"The Knock 'em Down Boys - a coming of age novel with a toxic twist - Chapter 1 in full.
Here's the rest of Chapter 1 where you meet Rat, Sparky and El Pigface - and they show you what they do to have fun! Let me know you thoughts!
My best friend.
My do anything for me best mate is lying limp while I’m clutching his cracked-up head and chaos is everywhere. Blind panic is kicking everyone in the arse. The whole area seems to empty in an instant. That’s the effect that the Police have on people like us.
It all happens that quickly and then, there’s just us three.
Me, Sparky and El Pigface.
Sirens are sounding. They get louder and louder, or at least that’s what I imagine happens because I can’t really hear anything but the short painful breaths of my friend and the whimpers he makes as we try to make him comfortable.
His blood is seeping onto his jacket. It’s warm and sticky on my hands. I keep thinking that the jacket will be ruined now. I know how much he liked it. I pull off my own jacket and wrap it around him hoping it might help but the blood is seeping through into it too.
His blood.
I don’t know what more to do.
El Pigface has called for an ambulance. I’m scared. My mate’s in trouble – serious trouble. We all are. Nothing is what we thought that it was anymore and this shit is too real. Everything’s messed up.
I’m crying too, because I realise that I love my mate the way that you love the most important person you have in your world.
I’m crying because I love him like that. And I’m crying because he’s probably dying.
I expect that you want to know how we ended up like this?
Well, I can tell you, it wasn’t simple...
Chapter 1
Wycombe Wanderers – Home – Saturday, August the 22nd
There are about twenty of them as we round the corner. They’re all shouting, getting themselves psyched up, trying to pretend they’re not shitting bricks at the prospect of meeting with us. Word gets around. We’ve seen a good bit of action over the last season or two.
We’re getting a reputation.
They’re all spread out and disorganised, waving their arms about and spitting. Their top boy is obvious, well kitted out to be fair and walking a pace ahead of his boys. But he’s not sure, and you can see it in his eyes.
There are only twelve of us. We’re outnumbered, but numbers aren’t everything. We’ve had this before. Maybe if there were fifty of them and ten of us we might have had to think twice. But we haven’t run yet.
We’re tightly packed and close together. A single unit. Each of us responsible for the lad to his left. We all know the rules. We don’t run. We don’t scream and shout. We don’t split up. We look after the lad to the left as much as possible. Back in the old days The Spartans, who were the best Greek warriors, had this motto: act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything and everything is contained in him.
I’m in the middle of the twelve. On my left is our Top Boy Sparky. Sparky’s sixteen. He’ll probably graduate into the main firm soon. I’m fifteen, and I’ll graduate with Sparky. On my right, looking out for me is El Pigface, which has got to be the best nickname in our crew.
I’m Sparky’s second. We’ve known each other for ages so we trust each other. We’re a good team and we run the crew. I plan everything for us. I’m a thinker, and Sparky relies on me to see problems in advance – give us the edge.
“Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail”.
In a scrap, you’d want Sparky on your side. He’s one of those lads who never lose their cool, and I mean never. Nothing phases him. Or at least nothing I’ve seen. We all follow where he goes, without question. He’s pulled us out of plenty of scrapes and no one ever seems to catch him properly. Not left hooks, bottles, bricks or whatever else some chav might launch at him.
And when someone does catch him, he just seems not to feel it.
The Nonces in front of us are making a lot of noise as they come towards us, and you can see some of them glancing at their Top Boy nervously. Each time he catches their eyes, he growls at them. Even slaps one or two of them.
That’s fear.
They want to run. But they don’t know what would be worse the kicking they’re gonna get from us, or what their Top Boy might do to them after he catches up with them. That’s fear, not respect. And fear isn’t gonna be enough to beat us.
The Spartans used the words Andreia for courage and Phobos for fear. They worshipped the first and despised the last. They also had this other word, Pseudoandreia, which is a way of saying that you’re pretending to be brave – like the idiots in front of us.
My name’s Mark. But everyone calls me Rat. They call me Rat for a few reasons.
Firstly Brains. If you’re thick, you lose in this game. Especially in situations where you need to think quickly.
Secondly, I’m agile for my shape. I’m well-built. Not overweight, just stocky and with a little bit of a fat covering here and there.
It’s a known fact that Gladiators in Roman Times were fed fatty foods to ensure that they had a bit of a covering. It protected the important parts of the body from slash wounds. The fat gets it, not what’s underneath. And one day I might rely on that.
People underestimate me too, like rats. Rats are clever and when they’re cornered they’re savage too.
Lastly, I can sense danger. I just know it’s on the way sometimes. Maybe that’s what makes me most useful to our little group.
Sparky is to the left of me; El Pigface is to the right. Our line is straight. We walk at the same pace and no one is ahead of anyone. We’ve done it plenty of times before and we can see it’s unnerving them. They’re scared. Maybe we’ve beaten them already, even though they’ve got the numbers on their side.
We’ve tricked them of course. We’re at home. They should have done their research. Choose your battleground is what the Greeks would say.
We knew the route they were taking because of our spotter. He’s only eleven, but he’s a good lad. Give him a few years and he’ll be a nice little recruit.
We’ve waited until they’ve headed into a long back street. The kind you see with a hundred or more houses stretching into the distance and little open gutters with a sort of green-brown slime in them that never seems to evaporate.
