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  CHEAP WHITE MEAT

  ALEX FLYNN

  Copyright 2012 Alex Flynn

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Nobody cares about me. Not one single person in the entire world. Not even me. And why should they? I’m fat for a start and I don’t think I’m in any way attractive. I can’t sing, I can’t dance; I’ve got no personality and I go mute when a stranger is in the same building as me. And everyone is a stranger to me.

  So everyone gives up.

  I’m not worth the effort. A lost cause. My own worst enemy. When they’ve done the minimum their job specifies they sign me off and pass me on for the next one to “have a crack at me”.

  But they all leave me alone, sooner or later. Even though I don’t get violent, I don’t start screaming, I don’t try to run away and I certainly don’t try harming myself. They just put me to one side. Apparently, it’s just a “phase” I’m going through.

  No, a phase is something like only eating cucumber sandwiches because you don’t want to get a muffin belly. Well, too late! A phase is counting to ten before walking down the stairs in the morning because it will mean that your best friend will sit next to you in school. But I’m not allowed to keep friends any more. And anyway, at the moment I’ve only got a grand total of four who I’m allowed to choose from: The Biter, The Self-Harmer, The Alcoholic and The Psychotic. All under 16 years-old. All under 24 hour supervision, or supposedly, for their own safety.

  And I’m the problem child? The one they can’t get through to.

  But somebody got through to me. All the way through and right inside. But they didn’t care about me, whoever it is I’ve turned into down the years. They only cared about my situation, and my vulnerability, but only so that they could exploit it. Well, that’s what I’ve since been told. I don’t know, it might be true, but I just want to forget about it and move on.

  But no, I’ve got to talk.

  Otherwise, they say he’ll get away with it. They are the ones who are specially trained to deal with my situation, but they’ve never been in my situation. At first I didn’t really think anything was wrong, well I’ve never had anything “normal” to compare it to, but sat here opposite him, and her, his new subordinate, I don’t feel like the victim. I feel like I’m the guilty one. The ringleader who has masterminded the whole thing. After all, surely my silence is an admission of guilt.

  Perhaps they’d prefer it if I were The Self-Harmer. I’m sure they’ve got enough experience to conjure up a tragic accident in which I could put myself at peace. But I don’t care what happens to me, except that when they lock me up properly that they lose the key and don’t call out a locksmith.

  He wants me to go back to the beginning. And he wants me to call him “Dan”. If he was as good as he claimed on his C.V. then he’d know that I’d speak when I’m ready. But I’ll never be ready for him. I’ve made my mind up and I’ll never change it.

  She’s talking about her younger sister. I don’t know why; I don’t know her sister and I’ve got nothing in common with her. And because of that one stupid comment of hers I’ll hate her forever and won’t do what she wants.

  The one they want me to talk about wasn’t exactly nice. He didn’t make me feel special. I certainly didn’t fancy him and I’ll never know what love is. We didn’t talk much. I don’t anyway and English isn’t his first language. But he certainly knew what he was doing and before I did it was too late.

  Sometimes I don’t think it’s that big a deal. It wasn’t like I was saving myself for anyone because no one would want me. They certainly wouldn’t want the type of person they’ve let me become down the years. However, some serious allegations have been made. Allegations that are against the law and could land someone, or some people, in a lot of trouble.

  For some reason people still talk to me as if I’m 8 years-old. Like they think that because it was the last time I was relatively normal it will take me back to a shiny happy place and make me open up. But I’m not 8. I’m 15. Or at least I should be. I don’t quite know what I am any more. I didn’t know I’d technically been raped until about three weeks after it first happened and that didn’t stop me letting it happen again, repeatedly. And I didn’t know I was an underage prostitute until this morning.

  I’m not exactly slow, or I wouldn’t have been if I’d have stayed “normal”, but things like that don’t register in my mind. Maybe I am still 8 years-old inside my head. I don’t know, I can’t really remember what it felt like to be 8, or maybe my mind won’t let me remember.

  They look like they are starting to lose patience. It’s Gillian’s turn to be my Key Worker and “look after me” today. Apparently, she’s a fully qualified Occupational Therapist but I would hate to see someone try to do her job without the qualifications she’s supposed to have. She’s answered everything she can when they ask her some extremely probing questions, but she doesn’t know enough.

  For some reason they keep mentioning money. How much pocket money I get. Whether my family give me any money. What I spent that money on. If that’s all they’re bothered about they can have it. All £380 of it.

  I wasn’t planning to use it to run away with. I did have one thing that I wanted to do with it but I couldn’t tell anyone because they’d talk me out of it. Tell me that I was too young and that the thing I wanted fixing was just the way “Mother Nature intended me to be.” Well, Mother Nature must be a right bitch if she wanted to create a monster like me.

  I did think for a while that having money would make me feel better.

  But it didn’t.

  As soon as I remembered that I’m not really in charge of my life I may as well not had it at all. I may as well have done all that hard work for nothing. I used to lay it out on my bed, in serial number order, and try to work out what else I could buy with it. But there wasn’t anything I wanted other than a tummy tuck and liposuction from my arse and thighs.

