Ronnie Winters

Ronnie Winters

Having a gun on you every hour of every day is no mean feat. Even if it is just a fake, it’s pretty damn near impossible. But it can be done because I did it. I’m not proud of it; I didn’t really want to have to do it at all. And I wouldn’t have done it at all if I hadn’t been so paranoid about my past catching up with me. I suppose though, that it was pretty justifiable paranoia. Most people’s pasts are reasonably docile things. They’ll make some people cringe, make some people cry, but generally they don’t pose any real peril. Generally, they don’t sniff you out, hunt you down and tear you to shreds. My past was like that; a very dangerous, bloodthirsty wild animal.

I had tried to isolate myself from my unpleasant history. I detached myself from it, moved on, got a job as a bricklayer for a smallish city-based company – all completely above board and legal. I had a girlfriend called Becky, a small but relatively nice flat and things seemed to be going well. I kept my nose clean, my head down and my shoulder to the wheel. I don’t think I could have tried any harder to forget my past. But then, sometimes I think it wouldn’t have made any difference whether I’d tried or not. What happened would still have happened, I’m sure, and whether it would have happened sooner or later is inconsequential.

My past. Now there’s a nasty tale to be told, not that I’ll go into details. My alcoholic mother left me, my step-brother and his dad when I was about seven. I don’t suppose that her leaving should have made much difference to us – she was so neglectful anyway – but it did. At that age, you’re just starting to think for yourself, and then if your last blood relative runs off without a single word of explanation or goodbye, I guess it must have some effect. My step-dad was hardly a role model either. He got into fights and then into trouble and then into prison a couple of times a year. Shuffled between a broken home and a reluctant grandma, it’s no wonder me and my brother became problem children. We stopped going to school, caused havoc in the streets, terrorised neighbours… He was older than me, the only person left in my life who seemed to care what I did, so I followed him, looked up to him, idolised him. I was impressionable and he was the only one around for me to aspire to be like. So I stuck with him, did whatever he did, or whatever he told me to do. Which turned out to be a very unfortunate thing. Living in a rough area, it didn’t take long for us to get wound up in a pattern of crime, which rapidly escalated to become more and more serious. By eighteen, my brother had a formidable collection of very dangerous knives and had used them too. With a dangerous gangster as a role model it’s not hard to guess how the next few years of my life played out.

While I never became a high profile personality, my brother was soon leader of his gang. As the godfather’s brother no-one ever gave me any grief, even if I did get under peoples feet. I did small jobs just to keep myself out of the way: smashed CCTV cameras, picked up weapons from suppliers, took number plates for stolen cars. But then something happened that made me leave that life behind. I stopped it, tried to forget it. Like I said, I had my job, my flat and Becky. I was starting to lead a normal life. I had stopped running from my past, stopped looking over my shoulder at every corner for an unfriendly face in the crowd, and stopped constantly dreading that it would find me. So it wasn’t fair that it caught up with me like it did: unexpected and vengeful and murderous. It wasn’t fair that the moment I stopped running, my past caught up with me.



Get home from work. Becky’s not in until later. I sigh. I hate coming home to an empty house. Key in the door, door open, door closed, lights on. My jaw drops. The house is not empty.
“Evening, Ronnie,” she says, reclining against the wall, arms folded across her chest. But it’s not Becky. My mouth goes dry. From that very moment I know I am in deep shit. It’s Jasmine Reed, the woman that’s been after my blood for the past four years. I don’t know how she’s found me, but it’s very bad news.
“Miss me?” she asks, and her voice makes my skin crawl. It’s like all the fear in a memory turned to liquid and poured into my blood so that just with those few words, I’m back to the old me, back to my past. Just her voice has conjured up all the years I tried to put behind me so that suddenly they’re real again, and they’re standing in my hallway and I’m scared. But then a reassuring thought flashes in my mind.
“Like a bad cold,” I answer, and my hand flies under my jacket for the replica. It only takes an instant for me to realise that it’s not there. My head snaps up.
“Looking for something, Ronnie?” she asks. In her hand she twirls my reassurance. Slowly, my insides begin to tie themselves into knots, the realisation gradually dawning on them, as it is on me, that this is serious.
