Eeny Meeny

35

I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t resist. I’d searched in vain for ways to hurt him. Never been able to. And then suddenly it fell right into my lap…

My mother had found it rooting around the bins at the edge of the estate. Funny little mongrel with a white patch over one eye. Cute if a bit mangy. She’d given it to my dad as a birthday present. I think she thought he might hang around if he had something to care for. A simple plan, but it kinda worked. Ok so he still went off for days at a time, drinking, fighting and shagging the local slags, but he doted on that mutt. He was forever petting it, whilst the rest of us watched on, ignored.

It’s funny, but once you know you’re going to do something bad, everything immediately feels better. You feel light-headed, euphoric, free. No one else knows what you’re planning. No one can stop you. It’s your dirty little secret. The days before I did it were some of the happiest of my life.

In the end I opted for poison. The caretaker in our block endlessly moaned about the rats – however much powder he put down, he couldn’t get rid of them. So it wasn’t tough to half inch a tube of the stuff. I thought this was the best way. The mutt was a greedy little beggar, could never resist a feed. So I made him a very special one. The cheapest, shiteist dog food laced with rat poison. He scoffed the whole lot.

I laughed later when I saw the mess. Dog shit and dog puke all over the kitchen floor. The life poured out of him from both ends and within a couple of hours he was dead. Mum was fucking terrified, wanted to bin it before Dad got back, pretend the mutt had run away or something. But he’d bunked off early and caught her in the act.

He went mental, knocking her around, screaming at her. But she was as confused as he was. In the end, he found the empty rat poison tube in the rubbish outside. Stupid mistake really, but I was still young. He exploded back into the room clutching the tube and silly cow that I am I smiled. And that really did it.

He stamped on my head, kicked me in the stomach, booted me between the legs. Then he grabbed my neck and held my head against our three-bar fire. On and off, on and off. Don’t know how long he went on for. I passed out after twenty minutes.