Skateboards and Methadone.

by Doctor Beard

When you take a variety of drugs on a regular basis you soon learn the meaning of two horrible words. The fear. Wherever you go, it doesnt matter what country, these words seem to be pretty much universal. Anyone stuck into a steady drug habit will know meaning of that terrible expression. I'd had my fair share of bad times on LSD and paranoid collapses from amphetamines. At the point of my life that this incident is set I had actually quit acid because of serious flashbacks and paranoid delusions involving God and myself, who had it in for me in a big way. That one lasted about three months and I spent nearly all that time in one room scribbling frantically on insanely violent comic strips, so I figured I should quit the regular intake. Having God against you when you have spent all of your life as an atheist is a hard trip to handle, but nothing can prepare you to face a psychotic mutant who's screaming about wanting to cut people up with his knife in a hospital waiting room at six in the morning.

It was late spring, maybe early June. Nighttime. It had just stopped raining. Varnish and myself were out on the orange-black wet Derby streets. We were by the hospital on Osmaston Road, looking down Keble close that ran down the side of the Hospital. There were wet, glistening cars on both sides of the road, all the way down to a dead end, a high curb and fences with just a small alleyway to get through.

"It's a tight gap," I said, "but I think we can get through. Gotta mind that curb though."

"I don't know," replied Varnish, "it looks like a big curb, and at that speed. I don't know, besides I'm not completely with it."

Several hours earlier back at the flat we were on the nightly shift when just before closing time we had a late caller. I'd served her before, brought up by a good friend. The woman was probably early thirties, once good looking, now just a worn out shell, eaten away by heroin and a rough life. She had bleach damaged shoulder length hair and cropped black leather jacket.

"I need some hash but I haven't got much money." She told us.

I saw Varnish's face of money joy drop. He got up, sat on the couch and loaded a bong.

"Are you asking for a lay on?" I asked, not sure what she was expecting me to say. There was no way she'd get a lay on, she wasn't regular enough and we didn't know where she lived.

"Oh, good god no, I have these." She pulled out a pack of ten pills, from the packaging it looked pharmaceutical.

"What are they?" Varnish jumped in, his eyes lighting up at the sight of class A drugs.

"It's Methadone," she replied, "ten of them. You see it's my script but I'd rather have ten quid's worth of hash, it does a better job keeping me away from the smack, and doesn't mong me out as much." I turned to Varnish, "What do you think?" After all it was his money behind it all.

"I say go for it." Varnish never took his eyes off the small silver packet of pills.

"Looks like you got yourself a deal." I said, "Ten quid's worth?"

"Yeah, if that's okay with you."

"Believe me it's fine with us," I said, "We got something to do tonight, now. Fancy a trip out on the Skateboards, Varnish?"

Varnish replied but the words were lost trying to hold down the vast amount of hash he'd just inhaled through a glass bong.

I cut the hash up for the woman. As she left she warned us not to take more than four each; "you'll end up puking your guts up." With that she left, she said she had someone waiting.

We sat and ate five Methadone pills each and sat smoking for a while, listening to Ween blasting out of top range speakers with no regard for the neighbours whatsoever. Pure Guava, a damn fine album. Nothing happened after an hour so we cracked open a few beers, besides it had started raining, so we figured the skateboard trip was out the question. I had gotten into skateboards and narcotics back in ninety-one, spending most Saturday nights high on LSD skating the deserted streets of Derby, always ending up in the haunts of Markeaton Park around dawn.

No, there was nothing for it; we'd just have to sit it out in the time capsule, a ten by eight-foot room with a sloping roof and no windows. The floors were covered in hairy rugs, empty beer cans and bottles, and overloaded ashtrays. Varnish had two of his paintings on the non-sloping wall. One look at those and you knew he was a drug fiend. They were good too. One thing that I never understood about Varnish, he was a damn good artist, a little mutated by his vast intake of narcotics, but good still the same. Yet he never really used his talents to do anything as far as I know. The last I heard he was a night security guard, on the gates of some factory or industrial estate.

But I'm being side tracked here; I should be talking about the time capsule room. The bottom end of the room was completely filled with Varnish's stereo equipment, laid out on a long flat coffee table. Unknown to Varnish at this point in his life was how wrecked everything in this room would get over such a short space of time. So wrecked that he would end up retreating all his belongings to the safety of his bedroom.

I'd already managed to set fire to his sofa with a zippo lighter whilst loading a bong. Thinking I'd snapped the lid on the zippo lighter shut; I laid it on the sofa next to me. There it burned for several minutes until I noticed the flames lapping my leg. After that a fat speed freak sat back on the sofa, breaking the back supports. The sofa moved to lean against the wall after that. The stereo equipment took the next beating. A young freak called Martin stumbled down to the bottom end of the room in search of a space to sit; by this time the house had become a meeting place for everyone and was getting a bit full on most nights. Martin had taken something, possibly heroin; this was his usual taste, but you never could tell with Martin, he would have eaten anything that came by. He seemed to have a special gift for obtaining all the nicest, obscure drugs; he could have been on anything.

As he went to sit down his legs gave way and he fell forwards, his head hit the coffee table square on the corner. The turntable on the other side of the table threw the needle across the Butthole Surfers album and the whole thing bounced off the table.

