Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman

by John Theesfeld

  “It is a fine evening, indeed.” I boasted and smiled to the men before me and put my top hat back atop my noggin. They stood stone-faced. I turned back around and took a few further steps. I halted my gait as to not get too near the scuttlers in front of me. The men behind me slowed their paced. I was fairly certain they stood far enough away to not be able to lay a blow from where they stood.

  “Yer watch, what’s ever in yer pockets, hand it over. Hand it all over. If yer nice, we might not kill ya’ all the ways dead,” the knife-wielding scuttler demanded.

  “But the evening... How does it find you?” I smirked.

  “You want this the hard way, boyo?” One of the men behind me snapped. I believe it was the one with the pipe. The one with the thin neck. The neck I planned to jab with the tip of my umbrella after disarming his portly friend with the wooden board adorned with rusty nails by stabbing him in the right bicep, rendering his right arm useless for the fight.

  I turned around to face the thin-necked man, “No. Thank you.” And I turned back to the men, the one with chain, the one who would be easy to throw off balance with all of that weight upon one appendage. And the one with the blade, who would be my first target. The dried blood covering the metal of his knife told me he was either good at using it or liked using it, in either case, it did not bode well for me.

  “Well, if you’re not much for the small talk, I do understand. I, myself, am not one for the small talk. Well, then. Let us get down to brass tax, shall we?” I knew I hadn’t much time, the look of hungry dogs were instilled in their drunken, downtrodden eyes.

  “Are you daft, old man?” The man with the knife shouted in a high-pitched squeal like the pig he so proved himself to be, thusly securing his place as my number one target.

  I first pulled my pocket watch from my vest pocket and checked the time. “9:20,” I muttered. Behind schedule. I did hope to be at the Lamp Lyte by at least nine.

  I held the watch, offering it to the man with the knife. As predicted, the scuttler lunged for it. There was something more to this man than a drunkard’s night out. He had something else in his system. They all had something secondary in their systems. The dead eyes. The ashen skin. The lumbering movements. Perhaps rancid rust moss; my first guess. Perhaps on their way to becoming full-fledged gasters, I thought. Whatever their toxin, they were in need of more, suffering in the shadow of insanity and gripped by fear. An unfortunate side effect of coming off the effects of rust moss was sheer paranoia and fear. These beasts carried weapons not just to attack others, but to protect themselves from each other when they reached their lowest points.

  As this scuttler lunged for my watch, his fellow thugs followed like a pack of hyenas. In the flash of a moment I raised my umbrella, extracting the spike from the tip and let the first attacker impale himself through his arm by his own force, causing him to drop his knife.

  With him, being able to move him in whichever direction I liked, having him caught by my blade, I pushed him away and into the man with the chain-arm as he threw a punch. As the man with the chain fell off balance he was met in the face with a board of nails, a pleasant surprise and one I had not accounted for and a dire consequence the scuttler had not planned. I took the moment to swiftly bring my umbrella to the back of his noggin, putting him to the ground. With three of the four down, I stepped back, turned to the man with the pipe.

  “It seems,” I said to him, “this evening finds you speechless.” And I jabbed my umbrella, pike retracted, into his throat sending him into a choking fit. The man with the board tried prying the nails from his face to no avail. The man with the dead arm held his wound as he begged for salvation and forgiveness. And I moved on down the road.

  It was a welcome I should have expected. It was a welcome I prepared for, a welcome to Rust Waters.

  17

  The Havis lineage, original homesteaders of Northward Territories, thrived for generations. They originally left the metros of the Clockwork Foundation to escape the pressures of modern life. Under Thomas Havis, his brothers, sisters, their families, they created a movement to live off the land. They had quite the following, too. People followed them from all over the world. They chose a valley in Northward to populate and lived well for themselves.

  For a time, at least, they lived well for themselves. Then, an infestation of quaymoths halved the population. The Havis survivors became hosts and their peaceful community became a cannibalistic, maldeviantized hive.

