The Death of H. R. Jefferies

Got out four weeks ago. Fresh air tastes so much better when you ain’t breathing it from behind bars. Over crowding, they said. Knocked a couple of months off my five-stretch. Result! Fed up of the fucking do-gooders. Coming in to chat to you about fucking personal problems. What the fuck do they know? Were they perved up as a kid? Did they grow up surrounded by fucking criminals and drug addicts? I needed the help then. Not to be locked away. Locked away with all of these junkie scum. Then the fucking wankers come in to ‘talk about my childhood’. Try talking about my fucking childhood before the sentence was passed. Try talking about my childhood when I was a kid. Bunch of fucking pricks.
Only two ways to drag yourself out of the mess of my past. Career criminal being my first choice. I failed at that spectacularly, just like I fuck up everything. Pissed away the best part of my twenties inside that fucking rotten hole.
Time to go for box number two. Drum roll if you please, maestro. Get an education.
Yeah, fuck me.
Education?
Yes I got a fucking education. It was easy as well. Just the clock the bars and the books this time round. Not like school. Not like spending every waking minute of every single miserable fucking day wondering what carnage I’d walk home to at half three. Oh no. Just the cell. Starched sheets and a first class view of the recreation yard.
I went for maths. Nice, simple, clean, unmolested numbers. One. Two. Three. Not like all that sociology and psychology bollocks they teach. Was it because your daddy hit you…or are you just a tosser?
So I’ve got a masters degree, no less.
Walk into a job on the out I thought. First class. I did a crime, but I done the time. Paid my debt. Now I want something fresh. Something clean. Something better.
Five weeks. Five fucking weeks and not even an interview. I’m stood outside the Job Centre now. It’s started to rain and I’m getting all wet. A lady bumps into me. I say sorry but she’s already gone. She didn’t even fucking see me. Turns out with my record they don’t want to touch me. My fucking record, wake up love, this is the naughties, it’s all mp3’s now. You don’t like MotorHead, I’ll put on a bit of Queen. Tits.
I was just a little boy. He came up to me. Fucking offered me a sweet. Yeah, stupid. He was even an old guy in a mac for fuck’s sake, but I was just a kid. That happened to me. I did bad, but not like that. I still wake up in cold sweats and they won’t even give me a chance.
Bastards.
Yeah, I held up a few bookies and done over Somerfield, but my mum just committed fucking suicide. Drugs, she loved them more than she ever loved me. When dad left escaping into chemical oblivion mattered more than me. It hurt me too.
What choice did I have? No money, no job, family gone or dead. It was the easy way. Fast money. Just this numb buzz in my head. I knew it was wrong. Like you know getting cut hurts, but you don’t feel it because of the pain killers.
I was just like mum. Looking for the easy way out.
Now, I’ve worked real hard. Got a degree. Gone straight. I even shave me face dead regular. But they don’t want me. I’m so stupid. I was actually surprised I couldn’t get a job. But why would that want me? No one has ever wanted me.
Bloke on the desk in the centre just told me there were vacancies at McDonald’s. Mc-FUCKING-Donald’s? I fucking have a fucking degree in fucking maths! Working out how much a big mac and fries costs isn’t exactly what I studied four years for.
People still pushing by. I’m invisible.
What they all don’t know though, is I have a gun. Yeah, no shit. They never found it after they nicked me. I stashed it in a tree down Vassel’s Park after my last job. It had a hole in the trunk so I just dropped it in there. It was still there, after all these years, wrapped in the oily rags in a little plastic box.
It’s in the inside pocket of my coat. I’m getting soaked though to the skin. It’s pissing it down. I pull it out.
Don’t really know why - it was getting wet anyway.
They fucking see me now! They all fucking see me! Do they see me, or the gun? Way I see, the gun is nothing without the man. They see me. They’re paying me attention. Just like the old days. But they’re all running away. Screaming.
“Look at me,” I’m screaming back at them. “Fucking look at me.”
I let a shot off into the air. Not intentional, like. I barely touched the fucking trigger. I didn’t even realise it was loaded, I didn’t stop to check. How many bullets were left in when I hid it – I don’t fucking know.
A woman jumps on top of a little boy, pushing him to the ground, she lays on top of him. They must be thirty yards in front of me, on the filthy pavement, getting soaked. Why would she do that? I’m not going to hurt a little boy. They think I’m some sort of a psycho.
Some filth grabs the kid from under her and runs off. The woman follows behind. She trips over her heals. I let out a long roar of laughter as she scrambles up to her feet.
I spin round to the job shop behind, arms out stretched. People are peering at me from behind the pillars and the tops of furniture. “I just wanted a fucking job,” I yell through the glass.
I turn back around and there’s this bloke. Bigger than me: taller and fatter. Takes me a few seconds to work out who he is.
Filth.
“Give me the gun, son,” is all he says. He’s holding out his palm and looking all tense. After five inside you know fear, and this guy is scared.
“Why?” I ask. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“Give me the gun,” he’s repeating his words like I’m some sort of fucking retard. I have a fucking degree, you clit! “Just give me the gun, son, and we’ll talk about it.”
Talk? Fucking talk? He’s just one of them. One of fucking them. They took my fucking life away.
“Talk?” and I’m screaming at him. Really loudly, I know because my ears are ringing, but it don’t sound loud. “My name’s Mr. M. Goodwin, and I want a fucking job, not a fucking chat.”
“And I’m PC H. Jefferies. Now give me the gun, son.”
I’m just standing there. Thoughts whirling so fast round my head I don’t know what they are. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Old Bill are everywhere. They’ve got guns. Bigger ones than mine. There’s some fucker with a loud hailer, but this prick is still standing in front of me. It’s like a fog lifting around my brain. I’m back in the real world. The rain fresh and cold on my skin. And there’s a gun in my hand. What the fuck. A fucking gun. I only came out for a job.
There’s this thing rising inside me. Tears start spewing out my eyes like I’m a fucking girl, and all I can think about is I hope this bloke can’t see me crying because it’s rainy and we’re wet anyway.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, so why the fuck do I have a gun? Lock me up. Throw away the fucking key. I’m fucked. I hold the gun out. I’m dropping it in his hands.
Next thing and he’s falling away from me. His eyes wide and full of terror. It went off. His body crumples at my feet. I think I just shit my pants.
Fire flashes through the grey of the rain and I’m falling down now. I land on the pavement. This metallic taste in my mouth. Jefferies’ dead eyes staring at me.
My vision fades to black.

I was feeling a bit restless last night so wrote that. It was pretty free flowing and I got it done in about an hour. There's a few of us submitting this Thursday, so we're sending of sub 2000 word pieces for critisism among the other members. I was thinking of sending this out (since the other story, which I'm yet to rewrite is a bit too long - and I haven't had time for a crack at the second version yet!) with the possibility of turning it into a longer story. I'd be interested to know what anyone else thinks!