South-East London Blues - short story

[Orb]

If this stinks of hypocrasy, it's because it's been written by a middle-class, white, privileged, arrogant, never-actually-been-to-place-in-question-so-is-relying-on-dubious-possibly-non-existent soruces guy who hasn't really had to deal with personal hardship on levels anywhere even remotely approaching the protagonist's, so drew all background knowledge/inspiration from gangster films/his...brain . CC 3/4 for this story, please. It's a little old, and not my best (I think), so I don't need too many complaints

Short story at only 1012 words, something I wrote about six months back. Some strong language.

South-East London Blues

There are different types of heat in South-East London. There’s the heat of a bright, sunny day. I never really noticed that kind. There’s the crushing, sweltering heat of the factories and the stores. That’s the type of heat that makes you ill. You always recover, but each time something’s gone. Then one day, you don’t recover. There’s the heat at night. That’s always the worst. It’s the solid, stinking, sulphur heat. It’s the heat of all the gunfire and the bloodletting and the lies and the drugs. It’s the heat of a city without a God except the paper effigies of gang-leaders and the drug-lords. That heat sometimes gets too much for someone; when it does that someone puts a bullet through their head. That heat, that scalding, sulphur heat, that’s the South-East London blues.

Once that type of heat got too much for me. That’s why I’m here in this false cold. They put a man in prison for life to ‘cool down’. It’s a greenhouse in here. Still, I’m ahead of myself. It must have been… what? Six months? A year? Three years? Time doesn’t exist in here. It hardly exists outside. People keep saying ‘life goes on’. Not in South-East London. In South-East London it just repeats and repeats and repeats. Another true friend killed – by the drug-lords, or the cops, or himself. It doesn’t matter: it all sinks into that subconscious sludge. You pretend you don’t care but it all sinks deeper. And eventually your head is full to the brim with all this filth. In South-East London, noone censors you, because everyone’s guilty.

I grew up in Hell. In the ’90s crime was still rampant. Supposedly they got the last of the Tamil gangs three years ago. Now they’ve just begun throwing more and more money at the place. Maybe it’ll work. But there’s something darker than poverty here. I grew up in a gang. Who didn’t? These weren’t the efficient gangs of legend, the Krays or the Richardsons. I mostly stayed away from it. I was ‘smart’; I wouldn’t get involved in the clumsy stick-ups or protection rackets. I could read and write, which was a damn sight more than some of the others. I just sat at the back and added up the figures. Occasionally I was involved with drugs, but I was always careful. I reached sixteen without a single arrest. In that, I was unique. All of my friends had been charged with something or other. Some weren’t convicted. Some were let off because of their age. Some were shut in this same iron greenhouse. Some killed themselves.

I kept a low profile. My older brother was in prison for armed robbery. My younger brother, Richie, was following in my footsteps. He was smart. He was also very unlucky. The gangleader, Tom 'Tomahawk' Eliot, was nicknamed after the time he ‘executed’ one of his men with an axe. He wasn’t the brightest but he was feared and he had cash. Tom had two of his thugs kick the shit out of Richie for ‘ignoring him’. I came home that night to find Richie lying on the floor with one of his teeth missing and bleeding. I fixed him up. I comforted the kid. I told him to stay strong. Then I realised. Then I realised it was all one continued lie. One never-ending circle. Richie was thirteen, for God’s sake.

I couldn’t call the police. They were all eating from Tom’s hand. They would answer with a calm voice and all the subtleties that said ‘bribed’. I couldn’t let that bastard get away with this. So I did the only thing I could. I succumbed to that sulphur fever that is the South-East London blues. I ran; I ran to the ‘meeting’ that Tom was having with one of his ‘friends’. He wouldn’t be ready. Noone interrupted his ‘meetings’. I was lucky in that respect. I wasn’t thinking at all. My entire mind was a mixture of the coals of anger and the rage I’d built over my life.

Tom’s bodyguard, a sadistic bastard who would cut the tongue off of illiterate gang-members who were likely to inform on ‘us’, stood outside a door with cracked green paint. His knife was resting by his hip, in plain sight. I ran at him. He stared at me quizzically. Perhaps he guessed the cops had latched onto me or something. I ran into his huge body. The impact knocked us both back, but I came off with the knife. I stabbed at him, driving the steel point into his stomach. I stabbed again, ignoring the burning sensation and sickening sound as he struck back. This time I hit his neck, and he fell after an eternity. I stepped past his body and barged into the door, a splinter went into my shoulder. It was agony, but that wasn’t enough to stop me.

Tom was already running for the back entrance. His great lump of a body wasn’t fast enough. He said something, but in the heat of the moment and the pounding agony around my ears I couldn’t hear. I stabbed into that great roll of fat he called his shoulder. The knife slide through easily, letting free his blood. I kept stabbing.

The police found me an hour after he died. I was still stabbing the body with an energy I shouldn’t have had. Blood was everywhere. It was soaking my clothes and skin and congealing on my face and the floor. I was arrested. I was convicted of murder. Then they sent me here.

I’m writing this not to justify myself. I don’t need to. I’m just writing to explain: I don’t need these jaded thoughts and condescension. I don’t need your money. I don’t need this prejudice and this judgement. I just need some shelter from that sulphur stench and horrific dark heat of this godless place. Some shelter from the South-East London blues.