The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  ‘You awake?’ he said.

  ‘I am now.’

  He laughed. I turned on my back and looked up at him. I couldn’t help but smile as he looked down on me with this wicked grin. I mean, I know he loved me. He kissed me on the lips then, and he slipped his hands round my waist and pulled me close. His body felt so warm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. But I shushed him and made him kiss me some more. We both got a bit hot and bothered then. A minute on and he was inside me. I looked into his face as we made love. This was summat what didn’t happen very often anymore. I’d forgot how he could look, the times when he was really into me. His features melted into each other and all the animal was sucked out of them. He looked so vulnerable. Even after all that’s gone off, this vulnerable face is the one I took with me of Mark, the way I remember him. His pupils were dilated for a change, instead of the needlepoints they usually were in his scary grey eyes.

  We lay there after for a bit. Mark was still touching me but it wasn’t the same. His hands were moving faster, and he was fidgeting. Loads of gells moan about their blokes not wanting to sit round and cuddle after they’ve had sex, but this was different. The problem was Mark needed his next hit. Was desperate for it. The only thing I can compare it to is when you’re sat in a bar with a smoker, and there’s no ashtray on the table. You can see they aren’t with you, all’s they’re thinking about is where they can get summat to put their ash in so’s they can light up. And lying in bed with a junkie who hasn’t shot up is just like that. Thing is, I’d give a smoker some slack, me. But not Mark. He was waiting for me to excuse him, to tell him to get up and go get wasted already. But I wasn’t going to say that. I was never going to condone his habit. Mark wriggled and struggled with his cravings till he couldn’t no more.

  ‘I got-ter gerrup,’ he said, launching his-sen from out the covers and onto the rough floorboards.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  He stood there for a minute, looking down at me. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said.

  I looked back up at him. He held eye contact for a bit, then turned, grabbed his dressing gown, and made to get out the room. I watched him go and wondered what I was on. I’d been happy to let my mam walk off, never gave her no leeway even if she was my mam. I couldn’t work out why I gave this bloke so much more credit. She didn’t deserve owt from me but neither did Mark.

  I turned over in bed, noticed how grubby the sheets were. I got up, and promised me-sen I would leave, and soon. I wasn’t going to be that gell Duggy thought I was. This couldn’t be for ever, not after what’d happened the night before. I came downstairs and found Mark in the kitchen, strapping round his arm, needle in. His arm was covered so bad in tracks it would of given Midland Mainline summat to think about. He looked up at me, then his eyes rolled back. He looked back at me again, like he was embarrassed to be caught that way.

  ‘I’m sorry Kez, I really am,’ he said. I couldn’t work out if he was talking about what he’d done the night before, or his addiction, which he knew I didn’t like and’d never wanted. I was sad then. Wondered about Mark. What chance would he have on his tod. He just wouldn’t cut it, was too hooked on that shit to make proper decisions, in the long run anyways. What would happen to him if I was gone? I thought. I corrected me-sen. What will happen when I’m gone? Who’ll turn him on his side and make sure he doesn’t choke on vomit?

  Mark started fiddling in the fridge, poured some juice and took out eggs and bacon. He waved the bacon at me. I spose it’s how old married couples get, asking each other questions by waving packets of bacon at each other. I smiled at him, which was enough of an answer too.

  The smell of bacon and eggs cooking filled the room, cheering me up. I made us both a big, well stewed cup of tea, mashing it for ages and squeezing the teabag so’s the liquid was the colour of polished oak, then adding a load of milk. That was how Mark liked his tea and over the time we’d been together I’d took to drinking it that way too. I heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Ey up, smell-a bacon raised the dead,’ I said, grinning at Mark. Jon walked in the door, carrying this dumbbell. I’d clean forgot about my worries the night before. I thought he was exercising, pumping iron, bringing it down with him to show off. I watched him walk over to Mark without thinking much on it till he raised the weight above his head and I realised what he was on with.

  ‘Mark!’ I yelled. But I was only in time for him to turn and get the thing right in the face.

