Banned from the pubs

“So there we are,” said Damien, “the five of us, coming out of the Moulin Rouge, around 3 in the morning. We get outside, and we see that Sam’s got blood all over his face. Now, Sam might be a bit strange sometimes, but even he doesn’t walk around with blood all over his face. I mean, he isn’t Polish, is he?”

There were a couple of grins at this, as we looked around to see whether Rafael was in the club. There were four of us sitting around a table. Damien had grabbed it after some skins had got up to go to the dancefloor, and Ian and I had joined him on our way back from the bar. Morag had come through with her promise to buy me a drink. In fact, with her newfound prosperity, she had sprung for an entire round. About half a pint of that had accidentally ended up in my lap, for which she had, of course, apologized most profusely. I thought I had gotten off lightly.

“So we ask him what’s happened, right? And he says that some cunt just hit him as we were walking down the stairs. For no reason.” Pause for a drink. “So, I go back up the stairs, but the bouncers won’t let me back in. Now you know me, I’m normally quite a peaceful sort, but I was starting to get a bit tense here.” More grins around the table. Damien’s “peaceful” personality was well known in the Irish.

“So I explain that we want to see this guy that did it, just to find out why. You know? And all this time, Sam’s just standing against the wall, wiping blood off his face, shaking his head, and we’re all feeling, like, sorry for the guy. He’s a mate, you know?”

As I raised my bottle for another sip, someone slapped me on the back of the head, spilling another mouthful in my lap. The roar of laughter that followed could only have come from one mouth.

“Oi, Mick. You want a drink? Morag’s buying.”

The leader of the Aryan Knights placed his fists on the table and looked around. A barbed wire tattoo snaked around his left arm from wrist to shoulder, with swastikas and eagles claiming the spaces between. A picture of a chain spiraled up his right arm. A real chain looped around his waist, held in place by a huge combination padlock. We all knew that the combination was set to open with just one click of the dial.

Behind him stood half a dozen smaller clones, trying to look hard. One of them was wearing a Sisters of Mercy shirt, which just didn’t make any sense to me at all. What was the world coming to?

“Not tonight.” He raised his eyes and scanned the dancefloor. I could practically smell the aggression pouring off him. “Tonight I’m just looking for a fight.” He picked up Damien’s beer and had a swig, then handed it back and winked. “You girls behave yourselves now.”

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

If you want blood

Then another body entered my sights. Damien had moved to intercept the insect, had reached out easily and had taken away its stinger. The bug spun around, not knowing which way to run, or even where to look. It seemed to decide that the madman with the loaded gun was a greater threat than the madman with empty hands, and it headed back towards me. This was a very brief change of trajectory. As it rushed towards me, I swatted it with the back of my hand and it flew across the room, landing at Stevie’s feet. I saw the black cloaks rush to its aid, but I was busy with the other entity that had forced itself into my field of vision.

Damien stood with his back to the wall, gun hanging loosely. He was still shaking his head.

“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” he told me. “I wouldn’t have let him hurt Morag.”

No. You do not use that name. My hand lashed out again, sending him spinning along the wall. He managed to stay on his feet. As he straightened up, a small part of me registered that I’d never felt this strong before. The greater part of me ignored this minority report.

“Ok, I deserved that,” Damien went on, wiping a new trickle of blood from his nose. “I’ve done some bad things. But I’ve changed, John.”

He might have been expecting it, but the next backhand still caught him before he could move. This time he ended up on his knees in the corner. He had lost his grip on the gun. He scrambled to get his hand back on the weapon, but I was in front of him before he made it fully back to his feet.

“No!” The gun swung up. His free hand was braced against a wall, supporting his watery legs. The scratch on his face had opened, and blood was starting to ooze down his cheek, competing with the trickle still coming from his nose.

“Don’t make me do this, John.”

I didn’t care what he did. Nothing could stop me.

