by Joseph Kane
“I’m going to kill them.”
Lying on her single bed with my hands behind my head, I looked up at the ceiling bulb or around the room, with a tense feeling from all the ghost stories they told me. The large room was pretty empty, being so poor. Other than a bulb and a single bed, it was a familiar sight in poor households. Her bedroom door was wide open, as I could just about hear the four of them squabble downstairs. The big old empty house made my skin crawl. I wish they would hurry up, I thought. Looking around the room, it suddenly went really cold, so I moved my arms from behind my head, then put them under the cover. Looking on to the landing, out of nowhere her bedroom door that was wide open just slammed shut. Terrified, I threw the bed cover over my head shaking like a leaf. The loud bang made me jump as I watched it close faster than any human could. There was no draft, and even if there was, the door was wide open in her room. No draft in the world could’ve got behind it. The light from the ceiling bulb shined through my duvet, while I froze keeping my eyes wide open. Patiently waiting, I prayed for his sister to come back. Ten minutes of silence drove fear into me before she finally walked into the room.
“What was that bang?”
“The door just slammed; I want to go home.”
She calmed me down, reassuring me nothing else would happen. I was looking right at the door when it happened; there was no string attached to the handle, and from her expression, she seemed as shocked as me, promising that it wasn’t a prank. The four of them swore blind that it wasn’t a prank, even years later. The door opened into his sister's room. The speed of how it slammed was frightful. I’d never seen an object move so fast in my life. Not really believing in ghost before that night, the spirit was described as jealous. No wonder his mum was a nervous wreck. That was my first and last night sleeping in that house. The experience will stay with me forever. Twice, the priest came to perform a blessing with no avail. Eventually, they moved out.
My fun ended by the time I had reached year nine. Just over two years at my new school, with teachers trying to get through to me, I couldn’t calm down. There was no way detention came before food; I was too hungry. Being suspended twice already for misbehaviour, the headmaster called me into his office for a meeting. My mum and grandparents sat around me, while my white-haired Irish headmaster laid it down to me. After thirty minutes of wasting my life, He decided to suspend me permanently. He could have said that straight from the get-go. What I should have done, was expose my mum for being a drunk that didn’t feed me, explain how I lived in a crime-riddled-estate, tell them to go fuck themselves before finally walking out. What I actually did, was sit with my arms crossed feeling sorry for myself. Disappointment followed, even though I was a perfect candidate for being a train wreck. That school was my only food source and the only place where I could block out my drunk mother, a life of crime, and chronic poverty. The only people I let down were my grandparents, and god forbid, there was no way I’d ever disrespect them. I wasn’t even bad at that school. Some kids were awful. Soon after I left, I heard it went downhill. They needed to take a long hard look at the teachers, instead of their moral high ground. My morning tutor was an alcoholic that raged at us, the history teacher would drop his pencil to look up girls skirts, the woodwork teacher assaulted me, and the rest of the teachers were verbally abusive beyond discipline; not to mention the PE teacher having a relationship with a pupil. Still, nothing could change the fact that I was riding a wave to hell. What can young people say or do to be treated equally? By the time some of us were teenagers, we knew more about life than half of the adults. It was scandalous.
The only thing I missed about that school was the food and my English teacher who played with me on the corridor during breaks. Hiding behind doors, we pretended we were soldiers shooting at each other, throwing imaginary grenades. He brought his guitar into school to play in front of the class. One day he made a song up about me, playing it to the whole school in every lesson he had, making me famous. He knew I was going through a tough time at home. It went a little like this.
“Josephhhhhhhhh, Joseph Kane.
Josephhhhhhhhh, Joseph Kane.
I say a poor old Joseph,
a poor old Joseph,
poor old Joseph Kaneeee.”
