The Place in Between

by Reverend Steven Rage

  “Yeah,” Juan nodded, seeing where she was going. “Now you’ll get to use some of your long dormant medic training, get her set up for the long haul.”

  “Think she’ll go for it?” Mary asked, watching her get rejected and looking more and more anxious.” Egg-layers weren’t everyone’s cup of orange pekoe, apparently.

  “I think she will.”

  Juan stood to let Mary out of their booth. “Does it really matter?” he asked. “Little baby Bubblegum over there looks like she’d fuck herself with a pool cue for a taste of the Silver and we’re going to keep her fucked up on Plata ‘round the motherfucking clock.”

  “And if she doesn’t go for it?” Mary insisted. Bubblegum’s feathers were bright shiny silver and hard black. She kept them plucked so that all of her pay parts were covered. She had a big plume of whispery feathers, reminiscent of hair, as a cloud halo crown. Mary thought she was sexy as fuck. She knew the vampire would dig her, that’s for sure.

  “She’ll go for it.”

  Juan smiled down at Mary. He thought Bubblegum was sexy, too. He said: “I think blood taken by force will taste just as good as blood given. Don’t you, my love?”

  “Yes I do, you fucking gorgeous creep,” she replied, biting her lower lip, nostrils flaring. Juan knew she was getting wet. Maybe the nocturne would let them play some too.

  “And me. She looks good enough to eat.”

  Ignoring yours truly again, Juan bent down quick to give Mary a kiss. Her breath caught as he probed her mouth with his teeth and tongue, finally ending the kiss with a nippy ball of spittle which he launched down her throat.

  “Go fetch,” he ordered.

  Mary swallowed and smiled. She rose from the booth.

  As soon as she left, Juan ordered me to exit. He tugged down his trousers and pooped me out. He didn’t have to tell me what to do, I already knew. I was on point.

  Mary went to the bar. Bubblegum was leaning against some older dude, trying to laugh at his lame shit. The guy had the biggest set of salt and pepper dreadlocks I had ever seen on a pasty-face. His suit was immaculate. He did not look like he belonged in this shoddy watering hole, but he had that expression on his face that fairly shouted slumming.

  I stood on my own behind a thick support column. The principles couldn’t see me, but I could see them. I could see the whole picture by checking out the mirror that ran over the bar.

  Keeping half an eye on pumpkin pie there, Mary got the bartender’s attention, while purposefully ignoring fancy dreadlocks’ stare.

  “Two ethanol rocks,” she told Steel Ovid, placing the empty glasses on the bar top and pulled out some cash. She laid money down for the drinks. The motherfucker will know what Mary wants when he sees the flash of cash. Paper money sales were always frowned upon these days. The Occupying Indian provisional government preferred patrons to use their very traceable digital accounts, bar-coded to a micro-chip under each legal citizen’s left wrist. Transactions using paper Rupees or the Federal Reserve Notes that the United States – who’s terra firma The Harbor physically resides upon – is condoned, but just barely. The standard exchange is a 2 for 1, making the insistent cash holder lose money. But when one is purchasing narcotics, well… Everyone looks the other way.

  When the barman served up her drinks, Mary smiled sweetly, wrote on a bar napkin.

  “My phone number,” she told him, loud enough to be heard by anyone giving a shit. She handed over the napkin to the bartender. Steel Ovid picked it up and looked at it closely. He saw the two bills folded inside. He looked up at her, Mary smiling sweetly.

  “I see a two here at the end of your digits….that right?”

  “Clever girl, she is.”

  Mary nodded, “Uh huh.”

  She straightened and waited for the barman to make change. She turned slightly, saw the girl losing interest. Dreadlocks seemed to actually think she wanted another drink. Bubblegum was getting increasingly anxious, no doubt her Plata high was wearing off and she was at the very beginning edges of panic. Bubblegum’s head was doing the herkie chicken jerk. She was unable to keep her head from bobbing like she was seizing. Mary could see the cluck was ripe for plucking. Mary got her attention. The old man, smiling, turned away from them both.

  “What’s your favorite color?” she asked the girl. The bartender turned back and gave Mary her overly lumpy change and her cocktails.

