“You want one of these goodies then?”
Simon opened his hand under Johnjo’s nose so quickly, the tablet hopped up like a jumping bean.
“Dunno,” Johnjo stared at the pill as if he tried to determine its carat. “What’s it for?”
“Neck one and you can use those dormant ninety percent of your brain, Bro.”
Simon threw it into his mouth and chewed it to pieces, guzzled it down with some Stella and slid his tongue through the holes and gaps in his denture. Waste not.
“No idea. It’s the stuff Aunt Jodie gets for her cancer. Thought I’d give ‘em a try.”
“Bet she already misses them.”
“Way I see it? It’s for her own good. The poor cow can’t move, shits herself and she’s got these black things on her back, like holes? All pussy and shit? Looks like a fucking zombie. Honestly, she’s better off dead.”
“That’s her painkillers, man. They ain’t for curing cancer, you fuckpot, it’s so she don’t scream the bloody roof down.”
Simon shot Johnjo a skeptical look, shrugged and put the bottle back on the table.
“So.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and grinned. “You happy to see your fave grandsons, Big Daddy?”
Roland grabbed his oxygen tank by a cord, dragging it closer, put the mask over his mouth and nose and took a long gasp, hard enough to make his balls float gently in the scrotum.
“Can’t say I feel the joy here,” he said, and coughed up a piece of phlegm that sat on his pants like an exotic bug. He eyed the twins up and down. Scrawny little bastards, mean as pit bulls on steroids. Walking the earth for twenty-one years and wasting and fucking up every single minute of it. Shared a flat, shared the birds, their money and four working brain cells. Not that any of it came as a surprise. After their mother had legged it and their father went down for a triple homicide he couldn’t even remember, being on enough meth to make a whole tower block of council houses shake, rattle and roll, he had taken them in and raised them.
More or less.
Less, actually.
“That hurts.” Simon bent forward. “But it’s fine, Big Daddy. Like I said on the phone – just give us the gun for an hour or two and we’re gone again. It’s not like we want to be here, right?”
He flicked the crown cap against the tank.
“These things are bloody dangerous. Explode all the fucking time.”
Roland lifted a yellow, kiln-dried finger, signing them to wait and turned up the valve a notch. When he inhaled, it felt like the oxygen was fanning a fire under his remaining lung. He coughed again. Longer this time and quite soggy.
“I’m not giving you two retarded shitdicks a gun. Hell, I wouldn’t trust you with a plastic fork.”
Johnjo watched Simon’s carotid artery thumping a techno beat and chimed in.
“Look, Big D, we wouldn’t ask if there was a way around it. We really need a weighty argument, that’s all. It’s not like we gonna shoot someone.” He stared at the ceiling, waggled his head. “I guess.”
Simon had regained his composure.
“This fucker Marty,” he said, calm, though a bit pressed, “he says he’s going to grass us up to the filth if we don’t hand him a bag of E. And by bag he means a fucking plastic bag. So – we just drive up to the cunt, give him a bit of a kicking and a headbutt or two with the gun, explain to him the hurt that might come with a bullet up his spunk hole. Talk the talk, Big Daddy, that’s all.”
“And, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly does he have on you?”
“Nothing really. You know … stuff?” Simon got twitchy, fiddled with his digits, rubbed his ass over the cord sofa.
Roland felt a hard ball of rage next to his solar plexus.
“Guess it has nothing to do with you fucking bastards raping his fourteen year old sister then?”
All this hate and he couldn’t even scream. Damn lung.
Not that the twins would’ve care anyway. Simon didn’t miss a beat.
“Yeah. The fucking nerve of the cunt.” He nodded enthusiastically. “You know, Big Daddy – if I had a little sister and two wankers would bang her up the ass, I’d kill the bloody fucks. I wouldn’t try to make me some quid out of it. So you see … he has it coming, right? Can we have the gun now?”
Johnjo picked at a long, dark flap of skin on his calf.
“Oi, Simon,” he said. “I think the frigging bitch gave me the scabies.”
“Maybe it’s my fault, y’know?” Roland closed his eyes, steadied his breath. “All the shite ‘bout the things we did back in the day. The hard guy stuff. About the girls running for us. How we took over the weed business from the Micks. The scutwork I did for the Krays.”
“They were twins too.” Johnjo shouted with glee.
Roland spat on the floor.
