Mine?

For those that are new - the beginning...


Six months later and I have new fucking friends and together we roar.

Claudia and I are now so close I dream her family.

This new girl that stands before me though, Claud's sister, could be so dangerous as to destroy me. I think her perfect in every way. She is a model. Tall, slim, blond, pale, yet dangerous. I saw it on the first day that we met. Her name is Cecilia. She will bring new colour to my world

I am sat on the floor of the tiled subway that leads to Piccadilly Underground station. Claudia is beside me and together we draw vodka from the bottle into the syringes, which we then cap and throw to one side. Cecilia wears a pink rubber dress with a flower in her hair and she stands before us, smiles at the passers by, and makes them wonder. For they no longer wonder about me. This is London and the unexpected is harder to find. Yang Dog is stretched out on a dirty jacket. He is panting, his breathing laboured and panicky. He leans his head backwards and with an awkward flex vomits.

'Your dog just puked on Sydney's coat.' Pointed out Claudia as she filled the last syringe. 'You can wear it now.'

I watched as a man entranced with Ceci's beauty walked past and turned his head to see some more.

"You couldn't fucking afford it you wanker.' I called out, then poked my tongue. Not his.

Mine?

Then I patted Yang Dog, promised we would get him to a vet soon and lifted him off the jacket.

The jacket said 'Fuck Politics Lets Party' in painted letters on the back and 'My dog ain't well' in vomit on the front.

'What that jacket needs.' Smiled Claud, 'Is some shock value.' Then she stood up and stuck a syringe through a button hole on the front.

'What Myra fucking Hyndley needs...' I retorted, referring to her T-shirt, 'Is this...' and I spat a huge green glob out my mouth and onto the face of the child killer.

'Fuck Myra weren't nothing. Brady's the man.' She laughed, pulling out her T-shirt front and examining the sticky mess. Then she spat her own green right in the middle of Brady's face.

Still Ceci smiled and posed and people stared, sometimes at her, but sometimes at us with disgust on their faces, just as we hoped.

'Time to go.' Claud offered, so we gathered up our things and headed for the tube barriers. It was a matter of timing. You had two choices. The first was to push behind someone with a valid ticket and force your way through the electronic barrier. The second was to lie on the ground and slide underneath it. To the disappointment of the crowds, Ceci chose the former and Claud, Yang Dog and I the latter. Yang was not well though. I wondered if he would die.

The Northern Line train rattled and jumped its way to Angel Islington tube. Claud and I knelt on the floor smearing the black sooty dirt that filed the wooden grooves onto each others faces and arms.

'You're fucking filthy.' She astutely observed as she spat on a finger and wrote the word 'Fuck' in the dirt on my forehead.

'Like your Mum?' I laughed back. But I was entranced by Cecilia again who now sat twisting her long white hair around a finger. Then I noticed the boy. A group of black teenagers were moving up the train and making a line for Ceci. I watched. Waited. Looked up at them and at her from the floor.

'What's your name girl?' Said the boy that stopped before her.

Ceci didn't answer. She looked at Claudia and I and we stood in preparation for what might come.

'Fancy coming out with us?' He asked. Still not aware that she was ours.

Mine?

I couldn't bear it. 'That's my fucking little sister. Leave her alone. She's only 14.' I lied about the relationship but not the age.

The rest of his group laughed at the sight of Claud and I but the boy at the front did not. He just stared. Mostly at Ceci, but sometimes at us.

'She look like a whore.' He turned and kept his gaze fast on me now, 'What your Mum let her dress like that for? She gunna get raped.'

I moved a little closer. Me. The syringe. The dog vomit. Yang Dog strained on his string a little but was mostly too sick to care.

'Leave, my sister, the fuck, alone!' Then there was complete silence on the train for a second before the two of us flew at each other and his fist landed firmly on my teeth. I can't describe the fight, I can't tell it true, because I now remember little more than spitting out bits of teeth in the police station interview room shortly after.

'What's your name love?' Asked the uniformed man with more smile than we deserved.

Ceci sits sexily posed on a plastic chair, Claudia smokes a cigarette given to her by the police officer and I have a moment of perfect realisation. This life is starting to become something I can never turn back from. This girl that I see today in the Police Station mirror, her scars are moving from the inside to the out. The fragments of white, broken bits of me that now lay in puddles of dribble and blood in my filthy palm - they are to be the first permanence of this evolution. I am no longer the Claire I was before.

Claudia thumbed the discarded ticket, a Cheapday return, before looking up and smiling thick.

'She's Cheapday. Cookie Cheapday.' And with the twist of the end of a word, Cookie Cheapdate was born.

Continued...