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

by Richard Raley

  Finally a chance to see Miami? Ain’t quite spring break yet, but I could get an early start. Always had wanted to fuck a Cuban girl with a Gloria Estefan song playing in the background.

  Rhythm is gonna get you, rhythm is gonna get you, tonight!

  . . . What?

  Pocket continued his long tradition of getting me over Val by very much not helping, “You have plenty to think about, dude. You had a huge blow-out fight with your mentor and she cut you free, some crazy child-kidnapping cult leader wants to kill you, you beheaded a vampire god after you failed to save her also vampire god sister, you’re hiding some earthquake artifact that everyone thinks you destroyed, and your brother-in-law will put a hit out on you once you’re done making him all the artifacts he wants. Did I miss any?”

  T-Bone also helped, “Missing sister. Still hasn’t cured Anima Madness.”

  “All around total fuck-up, I get it,” I growled.

  “You told Pocket about—”

  “You both know everything,” I lied with a tongue that tasted like acid. “Just try not to talk about it around other people, included goatfuckers or video game nerds, please.” A lie; they didn’t know the Curator was Obadiah Paine and didn’t know everything about the vampires and fairies . . . Meteyos and all that shit. They got the sanitized not-so-crazy version of my life.

  Val knew the most. She’d been there with me.

  “Quit thinking about her,” Pocket called from the driver’s seat. He punctuated the comment by starting up the engine and getting the RV moving.

  T-Bone and I sat in the back, where all the seats and tables and the shitty fridge and even shittier microwave were at. “You can’t even see my face from up there.”

  “You’re a different kind of silent when you start thinking about her,” Pocket called back. “Stop distracting me, driving this boat is a pain.”

  “I could drive it.”

  “Then you couldn’t drink.”

  I nodded at T-Bone. “Why can’t you make excellent points like he does?”

  T-Bone pulled out his laptop and set it up on the table. “He only has to put up with you a couple times a year now. I’m just trying to survive most days.”

  Standing, I took a quick inventory of the kitchen. In the cupboards, I rummaged around for a glass, found one that wasn’t too nasty, and sat it in a cup-holder embedded in one of the tables. This is some seriously okie-redneck shit. Then I opened my bottle of Jack and poured. “Want some?”

  “No, thank you,” T-Bone said, his computer making a noise announcing that it had woken up.

  That’s one of us at least.

  Not sure when my life had started to feel surreal. The Geo Realm? Since then it had alternated between dream and nightmare, never quite feeling like the world I’d known before. Like some drug fueled trip. Even when I’d learned of the Asylum and of the Mancy I had taken it as fact and moved on, but lately the surreal kept building—kept making me feel out of place and disjointed from reality.

  This drug trip be getting dark.

  Especially without Val along for the ride.

  “He’s right,” T-Bone said, clicking away with his attention almost completely on his laptop screen, “it’s a different kind of silence.”

  “Quit thinking about her!” Pocket called from the front of the RV. “Stop picking at the scab! Don’t touch it or you’ll go blind! And stop being such a whiner while you’re at it too!”

  “Your Fines Samson impression is scary, you know that?” I called back.

  “I can do a pretty good Jethro Smith too.”

  “That one’s easy.”

  “Should be, he’s the only teacher who curses as much as you do.”

  I shuffled through the shitty fridge—despite the alarming sudden movements that the RV seemed to be making—to find some coke to pour in my Jack Daniels. For normal people it’s the other way around. Not for me. Not after a breakup. I took a sip after the two had been mixed together. “Nectar of the gods,” I declared as I sat back down across from T-Bone.

  “I have something to show you,” he announced in his business voice . . . which I’d come to associate with bills, contracts, and lawyers stealing my money.

  “Is it naked women?” I still hoped aloud, taking another sip of booze. “You in one of them secret hacker celebrity nudie rings?”

  T-Bone met my eyes over the rim of his laptop. “White hat,” he reminded.

  “There’s no morality when it comes to nudie pics, man. Just males acting like the beasts they are, chanting ‘boobies’ over and over.”

  He turned the laptop around. The screen had a bunch of inputs and some tabs to click on. “It’s a program for anima conversion formulas.”

