I was sat on the bus reading Keane: The autobiography, totally immersed, totally oblivious. It was one of those books that you got for Christmas, always meant to read but life kept getting in the way. Now with my hour long bus rides I had no excuses and I was glad. The book was almost as good as watching him play. He was the engine of the best midfield quartet ever assembled and for me one of the greatest players of all time.
The pure enjoyment I felt that afternoon, lost in a world of words, was unceremoniously interrupted by the unmistakeable squeal of Marvin. I heard him behind me.
“Eak, eak.” He squealed.
I refused to turn around. Even if I couldn’t concentrate on my book I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of thinking he had interrupted me.
I sat there calmly thinking what to do. I thought about what his plans were. Was he going to attack me on a crowded bus?
I doubted even he was that stupid.
That went for the main road where the bus stopped. As I have mentioned before it is one of the busiest roads in Poland and even if cars were whizzing past the chance of someone seeing an attack and stopping would be pretty high. There was a short walk, maybe four or five hundred metres where he would have his chance to pounce uninterrupted. That would be what he was planning, I was sure of it.
I fingered around in my bag, locating the pepper spray I had bought for such an occasion. I had bought Elly a simple spray can but mine was disguised as a fountain pen so it didn’t look strange when I took it out of my bag and slid it into my pocket. I started to feel smug, he didn’t know what I had in my pocket and then I realised that I didn’t know what he had in his pocket either. He had a hammer before and if he had brought it with him or worse I could be in real danger.
I thought about calling or texting Elly. I was sweating, I could feel my heart beating fast. The other noises faded away and all I heard was my heart thumping and his snorts. I decided Elly was safer at home and if Marv wanted to go at it again so be it.
I wanted to fuck him up.
There would be no mercy.
There would be no hand shaking this time.
Only the hand of justice, my justice, hard justice!
The stop approached quicker than I expected, I had been lost in my own thoughts. I struggled to get my watch off and into my bag along with my phone.
I didn’t want to damage them. I should have waited and gotten off at the following stop.
Thud!
My hands still in my bag, barely off the bus and whack, he had hit me.
Surely the passengers had seen, surely the bus driver would stop, the other passengers who got off would intervene, passing motorists whizzing by.
No.
He dragged me to the ground. I tried to free my hands but they had gotten caught up in my bag strap and coat sleeves. I was bucking and writhing around but I was a sitting duck. A more competent foe would have had me a bloody pulp but he seemed to be enjoying being on top of me too much.
Finally I flung him off and released my hands, smoothly whipping out the pepper spray. It sent him back in surprise and I wasn’t about to chase into it. I stood my ground and he regrouped. He charged at me again, this time with a screwdriver in his hand. I didn’t spray pepper at him this time though, I waited.
I waited until I could smell him then flashed the taser. It emitted a hideous echoing cackle and flash of blue light that danced between the metal prongs. He ran off into the traffic and I thought about giving chase but he still had a screwdriver and enough screws loose to use it.
I returned to my bag and coat then continued on my journey home. When I got in Elly couldn’t believe it but my face was red, swollen and had a few cuts.
There wasn’t much blood and I just looked like a sunburnt fatty rather than a victim but it felt sore after the adrenaline wore off. When it did we were at the police station banging our heads against a brick wall. It was their legal and bureaucratic opinion that in a court of law it would come down to my word against his. They wouldn’t then press any charges, they wouldn’t even question him.
I took it as a sly wink to do him in big style. As long as there were no witnesses these fuckers didn’t seem to care. Maybe they would if it was a foreigner on a Pole. I considered it as advice though, if no one was around to see it and there was no direct evidence then they wouldn’t do too much.
Lazy? Yes.
Good for revenge? Yes.
There was justice to be served now. No eye for an eye bullshit. Just a simple truth, you hurt me and I have to hurt you worse. He hadn’t done too much and after his weak physical showing the only thing I feared was his unpredictability.
He was much taller than me but I knew I was stronger and the better fighter.
