blocking across the door so’s she couldn’t go nowhere. Gone were the days when I was scared of the back of my mam’s hand. She could only just about hold it still long enough to melt down her smack and inject it, and that was the truth.

  ‘Yer fucking paranoid,’ I said. Mam flinched away from me but didn’t say owt. ‘Who’s going-ter look after Jon? He’s just a lickle kid and I’m not sixteen yet or owt,’ I said.

  ‘You’re owd enough,’ she said. I looked in her eyes, tried to see if there were owt there for me. If she gave a shit at all. The sockets were sunk and empty, like she was beginning to turn into a skull. All’s I saw was hunger. She was a junkie first, not a mam. ‘Yer killed that bloke,’ she said. ‘The one what wa-in the paper.’ Then I realised. It wasn’t no police she was scared of. It were me.

  ‘Do what yer want,’ I said.

  She held out a twenty to me then. I looked at it like I’d nev
er seen one before, didn’t know what it were for. ‘To tek care of yer dinner for a few days,’ she said. I smirked and flicked her hand away.

  ‘No, ta,’ I said. She wasn’t buying me off for a twenty. I moved out the way of the door and let her go. I could of stopped her. Mark would of helped me persuade her, promised to keep her lined up with everything she needed and all that shit. But I couldn’t be arsed. She wasn’t exactly much use to us, state she was in. I was well past caring. I watched her walk off, dragging this black bag after her like Dick Fucking Whittington. She was skinny as owt cause the only thing she got hungry for them days was the poppy. She made a right sorry sight walking up Whitwell Road like that. I almost felt bad about it.

  So there I was. Still at school and not even sixteen with a lad of ten to look after. I wasn’t even that much older than him. Don’t get me wrong, Jon wasn’t hard work, never had been, not since he was very little anyway. And I’d always done a lot for him being as my mam was such a waste of space. But being all he’d got, just like that without no warning, that wasn’t easy to get my head round. For starters there was the small problem of school. He was due to go to senior school the next year but with Mam not round there wasn’t no one to register him. If I went down they’d work out she’d gone and left us and then they’d put Jon and me in care cause I wasn’t sixteen yet. Then there was the house, the rent to sort with the council so’s they’d not notice she’d gone when the DSS stopped coughing up. We had to make sure they never found out she wasn’t there no more and threw us out. Worst of all there was letting Jon in on it all, what’d happened, that his mam’d just walked out like that cause she didn’t give a shit. I would of rather she’d of died and made us both orphans. That’s what I’d tell everyone, I decided there and then, that we were orphans. That we’d always been. All this stuff went through my head as I stood there watching Sue Hill walk off, so’s I got all dizzy with thinking and had to go and sit down at the kitchen table and rest my head on it. I was still a bit pilled to be totally honest, and I’m sure that didn’t help.