Nothing but Meat: A dark, heart-stopping British crime thriller (9 page)

The Origin of the Tooth:

After tracking his mother for weeks the
Ghost now found himself outside a rundown social club hidden somewhere in the
Birmingham suburb of Aston. He leant against a wall and waited for her to
finish with her clients.

He was surprised at the amount of business a
one-eyed, junkie prostitute managed to get, but as she led client after client
into the narrow darkness of a piss-soaked alley by the side of the social club
he had time to consider that when working in the world’s oldest vocation the
professional is required to know ones clientele and not to overcharge.

Music played loudly from inside the club and
one song in particular was so apt it was as if fate was controlling his
destiny. He listened to the crowd inside drunkenly singing the chorus to an old
pop song. The tune churned his stomach and repressed memories flooded back from
when the song was new and he was just a small boy.

*

All smiles she was but not to him. His
mother wore two faces - one for the public; painted and kind, and one for when
they were alone. Only he saw the face with the furrowed brow and the gnashing
teeth. Only he felt the heavy hands that slapped the backs of his legs and head
and he quickly learnt to run when she was in one of her moods, taking cover in
his bedroom knowing the weekend would come too soon and with it time spent
alone with the man she called Uncle Derek.

He was a lonely and solitary child and
against all better judgement tried to spend time with his mother but she
acknowledged his existence enough only to feed him a few times a week, usually
as a reward for staying out of the way when her friends came over, the rest of
the time he was forced to fend for himself; sustaining himself on leftovers and
scraps from the bin.

The boy’s hair was long and his mother made
sure it stayed that way because Uncle Derek liked it like that. They teased him
at school because of it, they cornered him and pushed him around, and they told
him he looked like a girl. Sometimes he fought back and fights erupted causing
the teachers to notice and call his mother into the school.

His mother wore her public face as she
floated through the corridors on the way to the headmaster’s office.
She was whiter than fresh
snow; painted and innocent. Her façade was the perfectly crafted illusion of a
concerned mother called into the school to learn what was going on with her
troubled boy. She sat across from the headmaster and the head teacher and
expertly wove her invisible veil of lies and deceit.

The boy sat next to her and remained silent throughout her
performance.

Firstly she registered her surprise at being called into the
school. Then she struggled to explain her son’s actions and her incomprehension
as to what would make him lash out in the way that he did. She deftly slipped
into the role of character witness and explained how unlike him it was, and how
he’s normally such a quiet, gentle boy. Then finally she turned it around and,
with expert precision began to blame everyone else; it must have been
retaliation, was he being bullied? Was it because he was an only child from a
broken home? Why wasn’t the school doing more? Why wasn’t the school looking
out for him?

The teachers were sympathetic to her situation and shared her
concerns for her son’s wellbeing but unfortunately it didn’t change what he had
done. She accepted their comments and valued their opinions and then lavished
them with apologies for his actions and assured them she was confident, that
with their help she could keep her troublesome son under control.

Afterwards she took the boy to the car and he sat quietly as
they drove. She spoke to him in a flat and serious voice, she was angry with
him and yet he couldn’t understand why. All he ever wanted was to make her
happy and he always tried to do whatever she asked of him.

‘I don’t like it when I get called into your school to meet
your headmaster. It interrupts my day and draws attention to me, so I’m going
to say this once and once only and I hope it’s clear, if you don’t stop
misbehaving at school I will hurt you with my cigarettes again. Do you
understand me?’

The pain he felt when she held him down and stubbed her
cigarettes into his armpits was fresh in his memory and he mumbled, ‘Yes,’ but
the question was rhetorical. She continued, ‘If you tell anyone about my
friends or talk to anyone about what happens when you stay over at Uncle
Derek’s I’ll hurt you worse than you can imagine. I’ll take the kitchen
scissors to your little cock and balls and I’ll cut them off,’ she said. ‘Do
you know what will happen then?’

He looked out of the
window and shrugged painfully upset.

‘If you don’t bleed to
death, you’ll end up having to sit down when you pee; just like a little girl.
Do you want to pee like a girl for the rest of your life? Do you?’

He whispered his reply.
‘No.’

‘Imagine how badly they’d
tease you if I snipped your stupid little cock off,’ she said and snatched
between his legs, pinching him hard. He yelped and tried to move away but she
held him tightly, cackling with laughter and digging her nails in.

He cried all the way
home. She told him to stop but he couldn’t help it so his mother turned the
stereo up and drowned out the noise of his misery with the music of Barbra
Streisand.

The weekend rolled around as it always did and his mother
took him to Uncle Derek’s house, she dropped him off and left almost
immediately without saying goodbye. The boy saw Uncle Derek give her some money
before she went, her friends often gave her money too and he wondered what she
spent it on. The Headmaster had once asked him what his mother did for a living
and he said he didn’t know but she had lots of friends that helped her out. He
was glad the Headmaster didn’t mention it when they were in his office.

Uncle Derek always seemed very tall to the
boy. He was skinny too; his hips protruded from his skin and his veins stuck
out all over his body like turquoise spaghetti. He tended to ignore the boy
until dusk and then made a game out of taking their clothes off while he played
music on a small cassette player and sang along with the songs, trying to
encourage the boy to join in.

‘Sing and dance with me,’ he said holding the player above
his head and twirling his naked body around the room. The boy watched him dance and thrust himself in the boy’s
direction. Uncle Derek sang and grunted and moaned in time to the music and the
boy thought how it sounded like the noises that echoed from his mother’s
bedroom when her friends came over.