  “ . . . Wha the wha?”

  “You felt bad and I . . . I didn’t know what to do. I’m not good with other people if they aren’t geeks or . . . other electromancers, I suppose. So . . . after I called Pocket, I tried to think how I could cheer you up. I know how much you hate doing the arithmetic part of artificing and in the last few months I’ve seen how much time you waste doing it by hand with a pencil and paper . . . and it’s my business too now.”

  “ . . . Whaaaaaaa?”

  He clicked a tab to pick electro-anima. Two outputs appeared on the screen, one for the geo-anima needed to contain the electro-anima. He entered 10 milliliters—anima is in metric, for which I hate myself, but my only real rebuttal for is: ‘America, Fuck Yeah!’—and the geo-anima number changed to the appropriate amount.

  Would’ve taken me a minute or two to do the same, but since I’d been doing so many of them I could pretty much guesstimate it by now, at least until the final design was in place.

  It’ll save time, but it’s not like it can—

  He clicked a toggle and a secondary interaction opened up. He clicked the tab for spectro-anima and entered another number. The geo-anima value changed to match the multiplier of spectro and electro interacting with each other. He did another, clicked an option, and showed off the numbers changing based on a closed or open-recharging artifact.

  “We’ll have to be careful trusting it at first—until all the bugs are out of the system—but once we can, you’ll be able to design without ever doing any arithmetic again. You can focus on mechanical requirements and stresses and . . . are you okay, King Henry?” he asked.

  “You . . . you automated anima formulas,” I eventually got out.

  “I know it’s scary to . . . why do you look like you’re about to punch me?”

  “Anima formulas were the joyless toil of it all,” I said, glancing up at the ceiling of the RV. “Without them . . . it’s just all the good parts.”

  “Exactly,” T-Bone agreed, a little confused. “The parts we like. What . . . what are you doing?”

  “I’m waiting for the meteorite to hit me.”

  T-Bone rolled his eyes. “If the universe really hated you it’s had plenty of opportunity to kill you before now.”

  I laughed, taking another sip of liquid courage. “The universe hates everything. That’s its natural state. It began with hate, with a pure, violent explosion strong enough that it had to wiggle around its own rules and declare itself full of shit the very second of its creation. It’s filled with cosmic rays, microwaves, light rays, and a billion other things that will fry the skin off your bones—and if that doesn’t kill you then the radiation will, or it will morph your kid into a three-armed, one-eyed, quad-balled freak. The universe hates life. Me, you, fucking everyone on this planet are a god damn miracle just waiting to be snuffed out at any moment.

  “Earthquake, volcano, fucking climate change cuz the cows just won’t stop farting. Testicular ebola, malaria, everything poisonous waiting out in the dark to give a good poke. That’s just the normal shit too. We know there’s a lot more out there, don’t we? Monsters don’t want to give a poke but have themselves a nice long suck.

  “Universe hates us. Wants to kill us. Only. Way. To. Fucking. Survive. It!” I finished my rant wi
th another sip.

  “Yet it’s also the only place in existence where you can find Valentine Ward,” Pocket yelled from the front.

  “You can’t tell me to stop thinking about her one minute and then use her to win an argument the next, you bastard!” I yelled back.

  “Just did, dude.”

  I sulked about it. Universe wants to wipe us out . . . sure it does . . . but there’s some pretty awesome people in it. Should trust them, Price. Just a sliver. Do it. Make some strings. Open the box. Stupid Pocket, now I can’t stop seeing them dark eyes. That light in them like they might create something new and never before seen at any moment—

  “Stop thinking about her!”

  “I’m gonna come up there and kick your ass!”

  T-Bone tapped his laptop screen. “I’ll load the program onto all the computers at the shop. Maybe set you up with a ruggedized tablet that will be harder for you to break. Although . . . we’ll have to replace it every other month knowing you.”

  I said ‘fuck it!’ and took a whole gulp of jack and coke. “That would be nice . . .”

  Outside the window, I saw that the RV had pulled onto the highway.

  [CLICK]

  I had a good buzz going by the time we hit up Bakersfield for lunch.

