He made a point of sitting at the back. Usually he wouldn�t. Usually he�d sit at the first totally free seat � if there happened to be any � and sit side-on, taking up both seats. He�d stay that way until the bus got so packed he felt obliged to offer a space to an elderly woman, or sometimes the whole seat to two. Usually that was what he did. Today he sat up the back.
One of the well-represented elderly caught him on the way - an old schoolteacher of his.
�Alright James?� she said, �how�s your dad?� Concerned tones.
Jim � not James � stopped and spoke to her, explaining everything. The teacher - Mrs Mercer - nodded concerned nods. Jim would usually have mumbled the minimum and walked on - Mrs Mercer seemed to enjoy belting him a bit too much - but he was in the mood for bullshitting, fooling someone. He even spoke posh.
�He�s doing fine, the nurses are surprised at how quick he�s been up and about, they say he�s got the fitness of somebody much younger.�
�Really? Let�s hope it continues like that and he�s back to normal.�
No mention of what happened. It was like he�d been struck down with hyporthemia, or some other old-folk�s disease.
Outside: shopfronts, a ratio of one boarded-up to two still-in-business. The streets were crowded with old folk, up for early-morning shopping and early morning bingo. Old wifies going to the hairdressers to blow twenty quid of their pension on a sheer-white perm, old men off to the pub to get wasted.
The younger generation were represented with young mums, fourteen to twenty-something, shoving prams and buggies, blethering to each other. The boys were the early-dole-appointment crowd, mixed in with some who made their living �buying and selling� � the entrepreneurs.
Jim�s dad used to say, the things you see when you dinnae hae a gun.
Jim�s dad used to say, if anybody hits you, you hit them back, and I dinnae care who thi are.
It was a rites of passage, having someone pick on you. When he was eight, Jim used to have a guy nicknamed Dodge, who filled the position of tormentor to the best of his ability. Like most bullies he�d always materialise whenever Jim happened to be on his own. Dodge was never on his own, though � it was like he went to bed with four or five pals and woke up with them in the morning.
It was nearly a daily event, Dodge either kicking seven bells out of him or threatening to.
The fuck ir you looking it?
The threats could be worse, waiting for it to happen.
Even now, in the bus, he could conjure it up, the riot in his belly, then his knees going weak, his guts, skeleton, brain, tongue, and every other thing in his body threatening to spill out of his arse and gather in a puddle round his feet. The fear, terror, and the humiliation of having the verbals, and the kicking if it came; of having it played out to an audience like you were just some piece of shite just there to provide a laugh . . .
Jim clenched his right fist, then released. He moved his left hand up until it was level with his left nipple, and he touched the top of the gorilla bar. Gorilla bar, it was like a crowbar, only stronger.
�Wanti Lumphinnans.�
The guy getting on the bus was one of them. Jim stared at him, at the baseball cap, the visor-thing sticking up at an angle like something a fucking dinosaur�d have. Burberry check. The polo shirt, tight, the jeans, tight, the Rockport shoes � hundred-and-odd quid and they all had them.
�Same as him.�
His pal was the same. The same skinny frame, the same brain-dead look about the mouth, the same sadism in their eyes.
Usually he�d pretend they weren�t there.
He stared at them as they walked down the centre of the bus, towards him. Stared like he wanted to burn holes in them with his eyes. Hoping they�d open their mouths, and say just a few magic words. Just a what the fuck ir you looking it? Or you goat afuckin problem? to allow Jim to take that gorilla bar out of his inside pocket and smash both their fucking faces in until they were mush, right there on the bus, laughing as he did it, pissing himself.
They�d sat down two seats in front of him. They hadn�t caught his eye. They seemed to sense it. Things really were different.
Not like last time.
Last time was after the break-in. His dad was up North with his mum � the last holiday before she died � and the cunts broke in. Made a mess of the place, fucked it up, took the telly, some money, jewellery. It�s such a clich� it wouldn�t even be worth explaining to anyone.
Jim explained it to the policeman. About how they�d been there forty years, and all this other shit that � looking back � he�d have been better just not mentioning. The policeman said they�d try and catch who did it, they never did it.
He was with Brenda then. That was round about the time she finally got round to realising how weird he was, and how he�d never have bairns; round the time she chucked him. It was staying indoors for three whole months that did it. Apart from going to work, he never left the house.