“Difference is, one of them actually had a working brain.” He dry-wiped his face. “Whatever. I know I sure did my lot of bad deeds and the only thing I’ll ever get at the pearly gates is the finger, but you two? You are scum. Vile and evil scum.”
“That’s it, you cunting old fart. You’re dead.” Simon jumped up.
And sat down again; a dark red Rorschach pattern spreading out on his shirt. Johnjo screamed, but couldn’t hear himself, ears ringing from the shot. Roland leaned back in his arm chair, gun resting in his lap. Strangely, Simon seemed more concerned about the state of his shirt, picking the fabric with two fingers and pulling it away from the entrance wound. But his nostrils spasmed and his pupils almost met the eyebrows, so it was down to shock, Roland reckoned. He also reckoned he should talk a bit quicker. It was high time he got it from his chest and he wanted both kids to hear him.
“I didn’t want you in my house or in my life. Even two mental farts like you should’ve noticed that. But I fed you. I put clothes on you, and hurled your asses out of the police station every fucking month. Considering all that, plus the defective genes you got from my son, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had turned out to become some run of the mill bastards.”
His lung ached and his throat burned. He hadn’t spoken that much in years. Roland grabbed the mask, but didn’t put it on. No time to breathe, he thought. Simon looked halfway gone already and Johnjo just sat there, quivering and mumbling, trying to get a grip on what was happening.
“Fuck that.” Roland shook his head. “Fuck nurture. Fuck nature. You were born this way. No way around it. If I had chained you to the wall in the cellar and pissed in your mouth for supper, you still wouldn’t go out to rape fourteen year old girls if there was one human bone in your bodies. And you’re not getting away with that.”
“Big D?” Snot dangled from Johnjo’s nose. “Don’t kill me.”
Roland stared into Johnjo’s hollow eyes. There was no understanding, no remorse, nothing. Just primal fear. He stood up and it took all of his strength to stagger over to the boys, dragging his tank behind. Molten steel surged against his lung and the spittle he swallowed turned to acid in his chest. He counted his steps, so the pain wouldn’t swallow him and bring him down to his knees. Three, two, one, and he dropped down between his grandsons, his legs trembling and his heart humping his rips. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw Simon’s jaw slacken and his head slumping down.
He reached over, gave the wheel another turn and slammed the mask against Simon’s nose.
“Breathe, you fucker,” he said. “You’re not croaking on me just now. Breathe. Breathe!”
Simon’s chest moved. And Johnjo made a move for the gun. He grabbed Roland’s hand, wriggled and wrestled, pressing it down and pumping it, aimlessly, desperate, but forceful.
“Not… going… to… happen.” Roland squinted through little black holes dancing in front of him, held his breath and put the last bit of strength his body had to offer into his arm, slammed the elbow back, and Johnjo’s jowl dangled like a broken ventriloquist’s doll. The pain made his grip even harder. Roland heard one of his knuckles pop, and the gun went off. The bullet went straight through the tank’s oxygen gauge and little shreds of glass pierced Simon’s eye. He didn’t seem to notice. Johnjo went rigid. Roland dropped the gun. The tank hissed oxygen.
“You pissed yourself,” Roland said, pointing at Johnjo’s trousers. Maybe all that sluicing oxygen was making him a bit stoned or that piss stain really looked like Piers Morgan’s profile.
“Oh…” Roland laughed. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t care. It was the first laugh he had in over a decade. “You thought we’d all go out in a blaze of fucking glory. Jesus. Oxygen doesn’t explode, you stupid shit.”
Johnjo wasn’t moving. Neither was Simon’s chest anymore.
“How about bumming us a fag, boy?” Roland took a pack of cigarettes from Johnjo’s breast pocket.
“Fucking Marlboro’s. Always been an Old Holborn man, me.”
He slowly put the cigarette between his lips, bit down on the filter. His fingers went back into the breast pocket.
“Oxygen, like I said, doesn’t explode.”
Johnjo’s eyelids flattered. His upper lid curled.
“You want to say something, huh?” Roland pulled the Zippo out and hit it against Johnjo’s forehead.
“What oxygen does, however, is support combustion.”
Roland looked at the Zippo, flicked it open.
“Told you. You’re not getting away, the both of you.”
He gave Johnjo a wide smile.
“I really wonder if I’m quick enough to get one last drag out of that cigarette,” he said.
by 
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That was a blast!!
Cool.