Extended Plot: In the remains of a city once known as Chester, lies the suburb of Hollyoaks, an abandoned blood bath, famously known for its high murder rate. To mark the reinstatement of the death penalty in Britain, fourteen young male offenders between the ages of fifteen and eighteen are forced to participate in a televised death match called the Chester Games. Thirteen will pay the ultimate price for their violation of the law whilst the last 'man' standing gets to escape any further imprisonment and earn their ultimate freedom.
Disclaimer: The idea behind this story is based on the book "the Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.
Glossary:
Feltham: A prison for male juveniles and a young offender's institution in London.
USLA: Under school leave age.
Written from Brendan's Point Of View.
Part One: The Tributes
Chapter One
*I have a cape. It's not a cape. It's a sheet but I call it a cape because I'm a young'un, a wee mucker with a huge imagination. I soar like a bird and the sheet gets caught up in a tranquil oscillation. Both of my arms are spread like the Angel of the North, like I'm an undefeatable warplane. I'm inviolable it seems… almost unbreakable. Then the capering concludes and I cease for quarantine. He's here. I can hear him respire. It's a dastardly reverberate. I embellish to capture a chalky-white complexion. Then the walls close in. Footsteps I hear footsteps. They pulsate. I disintegrate in acquiesce. He extricates the buckle to inaugurate a cacophony. He slides the substantial cotton sheathing his posterior downs slowly, gently past his waist. I delve into the infelicitous moment of cessation and then I start to fall...*
When I wake up, the homecoming back to reality is anything but consoling. It's haunting and I'm there, hanging helplessly like a puppet; bouncing recklessly like a jack in the box. My breathing is untimely and my palms are wet. "Stay away from me!" I caterwaul softly, panting excessively in my chest as sweat appears to leak drastically from my skull. Lowering back down, my backbone feels frozen and tips of my fingers feel numb. I reach out for the duvet in a bid to pull it back up past my waist but finding only the loose fabric of the pyjamas bordering my bony legs. I must have kicked it off in my sleep. Of course I did. Evil interrupted my dreams again last night.
This very duvet has grown to be my nemesis in the past year (if you can say that about a quilt). I like to think we have a love hate relationship, though if you ask the quilt itself, it would probably say we have a hate hate relationship. It's more 'volatile' than 'hate'. Sometimes in the winter, the duvet is all I have to rely on for protection, not only from the nippiness that such a season brings but also from myself. Sometimes I wake up wrestling with it, wanting to escape from whatever nightmare is crippling my brain. And there is the quilt, acting as a bouncer, restraining me to the depths of the mattress.
I prop myself up on one shaky elbow. There's enough light in the cell to see it. My duvet heaped up there in a pile on the floor. I listen gently to my cold beating heart starting to pace itself; as I try to think, try to remember; that today could be the day where I finally escape from this. Because today; is the day of the reaping.
Many of us know very little about it. But what we do know is that each of us here at Feltham, has a one in sixty chance of being chosen. And though the exact rules are confidential, we know that one us here today will be leaving Feltham and we won't be coming back. And me, having been here for almost two years and being so tiredly sick of this cell, its leaking tap, the cream walls, the stench of the urinals, the juveniles… I'm so desperately hoping that it's me.
Our wing, nicknamed the USLA wing, is usually crawling with staff by this hour; either cautioning us for threatening to bash each other's faces in or readying us for breakfast which isn't until 7am. But today the corridors are empty and there are no threats.
I hunch over on the edge of the bed, my legs swinging like a pendulum, for the silence is overbearing and I contemplate whether or not is the right time to break it. My attention turns towards the sink, a beryl shade of green and soon in time, my restless eyes focus towards the tap and then the water, which is ever so provokingly dripping and dropping and tapping out of it. No big deal for some, but for me it's like dirty nails desecrating against a chalk board. And it's then and only then that I decide that; nope, I can't take the silence anymore.
In the cell besides me rests the only person with whom I can be myself. Foxy.
"Foxy!" I call, knuckles rattling against the wall that separates us. His real name is Warren, but his surname is Fox. When he first came in for arson, he was a scrawny little thing, so Foxy became my official nickname for him.
"What the fuck do you want Brady?" The sound of his voice brings a smile. Foxy says I never smile, only when I'm eating.
"I'm going to smash your face in and shove a spoonful of cornflakes down your throat." I say.
"Oh, is that right?" says Foxy "I'm going to shove a spoonful of cornflakes up your arse."
Cornflakes and milk; we both love to joke about it because it is the only thing Foxy has dared to eat for breakfast since arriving here. Right now, it's silent again, so I resort to bashing my door in. The officers hate it, say we do it for attention, try to ignore it and nine out of ten times fail. As soon as I do, Foxy joins in, until we both appear to have conducted an orchestra of door and wall.
The morning staff arrive, can't appear to hack the noise for much longer. We're all early morning birds here, bar a couple of night owls. They start to let us out one by one, so I ram a brush through my hair a couple of times, rip a few out in the process and put on my cross.
