Of A World That Doesn't Care E-Book

Bernard Morris

• Herausgeber: Bernard Morris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

It is the spring of 1980 and Margaret Thatcher is in power. 16-year-old Rickie Stone will be leaving school in three month’s time. In the same boat as the vast majority of school leavers, he will leave school not to get a job but to join the ever-lengthening dole queue. Most of the kids have only a future of social security benefits. Most will be compelled to face the emptiness of unemployment. Most will be doomed to hang around street corners out of pure boredom and frustration and feelings of rejection. Most will be constrained to walking the streets before their working lives have even begun. Some will be led to crime. As a protest against the present job situation, Rickie plans to do something about it.

Leseprobe

OF A WORLD THAT DOESN’T CARE

Bernard Morris

© 2014 Bernard Morris

First Edition

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievable system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

I am the one in ten

A number on a list

I am the one in ten

Even though I don’t exist

Nobody knows me

Even though I’m always there

A statistic, a reminder

Of a world that doesn’t care

UB40

The ringing of the alarm clock assimilated into his dream, dragging him into the real world. Rickie Stone awoke to find his younger brother standing by the side of the bed, alarm clock in his hand. The alarm rang painfully in Rickie’s ear.

“Knock it off, bruv.”

Rickie pulled the blankets up over his head as if attempting to suffocate himself. Kurt, in his blue pyjamas, stood there allowing the ringing to continue.

“Knock it off I said.”

Kurt turned the alarm off.

“Aren’t you getting up then, Rickie?”

There was no answer from Rickie. He lay comfortably under the blankets, curled up, hands between his legs. Kurt looked down at the breathing hunch of blankets on the single bed.

“Rickie, it’s just gone 8 o’clock.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“You’ll be late if you don’t get up.”

“I’ll get up in a minute.”

“Steven’s already up.”

“Do you want me to give him a medal?”

“It’s nearly five past.”

“I’ll get up in a minute.”

Rickie snuggled up, the springs squeaking. Kurt put the clock down. He smiled, scratched his chest, grabbed the blankets and stripped the bed. He ran out of the room, laughing all the way down the stairs, Rickie frantically pulling the blankets back on to the bed.

“You little twat!”

Under the blankets Rickie snuggled up again, hands squeezed tightly between his thighs. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and drifted back into sleep only to be awoken by the stamping off his mother’s feet as she climbed the stairs. Rickie waited for it, that sound. When mother reached the eleventh stair the eerie creak sent a shiver down Rickie’s spine. That creaking step, it was like a coffin lid rising. Rickie imagined the creaking step giving way, dragging mother into a bottomless pit. He laughed to himself as he pictured mother tumbling down into the dark unknown of the cellars at Number 14, Birchwood Road.