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” she says, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, “Someone with your connections, with a fake?” She shakes her head. “And a bad fake, at that. Things have gone downhill for you.”
“When did you take that?" I croak.
“Ronnie, I’m upset!” she exclaims, “I can’t believe you haven’t seen me.” She takes a step forward and my knees turn to jelly. “I’ve been virtually stalking you all day. Is your eyesight getting that bad?” The thought kicks into my head that I should run but I don’t give it much attention. All I can do is look at Jas and get more and more nervous. “Or did you simply not recognise me?” she goes on, “After four years, your memory might be getting bad…” She smirks coldly, giving the gun another twirl. “I hope it’s not your memory,” she says, “Because that would make revenge that bit less sweet.”
With the word revenge I know why she’s here and my imagination begins filling in the gaps. I make a noise like a sick cat, want to run and vomit at the same time.
“Take him out, Joe.”
By the time I realise there’s someone else in the room, it’s too late for either.


I wake up and wish I hadn’t. I’ve been beaten unconscious and beaten awake again. Not an entirely new experience but it doesn’t get any better with familiarity. There’s a burning in my side, and my stomach aches with bruises but it’s my face that feels like it’s splitting in half. A fist hurtles into my gut again, and I double over winded. A blow in my side and I gasp. I swallow the air; I’m in a panic, afraid and desperate. The safe little world I’ve cocooned myself in is rapidly falling apart. I blink blood out of my eyes. I’m tied to a chair in bedroom, bleeding all over Becky’s cream carpet. Becky… Then Joe throws a punch right in the centre of my face. My already broken nose splinters and I can’t help but let a cry of pain escape me, my eyes watering madly. Joe is a virtual giant, a tree-limbed, six foot, Herculean brute. I’ve been at his mercy before and want nothing else now than for him not to hit me again. He does though, and again and again before Jas calls him off.
“Enough, Joe,” she says, and he moves away. Blinking, I see her. She makes me shudder: out of fear, yes, but also out of disgust. She has eating disorders, she must do. She’s too skinny, all angles, jutting bones poking cruelly from under her skin. A taught, ugly bag of bones. She was beautiful once; now she’s a skeleton. A wraith of who she once was. But that, I realise, might have a lot to do with me.
“You awake now, Ronnie, you scum?” she asks. I almost throw up at the sound of her voice. She scares me so much. She ambles over, so calm so deadly, a predator who knows there is no escape for her prey. I start trembling, squeeze my eyes tight shut.
“Can you hear me?” she asks, right at my side. I croak in reply, turning my face from hers. I can’t look at her, can’t bring myself to meet her stare. I’m so pathetic. I feel a tear trying to sting its way out from between my clenched eyelids. And then she says, “Your brother is dead, Ronnie.”
Every muscle in my body tenses. My eyes snap open. I refuse to believe my ears.
“Your brother’s dead,” she repeats.
The words bounce off the walls of my skull, not sinking in, not making any sense. I need it not to be true. I need it to be a lie. I shake my head, whisper “no” to myself. Jas doesn’t speak. She reaches out to Joe and puts a mobile phone in front of my face. On the screen is a picture of my brother with his throat slit ear to ear.
“They published the picture on the internet,” Jas says, her only explanation, the only consolation I’ll get. I shake my head, wanting to knock the image out from in front of my eyes. “It was waiting to happen, Ronnie,” she says.
My shoulders sag. I know it was coming, I know it had to happen one day. But I’m not ready. I’m not ready for it today, not tomorrow, not while Jas is still breathing. He was my one protection against this, and now he’s gone. The tears that slowly run down my nose and cheeks are not only for my brother. Like a coward, I cry for myself, because now I know I’m dead.
Jas lets me be for a moment; at least she grants me that. Then I tilt my head back; compose myself and nod - a signal to Jas that she can start her revenge now. I shudder, feeling like I’ve just signed my own death warrant.
“You know why I’m here,” she says, “You remember right?”
“Yeah,” I croak. Of course I fucking remember. How the hell could I forget?
