Applied Science

Chapter 2
Cellar

Chapter Description: The protagonist recalls his childhood and how he ended up living the lifestyle he lives.

I grew up knowing no parents knowing no love no tenderness. Just violence substance abuse and money to keep me going. I had started running money for local dealers at the age of 6 which at the time paid me handsomely. When you are 6 and you have nothing and all of a sudden you make £50 in an afternoon taking money from one place to another it’s an unreal experience. I could buy things that the other kids in my home didn’t have. The men i worked for shit everybody up nobody would touch me. I felt invincible and i felt powerful. Which as you can imagine growing up in the care system is something i never felt. I was short for my age even then mousey brown hair green eyes button nose. In the wrong hands i would make a nice plaything. I knew that even then i knew that and money could never drown out the fear i felt. The crippling underlying fear.

I made friends older friends and things were good for about a year. When i was seven the guys i worked for moved me onto taking more hot packages between places for them. I stole a green BMX that i went everywhere on and i could shift 2 or three keys in a day. I stopped going to school and stopped going to the home altogether. I loved it and the crew i worked for became like a surrogate family. Shit was great and i lived as well as a homeless 8 year old could kipping in crackhouses and squats. Luckily at that time the people i ran meant that everybody left me alone and to myself when it came to addicts and other scum. Unfortunately this didn’t last forever.

I ran for that crew for a further 2 years. In that time i saw things that nobody should really see at that age. I saw an addict try and jump one of the crew for a bump and the addict did not fare well. With 4 wounds to the chest I watched the life drain from his eyes, i smelt the stench as he shit himself, i couldn’t tear my eyes away from the body. It lay there for hours. It’s eyes still open It’s skin turning waxy and It’s eyes staring forever into the distance. By the time they got rid of it he didn’t even seem human to me. Films and TV say that even people in the shittiest of lives are supposed to feel remorse or anguish when seeing things like this. At that point I’m not sure i even did feel anything. I just felt nothing. I saw how this life was i knew if you tried shit you got smashed. It was one of the events in my young life that lead to me becoming the detached being i was in my later years. Thing is a lot of people say that the youth involved in shit like this know nothing getting into it and that was somewhat true. But by 10 i knew what this game was about and very well where it could end. But i was in now and the money kept me going and i had my comrades. The final step down on my spiral was when i was 12. I was running to a new supplier the crew had been in touch with. Nobody knew much about him but i was disposable to the crew. He wasn’t buying in serious weight so they sent me. Looking back i should have known this but still i went, like a lamb to the slaughter. I arrived at this man’s house. A nice semi detached post war build. Nothing special looking about the place looked like the same soulless shitbox that business cunts drive their shitty BMW cars to. I knocked on the door and a bald man in a wife beater answered. I was immediately grabbed and pulled inside. This was not routine i normally gave the package at the door and went that was how this was supposed to go. Now i was inside this hallway with this huge man holding me against the wall. I struggled to no avail. Tried to reach for my shank and couldn’t make it. I was eventually muscled into a room and thrown into a chair. I wish i could remember more about what happened there but truly i can’t. I was terrified. I was given the typical rudeboy spiel about what the fuck i was doing on his patch. The normal shake down shit. I had been smashed up loads of times in the past but nothing compared to the beating i received there.

I remember waking up sometime later my whole body in agony. My hands were bound i was left in a basement somewhere. There was a dim light from a bulb hanging from the ceiling and this place stank like stale piss. There were boxes here and there, a freezer and not much else. My left eye throbbed totally closed up. For the first time in a very long time i sat spread my little hands over my eyes and sobbed bitterly. I knew where this was leading. It would be my body turning waxy in the cold next. I lived like a lunatic child like i had nothing to live for but only when faced with true mortality did it sink in. I sat there for what felt like hours pouring my little heart out into that dim cellar. I was truly broken. Eventually a voice bellowed down the wooden stairs leading down.

“YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP DOWN THERE BOY BEFORE I GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!”

i stifled my sobs and quietened down. At this point leaving there with my life was top priority to me. That or some water, i was ridiculously thirsty. I saw a dog bowl of water in the corner, i didn’t give a shit if a dog had been in it. I tried to move over to the bowl and at that point i realised that my feet were also bound. My left leg was in crippling pain as well. A small squeal came from me as i made my way over the damp cellar floor. It felt like a mile to me those few yard across the floor there. I finally made it and drank deeply from the shitty smelling water, Letting every gulp cool my aching frame. I hadn’t noticed the 3 men coming down the stairs in my state of utter ecstasy. An older man with glasses and two large men stood there at the foot of the stairs staring down at me. One of them was the bald man from the door but i didn’t recognise either of the other two. They stared at me there pitiful and weak. I was truly feeble and at their mercy. I slowly felt my trousers begin to warm as i pissed myself in fear. The older man spoke softly.

“That water was meant for my dog you little shit. He’s worth ten little rat runner boys like yourself.”

i tried to shuffle back but made no ground as the bald man strode over to me again. I was roughly hoisted to his eye level and made to look into the older man’s face. He surveyed me up and down all the while i was blubbering pathetically.

“let’s see what this little shit playing big man gets in a big man’s world! Give me twenty boys i won’t be long!”

The bald man left and i was here alone with the older man.

I will spare you the details but i was used there. How dirty old cunts use small homeless boys trying to get by. I never felt more filthy and disgusting in my life as i did when he left that cellar. This went on for weeks. Beatings starvation and other things. Eventually I could open both of my eyes and got used to moving around the cellar in my bindings. One day I found a sharp nail end on the underside of the stairs which I used to tear and undo my hand bindings. First thing I tried to do was get out of that fucking door which was unfortunately locked. I looked around the cellar for something I could use to escape from this dungeon. I saw an old chest freezer in the corner and an old Stanley on a shelf above it. I made my plan. Later that night the old cunt came down to have some more fun with me. This time when he came down he found the lights off. He turned the lights on and immediately received a well placed slice to his private area. The man screamed and screamed. I looked up the stairs awaiting his two gorillas to come and save him. Nobody came unfortunately for him. This cunt was home alone. I decided that after all I had gone through at that point I was getting my revenge. I pushed the chest freezer over to his writhing slug like body. I split the wires with that knife and plugged the freezer in. I had my fill with that bastard there and then. I don’t know if he died but I now he must have been glowing in the dark when I was done with those wires. I hope he didn’t die personally; I want him to live the rest of his days with the scars I left him. I pulled my way up those stairs and made my way through that house. On his coffee table lay a .22 pistol. I grabbed it and stuffed into a nearby rucksack along with about £1.200 of his money.

I ran out of that house found by bike, still stuffed by the front door and made my way back to a squat a frequented. I never ran with my old crew again after that but I had money and I knew the trade. I made other friends on the opposite side of town and that was that. Over the next 12 years I did job after job. Deal after deal until I established myself as a respected member of the underworld, doing hard drugs partying and destroying myself slowly. Ever since that spell in the basement I was more violent and depraved in my undertakings. I eventually stopped staying in squats and got my own place. Furnished it nicely dressed very well. I said i would never feel dirty and as scum like as I did in that cellar ever again. At least until that job came up.