The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5)

by Richard Raley

  And it just seemed pointless.

  Like a child’s reaction.

  Breaking a toy so no one would want it.

  So I drank at the bar instead, telling some lovely free-spirits to flap on over to more interested men.

  Night was a bust, and okay, so even the idea of no-strings college girl pussy didn’t assuage my wounds, but I still figured I’d be back in the saddle soon. Annie B promised me more than once she’d show up to fuck my brains out the minute Val dumped my ass. I counted down the hours for the news to spread, expecting to wake up with a blood tentacle up my ass and Annie B grinding me like a millstone.

  Only she didn’t show.

  So I drank some more that morning and that afternoon and that evening.

  Annie B still didn’t show.

  Guess she was still sore about the stabbing her with a blood-devouring dagger thing.

  It was an accident.

  You’d think that accidentally eating someone would just be foreplay to a vampire.

  But no.

  No Annie B despite all them promises.

  Drank.

  Drink.

  Drunk.

  At some point I drunk dialed Val. Only I drunk dialed her home phone and . . . she was no longer home.

  Right, she’s trying to find Welf’s tiny cock in London, I thought darkly as I recognized the scolding words flying out of the phone’s earpiece. “This is just as hard on her as it is on you, you moron!” Miranda Daniels yelled at my ass. “She thought this over for weeks! She cried all day before she left. Don’t be selfish and try to stop her!”

  “I have made a terrible mistake,” I managed to mumble into the receiver.

  “Are you drunk?” Miranda asked.

  “Of course I’m drunk!” I growled. “I love her and I can’t even tell her! It would seem like some bullshit last minute attempt to keep her with me! I love her so much I can’t even fuck strange women when she gives me the free and clear! All I can do is drink! So I’m drunk!”

  At least, that’s what I said in my head. Pretty sure all Miranda heard was: I—mumble—mumble—burp—fuck—belch—drunk.

  Miranda sighed. “I’m sorry she hurt you again. But this isn’t healthy, King Henry. Focus on your work, maybe, not rum and coke like the last time. Also . . . don’t have sex in public where the girl’s father might be around. We’ve learned that lesson, yes?”

  “Last time I had Ceinwyn to help me,” I drooled at the phone. “This time I’m all alone. Don’t like strings . . . don’t like them, can’t trust them, can’t make my own, wouldn’t be right. Right?”

  Belch—Ceinwyn—murmur—something about Macaulay Culkin movies and dental floss.

  Another sigh. “I agree with you about the Dale woman breaking the two of you up. But then I’ve never idolized her. Not that Val doesn’t deserve a promotion, just . . . ’two flocks, one gust’ is an aeromancer saying, you know. She wants the two of you on the same team but not together for some reason. Maybe it’s for the best. Did you ever think about that? Can’t you both be friends and each find someone who will be there for you?”

  I finally managed to hit the end button on the phone.

  For a moment I wondered if I wasn’t too drunk if I was happy to be getting sympathy from the Ginger Nemesis, but then I just drank some more and forgot about moderation.

  [CLICK]

  Four days, five days, something like that.

  King Henry Price.

  A pitiful wreck.

  I didn’t so much put myself together as just run out of steam.

  Finally went into work. Where else did I have to go?

  Still wasn’t a functional human being.

  Still wasn’t happy with the world.

  But didn’t plan on destroying myself no more. Five, six days . . . time it took me to accept Val wasn’t coming back. It was final. It was done. Five or six days to open up my eyes; get a sight at a starless night.

  Starless night? You fuckin’ pussy.

  When I came into the shop that day, I came in with donuts and coffee. The food was my only comment to either T-Bone or Prunella about my absence. Yet they both had to know. T-Bone probably got a call from Val the second she left my sight. Keep him together for me, Tyson, he’ll need a friend or two.

  T-Bone and Val had gotten along well in the last few months. That’s Val for you, everyone likes her. That’s T-Bone for you, he likes everyone.

