Write What You Know

Write What You Know

by Stephen Owen

Mr. Edwards was a whiskey-nosed man who taught English at Gainsborough Comprehensive. He wore a green tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and was pretty crazy at the best of times, but today he was in overdrive. He scribbled his literary tip for the day across the blackboard in four giant powdery words. When he'd written the last one he underlined it several times with a piece of red chalk and turned to face the class.

“Write. What. You. Know.” Edwards was emphatic. He spoke as if each word was a separate sentence, thumping his fist beneath his story-writing commandment as he retraced his steps. “If you want to be a successful writer, then take heed!”

He stood before the class and looked at the students the way a farmer might observe his failed crops after the wettest summer on record.

Morgan Wainwright yawned. He was busy writing on his desk. Nothing as profound as Edwards' teachings, but still pretty impressive stuff. He had a knack for making words seem like they rhymed with other words when they clearly didn't, especially rude ones. His head was down, dark hair dangling. He never even heard the teacher coming.

Edwards strolled across the wooden floorboards, hands behind his back. He put on his spectacles and leaned over the unsuspecting student.

Morgan looked up, cheeks flushed.

“Toilet humor. Most amusing.” Edwards studied the boy's desktop ramblings through narrowed eyes. “Tell me, boy. Have you actually listened to anything I've said this afternoon?”

Morgan said nothing.

“I'll take that as a 'no'.” The unfazed and unsmiling Mr. Edwards pointed at the blackboard. “I want you to write me an essay. And you need to possess a comprehensive understanding of the subject that you are writing about. Let's make it a thousand words. No. Let's be generous and make it two thousand. On my desk first thing tomorrow. And you need to be damned sure you know what you are talking about, boy, or I will find out and your miserable life will not be worth living.”

***

A cold October evening, pint in hand and I'm sitting in The Red Lion pub. It's pissing down outside, the place reeks of cannabis and damp leather, and the deejay's got big hair and flares.

I swore I'd never go to a school reunion, but here I am in a darkened corner getting depressed and thinking how old everyone got. I don't like the past and I definitely don't like people from the past popping up in the present. I'm in my fifties for Christ's sake, divorce and debt kicking me in the balls for ticking all the wrong boxes in life. Why would I want to be reminded of when life was even worse?

Through the dancing crowd I see the manikin figure of Morgan Wainwright, turquoise cocktail and shirt to match. He found me on Facebook and persuaded me to come tonight, that's the only reason I'm here. He used to sit next to me in English lessons. Spent most of his time writing obscene limericks on his desk.

He sees me staring and wanders over.

“David.” He raises his glass and smiles. “How you doing?”

“I'm a bit drunk,” I say. “But I got married once.”

Morgan looks interested. “Any kids?”

“Yeah, but it wasn't mine, so I'm kind of unmarried these days.”

“Oh.” Morgan sips his drink. '2-4-6-8' by the Tom Robinson Band throbs through the sticky atmosphere and the crowd rocks the joint like it's nineteen seventy-seven all over again. Morgan looks around, starts pointing out people I don't recognize with names I've never heard of. The more he talks, the more he reminds me of how much I hated school. He's all rose-tinted glasses and bubbling with bullshit anecdotes about the good old days and how much simpler life was back then.

“You're talking like you enjoyed it,” I say.

“It wasn't that bad.”

“What about Mr. Edwards? You gotta remember that bastard.”

“I do.” Morgan's face darkens.

“Got stabbed to death in the park. Not that I give a shit. He fucking deserved it. I reckon loads of people wanted him dead.”

“Most of them were school kids.”

“And he was queer.” The words spill from my lips before I even think about what I'm saying. Not that I care about any political correctness crap, but I know Morgan is gay, and he's the sort of guy who probably does. I don't want to offend him. He's the only reason I came tonight.

“Who told you that?” he asks.

“He just was.” It's a crap answer and Morgan knows it. He flutters his fingers at a group of women dancing around their handbags. It might as well be witches around a cauldron judging by the state of them.

“Forty-seven stab wounds.” I eyeball the crowd and examine the faces to see which ones might fit in my mesh of a memory. I'm not bothered to ask who anybody is because I don't care. I've already found who I'm looking for. “Throat, chest and groin. Ripped to fucking ribbons that bastard was. I've still got all the newspaper reports.”

“I remember it,” Morgan says.

“So do I. Same day he made you write that story for scribbling on your desk.”

Morgan nods. “Shame he wasn't around to read it. Best thing I ever wrote.”

***

It was nothing unusual for Mr. Edwards to go for a late night walk. It helped him unwind and forget his troubles for a while. But tonight he was struggling. He couldn't stop thinking about that obnoxious boy and the obscenities he'd carved into his desk. The boy had talent. Why be so damned negative about it?

