Darkness of Me

By Simon Anshaw

A teen life full of partying, girls, booze, and drugs sounds like the perfect life for Matthew, the local football hero. With his soulmate Sarah and Johnno, his partner in crime, Matthew is on top of the world.

But in a small town, where difference is looked down upon and all who don’t fit the mold are shunned, Matthew begins to understand his inner feelings aren’t what is being outwardly expressed. What if he isn’t what the town tells him he should be? If anyone finds out, will they break him? Or will Matthew be able to break through?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685504250

Book preview

Darkness of Me

By Simon Anshaw

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2023 Simon Anshaw

ISBN 9781685504250

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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To my younger self.

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Darkness of Me

By Simon Anshaw

Chapter 1

Bitches! I hate bitches! They can have any guy they want and I hate them for that. They walk around with their chests sticking out and their tits flopping about, and the guys! Well, they follow them everywhere, with their tongues hanging out and drool running down their chins. These bitches can have any guy in the school, but no, they don’t want them. They only choose from their little group, and there are only a select few in that group. In their eyes, if you’re not part of their little group then you don’t exist! The funny thing is, I’m part of that group, but I still can’t get any of those guys.

Girls! Ha, now that’s a different story. I could have any one of them, and God knows that I have. I guess I am like those bitches, too! The girls that I’ve had are from that group, or close to it anyway. It’s all part of the image, and an image is all you’ve got in a small town like this.

Image, it’s a funny thing, you know. It all depends on two things, your looks and your friends. Looks, well you can’t do much about them. But friends, you get to choose them. Who would have thought that that first day of kindergarten would have determined our whole schooling lives, and probably beyond. From that day we were it, and we still are now. There have been a few minor changes to the group over the years, but not many. Change is hard to come across in a town like this.

It’s funny how you base your life upon the expectations of what others have of you. I’m the perfect example. My older brother hung with the cool group, so I’m expected to do the same. I’m good looking—unfortunately—so I was expected to have all the girls, but no one asked for my opinion. It’s so hard to break free from the stereotypes placed on you at birth. Especially in a place like this, where everybody knows your name.

I live in a small rural town, where people drink beer, play football, and then drink some more. Everybody’s so set in their ways. Every male is hetro, masculine and macho. And for the women, well, the word slut comes to mind for the majority of them. Everybody knows everyone and the gossip, it spreads like wildfire. I can guarantee that if you do something wrong, or against your image around here, everybody will know about it within five minutes. With this town being about three hours’ drive from anywhere, it acts like it is its own little world. And it’s a place where outsiders aren’t accepted.

There is a party at the showground tonight, it happens almost every Friday and/or Saturday night, and even on some weeknights. It’s what us kids do before we’re allowed into the pub. But it’s pretty much the same thing, a lot of beer being consumed and, if we can get any, a lot of drugs inhaled. It seems that the expected drinking age in this town is fourteen. I’m sixteen, so I guess I’m a professional now.

Our parents don’t mind us going out at night. They don’t say it, but they did the same when they were young—no one seems to be able to escape from this town, it’s just a continuous cycle. They were once us and we will one day be them. It doesn’t really matter though, because they’re usually out doing the same thing somewhere else. The police hardly ever break up these parties either. The cops are local, so they go on the rule that if they don’t know about it, then it’s not happening—but they know!

There is no true set time for these parties to begin, it’s just common knowledge when to turn up. The party animals begin at around six, but the thing really starts to liven up around eight. The time varies on when it usually ends, on a boring night it could end at ten, but if there was a reason for celebration it could see the sun rise.

And tonight, there was reason for celebration. It was Saturday night and earlier that day the Under Seventeen’s, my team, crushed one of the neighboring town’s team twenty-eight to twelve, putting us on the top of the table. This town always takes great pride in its rugby league teams.

There will be around a hundred people there tonight, probably more. The majority will be around my age, sixteen or seventeen. We controlled most of these parties, and it was when we did something big, that it was cause for celebration.

I didn’t feel like going though, I had a rough game today. I had a shoulder rammed hard into my ribs in a tackle and I was hurting a lot. I wasn’t in the mood for a party. I had to go though, you pissed a lot of people off when you didn’t show up, especially someone like me! So, I put on my jeans and the thickest jumper I had (since it is the middle of winter), and walked over to the showground.

The showground was huge. It consisted of two large horse-riding rings, the town’s swimming pool, some large hay sheds and two football fields, which turn into a cricket pitch in the summer. The large hay sheds held the heart of the party. The sheds were only used one weekend a year, when the rodeo came to town, so we used them every other weekend. The council tended to turn a blind eye to us using them, but gave us gentle reminders about when the rodeo was coming to town and we usually got the guilts and cleaned it up nice before they arrived. The town just seemed to work that way.

The noise of the party entered my ears just as I was jumping the small fence, which divided the showground and the road. As I crossed the two football fields, I could see a mammoth, raging bonfire. It was seven forty-five and the party was in full swing.

The bonfire, we used it for heat, but it was probably the only thing that my group didn’t control. Well, we could have, if we wanted to. But why bother, it was the little kids’ job. It was the job of the kids aged between twelve and fourteen (the one’s under the drinking age), who had been let out by their parents, to tag along with an older brother or sister. A lot of these kids would have been collecting wood all day long for this. I’d know, I was once one of them. The fire gave these kids a sense of pride and a sense of power. It was the heart of the party, and they owned it, they were in control. But no matter how powerful they felt, they never questioned the authority of an elder. One of us.

The heat of the fire brushed against my face, the closer I got. It was placed just outside of the entrance to one of the hay sheds. The hay sheds themselves were huge. There were two of them. One was new, only a couple of years old and it was made of steel, with large rolling doors that were always locked. It played host to large tractors and other machinery, which the council used to build roads and other stuff like that.

The other, the one with the bonfire out the front, was ours. It was tall, they both were, very tall, about the height of two houses stacked on top of each other. But this one was old and made of wood, rotting wood, and it stunk too. It was a traditional hay shed, it housed hay, the town’s emergency supply for the drought season. It’s been years since we’ve had a drought so severe that they’ve had to resort to this stock. Therefore, this shed became ours, and the hay was used to make secret tunnels and passage ways for lovers to frolic amidst.

I was now close enough to the party to be able to distinguish faces that were illuminated by the party’s life source and centerpiece—the bonfire. All of my football team was here, scattered in and among all of the little social groups. This was a celebration! There seemed to be well over a hundred people here already, and it was only after eight.

Matty! Ya made it! The voice came from Ian Thomas, a little, skinny, ugly kid, who ranked well below me in our social hierarchy. But tonight, he was on my level, he was in the team. Even though he was just a left-winger and only touched the ball roughly four times a game, he had as much right to celebrate tonight as I had. By the way he was slapping me on the back, I could tell that the fame and alcohol had gone straight to his head. But if it was still there on Monday at school, someone twice the size and twice as popular as him would put him back in his place.

Is Johnno here yet? I asked. Johnno was my best mate and my only superior