  Accepting my new single status, a kind of dark humor settled over me. Not humor in the Greek-sense of an under or overbalance to be rectified, but the actual comedy of it all. Pretty funny. Love a woman but can’t tell her. Woman cares for me enough to just let me go and fuck whoever I want and the thought of meaningless sex makes me feel like shit cuz it’s not with her.

  That’s some serious comedy.

  Some humor.

  Not in the Greek-sense.

  In the Greek-sense it was a punishment worthy of Prometheus.

  Thought I could control fire.

  Thought the star might just be mine . . .

  But she’s Ceinwyn’s.

  Always was.

  Just never realized it.

  Val was likely right when it came to Ceinwyn. As much as I wanted to be angry with her, Ceinwyn wasn’t about to screw up a plan just to mess up my sex life. Now that the booze was partially out of my system I could see how arrogant the thought was.

  Ceinwyn didn’t care about my sex life.

  She only cared about the Asylum.

  About the recruits.

  About . . . upholding the fictions of the world until she could change them. Even if upholding them cost her a pupil. Even if the required path to change the world stomped on that pupil’s heart not long after.

  Assistant Director of International Recruiting, I thought as I sat down behind my desk in my shitty little office at the very back of the store. Val will be good at it. She’s good at everything.

  I sat there daydreaming about the last eight months before T-Bone worked up the courage to knock on the door.

  “Yes?” I growled.

  “I heard,” was all he said.

  “Good for you.”

  “I checked in on you a couple days ago, do you remember that?”

  I gazed inward at the drunken haze. “Nope.”

  “Well . . . you were mad.”

  “At you?”

  “As in madness.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Conversations on eggshells are just fun. I popped open the top of my coffee. “What do you want, Tyson?”

  He gauged my attitude some more. When he decided I wasn’t completely drunk, he continued with, “You threw shit at me.”

  “Sorry about that. Bottles and stuff?”

  “Actual shit.”

  “Huh . . . must’ve been scared for my life.”

  “Outside of shocking you with an SDR, I didn’t see a way to get you under control, so I just left,” he explained.

  I pulled out a bottle of Bailey’s from my desk drawer and poured some in my coffee.

  . . . What?

  I said I wouldn’t get passed out drunk, not that I’d stop drinking.

  I’m in pain here.

  Have a little consideration.

  Judgey little assholes.

  T-Bone’s okay with me throwing feces at him then you should be cool with some Irish Coffee at 9AM.

  I took a sip. It helped with my hangover. “I find out I married a stripper over the last few days, I’m going to be really pissed off. Especially if that stripper was my first girlfriend . . .”

  T-Bone blinked a bit, but eventually ignored the comment. “But I was worried about you.”

  I glanced up at him.

  Being that he’s a six-foot-four, three-hundred pound guy . . . there’s a long way to glance until you reach his sweater-vest, much less his face. “What did you do?” I growled some more.

  “I called someone,” he guiltily admitted. “To help. Get
you through the breakup.”

  “Ceinwyn?” I more than growled. Pretty sure I started pooling anima like some kid Single who didn’t know better.

  “No!” T-Bone said quickly to calm me down. “I’m through with Ceinwyn, remember? Totally on your side? Business partners? Twenty percent stake in your company? Ringing a beer-lubricated bell?”

  I took another sip. “Did you call Val?”

  “No!” T-Bone said even quicker. “She’s . . . evil, icky, hurt you, cooties, don’t like her at all.”

  “I’m not five,” I reminded him.

  “Bros before hoes?” T-Bone tried to speak my language.

  I sighed. “Ain’t hoes, T-Bone, just ladies trying to make the world a better place.”

  This seemed to alarm him so much that he forgot to scold me about the nickname he hated. “You’re worse off than I thought . . .”

  “Who did you call?”

  A buzzer sounded on my desk. I again glanced up at T-Bone’s guilty face.

  “Better get that,” he said.

  I poured in some extra Bailey’s and waited for a second buzzer before clicking the intercom on my desk. I took a sip of much stronger coffee before I queried, “Yeah, Employee?”

  Lay off me, it could be a lot worse.