“Yeah?” she says, “Wow, Ronnie, I wouldn’t have thought a coward like you could manage a “yeah” if you really knew why I was here.”
And my breath catches in my chest like a shard of glass for a moment. What if she knows about Becky?


Becky. Becky. Despite the horror of the idea that Jas might know about her, just her name was like a shred of sanity in a situation that had spiralled completely out of my control; a beam of light in what was fast becoming an impenetrable black. Becky, my girlfriend, my angel. God, I loved her. She had already saved me, if not from death itself, then from the person I was threatening to become before I met her. She kept my head out of the clouds, my feet on the ground, all the broken pieces of me sewn together. With her, earning legally for the first time in my life, I had someone to spend my money on. I’d never had that before and I relished it. I spent every spare penny on her, taking her to dinner, to the cinema, the theatre, theme parks… I showered her in every gift money could buy until she told me to stop being so lavish. I didn’t have to buy her affection, she said. As long as I loved her, she’d love me back and that was all that mattered. I started saving my money instead, with plans to take her on a cruise.
I met Becky when I was out shopping. You know those idiots who buy their food or whatever, and then leave their wallets by the till? I was one of those. So, one day, I left the wallet and walked off. By chance or fate, Becky was the one who noticed. As I approached the exit, she tapped my shoulder.
“Excuse me,” she said, “I think you left this.”
I turned. I always say that that was the very moment when whichever black cloud that had been hovering over me finally parted. She may not have been blonde or leggy with supermodel good looks, but there was something in her face that triggered off some long-forgotten thing inside me. Maybe, I finally realised what I’d been missing during all that time of hiding away with only my self-disgust for company.
“I think this is yours,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, realising it was my wallet in her hand, “Oh. Thanks. Wow, what an idiot.” I laughed sheepishly. Prat, I thought to myself, prat and double prat.
“S’alright,” she said, still smiling.
“Seriously, I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on.” I pocketed the wallet, “Thanks again, by the way.”
“Very welcome, Mr. Winters.”
I think I must have jumped with shock. At a time when I was at the height of my paranoia, the fact that she knew my name was enough to release a shot of terror through my veins like a drug. She must have noticed my distress.
“I read your name off the cards,” she explained, and now she was the one looking sheepish. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything.”
“No, no, of course not…” I tried to shake the moment of panic from my system. Stupid paranoid idiot, I thought. “Thanks very much.”
She smiled and turned to leave, and I realised how sorry I already was to be seeing the back of her. Without really thinking about it, I called out, “Hey.”
Wow. Now I was stuck. I could hardly say, “I’m already sorry to be seeing the back of you, please come out with me for a meal, and then maybe back to mine for a drink.” I couldn’t say it, no matter how much I would have liked to.
“Er…” I racked my brain, desperate for an excuse for having stopped her from going back to her shopping. Then, “Well, seeing as you know my name now,” I said, “Surely it’d only be fair if I got to know yours too.”
To my relief she didn’t turn around and slap me. She extended her hand grinning. “Becky Edwards,” she said, “and what would the ‘R’ in ‘R.Winters’ stand for?”
I grinned back, relieved. “Ronald,” I said, then shrugged, “Well, Ronnie, normally.”
“Nice to meet you Ronnie.”
We stood there for a moment in awkward silence. We were both smiling like wallies, each waiting for the other to talk first. We must’ve both realised at the same time what idiots we looked like, because we burst into sheepish laughter together. I knew then, that I really liked this girl.
“Look,” I said, still smiling, “I’ sorry if the sounds really blunt, but we’re already introduced and it’d be a shame to have wasted the breath, so…”
“Pass your phone and I’ll type in my number,” she said, giggling. We must’ve looked like awkward teenagers then, giggling and fumbling with mobiles.
“And as you’re being blunt,” she said, blushing ever so slightly as she handed back my phone, “Why don’t you go the whole shot and ask me out for a drink, too?”
Well, I left that supermarket grinning madly from ear to ear. How happy was I that night, to be one of those idiots that leave their wallets at the till?


