When I was a teenager, I had a friend who I wasn’t particularly sure even liked me, but we sometimes hung out anyway.
He was never very friendly to me, but occasionally I’d be invited, as part of a group, to drink beer and watch MTV2 on the weekend.
We’d drink ice-cold Budweiser, order pizza, usually pepperoni with extra jalapeño, and watch Beavis & Butthead and Ren & Stimpy, followed by music videos back to back: Faith No More, Pantera, Deftones.
We’d smoke cigarettes in the garden and mess about. Sometimes it would get rowdy and two people would fall out.
One day, during the summer holidays, he phoned me. Not to invite me over, and not on a weekend. He asked if I wanted to go to the fields and river behind his house to smash something up.
I said sure. I told him I’d bring my orange-handled hammer and a boombox so we could listen to music. He said good. He also said we were going to set it on fire and bury it.
I walked the short distance to his house wearing pale blue jeans, black Converse, a Marilyn Manson Smells Like Children T-shirt, and a tattered red and black check longsleeve shirt. I shaved my head with a razor that morning.
His house was empty. He was already waiting with a backpack. We jumped the fence at the bottom of his garden and cut off the dog-walking path, heading straight into the overgrowth.
In a small clearing, he knelt on the pale dirt and pulled a computer hard drive from his bag. He didn’t look at me. He started stamping on it with his heel. One stamp sent him recoiling in pain. I told him to stop and took out my hammer. He nodded, awkwardly. I set the boombox down and pressed play.
Pig Destroyer’s 38 Counts of Battery started immediately. I lifted the hammer over my head and brought it down hard onto the drive. The casing bent and cracked. We laughed. I kept swinging, and he started headbanging to the music. The mood improved.
When I stopped, he took the drive and tore it open. Inside was the disc and the arm. He dismantled what he could, then put the pieces back into his rucksack. Good, he said.
We walked on until we found a gap in the hedgerow. He took out half the smashed drive and a bottle of lighter refill fluid. He poured it over the parts and flicked his lighter. The pieces caught. We watched as the thinner metal curled. When the flame died, he raised the bottle and squeezed again, letting the liquid arc down. The fire ran back up towards his hand. He yelled and fell backwards laughing, then slammed the bottle on the ground until it stopped smouldering.
He threw a trowel at my feet and told me it was my turn. I dug a shallow hole and kicked the burnt parts into it. I piled mud on top and pressed it down with my hands. We scattered leaves and sticks over the spot.
We kept walking until we reached the bend in the river, where the water deepened before thinning out again.
The music was still playing. He tipped the remaining contents of his bag onto the ground and said, more. I hit what was left with the hammer until he was satisfied. He found a heavy rock and stacked the fragments on it. Then he waded into the deepest part of the river, lowering the rock carefully and flipping it upside down so it trapped the pieces beneath it. To do it properly he had to go fully under. When he came back up, his hair clung to his face. He pushed it back and waded out.
Okay, he said. We walked back in silence. The sun was setting. People passing us on the path shook their heads. We were muddy, smelled of lighter fluid, and one of us was soaked through.
We climbed back into his garden and went inside. I thought he might offer me a beer, or put MTV on, but instead he said he needed a shower and that he’d see me back at school. I said sure and left. I switched the boombox off on the way home to save the batteries.
When I got back, I played Doom on the PlayStation, drank a Rolling Rock, and ate a microwavable chicken curry. I fell asleep fully clothed and dirtied the bedsheets with mud. About a week later, his father was arrested.
