“No it’s been more than thirty...forty-five at least,” the brown-haired man added.
“One what?” I hated this. “What do you mean, ‘an outsider’ like me”?
“An outsider that’s human,” the red-haired man said, watchful of listeners around him. “You should be careful,” he added.
“He’s right,” said the brown-haired man, “and you should get yourself a weapon or six.”
“Tell me about the queen,” I whispered nervously, “if you don’t mind.”
The red-haired man looked around the tavern once more to make sure no one else was listening, and then took me by the shoulder.
“Lilith’s boys are everywhere, and it’s their job to kill every queen.”
I was no less confused.
“...Oh, and to kill every man that comes from the Outside whose job it is to give up his seed to her.”
My eyes grew wide. My heart thudded in my chest and then made its way to my stomach. I felt incredibly dizzy.
The red-haired man helped me to the table where the dog under it still lay chewing on leftover bones. The other two men went back to their drinking.
“Explains why you’re runnin’ around with the little demon.”
“He’s supposed to be helping me.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” the red-haired man went on, “but I can tell you to watch your back everywhere in Creation. Keep your head about you. Be careful trusting women and you’ll need help getting into the fortress.”
Creation? My head? I pressed a hand to my chest, searching for my heartbeat. “Creation?” I said aloud.
“Oh boy, you really are from the Outside.”
A barmaid sauntered over. She may have once been a beautiful woman. Now, scars and needle marks in the bends of her arms fouled her. Her eyes were bright like emeralds, but tired and corrupt. Her plump breasts spilled out over her top, revealing every freckle and mole though they were strangely attractive.
“Why did you come to Fiedel City anyway?” said the red-haired man to me, expertly changing the subject. He swilled down his drink and gorged the greasy meat on his plate in-between words. He eyed me with a be-careful-what-you-say sort of look.
“I guess I...uh...needed to get away from home, see what else the world has to offer.”
“So you chose Fiedel City?” The red-haired man faked a dubious look in his short glance. “If you haven’t already noticed, this isn’t exactly a place to stretch your wings.”
“You want anything?” the barmaid asked. “Anything at all....” She traced her tongue along the length of her painted lips.
“We have everything we need here,” said the brown-haired man from the bar. “Ale, the finest food in the North, and plenty of women!”
For a moment, I hoped no one saw the disgusted look that manipulated my face. The ale tasted like horse piss—I was positive that’s how horse piss tasted—the food...well, it had no right to be called food, and the women....
“Too small,” the red-haired man said. “Fiedel City is a speck on the map compared to the other cities. Blink and miss it, y’know. And there ain’t much magic anymore.”
“Well, I’m only passing through,” I said. “Not that I don’t enjoy your city. It’s...nice.”
All of the men laughed.
“You keep telling yourself that,” said the red-haired man.
The barmaid was now sitting on the edge of the table; dress pulled up the thigh, a mug of ale in one hand.
“Go away woman,” said the red-haired man. He put his thick, rugged fingers in his mouth, then suckled the juices from the meat and tossed the bone onto the floor. The black mutt underneath the table lapped at it, growled and then carried it off to a more private spot near the far wall.
The barmaid stood up and leaned over me, pressing her enormous, jiggling breasts into view. “Name’s Charla,” she said with the flick of her tongue. “I’ll check back with you later.”
She brushed her hand under my chin, winked and walked away into the crowd.
I was oddly attracted to her and though she faintly stank like sex, it mattered about as much as the horse piss ale: it still hit the spot and the rest was beside the point. I watched her go until the ale and spit shower shook me from my horny daze.
“There are some magics left here,” slurred Morris, hovering over me now. “Ronan in Big Creek says so.”
My curiosity was only mild. “What kind of magic?” I said, wiping the spit from my cheek.
“Oh no! Don’t believe anything Old Ronan says,” the brown-haired man interjected. “He was born drunk—says things all the time that ain’t true, like that time he ran amok through the square sayin’ he was robbed by a band of short people with bones ‘round their necks.”