That wouldn’t count for shit if he stabbed me though.
There could be no rules, no law where this fucking nut job was concerned. He might have thought that his bully boy tactics would work, they had worked on the women of his family for so long but he had unleashed the beast.
I wasn’t stupid though and I knew a war couldn’t be won by bombs alone.
Hearts and minds had to be swayed as well so I got Elly to invite her Mother and Grandparents to dinner that weekend.
The charm offensive went into overdrive and we hadn’t heard a peep for numb nuts until the day of the meal. Elly’s Granddad couldn’t make it but Elly’s Mother and Gran came. They were enjoying the tour of the house, cooing about the baby and other such things until we got to dessert and Marvin turned up playing the victim again.
I let him spin his story and Elly counter it while I prepared the desert. I had made a treacle sponge and was using my last tin of Ambrosia custard, that’s how much this day meant to me. I wanted to show how fair I was so I offered to let him eat dessert with us. I could smile at him knowing his hate would betray him. He was bubbling over with jealousy and me being gracious just made it worse. If I thought he would have stayed I’d never have offered.
It worked like a treat and he went from being a victim to a hate spewing monster. It started with squealing and swearing and quickly escalated as I laughed it off. His Grandmother begged him to calm down and then he turned on her. She stood with her arms open trying to embrace him, telling him that she loved him and wanted to help him, in return he spat at her and threatened to burn down her hut as she slept.
There was a lot wrong with this guy. I had heard of some fucked up losers but even the dirtiest junkies loved their Gran. I was gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe it. I had hoped to win them over but Marvin was throwing them over the bridge and burning down at the same time. I had never witnessed such vitriol in the face of pure love.
Finally his Mother had heard enough and she stood up to confront him. He wasted no time in physically striking her. There he was, the man of culture, the man of honour against his frail Grandmother and own Mother. I stepped forward to intercede. The coward backed up and I saw Elly going for her pepper spray.
When I had given it to her she protested that she would never need it because he wasn’t really dangerous. She might not have needed it to protect herself but for her family it was essential.
My thinking was that he had gotten away with cheap shoting me and I wanted him to hit me in front of witnesses so I could prosecute him. I wasn’t afraid of his punches but he cowered away. Elly’s Mum didn’t though and as she flexed with a golf umbrella I wasn’t sure who she was going to hit. It was her son, her attacker who felt the brunt of her anger.
He was off like a scalded dog once again.
Elly and her Mum wanted to go to the cops but her Granny was protesting. I suggested that he needed mental help and that was the route we should pursue. I knew the police weren’t going to help us and it seemed caring and reasonable. It won me more brownie points to boot.
The idea that he would be confirmed as insane would be helpful in keeping him at arm’s length as well. We all trundled off to the Police Station after washing up and we got a better response than we had previously. I knew it wasn’t going to be a priority as they only begrudgingly agreed but the choice they had was to help commit him or arrest him for various threats and assaults. I guess that getting him committed was less paper work.
They weren’t triangulating his cell and I doubt he even had any debit or credit cards to chase down so realistically even though they said they were going to look for him I think they were waiting until he turned up on their doorstep. It wasn’t a bad strategy considering he used to pay them regular visits to complain about Krueger’s garden parties. Time was an issue for me though. Bad pennies do turn up but normally they don’t try to run you down.
I was returning home with Krueger after his evening walk and in the pitch black I was struggling to find the key to the padlock I’d bought to keep idiot out. It had been a good investment in terms of the fact that it actually kept him out. It wasn’t such a hot idea in terms of the fact that while I was fumbling around with it I heard him revving up a car and start speeding towards me.
I quickened my unlocking and frantically dragged the dog into the garden before spinning around to lock the gate behind me. It was too late though and the car was upon me so I swung the gate outward into the street. It smashed into the bumper and rattled loudly.
I later found out that he had been staying with his Uncle from his Father’s side of the family and this was the guy who’d given him the car as a gift. Well it was truly spoilt now and I pulled the gate back and swung it viciously into the front of the car a second time. I saw him sat in shock.
