Free Fighting to the Death by Carl Merritt

so-called tough kid bashing the shit out of other, weaker inmates. In the end, I fell for the bait and gave the socalled ‘Big Daddy’ the hiding of his life, which was nothing more than he deserved.
    The only member of staff I even vaguely got on with was the art teacher. I did twelve hours of art a week. I couldn’t get enough of it: I loved it. It was like a release from all my problems, which enabled me to escape into a fantasy world and, believe me, I needed something to help me forget my troubles.
    I specialised in painting faces. They were all imaginary, well sort of. And they all looked a bit bloody miserable. Many were faces of people from my past – like that bastard who slammed an iron bar over my head at the Pigeons pub and that arsehole ‘stepfather’ Terry, who’d landed me in borstal in the first place.
    I had a special technique when I was drawing. I’d start at aneye or the nose and then work my way out from there. I never knew what I was going to end up painting; bit like my attitude to life, I suppose. I’d just strike out with my brush or pencil and then see how the mood took me. That art teacher encouraged me a lot. He seemed to understand what was going through my head, which is more than I can say for any of the teachers back at school.
    Often I’d end up with two faces looking at each other. Sometimes I even managed four faces on each page. Their haunted look reflected what I felt at the time. How could I have done pictures of smiling, happy faces if I didn’t feel it myself?
    I also drew cartoons – some called them caricatures – of people in the borstal. I’d pick out people’s faults, like a big nose or a bulbous mouth, and make them look even worse. There were a couple of screws I loved painting in a really distorted way but I’d always tear the pictures up into pieces if any of them marched into our dormitory. Pity I couldn’t do the same thing to them in real life!
    There was one huge, fat bully of a screw with a goatee beard who featured over and over in my cartoons. I hated him so much, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Anyway, one time I drew a cartoon of him sitting on the toilet, looking like a big fat prat (which is what he was) and stuck it up on the wall to amuse my cellmates. I was asking for trouble but didn’t give a toss. The screw walked in one day and, surprise, surprise, spotted the picture, but the funny thing is he didn’t recognise the figure as himself, even though everyone else said it was a good likeness. He just snatched it off the wall and tore it into little pieces without saying a word. But news of my caricatures eventually reached the borstal’s counsellors, whose job it was to assess if Iwas ready for release. Naturally, they believed I was still a bolshy youngster who might be a danger to society. I answered every one of their questions with ‘Fine’. I didn’t want to give anything away about myself. I’ve always been like that.
    I eventually left the counsellors’ office knowing they had me labelled as a nasty, violent delinquent, not prepared to face up to what I’d done. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d steamed into Terry to stop him battering my mum – it’s as simple as that. But the authorities never looked at it from my point of view.
     
    About a week before I was due for release I was called into the Assistant Governor’s office to take an important personal phone call. It turned out to be my Uncle Pete. He said: ‘You can’t go back home next week, son. You gotta steer clear in case that bastard Terry comes looking for you.’ I insisted I wasn’t scared of Terry but Uncle Pete said the family had decided it was too dangerous for me.
    So here I was, about to get out of one cage only to be dropped right into the middle of another. Story of my life, I suppose. Even after serving time for giving him the beating he deserved, the spectre of Terry was haunting me.
    A week later I got out of Rochester. Me