  “What’s that?” Bubblegum asked, turning full to her.

  “She’s so sweet,” talking pretty much just to myself at this point.

  Mary smiled back at her while counting her change. It was all there: two 5K New Rupee notes, two 1Ks and a small zip-locked baggie holding two grams of thick gummy ear wax Plata. She let her new friend see the taut little yum-yum bag.

  “I asked you, what’s your favorite color?” Mary repeated, “Silver, right?”

  “Yeah, new best friend,” Bubblegum clucked, “Plata is my favorite color.”

  “Well then.” Mary replied with a growing knowing smile, “Come with me and I will make all your dreams come true.”

  Bubblegum immediately left the bar, following Mary without a moment’s hesitation. I mistakenly thought she was making a bee-line for the exit.

  Damn, I hate it when I fuck up. When I got to the exit and the two ladies were nowhere in sight, I got scared.

  “Shit!” I exclaimed through clenched jaws.

  This was not good. I worked my way back the way I came, but Mary and the hen were nowhere in sight.

  I hop over to Juan as hasty as a shallow thought. I told him the deal and was up Juan’s trouser leg and in his ass in an instant. With a rough grunt, Juan stood up and we both bolted after them.

  We couldn’t find Mary and the egg-layer anywhere in the standing room only bar crowd.

  Damn it all to hell! This is just fucking ducky. Now I can’t talk shit about the rest of the incompetents. I really hate that.

  But not nearly as much as when I fuck up, which I most certainly just did.

  Maybe she went outside.

  Yr:09.ACE.13n.10

  (The 9th year, After Cataclysmic Events, during the 13th Waning Moon, on the 10th Day.)

  Two days ago:

  Juan went back to the same dark shoddy bar, again. And, again, he went without Mary. She stayed away to tend to Bubblegum, keeping her stoned and happy. The comely coop-chick still thought they both had a sex crush on her. They let that cluck-fuck fantasy remain intact. We decided that it would be prudent and to our advantage to keep from telling her the whole truth. At least not until our hand was called. None of us ever mentioned me.

  Morbid is not everyone’s favorite late-night radio talk show host. Of this I am quite aware.

  “I want to shove it up her tiny stink-hole,” I say, by way of example. “Please tell me I can.” I am not the politest of company. I don’t really know of any unholy shit monsters that are. I guess that it kind of goes with the territory.

  “Maybe,” Juan told me, “we’ll have to see how this whole thing plays out.”

  “Yes, we will,” I agree. It’s not easy being green.

  “Let’s not talk about that shit right now, Morbid,” Juan replied, and rightly so. “Game faces, bro.”

  “Yeah,” I say with all the forced bravado I could muster, “Let’s bag us a vampire!”

  Juan and I needed to find the nocturne in a bad way. Juan and Mary were in hock up to their eyeballs keeping the hen high on Plata. This shit is crazy expensive. If we didn’t rustle us up a steady source of income soon, the goon squad would find us.

  That’s bad, real bad. They will send more than enough knuckle draggers to see us that even I, the unholy shit monster, won’t be able to save Juan and Mary. Motherfuckers are as serious as a heart attack when it comes to their wet, sticky cash money. And without Juan, I would be lost. The nocturne must be found.

  This time we needed a face-to-face meeting. It’s frustrating because we hadn’t been able to locate the elusive blood drinker. We c
ould hardly believe it. All this time and work and we can’t even find the nocturne. And once we do (heaven help us) the real work will begin. No wonder Juan was so edgy.

  Other than this crap-awful bar down here amongst the dregs, we had no real clue of how to find him. Nobody knew the vampire, or where he cribbed or even how to contact him. It didn’t matter, however. Juan wanted no-one but his Mary, him and me in on this plan.

  The Harbor may be seen as nothing more than a dystopian ghetto shit hole, and it most certainly is, but we knew small town rules still applied. Everybody knew everybody’s business down here in the great stinky half-frozen tunnels. Everyone knew who was zooming who. It’s just like old Mayberry, but with a much higher body count.

  Except in Mayberry, Andy and Barney wouldn’t let you get the skin flayed off your body while fucking a dead dog for a 5K NewRupee auto-deduct.

