Stoned

“Miss Harrigan, because of your age, I hereby sentence you to six months in the Secure Training Centre. Your vandalism was of the most heinous kind and will cost many pounds to repair. Take her away.”

I heard the words, trying not to cry. It was not what I had hoped, although my lawyer had told me that it was likely. Here I was, fifteen and now with a convict record. I knew that the STC I would be going to was almost worse than proper prison, as I had met several on the streets, who had been there and bore the scars.

It had only been a bit of fun, one dark night in 2015. Who would have thought that the cemetery had low-light camera coverage. We had scored some weed that day, and the suggestion that we could do some damage sounded good at the time to a bunch of stoned street kids. We only intended to push some of the gravestones over, but more than one broke in the process before we were blinded by torchlight as the coppers surrounded us.

I had been in police station cells before, as living on the streets tended to bring you to their attention more often than normal people. I had developed early, so allowing me to lie about my age, or else I may have been returned to my parents. All of the pick-ups had been the standard collection of the homeless, with us all getting a shower and a good meal, followed by a lot of weasel words from the Social Services before being tossed back out to fend for ourselves.

I had run away from home when I was fourteen, having been given an unwanted birthday present by my drunken father. He had taken umbrage with my preferred Goth look, and had told me, as he had me pinned on the bed, that this would make a proper woman of me.

Since then, I had experienced the same act several times, but getting paid for it. I went by the name, ‘Hound. Short for Whore Hound, and had continued my Goth persona, which allowed me to still look the part in winter, dressed in black jeans, heavy boots and a long coat.

My convicted fellows were a raggedy bunch. Three girls and two boys. We were all in our teens, and two of the girls were servicing the boys on a regular basis in exchange for extra weed. My sentence was more severe than the others, them being given time in a Secure Childrens’ Home, as the boys were almost catatonic when we had been arrested, and the other bitch girls all declared that it was my idea. The police already knew that I was the unelected leader, so went along with it.

My patch, when I was working the streets, was around the marina and the University campus, within the triangle of Pier Road, Medway Road and Dock Road. The station that I had seen the inside of, a few times, had been the Medway one, on Pier Road, and to the eastern edge of my usual area. It would have been more lucrative if the Chatham navy yards were still operational, but I did get some business from the fishermen coming back to the marinas after some time on the water with a crate of beer. We all made enough money to feed ourselves and look after the squat we were occupying on Trinity Road.

The Rochester Medway STC was to be my home for six months. I was likely to receive abuse and beatings while they pretended that I was being given schooling and training in some sort of trade. I knew that the whole thing was a façade for brutality, overseen by a private company, rather than the government.

From the court, I was taken back to the remand cells. Later on, I was in a van and heading to the STC, not very far away. There, I was reunited with my belongings for a short time, before I had to strip and get showered and given a buzz cut and delousing, which didn’t bother me. What did bother me was when all my piercings were removed, some quite painfully, and added to my box of things to go into storage until I was out again.

The STC held less than a hundred, as planned, but seemed more crowded than that. I was put in a cell with another girl, who smiled sweetly as the door clanged behind me.

“Welcome to the House of Horrors. I’m Bridey, shorth for Bridezilla. We have twelve hours before the doors’ open again, and the screws don’t worry about screams or crying. That’s pretty usual. You go along with what I want, or you sleep on the floor.”

Needless to say, eventually I got to sleep in the bunk, having had a couple of bonus orgasms. The following day, I was taken to the proper induction, where I was told all the don’ts, the only do’s being to follow orders and stay on the right side of the ‘officers’. For a week, I was taken to a schoolroom in the mornings and given tests to see how educated I was, which wasn’t beyond the year I left home, although I had been a good student up until then. After some days, my afternoons took a totally surprising turn.

I was joined, in a minibus, by two teenage lads with three guards to keep an eye on us. We were taken to the churchyard where I had done damage. The main guard addressed us when we arrived.

“Right, you lot. We’re here so that you can expend all your extra energy. You can thank this girl for what you’re going to do. She, and her mates, caused a great deal of damage. You will be righting fallen gravestones. They’re harder to pick up than they were to knock down. Work hard and stay good, and this will be your task until it’s finished. Mess up and you’ll be in the sin bin during the afternoons. The boys know how to inflict pain without leaving marks, so do your best, eh?”