There are always really useful things to hand in these alleys: halves of bottles, loose bricks on backyard walls, and old bits of furniture like a chair’s legs. We’re so tuned in to these kinds of places now, it’s like we just sense where the stuff is, almost without even looking for it. It’s nice to know there’s a handy advantage around – if you need it.
Great places for an ambush these terraces too, because some of them have dead ends, or at least a pretty big wall you’d have to climb to get out. And these back street roads are thin, maybe only a metre and a half across, which means that numbers aren’t going to help as much as you’d think.
If you do want to run, it’s past us or over the wall.
We wait silently until their mob walks into the road, and we hold our breaths as they walk to the halfway point of the road before they realise they’re in a dead end. That’s when they turn around and see our line walking towards them from the road’s entrance and we have them trapped.
As soon as they’ve got their pretend courage up they run at us chucking quarter bricks and bottles, anything they can pick up from the street. We dodge the bricks and swat the bottles away with a minimum of fuss and little noise.
You know how football managers make their players watch the matches they’ve played, assessing strengths and weaknesses? Well, that’s what I’m up to as well. One of the lads, hidden a way off, recorded the ruck on his mobile and one of my jobs is to look at the highlights. None of us wants to do the filming, but it’s important, so we all take a turn. We can see who stands out and what we could do differently next time.
When I can, I try to get footage of other mobs before we meet them. But it’s not always as easy as that. Reputation enhancement is what we’re after, but not at the expense of getting caught by the law or giving too much away to our competitors.
When we clash together, they don’t know what’s hit them. They’re all over the place. We absorb their attempts to smash our line. We lean forwards slightly, plant our feet, and keep an eye on the lad to our left.
I’ve been fighting with this little mob since I was thirteen. So has Sparky. We started it all. Well, when I say started, I suppose I mean re-started because this is the twenty first century and our mob is named after the first mob that started up from our club. We’re Swindon Town and proud – red through and through. Our little gang’s known as S.T.A.B. Nice isn’t it. It’s got a ring to it: Swindon Town Aggro Boys.
I wish it was something that I could say I’d invented. I’d be proud of that. But it’s not. The original S.T.A.B were around back in the day in the 1970s, and over time I expect that the lads just ended up with jobs and families and so the mob just eventually disappeared.
Me and Sparky were looking around the internet when we came across the name, and that was it. We knew it was for us: S.T.A.B – the next generation. There’s an adult Mob too of course, and that’s where me and Sparky are heading. But right now, we run this little squad.
And we’re getting noticed.
Once the fighting actually starts, their arms swing and flail randomly and we block and dodge with ease. Then we let them have it. It’s impressive to watch us. El Pigface dodges a couple of badly timed punches from a lad and then – smash! The kid’s on the floor and Pigface has left a print of his new runners on the lad’s cheeks.
We move forward and over the lad who is curled up in a ball to protect himself from what he thinks might be coming next. Maybe he’s had enough already, because he doesn’t seem that keen on joining back in?
I take one out quickly and after I smack him a few times and get a cracking dig into his ribs, he turns and he’s off like a shot. And that goes for a few of them. When one of them goes, it kind of gives an excuse for a few of them to bail out.
To my left, I can see that Sparky is squaring up to their Top Boy now who doesn’t seem quite as confident as he was a few moments ago. Fair play to him though, he’s still giving it some with his mouth, probably to psyche himself up with only half of his mob still here to face what’s coming.
Sparky’s smiling at him, which seems to rile him. I keep an eye out just in case Sparky needs my help while they go at it. Their Top Boy is alright to be honest. He’s got a boxer’s stance now, which is different to the wide boy strut he was trying to intimidate us with before. He’s in a crouch; his legs are slightly bent and his feet are apart. He’s trying to land a punch on Sparky, but Sparky’s got his defence up and their boy’s just catching his arms or Sparky is easily dodging what he’s got to offer.
Then, without telegraphing his move, Sparky feints to the left and moves with speed to the right before sweeping this lad’s legs from underneath him.
The lad hits the floor. There’s a thud as his head cracks against the concrete and when his back meets the asphalt there is an exhalation of air as his lungs empty with shock.
There is a sound then that I can’t hear. I can see the funny shape of his mouth on the screen, but I remember the sound because it was so weird. As the air leaves his lungs and his lips flap, it sounds like a fart.
And this is where Sparky is so lethal. Before even this kid can open his eyes from the impact, Sparky is right over the top of him, pinning their Top Boy’s arms down with his weight. Within seconds Sparky opens a cut above his eye, re-sculpts the definition of this lad’s nose and tries to dislocate his jaw with his right knee.
Sparky is devastating when he’s got you where he wants you. All their Top Boy can be thinking about now is how he’s going to get away without being severely damaged.
It must be at this point that we heard sirens or something because that’s when I grab Sparky by the shoulders, their Top Boy writhing around in his own blood underneath him. I have to pull Sparky a couple of times until he starts to move.
As I’m leaving, I turn to Sparky who is leaning over their Top Boy. I’m not sure what he’s saying because it’s getting pretty noisy, but I can guess that he’s telling him to remember S.T.A.B and to bring at least double the boys next time he comes to Swindon because this wasn’t even a workout for us.
We’ve put on a good show and we know it. More importantly, we know that word will get around. Watch out if you come to Swindon with the idea that you can take the piss.
Watch out for S.T.A.B.
Let me know your thoughts everyone. If you liked this and want to find out more about Rat, Sparky and El Pigface - What they do? Who they meet? And what exactly is the toxic twist in the novel? Let me know and I will post Chapter 2.
Click subscribe or message me below friends.