  If I’d have spent the money on food I’d have ended up fatter. If I’d have spent it on clothes I couldn’t have bought the nice ones because they wouldn’t even cover my arse. There’s nowhere I want to go. And certainly no one I want to go with.

  Of course, there’s the friend who I’ve still got inside my head from when I was 8. But he’s nearly a man now. And he wouldn’t remember me. The one who the other boys used to laugh at when I did a cartwheel and exposed my fat thighs to the world. Because I was “chubby” I don’t think anyone could believe that I was neglected. Although I wasn’t neglected, that’s just what had to be claimed in court so that the prosecution could get their precious conviction to pacify the “great” British public.

  When I was younger, I didn’t fit into their little examples of how a neglected child looks or acts. So I had to change my ways so that people would actually believe that there was something wrong with me. But then maybe they should just throw away the textbooks and try to deal with me another way. A better way. A way that actually works.

  I wonder how they’d deal with it if it happened to The Alcoholic. Now she can talk. Probably so much that they wouldn’t believe her. But at the moment they don’t believe me. All because I’m not talking. Now of course I could talk for a couple of minutes today and they’d leave me alone. Until tomorrow. But I don’t want to be left alone until tomorrow. I want to be left alone forever.

  It’s happened. It hasn’t killed me. But it hasn’t made me stronger. I’ll probably never get over it. Although I wasn’t exactly functioning normally beforehand. However, I know that deep down today is just the start of an interrogation that could last for months.

  Chapter Two

  They’ve let me outside for
five minutes. I think it’s more because they wanted a break rather than for my own welfare. But I don’t like being left outside alone. Exposed. With the C.C.T.V. waiting to watch me open the gate and make a run for it.

  I used to go out. And it used to annoy The Psychotic one because they trusted me. But they don’t anymore. Gillian says she still trusts me. But then Gillian’s tried to say pretty much everything since she wanted a new challenge in life and decided to try to make mine better. Gillian says her “conversational style” is a strength of hers. It’s not. But if she didn’t talk so much then I might be able to remember more of what she says.

  Today must be costing them a fortune because all The Others have been taken out for the day. On a Saturday. So all the ones who have had to come in and provide cover will get double time and a day in lieu, which I’ve worked out means a days holiday. Some of them will effectively earn £380 today. For one days inconvenience. It took me seven weeks to earn that. But they look sincere when they say they really do care about us. Although I’m always the last one they make eye contact with when they say it to us as a group.

  The Biter needs to be told it almost hourly otherwise she’ll bite them. And it hurts. Well, she’s never bitten me but she knows how to punch as well. I think she was the first to notice the change in me. How I didn’t flinch as much when someone invaded my personal space. So I started to over-compensate and started flinching when someone had no intention of coming near me. Gillian’s already said twice today how she can notice the change in me now that she looks back at it. In retrospect she tries to say. She doesn’t have a problem pronouncing her ‘R’s, but she talks that fast, and that often, that big words don’t come out right.

  Sitting out here alone, waiting to be called back inside, is boring. I mean, I’m normally on my own all day everyday anyway but now it’s different. Now I know I’m going to be called back inside any second soon. Even though I don’t have a watch, I know it’s been well longer than five minutes.

  If I were normal then I’d be messing around on my mobile. But I must be the only teenager who’s never wanted a mobile. I was given one, so that I could “text” people instead of speaking, but I conveniently lost it. I didn’t like it being next to me, like it was a way of people being able to check up on me any time of day or night.

  Gillian pops her head out from the fire escape so I stand up. However, I sit back down and put my hood up when they follow her outside. This must be their new tactic. The office setting didn’t work so maybe the tranquil fresh air will sprinkle some magic.

  Dan says something about how a cup of tea always helps to clear his head. When he says that I wish I were The Biter. I’d bite his stupid head off so that he couldn’t come out with comments like that. I don’t know why but every bloke they send through those gates is either camper than a row of pink tents in a field at a gay pride festival in Brighton or some Sergeant Major type who believes in “tough love”. I don’t like either type. So I don’t talk to them. But it’s all an act. They’re not really like that. It’s how they‘re told to behave. Not to show any weakness. Not to show any humanity more like.

  I don’t act this way on purpose. I just do it. Anyway, it’s not an act. If it was then I would have got bored of it by now. After all, I need to sort myself out at some point before I turn 16 and get turfed out of here because they supposedly don’t have the resources to be able to cope with adult nutcases. I’ve no idea where I’ll be sent once I’m 16. No doubt I won’t have any choice. As usual, I’ll just be sent wherever they can “find a place for me”.

  The former residents here aren’t exactly a long line of success stories. Their time in here doesn’t exactly fill them with hope and expectation for the future. But then we are at the end of the line. Sort of an unofficial psychiatric ward kept around the back; hidden from sight from the day patients who still have a chance of turning their lives around.

  I wouldn’t have considered myself to be a psycho. But then it doesn’t exactly happen overnight and I suppose that I’d be the last one to notice that my behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic if I thought that I was still relatively “normal”. I used to think that a lot of the things that they said I had wrong with me; suspected ADHD, suspected Borderline Personality Disorder, suspected Body Dysmorphic Disorder and various kinds of weird behaviour, were just a by-product of being stuck in the care system. I used to kid myself that once my life went back to “normal” then I’d go back to normal, but then as I’ve said; no one cares about me so I’ve never had the chance to give “normal” a go.