Realizing this, he pushed himself off the wall and ducked under my reach, heading for the door. But Stevie moved to block his path.

Damien stopped where he was, then staggered back as if he’d run into a brick wall. He spread his arms, one hand warding off this new opponent, the other hand with the gun stretched back towards me.

“I’m sorry, alright?”

I kept moving forward.

“I just want it all to stop, for fuck sake. Please. Just make it stop.”

I smacked his arm aside. As he spun from the force of the blow, I slapped him again, knocking him once more to his knees. I heard his jaw bone snap as he went down.

I glanced over at Morag, whose eyes had never left Damien. Her bruises seemed to have darkened during the few moments since I’d first seen them. Maybe that was only my imagination. I’d never seen her physically hurt before. Was it only her face? What about the rest of her body? What about…?

A new wave of berserker rage flooded through me as I turned back towards Damien. He hadn’t even tried to make it back to his feet this time. One hand cradled his broken face. The other held the gun close to his body, pointing up towards me. He couldn’t say it, but his body language pleaded for mercy. The same mercy he’d shown the mother of my unborn child?

I raised an arm. His eyes hardened. I started to swing. His finger pulled back on the trigger. I smiled. His eyes closed slightly, in anticipation of the coming noise.

Then the Beast was moving between us, the gun went off, and I was pushed back against the wall.

As I bounced forward, raising my arm again for another blow, I saw Stevie carry on across the room, clutching his chest.

Damien pushed himself upright, arm straightening towards me.

I was now too far away to reach the gun. But I was bulletproof. Wasn’t I?

Oops.

Damien squeezed his eyes almost closed as his finger started to tighten on the trigger one more time. I was tempted to close mine too. It was either that or launch myself forward in a final attack.

Before I could make that split-second decision, Damien’s arm jerked up and the shot went over my head.

He dropped the gun. Lowered his arm. Opened his eyes. Wide. Shook his head. Then dropped once again to his knees.

Behind him stood Morag, a bloody knife in her hand.

She moved around in front of Damien, holding the blade so he could see it clearly. Crouching next to him, she reached over and wiped it on the front of his already stained shirt.

“Psycho bitch strikes again,” she murmured, with that sweet smile on her face, the one that gave grown men nightmares.

Damien was leaking all over himself. From his nose, from the side of his face, and now from his mouth. One eye was useless, swollen almost closed and looking off at a strange angle, as if he was trying to look behind himself. Obviously that wasn’t working for him.

“Now this is very important,” Morag told him. “For both of us.” She slapped him lightly on the side of the head. He glared at her as well as he could. “That’s good. I need your full attention.”

She held her knife in front of his face, turning it so the light in the room played along its length. She smiled. He nodded and smiled back. More blood dribbled down his chin.

Morag lowered her arm and placed the tip of the blade just under his rib cage. He raised his hand. He didn’t try to push her away. Instead, his hand rested on hers, drowning it.

Damien looked up at me. No words were necessary. Or possible. His one eye held a depth of emotion, the intense feelings that modern males refuse to share until it’s too late. Secret jealousies. Unspoken gratitudes. Hidden pain.

I nodded in complete understanding. He nodded back.

Turning again to Morag, he managed to breathe “Thank you” without moving his mouth.

Then he grunted as she leaned forward and drove her knife in up to the hilt.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

By demons be driven

Morag was handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the back room. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she sported a beautiful bruise across her cheekbone, spreading into a discolouration around her left eye. She barely looked up as we entered.

Through the red mist that appeared in front of me, I saw Michael had been scribbling on a notepad. He dropped the pen on the desk when he saw us.

“I hope that’s your will,” said the Beast.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you suicidal?”

As I stepped forward, not sure whether I was going to free Morag first or leave that until I’d killed everyone else in the room, I noticed Damien leaning back in a chair against one wall, drink in hand. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t supposed to be there. My killing spree hit a temporary speed bump.