Everyone told me he sang that tune with his guitar for years after I left. Sadly, he ended up dying from cancer years later from smoking I imagined. He was a legend from Blackburn. I will never forget him. Fifty is too young for a good person to die. Scum bags live forever. The man dedicated his life to pupils like me. Now it's my turn to honour him, by doing the best I can in life for acknowledging me as a person, when others ignored me. Its people like him and my gran I want to make proud. It was worth getting kicked out. I had the best time of my life. If I listen carefully, I can still hear remnants of music played by Enya, from one of my classes. The only thing I possessed, was a porcelain flower I made for mum, painted yellow for mothers day. The science department kept my rattlesnake skin that my relative brought from California. I let them keep it to show future pupils. What won’t be missed, are the lonely walks through a dangerous park, when I woke up late. I doubt mum would notice if someone kidnapped me. I could be in France before she gained consciousness.
Just before being exiled from school, mum and I moved into a new flat with Levi. We stayed on the estate; it was just close to my dads old flat by the pubs. Now basking in the sun in Bournemouth, there was no worry of bumping into him again. I only saw him twice a year, and that was only because he visited my gran. He was another parent that had a selfish, strange, ignorance about him. Even still, I loved my dad, and he always said he loved me too; over the telephone of course. He told me I could go and live with him, but it never materialised. He just left me to the mercy of my mother. I had two parents that didn’t want me; how charming. If they couldn’t take care of me, what the hell am I doing on this planet? It took earth 4.543 billion years for two drunks to get together, only to decide they don’t want me. The new flat was a shithole. We went from a perfectly good Council flat, started from scratch, just to move into a damp, private rented flat that was two streets away. I had no idea what went on in her head. It had to be because it was closer to a pub, that’s the only logical explanation. Every time I came back from school, no one was home. She was at the end of the street in the pub getting slaughtered. There was one time when she answered the door when I finished school, telling me about her great news.
“Oright mum! How's your day been mum! How are you mum!” She sarcastically said to me.
“You don’t even ask how your mum is.”
“By the way, I’ve just got married.”
Give me a chance to get through the front door, Jesus! From out the blue, mum and her family went to the registry office, got married and then had a private meal together while I was at school. I didn’t mind of course, Levi was a nice guy. I was the one that got them together, but she could have asked me if it’s ok. It was strange having Levi’s grandchildren, older than me, call me uncle Joseph. They took it serious as well. Even some of Levi’s sons and his daughter introduced me as their brother. She didn’t think twice about filling the freezer before eating a three-course meal, smiling for the camera with a glass of champagne in her hand. I knew why she married him. It was to get her hands on his money. She set up a joint bank account. Now his wife, she had a firm grip on him. Somehow their relationship worked. She never made it easy for him though.
Now at home all the time, the only thing to do is play Grand Theft Auto on my PlayStation 1. Without knowing, my generation was brainwashed by video games that depicted crime. Our surroundings were nothing but a bad influence. The music artist 2pac was in full flow with his music career, and Hollywood released plenty of gangster movies. Adding those elements to our childhood development with the screwed up life we had, contributed to most of the crime we did. With so much bad influence, our minds were totally warped. There were only two outcomes in the future for most of us; prison or death
. That seems like what someone in the Mafia would say; the only difference is, they had a choice to join that life, we didn’t. Unlike organised crime, we did what we had to to survive. Everything was imposed on us from bad parenting. When a kid is brought up in a life of poverty, crime, and substance abuse, the last thing they need is a movie, a song, or a video game to encourage them. I could feel a tug of war in my mind between good and evil. With a short supply of positive role models, I think it's safe to say that future generations are fucked! With bad outweighing the good, I was sucked in by the vortex of instant gratification all around me. The buzz was too addictive.
Some guy with a black leather jacket walked to the shops from his high rise flat. He had a gym bag on his back that was chained around him. Apparently, it was full of beer from the shop, so we decided to rob him. Like a pack of wolves, we attacked him as he walked away ignoring us. Each of us tried to pull his bag off him. Surrounded, we tried everything to stop the grown man reaching his home. I kicked and punched him with everyone else before jumping on his back like a Lion. Placing him in a chokehold, I tried to get my prey to the floor. Everyone ran out of ideas. I looked for a weakness, something I had been taught all my life. His legs were the only thing keeping him up, so I waited until he put his weight on his left leg. I kicked as hard as I could behind his knee so that he would fall from his own weight. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. The rest of the gang spectated, after failed attempts to stop him in the past.
