Karl’s Story

Dirk Bruere
21 min readJun 6, 2023

MillWall — No One likes us, we don’t care

[The back story of Karl from the book Emily — a PostHuman Romance]

It was not a good start being born to a violent drunk of a father and a mother who refused to leave him. It was like living a nightmare every moment I was in the house with him, not knowing when or why he was going to lash out. Mum got the worst of it, looking back. Seeing her with a black eye or fat lip after being punched or slapped was common. And the number of times the police were called by a neighbor was beyond a joke, but they never did anything because it was a domestic they said. He would sit there every evening watching the TV with a can or bottle in his hand getting more and more pissed as time went on. We always hoped it was a can because bottles really hurt. Always waiting for when some word or glance or something would set him off. Give you an example of what a bastard he was. One day I found a kitten in the street and brought it into the kitchen to give it some milk in a saucer on the floor. In he walks and straight away he kicked it up the wall and slaps me for wasting his money on stinking animals. I picked it up and ran out. It died later. I was nine at the time and wanted him dead. I asked mum why we didn’t leave and she said it was because he needed us. Mad.

Naturally my schooling was totally fucked, especially when I went to secondary school. Nowhere to do homework, so I never did it. Always got detention with the other bad lads and as for the bruises, well, the teachers stopped asking after a while. I didn’t tell them, it would just have caused more trouble so nothing changed. Tried not to go home until well late to avoid him, and then sneaked upstairs so I was always tired and often hungry unless I could scrounge some food from one of my mates houses. Then it was bunking off school so that was the end of that. Left school at fifteen and got a job on a building site. Even then I had to hand over my money to him as rent, but I kept enough back for some fun.

Yeah — I actually had friends. Not what you would call respectable and all of us had been in trouble with the law for petty crime, usually nicking stuff. We were also into the skin scene complete with number two cuts, DM boots and braces. Fancied ourselves as Millwall Bushwackers which was a laugh since we were a few hundred miles away from them up North. Our local teams were crap third division, but Millwall had the reputation. We visited the den a few times but it was expensive so it was mostly away games we got to watch. It was the usual get pissed, bag of chips, have a fight, run away. Almost got cornered by the ICF on one outing. Good times.

Then two things happened. Mum died when I was seventeen. Gran arranged the funeral and that fucker just drank himself senseless. The only upside is that he had to cook his own food. The place rapidly became a shithole but since he was the only one who spent any time in it I didn’t care. Then the other thing happened — Suzie. She used to hang around the scene and I had noticed her before but never talked to her. When I did we hit it off instantly. She was a little bit younger than me and I was coming up to eighteen. She was doing A-levels and was going to university in Autumn, but that didn’t matter. Hormones, young love, first sex. An eternal story, but like any other powerful drug it has to be experienced and then it’s too late — you’re in up to your balls and nothing else matters. No chance of me taking her home to meet the family and she made it pretty clear that hers would hate me for being skinhead scum. And so things remained until the weekend of my eighteenth birthday, when some friends had arranged a bit of a bash at a well-known but notorious pub across town on the Saturday night. We knew the bouncers. Bouncers at a pub was generally a bad sign for your average upstanding citizen, but it was our place and we ruled it.

I’d just got in from doing some overtime on the site since I’d missed a morning previously in order to be with Suzie and the foreman had gone crazy with the usual last chance crap unless I did a shift for free. First thing as I walked in the door was dad, all tanked up with that look in his eye. He tells me that Suzie’s father had called, that I’d knocked up the slag and was a stupid cunt. Then he hit me, just like the good old days. Except now I was sixteen stone with three years of doing crap jobs humping bags of cement and sand around building sites. When I just stood there and took it he knew he had made a big mistake. Not sure what he expected. Maybe me to run off crying or Mum to step in to take the beating instead of me like she used to. But not this time. My first punch took out his front teeth, and then I pulled him in and kneed him in the balls. He made a little squealing sound and started to fold over but I had him and held him upright by the neck against the living room wall. This is for mum I told him as I nutted him and smashed his nose. Then I let him drop and since he was still trying to scream I kicked him in the stomach, which shut him up. He lay there curled up with his mouth open like a fish, silent and trying to breath surrounded by blood and teeth with his eyes gushing tears. I’d like to think they might have been tears of regret, but if you’ve ever had your nose broken you know they’re not.

