Jewels and Panties (Book, Sixteen): The One Above All

by Brooke Kinsley

"Okay..." I replied. But all I could think about was the image of money buried in the desert.

  How much exactly was two hundred thousand dollars in today's money? Would the notes even still be valid?

  Money can change a man, I thought. It can turn them into a monster.

  Chapter Four

  Lincoln

  The cat looked up at the figure behind the shadow, meowed and dashed away.

  "Aw, Luca, why you run away?"

  In front of me stood a small hunched man dressed in black. A hat was pulled low over his eyes. He was small. Really small. Not short enough to be a dwarf but almost there. For a moment, I thought I was staring at a child playing dress-up. But his voice sounded like a broken typewriter had gargled with scotch. In perfect English he said, "He's my cat but only when he feels like it. He likes his freedom. He is a real spirit."

  We both looked in the direction of the cat who was now sitting at the top of a five foot wall staring down at us with a look of pure derision.

  "Cats are strange, no?" he asked me and at last lifted the hat off his head to reveal a greasy, black comb-over smeared across a tanned head.

  He had a long mustache with curled ends and spectacularly green eyes that seemed at odds with the rest of his appearance.

  "They're temperamental," I said. "Had one as a kid. It would be all kisses and sweetness one minute than claw your eyes out the next."

  We stared at each other. We were strangers but he was looking up at me as though we were old friends.

  Why the fuck am I standing here discussing childhoods cats with a midget dressed as the devil? I thought to myself.

  "My name is Marcel," said the little old man and stretched out a chubby hand covered in gold rings.

  They weren't ordinary rings. I could see that from a glance. There were precious gems sunk deep into metal that looked as though they'd been hand forged. There were signet rings engraved with strange symbols that looked as though they should have been on an ancient tomb. He saw me looking and smiled so that I could see his gold teeth.

  "You like?"

  I said nothing.

  "Specially made."

  "I can see that."

  He was still holding my hand with a sweaty grip but he was very much in control of the moment. I got the feeling I wasn't allowed to let go.

  "I'm Lincoln," I said.

  "I know."

  "Of course you do. Everyone knows everything in this place."

  "Can you be surprised? You stick out like a sore thumb."

  A puddle of sweat was forming between our hands making me uneasy and nauseous.

  "How about a drink?" he asked.

  "No thanks," I replied. "I'm kinda trying to keep myself clean at the moment."

  Then I laughed at myself because I remembered the struggle with Cynthia and the green juice on the floor and all her protests about my unhealthy lifestyle.

  "But you smoke weed, right?" asked the little man. "Weed is clean."

  I hadn't smoked the stuff since college. It just wasn't really my kinda thing. It was for people who wanted to relax and explore the creative parts of their minds. I just wanted to stay awake forever so I could study and work and work and work some more. Adderall was my best friend in college. Nearly made me lose my mind.

  "Wanna come for a smoke?" he asked.

  "Erm... I really should be heading back home."

  Glancing over at the cat as though it could somehow help me out of this awkward situation, I saw it lick its paw and give me a quizzical look.

  "Luca might join us eventually," laughed Marcel. "But you should come. Come relax. Free up your mind."

  "I'm cool. Don't need to do any of that."

  I began walking back toward the house but he began to follow me, always keeping exactly four steps behind me. He was babbling as he walked, jangling his rings together so that he sounded more like a religious procession. A one man ceremony.

  "The herb is life. Did you know we are descended from trees? Smoking cannabis helps us connect with our roots in the most literal way possible. It helps us become one with nature, with our ancestors. Smoking brings us closer to God. Until we are God."

  Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. Just my luck that as soon as I escape one crazy midget I walk into the path of another.

  "We are not related to trees," I said, stopping in my tracks. "I suggest you read a book. Any book.But preferably Darwin. He might be able to straighten some stuff out for you."

  He stood by my side and placed a hand on my arm. It burned through my shirt.

  "Books are made from trees too. The act of reading is an act of worshipping our ancestors."

