Nov. 9th, 2011

jack_babalon: (Default)


Ronnie’s sitting at the wheel, snorting blow off a hand-held mirror with two skinhead gorillas packing the backseat with 600 pounds of all business. And don’t think he’s doing that stepped on shit his crew push for him either. No fuck that. This is the sweet white those he reports directly use. The private stash, with each line inhaled demarcating a fragile boundary between keeping his shit and losing it. When he vacuums up the last grains off a jagged bump it leaves in its place the reflection of his swelling black eye blinking back at him. He shakes his head already feeling the numb of the blow recede and the anger roaring in to fill the void. He glances away from the damage and out the front window of his 1970 pimp white Coup de Ville. Directly ahead an abandoned print shop. Two story brick number from the 20’s. That’s where they had her locked down. In the basement with only one way out. Fuck only knows for how long though. He’s already got five of his boys heading to the hospital and another half dozen standing watch in there instead of making him money.

Worst of all this was going down in East Point. He fucking hates East Point. He can’t so much as take a shit in this part of town without having to call in favors and cash in debts just to get a sheet of toilet paper. He scans the parking lot and the adjacent road. He counts all the cars the crew have sitting parked there, his included, and arrives at a sum definitely worth the attention of a passing patrol car. He suckles the gums of his teeth nervously and checks his phone. It’s 4:02 am and exactly seven minutes since he called him.

The Specialist.

“Mother-fucker better get his ass up here sooner than later,” Ronnie mutters to himself, scraping a plump bump off the Mound of Kilimanjaro piled on the corner of the mirror.

The two skins remain stoic silent, scanning around for any traffic and checking the purple shadows draped over the decrepit factory across the street for movement. Ronnie crouches down in the front seat, with his stout bull-dog physique he resembles a question mark trying to swallow itself whole. But when he looks into the mirror he immediately notices the black eye’s gone.

No, not gone, replaced… along with the rest of his face.

A familiar wink fires up at him from the mirror.

“You called?” a voice speaks from directly behind him, the two skins jump in their seats with shock as a flame sparks up between them illuminating a hooded third person scrunched between them lighting a cigarette."S'up?"

The skins dive quick draws into matching black bombers pulling for their pistols but producing instead fistfuls of withered roses that they wave menacingly at the figure’s head.

The flame casts the lower half of the intruder’s face in an orange glow, a scythe of a grin flashes and truncates the light with a puff of smoke. From beneath the hood’s umbra a constellation of skylines burn in pin pricks of white and a demented giggle erupts between them. “Aw, for me? You guys are soooo sweet.”

The skin on his right stares dumbfounded at the roses with the petals crumbling off his grip. The one on the left however reacts without hesitation, yanking the stranger by the front of his black hoodie with his free hand and winding up for a withered bouquet laced punch with the other.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah, everyone calm the fuck down a second.” Ronnie barks leaning over the back seat to a lay a hand on the left skin’s forearm. “This is him. This is my ‘guy’.”

The skin with the initiative looks at Ronnie then back at the hooded figure then back at Ronnie. The strength of Ronnie’s glare is enough to cow the shaved ape, pry open his grasp from the intruder’s chest and produce more than sufficient gravity to lower his impending fist.

Ronnie juts his black, bearded chin up at Adam: “Alright, quit fuckin’ around, man. Give ‘em back their shit.”

“Pfff,” the figure shrugs and tugs his hoodie back down. “Whatever.”

With a dismissive roll of his free hand, beneath the slip of a blink the roses are replaced with two identical drop guns. In between the baffled grunts of the skins staring at their firearms as if for the first time, the figure has vanished from between them and is now sitting back all chill in the passenger seat next to Ronnie; arms folded behind head as if they were about to go out for a sunday ride.

“What’cha need? I was all up in bed and not alone if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I ‘know what you mean’…, “ and Ronnie pumps his fist lackadaisically over his lap a couple of times with rolled eyes. “But I’m calling in a favor so you’ll have to call off spank night for some other time.”

“Another one?” The figure snorts and stares out towards the building. “Didn’t I just take care of your snitch problem a coupla weeks back?

“Yeah, you did… and that was one less you owe me.”

“Well god damn there, brother. Just how many do I owe you?”

“I don’t know, Adam… exactly how many people are looking for your ass right now? How many people have you fucked over, screwed up or generally pissed off that keep coming to me or my associates asking questions about you? We got a number on that one? Because I'll tell you this for free, I've sure as fuck long lost count.”

Ronnie lays cool, steady eyes on Adam and Adam blinks ahead in silence with a bit lip.

