Some Kind of Nightmare
Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 11:46 pm
16 Vortas ♦ Evening ♦ The Clockwork Stag
Easy breaths: in, out. In, out. That’s the theory, anyway, but life never really works out according to theory – at least, it hadn’t for Tom. Once, when he was just a boch, Marleigh told him always to grab the bull by the horns, whatever that meant; if you had something to do, you just had to do it, plain and simple, and worry about the consequences later. Tom had never been a thinking man, and he’d been proud of it. He’d never had time to think, so he’d been damn sure of everything he did.
Now he had lots of time to think, and he wasn’t damn sure of anything, and he reckoned it was fair affecting his health. Or Anatole’s health, such as it was. The headaches and the chest pains and the shakes were getting worse all the time, and if he didn’t get used to living like this, he’d die. He tried to push it to the back of his head like he’d always done – easy as pie, it used to be, when he’d had to have a little chat with one dobber or another – but this was a whole other world of vodundun. This was shit that they studied at Brunnhold and still hadn’t figured out. This was a bad dream, except he was living it, and there was no waking up.
They left him alone at the Clockwork Stag, mostly. He’d gotten a few looks the first time he’d ducked in; most people in the Soot District didn’t give him a second thought, and he figured near everybody else took him for a wick, but up close, most people could tell there was something off. You didn’t see gollies at the Stag, near ever. But he had a field like a mung Brunnhold dropout and never made any jibber, so the looks were short-lived, and he’d even gotten a couple of quick, sympathetic smiles. (He guessed he looked the worse for wear, all sick and overworked and past his prime.)
Tonight the Stag wasn’t so busy. He was sitting slumped over a rickety little table, nursing a drink from a clay mug that looked more like a deformed animal than a drinking vessel. Thump, thump, thump went the pulse in his head – he pressed his fingers to his temples, massaged. Easy. With his other hand, he took another drag on his cigarette; he peered through the smoke at the Stag’s other clientele. It was something he used to do in Old Rose, trying to guess who’d be an easy lift, even after he’d gotten done being a petty thief. Something to focus on, even now. For a little bit he might’ve even forgotten who he was – he could’ve been himself again, slumped at the Black Dove after a long day, determined to get guttered while the night was young. Except these were different people, and he’d never again be himself, not ever.
Tom knew the lady sitting alone by the stairs, one of Burns’ better mugs cupped in her swollen hands. She was pale, face pinched and strained, a couple wisps of gray hair escaping her headband. Her threadbare dress hung loose and baggy around her skinny limbs, and she had the tell-tale stoop of somebody who spent all day bent over machinery. She had a kid who’d just started working. He still remembered how she’d fumbled the other day and nearly lost a finger, when one of the machines had stopped working. He’d offered to take over for her, but she wouldn’t speak to him, nor let her boch around him, neither. She acted sheepish around him, like if she breathed on him wrong, he might call the Seventen. She looked up, and he glanced away quickly.
He didn’t know the couple who’d just come in. Tall woman, black hair just barely staying in a braid. Great, dark-skinned man with a lined face and kind eyes. Both in working clothes. Wait, he did know the man – he’d seen him at docks. That’s where he knew another man, a big rough-looking man at the bar who’d just busted his mug. The serving girl was saying something smart to him –
Great fuckin’ Lady, look who just walked in.
Tom swallowed thickly and scratched his head, trying to cover up his face with his arm. He hadn’t had long to look, but he’d seen it: that tell-tale wobble in the air. That was the real deal. He wheezed and hacked, taking a shuddering breath through his lungs; all of the sudden his shoulders were hunched around his ears and he couldn’t breathe for the smoke, for his nerves, for the walls closing in on him. Was that a clocking auntie? Here? Why?
He took a quick drink, thinking it might steady him, but his hands were all jelly now and he couldn’t move right and he fumbled –
Crack!
“Shit!” he snarled, then jumped, still not used to the sound of his voice. “Sack it!” There was ale all over the table, soaking into the wood, busted-up clay in puddles of it like islands. He tried to shuffle them together with his shaky hands, muttering rapidly under his breath, unable to calm down. The pounding in his head spiked; it felt like his brain had come dislodged and was clattering around in there.
Swallowing again – nearly choking – he looked up, terrified of whose attention he might’ve caught.