[fiction] Lust, Hunger and Avarice - 1

I came up with this story by listening to this song about 30 times.  Also relevant is the fact that I just finished reading The Dark Tower a few days ago.



1 - Snakes in a Bar

I met Marlo on the corner of Ricket street, down in the valley where the streetlights break and don't get fixed.  The corner I just mentioned has no other street.  It's Ricket & Ricket, if you must.  But everyone knows where you are when you say "Ricket," and they know what you went there for.

Well, except for us.  In our case they would be wrong.

Marlo was wearing a black trench coat.  I didn't know if that was part of his thing, but we didn't match.  I was wearing leather.  He looked like a Matrix fan on Halloween.  I nodded.  He nodded.  We looked at the establishment.  It was a strip club called Wizards that was re-purposed out of an old office building.  The outside remained nondescript, save for the blackened windows and stray fliers for hookers.

I reached for the door knob but when I touched it, I felt a snap and the entire door lit up:  tight ribbons in a myriad of curves and angles flashed red on the surface of the door.  It had symmetry in both directions and it looked like the design had been chalked on.

"I think everybody knows what we are now," said Marlo.

I looked at him and shrugged.  "How else was I gonna open it?"

Just as the glow was fading, a young woman opened the door and smiled.  "Welcome!" she said.

She led us through an anteroom too chic for a dead end strip club.  The carpet was clean and unstained, the walls black, and the light came from lighted column-shaped fish tanks with jelly fish inside.  One of them swam to the beat of the low base we heard thumping from the stage.

There was only one stage, bathed in blue light.  A single dancer with pigtails and an exaggerated school-girl uniform performed for a single customer, who obliged her by tossing poker chips onto the stage.  New county law, explained the door girl.

I saw one of the chips on the bar when we sat down with our backs to the stage.  It was dirty and faded and probably covered with herpes.  Marlo bought our first round.

"I heard you're still a level one," he said.

I shrugged.

"You fail the trials or just give up?"

I studied my glass with great intensity.  Hoped they washed them between customers.  "No interest," I said, "Not really.  I'm just gonna ride this train until it-"  I looked up.  Marlo was being led away--some blonde bombshell was pulling him towards the curtained booths by his tie.  Since when was he wearing a tie? A perfect copy of Marlo's new friend showed up at my side.

"Care for a lap dance?" she asked.  Her skin, eyes, hair were all alluring.  I swallowed the last of my whiskey.  Time to go to work.

A warm, toasty, happy feeling started flowing up my feet when she closed the curtain on our little velvet cage.  I usually don't get that feeling from one drink.  The warm feeling grew as she did her one-woman show.  This was probably twice the business they had gotten all night.  She started spinning and shaking her hips to the music, and the warm feeling crossed my knees.  It hit my thighs and my legs went dead.  Her head was bobbing to the base.  She smiled and looked at me in the eyes while she peeled off her flannel shirt.  The warm feeling hit my stomach, then my chest.  She bent over away from me to finish the job.  I watched her clothes slide down her legs.  All I had to do was look over every in of her body for that tattoo.  Easy as pie.  I felt so relaxed!  Then the warm feeling reached my neck and my head and I felt even better.  I leaned back against the wall with a dumb smile on my face.  She knelt in front of me and put her hands on my knees.  She leaned forward, grinning like she had never done this before, slowly sliding her hands toward--then I the flash in her eyes.  Green.  Bright green, and vicious.

I grabbed her by the neck and slammed her back against the wall.  Now I was on my knees, crouching, pressing her neck into the wall, taking a good look at the fangs hanging out of her top row of teeth.  She struggled, hissing at me, blowing just a tad of spittle from her fangs onto my arm.  Three droplets landed on my unprotected wrist.  It burned.  That warm feeling turned cold.

She hissed louder and I turned my head to avoid the acid.  The curtain was ripped open.  A large, bald, burly ogre of a man stood there looking down.  I saw on his neck their sign, a tiny tattoo of a snake, right there above his collar bone.  Her handler.  Or maybe her bitch.  Who knew?  I threw the snake girl at her ally and they fell together on the floor.  In her frenzy she bit the nearest warm thing, and that happened to be her big burly bald friend.  I watched her sink her teeth into his neck.  When she raised her head up he was dead and bleeding.  Then she looked up at me.  I walked towards her.  She fled.

I heard a large thump behind the second curtain.  Marlo.  I opened the curtain and found him down with his eyes closed, the other blond going to work on his neck.  She lifted her head and looked at me.  Blood streamed down her face from her fangs.  She launched herself at me.  I turned her momentum into a flip, sending her down onto the top of one of those tables that people sit at while they watch the stage.  The table didn't budge; they were all bolted to the floor.  She hissed at me again and then ran out after her twin.

I looked around the room.  They were all looking at me like I was the monster.  I approached the bar.  Its tender backed away, raising his hands.  "I'm not here to hurt you, pal," I said.  I held up my guild badge for him to look at.  He nodded but kept his hands raised.  I closed by badge quickly--I don't like people seeing my symbol--and left.

Outside, there was no sign of them.

The nearest functioning public building was two blocks away.  It was a trashy 7-11 wannabe and the only illumination it provided to the street was a dim yellow light above the door.  That's where I parked my bike.  Not the safest place, but I wasn't the only one willing to risk it.  Another bike was parked next to mine.  This newcomer was black with silver gray trim.

This motorcycle had a black rose painted on the side of the gas tank.  I didn't think it meant anything back then.