Pinprick by Matthew Cash

a pair of hands. All I ever did was load cuts of beef, pork, lamb and chicken into polystyrene trays after they had been butchered, ready for wrapping. After three hours of watching pieces of dead animal ride up a conveyor belt I was relieved to have a break. Just to get out of the factory floor and the smell of raw meat and blood. When the break whistle blew most of the guys went to the greasy spoon cafe round the corner or risked food poisoning in the staff canteen. I just needed fresh air to try and flush the coppery smell of blood from my nose.
    When I got outside I headed for a mound of grass at the back of the factory. I saw a bloke sat hunched over on a bench set against the red bricked factory wall. I didn’t pay him any attention until he looked up at me and a wave of mutual recognition passed between us.
    “I know you, don’t I?” he said and took a long drag off a cigarette he had pinched between his thumb and index finger like a dart.
    He did look very familiar. He had long brown hair which was cut shorter at the fringe than the rest of it and a beak-like nose that made him look like Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from Batman . Even though I thought I recognized him I couldn’t put my finger on where from. I told him my name and he told me his. The fact we both came from the same village meant that he was most likely the brother of someone I knew at school or something.
    Malcolm told me that he’d been in the same year as Catherine and that she had thwarted all his persistent advances. I asked him what methods he had tried and sat down beside him.
    “I dunno, just asked her if she fancied coming out for a drink or two, to watch the footie.” There was a twinkle in his eyes and a twitch to his mouth.
    I laughed, “Are you sure it was my sister you were trying to ask out?”
    “Yeah!” He nodded and ground his fag butt with a brown boot heel, “I tried everything else, but she weren’t interested. Must be me conk.”
    I laughed again, “Nah I’m sure she could see past that!”
    “I doubt it,” he said stony faced, “I have enough trouble seeing past it myself!”
    Laughed hard at that one, I did. Well, that was when we first met; he told me all about his passion for the Blues and how he was getting their logo tattooed over his heart by a friend of his at the weekend. I wasn’t interested in football and he was the first man I’d met who didn’t look at me like a queer piece of shit for saying so. He had said that he wasn’t surprised, what with my Mohican and Sex Pistols t-shirt.
    Anyway, we got talking and asked me if I wanted to go to his mate’s for a beer and to watch him get tattooed at the weekend. I was curious so I agreed.
     
     
    Freddy
     
    Even though Freddy worked at the same place as us our shifts rarely coincided, so the first time I actually met him was when Malcolm had his tattoo. Freddy was the one doing the tattooing. My first impression of Freddy wasn’t too good. He was a lanky, scrawny git walking around with his top off, with a fag constantly in his mouth, grunting like a Neanderthal. He had loads of crude, badly inked tattoos all over him. An assortment of stick men, swastikas, inverted crosses, daggers, serpents and skulls covered his arms and stomach; pretty much anywhere he could reach himself.
    He seemed quiet and moody, which kind of went with his skinhead persona. When I first heard him speak I thought he was putting on a silly voice, like something out of The Young Ones or a Monty Python sketch and made the huge mistake of sniggering. When I saw the expression on his face I thought he was gonna punch me. He was looking at me face on and I realised he had a slight harelip. The nick in the left side of his top lip made him look like a crazy bald Elvis.
    Luckily, Malcolm interjected and prevented anything from getting nasty. He was always cracking jokes about how ugly he was but if anyone else did apart from his mates, all hell would break lose.
    I watched whilst