  Bakersfield is a shithole.

  Usually I’m very free with this descriptive term when it comes to cities, since cities are full of people and people are full of shit, but for Bakersfield I think I’m being kind by just calling it a shithole. This is the city that is so shitty that people in Fresno turn to each other and say, “Well, at least we don’t live in Bakersfield!”

  It’s hotter, it’s smoggier, has less to do in it for entertainment, worse crime, more poverty, it makes Fresno a paradise in comparison.

  Just . . . fuck Bakersfield!

  With the coat-hanger that should have been used to abort the place before it was ever born.

  Pure shithole.

  But it’s got a Denny’s.

  So . . .

  There you go.

  Pocket ordered a huge burger, I went with a BLT, and T-Bone had himself a salad.

  They made me leave the booze in the RV.

  I know Denny’s is the official restaurant of stoners coast to coast—not to be confused with Taco Bell, that’s the fast food category—but like Denny’s has never had a drunk inside one of their places, right?

  Pfft.

  Pocket slid his fries over onto my plate. “Some things don’t change, do they?”

  “That’s the point of restaurant chains, I suppose,” I said, taking a bite of one of those wondrous, salty deep-fried spuds. “Same shit wherever you go. Instant comfort.”

  “Incoming ‘cogworkers are placid sheep’ rant,” T-Bone warned Pocket.

  Who only smiled and nodded in reply.

  I ate another fry. “Fuck you guys.”

  “For knowing you so well?” T-Bone asked.

  “For everything,” I decided after a time studying the view out the window. Southern Valley ain’t so different from Fresno. Just as gray and depressing that time of year. Chilly but nothing an East Coaster would consider ‘winter.’ Just dreary all around.

  You got to cut out the emo shit already, dude, I told myself . . . but it was in Pocket’s voice, being a cynic is one thing, but you’ve never been a whiner for as long as I’ve known you. Seen you do some pretty stupid stuff to yourself and you usually just shrug it off. This Ceinwyn-Boomworm One-Two Combo has you fucked up, got me real worried. Knock it off already!

  I watched a bunch of cars pull in off the highway, thinking about why we would head from Fresno to Bakersfield and what our end destination could be.

  The real Pocket, not the one in my head, raised an All-American eyebrow. “You thinking about escape?”

  “Depends on where we’re going.”

  T-Bone got my meaning even if Pocket didn’t. Sure, I’d told Pocket some of what happened a few months ago, but T-Bone had lived it with me. “We aren’t heading for Los Angeles. I’m not suicidal.”

  “Ceinwyn pulled this shit on me once. After we graduated, remember? You and Jesus went to Pismo and the Lady wouldn’t let me leave the Asylum. Auntie Badass made me an intern for a month.”

  Pocket nodded but gave no comment.

  “You ain’t spying for Ceinwyn too, are ya?”

  He barely kept his mirth contained. “Don’t suppose you could tell me what kind of crap you had this morning? She’s really curious.”

  “I ain’t paranoid.”

  “Well,” T-Bone added, “you are. But there really are people out to get you so we let you get away with it.”

  “I don’t spy for anyone,” Pocket shot back at me, bit serious now. “One of the joys of being a fernthrower is that you aren’t sucked into being a Recruiter or into ESLED or whatever other vortex is dragging you down, dude. I just have a semi-normal job finding missing people . . . it’s nice, should try it sometime.”

  “Maybe in my next life,” I got serious right back at him. “Don’t got enough time in this one to finish everything I already started.”

  Pocket nodded. “I know that. So does Boomworm.”

  There was a double meaning there. Val knows I don’t got a lot of time and Val doesn’t have a whole lot of time herself. I wasn’t sure which meaning pissed me off more. “Why can’t I know where we’re heading?” I returned to the original point of contention so I didn’t have to keep thinking about Val.

  T-Bone and Pocket shared a look.

  T-Bone eventually shrugged. “He can still make it . . . but he’d have to actually escape and steal a car to do it.”

  “Original plan,” Pocket told me, “back before all the warning signals and my red phone started ringing—”

  “Giving me your fries don’t give you the right to keep blasting me like this. There will be revenge, Fern Thrower.”

