“Please Johnny, please darling, I’ll pay you back.”
She looked awful, sunken eyes in a thin face, loose teeth and scabs that she’d picked at in her frustration.
“Mum,” I said softly. “I’m not giving you money so you can kill yourself, I’m just not.”
“It’s only a little fix baby,” she pleaded. “Please Johnny, I need it.”
I was almost in tears myself at her plight, I was seventeen, a week from my eighteenth birthday and I was watching my mother kill herself right in front of my eyes.
She wore a filthy tee shirt and even dirtier shorts, her whole body was skin and bone, in the two short years since dad had died of a drugs overdose, she’d gone from a beautiful, fun loving mum to this, a mess, a fucking wreck.
I’d heard of cold turkey before, but I’d been told it was dangerous and as often as not, killed the person undergoing it, but the way mum was then, she’d have been better off dead.
I stood up slowly from the table where I’d been eating my dinner and looked at the pleading in her eyes, then I hit her.
I did it right, thank God, and she dropped like a stone, she hardly weighed a thing as I picked her up and walked upstairs with her in my arms.
The screaming began as soon as she woke up and saw the leather straps round her wrists and ankles, I was sitting in the room’s only other item of furniture, a straight-backed chair.
“I’m going to keep you here until you can do without heroin, mum,” I said softly, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice normal. “It might be two weeks, it might be three, even a month but you’re not coming out until you’re clean.”
“You fucking little bastard, I’m your fucking mother, untie these straps right fucking now.”
“No mum, I want my mother back.”
She was in the attic that dad had converted into a recording studio before he tried drugs for the first time, he was dead less than twelve months later, leaving mum a total wreck and me angry. He’d been a successful musician, making a good living doing backing tracks for television advertisements and occasionally doing a tour for a big name singer who knew of him and his growing reputation.
It had been all downhill from there and mum had succumbed to the dealers, the pushers and the general scumbags who inhabit the twilight world of the junkies.
Her own money had gone first and then she’d started on dad’s, but a lot of that depended on repeats of the commercials he’d made and came in cheque form twice a year, the last one had been for fifty thousand pounds, and she’d used the last of it a week ago.
I’d come down from the studio late one evening where I’d been working on some of dad’s unfinished tracks and found her being fucked on the kitchen floor by a smarmy looking twat in a suit.
I threw him out in disgust and she went for me, shouting that he was going to give her money for a fix and without it, she’d die.
“Don’t talk bloody rubbish mum,” I tried to talk reasonably. “You don’t need that shit.”
“Watch your mouth, John,” she shouted. “Just don’t forget whose house this is and if you ever do that again, I’ll throw you out, have you got that?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said and went to bed. But when I woke up in the morning, I found she’d sneaked into my room and taken all the money from my wallet.
It was that more than anything that made my mind up, I spoke to dad’s doctor who advised me against my proposed course of action, then later on in the pub when his doctor’s head was back in his office, he said he’d give me all the help he could.
It was three days before she stopped screaming, I’d thrown a sheet over her, more to preserve her last shreds of modesty than anything else. I cleaned her up on the second day, and she spat at me, she actually hawked it up and spat!
On the third day she was sweating and calling me a pervert, the stench was awful.
On the fourth day, she allowed me to spoon feed her some soup, but she bought it up again immediately, so I cleaned her again.
“The scabs are looking cleaner mum,” I told her and she nodded.
“Yes they feel better darling, a lot better, I’m okay now so you can let me up.”
“Not yet, mum,” I shook my head. “You’ve got another eighteen days yet.”
I didn’t realise a woman of mum’s stature could create such a noise, she knew the studio was soundproof, it had been something we’d all joked about when having it made. She screamed, howled, threatened, screamed again and when the sheet slipped off she even thrust her groin up at me.
“Come on Johnny, fuck me, I’ll give you the best fuck you’ve ever had, COME ON YOU BASTARD, FUCKING SHAG ME.”
That was the night I went to bed crying, but when I went in to see her in the morning, she seemed quiet and just stared at me.
“You’re going to kill me, you know that don’t you?”