More laughter erupted.
“Well, he tells Morris things all the time ‘bout magics and bitches, and bitches that do magics. Oh, and about that angel with no eyes. Sometimes Morris believes him.”
“An angel with no eyes?”
Morris set his mug upon the table. He looked down at himself, dingy tunic stained with a bit of everything, and tried to wipe the moisture away. Side to side his body swayed.
“Bah! That old man is a teller of stories I say!” said the brown-haired man.
Morris turned to me, placed his greasy hand on my shoulder and leaned in close. The stench of his liquor-laden breath was horrendous.
“You look like a strong man. Maybe you could help Morris hunt that wolf in the wood that keeps killin’ his chickens, eh?”
Morris pulled the empty mug to his thick, cracked lips and gulped heavily at absolutely nothing. He pulled it away, still leaning on me, staring me straight in the eyes.
“If I can find the time I’ll see what I can do,” I lied.
Morris drew back and just before he fell, caught his balance on the edge of the bar. “Well, Morris bids you all a good evening. His wife is probably waitin’ by the door with a tree-whipper!”
“G’night, Morris,” said the red-haired man. “Maybe you should sneak in through the window.” He laughed and tossed another bone to the dog.
Morris stumbled out of the tavern and the tall, rickety door closed behind him, but it made no sound.
“I wouldn’t worry about Morris’ wolf problem,” said the red-haired man. “He won’t remember the agreement in the morning.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Nice to know—where’d Tsaeb go? I looked around for him, realizing only now that he had been gone for quite some time.
The red-haired man scanned for eavesdroppers.
“Look,” he said, gazing around once more, “Can’t swear my life on it, but I heard the only one to ever get into the fortress is an imp named Sophia Ana-Lula-Desderii Medishini—I know, a mouthful; she goes by Sophia. Lives with Old Ronan in Big Creek. Master and slave, bound, y’know.”
“No, I’m sorry I don’t know.”
“She’s an imp, a little bitch of an imp—all imps in Creation are bound to someone. Poor Ronan.” He drank down the last of his ale and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. A belch rattled his chest. “Cute as a button she is, but the nastiest little imp I ever saw. Worse than your friend—where’d the demon run off to anyway?”
Worse than Tsaeb? I thought, but then a familiar, unanswered question came to mind. “You said Creation—what does that mean exactly?”
The red-haired man brought up his hand and scratched the side of his chin contemplatively.
“That a trick question?” he said. “It’s just what the world is called.”
“I thought the world was called Earth.”
“Earth?” the red-haired man laughed. “Only outsiders call it that; it’s a northern-southern thing, like how people in Big Creek call ale ‘booze’ or the dimps in Bastia City say ‘Cration’ instead of how it’s supposed to be said: kree-ay-shun.”
By now, there was one thing obvious to me: this place respectfully called kree-ay-shun and not Cration, was a place wh
ere something dark and evil, long ago had taken place. The Fall of Man, perhaps?
I waved that ludicrous thought away.
“Why is Sophia the only one?”
“Cuz’ she’s that good.”
“Well, I imagine someone else has gotten inside,” I said. I took a quick sip of the horse piss.
“I mean it’s a huge fortress and surely has guards and such.” My face tightened bitterly as the ale raped my taste buds again.
The red-haired man chugged the rest of his ale, but he was obviously used to the kick. He set the mug on the table and motioned Charla the barmaid over with the wave and curl of two fingers.
“Employees of the fortress live and die in there,” the red-haired man explained, holding up his mug for Charla. His eyes never left me. “Since the beginning of the Dark Days, no one inside that fortress has ever left it.”
It was my turn to eye him with that be-careful-what-you-say look. Charla stood right there, pouring the ale, listening with her sexy smirk and popping hips. But the more I thought about it, she probably wasn’t listening at all. Other things were heavily on her mind, like getting me alone so that she could...do whatever she wants with me.
