Riot E-Book

Jones Jones

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Modern Dreams
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 84

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Riot is a raw, visceral rant by 18 year-old Mark Jones, a college student in a depressed area of Cardiff, South Wales. He's hemmed in by apathy, sex and violence on all sides and despite his intelligence and humour, he's sucked into small town life. Ultimately he escapes to Manchester, but something unexpected claws him back. It's bleak, frightening and funny, all at once.

Leseprobe

RIOT

Riot is a raw, visceral rant by 18 year-old Mark Jones, a college student in a depressed area of Cardiff, South Wales. He’s hemmed in by apathy, sex and violence on all sides and despite his intelligence and humour, he’s sucked into small town life. Ultimately he escapes to Manchester, but something unexpected claws him back.

It’s bleak, frightening and funny, all at once.

“The first book by Welsh writer Jones Jones is a compact, elegant little volume containing ten short stories and a novella. Titled The Humiliation Triptych, its presentation is impressive, with neat hardback binding and a sprinkling of absurd, Victorian-style illustrations that – despite being largely random – marry perfectly with the general feel of the writing.” Neon Magazine

“MARG is an exceptionally well written page-turner and a very strong start for both writer Jones Jones and Salt Publishing’s new Modern Dreams range. Highly recommended.” WAYNE SIMMONS

JONES JONES was born in Wales in 1977, but now lives in West Yorkshire. He’s had many jobs over the years, including working at a golf course, writing press releases and magazines for big companies, and selling books on a market stall. His short stories have been published in various online magazines, he self-published The Humiliation Triptych in 2012, and his novellas Marg and Riot are published by Salt.

Also available from Modern Dreams

Devil On Your Back by Denny Brown

Sky Hooks by Neil Campbell

Songs of the Maniacs by Mickey J Corrigan

The Pharmacist by Justin David

Precious Metal by Michelle Flatley

Albion by Jon Gale

The Organised Criminal by Jarlath Gregory

Riot by Jones Jones

Marg by Jones Jones

Desh by Kim Kellas

Carrion Men by V.C. Linde

Choice! by Rachel Medhurst

Stuff by Stefan Mohamed

The Blame by Michael Nolan

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Jones Jones,2014

The right ofJones Jonesto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2014

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-017-1 electronic

Inhalt

RIOT

RIOT

“The cause of the Cardiff riots is the looters; opportunistic, arrogant, amoral young criminals who believe they have the right to steal, burn and destroy. There were no extenuating circumstances and no excuses. Severe sentences must follow.”

Comment on Cardiff Leader Online

No matter how hard I hit Stevie Jen, he carries on giving it back. After watching The Fighter, me and him wrap scarves around our knuckles and knock fuck out of each other in my front room. Sweating buckets we are. Dancing like dicks, naked from the waist up. Council house versions of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

He’s a thin, wiry fuck, Stevie. Pale too. Bony torso, ribcage like a stray dog. Dappled with ginger freckles and blue veins, he is. Tiny nipples. But he’s hard as nails. We’re pummeling each other. First him, then me, then him again, ‘til my mam puts her head round the door:

“You’re eighteen years of age! Soft as shit, y’are. Both of you.”

I don’t see him much in college nowadays. Rum as fuck, he is; runs about with all the scavs. Some of the estate lot too. Like Wes Edwards, who’s mam has Stout tattooed on one tit and Mild on the other. Stick hairspray cans up their jumpers in class they do, Stevie and Wes. Then they press the nozzle and suck like fuck for a filtered lung-full of aerosol. First time I saw them do it, Stevie nearly passes out. Eyes go into the top of his head.

Doesn’t give a fuck about lectures, Stevie, just pleases himself. Comes and goes. One afternoon, when I was in Business Management, him and Eds were shagging Cerrys Howell right outside my window. Gives me the thumbs-up, Stevie does.

Doesn’t enjoy himself half so much at home. Me and him are on the Wii in his mam and dad’s front room, kicking six shades of shit out of each other on ‘Mortal Kombat Armageddon’. Stevie’s little brother Greg comes down and sits by us in front of the settee. He’s not so little, though. Not so thin as Stevie. Taller too. Been at a young offenders place near Stoke for most of the past year. Came out twice as bad as he went in.