  I could call her Lube.

  “So . . . know you’re emo, angsty like Garfield Spider-man at the moment, Boss, but some asshole kind of just pulled an RV up in all our parking spots. Thought you’d want to know so you could go kick his ass. Over and out.”

  “Thanks,” I managed before the light went off. I studied T-Bone. “If you ordered me a portable whore house, I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about you.”

  T-Bone frowned. “I actually figured you would handle that on your own.”

  “If only . . .”

  “Oh . . . well, sometimes if a man is drunk I understand that—”

  “Cuz I’m heartbroken!” I interrupted. “Not cuz I can’t get it up. Prince Henry knows no loyalty! Not even to me . . .”

  T-Bone seemed both embarrassed and confused. “You named it?”

  “You haven’t?”

  The intercom went red again. “Whoa! I mean, I know I called him an asshole and I know we’ve covered the whole ‘if you or any of your friends hit on me I will sue the living daylights out of you because I’m not into relationships at the moment thing,’” Prunella’s electronic voice called, “but the guy who exited the RV is a major hunk. Like Armie Hammer wish-he-was-in-a-speedo hunk. I’ll go outside and talk to him if you want, Boss. Not a problem, at all.”

  There’s something wrong with her generation.

  Her generation is basically your generation.

  Yeah, well . . . go fuck yourself.

  I thought about her description, too heavy on movie references or not. For the first time in six or seven days I actually smiled. Only one guy I knew who drew that kind of reaction from the opposite sex. And you ain’t that guy, Price.

  Just my best friend from the Asylum.

  Who was also the only guy I knew to successfully get me through A Valentine Dumped King Henry Disaster. Granted it was the smallest of the three the very first time around, but he did it.

  “You called Pocket, didn’t you?”

  Session 49

  What’s a room say about a person?

  Mine said nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  Wasn’t a bit of personality to it yet. Just walls, a floor, and a roof. Bed. Had a bed to myself, in its own small room, with traditional cabinet and a small little TV. TV was controlled by Administration still . . . wouldn’t be any ESPN on the thing, but it was mine.

  Mine for three years.

  Just like the kitchen with the brand-new pots and pans. Just like the refrigerator and cupboards pre-stocked with geomancer favored food. There was a small coffee-maker . . . mine.

  A bathroom. Shower. Mirror. Toilet.

  All mine.

  I had trouble sleeping that first night. Even though I’d gotten used to sleeping alone thanks to Ceinwyn’s month-long, cross-country recruiting trip. It was still wrong. Still no Val across from me. Still no Pocket nearby. Still no snoring from Jason Jackson down the hall. Still no grunting and humping from Estefan and Debra—that damn bastard never could go a night without slipping into her curtains to say hey baby, not even test nights.

  The moaning would start.

  Then the groaning would start from the rest of the class.

  Like clockwork.

  Nothing that night.

  All quiet.

  Thirty of us separated by real walls.

  Graduate students.

  Ultras for real.

  Time to be a Pent, King Henry Price.

  Time to be an Artificer.

  Time to meet Plutarch.

  [CLICK]

  September 2013

  I’d only returned to the Asylum the day before, but had found a schedule waiting for me on my new refrigerator.

  I studied the damn thing in amazement. It was so . . . different.

  What do you mean I don’t have breakfast until 7:00AM?

  And it didn’t end until 8:30AM . . . when I’d start teaching a History class for Bi’s.

  Huge mistake choosing tradition over common sense.

  No one with common sense would let King Henry Price teach anything but a curse word symposium.

  ‘Bag of limp dicks,’ say it with me, class!

  After the class, I had prep time. After the prep time, I had lunch.

  My Artificer training didn’t even start until 12:30PM.

  I have seven hours of free time. What the fuck am I going to do with myself? I thought in horror.

  I checked the schedule again. Wait a second . . . do I get to sleep in until . . . fuck me, this is weird.

