...Crazy Anymore (reprise)

Back at the flat we pooled our loot on the coffee table and flicked on the telly to see whether we had made the local news. Sirens had rained down all day, but no one had come round to nick us. We would’ve fought the fucking scum fuzz any day of the fucking week. We were on top of the world like, an unstoppable force. A fucking crazy day it had been and it wasn’t over yet.

I tipped my can of beer into a glass cos I hated the taste of tin with my booze. I ripped open another wrap of coke and poured half of it into my drink and downed the concoction in one go. I grabbed a second can and repeated the sequence. Billy and Shauna just looked on in astonishment.

- Fucking greedy cunt! Billy said.

I stared at them, my eyes bugging out from my head and I grinned. I pulled another wrap from my pocket, like fucking Santa I was, and poured half into Shauna’s drink and the other half into Billy’s bottle of beer. They grinned back at me and necked the lot. Billy belched loudly and we all fell about laughing.

Colin came up from his downstairs flat. We thought it was to complain about the noise again, as he had done the night before. I was ready to placate him; well, I was ready to butt the fucker’s nose out of joint, but to my surprise he didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. He sat heavily on the sofa, the springs creaking as he adjusted his considerable weight. He pulled out a tin and some tatty rizlas and rolled a sizeable spliff. Once it was lit, he started talking and it was difficult to make him stop. Anyone would’ve thought it was him that had been sniffing Bolivian marching powder all day long, not us.

The hours ran past us, disappearing into night and back into day. The hours spent filled with the passing of spliffs and the snorting of various powders, until we had run out of drugs and were left only with the final remnants of alcohol in the bottom of cans and bottles. We poured each vestige into a glass, making a murky and sweet-smelling liquid drink that almost took your head off with each sip. Once this was finished we went out in search of more.

None of us liked walking, not even up the stairs to the flat; we would have preferred it had they installed one of those granny lifts, the ones that stupid old bint advertised during the commercial breaks for a telly show like Countdown. Anything that old rags might watch to while away their days, until death cast his shadow over them. To be honest, having seen the shows myself during the slow days that the dole provides, they were about as close to death as a person can get without actually snuffing it. It’s all bollocks, really. Complete and utter bollocks.

The car started on the first spark of the wires and we were on our way back into town, to steal more booze and catch up with any number of the town’s less salubrious inhabitants: the ones that sold powder and puff.

Shauna, who accompanied us on all our sprees even though she should really have been in school taking her exams, was sat in the front again, twiddling the knobs on the stereo. We never said nuffin’, but we all knew that she was more often than not twiddling Billy’s knob. I tried to scrape the image of her with a mouthful of cock off my mind – jealousy can be bad for driving, takes yer mind off the road. My time would come; she and Billy had not been sharing a room for some days and she had taken to crawlin’ into bed with me on more than one occasion, although I lay there stiffly, just in case Billy was waiting to pounce outside the door. I liked the feel of her breath on my neck as she slept, the feel of her skin against the hairs on my arms. Soon, I would enclose her in those arms and all would be happy.

Colin and Billy were in the back of the car. I’d never taken Colin on a spree, but he was nodding his head like a fucking jack-in-a-box when I asked him if he fancied coming with us to town. That’s the trouble with these dope smokers – they are so lazy-arsed that sometimes they nod their fucking heads to anything, including shite on the radio like Celine Dion. Sea lion Dion: that was what fucking Billy called her. He had names for loads of celebrities that made me laugh: Jan Dildo instead of Jill Dando, Scrawny Beaver instead of Sigourney Weaver. He just kept coming out with them, making me piss me pants. Almost, anyways.

A song came blasting out of the speakers in the car now Shauna had got the stereo finally working. I dunno the song though; it was some new-wave punk thing, all grinding guitars with a throaty singer shouting into the microphone. All I could make out was the words: I don’t wanna be crazy anymore. Fucking pussy, that singer. I liked being crazy. To prove it, I pushed down hard on the accelerator and felt the car move up to over 100 miles per hour. Fucking right this was the way to live.

The car seemed to leave the road for an instance as we came over the small rise and I laughed as we slammed back down to the road. It was a close shave, what with the cliff wall plummeting to the sea below being the alternative destination if I’d’ve got it all wrong. I watched as the sun glinted across the ocean beneath us, cascading across the wave as it ebbed and flowed.

- Fuck’s sake there.

That was Billy. He was pissed at me cos I’d made him spill his coke all over the floor. I watched him in the rear view, checking out how angry he was. He was black mood fucking mad, that’s what I saw. I reached into my inside pocket and withdrew a small wrap of paper.

- Here we go braw, get some of this up yer nostril and stop yer fucking evils.

He snatched at the wrap of cocaine and tipped the whole gram onto the mirror. I instantly dropped my speed to 80 mph. No need to spill my own drugs now, is there? Less than two minutes later and a fucking fat line was sitting on a mirror just under my nose, glistening like the waves had been earlier. Shauna grabbed the wheel for me, steering from the passenger seat as I turned around to take my snort. Fucking lark this, I was getting double the buzz what with the stolen car and the coupla pills I’d necked that morning to get over the hangover. The line was the icing on the cake.

As soon as I had sniffed hard along the line, I twisted back to face the road, just in time to see that Shauna was losing control the faster we had gone.

- Shit, we’re gonna fucking die

She said that out loud before collapsing into laughter. I pulled on the handbrake, pulling the wheel down with all the strength I had. The car spun around and I floored the accelerator. We went around again in the spin and then the car pulled into a straight line and we were off once more at a hideous speed.

- Bet fucking Clarkson couldn’t do that, the cocksucker.

I had to agree with Billy, I was a fucking good driver. Even if I hadn’t had a lesson in my life, not passed a fucking test or nuffin’, just common sense and a leaden right foot. We careered into town, narrowly missing some stupid old rags crossing outside the Co-Op. I clipped the metal post by the Town Hall that advertised the latest residents’ comments to the fucking council and came to a halt along the side of a gleaming 4x4. The two cars were a mess; we were out and running before the engine had stopped and anyone had noticed the accident.

How we fucking laughed when we got to the off licence, shoving cans of high-strength lager into our pockets and shooting evils at the store manager.

- What yer gonna fucking do?

That was Billy shouting, his teeth gnashing as the coke high peaked.