Michael stood up, with a gun in the place of the pen. But his arm remained calmly by his side.

“There’s no need for more violence,” he said. “I’m sure we’ve all had enough of that for one day.” He also had a black eye, and his lips looked swollen and bloody. His shirt had been torn away from his neck, and there were still a few drops of blood decorating the chest area. See? The trend hadn’t taken long to catch on.

“I never laid a hand on her,” he protested. “She was already bruised when your friend brought her to me. But we had to tie her to the chair in self-defence, while we waited for you guys to come collect her. Of course, this gives us one last chance to reach some kind of agreement on how we can all work together.”

I wasn’t listening. Apart from the main players, three of his black-cloaked creepies stood around the room, their attention focused on the Beast behind me. My eyes hadn’t moved from Damien.

“I have to admit,” I told him, “seeing you here has thrown me a bit.”

He shrugged. His nose had been broken recently, and a new scratch ran down the side of his face. And yes, he’d jumped on the bloody shirt bandwagon. But with more blood than I would have expected from a broken nose.

“Hollis Brown here decided to give me this one last chance,” Mike explained, “just as everyone else deserted me. He appeared out of the blue with your beautiful friend, so we could all try to salvage something from this situation, for the sake of all humanity.”

Another speed bump. This was the serious kind, with steep sides that would destroy your shock absorbers and rip the guts from your car if you hadn’t seen it coming.

“?”

The question was unspoken, but Damien understood it well enough.

He shrugged again and shook his head. His voice was empty, flat. “They’re gone, John. I didn’t know what to do. She was going to leave me. And take the baby. I couldn’t let that happen, John. They’re all I have. Then things just…”

He shook his head again, before taking a long drink. I turned to Morag, who was trying to bore a hole through him from her position in the center of the room. Her left eye was now swollen half closed. But that had no effect on the intensity of her gaze.

Instead, it brought the red fog back into my own eyes.

Michael made the mistake of speaking next.

“And that’s exactly the kind of tragedy that I want to prevent. If you’d just – .”

The desk was the only thing keeping him alive. I moved to one side, planning on going around it rather than over it or through it. Although those had been my first instincts. Mike responded by moving in the opposite direction, raising his weapon as he went.

“Look. Wait. Let’s talk.”

But all I could hear was a buzzing in my ears as my peripheral vision vanished and Michael became the centre of my universe.

I moved faster, crossing the far side of the desk as he backed away. He joined his hands together to get a steadier grip.

“Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you.”

Buzz buzz buzz. The insect was making defensive noises as I prepared to swat it. Maybe it would sting me in its death throes. Just another reason for me to swat it hard and fast, before it could do so.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

Revenge is sweet

I reached out and picked up my neighbour’s glass from the bar, full of some exotic looking cocktail. Before he even noticed that it had moved, the glass was tilted above his head and the sticky drink was no longer inside it. I could see each individual drop as they splashed off his thinning hair and carried on down to his shoulders, making beautiful colours and rainbows in the red and blue lights from the bar.

The dark thing inside my head wanted to smash the empty glass after the liquid, making more pretty colours, but I managed to hold it back as the sights and sounds of the room flooded back into the real world that I inhabited. The old fart’s shoulders hunched up in the time-honoured “this is what happens when I’m wet” gesture, and his companion shrieked aloud at the sight. This was even funnier than whatever they’d been talking about before, and I had to agree with her. It certainly brightened my day considerably, and even brought a smile to my face as I turned to the barman and waved my half-empty beer at him. No debates about whether I’m an optimist or a pessimist, please – half the beer was missing, whichever way you looked at it.

But the previously friendly barman wasn’t moving. The much-needed refill wasn’t winging its merry way towards me. Instead, the few other old folks propping up the bar all seemed to be looking in my direction, with eyes wide and mouths closed. Which is the way it should be 24/7, if you ask me. I decided to glance round and make sure that there wasn’t something else interrupting their otherwise empty lives, but as so often happens in these situations, I immediately regretted having done so.

