The Brimstone Method

The Brimstone Method - Part 2

I don't know if you've ever woken up with a scorching hangover, in a place you don't recognise, with your ankles and wrists fully restrained by cable ties. Panic sets in real quick.

After a few minutes of screaming and struggling, which did nothing but shred my voice and cut into my skin I calmed down slightly. My head was pounding and my heart was beating faster than a steroid-pumped racehorse.

We were both lying in the back of an old van. The floor was speckled with rust and caked in oil. Seamus was next to me but he was still out for the count, a dark red bruise on his forehead where they had clocked him. And we weren't alone in the back of the van.

There was a dog. An angry looking dog tethered to the rear door handle by a really thin looking piece of string that did not look fit for purpose, if its purpose was to restrain a violent animal. I have no clue what type of dog it was, maybe a Pit Bull or a Mastiff of some kind, who fucking knows. It was real mangy, real ugly. One of it's eyes was opaque and the other eye had green stuff seeping from the corner and the head looked a bit skewhiff, as if it had fallen off at some point and been glued back on not quite straight. It smelled rancid and growled at us the whole journey.

I'm not sure how long the three of us bounced around in the back of that van. Could have been five minutes or five hours. Although five hours is unlikely to be honest. Ireland just isn't that big.

They had really done a number on Seamus, he didn't wake up for ages and when he did he seemed groggy and really out of it. Then he threw up and I spent the rest of the trip trying not to roll into his puke. Any of it that trickled towards the dog it just lapped up which made me feel even more sick.

The van began really bouncing around like we'd turned onto a really unmade, rutted track. Which it turned out we had. The bouncing and pitching became almost unbearable and by the time it stopped about five minutes later we were covered in bruises and had been totally slimed by a mix of Seamus' beery, pie and chips vomit and doggy drool.

We heard the front doors open and slam shut and then the back doors opened to reveal four men in a row standing in the dark and the rain staring in at us. They all wore dark anoraks and parkas. One of them carried an umbrella. The first thing they all did was hold their noses and step back as the smell of Seamus puke hit them, before one of them took hold of our ankles, first Seamus, then me and hauled us out like sacks of potatoes, splashing us down head first into the mud. We were forced to our feet. My legs had gone to sleep and I kept toppling over but they kept hauling me up and punching me in the stomach until I could force my legs to support me.

The van had stopped in a field. It was a massive field and in the darkness I couldn't see the other side, although it was starting to get lighter. I had no idea of the exact time but it must have been nearly dawn.

So there we were; hungover, covered in sick, oil and mud, soaked through, shivering with cold, aching from our bruises and beatings and utterly confused as to what the fuck was going on. Only then did the guy with the umbrella speak.

So it turns out that this guy, the guy with the umbrella standing there like some kind of American mafia boss, was the buyer for all those guns in the warehouse and he is really pissed at Seamus and me, and has been for over five years. He'd been waiting for me to be released from prison so he could exact his revenge on us both - planning it for all that time, thinking of the best worst thing he could do to us; torture, matricide, identity theft. I can't remember half of his threats against our physical and mental wellbeing, but it must have taken him ages to google and memorise them all. When he had finished (I think) I remember asking him what it was we had done to him, other than lose the guns.

It was revenge, of course, pure and simple. Two of the guys who had been turned into unrecognisable red smears in the warehouse at Warrenpoint were his brothers and he blamed us entirely for their deaths. I think I protested a lot that it wasn't our fault, we were sold out and that it was the Army that had actually pulled the trigger, but he seemed very certain that it was us at fault and us he intended to punish.