Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

“And what if they agree with me?” asked Denise. “What if, after all the gums are done flappin’, they all agree I should beat the ever-livin’ shit out of him until he starts sending folks home?You know most of them folks is eager to get back to their real lives. They side with me, and all your liberal hippie bullshit ain’tgonna sway them.”

  “They’re good people,” said Randy. “They’ll make the right decision.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Randy. I seen good people do some terrible shit when the stakes are high. They’ll beat your ass down too before they give up their only hope of going back.”

  Randy frowned. He could only imagine the sorts of things Dennis had seen on the job, and he didn’t doubt her words for a second. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s get him tied up. We should try to make it back into the city before the sun comes up.”

  Chapter 16

  “Stacy’s problem,” said Tim. He paused briefly to hiccup, punch himself in the chest twice, and belch. “Stacy’s problem is that she’s still looking at me like I’m some little kid.”

  The bartender was a bald man in a tight-fitting sleeveless tunic which displayed the numerous jagged scars on his meaty arms, each telling the story of a broken-bottle bar fight he’d personally broken up. He nodded sympathetically. “Love is a foggy sea. The right woman, an elusive fish.”Business was understandably slow at four in the morning, and he was going to milk the only two saps still left at the bar for all the coin he could.

  “Maybe she just doesn’t like you,” said Cooper. He kept an eye on Tim’s fourth one-for-the-road. The level of stonepiss in Tim’s cup was equal to the level in his own.

  Tim slapped his hand down on the bar. “That’s because she doesn’t know me! Not the real me.”

  “You tell him, brother!” said the bartender. Addressing Cooper, he said, “This little guy’s got plenty to offer a woman.”

  “He’s a college dropout who co-owns a failing chicken restaurant with his sister who Stacy can’t stand.”

  Of the three of them, Tim had had the most potential to make something of himself. Cooper was never going to amount to much more than a pizza guy, and he was okay with that. Whatever Dave accomplished in life, it wasn’t going to make him any less Dave. But Tim could have been something. He’d breezed through high school without ever cracking open a book. The physics teacher, Mr. Daniels, told him that he scored the highest grade, per unit effort, of any student he’d ever taught.

  That was Tim’s problem. Everything had always been so easy for him, he couldn’t be bothered with anything that required any effort. He couldn’t coast through college like he had in high school, so he dropped out and talked his sister into going in with him on that goddamn Chicken Hut.

  Cooper had encouraged it at the time. He had also dropped out of college, and entrepreneurship sounded like a great idea. But then, what the fuck did he know?

  “Those are things I do,” said Tim. “That’s not who I am. She said my Facebook profile picture was cute.”

  The bartender flashed a wide smile and punched the air encouragingly. “Well there you go!”

  Cooper pointed at the bartender. “You. Quit pretending you have any idea what the fuck we’re talking about.” He pointed at Tim. “And you. I’m only saying this because I’m your friend. You’re no prize in our world and you’re starting to blow it in this one.”

  “Hmph,” said Tim. “This coming from a guy… Tell me, how many times have you pissed yourself since we’ve been in this bar?” He and Cooper both looked down at the puddle at the base of Cooper’s stool.

  “Gods have mercy!” said the bartender. “Is that what that smell is?”

  “We ain’t talking about me,” said Cooper. “We’re talking about you and Stacy. She’s smart, and funny, and nice, and smokin’ hot, whereas you’re a miserable little turd of a person. You can either get your shit together, or set lower standards for what kind of woman you expect to attract.”

  Tim nodded toward something behind Cooper. “You mean like her?”

  Cooper could have sworn the bar was empty. He turned around, but saw nothing but empty tables and stools. “Who?” When he turned back to Tim, he was swapping his empty glass to the bartender for a full one.“Goddammit, Tim! You know we need to get back on the road.”

  “You’ve still got half a glass. I couldn’t let you sit there drinking alone. You look like a fucking alcoholic.”