  Jon shouted as the weight fell onto Mark, telling him he was a bastard and a wanker and didn’t deserve me. Mark’s face was shocked as hell, like a cartoon version with a big round mouth and exclamation marks for eyes. He didn’t fall or owt. I would of thought a blow like that’d knock anyone out, but Mark was left standing. He was knocked sideways but that were all. The pan went flying, and some hot fat splashed on Mark and Jon, and on the floor. All’s I could think was I’d better clean that up before one of them slips on it. It sounds daft now but it just came into my head and before I knew it I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing at the hot fat.

  Course, Mark wasn’t having what Jon’d done. He started laying into him. ‘I’ll kill yer, yer lickle shit,’ he said. That woke me up from my fat-cleaning trance. Next I knew, Mark’d took the hammer from round his neck. He was standing there holding it up, looking Jon in the eye and saying, ‘Yer playing at big boys, huh?’ repeating it over and over like the psycho he was. I got straight up and stood between the two of them. Mark just stood there, looking at me. He was foaming at the mouth like he had the rabies or summat.

  ‘You’ll have ter come past me,’ I said.

  ‘Yer think that’ll stop me?’ he said. And he pushed his face at me, all menacing, and the pair on us danced round the kitchen like prizefighters.

  ‘Gerrout, Jon,’ I said, pointing at the door. He didn’t go straight off but I said it again, and he must of been scared to death cause he did as he was told.

  ‘We goin-ter have this again, then?’ I asked Mark. He growled at me. I swear that’s what it were, a growl. I bared my teeth. It shocked me to think how much like animals we were behaving.

  ‘Yer lay inter me wi-that hammer they’ll find out. Bout that, bout everything. Phil and the works. Jon’ll tell-em if he dun’t kill yer first,’ I said to Mark. ‘They’ll search the house. And you’ll end up locked away where you can’t get nowt to feed yer habit.’ I knew where to hit him, that was for sure. He stepped back and sat down with this dazed look all over his face. I sat down next to him. ‘Gi-me the hammer,’ I said. I took hold of his hands and the blunt end of the weapon, and he hesitated, then let go. ‘Yer got-ter stop doing that,’ I said. The funniest shit goes through your head when summat mad happens, like all this crap. I couldn’t help but pat me-sen on the back, thinking how I was just as good as Duggy at this lark. I didn’t need no training to deal with it.

  I looked then at the cuts and bruises across the side of Mark’s face. They were nasty, and it were a mark of how tough he was that he’d not been knocked out. Mark’d took a load more punches than me. Plus the odd knife attack what he’d managed to fight off. I shivered at the table, all cold and clammy from shock. I thought I might faint, cept I knew I couldn’t afford to. Couldn’t leave Mark and Jon to kill each other.

  ‘I’ll get summat for that,’ I said. I took out the same pack of frozen peas I’d used the night before, and put it to his face. He made a sharp sound, more than he’d done when he actually got hit. Then I couldn’t help smiling as a thought crossed my head.

  ‘What the fuck’s fucking funny?’ he said.

  I couldn’t help it, even though it were winding him up, and I ended up letting out a snort of laughter. I put my hand over my mouth. Maybes it were the shock but I couldn’t stop and Mark was getting more and more angry, shouting at me about what I was laughing my head off at given all what’d gone off. I stopped after a bit, and felt my throat tighten. But I wasn’t going to cry, not in front of Mark.

&nb
sp; ‘It were just how we match now,’ I said. ‘An eye fer an eye.’ One of the things Bek’d said about what she’d done to that gell before she got stuck in the EMHG. But Mark didn’t get the funny side.

  I asked Mark to do me a favour and sit still with the peas on his face, so’s I could go and sort Jon out. I couldn’t help laughing again, at what I’d said about holding peas on his face, it were such a fucked up thing to say. And Mark said he’d sort out Jon if I wanted and I said no thanks. Then even Mark smiled a little bit.

  Jon was sitting in the dining room. He still had the dumbbell in his hands.

  ‘Yer goin-ter put that down?’ I said.

  ‘Like I’d hit yer,’ he said.

  ‘I din’t think yer’d be stupid enough ter hit Mark,’ I told him.

  Jon dropped the weight to the floor and it landed with a thud. He stared up at me, this right bolshy look on his face. It were a good job he’d only caused all this shit out of loyalty to me else I’d of picked up the weight and given him a good crack across the face with it me-sen. He was at that age, was Jon. Thought he ruled the world, just cause he was big and a lot on the kids were scared of him.