“Hey, you still in there?” The red-haired man waved his hand in front of my face.
I put my figurative tongue back in my mouth.
Charla walked away, hips moving side-to-side, eyes looking seductively over her shoulder. I noticed how much nicer her hair was than the other barmaids. Hers was barely sex-frizzed—only on one side near her forehead where she may have patted it down afterwards.
“What happened to the other queens then?”
“Dead,” the red-haired man answered. “All of em’ dead. Killed by assassins.”
My brows creased. “If no one has ever gotten inside, and no one has ever left, then how did assassins kill the other queens?”
The red-haired man looked befuddled, his mug suspended inches from his lips. “You know,” he began, “that’s a good damn question.” Absently he placed the mug on the table instead of taking that intended drink. “That-is-a-good-damn-question,” he repeated, bobbing his head with each word in emphasis, eyes knotted together above his nose.
“Bah! That’ll teach me never to listen to rumors again, eh?” That drink finally came. “Still, Sophia’s the only one I’ve ever known to get inside.”
“What makes you think she’d help me?”
“Didn’t say she’d help. Just that if you want to get in, she’s the only one I know of that can pull it off.”
There was hard a crash near the bar. The brown-haired man who had been talking with us earlier lay on the floor between two barstools. Clearly, the ale had won. No one cared to move him, but did take the time to step over him when they passed, rather than on him. Except for that one man, tall as a tree.
“I’m calling it a night,” said the red-haired man. He rose from his chair, stretching his long arms out beside him. The black mutt near the far wall jumped up and waited by the tavern door for his owner.
“Not sure if there’s anything else I can do,” the red-haired man added, “but don’t hesitate to ask if you come up with sumthin’. I’m here most of the time—name’s Mr. Cromwell, but you can call me Oliver.”
I nodded and shook Mr. Oliver Cromwell’s hand.
When I finally made my way outside too, the eerie shrouded people in the streets of Fiedel City made me recoil. The rain had failed to a drizzle. Over the rooftops, the light from the fires and lanterns danced in a glowing ginger path. Smoke rose from many chimneys, spiraling toward the sky. I could see Tsaeb standing near a shop across the muddy road. Tsaeb was being Tsaeb, probably hustling the old man in the gray cloak. I was in no mood, and headed back inside the tavern and upstairs toward our room.
Charla, with her hips, lips, almost perfect hair and far from perfect smell, was waiting for me when I got there.
“Damn you, ADHD!”
--
SHE HAD ME AGAINST the wall, like a cop doing a pat down, my hands raised high above my head, pressed against the wood. A lone candle flickered on a nightstand near the open window.
“You look terrified,” she said.
“Me?” I choked a small, nervous laugh. “No, I....”
It was difficult to speak with the way her hand moved around in my pants like that.
“I bet you’ve only ever fucked two women in your whole life,” she said, licking the back of my neck. “Your ex-wife and that girl in high school that wanted to give you her first practice blowjob behind the bleachers.”
Aside from Rebecca Hines, there was another in junior high school (eighth grade, to be precise) and it wasn’t her first blowjob; she had blown the whole school before finally getting around to me. I was always picked last. Kickball. Volleyball. Potato Sack Races. Blowjobs.
I never considered myself an unattractive man, not even in school, but good looks don’t always work by themselves when one is an anti-social wimp, whose mother is a penny-pincher and refused to buy me the latest trends growing up. It also didn’t help much that I was always generally a ‘nice guy’, and it’s true what they say about nice guys.
Take a risk...just do it and quit being a chicken shit.
My thoughts were still a little ahead of my actions.
“And uhh...how much are you going to charge me for this?” I still faced the wall, but could see vividly in my mind how her hand looked gripped around me.
“A golden thimble?”
She took my earlobe between her teeth.
“You’ve been in my room already?”
I gasped at her touch. The blood behind my eyes felt thin. “But the thimble doesn’t belong to me.”
“Then what would you offer to pay?”