I could say that I lost it, but it wouldn’t be true. Even as I beat the crap out of him I was careful not to go too far. No way would I do time for killing him even though I wanted to break him apart bit by bit and watch him die. I’ve always despised people who lose their temper — they are weak and lack self-control. Then I went upstairs and filled a bag with a change of clothes, got my TSB savings book out of the drawer along with my birth certificate and a picture of me and mum. That was it — I was out of there. I walked down the stairs and heard him crying. Fucking cowardly scum. So I knelt down next to him and asked him how it felt. Told him that he was an utter piece of crap who had ruined Mum’s life. Like, was it worth ending up like this? Then he called me son, which set me off again but this time in a cold sort of way. I stood up and took a step back. I told him that if I ever laid eyes on him again I’d finish the job and by the way, the kitten sends you its regards, kicking him in the face. Blood on the boots time, which I sort of regretted. They were my best pair of DMs, but anyway, they needed Christening.

That was the last time I saw him and I heard he hanged himself a few years later. The world was a better place that day. Did consider going back and pissing on his grave at one point but couldn’t be bothered. Also had a girlfriend ask me once what made him like that and how he must have been miserable to start with and all that psychology shit. Maybe, but the arc of my life has not been forgiveness, understanding and reconciliation but fire, retribution and ensuring people get what they deserve.

Anyhow that weekend was far from over and the best was yet to come.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

I left the house and intended to get a bus across town, but it was only three miles and I needed the walk. After about five minutes I started shaking and crying. I always get like that after a ruck. It’s pretty common although we don’t like outsiders to see it, but I felt better afterwards. When I got to the pub it was early but several people I knew had already got stuck in, and they bought me a birthday beer as I told them what had just happened. It was just starting to dawn on me that I had nowhere to go but it was a warm evening, not that I wanted to sleep under a hedge. Jake said I could have his floor for a few days, which was great. They all seemed impressed as I told them what I did to dad and how he had it coming. The night wore on and the rest of our firm arrived but no Suzie. At around eight o’clock I called her house. It was a short call as her father answered and told me she was never going to see me again and to never contact her, before hanging up. I did think of going round and trying to talk but had visions of me punching him out as he tried to stop me and police being called and so on. Decided I could do that the next day or the day after. Plenty of time to sort out what was going on. Right now it was one more bit of aggro I could do without.

I just wanted to get pissed and forget. Which was when the aforementioned Jake and three of the others came over and he showed me what he had in his hand. Six little pieces of blotting paper each stamped with a cartoon devil and some pills. Scored them from one of the bouncers apparently and would I care to give it a try. Being in a fragile state of mind and not giving a toss I grabbed all of them, stuffed them in my mouth and swilled them down with the dregs of lager in the glass. Almost puked as one stuck in the back of my throat, but it joined its friends eventually. They all stared at the new hero and expressed their amazement in terms of how I was now totally fucked. Don’t worry Jake said, it’ll wear off in a few hours and we’ll look after you. Did they fuck.

Nothing happened and one of them bought me a new pint and we just carried on as usual. Then someone popped some money in the jukebox and Status Quo started playing In the Army Now. I had never heard it before, but the Falklands War had happened the previous year so it seemed just the ticket. Weird though, with some notes dragged out forever and people were sort of dancing but not quite and singing along until all I heard was endless words in the army now, over and over. And the smells hit me — cigarettes, beer, my own body odor because I had not washed since doing the shift. I had to go and get a wash so headed for the bogs. Fucking hell, you should never go somewhere like that on acid. Kicked the door open because I couldn’t stand the thought of touching it, took off my shirt and used it as a flannel for doing my armpits before rinsing it in the stained sink. I looked up and saw a face in the mirror, but it wasn’t mine, but it was. A Prince of Hell with blood dripping from the eyes which were bottomless black pits and which kept changing from one moment to another showing me world after world until I turned away sickened and afraid.