  ‘I’m not having this shit. Sooner or later we’ll have the police round here cause someone’s called-em, then we’ll be fucked,’ I said.

  Jon looked up at me from where he was sat. The know-it-all look slipped away in a flash and he looked like he’d cry any minute. No matter what he said about me treating him like a kid, sometimes I forgot how young he was. I could see the effort he was making holding onto his face. He was a good lad though and he didn’t cry. I sat down next to him and put my hand on his arm.

  ‘Mate, you and Mark got ter live wi-each other and just gerr-on fer a bit,’ I told him.

  ‘You should get rid,’ he said.

  I sighed. ‘It in’t that simple,’ I said.

  Jon looked at me like he thought it were, and that I was thick as shit for not seeing that.

  ‘I’ve got plans,’ I told him. He was shaking his head at me. ‘Real plans. For me and you to get out of here.’

  ‘Like what?’ Jon screeched the words.

  I put my mouth against his ear. ‘We’re getting outta here. I’ll have-ter tell yer the details some other time. If Mark hears what I’m saying ter yer we’re both dead,’ I said. Jon looked up at me then. I think he could tell I meant it.

  ‘Promise?’ he said.

  ‘I promise. But will yer promise me summat?’

  Jon shrugged.

  ‘That you’ll stop fighting wi-Mark.’

  ‘Spose,’ he said.

  ‘No. You got-ter promise like what I did.’

  ‘All right. Promise.’

  And I knew Jon’d keep his word once I’d made him say promise. It were our code, Jon’s and mine, that a promise meant summat. I told him to get his arse out the way while I sorted things with Mark.

  I went back to the kitchen where my boyfriend was still sitting with frozen peas pressed to his cheek.

  ‘He were bang out of order,’ he said.

  ‘I know. But so was you, last night. What would you of done if some-un else’d left me looking like this?’ I pointed at my face.

  ‘I’d want-ter know why first,’ he said.

  ‘Bullcrap. Like yer did wi-Danny Morrison.’ I gave him this right lairy look then, like I wanted him to drop dead on the spot. Mark went quiet. We both knew he’d gone much further than he should of with that lad, leaving him for dead, burning in the street.

  ‘What d’yer want Kez?’

  ‘Nowt. But you should know – yer do owt ter Jon cause of what’s happened today and I’ll leave yer. Don’t think I won’t cause I’m goin-ter. Understand?’

  Mark didn’t say owt.

  ‘D’yer understand?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I wun’t do owt ter hurt yer anyways,’ he said.

  It seemed a bit easy, all that. Mark agreeing to leave it without no fuss. It didn’t make sense. I knew how hard Mark held a grudge. There was one bloke with a melted face could vouch for that, and another on Wilford Hill who couldn’t no more.

  Mark’s junkies came over later, walking through the door all twitchy cause they were running out of shit. None of them commented on mine and Mark’s matching set of mashed up faces. Maybes they were all too scared to say owt, but I reckon they were too full of poppy-lust to give a shit what’d gone off. I left the zombies to it, and went to sit in the front room with a cup of tea. Jon wasn’t nowhere to be found still. Bek walked in.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ I said. She didn’t say owt more about it; maybes she’d heard it all go off and was just being polite. ‘Not going wi-Mark and his cronies?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nah. I’ve quit,’ she said.

  I snorted. ‘Right. And Mark’s not selling ner-more neither,’ I said. If she was cold turkey she would of been much more freaked than she was.

  ‘It’s the truth, Kez. I swear it.’ I looked at her. ‘I went to the doctor’s,’ she said. She took this bottle out her pocket.

  ‘What’s that then? That methadone shit or summat?’ I asked her and she nodded. ‘Does it work?’

  ‘I can’t say it makes me feel high as a kite, but it staves off the cravings and the fevers,’ she said.

  I sat there, shocked as Mark’d been that morning when he’d got clobbered by Jon.

  ‘Why yer doing it?’ I said. She took her breath in sharp and didn’t answer me right off, like she was scared of how I’d react to what she wanted to say.

  ‘It was partly that Duggy persuaded me,’ she said.

