2000 years of Tragic Skies

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Millennium night 2000 was the worst night of my life... In many ways it was the start of it all. In the pitch dark, in my old family home, I lay on my bed like a disease... shaking and bleeding tears to exploding fireworks. The worlds celebrations and whoops of delight contradicted my entire existence. I was in pain and I was alone... I wanted to shoot the crowds.

4 days previously I had found my best friend curled up and dead in our shared apartment, and just earlier this evening I had discovered I was a heroin addict. On this historic night, darkness and despair hung in the cloisters, lit up by Chinese Rockets, Roman Candles and a flickering lighter. My friends vomit and blood stains were still on the floor... his room still the wreck that the paramedics and police had left it in. The perfume of death was still thick in the air.

It was in this house, 17 years ago that I had watched my father disappear... had found my mother 3/4’s dead... and had lost the best days of my youth. In many ways I had travelled a perverse circle and had once again traipsed tragedy up a familiar flight of stairs.

I first met Ewan in 1995 whilst we were both working nights in a Soho Rock Club. We shared a love of music, hairspray, eyeliner and opiates. Ewan had a huge complex because he had a large chin, but I told him it gave him character and he looked like a pirate. “If you dangle a cigarette from the corner of your mouth & get a parrot... everything will be just fine.” That was my advice to him. Well, he never purchased a parrot but he did smoke his cigarettes with style. I think he even ended up liking his chin.

It was in the spring of 1999 that we decided to rent a place together. As my step-father was in the process of exchanging properties, we were able to rent my childhood house in Fulham. It was in disrepair and the council surveyor had classified it as a “death-trap” but it was going at next to nothing... which was exactly the price we could afford. On moving in, both of us held steady jobs and neither of us were addicts... though we were both using Subutex and occasionally heroin & crack.

The eight or so months leading up to December were passed working and spending our evenings mucking around with our guitars or talking nonsense. We would spend our weekends watching new bands play at the Kings Head Pub on the Fulham Palace Road. There was not one evening we did not spend together... not one, except the night of his death. There are three things that haunt me from that night... this is the first.

The night of Ewan's death (Monday 27th December 1999) was like any other. I returned home at 6.00pm and went straight up into his room. He was on his bed with a cigarette and his guitar... his scuffed boots kicked across the floor. His greeting was always a ridiculous heavy metal guitar riff... him laughing as I sat down to a Judas Priest classic. For the past month I had been doing heroin every evening... I asked Ewan if he had anything. He shook his head and nodded to the bedside table. On it there was a little wrap of heroin but inside was only dust... not enough to kill a fly. Still, he said I could have that if I wanted. I refused and said I was going to score. I asked if he wanted anything... he said to pick him up a bag. He gave me his bank card and I shot off. I scored quickly and headed home. It was on this journey back that a callous and familiar world put in its latest appearance.

As I was turning onto my street I was met by someone running across the road, all twitches and snivels. It was Gerald, an old work colleague. But Gerald wasn’t just any ex-colleague, he was the boy that had put me on to my first heroin dealer. With barely a “hello” he asked if I had anything... he said he was ill. I told him if he had another number I would treat him. Within 20 minutes we had withdrawn more money & scored again... not just heroin, but 2 rocks of crack as well. Gerald talked me into going back to his flat. I can’t explain why I took up his offer, but I did, and we spent the evening smoking and talking about work. Apparently he had been dismissed for stealing an expensive Persian rug. He went on to sell it for all of £30!!! By the time I left it was gone midnight. I rushed off home to give Ewan his gear and return his bank card.

On entering the house Ewan's bedroom light was still on. I flew the stairs and into his room. Ewan was laying on the floor curled up asleep next to the fire. The crack pipe, which he used to smoke heroin on, was besides him. I stepped over him quietly... placed his bank card on top of his television & then retired to my own room. I sat down on my bed flushed and distressed. “No... there’s something not right here.” I thought. “There’s something very badly wrong.”
I didn’t know what it was, but that image of him on the floor wasn’t correct... there was something disturbing about it. He was slightly out of posture... as if his joints were bent in the wrong direction. The position he was in just wasn’t natural, or possible. I rushed back into the room. This time I saw that his back was tight against the fire. One can’t lay against the metal frame of a fully powered electric fire like that... you would burn. I looked at his posture again and noticed that his head wasn’t resting against the bed, it was supported by it. It’s mathematical place was on the floor... a neck can’t comfortably support that kind of presure. It was here that I realised tragedy had arrived with this night. She had snuck in the back and she was wearing ruthless boots.

