KING SMOKE

KING SMOKE

The train carrying King arrives at Euston thirteen minutes late.

King steps quickly away from the first class carriage and the London
Stink is in his face like dead dry snuff. King snorts hard for a beat.
Through his nose for one slo-mo heartbeat. Out.

King heads for a taxi. Noise, dirt, grime, shitty-looking types
scanning his mug, trying to read him. King's book stays shut tight.
Locked up. Air tight.

Black cabs lurk like hardcore beetles infesting the belly of the
station - cleansing parasites removing the human virus. Exhaust fumes
pollute King's lungs with petrol/tar/Co2 and shit. King thinks; fuck
this, and jumps the queue. A Yup grabs Kings's arm, just above the
elbow. Cold Surrey twang in his ear.
"There is a queue you know."
King eyes the Yup. Gives him the mean and lean stare. No surrender,
EVER. The Yup's hand recoils like he's touched a ghost. He backs off,
legs akimbo like he's shit himself. King jumps into the cab, slams door
&; to cabby;
"Waterloo."

The cab spits out into bright blue air of cold winter London and
through streets of cold, clammy buildings.

King hates London. Overloaded with mockneys and fakes and uptalking
twats. King's amazed no one's run amok with an AK47 and laid waste to
Cambridge Circus, popping a dozen or two just for deep kicks.

King hates like most people love. King hates with all mod cons attached
for free.

King feels solid. Whiskey inside his veins, a mild numbness - no
horrorshow replays. King is a Killer/Killer King with Kapital K's all
round. And it feels easy.

Out the cab at Waterloo. A tenner through the slot.
"Keep it."
"Cheers Guv."
King strides up the stone steps two at a time. A smackout face looms
too close. King flexes, instinct, ready to hurt.
"Big Issue, sir?"
King so quick with another tenner.
"Keep it."
Hollow face beams like King just gave him a double-wrap. King ignores
the offered mag. King thinks; spike it &; die. King hates
smack-fucking-heads.

Platform Eight and a train to suburbia - home of King Senior. King is a
motherless fuck. She died. Five years ago. Martha. Seventy-three.
Always hated hospitals. Always hated life. Always hated King.

King never made it to his own mother's funeral. Too much heat. Too many
enemy faces all over. A prime opportunity for some giddy fuck to cut
out his eyes. King owed too much all over town. Bigtime debts with
death for defaulters. The funeral had the potential to attract grief
like fresh shit attracts flies.

King Senior lives in a bungalow. Lives the life of an OAP - Old Alone
Person. 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 in a urinal. King 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 door to his son. Blink. Shock. A
leathery heart skips a beat.

"King?"
"Hello pop."
"Come in, son."

King enters the home of King Senior. Blank walls, sparse furniture and
dull, painful 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.

"You always said I was a wrong'un, pop."
"I love you, son."
"Too easy to say now."
"Why?"

King stands.

Darkness settles over the bungalow like a smothering pillow.

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.

King replays idle last words between father/son. No clues. No reason.
Nothing given away.

"What do you want?"
"Not what I want, it's what you want."
"What?"

King touches King Senior's shoulder, with care.

"Euthenasia."
"No?"
"Yes pop."

King pushes the tip of the red biro into one dead open eye.

King giggles. Something pops. King snaps out of a daydream.

King leaves the red biro protruding from one ruptured eyeball and
gently kisses his father's slack, silent mouth, one last final
time.

King steps through the white plastic door and into the engrossing
blackness of night.

King looks up and sees the moon's cocky grin. King smiles back.

King's first smile. Ever.