  “—was to grab you tomorrow. But the only way I could get Tyson to agree to help out with joint custody in babysitting you was that there’s this video game thing going on that he wants to go to—”

  “Oh fuck me with a twisted duck cock,” I moaned at how much pain I was about to be in tomorrow.

  “—so we pushed the timetable up to today. Except the signups for the actual event are open until 5PM. Which is why we’re wasting so much time at a Denny’s in Bakersfield instead of heading out on the road. There’s no way I’m letting you have any chance at registering yourself up for the event. For your own safety. And my own safety if Boomworm or Miss Dale hear about it. Then I will be getting a phone call.”

  “No Los Angeles?” I asked T-Bone again.

  He shook his head. “No vampires.”

  Can’t promise that, can never promise that, I thought but didn’t say.

  Still . . .

  No Los Angeles.

  No City of Suck.

  Didn’t leave a whole lot of other destinations within a day of Fresno.

  Only one I could think of that would require a swing through Bakersfield.

  Sometimes . . . my friends are awesome.

  [CLICK]

  Viva Las Vegas, baby!

  Who’s gonna gamble?

  Who’s gonna have unsafe sex with a legalized prostitute?

  Who’s gonna be shit faced for the foreseeable future?

  Who’s gonna gain twenty pounds from cheap all-night buffets?

  This fucking guy!

  Las Vegas . . .

  Las Vegas is like a diamond that fell into a puddle of liquid shit. Looking at that diamond, sizing up that bling, we all hate ourselves for the fact that we’re drawn to it. Also ain’t a single person in the human race who can step away from the puddle. Ain’t even a person who won’t stick their hand into the liquid shit to grab up that diamond.

  Then you realize the diamond is really a cubic zirconia.

  Fuck you, Las Vegas!

  True to his word, Pocket swung the RV off the highway just after 5PM.

  Didn’t even care I
wasn’t being allowed to sign up for whatever this secret event was. Got to be dangerous . . . Val and Ceinwyn don’t want me to do it. Kind of made me want to do it. Which is why I’m not being allowed to.

  Me taking part in it or not, it was a secret event in Vegas . . . that meant it would be awesome. There would be booze and gambling and hookers and yes, I’m repeating myself.

  And no, I’m not actually having sex with a hooker. Don’t get all offended on me.

  I’m gonna have sex with TWO hookers!

  . . . What?

  [CLICK]

  Pocket drove the RV down the Vegas Strip as the winter day quickly died around us. The lights of the city were on, but not shining at their brightest yet, all washed out against the purple and reds of a bruised sunset. It was chilly out, but not even as cold as Fresno. Felt like an autumn night at worst. Guess that’s what you get when you build a huge tourist trap in the middle of the desert.

  My bottle of Jack had a nice size dent in it and I was pretty sloshed despite the fact I’d been spending all day slowly making that dent, instead of my usual method these last few days of hammering the thing in one swig. Had my forehead pushed up against the window, studying all them lights and all that traffic and all them people. “Been meaning to ask: where did you get an RV from?”

  “Dad’s,” Pocket said stiffly.

  Pocket and his dad got a kind of strained relationship going. Same as me and mine . . . only his didn’t beat him with a belt when he got drunk. Just put a lot of old-fashioned ‘be a man’ shit that Pocket didn’t particularly need in his life. Pocket’s folks ran a couple businesses in Pismo. All his sisters had stayed home, helped out, gone to college, got married, whatever, but they were still around.

  Pocket got the Asylum life.

  It was hard on his family.

  Plus some other shit we’d never actually talked about.

  Guess those of us without any family worth the name do luck out in some areas, I thought morosely. Not that I’m deprived in the family department these days, even without Val’s crew in my life. Peter and Ronnie Ward had been good to me. Accepted me . . . made Val bring me home for dinner every couple months. I was pretty sure I’d miss that. Even if Ronnie can’t cook for shit. Too much vegetarian healthy crap . . . just . . . fuck tofu! You don’t got a tiny Asian dick then you shouldn’t have to eat it and it sure as shit shouldn’t be shaped like bacon.