The helicopters roared overhead just like they always do this time of night. Poking their unwanted noses into everyone else’s business with their blinding faceless searchlights. Looking for the resistance fighters or drug dealers or whoever tonight’s victims would be.

Thunder and lightning, same old shit, every night.

I stayed hidden under one of the old crumbling concrete bridges that joined the two sides of this godforsaken city together, over the steaming brown cesspool of the river. Those chickenshits wouldn’t have the balls to come down here in person, not after dark. I was safe. I turned my eyes away from those fucking helicopters and down onto the current of the river. It wasn’t much better to look at. Rubbish piled up high on either side; its dark cold surface concealing god knows how many unsolved murder victims as it continued its endless race down towards the ocean.

I’d never been to the ocean. I’d been raised in the slums of this city by an alcoholic mother and a violent Dad. The same story, I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. A kid is born to a poor family, family doesn’t give a shit and kid has to look after himself blah blah blah. Who cares? No one.

The only thing anyone wants is the story of how he got out and if he fucked the girl and if everything was happy ever after.

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I was interrupted from my internal reverie by the words of a pale and grotesquely thin mess of a girl. She couldn’t have been more than 15. Her sunken cheeks, those bulging eye sockets, skin barely stretching over those bones, she smelled like she hadn’t washed in a month. She could have been pretty, somewhere else maybe. Her naïve little eyes, hidden in the recesses of her skull, darted back and forth between me and our surroundings.

“Yo, you got any pills mister?”

“Yeah sister I can hook you up. 2 quid a pop.”

“Thanks Mister”

She took five and scuttled off, must have been having a party. Yes, I’m a drug dealer. What the fuck else should I do round here to make some money? Mop up in some worthless bar? I earn more in half an hour than those assholes do in a week. Maybe I could be a cop? Those shitheads are worse than the murderers I sell my shit to. Maybe I should join the Resistance? To be killed inside a week? No thanks.

The cops are the real criminals. They were under the thumb of the Mayor and the Mayor was an asshole. Most of the people in this city are the poorest in the country, a couple of hundred thousand are homeless (the latest criminal offence introduced, although you’d only get a beating for it from the cops, it’s too expensive to house the transients after all.)

I decided to call it a night, I’d made enough. I pulled my collar up over my ears, not that it helped push the rain away. I walked down the river towards my favourite bar, passing whorehouses, junkie dens, starving people, some with kids, begging for just enough to get something to eat. I threw them some money and walked on.

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 I got to the bar, dried myself off, saw my baby sitting in a booth at the back and got myself a drink. I went down and met her. She was a junkie, like me, her name was Ruth. She saw me and her pale face lit up. She smiled.

“Hey Baby, how’s it going?” she said as she jumped up to greet me. God she had these fucking huge beautiful eyes, this piercing blue that just bled off warmth and hope. They were a little blurrier than usual tonight, she’d scored, nice one.

We sat down, we talked, we got drunk, we took a few pills and it was good. We sat in that dinghy little booth, the rain pelting off the windows outside, those fucking gun-ships circling overhead and we couldn’t have been happier.

Imagine the view.

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We left sometime around 4am, the helicopters had left, the cops inside no doubt safely home with their families in the suburbs by now. The light wouldn’t come for hours yet, the smog took care of that. You were lucky if you had an hour of real sunlight a day here.

We walked through the streets, past the gang bangers, the dealers, the hookers and whoever else was still awake and looking to start a fight or rob some unlucky bastard of his wealth.

That would have been me.

Some asshole hollered out behind us, “Hey asshole, nice bitch you got there”

I turned my head, “Fuck you.”

“Hey man, fuck you!” He replied. This generations Oscar fucking Wilde.

“Gimme you money, or I’ll fucking kill you, gimme it, now.” This happened all the time. I’d give him whatever I had in my pocket, which was fuck all, I knew better than that.

I passed it over, and got a smack to the forehead. Ruth screamed, not that that would be much help in this neighbourhood, or any neighbourhood in this fucking shithole of a town.

I felt the blood running down my face, was that the butt of a gun I was hit with?

“Hey asshole, I’m not a fucking retard, gimme the rest or your bitch is gonna pay for you.” This fucking asshole. I tried to stand up and got another smack to the head.

Yeah it was a gun. Fuck this.

“Ok man, calm down, I got more here for you, chill, it’s cool.” I was trying to be calm now but I could barely see. I put my hand in my back pocket, inside my jeans, in retrospect…that was a bad call. It must have looked like I was pulling out a pistol from the back of my jeans.

BOOM. BOOM.

I felt two bolts of lightning rip through my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I heard a faint scream, was that Ruth?

BOOM. BOOM.

The screaming stopped.

I lay there bleeding, and in my blurry vision I saw her lying there and the man running away behind her. Her eyes looked into mine, that same piercing blue. They looked confused; her wet blonde hair covered half of her face as she lay just beside me.

I reached out my hand, towards her, it was moving through something wet, was that my blood? Or hers? It was still raining. My vision started fading badly. The pain was going too. I tried to say, “We’re going to be ok.” She seemed to understand, and just before my eyes stopped working I saw her smile, one last time.

Everything was black. I could still hear her saying “I love you, I love you, I love you” as everything faded once and for all.

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That’s how this city was man; people were killed all the time. A million life stories passed and no one gave a shit. Romeo and Juliet happened every single day. I guess it’s better for people to imagine that everything ends up ok and we all go to the ocean and live happily ever after, maybe it gives them hope. All I know is that that shit isn’t how it happened in my world.

All the best.