Hammerport

Mr. Alpha responded, “I really fucking hate beer. There’s no lager, fuck it.” He looked up at the sweaty blob of a man behind the bar whose vertical dimensions paled in comparison with his horizontal ones. He was a walking, breathing, nightmarish advert for the alcoholic delights available in his fine establishment, although how much longer he would be walking and breathing for would be anyone’s guess. “Why don’t you have any lager, mate?”

The bar man reached under the bar and pulled out a sea-blue cap like a rabbit out of hat. He put it on back-to-front, clashing with the lime green polo shirt that failed in its one and only task: to shield an unsuspecting world from his blubber. He leaned forward with his best intimidating face. “I was in the marines, lad.”

“That twat needs to be dealt with,” Mr. Omega said to Mr. Alpha.

With the conciliatory tone of a dictator armed with an arsenal of WMDs that could be launched in 45 minutes, Mr. Alpha said to the bar man, “Too fucking right he does. You don’t like the suit, is that it? It wasn’t my fucking choice, alright? Or is it you don’t like a couple of Londoners in your quaint toilet water of a town that no one wants to fucking visit anyway? What’s your problem, mate? An ex-marine, huh? What did you fuck up to get yourself kicked out of the marines?”

The bar man leaned forward even more, which was an impressive feat considering the enormous bulk of his belly had already invaded half the bar with such aggressive force that war crimes had surely been committed. “I did my time, lad. What have you ever done for your country?”

Mr. Alpha had been taught to apply the tools of implication and intent in confrontations whenever possible; action carried the possibility of unwanted exposure. He responded to the fool’s manoeuvre by staring directly into the bar man’s gaze while sliding the half-full beer glass aside with calculated deliberation that implied the potentiality of an event between them. His face seemed to harden and became like sculpted granite. Emotions were no longer in attendance.

“You don’t want to fucking know what I’ve done,” Mr. Alpha began coldly. “You really don’t want to fucking know. You want to mind your own fucking business, you fucking fat shithead. Truth is ghost.” He did not blink, but did permit himself a soft smile, knowing that this would not come to blows.

The bar man acquiesced and retreated with his own smile, a weak, conciliatory alternative to Mr. Alpha’s composed edition. He had realised, at last, that he was in the presence of dangerous urban legends made flesh. Tread lightly, Mr. Alpha had intimated, because it is thin bloody ice beneath your encumbered feet this day.