  “Fucking squares!”

  We could tell no-one because we could trust no-one. One word of what we were planning and niggas might kill us simply because they hadn’t thought of approaching the vampire Plata dealer first. Folks here in The Harbor can be vile, petty and vindictive. We needed to proceed with ample care. Everything seemed to be coming to a head.

  Once again, Juan made his way through the drunk and fucked-up bar crowd. He had been nervous as all hell lately. He’d been drinking more than he should and smoking super-strong hydroponic weed constantly.

  Finally, after almost two weeks of this nerve-wracking shit, Mary had pleasantly surprised him with a handful of muscle relaxing pills, which he doled out to himself one at a time. The pills she gave him were the real and true thing, too. This was surprising. Pharmaceuticals were not on the list of over abundant items left behind. One can eat canned tuna and chili until your asshole bleeds, but not anything of medicinal quality.

  Mary smiled sweetly as she handed them over to Juan. She’s a good girl, that Mary. She’s a little penny-pinching in the old fuck-sack for my taste, but still…

  The pills helped Juan a great deal as he was forced to troll the same sleazy, sticky, loser filled tavern, night after fucking night, waiting for the nocturne. He was worried the blood-drinker wouldn’t show up. Juan and I were even more nervous that he might. But he had to. The three of us have everything riding on this scheme.

  Where the fuck is he?

  Juan did a quick, perfunctory head check of the patrons. He didn’t see the nocturne anywhere around. It was just like all the previous times. If I didn’t know any better, I would think the fucking vampire was avoiding us. If that’s true, at least he knew we existed. That would be something, but we couldn’t even assume that much at this point.

  To make immediate matters even worse, Juan had to pee.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked, incredulous. “You know where we have to go to do that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, God Damn it! I know. Fuck.”

  I could feel his bladder filling uncomfortably. He had to go. If we didn’t, Juan would have to find a place to piss right here in the bar portion of the saloon. This would cause us to be kicked out and never allowed back.

  With everything on the line, and with some growing dismay, we pushed back, deep into the cave-like bar. We were headed toward the rear hallways, stairs and the toilets. This was where the realio-dealio took place.

  The courage it takes just to approach the flesh curtains lent a moment of pause for even the hardest of the hardcore. It usually took a pensive person a lot of illicit drugs, a bucket of ethanol and a double-dog dare to even part the veil. Looking in is bad enough and we had to go inside. We had to part the curtains, enter That, and then locate us a toilet. All without getting ourselves detained, killed, or even worse.

  And what is worse than being killed, you ask? Getting stuck down there and never being able to negotiate your way back out, that’s what’s worse than being killed. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

  Taking a deep, cleansing breath to calm his nerves, Juan split the curtains of human skin. It was real flesh replete with freckle, scar and mole stains. You pass through and you find yourself piercing the confines of That.

  “Here we go!”

  We entered the first hallway. Juan took the stairway down, following the signs to the bathrooms. Humans and Halflings alike were engaged in all manners of drug consumption and sexual congress.

  A young girl was tugging on folks, pleading with them all for the return of her hymen. Juan just shook his head. How the fuck should he know where her freshness seal is? Shit.

  “Dumb-ass dead bitch,” I commented. Like that was something to worry herself about back here. Damn, I’ve taken shits smarter than this. But I am repeating myself.

  Juan stepped down about six more feet before he came to the first body. The male was long over-ripe, judging by the smell. He was a lovely shade of cyanotic blue. He was absolutely as dead as a door nail. But that didn’t give the old woman with a bald, spotted scalp the right to straddle his below the knee leg amputation. We stopped to watch her do it. It was abhorrent, but like a train wreck, we could not pull ourselves away from the wretched sight.

  The old woman periodically coughed up mucous from the blow hole in her neck and onto her hand. The old woman used it to further lubricate the dead fuck’s stitched, blunted stump-cock. As Juan carefully and quietly passed her by, he noticed she was vaguely see-through.

  “We got to go through Hell’s Own asshole, just to take a piss?”