Martin was out for the count; several people in the room were in fits of uncontrollable laughter. Others had looks of horror on their face.

"He sure hit that table hard," I heard someone say, "is he okay?"

I rolled him over. Recently Martin had gone into shaving his head to a grade one, and their had been many comments of his similarity to Charles Manson. He was a small guy, pretty weedy looking and suffered from schizophrenia.

His eyes were closed, he wasn't moving. Holy shit I thought, we're done for if he's dead, with enough narcotics in this flat to put us away for ten years, we didn't stand a chance if the police came sniffing around at a dead junkies body.

It was then I noticed the mark. When Martin had hit the table he'd split the skin just above the bridge of his nose, a crooked cross in the exact same place, size and angle as Charles Mansons forehead carving.

"Fuck me, would you take a look at that!" I said, hardly believing my eyes.

Martin's eyes sprung wide open. He leapt up and began screaming like a little girl. I turned and went to sit back down on the broken, burned sofa; "He's okay." I said. After a minute or so the girlish squeals turned into and audible sound, "My head, did you see what I just did to my head." His usual hysterical laughter followed. This was Martins reaction to most situations. Just laugh in its face, a damn good philosophy when you cut down to the bone of modern society.

The next incident involved Martin again about a month after the Manson night, Martin being in the same skagged up state as usual. It happened about two or three in the morning. Martin was on the nod. We’d been watching Hong Kong movies earlier and I had just finished a bong, trying to calm down the full body rushes that burst from my abdomen uncontrollably at regular intervals. I had been speeding for three or four days on base. I was in desperate need of some Morphine or Methadone to help me slow down so I could get a good nights sleep. Nothing had turned up so I resorted to beer, wine and grass. It was damn good grass at that time too, a constant supply of a stinky orange bud. I remember thinking this plan wasn’t working and I thought about going to get the rest of the base, about a gram and take it just to see what sort of monster I would turn into. It was then I heard a terrible sound. First a trickle, like a tap spits out occasionally in the middle of the night. Then there it came, more and more, louder. I looked at Martin, man he’s out for the count I thought. I leaned over him, where the hell was that noise coming from? It definitely sounded like running water, but from somewhere in the room, but that would be impossible, there were no taps or water supplies in the time capsule. Down by the side of the sofa, next to Martin was a large glass ashtray; it looked like it was full of some kind of liquid. Some kind of liquid? Thoughts raced thick and fast, what the hell could have caused that? I knew already but refused to accept the answer. Any other reason but that one, maybe a spilt drink, maybe I’ve been awake too long and it’s not there at all. No that wasn’t going to work. I looked back at Martin, then down to his trousers. I noticed where I was leaning on the sofa, next to Martin seemed wet. “ Oh shit!” I jumped up. “ You dirty bastard Martin. Ah shit, that’s so wrong.” The piss was still running off the edge of the sofa into the brimming ashtray, joint ends bobbed up and down in it. Confusion filled me. What should I do, how should I handle this. Under normal circumstances this probably seemed an easy thing to deal with, I thought, but these weren’t normal circumstances. My brain was reeling, what should I do? I thought. I’ll go and tell Varnish. He’ll know what to do, besides it’s his sofa, I’m not cleaning it up. It was then I remembered what he’d said after the last incident in the time capsule. Anyone, who damaged anything else in there, he was going to cut something small off them. An ear or a nose, maybe even a finger. To add to that Varnish had been on a binge since we’d lost ours jobs several months earlier, and this was the first night I’d known him go to bed so early. No, he’d needed his sleep; he’d been on the edge for weeks now. No, deal with this yourself, how hard can it be, it’s just a guy, smacked out of his skull, shit, he could be dead for all I know, pissing all over your deranged flat mates sofa. I knew the body releases it’s bodily waste when you die, was this the beginning of it? Is this how it starts, next vomiting, shitting and bleeding. I knew very little about that terrible drug he was on and I didn’t want to know. I was sweating and the room was twisting, double vision strobed in and out. Then it came to me, of course, it’s that simple. I turned on the spot, switched the television off, stumbled across beer cans and ashtrays, getting tangled up in the matted fur rugs. I kicked a tall glass bong over, grabbing it before the deadly water spilled out all over the floor. I switched the lights off, pulled the door to and slid off into my room, diving into my duvet using it as a shield, a vain attempt to protect myself from some horrible drug fueled scenario that was ready to ensue at any moment. I sat their rigid for a while, frozen with amphetamines and fear, working out how tomorrow would run. Just deny all knowledge of Martin pissing, it must have happened when you went to bed, this was the first you heard about it. I relaxed, that’s it, the Ronald Reagan routine to embarrassing situations, deny all knowledge, it all went on behind my back. But what if he is dead? What then? If the police got in hear we’d both be away for a long time and a dead junkie in your flat only leads to one thing, police. This would not do, I guess we’ll just have to dump his body somewhere, just another statistic for the already overflowing police records. I had another dab of speed, smoked some pipes and listened to music on the headphones until I could see light through my window. I watched endless spirals on the ceiling and behind my eyelids.