  The Alky-loop.Cooper knew this gambit all too well. Hell, he might have even invented it. The instigator is at the bar with a buddy, and it’s long past time they both should have gone home. Maybe they have to get up early for work the next morning. Maybe it’s only the sixth of the month, and their bar tab is already dipping into the money they’ve got earmarked for rent. Maybe their friends are lost in the wilderness, potentially chasing down someone with the means and motive to murder them. Whatever the reason, they’ve got no business being at the bar this late.

  As a means of defying good judgment and extending this brief reprieve from the miserable reality of what their life has become, the Alky-looper will wait for his companion to reach just below the halfway part of his drink before finishing his own. Under the pretense of not wanting his companion to have to drink alone, the Alky-looper will order a fresh drink for himself. He will then slowly nurse his new drink until the companion has finished what remains of his. Whether the companion is a silent fellow conspiratorin the gambit or not, he will find himself with an empty glass and his friend with a full one, leaving him with three choices: 1. Sit there without a drink until his friend slowly sips from his full glass, which can be soul-crushingly boring. 2. Abandon his friend and go home, which makes him look like an asshole. Or 3, the Alky-looper’s choice of preference, order another drink, thus perpetuating the cycle. His booze-addled brain may not have the capacity to make sure his dick is all the way out of his jeans before he pisses down his leg, but it’s capable of some shrewd calculation when it comes to getting in just one more drink.

  Tim eyed Cooper’s glass while taking a hummingbird-worthy sip from his own.

  There was only one way to end the Alky-loop.

  Cooper raised his glass, clinking it against Tim’s. “Bottoms up.” He tilted his head back and gulped down what was left of his drink. When he looked down again, he saw that Tim had only managed to gulp down about a quarter of his drink.

  Tim smiled and shrugged, his eyes pointing in different directions. “Sorry. I’m smaller than you are.”

  Shit. Cooper had forgotten to factor in their vast differences in size. A quarter of a glass of stonepissin one gulp was actually a pretty solid effort for a person Tim’s size. Cooper was in exactly the position Tim wanted him to be.

  “Why don’t you have one more drink,” said Tim. “And then we’ll get out of here.”

  Cooper nodded. “Good idea.” He grabbed Tim’s glass off the bar and necked back the contents.

  “Hey!” cried Tim. “Not cool, man!” As he turned back to the bartender, he barely managed to keep from falling off his stool by grabbing hold of the bar. “Good sir. Another round of stonepiss, if you please.”

  “Fuck that,” said Cooper. “It’s time to go.”

  Tim’s head wobbled as he laughed. “Don’t listen to him. He’s drunk.” He leaned in closer to the bartender and whispered, “Between you and me, I think he has a proBWLAAAAARF!” The vomit shot out of his mouth like the Decanter of Endless Water on ‘geyser’ setting, only green. The bartender got the worst of it.

  “I’ve got a probwlarf all right,” said Cooper. “His name is Tim.”

  Tim fell forward, his face splashing in the pool of vomit he’d left on the bar.

  The bartender, to his credit, refrained from repeatedly smashing Tim’s face into the bar. He didn’t look amused, exactly, to be dripping in halfling puke, but he didn’t look angry, exactly, either. Cooper took the stoic resignation on his face to suggest that this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Just an occupational hazard.


  “Will there be anything else for you gentlemen tonight?” A polite way of sayingPay the tab and get the fuck out of my sight before I cut you.

  “No, I think we’re good,” said Cooper. He removed the Decanter of Endless Water from his bag and poured some water on the bar. “I’m real sorry about the mess. Tim, pay the man. Maybe throw in a couple extra gold pieces.”

  “Talk to Julian,” Tim mumbled, barely awake.“He’s got the money.”

  “Dude!” said Cooper. “Julian isn’t here.”

  “Shit. Where’d he go?”

  “Goddammit, Tim! Wake the fuck up!” Cooper pointed the Decanter of Endless Water at Tim. “Geyser!”

  Tim flew off his stool and onto the hard, wooden floor. Cooper deactivated the Decanter.

