Preachers Chronicles by David Anglin - A collection of short stories. Just 99p.

A Way Home - 1st Chapter
 
He woke up to June the 7th, his thick duvet covered the fetal position he’d held himself tight in for the last few hours. His pillow was damp from water leaked from eyes which were now wide. Bags underneath them showed his sleep deprivation. Bags underneath them brought colourful insight into the troubled world of a boy
just 13.June the 7th had always been a bad date for him, where memories compressed to the back of his brain forced a way to the surface. The date was like his personal Friday the 13th, if anything was to go bad, then today was the day. He prayed for a good day but wasn’t convinced that God was listening.
He heard a knock at his door.
“Jerry it’s time to get up for school,” his keyworker Ann said.
He rolled his eyes inwardly, his earlier appeal to God fell on deaf ears. Though he still had no intentions of going to school today, he had a task to do, and it’s not like he’d miss anything in school anyway, since being kicked out of mainstream he couldn’t remember the last time he learned anything worthwhile, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d wrote on a piece of paper. No, school was pointless, he reasoned.
He held his fetal position tighter, he wished he could stay in the safety of his bed, the warmth reminded him of a mother’s loving arms. He caught himself. The word love was moist, he wasn’t moist, he was a 13-year-old moving deeper than most his age would ever dream to. He broke from comfort, swinging his long legs from the bed. His size 9 feet landed with a thud.
He remembered being with his gran one morning and when taking a look at his feet she said in her patois ‘yu foot long ehh?’ Memories forced a chuckle to escape from his lips, he hadn’t seen his gran in so long, he’d been a resident of care for what
felt like too long. Days spent at the breakfast table of different care homes had him forgetting the meaning of family life. He wondered how his grandma was.
His door knocked a tune of tap, tap.
“Jerry?”
His mood switched to rude.
 
A Woman’s Touch Softens The Hard Hands of a Badman - 1st Chapter
 
He sat alone, shrouded in darkness save for the headlights of car lamps as they brought temporary light to the insides of his black Fiesta. The puffs of grey smoke which opened up into patterns of spiraling ghosts kept the interior as fog.
He held paper lit at its end like the fiery red of a dragon’s breath to his fat lips sculpted in a shape, reminiscent of his mother’s. Taking a long slow pull of his fire starter he turned up the words on the stereo to the voice of J Hus saying, “Even when we never had a penny, yo we always had spirit, they can burn my flesh, but they can’t touch my spirit, they want take way my freedom but how they gonna take my spirit....”
He slid back down deeper into the black fabric of the ripped seats and his brain felt as if it was traveling from here to the Himalayas. Like he had the answer to the meaning of life, now knowing the true religion, and it all was as simple as two plus two.
His answer to life’s equation was broken as a nonbeliever knocked on his window, with eyes wide like the highlights from kohl eyeliner. The cloud from his mind dissipated, his overriding programming of survival of the fittest, set into motion. He was ready for action and greeted the regular stranger, Blocka with
“I keep on telling you not to beat on my windows like that
G.”
The response back was quicker, “And I keep on telling you
not to talk to me like that B.”
Unwittingly, the ego of man had entered them into a
standoff that was tense; each one unwilling to surrender his position. Jerry quietly stretched his fingers towards a man-made black knight sharpened to a tip, with the sole intention of checking lost kings.
“Aight listen, you want this work or you want me to take it elsewhere?”
The bigger older man looked at him harshly, “I hear all that  B, but I ain’t having no yout talk to me...”
Jerry cut him off, “I ain’t no yout G, I’m a ask you for the
last time, you want this work or not.”
Blocka had thoughts of robbing this slick-mouthed child  for his night’s wage wrapped in plastic. In days gone past, few would have dared talk to him with such open disrespect; as in that era, he’d been the main contender in a roadside coliseum for urban gladiators, pitching any adversary in a shower of public blood spray.
Though at the time, few realised that Blocka’s fearlessness for life originated from being a naive teen of 13 and introduced to a white widow that sapped life under the pretense of fool’s gold. He fell weak to the demon, needing a fix to lace the insides of his nose white every few weeks. As time went on, the need for the beast only increased, making him reckless and wild. Even the wicked at some point though, have to succumb to Father Time, and the effects of the white demon were long-lasting. So that
a body once strong and vital, was now weak from multiplying cancerous cells.