They had one of those roller towels in there, filthy with neglect as it hung down in a broken strip perfectly complementing the smell of shit and piss. As I stared at it the patterns of dirt started changing into unknown faces and strange places. Castles with lighted windows, gargoyles and endlessly deep scenes of… something. I could never quite grasp stuff as it popped up and thoughts raced after each other in endless circles and in the piss trough there were white worms and I just had to get out. I managed to put the wet shirt back on even though it took hours and opened the door to be hit with waves of people shouting in the army now over and over while dark forces flowed through them. Yes, I knew I was hallucinating but knowing it didn’t help. There was no reality left as one person, or thing, after another turned to look at me and mouth unknown words. Leprechauns, trolls, ogres, sprites, nameless spirits and mindless zombies stood between me and the exit which was miles away. These were once people but now they were just conduits for something unearthly. Then my eyes locked on to a man wearing a cowboy hat standing at the bar amid the chaos and insanity in complete stillness. He knew that I knew and that I knew he knew. He just raised a glass in salute, and disappeared. I ran in slow motion, like you do in dreams, passing the same tables and chairs time after time not getting anywhere. I was going mad, but I couldn’t go mad. Who was I? Who was experiencing this? asked something that was me, whatever that was. I crashed out into the rear garden of the pub which backed onto some woodlands with a full moon rising above it thinking I was free at last.

It was a warm evening and I could smell roses on the breeze along with the tinkling of tiny bells in the distance. I started to follow the sound towards the dark forest and with every step the world shattered into a million pieces but the one I ran towards was inevitable. The trees were red with bodies hanging from them by their feet, squirming and whispering words I couldn’t understand, waiting to be born. Then a clearing appeared shining in the moonlight and in the center stood a woman clothed with a pillar of light, but she was the moon as well, and these black robed figures were dancing around her worshiping her. Their leader was the man in the pub and he smiled as he saw me. I shouted at him to get away and come with me because she was evil, but he laughed and the beings became giant black dogs and he turned into a devil with bat wings and the dogs spoke and called him destroyer of worlds and then she told me to run for my life.

They chased me over fields and I leaped fences and walls, flying through the night which was bright as day and now the moon was no longer full but a half-moon and then no moon but a pitiless black sky filled with a sense of overpowering dread. Every time I deviated from the path she killed me and my mind fell apart with senses drifting away leaving only a spark of blue white light that was my soul. Then I was running again and jumped across a black river with flowing lights that were eyes that screamed at me, and there she was crouched on a road sign in the form of a big cat, testing my strength until the end of time. She asked me what I wanted and would I serve her like the others, and I said no so the chase began again until I was so tired of running and being frightened I no longer cared and I stopped and lay down. She stood over me with the giant moon around her head and asked me what I truly wanted. Was it money, or power, or women or success or happiness? What? So I just said I wanted to be a good man and for this to end. She smiled and then the moon got bigger and bigger until it swallowed me in light.

I woke up on grass freezing cold and shivering, feeling greasy as morning sunlight warmed me. Felt like absolute shit but I was so grateful it was all finished. Lifetimes had passed and I was old and I was never going to do anything so stupid again. As I rolled over I saw a woman standing over me asking if I was OK. I was now sitting in the front garden of a big house, so I told her not really, had a rough night and that I didn’t know where I was. Then I looked around and of course my bag was missing, but I felt my savings book in my pocket along with my wallet which was a relief. At least I hadn’t been robbed. She asked whether I would like to come in and have breakfast with her and her husband, which I thought was really nice because most people would have told me to fuck off or called the police and I said so and thanked her, so in we went. I had never been in a house with such a big kitchen and thought that they must be rich. They asked me where I lived and I said nowhere now but had friends in town so they asked what town and when I told them they asked why I was so far from home. Two hundred miles South as it turned out. I just sat there looking like a moron, and then pulled out my wallet and counted the money. Not much, but all there so I must have hitchhiked during the night but it was weird. They had a telephone and asked whether I would like to call anyone, which of course I did. Tried calling Suzie first, but got the tone for a disconnected number. Then it was Jake next and he was in because it was only just gone nine and he had the day off. Where the fuck have you been he said, we were wondering whether you had died or something, it’s been two months. Which didn’t make sense and I thought he was taking the piss. Next thing he said made my ears prick up, seems dad held a grudge and set the rozzers on me, but Jake said that they didn’t seem too bothered. The copper who asked knew who dad was and the history he had, and as far as he was concerned it was another domestic, albeit a bit of a rough one. And you also got fired, he added.

