99 Bottles of Sorrow [Nephero]

[GoblinFae]

    Why the hell had she ever left Solarta? Better yet, why had she never saw fit to properly return until now? This was home. This is where she had been born and raised. This is where she belonged with all her greyneck faults and rough edges. She had been all around the country from dome to dome and yet this is where her roots still tethered her. What kind of fool was she to give it up? Should have stayed with Coy, should have begged him not to leave. Should have done a lot of things. How could she be so stupid?

    Blu’s head spun with thoughts as she blinked her eyes wearily under the oppressive glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. The cold tile wall of the bathroom felt good against her back as she just rested there for a few moments and tried to gain her bearings again. Everything felt sluggish like the sand at the top of the hourglass that didn’t know it was about to be sucked through a hungry abyss like the rest of its brethren. She was swimming through a fog, unable to break free but still breathing.

    An unsteady step had her keeling to the left slightly before she was able to grab ahold of the counter and right herself again. It took some effort to wave the sink into turning on but eventually she was able to get it on AND get the soap to dispense into the correct hand and not that tricky false one floating in the edge of her vision. It was habit to scrub them over and over again in a familiar pattern all the way up to her elbows. Every bit had to be clean. You didn’t want to make anyone sick with pesky little things like germs.

    Funny how it was always the smallest things that had the greatest impact. A germ could kill you. A baby could rock your world. In the end Blu had been the one to kill Petite though. She was good at that, murdering loved ones. Coy. Darrin. Jonsey. Koba. Worf. Petite. Dead by her hand or close to. She was really good at that it seemed.

    Blu dried her hands and caught sight of herself in the mirror. That was why she never came back home. Past the red-rimmed eyes and dark circles beneath them was the face of a woman who never quite fit in. Berry-wine stained as always, she was a pathetic sight to behold. She was weak. She was useless. She was a disgrace.

    “No man would wanna marry a clown like ya. You’re a freak!”

    She couldn’t even keep her own child alive. She lost everything and everyone to the point that even her own body betrayed her. What good was she? She failed as a wife. She failed as a doctor. She failed as a commander. She failed as a mother. That one fucking hurt. She hadn’t even meant to become one and then the gods cursed her the moment she fell in love with that unborn child.

    “Are you happy now?” she screamed, slamming her fists down onto the porcelain counter. “Gods both I did what you wanted! Are you laughing at me now? Have I not suffered enough for your amusement? How much more penance must I serve before you are satisfied with the blood I have shed for you? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT OF ME?!” Blu howled, her whole body shaking with the fury she felt deep within as hot tears choked her and flooded her eyes once more.

    The door banged open seconds later as some scruffy blonde man poked his head into the bathroom. “Lady, you’re in th’ gents. Lemme call someone for ya, ya should really go on home now.”

    “Oh fuck you!” she barked back, slamming a wad of paper towels into the bin as she staggered past him and back into the dive bar. “I don’t need nobody,” she added with a quiet, raspy sniffle.

[GoblinFae]

“Je suis malade.”

[nephero]

   “I mean for fuck’s sake I saw th’ thing an’ I just… I ain’t never cried over a clown before. I miss him so bad, Bell.”

[nephero]

   “Onlookers Horrified as Local Pilot an’ Hero Blows His Own Fuckin’ Nuts Off Doin’ Stupid Shit, Best an’ Prettiest Friend says ‘I told you so.’”

   “What kinda headlines you been readin’ where that’s ever a headline?” Yavul called back to the wooden fence, where Blu was perched remarkably well for someone who was holding out her comm in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. In the dimness of the night, as far out from the residential zones as they were, as close to the dome wall as they were, the feedback from her comm’s screen rendered Blu’s face a ghostly… well… blue.

   “Clearly a trustworthy establishment, look at how pretty they said I was,” Blu sighed, before dissolving into giggles right into another mouthful of whiskey. Yavul snorted, turning his head into the shoulder of his vest to keep from choking on the dust devils gathered at his boots from where he crouched, poised and ready, over a small pyramid of various fireworks.

   “Trustworthy the freckliest part a’ my ass,” Yavul crowed, flicking his thumb against the wheel of the dime store lighter until the sparks caught and held. Lip between his teeth, Yavul eased the fuse towards the flame, breath held as the ventilated breeze pushed it back towards his only remaining thumb. Maybe he should’ve held it the other way around, dexterity being of the essence here, but soon enough the fuse caught and started snaking is way along a long, thin, black line. “There we go!”