“That’s what I thought.” Ronnie snorts dismissively before crouching down to snort decisively.

When he rises back up, grinding up sniffles in the back of his nostrils and lizard licking white flecks off his black beard, he offers the mirror over to Adam.

Adam declines with a flash of the flat of his hand. “Naw, y’know me. Never while on the job.”

“You might change your mind when I tell you what the job is.”

Adam bobs his chin across the lot. “Lemme guess, something weird, mean and bad is in the bottom of that building over there and you want me to deal with it.”

“Heh. Damn near enough, how'd you..."

“I can see it. Its aura at least. The signature reads ultraterrestial but it’s filtered… meaning whatever it is its inside someone”

“Yeah, now this would be the part where you pretend I have no fuckin’ idea what you’re talkin’ ‘bout!”

Adam takes a thoughtful drag off his smoke and frames his response slowly: “’Kay. So, you got what? Someone ‘possessed’ down there. Right?”

“Right.”

“Something like, I don’t know, a ‘demon’ maybe?”

“How the hell should I know?” Ronnie scrunches his attention on cutting off another bump of love. “But it don’t seem to be acting like it’s pitchin’ for the other team, if that's what you're asking?”

“Yeah. Well, the good news is is that there’s no such thing as angels or demons... least not how you understand them. Which leads to the bad news, that there's definitely things out there.” Adam sweeps the empty air with his hand, “ Invisible things. In a universe overlapping ours but at a different, um… think frequency than the one we’re set at. And though we can't see them they can see us and we make them hungry, man. We make them ravenous. And here's the really fucked up thing, the only way they have into our world is through a living human body and they'll gladly wear a halo or a pair of horns if it gets them through the back door.”

Ronnie nods and stares at the building thoughtfully, before finally speaking. “Okay, see that… that doesn’t tell anything I need to know right now.”

"Well what do you need to know?"

“What you’re gonna do about it?”

“Honestly?” Adam sighs and pulls his hood down before shrugging helplessly to Ronnie. “Nothing.”

"'Nothing'?” Ronnie accepts the word as if it were a slap, rubbing his palm over his shaved head with eyes bulging wider the deeper the reply drills into his pride.

“I don't mean no disrespect here, Ronnie. I know... I know you want me to walk my ass on down there, wave a wand around and chant some bad Latin until its gone but it don’t work that way.”

“What do you mean ‘it don’t work that way’, I thought this is what you did.”

“You’re thinking of a priest. I’m a magician, a metromancer technically and magick don’t quite work the way you think it does. It’s like… how do I explain this? It’s like the cheat codes in video games… but for real life. The problem is there’s consequences for using them. Bad consequences. A liftime's worth of luck gone in a single shot or it can boomerang back on you like a curse striking twice as hard as you threw it. And man, I kid you not when I tell you the more powerful the cheat code the worse the repercussions for using it. Ever wonder why there aren’t many millionaires in my line of work?”

Adam shakes his head sadly at his benefactor: “So brother, I don’t mean no harm, but this shit is wayyy out of my league.”

“Well then it looks like you’re about to up your game, ‘brother’.”

“Look, seriously, I’m not sure where you’re coming from with this or why you’re busting my balls about it. I know it sucks, but your best bet is to go down there and just put a bullet in whoever’s got that thing locked inside 'em. Believe me you’d be doing the poor fuck a favor at this point, the longer its in there the deeper the damage.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Well neither is my going down there and playing Exorcist. I’ve never done something like this before and there’s more than a good chance that shit’s gonna go wrong if I do. Not just for me but for whoever’s still locked inside with that thing.”

“Which sounds like a better chance than the one she's got now..."

"'She'?" Adam curls a self-satisfied smirk.

"Yeah, fuckin' 'she'. Now I don't give a shit what the odds are because I know they're zero if someone doesn't do something."

"Who is she, Ronnie?"

"Someone who better be sitting where you're sitting in the next hour if you plan on laying your hands on anything stronger than an aspirin in this town ever again. Someone who means the difference between you being able to walk out of here however the fuck you came in or crawling back with both legs broken... for a start. Someone, and I think we'll agree this is the biggie, who will keep my mouth shut the next time some evil looking bastard from the ‘Black Lodge’ comes by my place asking all sorts of fucked up questions.”

“Jesus…," Adam shakes his head rubbing the pronounced bridge of his aquiline nose. He’s tempted to call Ronnie’s bluff, the only problem is he damn well knows it isn’t one. Instead he shrugs helplessly and nods towards the mirror. “Well, in that case I guess I’ll be taking one of those bumps after all.”

***
To Be Continued

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