I called and shouted at Ewan, nudging and trying to rouse him. I didn’t want to touch him, it felt perverse, uncleanly. Something told me I was touching the dead, handling that which shouldn’t be handled. I finally kicked him... quite hard. His head just sunk down further. I bent down and saw that from his mouth and trailing to the floor was a thick dark red liquid. At this point I caught hold of his long hair and pulled his head around. Again, I didn’t want to, I suppose because I knew what I would find... & it was that, exactly that: a puffy drained face and two badly directed eyes - almost cataract in their appearance. There are three things that haunt me from that night... this is the second.

I let go of Ewan's head and let it slump back down. It was panic stations. In and out of the room... up and down the stairs. I sat down... stood up... back in the room. I stopped... started. I thought... I didn’t think. Help... I need help!.. an ambulance... I need an ambulance... Fuck!... HE needs an ambulance! Fuck..fuck.. fuck...I need a phone... I don’t have a phone... the neighbour has a phone. No... Ewan has a phone. FUCK! Back in the room... search... adapter.. no phone... fuck... crack pipe.. Fuck... body... FUCK... Can’t find it. There it is.. no its not.. TV remote... . Fuck, fuck FUCK!!!

I eventually found his phone, he was holding it. When I finally managed to prise it from his grip the first two digits of 999 had already been dialled. There are three things that haunt me from that night... this is the third.

Once I had calmed down a moment I phoned the emergency services. I just wanted an ambulance and they just wanted to ask me a series of bizarre questions, all the while telling me to calm down. Finally they asked:“Is he breathing?”
“No” I said “I think he’s dead.” With this they said an ambulance was on its way!

I didn't wait for that ambulance,l I fled the house. I was scared and I needed company. I ran back to Gerald's and hammered down his door. He opened stripped for bed. “Gerald... I got home and found Ewan dead!”
“What he’s overdosed... he’s unconscious””
“No.. he’s DEAD!”

Gerald chucked on some clothes and we sprinted back. If things weren't bad enough I had Gerald shouting in my ear: "You've gotta get rid of the body... lay it outside. You'll go to prison for this - manslaughter... you gave him the gear!" I had no intention of following Gerald's advice... if I was arrested and charged then so be it. My best friend had just lost his life, I couldn't think past that. Anyhow, even if I had have listened to Gerald it would have been too late, for when we got back the police and paramedics were on the scene and had entered the empty house. Outside, the neighbours had revealed themselves and were crowded in the street... that same group of faces that had watched from behind twitching curtains as my family disintegrated. 17 years had only served to bring them more wrinkles and bigger ears and noses.

I explained to a police woman on the doorstep who I was and she let me in. I tried to go upstairs to Ewan's room but they wouldn’t let me. The paramedics were trying to resuscitate him. I knew that was no good but I still kept hope. I wished beyond wish... & even as the paramedics took his body downstairs, completely covered, I asked “is he alive?” Of course the answer was in the negative. Two disgusting things then happened. 1) A policeman dragged me over to the ambulance where Ewan’s body was put... he forced me to look at the stretcher “That will be YOU next! Keep fucking around with that shit!” 2) Gerald's suggestion that we steal Ewan’s bank card and empty his account... Of course I never done that.

After a moment the paramedics left and the neighbours returned to their beds. The police questioned me for a moment but didn’t arrest me nor take me into custody. Ewan had died with a crack pipe in one hand and a mobile phone in the other... a modern inner-city death. The post-mortem returned a verdict of death by heroin overdose. I successfully contested this and an independent post-mortem put the cause of death down to a burst stomach ulcer. My heroin use spiralled.... It was no longer an evening thing. From this point on it was H for breakfast, lunch and supper. I drowned out Ewan's death in a heroin haze... all the time alone in that same house in Fulham. But I was soon to have another shock... my monthly exertions had taken their toll and on Millennium Eve I was hit with a sickness, a flu that I had never felt the likes of before... For the first time I became dope sick.

And so those are the events that brought me full circle... back to my childhood bed, in my childhood room in my childhood home. Laying in the dark and shaking to the tune of the Millennium night celebrations. To my left was my mothers old room... to my right was Ewan's. Down was the wall my father had skipped, and up was the sky... the year 2000, exploding in colours across another tragic London sky.

Take care guys, S.

Ewan S was 28 and was buried just after the New year in his home town of Rotherham. I was warned not to attend the funeral for my own safety. I didn't.

PS: Next post will deal with the part of this night where I realised I was an addict... I didn’t want to mix the two events as they demanded their own posts.