  Just like on the trip with Ceinwyn, I couldn’t help but wake up a few minutes before 6AM. They’d trained that reaction into my body. Didn’t even need the hum any more. BAM. I was up and awake. Psychological conditioning. Take a nicotine pellet, lab rat.

  I sat up in my bed, staring at the walls.

  Blank walls.

  Prison walls.

  The Ultra ’09 dorms had never felt like a prison. Felt like some serious commie shit, but not prison.

  This?

  This felt like a prison cell.

  Or worse: the first step on the path to becoming a good lil’ cog.

  I couldn’t sleep, but I had nowhere to go. New feeling at the Asylum. Back in my old room I would’ve thrown a pillow at Pocket just to have some company in my purgatory. Get him to laugh. That would wake up Val. Then I’d get her to laugh.

  That would make my morning anything but purgatory.

  Hadn’t seen her since graduation.

  Hadn’t seen the majority of them since graduation.

  Curious, I knocked on the wall behind me. “Hey, who’s there?” I said into it.

  “I’m sleeping in,” I heard a feminine voice say with fierce determination.

  “Eva?”

  “Yes! Sleeping in! I’m doing it, King Henry; stop distracting me!”

  “I don’t think sleeping in takes concentration—”

  “Silence or I cut you!” I heard a frustrated growl.

  I grinned. Eva.

  Not the best, not the worst.

  Ain’t Miranda at least. Or Welf. Although that would have opened up some serious opportunities for screwing with the douchebag.

  I glanced across the bedroom, at the other white wall standing between me and a second apartment. I crossed the room. A pause of anticipation. Another knock. “Who’s there?”

  “El Rey?”

  “Jesus?!?”

  “Stop saying my name like a gringo.”

  “It’s funnier when I do it this way, Jesus.”

  “I’m trying to sleep in.”

  “And failing.”

  “Yes!”

  “How was Pismo?”

  Uncomfortable silence. “Fun. New . .
. eh, stuff to try out.”

  “Bikini beach babes?”

  “More than even you could work your way through, El Rey. Sorry you couldn’t come.”

  “Nah, it’s okay. Wasn’t stuck here.”

  “With Miss Dale, we all got told when you weren’t here yesterday. How many bikini beach babes for you?”

  “None. Fucked a hillbilly in Kentucky though . . . I think I got crabs.”

  Even more uncomfortable silence. “Should see Miss Strange for that.”

  “There’s a conversation I’m looking forward to.”

  “Trying to sleep in,” Jesus reminded me.

  “Yeah, yeah, good luck, Lord and Savior.”

  [CLICK]

  Under no impression I’d be able to sleep in, I went about the apartment trying to make it mine. Someone had thrown my personal supplies and knickknacks from the dorm room into a pair of bags, which I went through and categorized.

  3 Cans of Coke

  1 Box of Hair Pins

  2 Tubes of KY Ointment

  Always have a backup available, gentlemen. Only takes one raw dog experience going wrong to learn your lesson. Life ain’t a porno, that spit trick they do is as fake as the tits.

  Various Pictures of the Last Four Years

  1 Wooden Frame with Ceinwyn Dale Original Artwork

  5 Condoms of Various Sizes

  No one gets pregnant at the Asylum, but just because Slush will cure hillbilly crabs in five seconds flat, that don’t mean you want to have to visit Miss Strange to explain your predicament to her. Where were you in Kentucky, condoms? I needed you, man!

  3 Nail Clippers

  1 Copy of the Karma Sutra

  1 Rolex Watch Engraved “Heinrich Von Welf”

  If you put into place a plan where you convince a guy his girlfriend might be pregnant, you might as well make sure you’re the only guy on campus with a pregnancy test beforehand. Welf really whined while giving up that watch . . .

  1 Sock Full of Spare Change

  1 Screwdriver

  2 Scissors

  3 Pairs of Panties, Owners Unknown

  Yeah, yeah, I’m a man-whore.

  1 LED flashlight

  1 Bra, Sized 34DD, Stenciled M. Daniels

  They grew and I have proof!

  1 Half-filled Bottle of Tequila Hastily Relabeled as Vegetable Oil