Cracking Up (5 page)

Maybe it was that time of the month because she could be a right grumpy cunt when she was on the rags, but my perception was that she was in that bottom place. I didn’t like to see her like that seeing as she had gone to the same comprehensive school for scoundrels; she was always dead friendly towards me and guaranteed to be a good laugh like the time when we were fourteen and she had let me squeeze her tit. “He’s never going to change. It’s never going to work. It’s just going round in circles,” she said, totally crushed.

“So what are you going do? Tell him it’s over, kick him into touch.”

“Oh, come on, Ow-wee! You know what he’s like! He won’t let me leave him. The only way he’d let me go was if he was the one that’d had enough. If he got bored and went to live with one of his other women. Them other slappers he’s shagging. Other than that, it’s a bit of an impossible situation. So I think I’ll be taking some sick leave off work soon. So I can recover from however it all happens.”

“What do you mean like?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not going be nice however it happens, put it that way. He can’t do anything without being violent. I can’t call the police and tell them about all that’s been happening, can I? He’d kill me! He’s already told me he’d slash me face with a stanley knife if I ever left him. So no other bloke would look at me.”

Spermy was only a short-arse, about five-seven, but bulked up on the juice and full of aggro. He was always scowling, had a chip on both shoulders and would lash out at any problems presenting themselves. He had once stood on a house roof for hours on end, throwing tiles down at the police; he’d once set a tramp on fire on a park bench for a laugh. Some lads were made crazy by circumstances but Spermy was crazy from the start. He was mad scary, but he knew his way around women and charming the knickers off them when it suited him.

To top it all, he had a bad bird-beating habit that had poor Lee scared shitless, because he was consumed with the green-eyed monster, out of his mind jealous. “He’s a fucking psycho,” she said. “A loon. The other night, he smacked me in the face when we were making love and accused me of thinking of someone else.”

Me mobie went off. It was Spermy. I walked off out the room and into the hallway. “Where are you?”

“Where do you think? Round Lee’s,” I muttered, but not too loudly, just in case she was listening.

“Fucking bitch! Smashed me fucking mobie up, lad. I’ll do time for her, I tells you. Gobbie cunt! Should keep her trap shut and her fucking legs open. “

“You’ve done her over good style, lad. She’ll be off work for a week, judging by the bruises.”

“Don’t be a soft cunt, Ow-wee lad! That nagging bitch asked for it, mate: The daft cow don’t want me seeing other sluts,” he said, by way of justification. “Little slag went doo-lally, smacked us one, threw an ashtray at us and tried to scratch me eyes out. Now, I don’t smack tarts unless they ask for it; so I warned her to pack it in. Then, BOOM! Crazy little cunt launched the mobie at me, smashed it to bits - a brand new Galaxy, for fuck’s sake. Screaming at us: I HOPE YOU GET AIDS WITH ALL THE SLAGS YOU FUCK. The stupid cunt had it coming, Ow-wee; that’s why she’s all lumped up, mate. To be honest, lar, I’ll be glad to see the back of her. And I definitely won’t miss her cooking - could burn a pot noodle, that one! She’s doing me head in, telling you!”

Some couples are addicted to the ups and downs. They were always having massive fall-outs and would be loved-up a day later. For instance, once she’d taken a restraining order out on him and then jumped into bed with him the next day. “Yeh, I know: Do your head in women, lar.” I said, then. “Anyway, where are you?”

“Round me other come bags. You coming round?”

“See you in a bit.”

I hung up and walked back into the front room.

“See what I mean? He’s got more time for you lot than he has for me which I don’t appreciate coz he’s always come first in my case. I’m just thinking when he is going to realize that he’s pushing a gap in between me and him, and then when it all comes on top with you lot who’s he going turn to? But he’s not listening to me at the moment. He don’t want to know and I don’t know why.”

“It’s not just you, Lee. He don’t listen to no one.”

“Where is he, anyway?” she said, giving me bad daggers. “Round one of his little slag’s gaffs?”

“Nah,” I lied. “He’s round one of the lads kens. Best thing for the time being. Let him calm down a bit. He’ll have a draw and everything’ll be all right tomorrow. It’s just a rough patch you’re going through, Lee. At the end of the day, it’ll be all right.”

“No, it won’t.” she said, her head was battered and she was weeping with her head in her hands. Spermy had cut her down to the point where she was a deflated version of herself. “Things won’t be the same again. All I want off him now is me life back. He’s bleeding torture, he’s eating away at me self confidence. I can’t stand it anymore.”

