"Stitch this"

Stitch this.

His eyes cross as the head-butt makes contact and the other one falls, real slow, body rigid, like in one of those exercises they make you do in drama class...I'll catch you...honest...laughing...a way to get even for telling that he was the one who let the art teacher's tyres down with a match he just happened to have in his pocket even though he protested that he didn't smoke.

A lump swells on his forehead, hurting, really hurting, though he'll never admit it as he looks down at the one he's just decked, spread-eagled and shamed in the gutter, with the ones he'd slapped palms and chorused respect! with not two hours earlier hovering like dipshits, looking gormless at a brother and the hard one they don't dare tackle...like the idea of living, man.

A mobile appears, flip-topped. They all have one but only one dares fish his out, trembling under transparent bravado, fearful of a mother's lashing tongue, the how-could-you voice...You left him there on the floor, in pain, your mate, while he's hurting!...and a father's heavy fist, clenched tight, finger jabbing against his chest, one of five that had punched his guts the night before because he was late coming home, taught him a lesson, stepdad.

Somewhere in the distance the two-tone-alternating-with-the-long-screech breaks the night air. The brothers stand up straight, pulling down jacket edges, wiping trainers on the back of trouser legs, gotta be bright white...not dingy. They get leery, mouthing, cussing, but stay back from the hard one, scanning for a way out...just in case.

The ambulance driver's a woman. She'd awoke to bloodied sheets, heavy, stomach cramps all afternoon and a husband who thinks the dole is a given right and a mother who hates him for what he's doing to her daughter cos she didn't bring her up to keep a man and anyway he ain't a man but she bites her tongue at the Christmas dinner table and smiles on birthday visits, even though no one's cleaned the dust away for months.

The hard one doesn't move. He watches, sees them wipe the swabs over him-in-the-gutter's cut. He's trying to find his place...that little space in his head where he can go and sit and watch and listen and all be okay, where it's blue and it's green and it's quiet... but he can't find it, can't find the safe zone, so he clenches his fists and watches the swab, staring wide-eyed.

Move along, says the period woman.

Just leave me...take him away and just leave me.

Move along, she says again.

Just leave me, I said...I'm not doing anything...I'm stood...simmering...but not doing.

She needs to prove a point. Hers should get off his backside and go to work, all men are useless anyway and sex would be nice now and then if he stayed sober long enough.

The place in his head is beyond reach, like the girl he once knew who would do anything he asked, anything, and all that she wanted was for him to have the vasectomy he'd had at twenty six I'm not bringing a baby into a fucked-up world like this reversed and then they could have a boy like him and a girl like her and go on the council list and get free school dinners and do jobs on the side so they could go to Costa Brava second week of August and risk skin cancer.

The brothers find a voice behind the protection of the woman's skirt, her between them and the hard one, her waving her arms, her shooing him off, her who'll get it first and they'll say they did all they could, he was a right nutter and their pictures will be in the local paper, waved in front of snide aunt's face, see what my boy did...protcting his mate he was...sticking together...got injuries too, grabbing his wrist, pushing the sleeve up, showing the bruises he really got falling down steps while drunk the night before.

She says she's calling the police, tutting, spitting as she speaks, wanting the toilet, leaking, cramps kicking her, sweating.

He doesn't need no knife, no bottle, no weapon, no distance-keeping armour for pussies, no I'm-a-man symbols they wave while they're crapping their boxers, bottom lip trembling, wishing they were warm and cosy back home, curry and a quick feel on the sofa before they shoot their load and roll over.

He can take them all, every cowardly one, pounding flesh and cracking bones, pummeling and punching till bodies become mush against his taut knuckles, digging, onward, inward, while they scream like babies and piss pools of fright onto the grey concrete, stain upon stain, brothers blood, seeping, pooling into dark rings.

Come and have a go, why don't you!

I'm waiting.

Scared are we!

Big bad brothers got no bottle!

A glimpse of green, sliver of blue, thw whisper of a cool breeze against his skin...clouds, billowy, white, puffed...grass sways gently. Quiet...so quiet. He closes cruel dark eyes and opens pale circles of grey that close out hurt and anger. Somewhere, far away in the place-where-no-one-can-reach inside his mind he finds his space and steps into it...sighs...breathes...takes control again.

The brothers taunt as the hard one turns away, strides into the night. He doesn't care...not any more.