“Ronnie, focus please.” It’s Jas again, closer this time. I clench my eyes tighter shut, pray she doesn’t know about Becky, God please don’t let her know… I broke into a cold sweat a while ago. Now, the beads of perspiration roll down my forehead, down the bridge of my nose. I’ve never wanted so much to open my eyes and find that none of this was happening. For this to be just a sickeningly real nightmare.
“Ronnie, focus,” she says again. I shake violently, my knees knocking together. I’m so pathetic.
“Look at me Ronnie, you coward,” she demands. But I’m not that stupid. I’m not about to let myself into that. I’m not about to see the hate and disgust in her glare, not about to see the hurt I caused etched onto her face. I’m not about to confront my worst memories, that I know will be reflected there in her eyes.
“Ronnie, you look guilty!” she exclaims in mock shock, “As guilty as Satan.” My eyes might be shut, but I wish like hell that I could do the same with my ears. She’s circling me, like a vulture does a corpse. “But no!” she exclaims again, teasing, taunting, torturing me in the most painful way imaginable, “Surely our little Ronnie hasn’t done anything wrong?”
I shudder disgusted. Mind games. She’s playing sick fucking mind games. The worst is that I know what she’s building up to. I wish madly to be unconscious so that I don’t have to have her remind me… Not that I need reminding. It’s all there, as harsh and as clear as the edge of a blade. It’s just on a high shelf in my brain, carefully out of reach for safety purposes.
“Focus Ronnie,” she says again. The mockery has gone from her tone. All that remains is hate and disgust. I know what she wants me to focus on. She wants me to focus on those damning memories, those excruciating memories that I keep in the dark corners of my mind inside fifty boxes, chained and padlocked. Memories I’ve spent four years running away from, four years trying to forget, only to have their living form standing in my own house. She trying to bring them up and it scares me because I know she’ll manage it. And I would give anything to avoid reliving those events. I wish and I hope and I pray, God you can’t let her do it, you can’t.
“Scared?” she asks. She hisses the word down my neck; I can almost feel the spider of it crawl down my back, as she breathes demons into my ear. I wince and let out a noise like a terrified child.
“You deserve to be scared, you shit,” she spits. I know it. Know that I deserve every curse and blow she could throw at me, and she’s thrown plenty. Last time Jas scared me, she left me charred and bloody pile of flesh and bone –
I stop myself quickly. There, one memory about to topple like a whirlwind into my head. I stop, but the shadow has already leaked out, a black tendril of poisonous smoke coiling around my mind. I try to stop it but it’s like opening Pandora’s box. The monsters want to come out. I groan in dread and fear.
“You’re so pathetic, Ronnie,” Jas says, and I’ve never heard such heartfelt hate in a voice before, “A pathetic cowardly murderer. I hope you’re torturing yourself over it. I really do. Because soon I’m going to kill you over it and all that pain will end. That’ll be my one regret about killing you, Ronnie,” she says, “That you won’t be suffering any more. That’s why I’m giving you time now. So you can truly repent what you’ve done in the shitty course of your shitty life.”
I want to scream at her. I want to beat it into her. I want to make her understand. Torturing myself? Fuck. I’ve been torturing myself over it for four years. Every day, every breath, every second I live, I torture myself over it. Each breath of air that brings me life is tainted with guilt, each heartbeat heavy with the pain of regret. I used to lie awake at night unable to sleep because the hatred I felt for myself was causing me actual pain. I couldn’t even sit still for the agony of self disgust. Sometimes I would scream into the black loneliness and wish I was dead. I was in a void of self-loathing. When I sobbed and cried and screamed, I only proved to myself how pathetic I was and then I hated myself even more. And if I did fall asleep, exhausted from taking my hatred out on myself, then the nightmares would come. My own screams would wake me, or the shouts of angry neighbours willing me to shut up. I’d always be in a pool of my own cold sweat, my throat raw from shouting, my limbs trembling in fear. Sometimes, I even wet myself in sheer terror or fall of the bed with the sheets smothering me, clawing at me like fingers. Being awake was hell, but sometimes being asleep was even worse. My life may well have carried on like that until I died. Until the day I lay and starved because food tasted like poison or the day that I screwed up the courage to hang myself or throw myself off the roof. But I met Becky and pulled myself together. But even now, if the thought of what I did escapes into a black dream, it kills me a little.