She turned to face me. She gave me a look, a scrunched-up angry look and, in fucked-up anguish, growled.“IT’S GOING TO BE WAR!!! Next time he puts his fucking hands on me, I’ll wait til he’s asleep and pour a hot kettle down his fucking throat. Life’s too short to be letting horrible cunts like him ruin it.”

6.

I went round to Megan’s house. She lived a couple of streets away in a cul-de-sac on the estate. She was another little cracker, a blonde, blue-eyed babe built like a glamour model and she also had SPERMY and PORN STAR tattooed on her bum cheeks like the class act she was; it would cost her a fair few bob to get the SPERMY one lasered off her arse after they split up. I’ll give him that: Spermy knew how to pull them, but then, the birds always find the naughty and nasty element exciting, and Spermy was an urban legend on the Shooting Range. That’s what we called the estate: The Shooting Range.

Megan had a cracking set of top bollocks and told everyone that her tits were proper real, which was a laugh: She had gone from a B to a D cup overnight, and her tits looked as fake as her wotsit tan. She also had a little girl called Heidi, but the dad was absent because he was in the slammer. He was doing six months for assault and I suppose it had left a big hole in Megan’s life and Spermy was quite prepared to fill that gaping hole. The thing was: The baby’s daddy was a fearsome drug thug and a dreaded gun-toting presence on the streets of Liverpool and the buzz on the estate was that there was going to be trouble when he got out, but Spermy couldn’t give two fucks. He always liked to say: Don’t cause no trouble, because it won’t be no trouble.

The troops were gathered and ready for action: Caspar, Trim, Dome and Melt. The lads were making themselves at home in the front room, playing X-Box on the big screen smart TV, swigging lager straight from the bottles, puffing heavily loaded spliffs and grabbing food from the kitchen like a bunch of barrel rats. The atmosphere was charged with tension, not anxiety exactly but a visceral nervous tension like when you’re mentally preparing for battle. Their eyes were shining with a combination of excitement and fear at the prospects of engaging the enemy in deadly combat.

Spermy was in the kitchen with Megan and Tilly, her best bimbo and a killer rack plastic tittied bitch also, Facebooking on her iPhone, the lot of them clustered round the kitchen table. The clippers were buzzing as Spermy sat on a chair, having his head shaved by Megan while Clubland blared from the Ipod in the docking speaker, Duke Dumont if I remember rightly. He had his top off and the big guns were out, revealing the tattoos that he’d had scratched on his skin. Huge letters that spelled out JU$TU$ CREW arched across his mid-riff. He had MOB $TAR on the inside of his forearm. Inked large on the other arm: GLADIATOR. A neck tatt listed his ambitions as MONEY, POWER, BITCHES. The skin over his heart read YNWA, the legendary terrace song of Liverpool Football Club, You’ll Never Walk Alone. He was a big-time LFC fan, redder than the devil’s dick, as he liked to say.

The tattoos complemented numerous, ugly-looking scars; I spotted a dark bruise, oval-shaped, two inches from his heart. If you asked Spermy about it, he would just tell you BATTLE SCARS, MAN! Inviting you to prod it with your index finger and feel the bullet embedded under the skin, proud to exhibit combat marks that were the ultimate evidence he was a proven urban warrior.

On top of it, Spermy was a proper gym rat - pumping iron and shooting up on the roids. The results were rapid and obvious: His neck, shoulders and arms were ripped and bursting out of his spotty skin, but he was like a hormonal time-bomb waiting to go off: Full of explosive aggro and a walking hard-on.

Anyway, by the look on his grinning kipper I could see he was pleased to see me and itching to tell me something. “Ow-wee, lad. I’ve copped for some bangers off Dog Sick.”

No kidding; it’s written all over your face, mate, I thought.

Megan had finished scalping him and I took her up on the offer of a freebie haircut. She ran her fingers through my hair, making a tutting noise and pulling her hand away quick like. There was a drop of blood on her fingertip. She spent about five minutes picking out tiny pieces of glass from my hair before skining my head like Kojack.

Spermy handed me a friendly spliff, then reached into the fridge and opened two beers. The beer was bottled wife-beater, Stella. I needed it and necked it; it went down a fucking treat. He picked up his baby pitbull, Maximus, cradled it under his arm and gave him a stroke. He sat down at the kitchen table and put the brindle-coloured dog on the floor. He took a swig from his bottle, then looked down at Maximus who was chewing on his trainer. “Dead game, our Max is,” he said, toe-ending him tumbling with his other trainer. “A fucking beast. Just like me - 100%.”

