Last Night A Cheesestring Saved My Life

Last Night A Cheese String Saved My Life
By
Ged Backland

As I lay here on my back looking at the ceiling, I might as well tell
you a bit about myself. Firstly you'll hate me, for it is me who breaks
into your house when you are out doing the decent thing, working for a
living, only to come home and find all your house trashed, your
knickers rummaged through by my grubby fingers, and wait for it
depending on the time of day a shit on your floor. I'll shit on your
floor where I'm standing, just drop my baggy jeans and dump and then
wipe my arse on the nearest material, don't give a fuck if it's your
Laura Ashley curtains or your IKEA rug. It's the adrenalin you see, the
rush, the excitement gets a bit too much. When you've stopped crying
you'll find your jewellery gone, the ring your mother left you, the
watch from your dead dad, all the little things that money can't
replace, I sell them for a fiver to Bernie for a bag of Smak.
Well done Sherlock, that's right I'm that thieving little scum bag smak
rat that they should bring back hanging for. Go on lets hear it,
'decent folk should be protected from the likes of me blah fucking
blah, heard it all before. So what, when the vicious apetite comes I
don't care, I want to devour, so fuck you and your wooden floors and
two hundred CD's, fuck your stuff and give it to me, I'll have it all,
strip the duvet cover off and It's my magic sack filled to the brim
with all the moments of your posh little life. Your insured aren't you?
Stop pulling the winging little face then, claim for the Rolex when it
was an accurist don't ye, say your system was a new Bang and Olufsen
when it was ten years old, your just like me, just the fucking same.
I've pissed myself, I think it's piss can't tell could be blood, Can't
move my head up to see, think it's my back broken I presume,I've lost
five days with the withdrawal and turkeyin' that was a head fuck, pains
in legs I can't feel, pissing sweat, I've been pissing it, it's only
now I can think straight, only now I remember where I am, on my back
motionless, unable to move anything below the neck, flat out in the
cloakroom of Bunty Bear nursery school. Bad karma returned with
interest you'd say, timely, you'd say to tumble through Christmas Eve,
no fucker back in here for at least another week.
Nobody will miss me, my mum, bless he tired face, will have done me a
dinner, she has done for the last eight years, I've only ever showed up
once, and that was so I could excuse myself at the table and go and
nick her charm bracelet whilst she dished out the sprouts in her
tissue-paper crown. Still she lives in hope that the little boy with
the fishing rod in the gold frame, who beams holiday delight from above
the fire will come back. The one who made her those lovely hand made
mother's day cards with the lovely words. The little boy who crept into
her bed every night until he was ten, the little boy who she could
never cuddle too much. She thinks it's her fault, the way I am, if
anyone's to blame it's those middle class rich kids who came up to
Liverpool to go to Uni. I was well on course for an honours degree
before Sash and Tarek took me to Bavna's flat for that first hit. It
was O.K. for them they'd ring daddy and get him to bail them out of
their debts, get swished away to posh clinics and rehab centers.
Whereas I was left on me arse with a big habit. That's surprised you
hasn't it, the university bit, you presumed that I'm some thick fucker
from a household that lived on a diet of Jerry Springer and U.K. Living
or from a home or just from somewhere that criminals came from some
crim town where they give lessons in stealing and thieving in between
tattooing your neck.

Fucking sky lights, cheap shite sky lights. Being a thief you get to
know a lot about the quality of window fittings. Victorians had it
right solid stuff, but now you've only got to tread on a glass panel
and you're through, and down like I am soaked with piss and sweat with
a broken back.

I'm fucking hungry as well, I'd forgotten what it was like to be
hungry, on the way through the skylight and to the floor I splattered a
luchbox that was left under one of the kiddies little designer coats
that had been left on a peg marked Lucy. Couldn't get to the little
butty or the breakaway but last night a cheesestring saved my life.
There's a song in there somewhere. See us Scousers always laughing
always cracking jokes.
"No Jobs, shit houses and no future but what a great sense of humour
you Scousers have got," Sash used to say. Fucking Cow she used to
pretend to be from Liverpool when she got drunk it was
nauseating.

I'm rambling now because I can feel it all closing down.

"Look Mummy Santa's hurt himself coming through the roof1"

"Oh my God here Lucy Darling, come away."

The End