We were led to a gravesite where a couple of guys were reworking the ground, ready for the stone to be returned to the upright. They had a tarpaulin spread out with some sand, a pail of water, and a small bag of cement. We were set to creating fingerholds to lift the stone, being one that hadn’t broken. The guards sat around in the shade and watched us, closely. It took all afternoon to gently lift the stone, one of the stonemasons helping us to lift, while the other guided it back to the vertical. It was bloody heavy! They had adjustable supports that were slid under it as we lifted, so we could get our breath back. When it was vertical again, the three of us had to stand and hold it in place while the cement dried. Only then were we given a drink of water and taken to the bus and back to the STC.

The two civilians that we worked with didn’t say much, just the odd ‘well done’ when we achieved a new angle without things falling apart. So, my days became almost liveable. Sex with Bridey during the evening, schoolwork in the mornings and work in the churchyard in the afternoon. After about a week, the guards were happy enough to sit on a couple of graves and play cards while we worked. The two stonemasons started talking to us, in low voices, and the work, while hard, was almost a release from the STC.

We only worked with unbroken stones in the beginning. I was starting to think that we hadn’t been the only ones vandalising the graves, and asked Steve, the youngest mason, about this. He told me that we weren’t the only ones to have done damage, but, because we’d been convicted, there had been a grant from the council to remediate the graveyard, as well as hoping that I would learn the folly of my ways.

At the end of the second month, I had caught up with the schooling for the year I had left. While the administration now had my birth details and school records, they could slot me into the education system to allow me to take the exams for that year. I would be sixteen before I was released, so it was a toss-up to send me back to my parents or try and find me someone who would take me until I was eighteen.

Also, by that time, me and Bridey were pretty close. With her as an alpha in the corridor, she made sure that everyone knew that I was her girl and to leave me alone. We had lifted the last stone on a Monday, and I was spending afternoons helping out in the laundry and kitchen, wondering if this was my lot for the next four months. Being outside was a lot better!

On the Friday, I was taken to the managers’ office, wondering what I had done wrong. I stood in front of his desk as he looked at papers. He put them down and looked at me.

“Harrigan, do you like to do jigsaw puzzles?”

“When I was young, sir.”

“Good. The stonemason that you’ve been working with has been happy with your work and attention to detail. He has offered to keep an eye on you while you’re with him, so freeing up a guard. Be aware that if you run, he will be in a lot of trouble, but if you stay the course, it will reflect well on your record.”

He looked at the papers.

“It seems that there are ten tombstones that have broken. Starting Monday, you will help the masons put these back together. He will explain the process when you’re delivered to him in the morning. He will give you lunch, and we’ll pick you up at the end of the working day. This will go a long way to your rehabilitation.”

I thanked him and went back to the kitchen, where a sack of potatoes waited for me to put through the peeling machine, knives not allowed. On the weekend, I was looking forward to the time outside. I had, by now, realised that I couldn’t go on the way I had been going. Now totally free of any weed in my system, getting regular meals and lots of exercise, I was thinking about my future.

On Monday, one of the regular screws took me to the graveyard in a car, walking me to where the others were, and leaving me with them after a stern warning not to screw it up. When we were alone, I was given a fresh bottle of water by the older guy.

“Welcome to our little band. Now we’re able to talk openly, I’m Martin Schuster and this is my son, Steve. We are the monumental masons with a workshop a few streets away. What we are going to do, today, is to take this stepladder to all the sites of broken stones, and Steve is going to get above the stone and photograph it in situ. That will allow us to reassemble it in the workshop on a flat surface. The rest of it will be explained when we get there. Now, what is your name? We can’t keep calling you Prisoner Harrigan.”

“On the streets I was known as Hound Harrigan, some of the fishermen called me Hot Lips, but my parents called me Helen Anne. Your choice.”

Martin smiled.

“Helen does fit you better than the others, seeing the way you look now, as the piercing scars are healing up. Look, we’ll be working here for a week to collect all the bits of stone, so let’s get started.”

Over the course of that day, we moved the stepladder around and I held it as Steve went up with his camera. Martin noted all the plot numbers and the damage. I was dismayed at what we had done. He looked at me.

“This isn’t all your doing, Helen. Some of these stones are so old they may have come down in a high wind. Some, we’ll put back together, while with others we’ll make new ones, a lot smaller, but with all the details on. There’s some that we’ll need to pull the records for and look at old photos to recreate the information.”