After that I had some thinking to do, so I asked Paul and Cheryl — that was their names — what date it was. I thought it had to be the day after my birthday, Fourteenth of August but no, Jake was not pissing me about. It was middle of October. I had lost two months and didn’t have a clue how or any memory of it. That was some fucking bad acid I thought to myself and what had I been doing for two months and why end up here? Then I remembered the pub and the night before and how I should have been dressed in filthy clothes, unshaven and smelly. They were my clothes, but clean like me. Another minor mystery to add to the big one. Then Paul asked whether I would like a lift into town so I thanked him. Seems he and Cheryl were not the owners but caretakers for something he called the society, but I wasn’t that interested. As he dropped me off he gave me a twenty-pound note, which at first I refused. Couldn’t understand why he would do that, but he said consider it a loan and I could pay it back next time we met, so I took it. As he drove off I looked around at where I was and it was right in front of an army recruiting office. What a fucking coincidence, but no home, no job, plus the local police keen to interview me, as they put it to Jake. When I was a kid I always fancied being a soldier or explorer. So I let fate take its course and became a member of the Queens Regiment.

In The Army Now

I actually liked the army, which came as a bit of a surprise. Not everything of course, because nobody likes cleaning stuff, but running around with a rifle and blowing up things was great and since I was always super fit all that tabbing bothered me less than just about anyone. As for getting shouted at by the NCOs and called all kinds of names, well, that was nothing compared to my previous life. I even liked formal drill where we marched up and down in formation. I found it relaxing. Army life lived up to the adverts in that you really can make some good friends and have good times, but then anything was better than my previous. I was also pretty good at memorizing things as it turned out. I only needed to see a rifle or other equipment stripped down once before I could do it myself and reassemble it, and learning to navigate with map and compass was a piece of piss. Not so for everyone since some of the others took ages to learn. And absolutely everyone had to learn every lesson, because it’s no good if you know how to do something when your life depends on the other man knowing as well as you do. So even though it was a bit boring for me, nobody got left behind. I wish school had been like that.

I was twenty when I got up close and personal with violent death in Northern Ireland. A strange place in that the towns were just like where I grew up, but filled with religious crazies holding grudges and feuding for centuries. The familiarity was dangerously deceptive and we were warned against fraternizing as they called it. If I never hear another Northern Irish accent again it will be too soon. Just hearing Ian Paisley talk gives me flashbacks.

As usual we were doing all the useless shit like wandering the streets pretending to be ducks in the Provo shooting gallery or manning checkpoints so we could mildly inconvenience them occasionally, when my section copped a bomb. We were walking along a road in Omagh next to some Land Rovers when it happened. All I saw was a flash and I must have blacked out for a second because next thing I knew I was in a wet ditch filled with stingers and brambles trying to breath and the world had gone silent except for a ringing in my ears. I had also dropped my rifle and for some reason thought it was in the water with me, but it wasn’t. Then I hear shouting and screaming like what you hear when you are underwater and I start to try to get up out of the ditch but feel all rubbery but I got my head up to see one of the guys lying in the road with half his leg missing and blood pumping out. The screaming was him shouting for his mum, and then dirt kicked up from the opposite bank because they were shooting at us. Then everything went quiet again except for the corporal bleeding out in the road. Nobody was going to help him because they were afraid of the sniper. And I was too scared to move as well even though I was the closest. We just watched him die. I just watched him die. Too cowardly to help my mate. By the time a helicopter arrived to cover us it was all over. Fucking crying in a ditch hiding and wanting to kill someone. Pathetic.

I got pulled out and taken to hospital. Burst eardrums and concussion and balance gone for a few days. Lying in the bunk I decided enough was enough. I was never going to hide like that again. I was never going to run away again, even if it killed me. I wanted to be the one doing the ambushes, not those Provo cocksuckers, so I applied for SAS selection. A year later I joined the Regiment. I can’t say selection was easy, but it wasn’t as hard as I had been led to expect. Of course, that came with the huge proviso that I was lucky not to pick up an injury as many did. Only one odd thing happened in those years. I was in the mess hall one day and they had Radio One playing when the DJ says there is a new single from Status Quo called In the Army Now. It was what I heard in that pub years previously. Finally, in case you’re wondering, I did write letters to Suzie but never heard anything back so I let it drop.

