Memories - A Shooting

When I look back on this now, I think to myself, "did that shit really happen??"
And yes, it did.
It seems so strange now. I was in real danger a lot of the time, but it just didn't feel like it at all. It all felt so safe. Sometimes I really wonder how I could have done it all, if it could have been me. Maybe I have someone else's memories. But I know I don't. And I know it did happen. I also know it wasn't safe. And I really don't know how I came out of it all alive. I really don't.

I want to write about one particular night which was pretty eventful. A lot of things happened for just one short night.
It was a saturday. I remember meeting up at a friends house to go raving. He rang the party line, which was a recorded message telling us where the party would be that night. I don't remember where the party was. Actually, I never knew where the parties were. "London", I would say, if asked. There was a group of us, three girls and about five guys. We walked to the train station near my friends house. The first fight of the night happened outside that train station. I don't know what it was all about to be honest. I wasn't paying too much attention, I was chatting to the girls and rolling a joint. My friend came up to me and asked me to hold his chips. Then he kicked another guys head in. Literally. He put him in some sort of headlock and started kneeing him in the face. Blood everywhere. And then it was over. Just Like That. They made up instantly, and my friend finished his chips, before they were even cold.
It was the strangest thing. When the train came, we all got on it together to go into London. Except one of us now had a bloody nose.
I don't remember the journey into London, which probably has something to do with the Weed. I was probably smoking it on the train, I usually did. Never been quite sure how we got away with that one.
I don't remember much else, up until one little scene which sticks in my mind. I remember my friend and his girlfriend having a fight over something. He stormed off. Unfortunately, he was the one with the map, so we were stranded. Three guys and two girls plus me.
I remember two of the guys going into a phone box and smoking something. I thought they were just hotboxing it with weed. I remember they didn't care where we were, they were having the time of their lives. Pissed up and stoned and miles from home. The other two girls were arguing about something, and then crying about something. I remember one of the guys came up to me at one point and said "hey, that girl just hit that other girl!" and then just laughed. He was joking. She hadn't. Not much of a funny bloody joke, it would have been fight number three for the vastly disintegrating night.

Apparently, that's what Crack Cocaine does to you. It makes you find things funny which really just aren't.

And it turns out, Crack Cocaine was what they'd been smoking in that phone box.
I couldn't believe it. Friends of mine? On Crack? One step down from Smack. The two drugs I'd always avoided. I didn't know what to do. Well, there wasn't really anything I could do.
The wide eyed looks on their faces were so strange, the way they acted was so strange. I knew these people, but I didn't know the people who were talking to me now. It was horrible. They thought everything was funny, they were running around like children, shouting and laughing. Writing on walls, throwing things, hitting each other, smoking more.
I was stuck in the east end of bloody london somewhere, with no clue where I was or how to get home, with three crackheads, one pissed girl sobbing over her boyfriend and another girl too stoned to do anything about anything.
I don't remember what happened next.
I do remember that we made it to another party somehow. But I don't remember the party.
The next thing I remember is the following morning. The guy who had stormed off earlier in the night showed back up. We were at a train station somewhere closer to home. He took me aside and said to me, "please, don't tell my girlfriend, but there was a shooting at the party I was at." He'd got out just before the police arrived. Quite a few people had been shot. He was lucky. I don't know what he'd been taking that night, but whatever it was, it must have been strong. He wasn't himself at all. He'd been angry with her, so he took way more than usual.
I don't really know what happened next, one minute my friend and his girlfriend were arguing about something, then he turned on one of the other guys and the next thing I knew, the old bill were there.

There's only one more thing I remember. I remember my friend holding someone in some sort of headlock, just like he'd done at the start of the night. I remember him kneeing that someone in the face, just like he'd done at the start of the night. I remember there was blood everywhere, again.

I also remember my friend getting arrested. That someone he was hitting was a copper.


It wasn't a good night.

It was a pretty shit night to be honest. My friend nearly got shot. Then he got arrested. And two people I used to know became Crack Addicts.

No. Not a good night at all.