A New England

Chapter Two- Crash

t was a night Crash would remember for the rest of his miserable existence. It often came back to him, uninvited, usually when he was doing the most mundane of tasks. Yet it rarely visited in its entirety, choosing instead to stab at his brain with fleeting images before he managed to suppress it again. Sometimes it was the fly crawling across the dinner plate, others it was the moldy coffee mug that had sat abandoned for weeks on the table and today it was the syringe, its point gleaming in the moonlight as it rolled across the floor.

Crash stopped what he was doing and sat down. He knew that this was going to be one of those rare times when the whole thing would come back to replay itself from beginning to end, creeping from whatever dusty archive it usually hid in to render him helpless and unable to stop this fully blown screening. Crash sighed heavily. He could not stop it. He could feel it coming. He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to relive that evenings events once more. That night was the reason he was stuck here now, trapped. He lay down and surrendered as his mind rewound like a tape in a VCR and took him back to the start. 

The only light in the room came from a couple of slumped candles that were burning dangerously low on the bare floor boards and from the moon that peered in through the small dirty window. There was precious little furniture; the living room lacked even the basics such as a sofa having only the scratched coffee table that stood forlornly in its very centre like a sacrificial altar. The offering to what ever God's it served consisted of the remains of meals in various stages of decay and a coffee cup that was growing a nasty looking strain of blue mould.

Crash looked at the girl who sat cross-legged on the floor opposite him. She was pale and thin looking and wearing only her pants and a stained vest. She had dirty blonde hair and a gaunt face with protruding cheek bones. She might have once been pretty but not anymore; drug abuse had a way of robbing people of their looks. Crash wondered if he had fucked her. He really couldn't remember who she was or how she had come to be here. He supposed anything was possible.

He glanced around the room with the damp and mildew and wondered for the thousandth time how he had come to be in this situation. His eyes stopped at last on the cheap silver frame that sat on the mantle. It look strangely out of place standing there so normal and everyday in these squalid surroundings, as though it had just been lifted from a nice family home and accidentally placed here in this dive. The girl had caught him staring.

"Who is that?" she asked and laughed for no apparent reason.

"That," he paused, looking at the girl, her pupils where swimming in her eyes, "Is my Mother."

He waited while the last of the scrawny girl's unexplained laughter died. There was the fly crawling slowly across one of the dinner plates. What had that fury mass once been? Pizza? Chicken? Who could say.

"Mother," Crash addressed the photograph, "I'd like you to meet...I'm sorry I've forgotten your name!"

He appealed to the girl for enlightenment but she had once again collapsed into a fit of laughter.

"Oh never mind," Crash said, "I don't suppose a formal introduction is really necessary anyway."

He started laughing himself then. Somehow the thought of introducing  the nameless drugged up girl who he may or may not have fucked to a picture of his dead Mother suddenly seemed hilarious.

He realised he was still holding the needle he had used to shoot up earlier and as he held it up to the candlelight he was struck by a thought that would have almost been sobering had he not been so far gone.

"I've already got two strikes," he said as he let the needle drop from his fingers and watched it roll across the floor.

It appeared the girl had not heard him, or perhaps it just did not register what he was talking about, but her laughing fit had left her sprawled on the floor, exhausted and motionless.

Crash lay back on the hard floor boards and laced his hands behind his head. It was going to be one hell of a night. He knew that as soon as he saw the shape of a horse form in the speckles of artex on the ceiling and start galloping across the yellow stained terrain above his head. There was no stereo here in the flat yet he could have sworn he could hear music playing as more imaginary shapes joined the horse in a crazed waltz across the ceiling.

He sat up. The nameless girl was still lying on her back, her grubby vest had ridden up over her hollow belly and he could see the faintest hint of hair above her pants line. Well, he thought, in all probability it was likely he had already fucked her so why not do it again? He wouldn't remember after anyway and neither would she by the look of her. He glanced again at the photo of his dead Mother and gave her the finger before tugging at the belt on his jeans.

The next thing he knew it was light and there was a heavy pounding coming form somewhere. It was not enough to stir him from his sprawled position on the floor. He tilted his head slightly and looked at the daylight filtering through the mildew on the window. The pounding continued until it gave way to the sound of splintering wood. 

Someone is kicking the door in, he thought, his mind registering what was happening but unable to comprehend the seriousness of it.

The gear, he thought absently, must hide the gear, I have two strikes already.

Even this thought did not stir him though, it seemed his mind was far away from his body.

There were footsteps in the hall now. He knew that this was a raid but he seemed unable to care. When heavy booted officers with guns and bullet proof vests marched into the room and hauled him to his feet Crash was humming to himself.

"Craig Barnes?" it was both a question and a statement.

Crash lifted his head. He felt as though the world was sliding from under his feet. He stopped humming. What a come down this was!

"How long has she been dead?" demanded a brutal voice.

"Who? My Mother?" he glanced at the frame where his Mother glared sternly from her glassy prison. How disappointed she must be.

"Don't play dumb with me Son, the girl, how long has she been like that?"

The grin slipped from Crash's face and he turned away from the picture. The girl, the one whose name he could not remember, was lying sprawled on the floor. She must have overdosed. Her eyes were wide and staring in her head. She was no longer wearing the stained vest and pants. A fly crawled across her naked breast.

Had she already been dead when he fucked her?

He didn't know. He had no idea how long he had been out. For all he knew it could have been days. He did have two strikes though, of that he was certain, and they knew it, the bastards knew it.

"Game over?" he asked stupidly.

"You bet kid."