  They became referred to as the Havis-Moth Clan, a tribe of mothmen hybrids. They were one of a kind. Unique as they were deadly. Frightening monstrosities capable of sheer horrors. Tales of the Havis-moth still haunt Northward, fabled to grab unsuspecting travelers in the still of night from the roads within the woods. Rubbish and nonsense.

  From Bewilderness, the section on hybridization. A male quaymoth, if one gets the chance, will puncture its mate, or victim, with its stinger. Upon insertion, the quaymoth releases its seed. With a mate, impregnation occurs, or does not. With a victim, the toxins turn one mad before dying of a massive stroke as the brain boils under a severe fever. A drop of quaymoth toxin can destroy life regardless of size, large or small. Although such a concentrated toxin, upon prolonged oxidation, it tends to lose its oomph, if you will. It's all very scientifical. One can read Dr. Arpin Weylong's thorough line of study on quaymoths, it's superbly interesting. Most of his work can be found in archived issues of The Journal, Scientifical, through a Ministry of Communications request.

  Perhaps members of the Havis family, and there were many, were unique, biologically speaking. Maybe it was the particular strain of quaymoth. Perhaps there was a third factor, allowing the two groups to co-mingle. Whatever the case, those with Havis blood that were stung by male quaymoths had a rather strange effect. They morphed into scaly, bug-eyed, winged moth-people. They were no longer men and women, but rather an evolution of horrors. Havis-Moths were brutally savage beyond comparison. They killed off the survivors. They killed off the quaymoth hive. They turned on each other, the strongest left to design a new hive and home.

  There were hundreds of them, at first. They lived like wild animals in the filth of their rundown village. The weak were eaten. They spread their heritage by abduction. Puncturing their kidnapped victims, most succumbing to the toxins, others surviving, only to gestate and die giving birth. Further generations were tamer, but still violent, no longer equipped with stingers, but maldeviantizing in a useful evolutionary manner. Extra arms, strong jumping legs, a tough outer shell; all improvements from generation to generation. The changes were wide and varied and not everyone changed the same.

  The younger ones of the group were also smarter. They knew for survival, they would have to kill their parental generation before they did them. It was a cruel realization on every generation, that the young would have to overtake the old, and the old would have to accept it. There was no way about it. Time after time, a generation reached maturity and destroyed their predecessors, then birthing a new generation that would one day do the same.

  Eventually these creatures whittled each other down to a handful of dishonest, scheming, selfish creatures. They were more man than quaymoth, now; perhaps maldeviant would be a more fitting term. Their eyes were quaymoth, bulbous and large. They kept the wings as well. Antennae to assist in sensing their surroundings and for use in flight. A mouth of pincers and feelers, on a few. Extra long fingers, on some. Four arms on at least one offspring fellow. They were each similar, but different; a fair diversity in appearance.

  They began to turn on each other until there were six left of the main clan. Brothers, and they band together as such, thus, The Insectoid Six was born. Or hatched. These six moved from Northward Territories south. They wreaked havoc, from murder to kidnapping and train robbery to bank robbery. They were just another gang of outlaws until they reached The Chasm where their criminal empire took off with great success.

  Though, interestingly and quite shockingly, one other Havis-m
oth survived and escaped south into the metro system. (Or at least it is thought that there was only this one other survivor. There could have been more, but none have turned up in my studies.) This particular man, at first, was forced to live as an underdwellar in the sewers below Rust Waters. Eventually he assimilated into society with a wife, she a maldeviant, as well, but that of an albino underdwellar. Very little is known about her.

  The young maldeviants in love wound up in Rust Waters, the slummiest, slimiest, sleaziest part of the metro system. Those in power, the people who are supposed to look out for the people, found not a single fault with renaming this pit of Haverton Metro, where all the sewage was rerouted to drain ‘naturally’ into Finn's Sinkhole, Rust Waters. By the time they moved in, Central Metro had long faded into the past. And this is where the Havis lineage found itself. (Of Haverthornes and Havis, I’d rather a metro at peace, like they‘d say so very long ago. Now it took on such a very different meaning.)