“No I’m not, mum, I’m going to save your life, a letter came for dad this morning, he’s getting an award for that commercial he did, you know, the one for the car. We’re going to go to the ceremony together, you and me mum, we’re going to collect dad’s award, and I’m going to be there clapping louder than anyone else when you walk up onto the stage to collect it.”
The next day she kept the soup down and actually said: “Thank you.”
I washed her every day, but the stench in the room was still indescribable, I didn’t dare release her even to allow her to use the toilet, so she was forced to go where she lay!
Every day it went on and then on the nineteenth day, she smiled when I went in with her breakfast.
“Thank you,” was all she said, but I could have cried with pleasure and later on when I went in with her dinner, she asked me to release one arm and one leg.
I did, and she smiled again.
“I’m almost there Johnny,” she whispered. “Not quite, but nearly.”
Three days later, I unfastened all the straps and led her into the bathroom.
“Heaven,” she sighed as she sank into the warm soapy water, “Johnny?”
“What mum?”
“Come here.”
I went over to her and she pulled my face down to hers, she kissed me gently and said softly.
“I’m never going back Johnny, never.”
I loved her more than anything in the world, but I couldn’t trust her, not yet. “I know mum,” I said and kissed her forehead. “But I’m still going to keep a close eye on you.”
“Oh Jesus, mum,” I said when she appeared in the living room, “You look like a bloody stick insect.”
She did too if it hadn’t been for the little bumps her nipples made under the tee shirt and her long, straggly hair, you wouldn’t have known she was female.
“Food,” she laughed. “I want food.”
I think we ate for England that day and when she pushed her empty plate away, she said with some hesitation.
“Are you trusting me to go to my own bed, Johnny?”
“Do you need a fix mum?”
“No,” she replied and knelt down at my feet. “Johnny, I swear to you on your father’s grave that I will never go there again, never.”
I kissed her and told her to go to bed.
It was a month later when we went together to the awards ceremony. Dad had always hated them in spite of them taking his jingles to millions and therefore making him the odd copper or two, but this one had become a symbol to mum and me, and there was a tear in my eye as I watched her get into the rear of the stretch limo that they’d sent for us.
I saw a flash of thigh above the top of her stockings, and that pleased me too, she’d always worn stockings before with dad and I knew he used to like her to keep them on in bed for him.
Of course, no-one knew who we were, the guys who write advertisement jingles aren’t exactly household names, but I felt like a million dollars as I walked up the red carpet with mum on my arm. She looked gorgeous in a figure-hugging silver dress, cut low to show off her boobs which were almost back to what they had been, but most importantly of all, she was actually smiling.
A lot of dad’s musician friends were there too and complimented her on her looks, but I also noticed a couple of them exchanging knowing glances when she told them she’d kicked the habit.
I was as proud as a peacock when she went onto the stage and accepted dad’s award, I’d actually completed the piece after dad’s death, but as far as I was concerned, it was his.
We went on from there to a nightclub where I danced with her several times and enjoyed them all.
“You look gorgeous, mum,” I said as I held her in my arms.
“Thank you, Johnny, I feel pretty good too and it’s all down to you.”
She kissed my cheek and I felt myself blushing as we returned to the others.
It was dad’s one time best friend who did it, we had a private alcove above the dance floor, and it was him who laid out several lines of coke on the table and invited everyone to help themselves, a lot of them did of course, but mum refused.
“No thanks,” she smiled politely. “I’m clean.”
“Yeah and I’m fucking Santa Claus,” he laughed. “Come on one hit won’t kill you.”
“She said no,” I said and looked at her face, she was sweating, and it wasn’t just from the heat.
Tom (dad’s ex-friend) stood up and sneered at me.
“Look sonny just keep your fucking nose out, or I’ll put it out, okay?” he offered mum a rolled up note. “Go on just a little snort.”
She shook her head again and I stood up to take her hand. “Come on mum, you don’t need this idiot.”
Tom was drunk and belligerent, he got up and swung a punch at me which I dodged easily enough, but he kicked out with a foot and caught me in the groin.
I saw stars and needles of pain shot right through me, as I doubled up he hit me again and again, mum was screaming and kicking him, but the blows kept landing on me until mercifully everything went black.