But I can’t explain that to Jas. I don’t deserve the chance to make excuses, even if there were any, and she doesn’t deserve to have to listen to me grovel at her feet. But how could anyone try to explain themselves to a mother whose children are –
“Just think, Ronnie,” she goes on, “Three children and their auntie. Three children and their auntie suffocating, screaming burning alive.” She stops and I open my eyes to see her cover a face with a hand. When she turns back to me her face is overflowing with grief and hate, un-cried tears and vengeance waiting to happen. I look away and I know I’m weak. Too weak to look into the eyes of the mother whose kids I –
“Can you imagine that end?” she whispers. “Can you still see their faces pressed up against the window? Can you still hear them crying?” she lowers her voice until it’s barely audible, “Because I can.”
I can’t hold back my own tears anymore. I feel like a balloon being inflated with guilt, so much guilt it hurts and it feels as if my chest is going to explode. It swells up, overpowering, escapes as a sob.
“You’re a murderer,” she says.
“No,” I groan, “Please, no…” It’s a plea. A plea for her to stop. To stop trying and make me relive it all. I’m shaking now, my body racked with heaving sobs. I look like a branch in a gale. Me before my memories.
“You burnt alive my little children.”
There’s and explosion inside my brain. Pandora’s Box flies open. The demons rush out and I’m gone. There’s nothing I can do now. I’m just lost, screaming and protesting back into my worst memories.


It was supposed to be a simple job. A team of four of us had a house we had to burn down. Jas’s sister’s house, by unfortunate coincidence. Her boyfriend was, apparently, a threat to my brother. We didn’t know the why’s or how’s; we never did. We were just underdogs, sent to get the job done and for god’s sake not to fuck it up. If my brother said jump, we asked how high. That was how it worked. We were mindless puppets. Anyway, it was supposed to look like an accident. An un-stubbed cigarette, or a gas leak or something equally as explicable. The important thing was that no one was going to be in the house. They’d all be in the town square for the Christmas fireworks.
We set the fire and left in separate directions, happy that everything had gone to plan. But as I was walking back I bumped into Jas. She was with two blokes, her and her sister’s boyfriends. They were laden with crates of last minute booze for the holiday festivities. We were on good terms back then and we swapped Merry Christmasses after chatting. It took me a deadly long time to twig that something was wrong.
“Not at the fireworks then?” I asked.
“Nah, not this year. Kids can’t go bless ‘em. All three of ‘em down with the chickenpox. I’m up to my eyeballs in Calpol and camomile lotion”
I froze. “Oh God.” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she grinned “It’s best they get it over with young.”
“Um, so where are they?” I managed, heart racing, dreading the worst.
“At home with my sister-“
Realisation took the breath from me and I glanced, panicked, over my shoulder in the direction of the house. Oh god oh god oh god.
Between my reaction and Jas’s mothers’ intuition, she knew. We ran, pounding down cold black concrete streets leaving the crates of lager forgotten behind us.
I was in shreds and rapidly falling to pieces by the time we reached the house. What I saw made me feel worse. Inside the house was choking on thick black smoke. Flames crackled on the ground floor. The kids were still in there.
“I locked the windows!” Jas wailed, screeching, hysterical, “I locked the doors and windows!”
But the boyfriends were already at the door, trying to break it down, shouting for help, telling Jas to call the fire brigade. And I stood there doing nothing. At first I was numb, thoughts storming around my head, caught up in a whirlwind, not making any sense. My brain buzzed static. I’d never killed anyone, never held a knife to a throat, never held a gun to a head and always hoped I’d never have to, but now there was this. Now there were three kids and a young woman trapped inside a house I’d set fire to. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. And then the windows exploded in a shattering of glass, enough to silence Jas’s helpless wails and enough to kick me out of stone. I ran.



