I was happyish at school. I had good friends, I was popular, and I had
a crush on my teacher. She reciprocated my crush by marking my homework well.
It was in this R.E class that a boy named Cav sat. He sat at my table, in fact.
He beat me in the year’s
most handsome boy competition. He was very well-dressed. And he was smart.
Smarter than me. A straight A student.
For these reasons, I
resented him. He got on my wick. He obviously had well-off parents. I didn’t
have well-off parents. I was poor. He had kickers shoes.
I bullied him. In
subtle ways. I made someone hit him for nothing, and I watched with delight. I threw
stones at him, when he was defenceless. I was influenced by The Running Man
movie, starring Arnold Swarzenegger. It was great fun to relive the movie with
my ‘friends’.
It was all a game. Throwing
rocks was just a game.
We made up in the end.
He came to my house to stay over. We shared the top bunk, sharing our ideas. We
used to draw each other pictures in class. I would draw him a robot, and he
would draw me a grim reaper. We both had talents.
I went to his house as
well. He had a toy room in his house which was like Toys R Us. His parents
made me a nice tea of lemon pepper chicken. He had an Amiga, which was better
than my Spectrum. We played Streetfighter 2 together. I was Ryu, and he was
Ken. We had many a blazing uppercut battle together.
We remained friends
for twenty years after. We did many magical things together, like visit a stone
circle and watch an eclipse. We had several drug-enhanced experiences together.
We watched movies together. We laughed, and hard, together. I thought of him as
my very best friend, along with Robert Massey. I loved him.
He was always there
for me. When I was hospitalized as a teen, he came to the ward on his own to
see me. When I lost my younger brother, he came to the funeral and consoled me.
Two years later, that
all changed. I was sat alone in my flat and I heard his voice in my head. He
was very nasty. I couldn’t explain it. His voice was coming from inside my own
fucking head. It was like he had a two-way radio, broadcasting within my very
own skull. He said he was going to kill me. He scared the shit out of me.
And that is the way it
has been ever since – Cav inside my head, scaring the shit out of me. He said
that the friendship was a joke, he’d blagged me, and his real purpose was to
make me kill myself. So, I am living with voices, ladies and gentlemen – his
voice, and it has driven me to hospital for three years, on and off. He is
wicked, he is cruel, he is the devil.
I took a wrong turn at
Cav.