Edwards sighed, head bowed, glazed eyes glinting above the silk scarf wrapped across his lower face. He wore a hat and long coat like the invisible man dressed when he wanted people to see him. Ironic, because the last thing Edwards needed was to draw attention to himself. Imagine being recognized at this late hour, especially by one of his students. They'd want to know where he was going. What he was up to.

He hurried down the street, hands in pockets, breath swirling in steamy clouds beneath the streetlights. “Hey, ho.” Unsteady on his feet, he crossed the road, entered the park and wandered into the darkness.

***

I lost my virginity to Jenny Jones at the summer disco. Last year of school. She looks older now, and much rounder, but she's still fucking voluptuous. That's a word I learned from Mr. Edwards. Not the word 'fucking' – although he did give us a lecture on swearing once. I mean the word 'voluptuous'. It means sexy, but that's not quite the way he explained it. He said it was directed toward or concerned with sensuous enjoyment and sensual pleasure. He meant sexy.

Jenny weaves through the party, dancing in a black dress that looks sprayed on with bitumen. She escapes the crowd, her dance turning into a kind of hip-swaying feline walk.

“And what are you boys plotting?” The sweetness of her voice hits a long lost nerve somewhere deep inside of me and I remember I loved her once. Before the five second fuck behind the school hall. The spark kind of went after that.

“How you doing, Jen?” Morgan asks.

“I'm well, thanks,” she says. “How about you?”

“We're discussing the untimely demise of Mr. Edwards.” I raise my glass as if toasting the memory, and for a moment I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd married Jenny instead of the cheating bitch I ended up with.

Jenny frowns and moves in closer. She leans over Morgan, her low-cut dress flashing ample cleavage. “He was gay, wasn't he? That's what got him killed.”

Morgan rolls his eyes, checks his watch.

***

Mr. Edwards could always find someone at this time of night. Kids out to make a few quid for not much work. Glue sniffers, usually. He didn't trouble himself with the morals of prostitution or under-age sex. It was business, after all. Supply and demand. Basic economics. That's how capitalism worked.

Edwards hummed random notes beneath his breath, the wet grass splashing beneath his feet. He thought of the boy writing on the desk. He wondered what the boy would write about in his essay tonight and his cock jumped at the idea it might be two thousand words of pure filth.

Content with the thought, Edwards marched deeper into the darkness, toward the toilets behind the tennis courts. He approached the block building. A concrete square, metal grids bolted on the windows. It looked like a Nazi gas chamber.

The glow of fluorescent light streamed through the open doorway where a figure leaned against the wall, cigarette in hand. A plume of smoke poured from the boy's lips. He was in profile. A silhouette in the night. One leg bent, the sole of his foot flat on the wall. He turned his head. “You looking for business, mate?”

Edwards' pulse quickened.

“Blow job, ten quid.” Cigarette smoke swirled around the boy's head. “You want it?”

Edwards unbuttoned his coat, unzipped his pants, hat and scarf still masking his face. “Yes please.”

The boy stepped out the doorway, boot-heels clicking on the paving. He flicked the cigarette into the darkness and walked with the same deliberate pace a certain teacher might use when creeping up on an unsuspecting student. The boy floated through the night, flashed a knife in the moonlight.

It thumped into Edwards' chest, hitting him so hard he toppled like a statue. And the boy was on him in a frenzied pummeling of serrated blade and torn flesh. They grappled like mud-wrestlers, only this mud was warm and sticky and smelled like copper pennies.

***

Jenny disappears as mysteriously as she emerged. Back on the dance floor, she flirts with some guy wearing star-shaped sunglasses and a stick-on Mohawk.

Morgan examines his empty glass, looks at her then back to me. “What does she know about it anyway?”

“Bet she doesn't know there were forty-seven knife wounds.” I look at Morgan the way I used to look at Mr. Edwards after reading a word I wasn't sure how to pronounce. “You know they never even found his fucking cock?”

Morgan narrows his eyes, leans across the table. He looks haunted, as if he deals with people recalling gruesome homicides every day of his life. “Did they really put that in the newspapers?”

“Urban myth.” I touch his fingers, cold and stiff.

“That's cruel.”

“Yeah, but you wanted him dead, same as the rest of us.”

Morgan grips my hand. “Mr. Edwards said I needed to be sure I knew what I was writing about or he would find out. So I followed him into the park. I was going to watch him have sex with some kid and record every detail.”

“You were there?”

Morgan smiles, uncrosses his legs and pulls a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He slides it across the table. “Nowhere near two thousand words,” he says. “But it's a pretty good description of what happened.”

I unfold the paper and read the story, words jumping out at me like punches to the head. I read and reread. Double check the details. All written down in black and white. Every gory detail. He saw it all.

“No one knows what you did.” Morgan pulls the paper from my fingers, a cigarette lighter in his other hand. The flame is alight, already licking at the corner of his work. It takes hold, blue and orange, dancing in the dark. “Best it stays that way.”