I must have passed out, I didn’t remember going to sleep when I woke up. I heard movement in the room next door. Here we go I thought. I heard Varnishes voice, he was mumbling something but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Cans and glass objects clattered about in there. It sounded like an animal scavenging for scraps in the rubbish. Then, “ JESUS CHRIST, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SMELL?” I held the laughter that wanted to burst out of me, like a condemned man laughing at his executioner. Don’t be stupid man, it’ll blow your cover story. Give it ten minutes I thought then head straight in there, a confused, sleep depraved speed head. “OH SHIT, AH NO, MARTIN YOU DIRTY FUCKING BASTARD, LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO MY FUCKING SOFA.”

It was about three in the morning. Varnish was laid out on the sofa, cleaned since Martins little accident. Varnish never new that I knew about the sofa, even to this day he still remains in the dark about the most cowardly act I have ever done. I was vegged out on the floor. At some point the Methadone had kicked in real heavy, fueled along with the beers we’d sunk earlier. “ Hey, it’s stopped raining.” I said. “ I feel sick.” “ Don’t worry about it, everyone gets that, it’ll pass.” “ Is that normal then, to feel sick like that?” “ Well, sometimes I guess, yeah.” “ Oh, that’s fucked that is, who would want that? Pay for a drug and it makes you sick. It’s wrong, there should be a goddamn law against it.” “ Just calm down, you’ll be okay in a minute, everyone gets it.” This was the first time Varnish had taken Methadone; I had failed to mention how dirty it makes you feel, or the waves of nausea that hit you. I got the feeling Varnish wasn’t handling his first hit of it too well. I remembered my first time on that down right dirty drug. It was at a good friends flat on a cold and wet October evening. We had four pills each and spent the night talking, drinking coffee and listening to jazz reggae and punk. My friend, as I recall, had a pretty rough time on it. I fell into a complete calm whilst on this drug and couldn’t understand how anyone could become uneasy on this stuff. This calm and relaxed attitude to these types of drug, did put me a bit on edge, better not do this too often I thought, I could get quite used to this. We had spent the entire evening drinking endless cups of coffee, a whole ten hours averaging three cups an hour. The whole evening neither of us had pissed, this resulted in both of us having excess fluids in our bodies that needed to be dumped somewhere, and quick. The result was not nice, a half-hour constantly relaying to the toilet. It seemed like I had vomited my body weight in warm coffee by six in the morning as the sun rose over the houses and flooded the kitchen with blinding light. Experience of this awful drug pointed to some sort of digestive shut down, I knew heroin caused the user to become constipated whilst using, I figured the Methadone caused a similar sort of side effect. This usually passed within twenty-four hours though. “ Listen, its stopped raining,” I said, “lets go out on the skateboards, the street’s will be empty this time of night, easy skating.” “ Will it stop me feeling ill?” “ It might work, worth a try I guess.” “ Okay, lets go.”

It was late, I had no idea how long we had been stood on the top of the hill, in the middle of the road, arguing about board speeds and wet roads and what could possibly happen to you if you came off at that speed. I had only once seen a bad accident on a board, a friend of mine came off his board at twenty five miles an hour or so and broken his collarbone in two places. His fault I guess, he had panicked, tried to jump off the board and run to slow himself down. “ I still don’t know. How fast will we be when we hit the bottom?” Varnish was still uncertain about the downhill skate. “ Hell, I don’t know. Look, when you get close to that curb kick the back of your board and you’ll go over the kerb.” The impatience in my voice was very apparent, well to me anyway. I needed to be somewhere, but where that place was I wasn’t too sure. Just any place but here, we stood out like sore thumbs under a bright orange streetlight in the middle of the junction. The police were everywhere on this street and we were carrying enough smoking implements, hash and joints to be hauled straight into a cold cell. Then they’d set on us, knowing damn well that we were on something and try to extract some piece of information before the drugs wore off. “ What’s that?” Varnish was looking back up the main road into town. I could hear something too. It was coming closer. From the scrambled mess I could make out distant voices, loud, abusive, drunk. “ Come on lets get out of here.” said Varnish. Walking towards us were five brutish pub types, they’d seen us and were shouting something at us. I could make out, “ …eh, skateboarder…”, it sounded like that looping every two seconds. “ Why,” I replied, “we’ve just as much right to be here as anyone else. I’m not moving just because of them.” “ Then you stay, I’m going.” “ Well, if they want to get funny, remember we’ve got skateboards. Have you ever felt what it’s like getting one of those in the head?” Of course he hadn’t and neither had I for that matter. “ Look, there’s five of them and there’s only two of us. They look really big and mean to me from here and drunk too. Fuck it, I’m going.” Varnish scooted off down the hill, accelerating faster than I had expected. He shot down the wet road, soon reaching twenty miles per hour. “ Hey, this road maybe steeper than I thought.” I shouted after him. He didn’t hear but it was too late for him anyway. The five gorillas in white shirts were about fifty feet away. I could still hear them shouting “Skateboarder”, but now I could also hear what Varnish must have heard, “ WANKER!” “Oh shit.” I stepped on the board and accelerated down the steep slope, parked cars rushing by, I felt like I was stationary and the whole world had speeded up around me, everything becoming a blurred motion, a time lapse. I could see Varnish ahead of me; he had one foot trailing on the floor, trying to decelerate his board. The drunks were somewhere at the top of the hill, we were well of their range by now. The melodic shouted abuse had stopped. I had nearly caught up with Varnish; he brought his trailing foot back onto the board, glanced back at me, grinning insanely and hurtled towards the kerb. He kicked the tail of the board, the rear trucks clipped the kerb, but he was over. He fought to keep on the board, his arms and legs flailing everywhere. The kerb was rushing towards me at a terrible rate; I kicked up the tail, and hurtled over the kerb. I remember thinking “ No way, you did it.” but as that thought left my mind I landed, instantly realizing I had left my board back at the kerb. I landed and fell into a twenty mile an hour run, my legs were trying to fold under me, I could see the broken collar bone hurtling towards me like a frieght train. I kept up and even managed to slow down a bit before collapsing in a heap at the other end of the alleyway. Varnish stood under a streetlight, in his usual subtle manner, lighting a massive cone that could have been spotted at two hundred metres. “ Come on, let’s get out of here before those geezers come after us. Where’s your board?” “ I think it left me at the kerb.” “ Well go and get it, before they come and get us.” “ Relax,” I stood up and brushed the grit and gravel off my hands, “ they’re not after us, they’re probably pissing up a tree somewhere by now.” I went and got my skateboard, it was still intact. This skateboard was indestructible, one of the old wide boards. We walked a while smoking the cone, then continued on our boards through quiet council estates and subways, ending up down on the embankment by the river Derwent. The embankment was made of concrete and stepped down to the river. Not a bad place to skate, but we were in no fit state by then to even stand on a board. The Methadone hung thick in our veins. Movement seemed almost impossible. We sat by the river and smoked a couple of pipes then I lit a joint, this time a non-conspicuous size. Water rushed over a wear nearby, creating a hypnotic sound. I don’t know how long we sat there just staring off across the water watching what looked like random images and short clips of eight-millimeter film being projected on to the darkness on the other side of the river.

