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Five minutes.
Sorrow
_For me_
I was nineteen years old.
I had my friends, i had my coven, i had a future ahead of me.
I was in the brave new land, though not new to me, it was none the less a good thing.
I was living with my then partner, she was a couple of years younger than me, and to be frank, at first she was a little naive.
That was soon sorted out though.
Only so much a "little rich girl" can have before she starts rebeling against the system.
It was september i think.
I say think, because i know i blocked a lot from my mind.
It was not long until midnight. I had my favorite boris vallejo t-shirt on, demon lover, my black jeans, my steely doc martins.
It was a warm night.
I was walking from newtown to greenstead.
Now greenstead had a rep for being pretty bad at times.
Myself, my partner, my best freind and his wife had all moved in to a lovely three bedroomed house.
I and my partner had the smaller two rooms.
Everything was good.
I had a job, i had respect, i was known by people.
Then, that night it all changed.
I was walking home.
I should have left five minutes earlier.
Oh it's fine to say that now, with a little hindsight.
But i spent a couple years crying myself to sleep, when i could sleep, with that thought.
Five minutes.
Five minutes.
Thats all it would have taken for me to be a different person today.
I would have been like i used to be.
Known, loved, wanted.
Five minutes could have, would have changed my world.
Well, it did change my world.
But there i was walking unafraid of anything.
I knew the lads infront of me were drunk.
I could smell other things on them too.
Drugs.
One knows the stench of it on people when you have seen people die from it.
You see it their movements, in their voices and ways.
I had left my friends house ten minutes earlier.
I was very aware of the time.
I moved to the other side of the road, but the time come when i had to cross, and they was away by some distance.
I crossed the road.
The alley way exit was less than twenty meters from my front door.
The alley itself is only five meters long.
I knew the time it would take me to go through.
I entered the alley.
Secounds later, i was aware of running feet.
Five pairs.
I was forced to the ground.
I tried to stand.
Some one kicked me in the back, on the spine.
I struggled.
Another kick and a punch, to the kidney.
I was down.
I curled feotal.
I had one side to a fence.
Only my back for them to hurt.
One of them pulled up my face, someone punched me.
Several times.
Blood.
Mine.
I called out, "help, please some one help".
But the area has a bad rep, who'd be silly enough to go out and try to stop a group of five lads kicking the hell out of some one?
No one in that area.
I was dragged to a standing position.
I was punched, kicked, beaten.
I fell.
One of them tried to get to my head again.
I grabbed his hand.
Bit.
Hard.
Bones crunched.
Flesh broke.
I could taste him in my mouth.
I laughed.
Yes laughed.
They stopped.
They ran.
I think i passed out.
Not for long.
Came too.
Looked at my watch.
A quarter passed midnight.
I waited.
I checked myself, from the inside out.
Eyes, hands, jaw, neck, wallet.
I had the next days rent in my wallet.
Only a couple hundred quid.
It was still there.
I was still alive.
I stood.
Legs worked.
I staggered home.
I got home.
Put key in lock.
It wouldnt open.
I checked the number on the door.
It was the right number.
I tried the key again.
It wouldnt turn.
I hammered on the door.
Calling out, as loud as my bloody ruined throat and lips would allow.
Eventually my friend came down.
Opened the door, expecting some drunk to be there.
He saw me.
Saw what i looked like.
Saw he smile on my face.
I walked past him.
In to the kitchen.
I was at the time, a chef by trade.
I had knives, i knew how to use them.
I took my machette and a thick bladed boning knife.
He wrestled them off of me i think.
I know we shouted.
He was until a year before, a soldier.
I didn't have the knives for long.
I remember them going back in to their case.
His wive and my partner came down.
Saw what happened.
Saw what i looked like.
One called the police.
The other poured me a drink.
I stood there, in the kitchen, bright yellow it was, looking at the glass in my hand.
I was thinking.
"I can kill myself with this glass"
I thought of all the ways i could cut myself up.
Make myself bleed.
Kill myself with the glass.
The thought took a few moments.
It was a lot of ways to die.
I looked at the drink.
Cola.
I think i was then in the front room.
Still bloody, battered and bruised.