  Ignoring my patter, “Hello?” Juan kept working his way down into the dark red smoke, until he finally reached the landing. There he saw a man with his hands tied behind him. A taut, tight rope of aborted fetuses pulled up the man’s wrists. The babies were secured to each other by their own long, convoluted umbilical cords. A sulfur and sugar smelling pit-demon was feeding the rope of abortions through a dog skull pulley.

  The man’s mouth was buried on a firebrand. The acrid smoke curled from his burning mouth. The demon stared hard at Juan whilst he pulled on the rope. He dislocated the man’s shoulders and kept pulling. The man never made a sound. Only his tears bore witness to his true pain.

  “Can I go to school here?” I ask. “It looks like they get to play Level 10 reindeer pain games. Yeah…Downtown is where the fun’s at, sugar-kitten.”

  We finally reached our stated destination. Lucky us.

  The restroom was filthy and crowded thick with men pissing. Trannies were sucking dick, their johns holding cash above their bobbing head as a promise. Drugs were being snorted, deals going down. Some nigga was desperate enough to tie his shit off in this horrid crapper in one of the door-less stalls, flicking up a vein, trying to feel for a bump to target his needle.

  “Gross.”

  Juan went into one of these stalls. A passed out fuck, pockets having already been turned out, was slumped over to the side. His head planted firmly into the feces smeared wall. Juan considered trying to wake him or dragging him off the seat. Instead, it was most expedient to simply pull out his pecker and piss on the motherfucker. He wouldn’t care.

  Juan was just shaking it and zipping up when he sensed someone. He looked up and right into the face of the old man with the big mass of dreadlocks. It was the same polished slumming dude that was trying to holler at our Bubblegum. He smiled cruelly at Juan. His jumpy nerves made him cringe.

  “You sure you want this, dear fellow?” asked mister fancy dreads.

  “Want what?” Juan retorted, confused. The old guy is human, not a vampire, not a demon. That means dreadlocks teleported himself here. Other than the Indian Army, Juan had never met anyone who could afford teleporting. Juan figured if someone teleports themselves into this shit hole, Juan had better pay attention to what dreads was saying. At least dreads didn’t have to go back up through all that shit to get to the bar again. Juan and I would. Oh, well.

  “Are you sure you want to meet the blood drinker?” he asked Juan.

  “What’s it to you?” Juan wanted to know, getting wide with the cunt out of a deep-se
eded need to not kowtow. It was ingrained and had gotten Juan into trouble many times.

  “Don’t get smart with me, young man,” he admonished. “I am The Good Doctor. I am the king. I am also the nocturne’s supplier. You need to be extraordinarily sure of what you wish for.”

  “Why’s that?” Juan asked, a bit more politely. He’d heard of the king, but had never seen him in person. I have to admit, he was pretty fucking impressive. And I am an unholy shit monster! We don’t impress that easily.

  “Because it may just come true,” The Good Doctor stated. And then he winked out.

  Before we could recover from that shock, a cold hand dropped solidly on to Juan’s shoulder from behind. It was strong. The talons growing out of the split fingertips dimpled Juan’s coat, punctured the cloth, and pressed into his flesh. Juan was surprised at how much it hurt. He sucked it up though and stood tall.

  “When you wish upon a star...” Softly, to myself, I said this.

  “You got balls hunting me,” the nocturne told him. He squeezed a little more and made Juan hurt a lot. “But do you have the heart?”

  “Makes no never mellow mind who you are…” Even softer.

  “I’m not after you, we mean you no harm.”

  “What do you want then?”

  “We wanted to meet you,” Juan told him.

  “You and the girl you were with?”

  “That’s right. I was hoping to speak with you.”

  “And you are?” the vampire asked with a bit more pressure. It was getting bad, the pain, but Juan knew a test when he felt one. Juan told him their names and intentions. He did not mention the unholy shit monster that lives in his ass. “Services?” he asked, “What services?”

  “Whatever you need, you know, help,” said Juan, arm going numb, fingertips tingling unpleasantly.

  “You two want to help me sell drugs?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Juan replied.

  “And what, exactly,” the nocturne mockingly replied, “makes you think I won’t kill your uninvited ass where you stand?”