I did twenty-two years in the army which carried me through the two Gulf Wars, ended up a Staff Sergeant and eventually got a medical discharge. My back was fucked from carrying too much weight for too long too many times. Out, unemployed and still single at the age of forty. As I walked out the gates for the last time it felt… desolate. I had been part of a family, part of something that mattered and carried prestige. Now I was a nobody civilian, all alone on the streets again. Well, not literally on the streets since I had a cheap house in the North that I had bought and rented out fifteen years before. Going back up there felt like failure even though it was a different town from where I grew up. So, what does an ex-SAS soldier do? The answer was to look for lucrative trouble as a contractor, to use a euphemism. Not as posh as a consultant, or as down-market as a merc, but piracy beckoned.

One of the best paying gigs was protecting shipping against Somali and other pirates in the Indian ocean. To start with companies would pay ransoms for captured ships and crews and of course that just encouraged more piracy. The nations with the largest navies did not appear to take it seriously and that left the door open for PMSCs who hired people like me. The way it worked was fairly simple. Shipping companies hired us to ride shotgun on their ships in case any pirates tried their luck. We had our own ships where we held guns and ammo supplies and which ferried us to the customer in international waters. Then according to the PR blurb we would fire warning shots at those poxy little motorboats and they would retreat having learned their lesson. As soon as the customer’s ship was out of pirate waters we would get picked up by another of our company’s boats and it would all start over again.

The reality was, however, that warning shots did not deter them. Sure they might run away after being shot at, but tangling with us and surviving was just bragging rights to them. What did deter them was us killing almost every one of them every time they picked the wrong tanker or whatever. When they send out twenty guys and only one or two come back alive, it tends to make their pals think twice second time around. So we would see their boats coming, usually on radar, and get set up on deck with our gear. I favored heavy semi-auto rifles like the old SLR (FAL), G3 or latterly HK417 that shot 7.62 NATO ammo, with a scope and bipod, or a shotgun if they ever tried to board us. Get hit square with those rounds within half a klick and you became what one of the old ex-RLI guys called a floppy. You know, because the shock of the impact just makes them go all floppy. Yanks called them skinnies, for obvious reasons.

So we would be set up and if it was at night we would be using goggles. After confirming that at least one man on the boat was carrying hardware we just shot them all, even if they were running away at that point. These guys were often hyped up on Qat and took the hint rather late in the day, so to speak. They were also idiots. They carried RPGs as if they thought it was a Hollywood movie and if they hit an oil tanker it would miraculously blow up. Instead it just leaked a bit of oil. The best one was where a boat got too close to us and a guy stood up in front and tried to shoot us with a rocket. The retard blew the bottom out of his boat. We were laughing so much we just let them go. They probably got eaten by sharks. It was all very one sided since a big ship makes a stable gun platform while people firing AKMs standing in a motorboat stood little chance of hitting anything.

Anyway, I did this for a few very lucrative years before it all calmed down, but that is not why I got out of the business. It was because one day a boat got in really close and I had to lean over the side to shoot. I hit one of them and he went into the water screaming. Then his pals stopped to pick him up even though they knew I had them in my sights. It was me in that ditch all over again and I didn’t want to do it anymore, so I collected my pay and that was it.

Moved back to Britain, sold the old house and got a better one in a better location. Followed in dad’s drunken footsteps but with a bit of a coke habit thrown in for good measure. Another weird thing was that if I did have PTSD or whatever it was not about the killing I did or getting blown up. I never slotted anyone who wasn’t a player. It was that old LSD trip. I dreamed about it regularly and woke up in a sweat more often than not. One night I was coming back from the pub and felt a bit funny, so I sat on a nearby bench. Then I fell over sideways. Couldn’t remember anything, or where I was. Just lay there with the moon above me unable to move feeling like a dishwasher had switched on in my head. I knew something was badly wrong as I started to hallucinate, and then lights out. Dead at fifty. What an absolute waste of a lifetime.

I opened my eyes and looked up at a ceiling. Hospital maybe, but there was nobody about and it was a rather nice room that was more like part of a flat or house. I was in bed, naked, so I carefully got up and walked over to a mirror. I was staring at an image of me when I was a teenager complete with shaved head. Then I turned to a window and looked out over a terraced village of brightly painted houses and other buildings leading down to the sea shore and a port. There were people walking in the sunlight. Where the fuck am I was all I muttered. A feminine voice behind sent me spinning around almost in a panic.

It was her.

Welcome to the Underworld, she said.

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Dirk Bruere

R&D Scientist and Engineer, Transhumanist, martial artist and Asatru. Zero State