  As I understand it, no one would have them. They were forced onto the bottom wrung of the social ladder. Though, I would argue, Rust Waters already was the mud beneath the social ladder. Through perseverance and the kindness of few, the couple were able to eke out a meager living.

  They were seldom seen. The man, his name said to have been Klaus, was a night workman in the sewage yard. His wife, Verna, repaired low-grade automatons and winders from home for a neighborhood maker shoppe no longer in existence.

  Klaus and Verna contributed to society, but lived poor lives. They were hassled at times for being maldeviants, though it was a prejudice they were used to. Their options in this world were very limited, but they had much to be proud of. Klaus had broken away from his quaymoth lineage; Verna, an underdwellar all of her life, trekked to the surface level to join society. They had come very far, indeed.

  And quietly into the world, within the darkest, dirtiest recess of the most populated metro on the planet a child was born who would become one of the most feared gangsters to have ever controlled the crime world within the unified metros of The Clockwork Foundation.

  As a child, she was home taught. Mechanics and engineering by mother. The ways of the world by father. She inherited the wings of one, the pale skin of the other. The patience of a lazing underdwellar, the violent tendency of a quaymoth. She grew up fast due to the quaymoth blood pulsing through her veins and was a criminal by the age of twelve. Considering how one looks at it, it only got worse, or better, from there. Now Mother Moth rules over Rust Waters and other neighborhoods of ill-repute, running a vast criminal underworld, her associates running the gamut from lowly underdwellars carrying out her deeds, to lowly politicians, also carrying out her deeds (the common denominator was a poorly adjusted ethical code and quite wretched moral code, their backgrounds varying greatly).

  I could see Mother Moth’s influence on Rust Waters. The metro had grown substantially in the past ten years. What was once a shell of a metro, burnt-out and dilapidated, shunned and ignored, was now the center of vice. It was a step up. For once in a very long time, there was order.

  I walked with caution through the dark avenues and fog laden boulevards of Rust Waters. My pulse still raced and I could feel my heart ready to burst from my chest. I feared the scuttlers I subdued into the sidewalk would have followed my path.

  The metro became livelier as I neared the heart of it all. The to-do upon the metro boulevard was astounding. Steamdrivers plowed through the narrow roadway regardless of pedestrians. If one was looking for a pub, a gambling house, or a brothel, this would be the place to visit. There were exotic dancing shows, side shows, freak shows. There were few legitimate businesses in the area, mostly pawn brokers and slop houses.

  A popular attraction seemed to be the Boat House, a tavern that allowed patrons to fight underdwellars for coin or other prizes. There was gambling on the outcome of pitting two underdwellars together, as well. A quite barbaric and sinister form of entertainment.

  The Havis clan had come a long way. From the rich, bustling metros to a life in the puritanical countryside, the creation of a utopia cut short by tragedy and overtaken by the bewilderness they did inhabit. Now, so many years later, back to the metro and running the show.

  A steamdriver roared to life at the opposite end of the road and clankered up and clunkered down at full speed. As it passed a group of men in front of an old pub, a man leaned out of the carriage with a revolver in each hand. He fired up the group of men, some of them were able to draw their weapons and fire upon him. I jumped and hid for cover as did many others. The steamdriver rolled down over the road with a great speed and the incident seemed to be finished very quickly. The man with the revolvers slung over the carriage door, dead. Nearly skidding out of control, the steamdriver turned a corner and was gone from sight.

  A few people shrieked. Others yelled for help. Most people just stopped to gawk. Others went about continuing with plans for the evening. I stood up and brushed myself off; I surveyed the area cautiously, looking about for further trouble. Closer to the core of it all, danger loomed within every moment. Taking on four scuttlers kicked to the gutter was one thing, taking on a chap who held his revolver with an anxious trigger finger and not a care in the world, was another.