   “Getcher ass back here ‘fore I gotta drag it t’ th’ burn ward!” Blu yelled, as if he would somehow miss her words over the quiet hissing. Yavul ‘baahhh’d loudly back, waving her on with his metal hand as he retrieved his brandy from the dust and took a long, solid swig.

   Too long, though, because from countless repetitions of the video (thanks to one Pilot Blu Moon), it was obvious that Yavul was somewhat startled by the sudden arrival of the fireworks he had lit, and no matter how loud they were, they were not loud enough to hide his yelp of terror and surprise.

[GoblinFae]

“I have t’ pee!”

[nephero]

   “Adieu, fleur douce, ce monde n'était pas prêt pour toi.”

[GoblinFae]

    Blu couldn’t remember when they’d crawled into the latest honky-tonk but it smelled like whiskey and cigarettes and the music was blaring with the lights down low, so it was good enough for her. The beat pulsing in her bones was strong enough to drown out her blues if only for a few passing moments. It was certainly long enough for her to hop on over to the bar top and order several rounds of drinks for two.

    She knocked back her shots quickly, gasping at the burn before smiling impishly. That buzz in  her veins was fast returning and she was not about to let it get chased away any time soon. For the quicker it died, the sooner she would have to face reality again. No one wanted that.

    The songs changed and suddenly the beer in her hand was forgotten as she began to dance from side to side, her head swaying and swinging like a saloon door. Blu just didn’t care who saw her or heard her as she started belting out the lyrics along with the band.

    Yavul swam into her field of vision and was easily dragged close into dancing with her. He might have tried to say something to her but above all the noise, both the band’s and her own, there was no telling what he was saying. Blu laughed, raising her arms high above her head and nearly spilling her drink in the process as she let the music take control.

[nephero]

   “Last call!”

   “—For alcohol, so finish your whiskey or beer.” Yavul rumbled, not even bothering with things like tone or pitch or anything to do with not sounding like a howling dog on a creaky wooden porch. Blu seemed to agree, making wide oh-ow-oh’s with her mouth just enough to reach the few short inches between her head and his ear.

   “Awoooo, fuckin’ boo,” the other commander pushed herself up and off the considerably more comfortable than it looked metal shoulder she’d been using as both stand and pillow, brushing at it to get the fog of her breath off the metal alloy. “It ain’t even late!”

   “Aw, hell, I gotta piss,” Yavul said, obviously in reply to the conversation they were having at that exact moment in time. He shuffled sideways out of the booth, the bottles and glasses rattling as his knee struck a corner and shook the table.

   “Well fuck don’t go takin’ the whole house down with you,” Blu grinned, shaking her glass a bit to dislodge the ice cubes that had melted into one another over the course of the morning night. What little liquid that remained she knocked back quick as a fiddle, before setting the empty-ish glass down with its brethren.

   “I’ll take whatever house I damn well want down wherever I damn well want it,” Yavul said, particularly dramatically as he ran through the last three shots he’d had lined up. “Like a damn… what’re they called. Them big fuckoff bowlin’ balls on a chain.”

   “Bowlin’ balls!” Blu howled, slapping the table and setting off a clapping rattle of glass with every strike of her palm. “You mean a wreckin’ ball?”

   “Whatever kinda balls you got t’ be me.” Yavul said, a little too loudly and a little too proudly, but certainly worth the lung ripping laughter that shortly followed. At least until that whole bathroom issue became more urgent, and he had to make a leaping run for the men’s room before all hell truly broke loose.

[GoblinFae]

“Whadya mean you’re outta pancakes? Well can I have pancakes instead?”

[nephero]

   “You’re plenty things, Bluebell Moon. Stubborn as a jackass an’ twice th’ hard worker, cheater at bets an’ master a’ makin’ nefarious deals with devil men, but ain’t no one. Ever. Been worse off havin’ had you around. Don’t let a pig shit like that sell you any lies.”

[nephero]

   Woosh! Bee-dooo!

   “Bee-boop,” Yavul sing-sung along as the automatic doors shut behind them, blinking blearily up at the sudden sunrise of white-blue fluorescence until his eyes adjusted to being suddenly inside. It was weird, in a lot of ways, how indoor lighting looked in the dead of night. It didn’t seem the same in the late evening; somehow you had to be there after midnight to get the full “nighttime” effect, where the buzzing of the lighting was louder than the entirety of the restaurant.

   Shuffling just to the side so Blu could go ahead of him, he checked his comm. 01:04 in the a of em. Blu toddled to the right, her fingers brushing up and over the carefully sculpted metal railing that funneled the lunch rush into a neat, orderly line. In the dead of the night, it looked like some kind of haunted carnival site. Like where a Soul’s Night scarefest had gone wrong some decades back and now no one dared set foot on that particular patch of dust and dirt.

