'G' IS FOR GUN
by
T.J.Hurford
'A' is for Arab
'T' is for Thrill
'B' is for Bullet
'K' is for Kill
Childhood is a time of great change. It is potentially a time of trauma for young minds and, in the hands of the wrong person, those minds can be distorted, turned away from what is 'right' and 'decent' and 'proper' toward that other thing - that thing with many names but all of them EVIL.
The small town of Warburton is a place like many others. It has a twice weekly market in the central square, a small police station and a cattle market. There is a long High Street where the local farmers come to do their business and rather more pubs' than at first glance might seem necessary for a community of only five thousand souls.
There is a railway station and an abattoir and an old council housing estate on the outskirts.
There is also a school.
Warburton IS different, though. Warburton is the home of a serial killer.
Some schools get lucky with their teaching staff and turn out well-rounded, informed and presentable young people whose future seems assured. Others, like Warburton Secondary Modern seem to attract the outcasts of the teaching fraternity. Men and women who seem to have become vocationally misplaced.
It has been a trying day for Brahim Ladwa. His girlfriend has just left him. He has been turned down for a loan to buy a car, and he has a hangover. If only he had never strayed from the paths of enlightenment. To cap it all, that horrible boy, Jack Winslow, who is always disrupting the class has been nattering away all afternoon. Brahim blows up. He hates teaching and takes it out regularly on the 'kids' in the class. He hates them and they hate him.
"You're all a bunch of ingrates". He shouts. "You're the thickest group of no-hopers I've ever come across". He storms out. At the back of the classroom, Jack Winslow gives his retreating figure an obscene gesture.
Out in the hills on the outskirts of town there is an army rifle range. It hasn't been used for some time, and although there is a regular patrol by a soldier who comes round to check the padlocks on the gates and 'Nissan' huts, these visits are predictable enough for the children to slip in and out unseen. For much of the time, nobody comes near the place, which, for obvious reasons is secluded and well-hidden in a fold of the hills.
Jack is a sullen boy. Growing up in the boring atmosphere of a small town with no entertainment, except for television, which only increases his frustration by showing him things he can never have, he is always getting into trouble. At fifteen, he rules the class both physically and emotionally. What Jack says, 'goes'.
Jack HAS found something to relieve the monotony though. His gang is into black magic. Not spells and all that, although they DO mix things together over a fire in the abandoned hut down by the railway line and regularly offer the resultant substances to wild animals in the vicinity with satisfying, though horrid, results. The kind of magic that Jack's gang is into involves sacrifice.
It started out with pets and quickly moved on to farm animals. Now it has taken the next logical step. Jack has killed a human being. The hut that after months of patient whittling away at, he has finally managed to break into out on the range contained little of interest except for one wonderful find.
A gun. A genuine army service pistol complete with a large supply of ammunition. The accident had happened whilst Jack was sitting staring in admiration at this weapon A soldier had entered the hut. It was the same soldier who had visited the school to give a careers lecture. He had told them stories about the war. The children had listened with interest. So, the REAL heroes had been those who had killed the most enemies?.
He had been early on his rounds, wanting to get back to barracks for a trip into town with the 'lads'. With a shout, the man had tried to take the gun away from Jack and it had gone off. The soldier died instantly. Jack was too innued to violence from watching the television to be worried by the sight, or, indeed, the act, of what he had done, but he did know that all trace of the deed must be hidden.
The gang had come to his rescue. A burial deep in the woods later that evening. There had been a full moon. Jack performed a kind of Satanic ritual by candlelight. In his mind the act of murder had already become deliberate and was believed by his 'tribe'. Everyone was there. Tom and Zack, Mo and 'Chunky', Billy and 'The Snot'. Even Rachael, 'Pens' and Sal. The girls looked in awe at Jack as he stood over the grave and fired a single shot from the gun into the unmoving corpse. There had been a lot of blood and as they filed past the open hole, each had spat upon the soldier's body and their leader had smeared blood from a jar onto their foreheads.
The death did not go unnoticed, but, try as they might, the police and army could find neither clue nor the body. The fact that there had been a gun in the hut had long since been forgotten, so eventually the general opinion became that a tramp had done the deed and hidden the remains. The search was continuing when another murder took place.
Sergeant Thorpe. Town 'Bobby' made a mistake. He was an old fashioned kind of 'copper'. If a child did wrong, he didn't report it. Not for a first, nor even, a second, offence. He merely gave the boy, (and it almost invariably WAS a boy) a clip round the ear. That Tuesday, Chunky Stevens wanted the day off from school to go to the cattle market, so he took the day off. The policeman saw him and took his normal action. That evening as he pushed his bicycle home across the churchyard, Sergeant Thorpe paid the price for his error.
Brahim Ladwa is the next. A man with a short fuse, he pays the price too. His mistake?. Shouting once too often at Jack. He is shot dead next day on his way to school.
A Soldier.
A Policeman.
And a Teacher.
The town is panic stricken. Three ordinary citizens. No apparent motive.
Nobody suspects the children but after every killing, the gang goes into the woods and performs a ritual. The words come naturally. The 'Brotherhood' have found a voice. No-one will ever push any of them around again. They have THE GUN.
They chant.........
'The Squaddie 'ated all us kids.
They 'Bogey clipped me 'ead.
The Teacher said that we was fick.
But they're the ones what's dead'.
As each killing occurs the chant gets longer:
And longer:
'We likes killin'
'F' is for fun.
'B' is for bullet.
'G' is for gun'.
end
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