Watching Maximus tumbling around the kitchen floor, you wouldn’t have believed he’d grow up to be a ferocious killer. He was just a little bundle, a dinky fur-ball with sad eyes and a wrinkled face, chewing mindlessly, looking like Winston Churchill. According to widespread practice among the dog enthusiasts of the estate, Spermy himself had already clipped its ears and docked his tail. He’d told me he was going to get him a tattoo and fight him when the time was right. “Okay; so it’s fucking cruel, but we’ve been treated like dogs all our lives, that’s why I like them. Everything needs one good thing in their lives and pitties do one thing dead good: FIGHT! Just like us fucking lot, they are.”

Maximus was sat on his haunches, looking up at Spermy with sad, patient eyes. Spermy spilled some of the beer on the floor and the pup lapped it up. “When he’s a bit bigger, going to get him on the juice. Run him on a treadmill. He’ll go off like King fucking Kong then. SCRAPPING AND TEARING BASTARDS TO SHREDS! That’s what he’s going to do. I’m going to feed him bait dogs, get him proper blood thirsty. All them other pitties, there just as good as dead. Telling you! DEAD MEAT! Just like them fucking dogs the Mug Fam.”

I told him about the drama with the Mug Fam’s attempted ambush at the chippery. “They think we’re soft twats! Weaker than anorexics,” he said. “We got to get off our arses tonight, lad. Take the fuckers right out!”

He slung his side-of-beef arm around my shoulders and took me upstairs into the back bedroom. Caspar followed us. “Come and have a look at my little friend,” mimicking Tony Montana.

We went into the bedroom and there was an AK-47 assault rifle and a banana clip on the bed. Spermy picked it up and showed it off. He was made up with it. “AK-47, man. A scary, fucking piece of firepower, lads.” He had his itchy finger on the trigger and I clocked another tatt on the meat of his right hand, just below the knuckles, as he snapped the clip into the rifle: A handgrenade.

Caspar was close to his older brother Mikey and had told me he thought about him every day. He was an absolute legend on the estate because he was a decorated soldier, a trained and confirmed killer of the British Army. He was away on his second tour of Afghanistan and Caspar liked to read the gun magazines he’d left behind. “Mac-10s are a better piece of kit for inside work,” he said. “I thought you said Dog Sick had Mac-10s.”

“That’s what he said. They’re on order. All’s he’s got now is the AK-47.” Spermy said.

“I like the AK-47 me-self,” I said.

“Mac-10s the best,” Caspar said. “It’s the guvenor. Spits 1200 rounds a minute. That’s twenty a second. The best for a packed room.”

“AK-47 is the best there is,” Spermy was having none of it. “When you want to top every fucker in the street.”

“Hold on, Spermy,” Caspar said. “Just hold on a minute, mate. Let me tell you something, lad. AK-47s are fucking ancient. They’re the same fucking things they was using in World War Two. They should be on the Antiques Roadshow. They don’t have the improvements that the Mac-10s got.”

“What the fuck are you slobbering on about, lad? Improvements!” Spermy said. “Fucking hell, lad: You can take those improvements and shove them up the crack of your fucking arse. I want a banger I know ain’t going fuck up on me. AKs don’t fuck up. Why do you think Bin Laden’s boys use them? All them terrorists. Lad: You’ve got Mac-10s on the brain. You don’t have the brains to fire a fucking BB gun and you’re gobbing off about Mac-10s.”

“He’s right,” I said, siding with Spermy. He was dead right.

Caspar had a top sulk on and said: “Fuck that shit, man, the reason those fuckers use AK-47s is coz they’re backward. That’s all.”

Spermy invited me into the other bedroom for a little socialising. “Let’s do a few,” he laughed. “And check out the pussy.”

We were going to get off our nuts. Fucking fantastic. The two birds had stripped off and were sat around in just skimpy lacy knickers and looked seriously sexy. They were filling a pipe with crack, sat in front of us with their tits out. Getting blasted on crack. I sat there with Sperm; we were having a laugh and a giggle, perving over the pair of lookers. They were fucking gorgeous and fit like. They gave us a bit of a lap dance routine, gyrating and rubbing their pussies to Route 96’s My Love. They were putting on a sex show, off their fucking faces on crack. High and horny, frantic for a shag with all the stone in their system. They were rubbing us up, fondling our bollocks. We did some crack; it was a top fucking rush and I was gagging for more straight away and so was Spermy. We got into a serious crack session that casually ended up in a group shag. We were going at it like fucking porn stars and kept the dirty bitches in rotation.