  It used to do my head in when they only said I had “suspected ADHD”; like they didn’t want to commit fully to a diagnosis in case it didn’t turn out to be the case and I’d sue them, meaning that their precious reputation would be ruined.

  If Dan could read my thoughts then he’d be able to know what happened at the beginning. When I was first taken out of the mainstream and put into care. When everything was fine but some people thought that it was their duty to interfere in mine and Mum’s lives. And ruin them both in the process as an added bonus.

  I wouldn’t say I was popular at school, but I wasn’t exactly bullied. Well, I had to put up with the timid name-calling, which counts as bullying these days, but it didn’t exactly bother me. I already knew I had fat thighs. I just didn’t like everyone else knowing. It’s easy when you’re in a normal school to slide through unnoticed. It’s when the class sizes get smaller, and you’re put in with a bunch of nutters, where any defects show because there’s someone with a clipboard writing down every miniscule detail about you.

  And didn’t the defects start to show! What kind of person is so shy that they can’t speak? But what if it’s not shyness after all. I don’t mean, what if there was a medical condition to suspect it as, which of course there is, but what if it’s not me but them? After all, I don’t speak to people I don’t like. People who are fake. Won’t be themselves. Try to cover up the defects. Pretend that they’re happy when they’re not. If they were truly happy then they wouldn’t have to waste their time on the likes of me.

  I’m sure in the good old days it would have been easier for them to deal with me. If some illness hadn’t killed me then starvation would have done because I’d have had no one to feed me. Or they could have transported me across the seas to the colonies as an “indentured servant” where I would have been flogged to death toiling in some plantation, practically the property of some rich landowner. But aren’t I virtually in the same situation now? After all, I’m virtually owned by the state and they get to deal with me how they feel fit.

  I’m sorry, I’ve let my mind drift. I’ve totally lost track of whatever it is they’re all saying about me. Gillian’s noticed that I’m showing signs of distraction so she thinks I need the toilet. She thinks that I’m too shy to put my hand up to ask and will probably end up wetting my knickers.

  Once again, I AM NOT EIGHT YEARS OLD.

  However, the opportunity to get away from the Three Mongamigoes is one not to pass up.

  Chapter Three

  I feel like a gorilla in a zoo waiting for my keeper to open the cage and let me outside for some stimulation. Gillian pushes the door open when it beeps and I’m free to explore the recreation of my natural habitat.

  But there’s a stranger in my enclosure.

  A random male. Maybe I’m not a gorilla after all but a panda. A giant panda, with giant thighs, which has to reproduce to help save her species.

  It’s okay though, I’ve been here before. I know exactly how to play this. They’re all the same; like a bloke who knows he’s going to be getting it at night so he’s been excited all day he lets it all blurt out within the first 30 seconds and spoils everything.

  I flash him a smile, to lure him into a false sense of security and wonder what all the fuss is about with me, but I don’t think he was looking. He’s wearing sunglasses so big and
dark that I can’t see his eyes through them. When I look at him all I see is me; so I look away.

  And wait.

  I’m waiting for him to speak. To reassure me that he’s “on my side”. Here for me. That he’s not going to judge me.

  But I’m still waiting.

  There’s something wrong. Things don’t usually pan out like this. Normally I already hate whoever is trying to help me. But how can I hate this guy? He’s not even given me any reason. Well, apart from those sunglasses.

  But he’ll speak soon.

  He has to. How else is going to be able to give up on me if he doesn’t even start? What’s he going to write in his little report:

  I was presented with Child X but because my big stupid sunglasses blocked out all the light I didn’t know she was in front of me until she kicked me in the head. I didn’t take up this job to be assaulted by ungrateful children so I’m resigning and going back to working in a call centre.

  I’m not going to kick him in the head though. That’s not what I do. But who is this guy? Is he a copper? A social worker? A psychiatrist? And why isn’t he telling me?

  And those sunglasses. They’re freaking me out. It’s the eyes that give people away. Show their true feelings. But if I can’t see his eyes then how can I tell how this guy is feeling?

  This is weird.

  Proper weird.

  Come on, it’s time to speak. Time to give the game away. Come on, what are you waiting for? Me to speak?

  Okay then.

  Just wait a minute whilst I clear my throat.

  Ha-ha, you’re not going to get me that easily. Come on, just say your piece; show some sympathy and send in the next clown.

  This is bad.

  I don’t know how to deal with this. I’ve heard of fighting fire with fire. But silence with silence? This is just stupid. How’s he going to get anywhere? I hope they’re not paying this guy; I’ve cost the country enough already. I don’t know why though. I’m not worth it. And I certainly didn’t ask for it. I’m the ultimate “Resource Consumer”. I constantly cost the country money, but I never give anything back. Every day it takes four people directly, and countless others indirectly, to look after me. On the one hand, you could say that I do my bit to keep the dole queue down, but surely they could find something better to spend the money on.