by Lee Bond
“Hey, I gotta get my end as well, Nickels, don’t you think for a second I’m walking out of this with my pockets empty. Fifty-five? Fifty-five’s all in, right down to the penny and wit' every scrap of copper wiring and, like, them floor panels and don’t forget, I’m doin' this with my guys. I still gotta pay these idiots! They might break stuff or whatever. I’m taking all the risk!” Armin licked his lips, pretended like he was making his absolute last offer. “Thirty-five five.” He threw his hands over his head and hunched down a bit, like he was surrendering on a battlefield. “That’s it, I can’t go higher than that, on my mother’s grave.”
Garth tilted his head back and hooted with laughter. “Thirty-five five might work down the street in the abandoned big box store that’s collecting tumbleweeds, dust, and an impressive array of spray-painted neon super dongs on the walls, Armin, but up here in Big Boy Town, thirty-five five sounds like you’re trying to piss me off. And technically speaking, if your guys are doing this during daylight hours, I’m paying them, so I’m the one gonna be out their wages, not you, so you can back on up out of that alley. Listen close to this next part too, ‘cuz I’m only gonna say it once. Any of your guys break any of your freshly bought stuff, that's got nothing to do with me. That’s on them. You take it out of their paychecks and nowhere else. Now, since I really do gotta see what’s going on in the hallway, the number coming out of my mouth next is the only one that’s gonna mean anything and I ain’t budge. You follow?”
When Armin nodded slowly, suspiciously, Garth resumed, “All right, Armin, final offer is forty-two five. All in. This dollar amount gets you what you want, leaves you more than enough room for a proper profit. Might take you a while to flip some of the stuff, might not, but what it gets you is me, not getting pissy when your guys are crating shit out of here when they’re supposed to be pulling the walls and floors up. What it gets is me, not looking at stuff and going ‘holy fuck, I got robbed, I gotta see what’s really going on over there’. What that gets is me, doing my own thing, upstairs, trusting you not to fuck me over. How’s that sound?”
Armin wanted to take his handkerchief out to dry the sweat on his forehead. Dealing with Nickels was like dealing with a made guy. He seemed to know everything he was thinking, sometimes before he thought it, and whether the man could really know the absolute value of the stuff on his property, forty-two five was perilously close to the profit margin for this little endeavor.
Still, though, there was money to be made, and at that point, it was still close fifteen or twenty gees, and that was nothing to sneeze at.
Seriously unhappy at the dollar value, Armin stuck a hand out, which Garth promptly clasped.
“All right my friend, forty-two five it is. Now, on account of how things work on my end, I can’t just say ‘hey, oh, I’ll present you with a bill for my work, only it’s gonna be forty-two five less, if you follow’. Accounting would shit an actual, live bird. I’m going to have to give you a proper wire transfer from my bank account and into yours. This way no one’s going to look into our dealings, you understand? I mean, okay, obviously, the transaction is one hundred percent legit in every way, yes, but whenever big money starts moving, Big Brother is gonna be up both our asses. You think the economy is for shit? That ain’t the only ting what got worse since the Crunch. White collar prisons ain’t like they used to be, neither, you unnerstand?”
Garth nodded wholeheartedly. He clapped a hand on the little guy’s shoulder. “Oh yeah, no, I get it, Armin. The last thing we want is for Big Brother to be noodling around our puckers. I have no issue with a legitimate cash transfer, none at all. So, say, end of day tomorrow?”
Armin pulled out his phone and checked out his accounts, nodding when the info came up positive. “Absolutely, absolutely.” He looked up from his phone. “Pleasure doin’ business with you a second time, Mister Nickels. If you don’t mind, I gotta make a few calls to get this particular ball rolling.”
Garth flicked a hand farewell and headed on towards the next –and more important- piece of bullshit …
The Red Lobby.
***
Garth stopped about ten feet from his intended target, mindful to keep his breathing and poise Arthur Fonzarelli cool.