Something shocked me from the first peace I had felt in a long time. I looked around; everything seemed really dark and blurred. I couldn’t see Varnish. My eyes began to re-adjust. Then there came a voice. “ Can you help me?” I looked around; it seemed to be coming from everywhere. My head started spinning. I stood up, get a grip godammit I thought, where’s Varnish? “ Varnish?” There was silence. Then, “ Yeah.” “ Where are you?” My vision was filling with black spots that seemed to have solidity and depth. “ I’m here having a piss. Shut up, will you, there’s someone up there.” My vision began to clear; I could see a bright orange glowing stone bridge in front of me. The voice came again. “ Excuse me, please could you help me.” I spotted a figure standing on the bridge to the left of us. He was looking straight at us. Varnish stepped out of the darkness by the river edge, zipping up his fly. “ What’s up Doc?” he said, “Are you alright?” “ Up there,” I said, “ we’ve been made.” “ Excuse me, can you please help me?” “ What’s the matter, man?” Shouted Varnish. I instantly knew this was the wrong thing for us to do, my instincts were saying cut and run, just get the hell out of there. This was going to be bad and we were in no state to deal with it at all. The figure walked across the bridge and down the steps towards us, “ Are you good people? Can you help me?” Varnish said again, “ What’s the matter, man?” “ It’s my head, look. Look what he did to it.” By this time he was stood in front of us, he tipped his head forward, he’d been holding his head since we first saw him, but only now did it register it why. His head was split open on the top, at least ten centimeters long. It was a gapping soggy wound and he was loosing quite a lot of blood from it. “ Holy shit, what the fuck happened to you?” I asked. “ This man, he hit me in the head with a tyre thing, you know a thing for the wheel.” The man looked up; he was only a boy, sixteen maybe seventeen. His face was covered in glistening thick black blood. Some had dried, he’d had this wound a while I remember thinking. There was something about this boy I instantly felt uneasy about. He didn’t seem right, I mean in the way he seemed to be. His general calmness after being smashed in the head with a tyre wrench. Something had put me on edge and I didn’t know what. “ Holy Jesus!” I exclaimed, “ You need to go to a hospital, man” “ Or the police,” said Varnish, “ Hell, we’ll take you up there, they gotta catch this guy. You can’t just go around hitting people in the head when you fell like it; there’d be anarchy. Where would we be then, eh?” “Maybe the police wouldn’t be such a good idea, Varnish.” I said. He looked at me puzzled. I gave him a, you know why, nod. He seemed to realize. “ No I can’t go to the cops.” Said the boy. “ Why not?” we both asked simultaneously. “ Because I’m on a curfew. I’m supposed to be in by ten every night. If they catch me out here now they’ll put me away.” “Why are you on a curfew?” asked Varnish, “ What you done?” “I err… burgled a few houses a few years ago, when I was younger, but I’ve done my time, I just want the chance to get on with my own life, but they keep harassing me. They won’t leave me alone and now they’ve put me on this curfew.” “ That’s some hard shit, man.” I said. “ Don’t worry kid,” Said Varnish. Oh no, please don’t, but before I could finish that thought he already said it. “We’ll help you. We won’t leave you out here on your own. We’re good people. Honest citizens.” Varnish put his arm around the boy and was already walking up the street. “Varnish.” I called after him. He carried on walking, talking to the boy. “ Well, err…what about the skateboarding? Are we just gonna forget that then?” There was no talking to him; he was on a mission. His mind locked onto a certain point in time where he now knew he had to be. In my experiences of the drug culture this was common practice. “We’ll take him back to the flat with us.” Varnish said as I caught up to him. We turned left and walked up St. Peter’s street, past shops and travel agencies, the orange lights illuminating the red brick street. The clock on the weird concrete erection in front of us said four forty seven. Great, I thought, it’ll be daylight soon and we can get rid of this freak. I lit a cigarette. “ So, tell us again, what happened to you?” asked Varnish. The boy told us he had asked this man for the time and the guy smashed him in the head with the tyre wrench. “ So this guy was in the street when he hit you?” “ No,” the boy looked at Varnish like he was an idiot; “ he was in his house.” Varnish looked at me full of confusion. I shrugged and dragged on the cigarette. “ What do you mean he was in his house? Were you in his house?” “No, I just knocked on his door to ask him the time, then he hit me in the head with the wheel…” I cut in,“ Tyre wrench.” this character was starting to annoy me. “ Yes, the tyre wrench. He hit me in the head here.” He pointed to his head again. Then it hit me; this boy was simple, backward. “ You knocked on someone’s door to ask them the time?” asked Varnish. “ Yes.” “ Did he tell you?” I asked. “ No, he hit me in the head with a tyre wrench.” The boy scowled at me, I hopped on my board and skated off up ahead. “ Might as well get some in seen as we’re going home.” I called back. I headed up the hill towards the concrete structure then turned it and flew back down the hill towards Varnish and the boy, lurching all over the road. As we headed home the only thing open was a massage parlour, a gigantic red and blue neon sign flashing on and off outside. This area of the street was constantly filled with parked Mercedes, BMW’s and Jaguars. The sky was starting to lighten by the time we got back to the flat. You could see distant clouds rolling across purple skies over the flats facing us across the square. We went up to the top floor flat and I made tea. Varnish and the boy went to his bedroom. I remember Varnish said he was going to clean the boy’s head. I went into the bedroom and entered a conversation I wasn’t sure I was hearing. The vibrations in this room were very unusual and definitely not friendly. “…Okay, I’ll go and run you a bath and I’ll call you when it’s ready.” Varnish said. He turned to leave the room. “ What’s going on?” I asked. “ His heads a right old mess. I’m gonna run him a bath so he can clean it properly.” Varnish smiled, but there was something unnerving in it. Was he keeping something from me? He turned and headed to the bathroom. I handed the boy his tea, he said thank you. He was grinning insanely at me, I felt like I was in the “we’re gonna get ya!” scene in “The Evil Dead”, a possessed character sat cross legged on the bed in front of me, but when would he start singing those terrible rhymes at me? I had to keep my cool; this guy was starting to get to me. Remain calm, if this kid thinks he’s getting to you there is a distinct possibility he’ll take advantage of the situation. It seemed like he had the mind of a ten-year-old but the deviance of a habitual criminal. He wasn’t to be trusted. I went and sat on the sofa in the left-hand corner of the room and put some music on. I heard the taps start running in the bathroom. I lay back on the sofa and drifted off into any uneasy silence. Everything I looked at looked black, even the lights. I felt like I was being swallowed into the sofa, slowly being sucked in. I could still hear the music but it seemed really far away. This sensation was familiar to me; I’d felt this type of drug many times before, sucking me in. It was even there that first cold October night at my friend’s house. Varnish walked back in the room. “Okay, the bath’s ready. Come with me and I’ll show you what towel to use.” The boy got up and followed Varnish out of the room. He still had the same stupid grin on his face as he left. I sat up and started to paste a joint together. Varnish came back into the room a few minutes later and sat down on the bed. He started to load one of the many home made bongs that were laid around the room. “ He says he can’t wash himself.” Varnish said after a minute or so. “ You what?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “ He says he can’t wash himself. He can’t even get himself undressed, I had to do it for him.” My eyes darted to Varnish in shock; he looked straightforward at the blank television screen not two feet in front of him, no expression in his eyes. “ Well, count me out.” I finally said, Varnish snapped out of whatever world he was in, “ No way, I’m not doing it. There’s something about this character, I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. Do you really believe that story he told us about the curfew?” “ I don’t know,” replied Varnish in a bilge of hash smoke, “ He’s just not all there, you know, he’s a bit simple. Don’t worry I wasn’t asking you when I said that. I’ll do it. I don’t mind.” “ I don’t know, that’s kinda weird, you’re going to give a young boy a bath you’ve only just met tonight, doesn’t something strike you as odd here?” “ Oh God, what are you saying man?” Varnish got up and left the room, then came back in again a moment later, “ I hope you’re not saying what I think your saying, because if you are saying what I think you’re saying then you’re sicker than I ever thought you could be.” He stormed out making “uck!” noises and shouting, “ that’s disgusting.” I lay on the bed smoking the joint and listened to the music, turning the volume up with my foot. What the hell was going on in there? Had I spent all this time sharing a flat with a man whose sexual orientations I had no idea of. What evil thing was manifesting itself in front of that poor unsuspecting boy, in the bathroom as we speak? That vile drug beast in the bathroom with the boy was not a man to be trusted, he enjoyed nothing more than freaking unsuspecting members of society whilst under the security of hard drugs. Perhaps the boy wanted it to happen, maybe he’d planned this all along, well all except the bash in the head, but how would I know? But good tunes at five thirty in the morning; suddenly everything is forgotten in a haze of thick grey-blue smoke and Tom Waits wailing over a king hell honky-tonk band.