   “When’s th’ last you been t’ a carnival?” Blu asked, wobbily, gripping onto the railing and leaning back full body in order to look at Yavul, rather than bother with the intricacies of stopping and turning herself a full 180 degrees. Yavul frowned, exited out of his text history, and pocketed his comm. Somewhere in a long blink of an eye had him straddling the railing, climbing over each one to get where Blu had gotten to, because again, that was somehow easier and less complex than following the cattle chute like a civilized human being.

   “Carnival?”

   “You’re talkin’ about haunted carnivals, I’m sayin’ they’re all haunted,” Blu continued, all the way up to the front counter where a very tired and very unsurprised young woman stood, all shock of blue hair and zero interest in entertaining a couple of drunks this evening. “I mean think about it. You ever actually seen it been set up? Nah. You ever actually see people loadin’ it all in? Nah. It just comes in bits’an’pieces and takes a bit’an’piece on th’ way out.”

   “What’re you even on about?” Yavul scoffed, hands making an alternating rhythm on the countertop as he flicked between menu options and reread each one about three times.

   “They’re cussed as all hell, every last one of ‘em,” Blu said, smiling sweetly at the girl on the other end of the countertop. A little too sweetly, like sugarwater that ran and had to be quickly wiped away. Distant-sweet, a thousand thought-miles away sweet, straight into another universe with all the collective haunted carnival grounds. “I would love them mini-pancakes. Y’all still got th’ mini-pancakes?”

   “That were seasonal,” said the girl, glancing back at the two equally tired looking fry cooks behind the fry warmer.

   “Nooo!”

   “Y-yes?”

   “Alright alright alright,” Yavul said, waving his hands amicably between both women as if shooshing a spranger and a coyote, “Two large curly fries, please an’ thank you ma chérie.”

   “I loved th’ mini-pancakes,” Blu sighed even as Yavul flicked his wrist over the chip scanner, continuing his moonwalk back where they kept the tubs of pumpable preservative flavoring. Which might have looked cooler if he hadn’t misjudged the angle and moonwalked his ass right back into the cattle chute railing, foot catching mid slide and sending him back first onto the tile.

   Before the gasping could stop, though, Yavul already had his hands in the air, blocking out the worst of the fluorescent starlight. “An’ he sticks th’ landin’, crowd goes wild, aahhh!”

   “Ten,” Blu said in between long, wheezing guffaws, “outta ten.”

[GoblinFae]

“I wanna name her Belladonna. Belladonna Joelle Moon. Got a nice ring t’ it, don’t it?”

[nephero]

   “I don’t think it’s th’ land. It’s the people what’s cursed. Who else goes t’ a carnival?”

[GoblinFae]

    She giggled until she was out of breath, wheezing and rocking to the point that she nearly fell off her barstool again. That would make it what the third time? Fourth? No, it was definitely the fourth. Right? Fuck it, what did it matter? The flashing lights were so bright in here.

    The words in the chatroom skimmed by quickly and the effort to type properly was becoming more and more of a struggle. Harley was there though. He was such fun! He had wanted to sell her womb out. Blu laughed again, this time falling off the stool for good and crashing into Yavul in the process.

    “Oopsie!” she yelled into his ear while using his strong form to steady herself again. A long line of empty bottles and glasses caught her eye to the point that she quickly signaled the bartender over. Two more bottles, slick with condensation thunked onto the counter moments later.

    Blu was already knocking hers back before the poor man had managed to even turn away. Her comm beeped again, dragging her attention back to it.

Yavul: Can't hear over th karaoke my son
Yavul: is so bad

    “SING!!!” she squealed into Yavul’s ear before bouncing to type the words into the chat. It didn’t take much for him to agree and she was soon clapping her hands like a little girl. When he was called to stage she was the loudest one to hoot and holler her cheers for him.

    Blu had no idea what song he was singing. She wasn’t even sure if it was him singing or not. Her head was thumping and her eyes felt heavy. A massive yawn practically split her in two as she stole the rest of Yavul’s drink for her own. Or at least she thought it was his drink. It was hard to tell among all the glassware currently occupying their section of the bar.

    She shrugged before chugging the remains. Blu blinked and the moment was gone again. Yavul was back and apparently with the way his lips were moving he was talking too. Damn if she knew what he was saying though.

[nephero]

   “Tu es une mère géniale.”

[GoblinFae]

    “Why do th’ Gods hate us so fuckin’ much, Agave? Why wasn’t I ever good enough for ‘em? They made me this way and every chance of happiness I make they take from me, from you. What did we ever do wrong?”