  I continued on, passing a posted bill for Central Metro Steam Authority Construction. The bill was terribly out of date, marked for H. 13 - 17 1872. The work area was left in tact, seemingly for four years now. Broken pipes, busted valves, cracked supports and crippled by rust. The area was a terrible mess. Just nearby, the burning gas lamps of burlesque shows and the colorful whimsy of the gambling halls stood in stark contrast. I stepped around the abandoned construction zone, which did include, might I add, a charred automaton left to rust away.

  There stood in a pile, beside another pub, train wheels and axles from various sized nimbulators, trains, and locomotives. Seemed a prank amongst GearMen to steal such things of a terribly large size and leave them next to their favorite watering hole. They seemed to have blocked off an entire alleyway with them.

  I noticed many establishments posted signs ‘Maldeviants Welcome’ in their windows and doorways. I wasn’t certain of any establishments which were still segregated, in fact, I believed that to be a trend that died out long ago. Perhaps it was in contempt of Judge Huppard and his policing of the district. Mother Moth was only so powerful when her opponents held political might. Though, the Judge could get burned very badly tempting the moth with a flame.

  The darkness of night became illuminated with the glow of gas lamps and suddenly the shadows dissipated into a lively party of silhouettes cast by the drunk and disorderly. Steam rising from a grate in the street plumed and scattered to wisps within the street traffic.

  From outside, The Lamp Lyte, Mother Moth’s social club, entertainment house, and gambling hall, looked like a carnival fun-house constructed by a madman. It was the facade of three buildings defaced and remodeled to create a spectacle of garishly horrendous fervor, a crescendo that rose and peaked within the physical embodiment of its centerpiece, a modest clock tower. The surrounding buildings, the gambling halls and burlesque shows and ale houses, paled in comparison. Around the entire metro block of pleasures, this was the hub of it all.

  This was not the Metro University Club. Nor The Monarch Ball. Neither a quaint Eastern Bay Seavenly House or a Gorillian Seavenly Den. This was not a South Gartenland Islands Fortune House. It wasn’t like a saloon on the edge of one of the three great deserts. It was none of these, nor other great cultural places of meditation, relaxation, social interaction, or pleasure. This was a toxic and poisonous hallucinogenic side effect within the mind come to life.

  Every vice of every culture was represented within this metro block.

  The main building of The Lamp Lyte stretched into the sky. Originally a clock tower, the building had been transformed into the Lamp Lyte and included rooms for rent and hide-out for many a-criminal on the middle levels. Far above the clock face was a level cleared out for
special events. Above that, a roof of spires pointing and reaching to the stars.

  I made my way to the grand steps of the Lamp Lyte, crowded with degenerates and gilded revelers alike. The gilded were out and about and adorning their most gaudy of costumes. There were few fine-tailored suits amongst the crowd. Most were lavish and some bordering on outrageous. I seemed to be the only average bloke around in my gray tweed and boring, old top hat. Then again, I was not keen on dressing up like a court jester or circus clown.

  I entered the establishment, a heavy atmosphere of smoke hung in the air; cheap seavenly soured the pungent aroma of filth and booze. There were tables of card players, wheels of chance, and coin-operated gambling machines. The invisible gears of randomosity worked overtime in a joint like this. There was a sort of pararphenomenonal vibration emanating from it all.

  Dancers on stage in frilly dresses like giant flowers in bloom twirled and moved to the music of a mediocre piano player tapping away at the busted keys of an out-of-tune piano. Women of the evening adorned in corsets flirted with men who had coin to spend. Two ale-men remained active tending bar towards the back. I made my way towards the bar through the tables of card players, machines of chance, dancing girls, and drunken revelers. I used the tip of my umbrella to push a drunkard back to his feet as he fell backwards, like the invisible hand of a second chance.

  I took my place at the end of the bar. The barmen looked nearly identical. Aside from their matching attire of white dress shirts, black vests and black bow-ties, both men parted their hair down the middle, slicked to the sides. Each wore thick handlebar mustaches and large mutton chops. From a back area, a large, thin automaton crafted to look just like the bar men rolled out with a tray of drinking glasses.

  I sat there at the bar and waited, surely one of these men would know The Strongman.