I came around as the boy walked back into the room; I could feel him watching me, even without looking at him. I asked if he was okay. He said his head still hurt. “ Well, you took a pretty heavy bang in the head, I’m surprised you haven’t got concussion.” The boy returned to the exact position on the bed as he was before. Varnish came in and sat down. We sat listening to calm sounds, smoking and drinking ribena, thinking the vitamin c would do us some good. The sun shone into the room casting streams of yellow through the smoke filled room. The boy asked what we were doing. I looked up from the smoking bong. “ We’re smoking hash, what does it look like?” “ Can I have some,” he asked, “it looks good.” We pondered this for a while, maybe it would help the pain in his head, maybe it would calm him down. Maybe it would knock him out completely and we’d end up with a young boy in a coma and a big crack in his skull to explain to the police. Then when he woke he would tell the police how these two degenerate looking men took him to their flat, bathed him and then made him smoke some drug that rendered him helpless. No, this was a bad idea I thought. He may even just go completely uncontrollable, we’d end up with a near fit situation, I’ve seen it happen before and it wasn’t nice. So we decided the hash painkiller was not a good idea. The boy began complaining that his head really hurt. Then he started to moan and rock backwards and forwards. Varnish and I decided to get him to the hospital quick, our time as Samaritans was over, we’d had enough of this creep. It was around six thirty as we stumbled to the car, my body rebounded from every step I took. I felt rubbery and I had little strength in any of my limbs. I had the boy in front of me, occasionally grabbing his jacket collar and helpfully thrusting him in the direction of the car. Varnish was in front us; he staggered around the car, pulling his keys from his jeans. “ Are you okay to drive?” I shouted. He just about made it to the driver’s door and looked up at me, “ I’m fine, we’ll make it.” He looked like his head was about to burst. His face had turned purple and he was struggling with the lock, muttering and swearing for a minute then we all got in and Varnish started the battered Corolla and turned the car one-eighty out onto the main road, turning left into town. He was driving about seven miles per hour. “ Speed up, man. We’re so godamned conspicuous.” I bleated in a panic stricken voice. I could feel the cops closing in on us right now. There were probably two of them watching us as we left the flat. They weren’t there for us, hell no. Just a couple of good old fashioned policemen having their breakfast in a quiet part of the neighbourhood after a ball breaking eight hour night shift. Then out stumble us two, unable to walk or even to open car doors, clamber into a car that looks like it hasn’t seen a MOT certificate for five years and drive off. “ I’m speeding up now,” snapped Varnish, “ you gotta give me time.” Something stirred in my stomach, writhing like a giant worm. The boy was still wailing, but it had gotten louder now. “ Arrr…my head, my head…arrr!” He was repeating this at regular intervals. “ I know your fucking head hurts,” snarled Varnish, “ we’re going to the hospital aren’t we, shut up for a fucking minute will you.” I could see he was loosing control of the situation. We made it about two hundred metres along the main road, averaging fifteen to twenty miles per hour. The churning in my stomach erupted up towards my mouth. “Pull over, I’m going to be sick.” I shrieked. “ What?” “ Just do it!” Varnish screeched to a halt, I opened the passenger door and threw up into the gutter. The vomit was bright purple. Varnish took one look at my sorry state of affairs and instantly threw up out of the driver’s door. I looked up over the dashboard just in time to see the patrol car glide past. Everything was silent and time itself seemed to slow. I could see the judge, the scowling jury and the grey prison bars flash in front of me. Varnish sat up and closed his door. “ Oh shit.” I said, it was all I was capable of, apparently this is the most common word people say before they die. “ What?” asked Varnish. “Cops, the cops. Oh shit, we’re dead.” “ Oh fuck!” said Varnish as he saw the police car right in front of us. He dropped down in his seat, cowering and babbling. But the police car kept going and with in a minute it was out of our sight. We looked at each other in amazement. How could they have not seen us? A car parked on double yellow lines at six thirty in the morning with two guys throwing up out of each door. It didn’t seem possible but it had indeed happened. “ We better get going before we push our luck anymore.” I said, “ Are you okay to drive?” “ I think so.” He slammed the car into gear and sped off to the roundabout ahead of us, turning right onto the one-way system and then right again at the next roundabout. Then on to the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary Accident and Emergency car park. I was out of the car before Varnish had time to stop. I opened the rear passenger door and hauled out the kid. “ Come on, no time to waste, my lad. Lets get that head of yours seen to. How is it, your head I mean?” “ It really hurts, I keep going dizzy.” He was whining, maybe even faking it a bit, well that was the impression I got at that time. Varnish made it out of the car and locked it up. He looked purple and swollen, ready to throw vomit on some unsuspecting doctor at any moment. “ Let’s get this over with.” I said. “Damn straight.” replied Varnish without even looking at me; he just headed straight for the accident and emergency sign above the main set of doors in front of us.