Outwardly, the Kin'kithal felt like he was doin' a good job of being super mellow, while on the inside, just about everything making Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez who and what he was was busy cartwheeling around, morbidly and abundantly creeped out by what he was seeing.
Imagining wall murals of invisible blood hanging all over the place as the grossest thing this side of the Universe had been an unconscionable lack of imagination and perversity.
Worse still was watching random construction worker type guys doing what they normally did when they needed to get from A to B quickly, which was taking a quick shortcut through the hole they’d just made, only in this case, that meant doing so in the Red Lobby, which further meant walking directly through … atomized … blood.
Which was super, super gross. Every time a guy took that easy way through the invisible blood-drapes, the entire thing just sort of … stretched … for a moment before snapping back into place.
It bothered Garth so very much that none of the guys walking through mementoes of his never-ending death cycle that he felt a bit nauseous, but nothing got his gut more wobbly than what happened between one heartbeat and the next.
One bald dude carrying his hard hat around in his hands instead of being a Safe Sam stepped through the very same spot of wall blood he’d been monkeying around with all day; whatever perversity kept the blood in place absolutely fell in love with Baldy the Magnificent's gleaming dome of smooth skin, because the whole swathe of carnelian goop followed the guy for ten feet before snapping back into place.
“Well, that’s new.” Garth muttered under his breath. When he’d fiddled with the blob, he'd been completely ignored, much like a bitter ex you accidentally run into at your favorite illegal smuggling hangout.
Intent on chilling for a few minutes longer, interested to see what else attracted the grim curtains the same way, Garth bit back a curse when one of Armin’s deconstruction employees caught sight of him leaning on the wall. The Kin’kithal took a deep breath and prepared himself for the tirade that was en route to his location in the form of a burly, over-muscled guy covered in those ridiculous tribal tattoos that had –once upon a long ago time- been all the rage.
“Mister Nickels, we needa talk.” Marko stepped up to the man who’d given them the huge task of gutting one of the biggest properties they’d ever done. They couldn’t afford to screw this up, not when they were looking at another solid three weeks of employment. Not in this economy.
“Hey, yeah, uh … what’s your name?” Garth found himself wondering if he’d be able to take the giant mountain-shaped guy in front of him without his Kin’kithal powers; what’s his name was a testament to the kinds of effects spending six hours a day in the gym –including ‘supplements’- could do for a dude and it was kind of humbling to be in the same room with someone who definitely looked stronger.
It was kind of a new experience for Garth.
“Marko. Marko Gorka.”
Garth nodded. Marko was definitely stronger, that was a given, but the chances of him knowing all eight hundred and thirty-six different types of hand-to-hand combat developed over thirty thousand years of evolution and combat were probably slim, making pure raw power kind of unimportant.
“So what’s the dealio, Marko? I was upstairs and I kept hearing people swearing their fucking heads off. Specifically in relationship to where those guys are all kind of just sitting the fuck around, smoking cigarettes and drinking soda pops instead of, like, knocking the fuck outta these walls."
To drive his point home, Garth gave the wall behind him a good solid backwards kick.
Marko waved his hands around, pointing pretty much everywhere Garth had died defending his home from the Hellfire missile, getting so worked up that the goof ch
illing on the container nearly fell off. “This. This whole area. It’s zorgindutako!”
Garth worked his way through the weird sounding word. It took a few seconds because he hadn’t really spoken any languages other than the predominant ones found in Trinityspace for a really long time. Sadly, Basque hadn’t made the cut, not even in systems or on planets that prided themselves on maintaining some connection to their cultural backgrounds, so it took a bit longer than normal.
“Haunted? Haunted?” Garth shook his head, amazed.
Marko spun in place, head tilted to one side. “You speak the language of my people?”
