The rise and fall of a boy called Rave part 20

To live a violent life

I think I should take a few moments to talk about violence and humans. Most of you only see violence in small amounts and never really understand it, never really get how much and at the same time how little the human body can take. Without direct damage to the nervous system the human body can heal from almost anything that doesn’t kill it out right, but it is far easier to inflict enough damage to kill someone than most people understand.

Most people see violence as what is seen on TV, Hollywood violence I like to call it. In moves a guy gets his head slammed in a car door and then gets up and keeps fighting, in real life the man is dead his head cracked open, his brains on the pavement, just pain dead. Even if he is lucky or thick skull enough to not die he is going to spend the next few minutes trying to remember which way is up, trying not to be sick and praying no one does it again because he can’t move. You get hit hard in the head you stay hit, you don’t keep going, you just try not to pass out. When you are down on the ground and you take a kicking you don’t stand back up and carry on afterward, you lie on the ground and hope the world stop spinning. A broken rib is not something you fight through, you fight to breath, this is the difference between the real world and moves.

Then you get people that watched professional wrestling when they were young, now they all know it is fake, but they still see that as the way violence works. If you hit someone in the head ten times while counting they are not going to get back up, they are going to be out. And then the is boxing, let’s get beyond the fact the both parties have spent a life time getting used to being hit in the head, know how to block, know how to dodge and how to move their head to rob a punch of its power, they are still wearing 12 oz gloves, and people still get knocked out. After the boxers spends 4 weeks just recovering. Most people don’t understand the kind of damage a fist, a bat, or a knife can do to a body.

People that live for violence are not like you, they live on an edge between damage and pain or victory and glory. So few people, normal people, understand violence in a pure animal form and of those that do most don’t talk about it and even if they did you wouldn’t understand what they said. The one that do talk about it, the one that can explain it to you, can put pure violence into words, are not the kind of people you want to spend time in a room with. The closest I have ever come to putting it in to words is ‘the rush and the crunch and the scream’ and when I shut my eyes I can still feel it running in my veins.

The point of all that is that violence, real violence, is a dirty and dangerous thing where people get hurt and people die. It was the way of the world that I lived in, that one of the few ways out was feet first with a wood overcoat, and you didn’t know when or how or why beforehand it just happened. This is a story about the end to a truly violent life and what it made me.

It was mid February and about 9pm, it was going to be a cold night, the frost was already forming on the pavement making it slick under foot. I had closed up the corner early, addict buy early in winter and find someplace warm to take the fix so keeping the corner open late gained us very little business. I took a swig from the bottle I was holding letting the rum heat my insides and passed the bottle over the head of the brunette that was snuggled up under my arm to Cain. He took a long pull of the spirit and breathed out slowly his breath missing in the night air.

“That’s good stuff” he said “you always have good shit Rave”

“It’s because I don’t buy the £5 gut rot that you lot seems to get no matter how much tin you are making” I replied “I know WhiteLighting is an institution but it really is shit. Where are we going anyway?”

“A flat I know, it is not far, I am meeting her there” he answered. The brunette shifted against my chest shivering from the cold. I have been trying to remember the name of the girl I was with that night, I had a thing going with a couple of different girls at the time but I didn’t have a real girlfriend and that meant I passed around the gang girls, I could give you the name of one of them or make one up but the truth is I have no idea who I was with that night all I am sure of is she had brown hair, I think that give you some idea of the number of girl I had been sleeping with since Faye left. I could give her a name but I think we will stick to the brunette for now.

I again wonder how many flat the gangs had taken over on the estate that started out as squats. We put a new door on, clean up the mess and then use it. Just my crew had two near our corner and I kept being taken to new ones. This one looked as if it had once been converted to a counting house, the door reinforced and a large table set up in the main room. I watched Cain fidget as we waited, I had seen the lad kill without blinking, but he was worried about seeing the girl it must have been love. I hope it was love because otherwise a lot of bad things happened so he could sleep with something a little exotic.

There was a knock on the door and he was up like a shot to get it letting in his girl. Now I remember her name, Sharri was a tall, curvy girl with hair that feel into lose curls and deep, green, sad eyes. She would have been a very good girlfriend for Cain but she was Islamic. They had been slowly becoming a subset of the estate for months now and we didn’t mix. We weren’t really racist, it takes a bit of effort to be really racist and we just put on effort into not being racist, we treated them like shit but then again we treated everyone like shit. If they had tried to assimilate into the estate maybe it would have been different but as it was the tension was building and both sides hated each other.

She had them meet in secret because her family wouldn’t understand and he had them meet in secret because some elements of the gang would use it to go after him. I was loyal to Cain and any girl I was with wouldn’t be stupid enough to repeat anything she saw while hanging with the gang’s two top leg breakers, and it would get her more status to act like it was a big secret she was in on anyway. If me and Cain were seen going to the flat we were just sharing, some of the best way to truly violate a girl needs two of you to do it you know.

He walked back over to me and pulled the bottle from my fingers “We will need this more than you” he said with an evil grin and took Sharri in his other hand dragging her to one of the bedrooms.

The brunette stood and began to walk backwards towards the second bed room with her head bowed a little so she was looking up at me sexily with big eyes full of mischief that I am pretty sure were green. I stood a little clumsily and wondered how much I had drunk as we waited, I shook my head slowly to clear some of the buzz, and I began to move towards her. I got to her as she reached the door, I pushed her up against it and groped her breast through her clothes getting a gasp of my efforts. I fumbled behind her for the handle and the door swung inwards, I stumbled as she move sideways with the door and ended up pressed hard on her, she laughed and ran her fingers over my face. She had very pretty face when she laughed, soft, pretty, pink lips moved into a smile, very pretty lips.

I kissed her softly at first, her lips where sticky and tasted sweet, I moved my tongue forward to lick the gloss of my lips and she took it into her mouth. I let her massage my tongue with her own feeling her hot breath in my mouth. My hand came up and grabbed a handful of her hair rapping it in my fist pulling her head back and our mouth apart. I kissed her neck and throat gently feeling her swallow nervously as I ran my tongue into the tiny little indent just above her sternum.