  “What the fuck, man?” cried Tim, soaking wet but wide awake. “Show a little courtesy, huh? I don’t feel good.” He closed his eyes and curled into a ball on the floor.

  The bartender looked at Cooper. “Am I to understand that you haven’t the coin to pay for your drinks?” His voice was calm. Maybe even a little hopeful.

  “Umm…” said Cooper. “That would appear to be the case.”

  “That is unfortunate.” The bartender lowered his gaze from Cooper’s face to where Cooper was instinctively hiding his crotch behind the Decanter of Endless Water. “Maybe we can come up with an alternate means of payment.”

  Shit.Cooper had reached some pretty low depths in his life, but he’d never had to fuck a dude to pay a bar tab before. His mind started racing for a compromise.

  “Uh…. How about a crossbow?” This was Tim’s mess. He could be the one to surrender his weapon.

  The bartender shook his head. “I don’t believe in them.”

  “What? Like, that they exist?”

  The bartender reached below the bar and pulled out a long, curved sword that looked sharp enough to slice a cow in half. “When I kill a man, I like it to be up close and personal.”

  “Listen, dude,” said Cooper. “I’m real sorry about all this. I swear I didn’t know we were broke when we came in here. But I’m not going to have sex with you. It just ain’tgonna happen.”

  The bartender looked at Cooper with disgust. It was the first genuine negative emotion his face had betrayed all night. “How could you… Why would you even… I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  Cooper pursed his lips and tried to think. “Then what are we talking about?”

  “I want the Decanter of Endless Water.”

  Cooper breathed a long sigh of relief. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “Just put it on the bar, pick up your friend, and get out.”

  While it was nice that sex was now off the table, paying a bar tab with a permanently enchanted magic item was hardly a more favorable solution. Cooper didn’t know how much a Decanter of Endless Water was worth, but he guessed it might be around the same amount of money he might consider fucking a dude for.

  “Don’t get greedy, dude,” said Cooper. “Even if you unload it for half its value, that crossbow is worth way more than the price of a couple bottles of stonepiss.” He reached behind his back and wrapped his hand around the handle of his battleaxe.

  This would either count as a Diplomacy or Intimidation check, both of which were based on Charisma, which was not Cooper’s strong suit. Still, the Difficulty Class might be low if the bartender was at all concerned with self-preservation. He was a big guy, sure, and he’d seen a few fights in his day. But he was still just a bartender, a second level fighter at best. Was he willing to put his life on the line for a quick score?

  “Fine,” the bartender finally said. “Leave the crossbow, and don’t you ever show your ugly faces in this tavern again.” He lowered his sword.

  Cooper could live with a last-ditch face-saving insult. He placed Tim’s crossbow on the bar, slung Tim’s inebriated unconscious body over his shoulder, and exited the tavern.

  Chapter 17

  Katherine spat out a rat head, then joylessly sucked blood from the body as she pondered what the hell could have happened to her idiot brother and his idiot friend. How do you get lost when the only direction you need to follow is ‘go south’?

  A horse-drawn wagon was approaching from the south. Katherine scooted around to the north side of the tree she was leaning against to stay out of sight. It wasn’t that she was afraid of some random turnip peddler. She just didn’t want to be bothered with anymore men asking her what she was doing out here all alone and defenseless in the middle of the night.

  Was it still the middle of the night? It was still really dark.

  Katherine wished she had brought back her cell phone, just for the clock. She tried to do some rough calculations in her head to make a guess on what time it might be, and speculate from there how much time she might have left before the sun came up.

  She made her calculations in reverse chronological order, starting with her freshest memories. It had been about ten minutes since a southbound cart had passed her, and maybe another twenty before –

  “Those stupid, lazy assholes!” Katherine said aloud as it occurred to her what must have happened. They had hitched a ride. The cart from ten minutes ago was small enough so that she would have spotted them. But the wagon that had passed twenty minutes before that was covered. They were all probably sound asleep at the Horsemen’s house by now.

