Friends Till The End

It was late on a Saturday night when I was locked in my cell fighting a cold. My nose was stuffed and my eyes watery. My throat was raw and it hurt to swallow. I had a wad of toilet paper bunched in my right hand.

I tried to sleep, closing my eyes to the noises coming from outside my cell. But I was too tense and too sick to find rest. I thought of the other inmates.

A number of inmates, as tough as they acted throughout the day, would often cry themselves to sleep at night, their wails creeping through the cell walls like ghostly pleas. There were other cries too. Different from those filled with fear and loneliness. They were low and muffled, filled with pain and anguish, raw cries that begged for escape, for a freedom that never came.

Those cries can be heard through the thickest walls. They can cut through concrete and skin and reach deep into the dark parts of a lost boy’s soul. They are cries that can change the course of a life. They are cries that when once heard, can never be erased from memory.

On this night, those cries belonged to my friend Niall when guard Ferguson paid him a visit.

The door to my cell swung open when Ferguson stood in the doorway, beer bottle in his hand, baton in the other. His dark eyelids gave him a sleepy appearance and the skin around his thin lips was chapped.

“I just fucked your little friend,” he said, his speech slurred.

He took three steps into my cell. I rolled off the cot and stood across from him, my eyes on his.

“Take you clothes off,” Ferguson said. “Then get back in bed. I wanna play with you for a while.”

“No,” I said.

“What was that?” Ferguson asked. “What did you say to me?”

“No,” I repeated. “I’m not taking my clothes off and I’m not getting into bed.”

Ferguson moved closer. “You know what you need? He smiled. “A drink. Have a drink, loosen up a little. And then we’ll play.” He lifted the beer bottle in his hand and raised it above my head and poured it.

Ferguson threw his baton on my bed and turned back to me and undid the buckles of his belt, lowering the zipper of his pants. He ran his hand across my chest and face.

“Okay,” he whispered. “You don’t have to take off your clothes or get into bed.”

“Please, Ferguson,” I said. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what, sweet thing?” Ferguson asked, rubbing my chest harder.

“Don’t do what you’re doing,” I said.

“But I thought you liked it,” Ferguson said. “I thought all you boys liked it.”

“We don’t,” I told him. “We don’t like it.”

“That’s too bad,” he breathed. “Cause I like it. I like it a lot.” Ferguson blew in my face, his drunken beer breath mixed with cigarette smoke.

Ferguson ran his hand past my chest and up to my face and neck. He moved me closer to him and I closed my eyes as he began to grab my hand. I opened them when he tightly gripped my wrist and saw Niall standing in the doorway. He had a makeshift knife in his hand.

Niall moved out of the light and into the darkness of my cell quietly. He was naked except for a pair of white briefs, stained red with blood. He was breathing through his mouth and kept the knife flat by his leg.

“Don’t be afraid,” Ferguson told me, oblivious to Niall’s presence in the room. “C’mon, I wanna have fun with you too.”

I looked one more time at Niall before I stepped closer to my bed, my hand reaching to Ferguson’s baton as Niall inched his way quicker.

“Hurry up, now,” Ferguson demanded, “It’s time to have fun. Get on your knees, and go nice and slow.”

Ferguson felt the edge of the knife before he heard Niall’s voice.

“That’s how I’m gonna let you die, dip shit.” Niall said. “Nice and slow.”

“You little punk,” Ferguson said with more surprise than fright. “What the hell you tryin’ to do?”

“It’s time for me to have a little fun,” Niall said.

“I can have you killed for this,” Ferguson said.

“Then I’ve got nothing to lose.” Niall shrugged.

I grabbed the baton and jumped to my feet and looked past Ferguson at Niall. I saw something in his eyes, something that I had never seen before.

“You can’t cut him, Niall.” I finally said.

“Watch me, Harry,” Niall said. “Sit down on your bed and watch me.”

“Go back to your cell,” I pleaded.

“He’s not gonna get away with it,” Niall said. “He’s not gonna walk away from what he did to me. What he’s been doing to all of us. What they did to Zayn.” He cried.

“He has to get away with it,” I said.

“Who says?” Niall asked. “Who the fuck says?”

“We’re gonna get out of here in a few months.” I whispered. “If you kill him, we aren’t going anywhere.”

“Listen to your friend,” Ferguson said. “He’s talking sense.”

I shoved the thick part of the baton into the center of Ferguson’s stomach and watched as he fell to the floor.

“Stay outta this, asshole,” I barked. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

Niall moved the knife away from Ferguson and handed it to me, gently. His face was a portrait of hard hate, emptied of its sweet charm, a resting place for all the torment and abuse he had endured. He was no longer the Niall I had known, the Niall I had grown up with.

Wilkinson had done more than abuse and beat him. It had taken him beyond humiliation. It had ripped into the most gentle heart I had known and emptied it out of all feeling. The Niall Horan who would turn his house into a safe haven for lost kittens was gone. The Niall Horan who stole fruits and vegetables and left them at the door for Ms. Brooks, an elderly lady in the neighborhood with no family or money, was dead and buried. That Niall Horan was replaced by the Niall Horan who stood in front of me now, ready to kill a man and not give it another thought.

“Let it go, Niall,” I said. “He’s a sick man and a piece of shit and he’s not worth it.”

“I’ll go easy on you in my report,” Ferguson spoke, standing up and getting his wind back.

“There won’t be a report,” I said.

“Fuck you mean, there won’t be a report?” Ferguson said, his drunken slur replaced by steady anger. “You two assaulted a guard. There’s gotta be a report.”

“Just go, Ferguson.” I said. “Fix your pants, and go.”

“I’m not leaving until Irish over here hands me the knife.” Ferguson said.

“There isn’t a knife,” I said.

I walked back to my bunk and placed the knife under my mattress.

“It’s okay, Niall,” I said. “You can let it go. It’s okay.”

“He’s not gonna touch me again,” Niall said, the voice no longer that of the boy who cried at the end of sad movies. “You hear me, Harry? He’s not gonna touch me again.”

“I hear you,” I said, grabbing my friend’s hand.

We both looked at Ferguson, waiting for him to walk out my cell. Ferguson looked at the both us before making his way to the doorway.

“I’m not gonna forget you did this,” Ferguson said, pointing a shaking finger at both me and Niall. “You two hear me? I’m never gonna forget this.”

“It’s a devil’s deal then,” I said.

“What’s that mean?” Ferguson asked.

Niall explained to him. “First one to forget dies.” He said.

Notes