“Bitch,” Keeg spluttered.
So we went looking for someone to kill. Keeg was raging. “I’ll find a bitch somewhere and fuck her and fuck her and then I’ll slice her tits off and fry them up for my supper!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said not believing him.
“I will. I fucking will!”
We found someone at last, an elderly bloke by a cashpoint, peering with rheumy eyes at the huge letters and trying to fit his card into the slot with a shaking hand. We leapt on him from behind and he threw up his hands and went down at once with a great gusting sigh that scared the shit out of us. And then he lay still and never moved again.
“What kind of fucking fun was that?” Keeg said. So we went and killed a dog as well. And that wasn’t much fun either.
I reckon we killed four maybe five people all told. I don’t remember exactly. We were stoned half the time, or pissed. No one ever got near us, not cops, not neighbours. I remember me mam saying once how dirty my jeans were — we’d had to roll around in the mud with this wino before we could finish him off. Accidental death, they said that one was — fell in the river and drowned. Anyway, it was only a tramp — who cares about them?
But somewhere along the line I stopped enjoying it. There wasn’t any anger left to come out. Or maybe it got changed into fear and that was scary in itself. I kept thinking it couldn’t last. The cops aren’t stupid. They’d catch us. Maybe they were on to us already and we just didn’t know it. And then we’d spend the rest of our lives in jail and everyone would forget about us. There’d be nothing to do except kick the shit out of the walls.
I got stressed out about it. I kept looking over my shoulder. Every time a bizzy car went past, I thought they were playing with us and would just drive round the corner and catch us. So when Keeg said, “Let’s go get a wino,” only a couple of weeks after the old guy, I puked in the gutter.
“You’re scared,” Keeg said.
“Don’t talk crap.”
“You’re shitting your pants.”
“It’s that fucking burger,” I said. “It’s giving me the runs.”
“Fuck the burger,” Keeg said. “Let’s go get some fun.”
“I’m going home. I’m sick.”
“Scaredy cat!” he said contemptuously.
“Fuck off.”
I went home. Keeg went off by himself but didn’t find anyone. Later, he said it hadn’t seemed right without me.
Then he broke his leg. Running to get out of the way of his old man when he was beating up everyone in sight. Ended up in hospital for a month. Like he said, it wasn’t fun on my own. So I got into the way of going to the library and mucking around on the internet. Then mam threw out the boyfriend cos he slapped her and we went off to live with her sister down south. And that was that — I didn’t see Keeg for ten years.
It wasn’t any better down south. No one in my new school wanted to know me — I had a stupid accent and didn’t know anything. So I stopped going and went down the library to surf the internet and then mam won a bit on the lottery and gave me a games station.
And it took off from there really. All the games were stupid. Fantasy stuff, dragons, and aliens and other dull shit. I reckoned I ought to make up my own games, based on what me and Keeg had done.
You don’t wanna hear all of this — the bits about how I got myself sorted. I found this guy who taught me how to do the computer stuff — he made me pay of course but it was worth it. Faggot. I went to school to keep everyone off my back, but I didn’t do anything, I just kept scribbling away, planning the games. Okay, so the first game I made up was shite and anyone playing it would have known exactly what me and Keeg had done and we would have ended up behind bars for the rest of our natural, but the later stuff was better. Much better.
I got it made in the end. I got a job with this small firm, just three of us. Made a name for ourselves and pulled in a mint of money. And that’s how I’m here, in this flat, with all this cash, and these clothes, and girls queuing up for fucks. And Keeg’s out there, swigging beer and still wearing a hoodie and trainers he bought years ago. Sod all in his pockets and he’s probably fucking the barmaid in the pub. That’s why he hates me.
I saw him last week. First time in ten years. In the street outside Smiths. Still the same Keeg, the same tatty jeans and holey T-shirt. He looked me up and down and laughed.
“Wanker,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, at least I’m not a loser.”
We stood toe to toe, face to face.
“I know stuff about you,” he said, softly. “I know about homeless kids and winos, and old gits whose hearts go pop the first time you say boo. Don’t you piss me off!”
“I know things about you too,” I said.
Maybe I’ve lost my accent a bit, being away. A huge grin cracked his face and he said in a prissy precious voice, “Know things too? Can’t speak proper any more, right?”
That got to me somehow. Like saying I wasn’t real. “Sod off,” I said.
He muscled in on me, till we were nose to nose. I could feel his hard-on.
“This is my town,” he said. “You sod off!” And he added, whispering, “You were the one that chickened out, remember. You were the one who sicked his guts up rather than tackle a pansy pervert.”
“Sod off,” I said again, and walked away.
And ever since, he and his mates — once my mates — have been prancing around outside my flat. Fuck knows how they found me. First couple of nights they tossed stones into the courtyard and against the wall of the flats. The security guard went out and yelled at them; minutes later a bizzy car cruised by. By then Keeg and his mates had gone.
But tonight they’re in the courtyard and the guard’s nowhere to be seen. Course, I could call the law, but if I did that, Keeg could land me in the shit. That’s what he’s betting on, that I won’t dare do anything. Shop him and I shop myself. Of course someone else in the flats is probably calling the cops. That’s why I’m going to have to sort it. Now.
Keeg doesn’t stand a chance.
I take the lift down. From the glass doors in the foyer, I can see the security booth at the gate, which I couldn’t see from above. I can see feet in polished black shoes, toes up on the floor. That takes care of what happened to the security guard, I guess.
They come for me the minute I walk out the door but Keeg roars at them; they give him sour looks but stop.
“Me and you,” I say, hands in the pockets of my leather jacket.
“Yeah,” he says, and the others jump on the low walls of the ornamental flowerbeds and sit there, beer cans in hand, legs swinging like they were at the football.
“Make it fast,” Keeg said. “Someone’ll have called the cops.”
“Sure,” I say and swagger up to him. He stinks of beer and piss and vomit, and once I stank like that too. This is what I left behind, this is what I could have been. And what’s he seeing? A smart guy, with looks and brains, the kid he once was, who made it out of here and who got everything life has to offer. And what do I feel?
Sick to the heart. It’s all shit and show. Nothing but nothing.
Nothing like what Keeg and me had. Why am I here? Because I left him behind. I walked out on him, and left him to the shit and the crap and the boredom and the beer, and all the rest of the nothing we had when we were kids. I let him down. He was my mate and I walked out on him. He’s shit but I’m shit too, just shit covered with a fine coat and we both know it.
We stand nose to nose, face to face, chest to chest and Keeg’s not the only one with a hard-on. And I’m thinking: this is it, this is real. All that other shit is just pretend. The only difference is that it pays, and means you can stand up and say look at me. I’m an executive with my own internet business. I’m respectable.