Free Jammy Dodger by Kevin Smith

d’you think y’are …’ He squinted down the barrel of the gun. ‘And secondly, WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO SHITE ON ME LIKE YOU’RE GOD ALMIGHTY?’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜SHUT UP.’
    He helped himself to a biscuit.
    â€˜Fuck me, these are rotten. Have you no fig rolls?’
    â€˜We – ’
    â€˜Shut up, Oliver,’ I said. ‘ Listen, Mr … um, sorry I don’t know your name …’
    He took his time chewing a mouthful of biscuit, swallowed and ran his tongue round his gums.
    â€˜They call me Mad Dog.’
    Winks whimpered.
    â€˜Mr Mad … Dog. If you’ll just tell us how we can help you, maybe we can – ’
    â€˜No, no, no, no, no. No …’ He shook his head and looked to the heavens. ‘No, no, it’s WAAYY too fucken late for that. Way too late. You had your chance. And you fucken blew it.’
    He rubbed biscuit crumbs from his moustache, then ruffled his hair, checking its dampness level. The style was what cultural historians would later term ‘the Weeping Willow Mullet’: flat on top, with long sideburns and a semi-perm effect at the rear. ‘And yese call yourselves editors.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what – ’
    â€˜SHUT UP! What do editors do?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜WHAT DO EDITORS DO?’
    â€˜Edit?’
    â€˜They edit. And what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means they find new writing by new writers and they publish it. Isn’t that right?’
    â€˜Yes, but – ’
    â€˜You couldn’t see what was in front of you, could you? You could NOT see what you held in your hand.Why? Because it was different, it was real. It was from real life . It wasn’t smartypants, it wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t – ’ His features twisted horribly – ‘ nice .’
    He glared at each of us in turn.
    â€˜Mad Dog didn’t go to a posh school. He didn’t go to bigknob university. And that means he couldn’t be in your nice wee fucken magazine, for your nice wee friends to put on their nice wee fucken coffee tables in their NICE WEE FUCKEN HOUSES …’
    He was perspiring and a jagged blueish vein had surfaced in the crescent of tiredness beneath his left eye. (It occurred to me on some abstract level that he might have a point, and a quick, hot jolt of ill-defined shame swept through me.)
    â€˜And yese didn’t even have the COMMON DECENCY TO REPLY. To put one wee FUCKEN LETTER in the FUCKEN POST!’
    He stood up (Winks cowered), set his gun on the desk and removed his jacket. A white cap-sleeved T-shirt revealed extravagant tattoo work, notably: a three-headed hellhound on his right forearm, the ace of spades with a grinning skull at its centre on his left. In gothic script beneath the playing card was Do’nt forget the joker . Sound advice. Assorted other creations adorned his heavily-muscled upper arms. (Despite the abject terror I still found myself puzzling over the H-E-A-T on his knuckles. Could it be a phonetic spelling of the Belfast pronunciation of hate?)
    â€˜So you see,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘In my world, it’s very important that people are nice and polite to each other. It helps keep everybody calm. So, when people are rude, what generally happens is that they get a wee lesson …’
    â€˜Now hold on – ’ Oliver tried again.
    â€˜SHUT THE FUCK UP I AM FUCKEN WARNING YOU I AM GOING TO FUCKEN SHOOT SOMEONE.’
    A new vein sprang to life in his temple, as though a countdown timer had been triggered. There was froth on his moustache. He continued.
    â€˜â€¦Â A wee lesson in manners which, in your case, will mean stairs could be a wee problem for yese, if you know what I mean. In fact, yese might want to think about taking an office on the ground floor. I think you’ll find that