Terry and the punk
Terry was on his uppers.
It had been a long, steady decline from dining in corporate splendour to eating from rubbish bins. Dodgy speculative finance, drugs, booze and a lavish lifestyle had finally brought Terry undone. Long since deserted by his wife and associates after years of rash dealings and indiscreet affairs he had finally levelled out here in London's underbelly streets.
There was an hierarchy down here, one in which Terry had won his place at the trough by beating an old woman mercilessly as she tried to extract a few slices of fur-covered pizza from “his” skip. She died unnamed and unmourned, and from then on the night people gave Terry a wide berth.
After three years Terry was a walking callous. Nothing was too heinous, nothing was beneath him, nothing mattered. He just didn’t care, and that made him dangerous in the faded eyes of the cardboard box people. They wanted to live, ultimately, but recognized that Terry didn’t.
One of the venues policed by Terry was the Pizza Hut down on Seaview Road by the docks. It was a rough area at night, with drunken sailors and fishermen staggering about filled with cheap liquor, spoiling for trouble. Terry usually stayed deep in the shadows until they had all gone, knowing that the manager was sympathetic, and would dump all the partly eaten pizzas into “his” skip before he shut the doors.
He’d sidled around to sneak a look in the front window a few minutes before closing, hoping that his filthy, whiskered face would discourage some diners from finishing their meals. Just as he was about to retire to his customary hideout behind the rubbish bins he saw a young punk burst into the restaurant, brandishing a rusty-looking shooter. All glittering eyes and gelled up pink hair. When the boy fired one nervous shot into the ceiling, counter staff and clientele hit the floor.
“Get down! Get down! On the floor!” The boy was seriously wired, jerking
this way and that, waving the pistol dangerously.
Terry smiled. He shrugged once, a long, slow shrug, and took a very deep breath. The door opened noiselessly for him, and Terry shuffled up behind the kid. “Are you going to order, boy?” Terry asked in a reasonable voice. The kid squirted off a round involuntarily, killing a Salvation Army trumpet player on her way home from band practice. She expired without a note.
“Jesus friggin’ Christ, man!” The punk jittered and shook,. “See what you made me do?”
Terry smiled. “Well, Holy Rollers have an obsessive desire to go to Heaven anyway, so you just helped her on her way. Now… are you ready to order?”
“Christ, man, are you fuckin’ nuts? Get on the fuckin’ floor like the others. NOW!!”
“I’ll have Hawaiian, I think, with extra olives and anchovies. No garlic bread, thanks, it’s always soggy here. And definitely no salad.” He looked at the punk. “They don’t do salad very well either.”
“No fuckin’ pizza, man, no fuckin’ anything! Get on the floor!”
“OK, OK, I assume that you didn’t come in here to eat, then.”
“Man, I’ll fuckin’ kill you if you don’t get on the floor!” He was hopping from foot to foot, and casting urgent glances at the door.
Terry laughed out loud. “Kill me! Kill me! C’mon, kill me then, you gutless punk! Look at you.. fucking pathetic. Full of stinking piss and wind!” Terry capered about the young thug, pulling faces, waving his arms and singing wordless cooing songs out of key. A demented Punch, minus his Judy, twisting and twirling ever closer to the twitchy and heavily-sweating kid. Then he slapped the young punk across the face.
“C’mon! C’mon! If you can’t kill me, then give me the gun and I’ll fucking kill you!” Terry stopped still in front of the terrified punk, holding out his right hand for the pistol, left hand knuckled into his cocked hip. “Well?”
The punk shot Terry in the face, the bits and pieces of Terry’s head flying about and decorating the customers still prostrate on the floor. He dropped the pistol and ran out the door into the night as Terry slumped facelessly into his fifteen minutes of fame.
A customer was heard to whisper the comment, “Serves him right. Shouldn’t have ordered the Hawaiian in winter.”
(c) John Irvine 2008