A deathly silence hit us the moment we walked into the waiting room. There were several victims of various night-time rampages. A guy with his arm in a sling, another guy with a homemade bandage around his hand, blood seeping through and dripping on the floor. In the middle of the seating arrangement in the waiting room was an old couple in matching anoraks. They were all looking at us. “Can I help you?” said a voice. I swung round, trying to find the owner. I couldn’t see anyone, so I improvised, just pretend you have seen them, get your bearings later. “ Err, yes. This man. He needs your help. You see, his head.” I pointed at the gaping hole in the boy’s head. “ Yes, he needs your help and he’s in a lot of pain you know.” I spotted where the sleep-depraved voice of a woman was coming from. In the wall right in front of me was a small window with a nurse in the middle, bursting out of a uniform two sizes too small for her. “ Name?” She yawned. “ Err, mine or the guy with the hole in his head?” Varnish took the boy to sit down at the far end of the waiting room, away from any other people. “ The victim, sir.” She said. There was a severe emphasis on the “Sir”, Like a bad taste in the mouth. We we’re not liked here. This angered me, we’d spent the evening with this freak, cleaned him and looked after him most of the night, wasted the good clean drugs on taking care of someone who couldn’t even bath himself. “ Look, I don’t know who this guy is, we just found him in town last night with his head split open.” “ What time last night?” “ What?” “ What time last night did you find him?” “ Doesn’t matter, we were out skateboarding and we found him.” “ Skateboarding?” “ Yes, skateboarding, why?” I could feel the sweat now running off my face and down my back. The conversation became more hectic, more questions, she knew I was on something and the moment I sat down she’d be on the phone to the police. Eventually she ceased questioning, I thought I was going to pass out, it felt like a hundred and five degrees in that waiting room. No, not now, I thought, you pass out now and they’re going to find you full of Methadone. I could see her looking at me, but the room was rocking from left to right. I had to pull myself together. “ Well, is that it?” I asked, completely in tatters from the barrage of questions she had just hit me with. Had I told her something I shouldn’t have? I couldn’t remember. “ Yes, you can sit in the waiting room now, please.” “ Well, how long is this going to take?” “You’ll have to wait in line, we’re short staffed, so you’ll have to wait with the others.” I went and sat between Varnish and the boy. Varnish lay back on the chairs, his eyes were closed but I sensed he was still with us. The boy had the insane grin on his face and he had taken to rocking back and forth again. Blood had started to fill the hole in his head again. We sat for a while in silence, the boy rocking back and forth, me staring blankly at the wall and Varnish passed out on the chairs. The methadone had calmed down now, but exhaustion was taking control. I felt sick, my stomach burned from the vomit session in the street. My arms and legs felt heavy and weak, I just sat and looked at the apple white wall wishing I could get up and go for a coffee and cigarette, but Varnish was out of it and I couldn’t leave this deranged, concussed boy on his own. Who knew what this skinny teenager was capable of doing. “ How long do we have to wait?” said the boy. “ I don’t know, we’re in a queue and all those people over there are before you,” I said pointing at the other patients, only the hand victim and the old couple were left. “ And the doctors are short staffed, so we may be here a while.” “ But, my head hurts.” “ I know your head hurts, but we have to wait.” I looked at the clock, seven forty five. The sun shone bright through the windows of the waiting room burning on my tired, dilated eyes. The boy began wailing again and rocking. I turned to Varnish. “ I think this guy is loosing it.” Varnish didn’t respond, he just lay over the four grey, plastic chairs. This was it; I was going to have to deal with this lunatic myself. His wailing had got louder; people were starting to look round. A nurse watched from behind a mesh re-enforced window. Oh shit, I thought, he’s drawing attention to us. This looks bad, two drug addicts, one passed out, the other looking like he’s going to burst in a drug crazed frenzy and a young teenage boy with a ton of blood all over his clothes and a gaping wound in his head. Any minute now the cops would walk in and that would be it. “ Ahh, my head, it really hurts. Ahh…” “ I know, but what can I do? Look, you’re gonna have to calm it down, you’re gonna get us in trouble. ” “ But it hurts, I feel funny. Ahh, it hurts, it really hurts.” He was almost in tears by this point. “ I know, fucking shut up will you.” “ I have a knife, you know.” “What?” I looked up to the boy, his face had completely changed, there was no pain in it, no tears, just a look of insane hatred for everything in this world. I turned to Varnish but he was still gone. “ I’ve got a knife…here, in my pocket.” My heart stopped, this was it, the end in one foul way or another, I had read about these homicidal teenage kids in several magazine articles, hell, now it was right there, sat in front of me. “Do you. Good. And what do you plan to do with it?” I could feel my whole body swell from sweat, trying to push through dirty, clogged pours. “ I don’t know. I feel funny. When I feel funny I do things.” “ Err…what kind of things?” He looked straight at me; “ I hurt people.” Sweat was pouring from my face; I had to keep control of this situation. “ Look man, I know your fucking head hurts, okay. But we have to wait. Now, if you’re not going to behave then I’m going to leave you with this worthless piece of shit here. Are we straight here, do you understand?” He began wailing again, loud enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear. “ My head really hurts and I feel really funny. And when I feel funny, I hurt people.” I grabbed Varnish, “ Wake up you son of a bitch.” “ I hurt people when I feel funny, and I’m feeling funny right now. I have a knife.” “ Varnish!” I shouted. He suddenly woke. “ What… What is it?” “ Wake yourself up, this bastard is freaking out on me and I want nothing more to do with this. I’m going. I never wanted to help him in the first place. He’s your refugee, you deal with him.” “ Did he say he had a knife?” asked a guy who had walked in ten minutes before with a bandaged leg. “No.” I replied, “ No he didn’t. He said nothing, nothing at all. Ignore him, he’s backward.” Varnish sat up, “ What the fuck is going on?” A doctor suddenly appeared from a blue two-tone door and called the name of the boy. Thank God, I thought, we can finally get out of here. The boy went in through the blue door but left his coat after Varnish had convinced him he wouldn’t need it. Varnish searched his coat for the knife, but nothing was there. “ Right, he’s no danger to these people so lets go.” I said. “ You want to leave him here?” “ Damn straight, lets get the hell out of here before he causes us more trouble.” “ We can’t leave him here. You go. I’m taking him home. I can’t believe you can be so heartless, man. God, what is it with you.” And before I could explain what had just happened he had disappeared through the blue door. I stood in the middle of the waiting room with the boy’s jacket in my hand not sure whether what had just happened had really happened. Had the boy freaked out or had I imagined the whole thing in some hallucinated state. People were looking at me. Time to move I thought, but I couldn’t convince myself to leave this possible psycho with Varnish so I to headed through the blue door. Inside I found the boy and Varnish in the second cubicle. A nurse walked in with a tube of something in her hand. “ Oh, are you here again?” She said to the boy. He grinned and said yes. The deranged mutant that had emerged earlier was nowhere to be seen, just a shy, smiling teenage boy. “ Does he come in here often?” asked Varnish. “ Oh yes, we get this one in every six weeks or so. You’re not the first to bring him in.” The tube in her hand was glue. She Began squirting it into his wound then squeezed the flaps of skin together telling the boy that it would sting for a minute. The boy winced; I knew how he felt after splitting my head open on a dance floor the previous year. I had accidentally head butted a fellow dancer and had my eyebrow glued back together. “Where do you live?” asked Varnish, “ We’ll take you home.” He said he lived somewhere in Chadesden, so we bundled him into the Toyota and headed at high speed up the A52 to Chaddesden and dropped him on a main street in that end of town. “Stay out of trouble man,” said Varnish as he left the car. “Oh, I will. I’ll be real careful from now on.” And with that he was gone. We headed home as the warm morning sun rose over the grey Derby skyline. It was going to be a good day, I thought, shame I’m going to be spending most of it in bed. About a week later Varnish returned from the city center. I had been running the business all day; it had been busy too. In between visits I had been working on the comic I was running at that time. Varnish was pale, he looked ten years older and was sweating but it was one of those violent cold sweats. A sweat I had only seen once before when we both worked as pizza deliverers and had been set up on by about ten Mackworth youths who were set on kicking our heads in. Varnish had calmed the situation by warning of his connections in the Allenton area of Derby. This had shaken them drastically. “What happened to you?” I asked. “ You’ll never guess who we helped last week.” He said, out of breath and looking like he was going to pass out at any minute. “Who?” “ Well, I just met my ex-girlfriend in the street and I told her about what happened that night. She started asking me what this guy looked like and how old he was. Well, when I told her about this guy do you know what she told me?” “ No, what?” “ This guy was a known child molester.” “ What?” I shrieked, “ No. That can’t be true.” “ No, I’m telling you man. It turns out he was caught meddling with her friends five year old daughter about four years ago.” “ No way, that would make him about thirteen or fourteen.” “ I know, he done time in a detention center for it, about three years. Now he’s out again.” “ And we helped him.” “Yeah, I know.” We stood there for a while, saying nothing, numb from the damage we had done. We had helped out a known child molester and even driven him home. Horrible waves of fear, hate and loathing immersed us. We spent the rest of the day smoking and drinking, trying to block out this terrible event. But the damage was already done; our only attempt to bring some good from our nocturnal, drug-fueled lifestyle had been shot down in flames. A great Hinddenburg plummeting from the sky onto the flailing crowd below, burning people leaping from the torched bones of this tortured wreck. Things between Varnish and myself deteriorated from then on. Whether it was that event, or the vast amounts of drugs we were caning at the time sending us into hopeless avenues of argument, or the fact that Varnish didn’t have as many apprehensions to the lifestyle we were leading as I did. Or maybe I believed that what we were doing should be kept as quiet as possible. My belief was the bigger you got the more the threat you were to the opposition. And the opposition was nasty. So I didn’t want to rock the boat, we’d just slip in there and take enough to live and no more. But Varnish always wanted more. And he got it too. He flew high for a while, but the competition must have had enough of him. One night, two large black gentlemen gained entry to Varnish’s flat with the aid of an old mutual friend’s brother. The two intruders stole Varnish’s entire drug, roughed up his girlfriend and punched another friend in the face for only having a blim’s worth of gear on him. It’s now seven years later and night covers London’s southwest. Warren Zevon is blasting from the stereo and riots from Prague are on the television. It is suspected the Milosovic has fled and now two fat, grey suits sit debating the matter with Jeremy Paxman. I look back now and can see plainly the reasons why things got as bad as they did, back then, and I wonder what happened to Varnish, was he still a night watch security guard, on an industrial estate somewhere in the heart of Derby. This thought fills me with two feelings, firstly immense sadness that such a great mind, and a fine artist is wasting his life when he could be doing so much. And secondly that an original freak is still out there on the night shifts, drug fueled and ready. A one of a kind chemical monster that inadvertently keeps the world rolling while the rest of us sleep. A true wonder of nature.