“No way, Kane has got him.”
Once on the floor, they ripped him to pieces like animals. By then, I walked away to the lads watching it. I couldn’t kick someone when they were down. They beat him, robbed him, then left him to struggle home. He was a big tough guy. We were just a bunch of kids, but I felt terrible afterwards. How could everyone else find it so easy to be bad, when I found it so hard?
I went on to steal cars, got arrested one time, then witnessed a copper kick the shit out of my friend Lee for being cheeky. I moved on to slightly bigger things like shoplifting and smoking weed. No one ever told me what to do, or that it was wrong. Being out of school meant I had to go to a day centre. It was a place for naughty kids that received some form of education. Being on the estate, we adopted a new kind of language called backslang. I don’t know where it came from, but the police couldn’t understand a word we were saying to each other. They eventually figured it out. I imagine it's now taught during police training because unless you know a simple concept, you wouldn’t understand it. That was an amusing time while it lasted. Here are some examples.
Ya-goo = you
Way-got = what
Cay-gan = can
Ka-gum-agover-hay-gear = Come over here
Play-geese = Police
Ray-gun = run
Cay-gan-yagoo-gago-tagoo-theyga-shaygop = Can you go to the shop
Alternatively,
Keban-yeboo-gabo-taboo-thaba-sheb-op = Can you go to the shop
We ran rings around the police, destroyed the community along with our own life, even if we didn’t realise. Whenever we wanted to call out to each other, we made a similar noise to what a dolphin makes. Our gang name was the first of its kind, later being copied in different variations for other gangs around Preston. The harder you look into an abyss, the deeper it gets. My intuition and wisdom pulled me back. I had reached as far as I could morally go. My dream was to join the Army or move to America. From the age of eight, after watching action movies all my childhood, I wanted to be a proud soldier that fought and died for my country. The pinnacle of my existence with all my strength was to die on the battlefield with pride, to return to the void where I came from before my drunk parents met. There was no honour in crime or cowardly acts. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. We can’t blame and follow footsteps, just because those before us, betrayed those before them. The life we had can’t be stopped; it has to be syphoned off in a positive new direction. Each bad influence needs to be suffocated like a fire that’s starved of oxygen. Energy in a being will always find an outlet. Direct that energy to something good and a new cycle will follow. Maybe I was crazy for seeking good, and life was inhospitable. All I know is, there is no way I’m spending ten years in prison, or dying at the age of forty from suicide, presuming drink, drugs or a knife doesn’t kill me.
Living close to a Mosque, droves of kids in white religious clothing had to walk through our neighbourhood to get there. As well as pelting stones at them, two brothers equivalent to the Kray twins decided to attack them up in person. The kids were much younger, but they didn’t care. Stealing piles of trainers from the mosque doorway weren’t enough; they had to go one step further. As I was the only person with them at that time, what I witnessed shocked even me. The brothers grabbed as many kids as they could to attack them. They punched and kicked the ones that ran past. The ones that didn’t run were lynched. Having them in headlocks, they chocked the life out of them. The poor boys didn’t say a word throughout the terrifying ordeal. I didn’t know what to do. It was the last thing I expected. They bent the kids over their back, nearly snapping their spines. The squeals that echoed down the street made my skin crawl. For five minutes, they caused absolute carnage outside the Mosque. I never knocked about with them after that. It was nothing more than pure evil. When I think I’ve seen it all, something even more horrific happens. Some of the community got severely victimised over the years. The worst event had to be an elderly couple the same age as my grandparents. Their flat was located down a ginnel next to other flats in a really weird spot. Because most of the kids from that estate ran past, they habitually kicked the elderly couple's door. The couple would come out shouting, which only fuelled everyone to do it more. They asked the Council for a swap, but they didn’t seem to care. They were victimised so bad over the years, they became ill and died. They had other health problems, but I believe they were tortured to death in their own home from the systematic trauma. There was no mercy on anyone that got targeted. It was an evil cartoon stuck on repeat.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall.
Who’s the worst one, of them all.”
