The rise and fall of a boy called Rave part 21

The Patchwork Man

The patchwork man was my name now a new man for a new world. I don’t know who started it, I don’t know how long it was used behind my back before I heard it, and I am not sure if it was my marked skin or shifting personality that got me the name. To my face I was always Rave but when they thought I couldn’t hear I was now Patchwork. I first heard it just after my rampage upon Cain’s death, the patchwork man, half whispered like a ghost story and I was the monster. My crew took the name to heart and it wasn’t long before our tags started to have stitch work in them. It was a good name and worked well as I took over Cain’s role within the gang. Mark couldn’t afford the loss of control of a corner to Eddy so I couldn’t be moved off, even if I could I wouldn’t have given up my crew, so a lot of the dogsbody stuff got past to Eddy’s lads but I was now the gang’s leg breaker.

It wasn’t a one person job and that is how I got my second Lt, that is how I got Flea. Flea was part of Taz’s crew, for weeks Taz had been bitching about him, becoming more and more worried, because Flea to put it bluntly was crazy. He was a small guy but people gave him lots of space, he had this intense stare, his hand where always moving, you would catch him mumbling to himself, he had a nervous tick which made him look like he was trying to bite his own ear which got him some stick until he bit off someone else’s, and he LIKED inflicting pain. If you have read all of these you might think that sounds like me but I didn’t like inflicting pain I liked committing acts of violence, I was in it for the crunch not the scream where I found my release, it may sound like a small thing but believe me it makes a big difference and it mattered more to me than I cared to admit. So Flea was crazy but that wasn’t a bad thing in our line of work.

It was a bit bumpy to start with until Flea saw me break someone’s fingers while demanding money and after that he was in awe of me and took everything I said as gold. My existence validated Flea and who he was, so long as there was someone like me it was ok to Flea that there was someone like him. Crazy or not once he was loyal to me he made a fair Lt, he was smart enough to run the corner even if he was a bit unpredictable in a raid. I taught him most of what Cain taught me but bits of it never seemed to stick inside his head and truth be told some of it was useless in the new estate we found ourselves in.

Cain’s death had sent a shockwave through the estate, one of the estates elite getting killed like that by a bunch of nobody’s because they had blades. I was not going to be court without a knife on me again and every other face felt the same way. Once it was apparent that the leadership where carrying every want to be and thug started and once everyone was carrying it was only at matter of time until the stigma of pulling a blade where gone. By the end of the winter war there was blood on the street.

I change quite a bit to adapt to this new world, my own personal style became more gothic, not because of the music or I liked the look but because Goths walk around set up for a knife fight. Baggy clothes, heavy denim and leather, work very well against the slash of a blade. The six inch long, thick leather wrist guards covered in tightly pack metal studs did wonders to reduce the number of defensive wounds you took. I was good at this, I knew how to fight with a blade most people didn’t, and while the stakes are higher in a knife fight they are easier. You take a lad who is a real good brawler and give him a blade he get stupid, he forgets a lot of what he knows, and spends all of his time focused on putting his blade in you and dodging yours, he stops watching your legs and your other hand. Your whole body is a weapon not just your hands and so many good fighter forgot this once you put a blade in one. Even with this I still added a few more scars to my impressive collection.

The first two fights of the summer war where blood baths, no gang could put up with the numbers who were hurt and soon it was stopped until something could be done. The Burned Stars called a meeting of the gang leaders, we cursed that we hadn’t done it first, but the was no question of not going, the risk of being the only one not to go and estate business being decided without you was too great for any Boss to think about it. Of course going to a meeting at the call of another Boss wasn’t going to happen so it wasn’t a meeting it was a party and if they happened to all end up in one room off to the side and happened to talk about some problem then it was ok. Then you had the problem of who gets there first, the other gangs where fighting about who would be last to get there, all Bob wanted was to be first. He wasn’t the politician that the others where, he was a warrior and thought that the real advantage of controlling the ground was more important than appearing more important.

The use of blades wasn’t the only thing that was needed to be mention in passing. The Albanians needed to be talked about, the immigrant problem and how best to keep them in their place, and Yaba.

Yaba was a nasty little drug that had just arrived on the estate, at the time I thought it came from Africa but I am now lead to believe it is Indonesian, it is a meth derivative cut with caffeine and as we didn’t have meth it was a wonder drug to dealer. The problem with most pills is you need a chemistry lab to put them together, which means a supply chain to get them to the users, each link in the chain adds to the price and reduces the quality of the produce. The £5 E you buy at your local meat market was produced at twice the strength for about 50p a pill and has been through a dozen hands where it has been transported, cut, split, and sold. It is the same with most drugs but not with meth and not with Yaba. If you can bake a cake you can produce Yaba, not to the same standards or in the quantity that an Ex lab can make product, but there is not chain just you and maybe the person you get to sell it.

As said it was a nasty little drug that destroyed your body and mind better than any of the powders I pushed but it was cheap and easy to make, highly addictive, and the perfect starter drug to move onto hard stuff. The problem was that no one controlled it. It was too new and simple for the King to have a grip on it but pills had always been his so none of the gangs had moved in on it. Well that isn’t true there were rumours that the Flesh Eaters where producing about half the stuff sold on the estate but the where still a lot of soul traders and it was a free market. On the estate it was bad enough with £2 pills but worse still is it had made it into the local clubs to be passed off as E and a lot of middle class kids where getting a taste for it, asking for Yaba and still play E prices for it. The pigs looked the other way when we were killing ourselves with drugs but soon a lot of “nice kids” would show up as addicts and then there would be a problem.

I didn’t think that anything would be sorted out by a meeting but we need a start and that is why the Dead Heads went to a party.