The Dark Part of Me by Belinda Burns Page B

your shit’s shit, Bomber,’ said Scott. ‘All leaf. You should have tried the gear I was getting before I left. From this Paki guy who grew it in his
basement. Fuck, I miss London.’ Scott turned to me. ‘So, can you get us some off this Trish girl?’
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’ I didn’t know what Trish could get but in the next breath, I’d promised him ten ecstasy pills and a fifty bag of speed. Right
then, I would’ve promised the heavens and oceans and all the fucking universes in between.
    ‘Fab.’ He bent down and kissed me on the cheek. His face was close enough for me to pash him. His mouth hovered on the edge of my vision like a gorgeous bird, his lips all glossy. I
imagined reaching out, touching them, my finger tracing the top, then the bottom lip, slipping inside, his tongue soft and wet, warm and pink and lovely. In and out. Round and round. Scott was back
in his chair, acres away from me.
    I knocked back some more bourbon and wondered how long it’d be before Bomber and Muzza racked off.
    ‘Hey, Woody,’ Bomber said. ‘What happened to that Asian bitch you were doing?’
    I swivelled my back to him, not wanting to hear it, but the bastard couldn’t help but revel.
    ‘Fuck off, Bomber,’ Scott said.
    ‘You should have seen her, Muzz, she was so fuck-ing nas-ty.’
    ‘Yeah?’ said Muzz, egging him on. ‘I heard some stories about her, alright.’
    ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Scott, dead serious.
    ‘Yeah, man. Bad like you wouldn’t believe. Great arse. Pins up to her cunt. You know it.’ Bomber jumped up on the bed and started air-fucking. ‘I could hear Woody banging
her through the walls. She’d scream and carry on and shit like a filthy fucking chinky-whore.’
    I looked over at Scott, wanting him to save me, to say it was all bullshit, but he was staring daggers at Bomber. ‘Fucking shut it or you’ll be sorry,’ was all he said.
    ‘Nah, Woody. Admit it. You were one lucky prick getting your cock into that every night. Oh, man, she had the tightest fucking arse I’d ever seen.’
    Scott flashed past me, wrestling Bomber onto the bed, and pummelling him in the stomach. Muzza piled on top. They were all laughing, tangled on the bed like some fucking orgy to which I
wasn’t invited. The room smudged and blurred a myriad dirty colours. A flaming comet of booze rocketed from my gut, burning up my oesophagus. I peeled myself off the floor and raced, arms
streaming, feet thundering, out through the rumpus and the side door to the front lawn where I spewed all over Mrs Greenwood’s prize marigolds.

    I lay down in the middle of the road, pretending to be dead. Even at that time of night the tarmac was warm as the beach. I pressed my ear to the ground and could hear tiny,
groaning noises as the bitumen sighed off its heat. When Scott came out, he would see me lying like I was dead on the road, my legs crooked as if they’d been smashed and broken. Then
he’d remember how he loved me, just like before. Just like after the car crash when we fucked in the wet grass and I came so hard I thought I was dying.
    I could hear a car coming up the road. It approached slowly, its tyres crunching on the loose gravel. I lay still, holding my breath, pinned like a butterfly to the road, waiting for Scott to
come flying off the lawn and whisk me up in his arms. The car rolled closer towards me, engine smooth and purring. I melted into the ground. The tar-baby screamed,
‘Get up! Get
up!’
into my ear, but I closed my eyes and thought about dying, wondering how it would be. The crunch of my bones. The squelch of my skin popping under hot rubber. I smiled and sank
further into the tarmac, just then quite happy to die. But the car braked sharply, gravel spraying over me. My body bathed in white headlight. The sulphur pong of unleaded petrol and the clean tang
of new chrome filled my nostrils. I lay motionless, listening to my heartbeat, waiting for Scott to save me.