There’s a second set of memories. Afterwards, I went into hiding. People, not only Jas but powerful, murderous gangs of people, wanted to see my corpse at their feet. So I pleaded with my brother for protection. He shouldn’t have given it me. But disgusted as he was, blood runs stronger than I knew. He sent me to address, a safe house in the country. I’d already run, and now, with his help, I could hide too. Hide like the fucking coward I was. But naturally, Jas appealed to my brother too. Jas and every other human being who wasn’t so corrupted as not care about the stolen lives of three little kids. She argued that I’d burnt her family alive. She should have the right to do the same to me.
“Take him,” he’d said, handing them the address, “Do what you like to the scummy bastard. Burn him to within an inch of his life, but for fuck’s sake leave him alive.” I can imagine him as he fought with himself over what to do. Here stood a mother who had to bury her sister and little children because of me. But I was still his brother, even if I wasn’t worth shit. “When I’m dead, you can finish him off. But while I breathe, you will not kill Ronnie Winters.”
They came for me in a snarling pack, ravenous wolves starved for blood, parched for revenge. They dragged me outside – there was no one around to see, and beat me silly; pistol whipped me or hit me with anything they had that would cause enough damage. When I was unconscious, they crammed my mouth full of firelighter, tied a petrol soaked rag over my face. When they knew I was awake, they beat me some more. Someone had steel-capped boots from a building site and was using them to great effect. Flesh tore, bones broke, guts bruised. I was thrown against walls, kicked and punched till every inch of me was bruised and bloody, till not a single rib was intact. I threw up again and again as my stomach was pummelled but it all stayed in my passageways, blocked by the firelighter. I gagged and cried buy if any one noticed or heard they wouldn’t have given half a shit. I choked, panicked and inevitably wound up snorting in more petrol and vomit than air. I couldn’t breath. I thought I was going to choke, to suffocate, to-
Suddenly Jas ripped off the fuel soaked mask. I threw up, gagged and spluttered as I desperately tried to spit out the firelighter while I kept being sick. Before I was done, she grabbed my hair and slammed my head repeatedly against the stone floor with more strength than I had thought she had in her. Soon I was being blinded my own blood as it ran into my eyes. She must have stopped before my skull cracked open, but it didn’t feel like it. I groaned and writhed in agony but that hurt my broken bones. The guy with the boots came over again, and kicked me repeatedly in the groin and stomach. I curled up defeated. I lost count of the times I managed to plead “Stop,” to gasp, “Please, no more.” No one listened.
Eventually though, they did stop, and Jas came over again. I was shaking like a man in a fit, reason scattered to the winds, just wishing that if they were going to kill me would they please get it over with quickly. No such luck.
“What’s this Ronnie?” she asked. Petrol was thrown all over my face, my nose, my eyes. I snorted and spluttered, trying to keep the damn stuff out of my lungs. But I was being doused in it, drowned in it and nothing I said was going to stop them from doing whatever they wanted to me.
“Your brother says we can’t kill you while he’s still alive,” Jas said, as I lay coughing and quivering at her feet. “But no-one lives for ever. So we’re going to give you a little taster of what we’re going to do to you the day he dies.”



If they would have set fire to me then, as I was, lying in a lake of petrol, I would’ve been dead. I would have gone up in ecstatic twelve feet flames amidst the cheers of the spectators. I would’ve been my own frigging funeral pyre. I’m sure I would have made a brilliant bonfire. Roast Ronnie. But they didn’t. They didn’t because then I would’ve been dead and they would’ve been in trouble, though what my brother would ever have been able to do to that mob, I don’t know. For ages afterwards, I wished they had killed me. It all would have been over in a flicker of a flame. A strike of a match and “poof” - That would’ve been the end of me and my self-loathing. But they didn’t.
I think they must’ve kicked my unconscious again. It couldn’t have been difficult by that stage. I don’t think I gave a shit anymore whether I lived or died, as long as I got left alone. I didn’t want to be me, didn’t want this pain any more, physical or emotional. I woke up as I was thrown into the bath. Every bone scraped and grated and screamed as if they’d been splintered into a million pieces. I was completely naked, and shivering from the fear, pain and trauma. In the country, miles from anywhere, no-one was going to hear me if I cried for help. I choked on the terror as if it were something solid. Oh Christ, Oh God, help.