In the spare room in the dark, on his own, he�d just lie on the bed and think about what he should do to those responsible. Thinking was all he would do; then. But you just couldn�t stop it. He�d been hearing the stories, reading the papers, he�d known this happened, but now it had happened to him And could he let them just do it, just make a cunt of his mum and dad, who�d worked blah blah blah, and him? All the scum he�d tried to ignore, he�d let away with fucking shit all through his life just to try and make life easier, to not create scenes or trouble, all these cunts who�d just �
These memories were angry, he wasn�t. His heart was beating at its normal rate. His breathing was okay. Everything, he realised now, on the bus, was past-tense. All these shitty scenes from his shitty life all replaying: just another collection of soap scenes from a Scottish drama which would�ve probably only lasted one series, then been cancelled, due to it making every cunt miserable.
He was going on a bus to another part of his hometown, armed with a gorilla bar in one pocket and a butcher knife in the other. He was going to stab, beat, and generally fuck up a man named Ross Menzies until he was dead. Then he was going to walk the short distance to Ross� best friend Alan McHale�s house and do the same to Alan McHale.
Simple.
He was going to do it, too. This time he could feel it.
He�d been watching them. They were both on the dole but worked on the side, labouring. They both had long criminal records, which would�ve been longer if a lot of people were too scared to report the numerous kickings they tended to hand out. Well-known to the police, they suggested the names right away whenever Jim�s dad described the cunts.
They both had the look of walking abortions, the kind of fucked-up scum who�re born and just take, take, take, and fuck up and waste everything their whole lives, not giving a fuck about any cunt, only occasionally giving a fuck about themselves. Every arsehole who asks you for a fag out of the blue and stares at you like it isn�t a question, every cunt waiting to stamp on a head or boot a face during a fight. Every piece of shit loitering in Hyena packs wherever they fancy.
What they fancy, just doing what they fancy and getting a million fucking chances or ending up on some fucking outwards bounds course or in prison which according to every cunt isn�t even that bad if you�re in with the right folk � if you�re a sadistic cunt.
They were both dads, McHale and with their bairns� names tattooed on their backs, tattoos they�d show off as they fucked about in their garden with their music blaring and Jim watching from fifty yards.
That was the problem, the bairns. Fucked-up scum like McHale and Menzies bred like rabbits. Every fucked up retarded violent evil cunt like this would have three or four bairns to three or four braindead fucked-up retarded women and these fucked-up bairns would grow up either battered or forgotten about and would grow more fucked-up and do the same. The scum breeding and breeding while Mr and Mrs Sensible, both working, nice people, like him and Brenda; while Mr and Mrs Sensible would wait and budget and when/if their child arrived they�d showed it with love and affection but try not to spoil it . . .
Then sent it out at age four to get wasted, victimised, maimed, killed, their lives-made-misery on by the fucked-up scum . . .
Ah�ll never hae bairns, he used to tell Brenda, and she�d think he was joking.
Ah�ll never hae bairns; ah worry too much aboot folk is it is.
One more stop to go, and he was approaching an ending. And his fa�ade was crumbling . . . or maybe not. His legs were weak, his stomach churned, there was none of the slippery feelings, none of that. Anticipation, that was it, anticipation.
His dad�s face after it happened was like the right side had caved in. His eye was a weird shape, his cheekbone all crumpled-in � the other one was a distant dot shot into the swelled sockets. The bruises were bright purple, bright bright purple, and they spilled from his face down his neck, like paint.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it, imagine how it would really be, not a Hollywood version. It would really be fumbling and pain and awkward, it�d really be horrible. But he was doing it, he�d done. The knife plunged right into the side of the cunt�s neck, sunk in again, again, however many times it took to get him weakened. Then the gorilla bar on the cunt�s legs, hands, ribs. Torture the cunt, get him screaming.
His head was all lumps, all swollen. His ribs just big splodges of poisoned blood under his skin � older and wafer-thin, even in undamaged parts; he�d never noticed that before.
It was time to be brave. He was ready for the sacrifice. There was only so much you could take. Maybe one Dodge was alright, but a succession, your whole life, just in varying degrees? Then your one surviving parent � your one surviving fucking parent? Blah blah blah - it was a clich�, it wasn�t even worth telling people about. But this time it was different.
He was ready for the hassle, because that was all killing meant. The same way dying did. Like when his mum got cancer. It wasn�t the dying that was bad, it the hassle. The hospital appointments, the waiting-for-results, the therapy, the whole drama of it all. That was it, hassle. He was ready for his hassle.
And a few of his knuckles were broken, and his thumbs.
He was only sorry he never had more time. Sorry he couldn�t search out every bit of scum in the country and kill every one of them, one by one. It�d do more good for the country than a million regeneration committees.
The stop was visible now, the ending in sight.
This country, he thought. This country�s fucked, this country�s fucked. If this is what it�s like now what�ll it be like in twenty years?
If this is what it�s like now . . .
You gonnae dae it? He asked himself, finally.
He felt like screaming.
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