“Well, I mean it’s not like I can write it or anything, but I speak quite a few languages.” Garth stepped forward, dismissing that conversation before it could get a toehold in his day. The last thing he wanted was for the mutant named Marko Gorka to run around asking him if he ‘understood’ this sentence because yeah, people really did get a kick out of whether or not someone from somewhere else spoke their milk tongue.
“Look, this place can’t be haunted. Well, okay, probably it could be because of on account of how it’s a school, and there’s nothing freakier than children and all those hormones and shit, but … not haunted. I’m at least thirteen percent sure of that.”
Marko kissed the small wooden cross he carried around his neck. He hadn’t been to church lately and he was thinking with this job, with the money it paid to get done on time –or sooner- he might just go by and make proper apologies. It was so hard though, with the way the world was. You needed to work more than you needed your faith. “Zorgindutako!”
Marko hissed the word a second time, kissing his cross passionately.
“Look, man.” Time to put everything in terms everyone would understand. “You guys are paid for productivity. The sooner you’re done ripping the fuck out of this place, the more you get paid. Now your boss Armin picked up a side gig a few minutes ago that’s gonna see some of you working your sweaty ballsacs into the dust, one that’s gonna make him more cash than normal, which means that the even more quickly you’re done, the sooner you’re helping him, which might even mean a bonus.”
Marko nodded. “The antiquities. That’s good. Everyone makes out. But this hallway, it is not good.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Garth stepped forward even further, using subtle techniques to get the huge bastard deeper into the Red Lobby. Marko, unaware that he was being successfully bullied by a guy who’d once fought a giant busily mutating into the physical incarnation of the M’Zahdi Hesh, backpedalled a tiny bit until he was shoulder to shoulder with the worst bit of the incarnate blood.
“Now, tell me what’s going on here? Exactly. Because if you’re seriously telling me you can’t work in this hallway, that kind of makes me feel like I don’t want you working here at all, and something tells me that Armin won’t like that.”
The burly Basque demolition expert licked his lips, felt his fingers strain for the cross around his neck, but he pointed again, this time with more precision, at several key spots throughout the hallway that just … just weren’t working properly. He didn’t like believing in ghosts, but … this hallway had him convinced.
“It’s like this, Mister Nickels. We work in these areas here,” Here, Marko indicated the first ten feet of hallway where they’d simply torn out the lockers and the walls on either side, forming one truly gigantic room, “and nothing. The lockers, the walls, the wires, everything inside, they come out like no problem, okay? All right? With twenty guys, that stuff came down like we were an ekaitz … a storm, you understand? The only time our job requires precision is when we’re blowing stuff up. You know … leherketa.”
Garth nodded in full agreement when Marko made a little explosion with his hands, complete with sound effects. “Sure as hell know where you’re coming from there, Marko. Good work on ripping the shit out of this place, by the way, you guys must love your bonuses.”
It was true. Although Triple-A Destruction had only been on the job for about a day and a half, the first eighth of the downstairs level was barely recognizable; for the first time since being down today, Garth had a moment to spare proper appreciation for their efforts. He could already see the light at the end of the tunnel. When all was said and done, the Arcade was going to be massive.
“So, the spots before this area and the spots after this area are no problem at all.” Garth jerked a thumb over his shoulder at some guy who was busy –no word of a lie- Karate chopping lockers free from their moorings. “So…”
Marko waved a hand dismissively in Garth’s direction, reluctant to do what he had to do in order to prove to their employer that the hallway was haunted. He reached down, grabbed the electric cut-out tool by Sammy’s feet and made his way towards a section of unsullied and haunted wall, ignoring Sammy’s look of absolute incredulity.
Once he got into position, the foreman motioned for his employer to come close, but not too close.
“Okay,” he shouted loudly, “I am going to start cutting into this wall. You tell me if you see anything weird. None of us have, but it’s weird. Haunted weird.”
