Page 85 of Beautiful Scars

PART TWO

Chapter 1

CILLIAN

The first place we lived after we got booted from the care home was a basement studio beneath a tenement building. It was the sort of place that sucked the soul right out of you.

All that got parked out front were broken washing machines and dirty old sofas. Cars? Maybe the odd burnt-out one. The apartment had windows, but they faced a brick wall. In the winter, the sun would set at 3pm and then you only had a couple of hours until the ice started to form on the inside of the windows, and you’d be watching your breath come out of your mouth in front of your eyes.

I could deal with that, but I couldn’t deal with the sound of the rats. I don’t fucking like them. I don’t like any sound, but the sound of scratching and scuttling all night is enough to drive a man to the brink of insanity.

To avoid that insanity, I’d take myself off to the pub at the end of the street. It wasn’t the type with a jukebox and a group of girls giggling in the corner. This was a standard old-man’s pub, where dogs were allowed and the only sounds above the low grumbles were pool balls knocking together. There, at least, they could afford to have the heating on, but you still had to wear a big coat until the whiskey took over and warmed you from the inside. Which worked just fine until I decided to stop drinking.

After that, I’d sit in the corner with a can of diet cola, huddled inside three hoodies as I’d wait for my turn at the pool table.

People like to emasculate you for not drinking.Why don’t you have a drink, Kill?I’d ask them if they’d ever met my brother. They wouldn’t ask me twice after that.

All except one person, who was like a dog with a bone. John-boy.

John-boy was a small man, which is why I think he liked to make a big deal about any perceived weakness someone else had. Five-foot-six, and built like a wet cigarette paper. If you asked him, he’d swear blind he was five-eight. He was a born bullshitter but nobody pulled him up for it because his dad killed his own mother. You can’t be a cunt to someone whose dad killed their mum. That’s just...the rules.

How he made it into the army I’ll never know, but he did.

He once told me that in some war—I forget which one, Iraq or Afghan or something, like I said the guy was a bullshitter so it could have been Pearl fucking Harbor—he watched a shell explode next to a moving car with a whole family inside. I was about to give him the whole“did ye, aye?”response, which was what we said before the internet popularized “Cool Story Bro”sarcastic thumbs up emoji.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I looked him in the eye and I asked him how it made him feel.

John-boy swallowed, picked up his pint, and looked across the bar. When he turned back to me his eyes were just hollow and dead. He said,same as when my dad battered my mum to death in front of me.

I liked John-boy after that. Didn’t matter that he was a bullshitter. He had as good a reason as any man to bullshit. Wouldn’t call us friends, but we were acquaintances. He was the type of man who could get you anything you needed for forty-quid. A new TV? Forty-quid. A thousand cigarettes? Forty-quid. Your kid wanted a trampoline for Christmas? Forty-quid.

John-boy would do anything for forty-quid.

And that, boys and girls, is the reason he’s in my warehouse, on his knees in front of me right now.

Cole crouches in front of him. “Just give us the name, John-boy.”

It’s hard to make out John-boy’s face in the dim lighting. He’s slumped on a chair with his hands cable-tied behind his back. There are eyes somewhere, but the rest of his face is mushy and black. He gurgles on a blood clot and directs it at my brother’s feet.

Cole stares at it, and then stands up. “Want to play a wee game, Johnny?”

“Fuck you.” Cough. And another one.

“Fuck me?” Cole laughs. “You already fucked us, mate.” He turns on his heels and heads to the back of the room. I don’t need to turn to see where he’s going—I already know.

This is Cole’s favorite way to enforce.

Find a weakness. Use it as leverage.

He’d never admit who he learned that from, but it’s almost ironic considering how much we hated the man who taught us that lesson.

“Give him some more while he’s waiting,” Cole shouts as his footsteps retreat.

There’s not a lot left of him, so I take a bit of initiative and do one better. Gesturing Derek with a flick of my head, he tips the chair at an angle and stands back as it falls the rest of the way to the ground.

John-boy screams and tries to turn it into something more manly after the fact. Another irony, considering the jip he used to give me for not taking a drink like a real man. I let him catch his breath while I grab a jerry can.