The old fart (not the dead one, the other one – now easily distinguishable because of the goop dripping from his head) was pointing a gun at me. Being well versed in the multitudinous varieties and technicalities of arms and ammunition, I recognized it instantly as a Big Gun. The kind that makes things explode, as opposed to the kind that just drills a neat hole through them. Chrome plated. Red grip on the handle. And this identification wasn’t at all easy to make, as the thing was shaking up and down, back and forth, and quite obviously wasn’t at all happy where it was. I toyed with the idea of reaching out and taking it away from him, but then I just couldn’t be bothered. So I tried to be nice.

“Fuck off.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m as macho as the next guy. But this wasn’t bravado speaking. At that moment, I honestly didn’t give a fuck whether or not he pulled the trigger. It had been a long weekend. I was tired. Hot. Thirsty. Coming down from some kind of recreational synthetic. Combined with the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush. And I was in no mood to start apologising or begging in front of anybody.

“You bastard!” He started to tremble all over, his eyes growing bigger by the second. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Possible replies stumbled over one another in my head as they rushed to get out first. But overriding them all came the lyrics to a song by little Ronnie James Dio.

 

“Well it’s a matter of mind. You know you can be free forever. So the next time someone points a gun at you…

Say Shoot Shoot. You don’t care. Shoot Shoot.”

 

OK, it loses something in the translation into a non-musical format, but believe me when I tell you that you don’t want me to sing it to you. Suffice to say, this was running through my mind, with the backing musicians doing their backing musical bits, while I stood there with a gun pointed at my head. When things can’t possibly get any worse, and you’ve got nothing to lose, what’s a boy to do?

I drained the last half of the beer in my hand.

“Look sunshine. Either shoot me, or fuck off. You’re starting to annoy me.” At which point I turned my back on him and spun the empty bottle on the bar, hoping that it would be replaced before I was rendered incapable of enjoying any more.

Again, this wasn’t just pure nonchalance. It had occurred to me that he’d probably be less likely to shoot me in the back, and more likely to explode if I kept staring into his face. I could also see his reflection in the mirrors behind the bar, and I was preparing myself to slip off the barstool and onto the floor if he made any sudden moves.

The impasse lasted a couple more minutes, then one of the other barflies reached for his drink, the ice cubes chimed in the glass as he raised it to his mouth, and the spell was broken. A collective breath was taken, then the hum of conversation in the bar started to build up once again. All this time, the old fart was still pointing the Big Gun at the back of my head. And I was starting to think that he might have gone beyond the point of no return, where it became easier just to go with the flow than to take a step back. But then grandma stepped up to the plate.

“Come on, love. Leave him. He’s not worth it.”

I took a deep breath, just in case.

“Really, my sweet. Come have another drink.”

In the mirrors, I saw the tension drain out of him as his arm dropped to his side, his head dropping onto his chest. His big moment had come and gone, and he’d blown it. I reached for the empty beer bottle in front of me. I’d be fucked if I was going to let the old fart walk out of there after that. I mean, I had a reputation to maintain. A reputation that, all by itself, had kept me alive on more occasions than I could remember.

But before I had a chance to turn round, the bouncer had performed a perfect rugby tackle on the old fart, hitting him from behind and taking him down to the tiles. The gun slid off against the far wall, and the teddy boy was on top of him, pounding away. Then it was over, and the little man got to his feet, taking his shades from a jacket pocket while slicking back his hair with the other hand. He grabbed the former gunman by the shirt collar, picked up the weapon from where it lay against the wall, and started to remove them from the scene of the crime.

“Sorry about that,” he grunted as he heaved away at the body that was bigger than he was. “George! A free beer for the peacekeeper, here.”

And who was George to argue? The beer appeared, and it definitely seemed colder and more refreshing than the previous one.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.