  ‘How can Duggy preach on drugs? I mean he teks stuff right?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, grass and pills and shit. Nothing heavy.’

  And I nodded, but I’d never seen Duggy take a drag of spliff, and the one time I’d given him a pill he’d shoved it down the back of the sofa, pretended to swallow it. It were all hanging together bad now, and my skin prickled at some of the thoughts I was having.

  ‘Listen Kez, I have to say this to you. It was mostly seeing Mark, the state he’s in,’ Bek told me.

  And there it were, truth on a plate. Mark was such a scary junkie even confirmed good-time gell Bek didn’t want to be owt like him. It reminded me I didn’t neither, and about my escape plan. There was summat I’d been meaning to ask Bek. It were making me more and more nervous, having all that money hanging round buried in the back garden. Too risky. I was finding out what Mark was capable of towards me. I couldn’t open a bank account cause that’d mean someone’d come sniffing round sooner or later, wanting to know a bit more about where my income was coming from. I needed some help from someone who knew money, and Bek was the only person I knew who’d ever had much of the stuff.

  ‘If you had a bit-a cash, and yer wanted to keep it out the road wi-out no one finding out, what’d you do?’ I said.

  She smiled at me. ‘You want to hide some from Mark?’ she said. I looked through my fringe at her and frowned. ‘It’s all right, Kez, I’m on your side,’ she said. I nodded. I was pretty sure Mark was still locked away shooting up and doing business, but I wasn’t going to say owt out loud in case he was outside the door listening. I wasn’t going to be that stupid again. Bek took the hint and came right over to my chair and knelt beside it so’s she could talk in whispers to me. ‘Premium bonds,’ she said.

  Bek explained that these things were a competition. That you could put your money down, and get it back, cash them, anytime you wanted. And they were wrote in your name, so it were a bit like the cash being in the bank. No one else could get it. She said loads of people had them, and if yourn got drawn out you could win summat, a lot of money sometimes. She told me I could get a few thousand pounds worth in a small bag. When she said that about the bag I looked at her, and wondered if she knew more than she was saying. If she knew summat about the suitcase. And if Bek did, why wouldn’t Mark when he was around all the time, watching me and listening in to what I
said?

  ‘Where can I get them things from then?’ I asked her.

  ‘The post office sells them,’ she told me.

  I nodded. It made a lot of sense. Then this look came over Bek like her head was full up with worries. ‘What?’ I said. She shrugged like she didn’t want to tell me. ‘What’s wrong wi-yer?’ I asked.

  ‘How far d’you think Mark’d go if someone upset him?’ she said.

  ‘You’re talking about this, in’t it?’ I said, pointing to the mess on the side of my face.

  ‘Not really. Just something Duggy said.’

  I looked at Bek full on. ‘All the way,’ I said, quiet as I could.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  I hesitated. The only people I’d spoke to about Phil was Mark and Jon. ‘I know it,’ I whispered.

  Bek shivered. ‘That’s what Duggy reckoned.’

  I did wonder what the fuck Duggy knew about owt and it got all them doubts I had about him raging in my head again.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked Bek.

  ‘Can’t remember,’ she said. But I knew she could and just wasn’t telling.

  ‘Why d’yer ask this stuff about Mark all of a sudden?’ I said.

  Bek shrugged. ‘Just that the way he is scares me.’ But she did that thing she’d always done, I remembered it from the EMHG. Bek wasn’t a great liar, not when you knew her well. Every time she’d said owt what wasn’t true to them carers she’d licked her top teeth and messed with her hair. So I asked her straight.

  ‘Is there summat yer know about Duggy what I ought to know about?’ I said.

  ‘God, no. He’s just Duggy,’ she told me, tongue doing overtime on her teeth, hand flicking at her hair like mad.

  I didn’t know what Bek was hiding from me, but I did believe she was the sort of gell who was loyal, who’d tell me if she really thought there was owt I should be worried about. She’d always proved that way when we were in the home together. I decided to go softly on it. Wait for her to tell me in her own time, when I needed to know. Thing was, Bek was a psycho too, like most of the people I loved. I couldn’t of been sure if I’d of pushed at her that I wouldn’t of got a stiletto in my eye.