Being at home with mum was absolute hell on earth from the age of twelve onwards. It was cheaper to drink at home, so that’s what she did. Now she had the bank of Levi, she was smashed every day. Kestrel super strength lager, with orange juice, was her poison. It stunk! How she could drink that shite, I’ll never know. If I went out, I’d be coerced into some awful crime. If I stayed in, I had one hell of a night. I stayed in my room most of the time. The food situation hadn’t improved; the cupboards were still empty. Her routine was to drink in her room talking crap all night to Levi with loud music. I honestly thought he would make her calm down. After getting her ass kicked by his daughter, her antics were magnified. Phil Collins, Police, and Sting vibrated through my wall as I tried to sleep. For no reason at all, fired up on loopy juice, she would come crashing through my door.
“Get the fuck up, and get in my room now. You have five seconds!”
I couldn’t go back to sleep, because she would do the same thing until I complied. The hallway light shined around her head. All I could see was a thin shadow, with green eyes bulging out like a monster. After punching my door three or four times, she walked off waiting for me.
“Right, what the fucks going on? What the hell do you think you are doing?”
It was all a figment of her imagination. She didn’t even know my favourite colour, let alone what I got up to. I just wanted to go to sleep. Now mentally unstable, she enjoyed tormenting me for hours on end, depriving me of sleep. All Levi did was sit in silence, looking at the floor. Neither of us did anything wrong. She created it in her head like she wanted to fight someone, from the rocket fuel she drank. After hours of suffering, there was no sign of slowing down. Climbing back in bed made it worse.
“Will you fucking leave me alone.”
Swearing at her gave her all the ammunition she needed. It made her worse as the night went on. Six hour
s later, she burnt herself out, falling asleep on the floor next to her music CDs. After an hour of sleep, the dragon awoke, doing precisely the same thing.
“Get in here now, you’re taking the fucking piss out of me.”
It didn’t matter if I had school or not. Half of my detentions were from falling asleep in class. She ran a campaign of torment for years. Sat in my room one night watching a movie on the small television my grandparents bought, a sex scene came on. Hearing her coming towards my room, I tried to turn it off quickly. It was another excuse to start on me. She walked in before I could turn it off.
“What the fucking hell? You better get the fuck in here now. I can’t believe this shit. Levi, he’s watching fuckin porn. He’s a dirty bastard; I want him out of my house.”
She caused havoc for hours on end. Explaining it was an action movie called Timecop, with Jean-Claude Van Damme didn’t matter. It was all the excuse she needed. She was crazier than a shithouse rat.
The best part was when my mum's friends and family phoned up or came around. It was like flicking a switch on her back; talk about Jekyll and Hyde. She would go from a violent, aggressive, abusive person to Mary Poppins in two seconds flat. The snake with two heads revealed itself. She reminded me of Medusa. The torment was compared to sitting under a dripping tap, while water drops bounced off my head. Evil thoughts passed through my mind, while incredible anger overcame me, now that I was in full flow of puberty. All that I endured in my life was finally at the surface. I wanted to kill her. Everything my dad did to her had somehow become justified. We had two cats to help kill the mice in the back yard. It had the opposite effect. The cats would catch the mice, then bring them in as a gift. We originally had one cat, but it ran away. I would have done the same given the situation. Under the sink, we had some rat poison. As well as being terrified of spiders, my mum hated mice or creepy crawlies. Personally, I think she hated anything that lived. I placed some of the rat poison on the counter, before crushing it up with a lighter. I was so angry, I just wanted her to die. I mixed it with a cup of tea that I had made for her. It was probably enough to kill a small elephant. Looking down at the cup, her next hour was about to be her last. Consequences of the aftermath invaded my thoughts. There was no reason to prolong my suffering or hers. There was no future other than a life of drink for this stranger called mum. Lying in her pit, I walked down the hall past my bedroom. Eventually, I was outside her room with a cup of tea that was about to change my life forever. Stood frozen, I became overwhelmed with doubt, guilt and every other emotion a good son would feel. Then I questioned myself. She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a caring, thoughtful son with a conscience. I threw the cup of tea down the sink. She wasn’t worth it. Life will catch her up. It catches everybody up. I didn’t know how much more I could take.