The train carrying King arrives at Euston twenty-two minutes late.
King steps quickly away from the First-Class carriage and the London Stink is in his face like a cloud of dead dry snuff. King snorts hard through his nose for one slow- motion heartbeat. Then out. Acclimatized.
King heads for a taxi. Noise, dirt, grime, shitty-looking types scanning his mug, trying to read him, get a feel of what he's worth. King’s book stays locked. Airtight.
Black cabs lurk like cleansing beetles, infesting the belly of the station, removing the human germs in dribs and drabs. Hot fumes pollute King’s lungs with petrol, tar, Co2, and hairy animal shit. King thinks, fuck this, and jumps the queue. A Yup grabs Kings’ arm, just above the elbow. Blunt Surrey twang in King's ear.
“There is a queue you know.”
King eyes the Yup. Gives him the look, the challenge, let's go for it. No surrender, no back off, EVER. The Yup’s hand recoils like he touched a virus. With legs akimbo like he’s shit himself, he scurries away to find a bus. King jumps into the cab, slams the door and tells the cabby,
“Waterloo.”
The cab spits out into bright blue air of cold winter London and through streets of dying, clammy buildings.
King hates London. Overloaded with rich punks, rich foreigners and up-talking rich twats. King is amazed no one’s run amok with an AK47 and laid waste to Leicester Square, dropping a dozen or two just for killer kicks and headlines.
Out the cab at Waterloo Station. Three tens through the slot.
“Keep it.”
“Cheers, guv.”
King strides up the stone steps two at a time. A smacked-out face looms too close. King flexes, instinctive, ready to hurt.
“Big Issue, sir?”
King so quick with another tenner.
“Keep it.”
Hollow junk-face beams like King just gave him a double-wrap. King ignores the offered mag. King hates smack-fucking-shizza-heads.
Platform Eight and a train to suburbia, to the home of King Senior. King is a motherless fuck. Her name was Martha. She died five years ago. Always hated hospitals. Always hated her life. Always hated her son.
King never made it to his own mother’s funeral. Too much heat. Too many enemies all over, looking and waiting. A prime opportunity for some giddy fuck to cut out his eyes. King owed too much all over town. Back then it was bigtime debts with a slow death for defaulters. The funeral had the potential to attract aggro like a fresh shit attracts flies.
A dysfunctional suburban street. Grey and shiny with old rainfall. King could kill for a ciggy. King remembers a pub from the old days. Local drink-hole for long weekend sessions many moons ago. Punk jukebox, reggae tunes and smell of ripe dope in the backroom. Cool faces around a torn-up pool table. King turns a corner and there it is, The King’s Blade Hotel. Used to belong to King Senior. Damp beer cellar with barrels, blankets and chain. Place for a dog, or an inconvenient kid. Slaps and punches and kicks. King shakes free from bad memories. Move on.
Right now, King spots a face as he enters the boozer. Young and wild, gabba-gabba into a cheap burner. Smart eyes check King out. A step back in time to another life. An Old Boy hunched on a bar stool doesn't even look up. Too old for the game.
“A double Bushmills. And twenty Bensons." King says.
“Machine got shagged last night, pal,” the bartender says.
King turns to Old Boy next to him, “How about a quid for one fag.”
“You a poof, or what?” Old Boy coughs up slurry as he scans King’s hands. King taps a gold pinky-ring on the wooden bar top. Zooms in on King’s nicotine stains, never can say no.
“Gonna cost you two quid, like.”
King nods at the bump-up, drops coins. Old Boy passes the cancer stick. Johnny Cash sings out the jukebox, Like A Soldier.
"Got a light?" King asks.
"Cost you a quid, like," Old Boy grins a set of fake yellow choppers at him.
"Why you old scrote."
Old Boy’s laugh comes up, crunches into a lung-shredder cough. King can almost smell gut mud and tar chunks. Cash sounds all rebellious and mournful as Old Boy’s death cough rattles the bar. King opens his eyes. King drinks Bushmills. Bushmills burns good and proper. Another? Why not?
“Double Bushmills.”
King asks Old Boy if he wants a drink. Old Boy stops dying for a beat.
“Double brandy, you fucking nonce.”
King tolerates and drags the fag long and deep. King’s drugs of choice, alcohol and nicotine. Kosher shit. No fucking around with anything else. Not. Right. Now. King buys the old scrotum a double brandy.
King hates people. King hates with all mod cons attached for free. King feels solid. Whiskey inside his veins, a mild numbness. King is a Killer, Killer King with Kapital K’s all round. And it feels easy.
King Senior lives in a bungalow. Lives the life of an OAP. Old Alone Person. Odious Angry Prick. The last human he expects to see before he dies is his only rotten son.
King strides down the narrow street towards the loathsome bungalow. King wants death for all. A world of dead folk like gobbed-out dog-ends scattered along a pub’s tin urinal. King was feeling like Death.
King Death decides to pay King Senior one final kiss. Son to father. Spawn to spawner. Spunker to spunkee.
Ding-dong.
King Senior opens the white plastic double-glazed door to find his son standing there. Blink. Shock. A leathery heart skips a beat. His fucking, no-mark dog of a son.
“King?”
“Hello pop.”
“Come in, son.”
King enters the home of King Senior. Blank walls, sparse furniture and dull light from a few naked bulbs.
The two Kings sit together, the old one hunched painfully on a hardback armchair, the younger one sprawling on the worn brown sofa. Nothing like seeing it for real. Cold yellow paste cluttered around the ruins of ancient eyes. Smelly blunt coagulation of death fear, melted by a hot tear.
"How've you been keeping, son?"
“You always said I was a wrong’un, didn't you, pop.”
“I love you, son.”
“Too easy to say that now.”
“What do you want?”
“It's not about what I want.”
King Senior tries to stand. King stands, touches King Senior’s shoulder, with gentle care, pushes him back down. Son to father. Down where he belongs.
“For all the things you did to me.”
“What you on about, son?”
“For making me the man I am today.”
"You always was a little fucker."
King picks up a cushion with the Queen's mug on it. Leaps over, kicks the claw hammer away from Senior's reach. Same old pop. Always a claw hammer. Back in the day when Senior was staunch, he shattered kneecaps for a living. If you didn’t pay what you owed he’d come and nail your bollocks to a door.
Darkness settles over the bungalow like a smothering pillow. Old wasted muscles struggling. Old hands clawing at lapels. Old piss all over the armchair. When it’s done King looks for a biro.
King doodles a flower on his dead dad’s cheek. Like a tattoo. A rose with giant, angular thorns. And now King pushes the tip of the red biro into one dead open eye. King stares. Something pops. King snaps out of a blank daydream.
King figures same old pop. Cash in the attic. Cash under the bathroom floorboards. Cash in the oven. King takes the lot.
King leaves the end of the red biro protruding from one ruptured eyeball and gently kisses his father’s slack, silent mouth, one last final time, lips to lips. Job done. Mission accomplished.
King steps through the white plastic double-glazed door and into the absolving blackness of night. Back to the train station. The express due in an hour. A long journey into Europe as another man. Connections in Amsterdam. Business as usual. End of.
King looks up and sees the moon’s cocky grin and King smiles back.
King’s first smile. Ever.
Incredible, absolutely brilliant.