Someone turned the shower head on and burning water was sprayed all over me. I writhed, tried to cover my face, tried to stop anywhere from scalding. It took a while for me to realise what they were actually doing. And the realisation didn’t making me feel any better. They were washing the petrol out and I knew, even if I didn’t know exactly why they were doing it, that it wasn’t out of consideration. They left when I was red raw and I tried to keep the thoughts of what they might yet do to me in the back of mind. Tried to soothe the swell of terror in my chest. Tried and failed.
I would’ve sworn that I never fell asleep. I would’ve sworn that I spent the long midnight hours shaking and crying and pissing myself with fear. But when I jolted awake in the in the blackest part of the night, my screams told another story. They told that I had slipped into a nightmare and once I was awake I screamed myself hoarse and fell into a numb daze. I think my brain began to shut itself down, waiting for the final blow.
The next day came and went in a taunt of moving shadows, the changing of the light. I saw grey clouds float past the window and eventually darken again to black. When the sky between the clouds was a deep violet they came back.
They entered the bathroom with a paper sack of coal. I swore and turned my head, eyes tight shut; couldn’t bear to watch as the black lumps rained down on my feet and legs.
“Who’s got the matches?” someone asked. I nearly folded in half with the despair that clenched my stomach. I looked up at Jas. She stared as me, dry eyed and blank faced. I wanted to beg for mercy, beg her not to let them do it, wail that I was sorry. But of course I was too scared. She raised an eyebrow. I looked away in time to see one of them light a match.


“You’re remembering, aren’t you Ronnie?” Jas croons in my ear. She’s right. And she knows she’s right because her voice echoes with bitter satisfaction. I tremble in a cold sweat. She knows she’s made me relive it all and she’s relishing the knowledge.
“You screamed like a coward,” she says, “Like the coward you fucking are. Because this little life you’ve built yourself? The brickie job and cheap flat? It’s all a lie. It’s a crock of bullshit and you know it. Because there are people like me, Ronnie, who know the truth about you, who know what a low, pathetic, sick shit you really are.” She moves away and I look up to see her wipe her hand across her face. Her hands are shaking. When she turns back I don’t close my eyes again. “You passed right out you know,” she says, “The moment the smell of your own burning flesh reached your nostrils-“ She stops, the stone in her throat choking off the words and she digs the heel of her hand into her eyes to stop herself crying. After a moment she composes herself and looks at me again. “You should have handed yourself in,” she whispers. “I thought you would, you know. You might have won a bit of respect for that.” Her eyes are welling up with tears and her fists clench, “But you had to run, didn’t you? You had to go running to big brother for help.” She shakes her head, disgusted. She sounds so revolted, as if I surprised even her by being such a damn coward. “When you hid… You lost any friends you still had. People had sympathy for you Ronnie, because you always had been pathetic. You were always too scared or too stupid to do anything important, you just kissed the arses of anyone big or strong enough to protect you. But you really shocked ‘em. Anyone can fuck up Ronnie, but only a monster tries to get out of it.”
I wonder if she knows that I already know this. I wonder if she knows that I completely agree with her, that I hate me just as much as she does. Yes, I’d run and hid. I wasn’t proud of it but I’d been scared and stupid and I hadn’t wanted to die. I don’t want to die now, but I don’t have much choice. If anyone could change what had happened I’d be the first one to try. If I could swap places I’d do it in an instant and be happy about it, I really would.
“I’m sorry-“ I whisper.
“Sorry?” she cries, “Sorry?”
“Yes!” I roar back. I strain against the ropes and the chair and the air and Jas’s hate and the past damn four years, “Yes, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m sorry it happened and I’m sorry I ran and I’m sorry I’m alive but I was scared Jas-“
Suddenly she throws the chair over backwards. My head hits the floor with a sickening thud and the world spins. Jas glares at me, breathing heavily, more than furious.
“Scared?” she spits, “I’ll give you fucking scared, Ronnie.” She takes a step over and I recoil in terror. She leans over me, her face twisted in a sneer of vehement disgust, unadulterated hate, “I’m going to kill you,” she says, “I’m going to burn you alive like you did my family. Be scared, Ronnie, “she says, “You are going to die and you are going to go to hell.”


