When Vietnamese Steve moved in he brought a whole shitload of trouble with him and a Nitro Piston Air Rifle for protection. He was a small-time cocaine dealer and I was a small-time cocaine addict. Steve owed around ₤1,000 to various drug dealers that he was not intending to pay back, which made the the first few of months of our cohabitation an edgy affair.

I lived in a two-bed flat above a kebab shop in a crap area of town. My old housemate, Nancy, had broken the lock on the front door — well, to be accurate, the police had broken the lock when they smashed down the door to rescue her from an amphetamine overdose a few months earlier. She was the first girl I ever loved but she rejected me. Though I mended my heart eventually, I never got round to fixing that broken lock.

For nearly a year, the door swung uselessly. It did not open directly onto the road, there was another door for that, but it would greet you as you entered the junk-mail filled hallway, swinging aimlessly, yawning like it was bored.

Nancy and I had cyclonic arguments until eventually she left, spitting threats and recriminations, and I found myself in the position of having to find a new flatmate quickly so I could meet next month’s rent.

Vietnamese Steve was looking to leave the flat he shared with a girl who dealt coke on the Welsh celebrity circuit. Steve found it impossible to sleep through the constant party and hoped my flat would provide him with a more peaceful existence.

As the first few months living together progressed, our paranoia about the dealers receded. We relaxed a bit. After all, anything of any value had already been pawned for drugs and booze. The air rifle Steve had brought with came to live by to the front door.

When we were drunk, we would shoot tiny holes in the wall, our sights laced with rum squinting down a blurry barrel. The air rifle could often be found propping up doors or being used to hit a light switch to avoid getting up out of a chair.

It was 2 am on a Sunday morning and I was trying to sleep. It was rare for me to go to bed at all on Saturday night, but this time I had got in early, leaving Steve at the party. I desperately needed a full stop to the madness, the debt, the cocaine, the filth of the flat. But the crowd outside the kebab shop directly below my bedroom had other ideas.

They made a constant noise. It was the sound of buzz-cut, pin-head men with tight fists and blunt syllables goring the night while their girlfriends pissed in the gutter. Drunks roared and bellowed like beasts in the night.

The flat was set back from the kebab shop fronting so the roof of the shop formed a rough balcony outside my window. I couldn’t sleep. I tried and tried but the noise stopped me. The longer I stayed awake the more and more angry I became until I felt like a crucible of hatred had boiled into a molten rage that flowed through my veins. I got up, the floor cold on my bare feet, grabbed the air rifle from the front door, opened my window and stepped out onto the roof of the kebab shop with the hard metal in my hands.

My thin boxer shorts flapped in the wind and little specks of gravel buried themselves in the soles of my feet. I icily lifted the gun. Ping! Ping! The metal pellets embedded themselves in the shoulders and chests of the noisemakers below.

Their shock and anger flared and, for a moment, the air was full of bottles and chips and forks. The soggy chips impacted me with little thuds, ketchup splattered my t-shirt and I ducked as a bottle wizzed over my head.

I reloaded, took aim and popped one thug right in a veiny bicep. With spit flying from his gob he shouted a torrent of abuse and launched a beer bottle fast at my head; it missed and shattered on the wall behind me and then all I could see is: Blue light. Black. Blue light. Black.

Syllables crackled on a police radio. Three nervous officers shouted at me to throw my “firearm” down on the street and emerge with my hands up. Another officer crouched down behind his car frantically radioing for the armed response unit, as the drunks jeered from the sidelines.

Vietnamese Steve never did get his air rifle back.

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Nathan A. Thompson has been excused from writing his biography due to an acute existential crisis. For more information please go to www.nathanathompson.co.uk.