  I felt there was no need arguing with him on this point. He wouldn't listen anyway.

  "So you come with me?"

  "No. I'm going home. I have work to do."

  "That you do. But not at home."

  "Do you always speak in riddles?" I asked, growing increasingly annoyed.

  "The riddles haven't begun, old friend."

  Urgh, this guy was driving me nuts but it didn't look as though he was going to be leaving me alone any time soon. And old friend? Where did that come from?

  "Look, fella. I appreciate that you want to hang out with the Billionaire Bosworth. People in this town seem to think I'm a big deal or something but I'm not your friend and I'm going home, right now to work."

  He looked highly amused as though I was being a raging idiot but had no idea of how stupid I looked. He continued to smirk, his little chubby cheeks shinning like polished apples. I wanted to slap the look right off his damn face.

  "A big deal," he chuckled. "You have no idea. But if the idea of being in my company displeases you so terribly, I regretfully accept that you must go on your way and complete your work. But maybe sometime you must realize I am a source of tremendous help."

  He turned on his heel and walked over toward the cat who sprung from its resting place into his arms. He made cooing motherly noises at it as he held it like a baby.

  "Pfffttt, help," I spat as I walked away. "How would you know anything about what I do?"

  I hadn't expected him to hear me but he must have had ears like a bat because he turned round to face me and shouted as I walked away.

  "I know more about life and death than you'll ever know!"

  Did he just say life and death? I thought as I stopped walking. For some reason, I was too afraid to turn around to make sure what I heard was right. And it was the way he said the word death. Like it was a great celebration, an exclamation of pure joy.

  "That's right, Bosworth," he continued. "I know more about rebirth that you will ever know. I can help you. But first you must bury your ego. People don't die, but their faults can."

  Slowly, as though I was confronting a monster, I turned my head inch by inch until he came back into view. But he wasn't by the wall where I thought he was. He was right behind me. Inches away from me with the cat still purring in his arms.

  "What the fuck?" I almost screamed as I jumped back.

  I hadn't so much as heard a single footstep. How did you get so close to me?

  "Rebirth," he said again, his green eyes darkening.

  For a frightening moment they didn't even appear to be eyes at all but whirlpools of energy. For the most fleeting of seconds, I thought I was catching a glimpse of another dimension in his irises. Then it was gone. And they were just eyes and he was just a man.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked.

  My voice came out in a childish squeak so I sounded like a teenager with a newly breaking voice.

  "What ARE you talking about?"

  He smirked again. This time I didn't find him obnoxious or arrogant. I found him terrifying. Up close, the look on his face was one of all knowing, of someone who had all the answers. Of someone who had been on this Earth before.

  I wasn't exactly the type of man who was prone to bouts of believing in hocus pocus but here I was staring at this little dude thinking above all else that he was not
from this world and neither was his fucking cat who was sharing the same smirk. There was a look on its face that was almost human, like an even tinier person was trapped within the confines of its fur.

  Overcome with the strongest compulsion to get the hell away from this guy, I tried to move but found I was frozen to the spot. I simply just couldn't look away from his eyes.

  "Are you ready?" asked Marcel.

  "Do I have a choice?"

  His smile widened. I was almost blinded by the shine of his metal teeth. I could smell his breath. It was sweet and herbal and entirely repulsive but intoxicating.

  "Everyone has a choice," he replied. "But it doesn't almost mean you will choose the right thing to do."

  Riddles again. Total nonsense but I was now hanging onto his every word as though each one was giving me a little of hope, a hint of a life I wanted. All I had to do was follow him and... then what?

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  "To a sacred place," he said.

  Reaching out his hand, his fat fingers clasping my wrist so it felt as though I was being led away by a handful of sausages, he started to sing softly to himself. Words in a language I didn't know flowed from beneath his breath and joined the breeze. The cat was now on his shoulders with his paws on his head, joining us on whatever ridiculous adventure we were embarking on. It turned to me as we rounded the corner and I swear to God it winked at me. The freakin' cat winked at me and all I could do was stare at it terrified. Fucking cats, I thought. Raised right from hell.