  She placed the Bag of Holding on the ground and lifted the mouth open. “All right guys. Hop in.” Two dozen rats, what remained of the ones she’d just summoned to snack on while she waited for her brother, scrambled eagerly into the bag. They’d probably all asphyxiate to death, but their blood would still be fresher than that horrible feathered monster thing.

  Not giving a shit about the turnip peddler seeing her, she took her giant bat form and flapped into the night sky. As soon as she rose above the treetops, she noticed a tingling sensation in her left wing. Glancing to her left, she saw the forest silhouetted against the dull orange glow of the distant eastern sky. Dawn was approaching.

  Fuck.

  She flapped harder, ignoring the gradually intensifying tingle in her wing. She didn’t have much time. It didn’t take more than a minute for the tingle to escalate into a burn. She could feel it on the left side of her face now too.

  Flap! Flap! Flap! SCREECH!

  Katherine’s left wing burst into flames. She spiraled down and hit the ground hard. The shadow of the trees eased the tingle on her face, but her wing was still on fire. Flapping only fanned the flames. Struggling to think through the searing pain, she took her half-elven form. Her arm was still on fire, but she was now in a better position to do something about that.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” she said as she opened the Bag of Holding with her right arm. Hoping the rats had consumed most of the oxygen inside the bag, she plunged her burning arm into it, all the way up to the shoulder. After a few seconds, the pain began to die down.

  Removing her arm from the bag, she found it to be a black, horrifying mess. The skin was crispy and flaky, and her fingers were all fused together. This poor arm had been through some shit tonight.

  It hurt a lot, but not as much as she thought it would. She’d heard about people going into shock after a traumatizing experience, their bodies not allowing them to feel the pain until they’d gotten themselves out of immediate danger, at which point the pain would really start to kick in.

  Fuck that.

  Katherine reached into the bag with her good hand. “Rat.”

  The rat she pulled out was gasping desperately for air. She bit its head off and greedily gulped down its blood. The tingle she felt in her arm this time was a good one. She squeezed the rat hard and kept sucking until her fingers separated and the skin had completely regenerated. She frowned. Her shirt was fucked, completely burned away all the way up to the shoulder. She must look ridiculous.

  “Keep your head in the game, Kat,” she said to herself. These trees weren’t going to protect her much l
onger. She could already see their shadows beginning to creep toward the road. What the hell had happened? It was pitch black out not five minutes –

  “The darkest hour is just before…” The Mamas and The Papas had been right all along. She was fucked. There was no time to dig a hole, and no one to shovel dirt down on her.

  As much as she hated to admit it, the Bag of Holding was her only option. But with nobody to let her out, there was no escaping it. All she’d be doing was buying herself time until she starved to death. She could place it by the road, and someone might pick it up. But even then, they wouldn’t know she was inside. Then she got an idea.

  She reached into the bag again. “Rat!” This poor little guy barely had life enough in him to gasp. She bit its head off, but didn’t drink the blood. Instead, she dipped a fingernail into its neck hole to use as a pen. She spread the Bag of Holding flat on the ground and carefully wrote the letterK, large and legible, in rat blood on the side of the bag.

  She dipped her fingernail into the rat’s neck again, then scrawled out the letters A and T as quickly as she could. She was starting to feel that familiar tingle on the back of her neck. Dawn was breaking through the trees. Their shade wasn’t going to protect her much longer. Her H was sloppy due to blood dripping from another fresh dip, but it could be made out in the context of the rest of the word. Doing her best to ignore the pain, spreading to her head and back, she held her finger steady as she wrote the letters E and R. Why the fuck was her name so goddamn long?

  As the tingle intensified to a burn, Katherine knew she only had a few seconds left. The last three letters she scribbled out were just a big, illegible mess, but they would have to do. Katherine was out of time. She hoped her name was as common in this world as it was back home.

  Holding the bag out open in front of her, she ran as fast as she could toward the road.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” she said once more as she felt her skin sizzle.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she added when what remained of her shirt ignited in flame.