Chapter 1

"Please Johnny, please darling, I'll pay you back"

She looked awful, sunken eyes in a thin face, loose teeth, scabs that she'd picked at in her frustration.

"Mum" I said softly, "I'm not giving you money so you can kill yourself, I'm just not"

"It's only a little fix baby" she pleaded, "Please Johnny, I need it"

I was almost in tears myself at her plight, I was seventeen, a week from my eighteenth birthday and I was watching my mother kill herself right in front of my eyes!

She wore a filthy tee shirt and even dirtier knickers, her whole body was skin and bone, in the two short years since dad had died of a drugs overdose, she'd gone from a beautiful, fun loving mum to this, a mess, a fucking wreck.

I'd heard of cold turkey before but I'd been told it was dangerous and as often as not, killed the person undergoing it, but the way mum was then, she'd have been better off dead.

I stood up slowly from the table where I'd been eating my dinner and looked at the pleading in her eyes, then I hit her,

I did it right, thank God and she dropped like a stone, she hardly weighed a thing as I picked her up and walked upstairs with her in my arms.

The screaming began as soon as she woke up and saw the leather straps round her wrists and ankles, I was sitting in the room's only other item of furniture, a straight backed chair.

"I'm going to keep you here until you can do without heroin mum" I said softly, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice normal, "It might be two weeks, it might be three, even a month but you're not coming out until you're clean"

"You fucking little bastard, I'm your fucking mother, untie these straps right fucking now"

"No mum, I want my mother back"

She was in the attic that dad had converted into a recording studio before he tried drugs for the first time, he was dead less than twelve months later, leaving mum a total wreck and me angry. He'd been a successful musician, making a good living doing backing tracks for television advertisements and occasionally doing a tour for a big name singer who knew of him and his growing reputation.

It had been all down hill from there and mum had succumbed to the dealers, the pushers and the general scumbags who inhabit the twilight world of the junkies.

Her own money had gone first and then she'd started on dad's, but a lot of that depended on repeats of the commercials he'd made and came in cheque form twice a year, the last one had been for twenty five thousand pounds and she'd used the last of it a week ago.

I'd come down from the studio late one evening where I'd been working on some of dad's unfinished tracks and found her being fucked on the kitchen floor by a smarmy looking twat in a suit.

I threw him out in disgust and she went for me, shouting that he was going to give her money for a fix and without it she'd die,

"Don't talk bloody rubbish mum" I tried to talk reasonably, "You don't need that shit"

"Watch your mouth John" she shouted, "Just don't forget whose house this is and if you ever do that again, I'll throw you out, have you got that?"

"Yeah, I think so" I said and went to bed, but when I woke up in the morning I found she'd sneaked into my room and taken all the money from my wallet!

It was that more than anything that made my mind up, I spoke to dad's doctor who advised me against my proposed course of action, then later on in the pub when his doctor's head was back in his office, he said he'd give me all the help he could.

It was three days before she stopped screaming, I'd thrown a sheet over her, more to preserve her last shreds of modesty than anything else, I cleaned her up on the second day and she spat at me, she actually hawked it up and spat!

On the third day she was sweating and calling me a pervert, the stench was awful, I wore a handkerchief over my nose and mouth while I cleaned her up, I'm not going to go into details, but it really was awful.

On the fourth day she allowed me to spoon feed her some soup, but she bought it up again immediately, so I cleaned her again.

"The scabs are looking cleaner mum" I told her and she nodded,

"Yes they feel better darling, a lot better, I'm ok now so you can let me up"

"Not yet mum" I shook my head, "You've got another eighteen days yet"

I didn't realise a woman of mum's stature could create such a noise, she knew the studio was sound proof, it had been something we'd all joked about when having it made, she screamed, howled, threatened, screamed again and when the sheet slipped off she even thrust her groin up at me,

"Come on Johnny, fuck me, I'll give you the best fuck you've ever had, COME ON YOU BASTARD FUCKING SHAG ME"

That was the night I went to bed crying, but when I went into see her in the morning she seemed quiet and just stared at me,

"You're going to kill me, you know that don't you?"

"No I'm not mum, I'm going to save your life, a letter came for dad this morning, he's getting an award for that commercial he did, you know, the one for the car, we're going to go to the ceremony together, you and me mum, we're going to collect dad's award and I'm going to be there clapping louder than anyone else when you walk up onto the stage to collect it"