My button loosened. My slacks and boxers dropped to my ankles. I stepped out of my clothes and turned around. She was already on her knees, looking up at me through bright green how-bad-do-you-want-it eyes, one hand sliding up and down the length of me.
What did she ask me again?
My eyes fell as heavy as my breath. I could feel her wet lips kissing me, her tongue snaking out of her mouth. But to keep my eyes closed was against the man code. I had to watch and as memory served it, it always felt better to watch. Before long, I was behaving like a real customer, my hands vigorously gripping the sides of her blond head.
But she kept stopping to talk. I hadn’t decided yet if that bothered me or not. Her voice was exciting; her words hot like the girls in my porno DVD’s I kept in the right side of the closet next to my dive tank and unopened tubes of tennis balls.
I liked the way her heart-shaped butt looked from this angle. I pictured another barmaid dragging her tongue down the smooth white slope of Charla’s back and then eventually between Charla’s legs from behind.
I threw my head back, moaning, biting the inside of my lip. I didn’t want her to see my sex face; I never liked to see it myself.
Focus.
I began to lose concentration. In a frustrating way. Sweat dripped from my face. I opened my eyes again and looked down at her.
God damnit! Baseball? I start thinking about baseball now?
I had always wondered if I was ADHD, but usually it was only during sex that it ever happened to me, that something completely off-the-wall would jump into my mind and scatter my dirty thoughts around.
“Tell me what you want,” said Charla, her eyes gazing up into mine. “Anything in particular?” It was obvious she sensed my frustration.
I felt her finger move slowly near my butt cheeks. In less than a second and before that finger made its way to the forbidden place, my butt cheeks tightened around it with the force of a boa crushing its prey.
The door of the room swung open.
“Get away from him you succubus bitch!”
Tsaeb bolted into the room, horns dripping with blood, eyes like black marbles. I froze for a moment, trying to sort out the quickly changing scene in my mind. When I realized it was Tsaeb, who I was use
d to seeing in the form of a child, I pulled back further against the wall and covered my nakedness with the ends of my dress shirt.
I looked down the second I heard an eerie hiss.
Charla wasn’t Charla any longer, or at least not the same pale-skinned blond with big tits and tired green eyes who had been doing a so-so job on me just seconds earlier. She sat crouched on the floor as though ready to pounce like a cat. Her skin was red like a blood flame, eyes swirling and glowing yellow. A long, thick red tail snaked out from behind her and slapped the rickety wooden floor like a whip. The bed and the bag of riches underneath it rose an inch from the floor. The bag spilled out in a scattered mound of gold and shiny gems.
I fell over the wobbly chair with uneven legs on my way toward the open window. The door was blocked by demons and jumping one-story probably wouldn’t hurt too badly. Clumsily, I hit the floor with a crash, as though my slacks were still wrapped around my ankles. The metallic taste of blood sprung up in my mouth.
“Thisss isss Creation,” hissed Charla, “you have no power here, outsssider.”
Tsaeb lunged forward and he and Charla rolled across the floor in a furious ball of tail and horns. The wall opened up as Charla pushed Tsaeb through it and into the neighboring room. The screams of women rang out and the threesome scrambled off the bed and out the door in a naked, frantic dash. Furniture became splintered wood in the path of the brawl. A large mirror crashed onto the floor exploding into shards of glinting, reflecting glass that shot in many directions. The whipping red tail came down again, nearly crushing Tsaeb’s little body underneath. Charla’s high-pitched scream pierced the air like a wailing banshee, sending me to my knees, hands gripping my ears. The candle near the window violently flickered making the enormous shadows more frightening against the walls. People ran berserk through the halls, shouting, pushing one another out of the way, all of them heading for a stairwell in a sloppy stampede.
Tsaeb stood over Charla as she writhed on the floor. Blood, black like oil, covered her chest and her throat. She made a choking sound.
Fumbling on my boxers, I rushed into the wall opening.
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