ALL IN THE HEAD 1

BARRY AND BARRY

Sometimes it is easier for things not to go plan or so one may tell himself or at least assume when he sits alone in his underwear clutching the neck of an almost empty bottle of whiskey with three more bottles lying empty and close-by on the floor of a dark one room bedsit.

It's dark because overdue bills were not heeded, as if anything could have been done if notice had been taken. Yeah, it can be easy to feel sorry for oneself and sit in misery when the universe has failed you. You could have always gone and made your own luck no matter the disaster which has come your way. You could have stood up and fought back, take the punches, and return them tenfold, tell the universe you can knock me down, but I will get right back up or you could just lie there wallowing in your own self-pity.

Barry Knowles never knew his father. The dad, who never was dad, ran out on mum as soon as mum said baby was on the way. Mum worked hard, she had three jobs and at that there never seemed to be much of anything though Barry as a child never wanted for much. What he did want, even at such a young age, was for his mum to be happy.

The world, his world, never seemed to have much room for happiness and such proved to be so the older he got. An apartment on the sixth floor of the third of six flats within a council estate with eight rows of housing preceding the row of flats is where Barry spent the first eight years of his life with mum.

He had friends in school but not so much outside of school, for if he weren't hiding in some small corner of whatever workplace mum so happened to be working within then he would be kept indoors at home with the apartment being so high up and with the neighbourhood being too tough for him to be allowed outside to play unsupervised.

Barry understood all this so he very rarely, if ever, found reason to complain, again even with being so young he wanted to add happiness and not inflict more hardship. Life was as is and he knew no different. The most disastrous of all disasters occurred at home when Barry was eight years old.

At home, mum reacted to a burning smell. She checked the kitchen area first, even though the smell seemed to be coming from elsewhere. The oven was off, and nothing was burning on the cooker. This was how it should be for she hadn't been cooking during this particular moment.

Clearly something or somewhere was burning outside the apartment, perhaps somewhere else within the apartment complex and on a lower floor. Mum didn't waste any time gathering any belongings or grabbing anything which could be considered to hold any value, either financially or otherwise, she simply took Barry by the hand and made a move to exit the apartment.

They only got as far as the front door to the apartment for as soon as it opened three men forced their way inside. They each attacked and had their way with mum despite her pleas and shouts of the building being on fire. The attack was relentless. Barry hid, and when the attackers left the apartment, he returned to mum. Her last words to him were 'I love you little man.'

Rescue workers managed to save Barry, any injuries he received were minimal. Barry could have grown up to be the man his mother would have been ever so proud of; he could have fought the world and he could have proved to the world that he was better than all that came his way; he could have at least tried.

It was all too easy to drink his life away, it was all too easy to sit in darkness and blame the universe for whom and what he is. Sometimes, however, the universe likes to deal a winning hand or two, even to someone who thinks of himself as a loser, the butt of an evil joke.

At twenty-five, a reporter offered Barry a small amount of money for him to tell her his story, and he did tell his story. He didn't want to tell anything, especially not on television, the memories are far too painful, but the money, well his pockets were empty. What would his mother think of what he became? The very thoughts of this brought him down all the more to the point he was ready to meet his maker. With his luck he was sure he'd end up burning in hell for all eternity.