Time passed.
A couple of hours.
The police came.
Spoke at me.
Nothing really registered though.
"Any motive"
"What did they look like"
"Had you provoked them?"
The questions went on for a while.
I stood, walked in to the kitchen.
Took the glass of cola.
Drank some of it.
Half of it i think.
Put the glass down.
Looked at them.
Told them all i remembered, the description of the shoes they lads wore, the colours of their eyes, their hair, what make sweatshirts they were wearing.
How many of them there were.
And then i went to bed.
Nothing ever came from the police investigation.
My partners stepmother took me to her doctor a day later.
I slept for a long time.
The docter was a private one. Paid a lot of money.
Took pictures of my wounds.
Measured them.
Recorded them.
Gave me a general check over whilst i was there.
He asked how i got the wounds.
I told him.
I know that the day before, and the night i was attacked, much of my ribs and back was bruised.
Sore to the touch, swollen.
Both eyes were black.
It was painful to swallow anyting other than liquids.
All i had been drinking was cola.
Apparently the wounds that he recorded were minor.
Yes there were a couple of foot prints where the make of the trainer and the sole imprints were rather visible, but from the beating i took, i should have been much more injured.
Things should have been broken.
My split lip was all but healed.
My ribs whilst a little sore, were fine, no breaks or cracks.
I had a blood test done as well.
I insisted on it.
I told him that i had broken the skin on some one with my teeth, i could tell him if i wanted to the taste of the blood, the taint in it.
The results came back clear.
My body was in good health.
My body was fine.
I went back to work a couple of days later, the other staff had heard what had happened to me.
I felt like a ghost walking in.
They all looked at me.
Saw me limp a little.
Saw the slight bruising.
I was limping because i stubbed a toe that morning.
My bruises were all but gone.
Some lingered for as long as a week.
What few cuts i had all healed with in a week and a half.
A fortnight later, i looked as if nothing had happened to me.
A fortnight of crying myself to sleep.
Five minutes.
A fortnight of nightmares.
Five minutes.
A couple of months later, myself and my partner decided that it wasn't good to live in that area any more, we saw out the housing contract.
My other freinds moved back up north for a while, back to a parents house.
By now i was a shadow of my former self.
Once i was the extrovert, the hedonist, the one that was seen first, last and always.
I wasn't just part of the crowd, i was essential to the crowd.
No more.
Loosing weight, sleeping poorly, when i slept at all.
Haunted by dreams, nightmares.
I was put on to medication, but all it done was made me worse.
The pills made me sleep for almost four days at one point.
They drove my mind from me.
I was like a zombie, no emotion, little motion.
I almost went to hospital.
I woke up when my mum was worried.
She wanted to leave my bedside to call for the docter.
When she did eventually leave it, i woke.
I didnt go to hospital.
I drank a lot of cola.
It took almost another two years before i went for counselling.
I had lost my partner to another man.
It didnt bother me.
I no longer cared about her.
The world was grey and ashen.
Nothing mattered.
I slept for a while with a gun close by.
I spent some time out of colchester, back to sheerness, with some freinds, old and new.
Some saw the change in me, asked me what had happened.
I told them.
Others didnt know me how i was before, so i was accepted as i was presented.
Some were freinds of my brothers.
I didnt see him that time.
I couldnt.
I went back to colchester.
And started the councilling.
It helped a little.
It helped enough.
But i still wasn't the person i was at five to twelve that night.
I'll never be that person again.
But i know i was never weak enough to cave in to suicide.
I had the option.
I had the means.
But i never gave in.
No matter how bad i felt.
Or still feel to this day.
I can still feel each blow.
I can taste the blood.
But i am jaded.
I am ashen.
But jade glows brightly in ceratin lights.
And some cultures use the ashes of last years fire to mark the hallowed place for this years fire.
I always have been a pacifist.
Yes there are moments when in rage i have given over to the anger, the hatred, the lust for causing pain.
But i have not since i was thirteen years old, physically hurt some one with the intention to do so.
That people have considered me violent, aggressive and so forth in the last year, i find both ammusing and hurtful.
Why should i cause the pain to others that i would not wish on to anyone.
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