He started to reverse and I searched for artillery among the rubble left by the builders. There were plenty of useful projectiles and since I had locked the gate he wasn’t getting in, I could stand their safely pelting him and the car if he tried anything. I noticed Elly at the window and most of our neighbours were probably watching too. They would have heard his wheels screech as he came at me, they would have heard the gate clang off the front of the car and if they hadn’t heard those noises it is extremely doubtful that they would have heard a concrete slab land on the roof of his car.
I had been aiming for the windshield but either I was stronger than I thought or I had miss calculated how fast he was coming at me. I saw his spirit crushed under that slab. It left a dint in the roof but in his eyes, in his eyes there was a signal, a signal of realisation. He had come to have his way again but he wasn’t prepared for me. No one had fought back with him until now and when I did he couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t adapt his plan. He had no ‘plan b’.
He thought he could hide out in the dark and mow me down.
That summed him up.
No spirit, no fight.
He had nothing to fight for.
I had Elly and Andrew. Something bigger than myself.
I continued to pelt him and he stopped to abuse me verbally when he should have fled. He ate a mouthful of sand for his troubles. Numb nuts couldn’t even tell when he was beaten. I had told myself that I would show no mercy but he was so pathetic that it had stop being a challenge.
He wasn’t nemesis material.
The pigs, or dogs as the call them in Poland, wanted to charge me with damage to the car but guess what fuckers it was his word against mine and he was been taken into a mental hospital.
I still can’t believe how events unfolded and the end to the Marvin story isn’t one which the Polish system can be proud of. Where ever you live and however much you think the people who run your government institutions are pains in the asses, you should be thankful that you weren’t in my position, in Poland.
After a week of evaluation in the mental institute where he repeated his accusations against my dog, myself, my demon child, his mother and grandparents they released him. Not because they didn’t think he was mental.
They had grave concerns. He had an unhealthy obsession with his sister who he referred to as his ‘honey love’, persistently had delusional fantasies and talked about ‘the bad people or the bad voices’ who made him say things that he didn’t want to.
The stellar fucking professionals who took the big picture view and proclaimed that they could only declare him coo-koo if someone, namely his mother, would take legal responsibility for him.
Now I know the government don’t want to be over burdened with frivolous cases but this was a matter of life and death. He was a danger to himself and others. They wanted a woman to take care of a vicious, mentally ill individual who had threatened to kill her. After his release he ran a woman down on a zebra crossing. The beat up car that his Uncle gave him that he would have used on me finally claimed a victim.
Everyone’s nerves were fraying.
Every day I went to work looking over my shoulder then I spent the whole day at work worrying about Elly and Andrew. Elly’s Mum had moved into Andrew’s room as Marvin had broken into her house out in the village to steal food and money. He had destroyed her possessions but again the police wouldn’t act.
There was no such thing as a restraining order at that time in Poland and he would tail her on the roads to her work then stake her out while she worked.
Elly wasn’t afraid to leave the house but me and her Mother were both afraid for her. Maybe she was just being strong or maybe she was too stupid to recognize the risk that he posed.
According to the police he was still a partial owner of the house and could come and go as he pleased. He had turned up with the police one day and they opened the lock on the gate, well snipped it open but when Elly told them he couldn’t come in they stayed while he looked around and left. I shudder to think what would have happened if they hadn’t stayed but then again they were stupid enough to give him access.
Elly’s Mother called the Uncle where Marvin was staying but he wouldn’t listen to her. Elly called him and told him the truth. He had already heard Marvin’s lies and while he kept Marvin away they both phoned the Mother with threats.
The insanity of it all was that it was as if it was the government, the police and the state institutions that were pushing this along. Nudging it forward to a disaster where someone would end up dead.
I had a plank of wood by the door, we had changed the locks, I carried a knife with me in my bag and the taser just for good measure but I still didn’t feel safe.
I was starting to think the unthinkable.