They left the room. I lay stunned. I was so terrified I couldn’t think straight. My eyes darted round the room as my heart pounded in my chest so hard it hurt. My eyes landed on the luminous green face of the alarm clock next to the bed. I took in the time but it took longer for me to take in what that meant. It dawned on me in a flood of panic. I jolted as if I’d been shocked. Becky was due home. Becky. Becky. Becky would be home at any moment. I had no idea what I was going to do but I rolled around and managed to get to my feet, still tied to the chair. My breaths came in ragged gasps of wild horror. I stumbled to the window. If I saw her, I might be able to warn her. I didn’t know how. All I knew was that if she came into the house, Jas would kill her too. Even worse, she might kill her and let me go. The world below was bathed in the artificial orange glow of street lights. House lights were on, the blue flicker of a television screen showing through closed curtains. People safe in their homes. Down the alleyways, black shadows crawled out menacingly onto the streets. I craned my neck to see the road and I was horrified to see a car approaching. My legs nearly gave way with dread, but then it drove past and disappeared round a corner. I exhaled in relief but then I heard another car coming. I looked again. The glare of the headlights disguised it but as it rolled to a stop outside the flat and they flicked off, I swore. It was her. It was Becky. Panic shot through my veins like a drug. I needed to warn her and I didn’t know how. She couldn’t come into the house, she couldn’t and oh shit she was getting out of the car. Fuck, I swore, oh fuck. I glanced around. I couldn’t open the window because my hands were tied behind my back. I couldn’t shout because if I made any noise Joe would come running. Oh god, oh god, how to get her attention. Suddenly I saw. I flicked the light switch off with my chin, then on again. Off, on, off, on, off, on. I looked out of the window, and there she was, looking up, looking beautiful, looking confused.
“Police!” I mouthed desperately, “Police!”
I saw her mouth drop as she saw my face, covered in blood. I didn’t know if she could see that I was tied to a chair as well but she saw that something was horribly wrong. ”Police!” I mouthed again, willing her to get the message and get it quickly and then to go. “Police!” I nearly sobbed the word to myself and then I saw her jaw snap shut as she understood. Then she began to dig around in her bag for her mobile. “No!” I mouthed manically, nearly screaming the word out, jumping at the window like a lunatic, “Nonononono! Somewhere else! Somewhere safe! Not here!” I motioned my head across the road and she got the point. I didn’t see whose flat she went to. I collapsed back into the chair in a rush of fear and relief and exhaustion. I gasped for air like I’d never known the joy of having lungs. As far I was concerned, it might not be a joy I had for much longer.
Just then, Jas and Joe came back in the room, now armed with artillery of bottles of petrol and white spirit. “Highly flammable” signs grinned at me with evil orange eyes. I put my head back and nearly groaned in dread. Not yet. Please don’t let them do it yet. Five more minutes please, oh God, not yet.
“You’re an expensive bonfire,” Jas said, “But I wasn’t about to take any chances. Besides, you’ll be worth it. Good god you’ll be worth it.”
“Jesus Christ,” I sobbed, barely believing it as Joe stated opening the bottles.
“Yeah, start praying Ronnie you bastard,” she said, “Though I would’ve said it’s a bit late to be starting now.”
Joe dragged me and the chair over to the bed, then took the bottles and ran rivers of their contents from the hall to the bedroom and then around me in a circle, like some kind of pagan sacrifice. The sharp chemical smell pierced my senses like a knife. I took shaking, shuddering breaths. I couldn’t think. I just watched them in a daze. They threw the last of the bottles onto the bed behind me and stood back to survey their work, like an artist steps back from the canvas to admire art. Content, Jas looked at me again.
“If you think this is bad,” she said, “You should try and imagine what I wanted to do to you.” She shrugged, “People said you weren’t the effort. They were probably right.” She looked me up and down and then looked pained for a moment. Then she said, “See you in hell, Ronnie.” She turned and they both left without once glancing back. The sound of the door closing with a clunk seemed to be the loudest, most final noise I’d ever heard.
Then they dropped a match through the post box and the house went up in flames.