  After a few minutes, we reached the edge of the town without seeing or hearing a single other person.

  "Where is everyone?" I asked. "There are normally people in the bars and-"

  "Holy holiday," he said. "A special day of worship."

  "Eh?"

  I had no knowledge of special holidays. This was a Christian town, right? I wasn't exactly the most pious person in the world but my parents were lapsed Catholics who occasionally took me to church when they remembered. I knew the saints, the holidays, the celebrations but what was today?

  "Today is the day that the dead come back," explained Marcel in response to my thoughts.

  "Like Halloween?" I asked.

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  "No," he said as he stopped outside the last building on the very edge of town. "Nothing like Halloween."

  Chapter Five

  Berger

  "Hey, what's the weirdest thing you've ever done for money?" asked Coop.

  "Probably work as a cop. I mean, who the hell would ever do that? What sane person would put their life on the line every day and spend hour after hour chasing criminals for the crappiest salary?"

  He rolled the bottle of moonshine between his hands and thought. We were out in the yard with the chickens clucking around us. The clear liquid we had filled our stomachs. It was acrid and most likely deadly but it had loosened us up and made us forget the heat and our problems. It had also made Coop horny as hell. He'd been staring at my crotch and asking filthy questions for the last twenty minutes and every now and again he'd reach out and feel a different part of me. Now it was my calf. He slid his hand up the back of my pants legs and squeezed the tender muscle. It ached slightly but in a good way, like he was releasing all the tension from my leg.

  Resting my head on his shoulder, I returned the question.

  "So what's the weirdest thing you've ever done for money?"

  It was a joke of course. I knew what he'd done. So I was surprised when he said,"Oh, you probably wouldn't believe me."

  "Erm, I think you're forgetting what I know about you. Don't think there's much I wouldn't believe about you."

  He squeezed my calf again, this time harder so I could feel his ragged fingernails dig into my skin. Moving his hand higher, I felt him tickle the back of my knee. I yanked myself away, laughing. Being tickled made me uncomfortable. It made me squeal like a baby and generally just destroyed any trace of masculinity in me.

  "Aw, you think you know everything about me just because you've had my balls in your mouth," he laughed. "Think you're just like my wife now, or something?"

  I thought he was being serious but as I looked at his face, I saw he was smiling like a lunatic, all drunk and googly-eyed with a hint of spittle across his bottom lip. His breath smelled like turpentine.

  "Well I tell you what," he slurred. "There are plenty of things you don't know about me. Plenty!"

  He waved the bottle in my face.

  "Uhuh!"

  If I was feeling more sensible I would have gone and got the old man a drink of water and something to soak up the alcohol that was no doubt burning a hole through his stomach like it was doing mine. But the truth was that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t move. My legs moved like they were filled with water and my head felt as though it was full of liquid lead. I tried to sit up straight and found myself slumping back down the wall. Coop laughed at me, burped then dropped the moonshine on the floor. A nearby chicken came over, sniffed at it, nearly passed out then staggered away clucking.

  "What the fuck is in that stuff?" I asked, pointing at the bottle with one finger that looked like two.

  "A bitta this. A bitta that," he replied. "A bitta allsorts.Uhuh."

  He thrust his hand into a nearby bag of birdseed, pulled out a handful and threw it up in the air like confetti. The chickens gathered around him clucking with euphoria.

  "My babies, come to me," he said.

  "You're nuts."

  "I'm drunk. I’m so fucking drunk."

  And he burst out laughing before coughing until he was spitting into the dirt.

  "I think I'm going blind," I said to myself.

  The sides of my vision were blurry and there were dark spots in my eyes. I was certain the moonshine had ripped holes in my eyes.

  "Gonna... Gonna get some water."

  Gripping the crumbling walls for support, I pulled myself to my feet and squinted into the distance where I could just about make out the vague outline of the kitchen door. Just a few steps to go and...