Uncle Derek knelt down in front of the boy; his body was
slick with sweat and he pointed a long finger into the boy’s face. He shouted
over the thin sound of the cassette player, ‘Do
you
think
I’m
sexy?’ but
before the boy could say anything he stood up, grabbed the boy’s hand and led
him into the centre of the room so they could dance together.

When the music ended and they were tired from dancing Uncle
Derek took him into the bathroom. It always happened in the bathroom and
afterwards his jaw always hurt and he was usually sick into the toilet while
Uncle Derek filled the bath with cold water.

That night he bled from behind, some of it went on the floor
and that made Uncle Derek angry. He threw the boy into the bath and he could
feel Uncle Derek’s fist gripping his hair with such force it made his scalp
stretch and rip. He struggled to catch his breath as his face splashed in and
out of the water, he coughed and gasped, trying to breathe only when his face
was clear of the suffocating liquid but it was impossible.

Uncle Derek held his head under the water and forced the soap
bar into his mouth, he felt it slide over his tongue and scrape against his
teeth leaving behind waxy, foul tasting chunks in his mouth. The boy gagged and
coughed and all the air left his lungs. He instinctively drew a breath and
suddenly his chest became cold and heavy.

He was face down and vaguely aware that the stinging he felt
in his behind had dulled. At first all he could see was the blurry white of the
bathtub and then he saw the lights. They came in dreamy colourful bursts, how
many he didn’t know, but then something else drifted into view; he saw faces
swirling in front of him; three, four, five. Just faces floating in the blurred
nothingness; they glowed with their own light and they were beautiful, just
like angels should be. They smiled and their eyes shimmered with a kindness he
had never seen before, shining with such love and understanding he was suddenly
no longer afraid. He wanted to ask them if they were angels and whether they
could help him but he had no voice with which to ask and so all he could do was
stare. His skin had become numb and all pain was gone. He felt detached, as if he
wasn’t part of himself anymore and all he wanted was to be one with the angels
in the water.

As he watched them
shifting in the white void they began to change. Shadows moved across their
faces and in an instant their skin ceased to be clear and ethereal. The shadows
seemed to grip and pull at them, tightening their skin, stretching it back,
creating cheeks of hollowed grey and eyes that sank blackly into their skulls.
Their heads tilted back and their mouths opened in unison, creating five
black-lipped circles of impenetrable darkness like entrances to the deep, dark
fluid depths of hell.

He panicked and felt like
he should be screaming but his lungs were heavy and he couldn’t inhale, it was
terrifying to him but the moment was short lived and the feeling of panic
passed, letting him go as quickly as it took him. It had been just one final
moment of horror before a sensation of peace washed over him and as it did the
colourful lights began to fade as though they had become shrouded in mist and
the hideous faces floated smoothly towards him. Closer and closer they came
with their mouths open and he no longer felt afraid of them, he understood
their power and their glory and he knew he wanted to be with them, to be one of
them.

Their eyes began to dance
with hypnotic flashes of colour that burst in front of the backdrop that was
the darkness of their empty, haunting skulls. They drifted close enough to kiss
him and he became completely calm as the lights in their eyes dimmed and all
became dark.

He was alone on the floor
when he woke up. His first thoughts were not of the pain he felt in his chest,
not of the hideous taste in his mouth but of the glorious dark angels he had
seen in the hazy mistiness of the bath water. He was disappointed to find he
was awake, tossed back into the world he knew. Back with his mother and with
Uncle Derek. He wished he could be with the dark angels again; have them take
him back to the place where he felt no pain and where the nothingness of being
numb was so comfortable.

He could hear Uncle Derek
on the phone downstairs, he was shouting, he sounded angry but also scared and
the boy knew it was time to leave. He rolled onto all fours and then, using the
edge of the bath as leverage managed to stand up. His head was light and his
limbs felt weak but he pushed on. He opened the bathroom door quickly and
quietly, sprinted across the landing, down the stairs and out of the front
door. What a sight he must have been; a naked seven-year-old boy running down
the street, his girly blonde hair knotted and tangled and still damp. Watery
blood painted the inside of his legs. But no tears; he never cried. Not once.
And he would never cry again.

The first person to find
him was a large black woman with a colourful bandana on her head. She picked
him from the floor and held him to her breast. He could remember her huge brown
eyes and pock marked skin and she smelt sugary sweet like honey.

His mother fumbled with the lock on
her front door and spewed slurred curses at the keyhole. The Ghost walked
towards her and the more she fumbled the more he worried about his timing but
then the door suddenly opened and she stumbled into the flat. He adjusted his
pace and crossed the remaining distance in a bound. He pushed her into the room
and closed the door behind them before she knew what was going on. She turned
on him but the drugs and alcohol had compromised her judgement and he easily
shoved her away. She felt greasy to the touch and the sensation disgusted him.
He was sure he could detect the sickly scent of seamen on her breath.

Her bedsit was a vile
cesspit of unwashed plates, empty vodka bottles and yellowed drug
paraphernalia. It smelt of stale smoke and used vegetable oil. There was a
grubby mattress in one corner and two burst armchairs sat miserably in front of
a portable TV.

He told her to sit down
with authority in his voice and she did as she was told without protest or
argument. He watched her for a time and she looked back from beneath the droopy
lid of her one good eye while the other remained clouded and static. To look at
her repulsed him, but he couldn’t look away, and as he analysed her face the
memories of his childhood flooded back; the taste, the smell and the sensation
of abuse replayed in every cell of his body and he felt vomit rise in his
throat. He could tell she didn’t recognise him, she had no idea he was her son,
the boy she sold for sex all those years ago just so she could buy booze, drugs
and shoes. She looked him up and down and said quietly, ‘What do you want?’