We settle once it comes to breakfast. In this place, we are far too hungry, far too occupied to even care about keeping our promises to bash in our fellow offenders. I watch as a spoon dives into a bowl of milk and cornflakes and starts to circulate, like it has done many times before.
"One of us could finally do it," Foxy says softly.
"What?" I ask, fiddling with the spongy filling which lay beneath the chairs plastic covering that had already been picked at.
"You know, leave Feltham. One of us stands a chance of being chosen." says Foxy.
The conversation feels wrong. I'd thought before about leaving, about wanting it so badly, but never about leaving Foxy behind, or what it would feel like to be the one left behind. And then there are the odds, a 1 in 30 chance. And if the odds are so minimal, why bother talking about it?
By the time we finish eating its 8:30am. At this time, we should be attending class but today, with the reaping being at midday, the staff has made an exception. Instead they send us to the gym, tell us to exercise but no one does. We stand, converse, bite off nails, stare into space... so they try to tempt us with a football; a past privilege taken away from us on the contrary of poor team spirit. All are easily lured towards the football field but me and Foxy decide to stay put.
What do you want to do?" I ask.
"Talk," says Foxy.
"We always talk," I say.
"Exactly," says Foxy, "one can never talk too much."
We may have played if it wasn't reaping day but with the minutes counting by, we relish for a bit of one to one time. Besides, it's not very often we get the gym all to ourselves.
When the pointless rambling about Fentham, its food, how much we bloody hate it and Foxy's apparent obsession with milk and cornflakes is finally over, we're lead back to our cells and ordered to shower. I'm told to tidy myself up. And then I find it, the politician clothes, the kind of shit you wear to weddings, laid out on my bed.
"You're fucking joking ain't ye?" I ask.
"Just do it." No sympathy, no understanding, no questions asked.
It's quarter to twelve by the time they get me in that suit. And "I'm the only one to cause problems" apparently. When they hurry me down the corridor, I'm silent. I'm lead back towards the dayroom; it's exactly where we were several hours before for breakfast. Though, the space appears to have got tighter. There's a temporary stage with a podium, three chairs and a glass ball that resembles a fish bowl; I stare at the paper slips with our names on. Sadly the reaping has to be held here; it's that or risk offenders escaping.
I find myself separated from Foxy; my punishment for arriving late. Instead I'm sandwiched between two other offenders, Danny Houston and Noah Baxter. And I'm prejudiced to hate them both because I barely know either of them.
All three chairs are filled with unfamiliar faces, a man we've briefly been introduced to as "Fraser Black" the man responsible for the reaping and two blonde females, sat on either side of him.
"I'll have her," Foxy whispers across to me, pointing to the one on the left and I'm made to lip read because he's several rows back.
Just as the clock strikes twelve, Fraser Black steps up to the podium and begins to read. It's the usual junk to begin with; how we ended up here and why. He tells the history of England, how in past times we'd be hung, drawn and quartered for our crimes. How we're lucky, or not so lucky because in exactly seven days, the death penalty will be restored back to English law. He lists the crimes, the attempted murders, the assaults, the armed robberies, some of the reasons why so many of us are doing time. Because it's our fault, because we couldn't just behave. And most importantly what it could mean for us now, how our futures are set to be bleak. And then it's finally time for the reaping.
Before sitting back down he introduces to us, first the woman on this left Clare Devine, then the woman on his right, Grace Black. They rise, approach the podium, actions near on synchronized. I look back to spot Foxy nodding at me, a sickly white.
"Good luck," I want to tell him because deep down I know he wants this as much as I do. But it's time for the drawing. "Right boys," Clare Devine says; men I want to correct her, men, because I'm not a boy. She reaches deep into the glass ball, fiddles for a while with the sixty slips of paper, and pulls out a name. The room is silent, so silent in fact that I'm sure, at least almost sure that I can hear the water gently dripping, dropping, tapping from the leaking sink back in my cell.
My neck is tense and spasming obstreperously and the colour is draining from my face and I'm nauseous. The slip of paper is placed gently on the podium which Grace Black unfolds and uncreases, then reads the name out in a loud clear voice. I kiss my cross. And in that moment of time I'm hoping, praying that it's anybody but Foxy, because I know I can't get through another day, nor another night in this place without him. And it's not Foxy.
It's Brendan Brady.
Author's note: Thank you for reading. :-) Ste and other regular faces will come into this at a later stage I promise.
For anybody interested to know who the other offenders taking part will be here's a list, I've also included their ages:
1. Brendan Brady 16
2. Ste Hay 15
3. Rhys Ashworth 15
4. Dodger Savage 16
5. Darren Osbourne 16
6. Doug Carter 15
7. Freddie Roscoe 17
8. John Paul McQueen 15
9. Trevor Royle 18
10. Joel Dexter 15
11. Cameron Campbell 16
12. Sonny Valentine 17
13. Simon Walker 17
14. Kevin Foster 15