Garth looked from Marko to the guy lounging on the cooler and back again, suddenly and inexplicably full of apprehension. He pointed a finger at Cooler Guy, saying, “You … wanna move? Marko is under the impression that he’s going to be opening a doorway into an alternate dimension any second now. If you wanna be the first thing Nyarlthotep eats, be my guest.”
Sammy shook his head. He’d been through this a few times already and was pretty comfortable. Besides which, this was more Marko’s deal than anyone else’s, even if the repeated shut downs were a major pain in the ass. He went back to eating his sandwich.
“Okay. Here we go.” Marko engaged the cut-out tool and started cutting, counting down from four beneath his breath. When he got to one, the machine snarled, buzzed a bit, then turned itself off, the safety fuse built into it popping as if from overload. “Now, there’s no power to anything in this wall, so even if I cut into wires, which I didn’t because there aren’t any here, this thing shouldn’t be shutting off. Weird, right?”
Garth kept a practiced, disinterested look on his face, staring right at Marko as if the man had lost his goddamn mind, with just enough ‘I am considering killing you for wasting my time’ mingled in there with a bored look to keep the man quiet for a few minutes.
As he stood there, the Kin’kithal assumed he was pulling the look off pretty well because Cooler Guy started laughing like a goddamn drunk hyena and kicked the unhappy looking Marko in the ankle.
Inwardly, though, Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez was playing the scene back in his mind just to make sure he wasn’t losing that mind.
In his time as Kin’kithal warrior in the reluctant employ of The Armies of Man, in his time as Specter and Heavy Elite, hell, even recently in his self-appointed role as itinerant destroyer of enemies against Reality 2.0, Garth had seen and done quite a lot of shit.
It was one of those inevitable things. Like, if you were a detective in New York, odds were quite high you were gonna run across a dead body, or, like, some rando guy all hopped on bath salts doing something that’d make Cthulhu rise up from his watery grave and be all, ‘bro, you sure that’s sanitary?’ before resuming his eternal slumber once more.
You couldn't get upset at the weird shit that happened in your life, you couldn’t, not when you’d chosen the life you were leading.
But this … this was right up there on his Wall of Weird, neatly eclipsing the previous entry of ‘Weird Blood Floating in Mid-Air for No Reason’.
The first few seconds of Marko’s wall-cutting endeavors had resulted in precisely the kind of thing you’d expect when a guy takes a power tool designed specifically to cut holes in things: a hole, being formed, in the wall.
But then …
The whole swathe in front of Marko, some eight square feet of red-limned wall burst –however briefly- into electric fire, an arcing, crackling eruption
of blue and white lightning that seemed to’ve followed the … natural cell-like patterns you found when you used a microscope on beads of blood.
The whole thing had lasted less than a second. One brief moment of furiously bright lightning, ripping across the bloodstained wall in all directions before flaring off into nothing, culminating in Marko, standing there with his cut-out tool, looking triumphant.
“Nah.” Garth said dismissively, shaking his head. “Didn’t see nothing. Was I supposed to see something?”
His blood had caught on fire. His invisible blood. Caught on fire. From electricity.
Thank fucking God no one could see that kind of shit because the whole building would empty out faster than Slappy Burgers that’d run out of burgers, complete with tools spinning hilariously on the ground. Possibly even –given the simulated nature of the world in which he lived- with those neat little contrails forming behind the faster moving men as they fled for the hills.
From there, it'd be the CDC and who the fuck knew who else, and in the meantime, Samiel, over on the other side of town, would be steadily en route to ruining the future.
Not cool.
Marko shook the tool at Garth. “It stopped working!”
“Electrical short somewhere?” Garth offered, eyebrow raised.
Marko tossed the cut-out tool to the ground and pulled out his own rechargeable jigsaw. He brandished it at Garth for a moment before savagely attacking the wall. As he began gouging into the offensive and haunted patch of old wall, he started shouting, “This madarikatu wall, Mister Nickels, it even … agh! You see? Battery operated stops working too!”