We were sitting on a grave, having some water, when the guard came to pick me up. I had enjoyed the day, doing something that had meaning, had been given fresh sandwiches for lunch, and had been regaled with stories of funny things that people had put on gravestones.

Before we left, Martin told the guard to pick me up at the workshop on Tuesday, because I would be there cleaning stones and fitting them back together. He was also told that I had been very helpful.

On Tuesday, when I was delivered, we found the two at the first stone that we would work on, with a device that looked like a solid board stretcher. During the morning, we moved each piece, placing them on the stretcher in the right place, ending up with a stone that was able to be moved, checking that it was correct with a printed picture that Steve had taken. The two guys lifted the stretcher and put it on a trailer. It was pulled by a small off-road buggy. Steve went off to open up the workshop while Martin and I tidied up where the stone had fallen, collecting a small pile of shards.

When we arrived at their workshop. Martin drove inside and the guys moved the stretcher onto a low workbench.

“Time for lunch, Helen. After that, your main job will be brushing all the edges of the bits and laying them out on the main workspace, so that they fit together nicely. Then, we mark each pair of pieces with lines. Steve will drill each piece for dowels tomorrow, while we collect another stone. When the stones are dowelled and glued, the pieces are all put back together and left to cure. We’ll be re-erecting them in a week.”

Lunch was around the kitchen table of the adjoining house, cooked by Martins’ wife, Alice. I helped wash up and the two of us had a little talk as the others went back to the workshop. It was as if I had been welcomed into her family and made me feel better than I had been for a couple of years.

That afternoon, I was alone in the workshop, cleaning and brushing bits of stone, while the others were off collecting another one. I had reassembled it when they got back, and I had some afternoon tea with them before I waited in the workshop to be picked up. I had enjoyed working away, by myself, with a radio tuned to a music station. It started me planning my time for after I had been released.

Over the next two months, I helped collect bits of stone, spent time preparing them for putting back together, helped to drive bits together with dowels and glue, setting the completed stones onto a board with a huge carpenters’ clamp holding them together, and being accepted as one of the family. I had met Steves’ wife, Mary, and even had a cuddle of their baby son. If there was anything that started me thinking like a ‘proper woman’, it was that.

My last two months at the STC were spent in the cell at night, on my own as Bridey had been released. I had school lessons in the morning, matching the normal school ones for my next year that I had missed, and was taken to the stonemason workshop in the afternoon to help out with re-erecting the last of the broken stones and working on new ones. At least I didn’t have to chisel the words, as they had a computerised machine that did that, after programming the text and the embellishments.

When my release date came around, Martin and Alice had nominated themselves to be my guardians for the next two years. So, I was taken to the house next to the workshop and shown a bedroom that I could use. I was so far away from being Whore Hound that I cried at the sheer generosity of these wonderful people.

Over the next few years, I attended the high school as an older student to finish my education. I learned how to keep the books and Alice taught me how to cook. My new parents gave me an allowance and also a new wardrobe, now with skirts and dresses. We would go off to the seaside on weekends and smell the sea air, rather than the Medway. In that time, I grew up as I should have done, having the odd boyfriend and pretending that I was still a virgin and saving myself for Mister Right.

I got closure, some years later, when we had a small marker to make. It was for the place where my fathers’ ashes were to be placed among the roses. What we had been given was simply a plot number and his name. I asked Martin if I could order something with more words on a small stone to be set next to the grass verge. He wouldn’t agree unless I told him why I wanted those particular words. After I had told him he hugged me and told me that if I did the engraving, he would place the stone at no cost to me.

So, my father had, for all time, a stone next to his ashes, with my words to haunt him for eternity.

There were the name, dates of birth and death, followed by, ‘Here lies a bully, drunkard and rapist. He was a hard man, a bad man, and is now a dead man. Burn in Hell!’

When the word went around, I’m told that many of his enemies, along with a lot of his friends, would visit him on a Saturday night, after a session in the pub, and piss on his grave. My fathers’ grave was so popular as a watering place that the rose bushes either side died, and there were even words in the papers about it.

My father had become a stopping point on the cemetery tours, and people that had never known him came from far and wide to piss on him. He had, in the end, a daughter who was now a proper woman, and a proper woman always gets the last word.

Marianne Gregory © 2026