“Giz a go Stevie,” he says, scoffing a piece of toast.

“No,” Stevie says. “We’re playing.”

So Greg grabs the controller and the two of them wrestle until Greg gets it free. Then he chucks it across the room and brings his heel down on the consol. Stevie’s trying to get up off the floor coz he knows what’s coming. But Greg brings him down to the carpet, easy.

After a month of Greg living back home, Stevie moves out. Goes to the flats by the police station. Dossing on the floor of these two lads from town called Powell and Bartley that none of us know. Scruffy fuckers. See them both on the car park bench now and then or shuffling round outside SPAR. So I’m not looking forward to going round there. But since Stevie hasn’t shown his face in nearly six weeks and isn’t answering his phone, I go. Straight from college on a Friday, past the cop shop and into the piss-stained concrete walkway of the flats.

Nobody about, thank fuck, save for an old woman with a fat Jack Russell. All this stuff going on behind hundreds of green doors. Dinners cooking, crying kids, shouting mams and dads. There’s stagnant puddles that don’t even dry up in the middle of summer. Second floor, E-19. Just like all the others, except the window’s papered-over with scabby old spreads from The Sun. Nobody comes when I knock. I don’t expect them to. I wouldn’t be in if I lived here. I give it another go. Knock, knock, knock just for the fuck of it coz I’ve come all this way. I have a squint at the newspaper in the window. Watford man sets fire to family.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s Jonesy,” I say.

I’m hoping to fuck this is Stevie, not one of the other two. My arse is going as the chain clatters off. But it’s him.

“Come in,” he says, walking back through the kitchen.

Jesus Christ, it’s a shithole. Half-eaten cans of food, pizza boxes, cups overflowing with fag butts, piled up bin bags. I follow him to the front room. He’s already flat on his stomach facing the TV, Stevie is, playing ‘Mario Kart’. There’s a fag going in an ashtray by his elbow. I wait ‘til he crashes.

“Twat,” he says, taking a quick pull.

“Haven’t seen you for a bit,” I say, sitting down on the armchair.

“I’ve fucked it off,” he says. “College.”

It’s dark in here; smoky as fuck. The curtains are drawn and the only light’s coming from the telly. He’s back on with the game, pulling tricks off the ramps.

“How come you’ve fucked it off?”

“Moved out from me mam and dad’s, haven’t I?” he says.

“What you doing for money?”

“This and that,” he says.

He jerks the controller.

“What you doin’ with Powell and Bartley?” I say. “They’ll get you into shit.”

“Couldn’t give a fuck,” he says. “Wanna spliff?”

I can hear next door’s telly going as he kneels at the coffee table and skins up.

Over the next few weeks, we hear stories: Stevie’s been done for possession; burglary. Turned over an old girl’s place on the estate. That he’s on smack. You name it, it does the rounds. Then it goes quiet. Two, three, four weeks, like he’s fallen off the face of the earth. Then Vice Principal Brough calls some of us out of the common room.

“There’s no easy way of telling you this, lads,” he says.

But I stop listening, I do. I tune in to ‘Everyday Robots’, drifting through the closed door behind Brough.

At the funeral, I can’t get my head round it’s Stevie lying there. This vicar or whoever is saying how special he was, and fuck me, I look at Ollie and Viv and we think we’re in the wrong place. This vicar wouldn’t know Stevie if he’d come up and lamped him. Which he probably would have done. He’ll be saying exactly the same about some other dead fuck tomorrow. So I take myself off in my mind ‘til they play arecording of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ on a crappy Hi-fi.

It rattles round the crematorium chapel, tinny as fuck. Then the coffin starts sliding through a curtain at the back. This is sick, this is. I look at Viv and he’s crying his eyes out. I look round. At the back of the chapel there must be thirty or forty men, all in these dark blue suits and matching ties. Our CD peters out and everyone goes quiet.

“As many of you will know,” the vicar says, “Steven’s father is a long-standing and well-respected member of the Gwyn Jones Male Voice Choir. As a tribute to Steven, the choir, many of whom have so kindly joined us in today’s celebration of Steven’s life, will now sing number 238. The choir would like the congregation to join them for the third verse.”