  I slid down the wall to the floor and was overcome with a wave of nausea. Coop was still laughing at me, still coughing and spluttering.

  "Lay your head, kid," he said.

  He was continuing to gibber about something. Through my drunken haze I could pick out a few words; love, regret, old... I tried to listen to what he was saying but the nausea was too much. Rolling over to my side, I covered my eyes with arm to block out the sunlight and fell into a deep sleep.

  ~

  When I woke up I thought the sun was gone. The reality was that it was just being eclipsed by Coop's figure as he crouched over me.

  "Hey," he grunted as he shook me. "You alright, kid?"

  I rolled onto my back and felt my head explode.

  "No..."

  "You look like shit."

  "I feel like it."

  He shook me some more and prompted me to sit up. I did what he said although it felt like I was dying.

  "I hate you," I muttered as he pressed something cold and metallic to my lips.

  It was a cup of warm water. It tasted like the ancient copper pipes he'd installed himself but it would do.

  "Cigarette?" he asked.

  "Fuck no."

  I remembered the rancid, dry taste of the Guatemalan tobacco and my lungs shriveled at just the thought of it.

  "How long was I out?" I asked, drinking the last of the water.

  It made my breath taste like old pennies and my stomach was gurgling in protest at how I'd treated it. The skin on my face was dry from the grit and the sun. I had the sudden alien urge to get my hands on some moisturizer. Miranda had golden jars of the stuff peppering her dresser. Each one did a different, magical thing apparently and they all made her smell like vanilla and roses. Miranda... With her sweet, cotton candy soft body and syrupy pussy. With her eyes that made me fall into trances. With her voice that always whispered the most disgusting things as she reached orgasm, her rosebu
d lips open ever so slightly so that I could feel the heat of her breath.

  I had blocked out the thought of her, had tried my best to forget her. I buried myself into the bodies of other people and sunk myself to the bottom of liquor bottles to try and wipe out any trace of her from my mind. But I couldn't. I was overwhelmed with guilt. Who knew how long she waited for me. Maybe she was still waiting for me. Although I hoped she knew she was better than holding out hope for a washed up loser like me.

  "Hey, what's up?" asked Coop.

  My vision had returned to normal. He was looking at me with kind, fatherly eyes with his rough hands resting on me tenderly. His face seemed to have aged in just a few hours. There were new, dehydrated lines around his eyes and his lips were chapped. Thick, red veins snaked their way across his yellow eyeballs. His hair was brittle like straw. He was my life now. He wasn't Miranda but he was here.

  "Nothing," I murmured.

  "No. Tell me. What's up?"

  He had sobered up well and was now back to his usual self with no obvious trace of a hangover. That wasn't what I could say about myself. Despite the heat I was shivering from the nausea and the pain in my head. I felt as though I'd fallen off a cliff, as though I'd been hit by a truck. I felt as though I'd crawled my way out of hell.

  "What the hell is in that stuff?" I moaned, nodding toward the bottle.

  It still gave off the faint stench of moonshine and it made me wretch.

  "It's all natural," said Coop as though that would answer my question.

  "Hey, cyanide is natural. Doesn't mean I wanna drink it."

  He picked up the bottle and placed it on the nearby window ledge out of sniffing distance.

  "If you must know, it's crab grass, honey and oranges fermented in chicken manure."

  "What!"

  "That's what gives it that real smoky taste."

  I looked at the chickens then up to him. Then I promptly barfed up into a nearby bucket of birdseed.

  "Hey, puke in the compost if you gotta," said Coop with no hint of sympathy. "That way we can reuse it."

  I'd had just about enough of his eccentric self-sufficient living. I wanted a bath with bubbles preferably run by a soft hand that could also make a decent cup of coffee. I wanted a television even if was just to watch junk. And I needed a couch with actual cushions and not have to sit on the harsh, homemade wooden furniture of this hollowed out shack. More than anything, I just needed to be somewhere that didn't smell like animals.