The liquid gold burns a familiar path through John's body as he tosses back another glass, relishing in the pain for the moments before it’s gone. He lets the tumbler clatter against the carved up counter top, adding it to the pile at the bar's edge.
Wordlessly the young woman opposite him gathers his collection, a silent question hanging in the chaos around them both. John nods almost imperceptibly, and waits.
The stale air reeks of cigarettes and booze, hums with the noise of old rock and roll playing from a salvaged jukebox, and cooks like an oven as the AC loses its fight against the summer beyond the half crumbling walls.
Billiard balls clatter from a piss poor break somewhere behind him in the sea of bodies all vying to be the loudest asshole in the room. Luckily it’s easy to tune out over the tinnitus ring trapped deep in his skull.
A new drink slides John’s way. He pulls it forward and examines the chips in the rim. Rotating the glass to the smoothest portion, he downs its contents in a single gulp and lets it slam back down to the table. One more new scar for the old wood.
Another silent nod, another glass, though this time the bartender's hand lingers on it, even as John tries to pull it from her grip.
“You keep this up, you’ll end up like the rest of them.” Her voice is nearly inaudible, making it harder to hear over the persistent ring.
Ignoring the woman, he tries to pull the glass from her hand, but she refuses to let it go.
With a sigh, John looks up to meet the woman's eyes.
She is new, so he doesn’t blame her. If it was Ricardo or Jammie they would have continued to let him drink in peace...
“I’ll survive,” John grumbles, his voice fumbling from his lips, more drunk than he realizes.
“Survivin’ and livin’ are two different things. You take me as the kind of man who’s been doin’ the former for a while.”
“You get a lot of tips, giving your paying customers a hard time?”
“No, I don’t,” the woman sighs, still refusing to let go of her grip on his newest drink. “How many more of these will you have?”
“It’ll be nine this year... so three more.” John pulls the glass harder than he intends, tearing it from the woman's hand and sending him teetering backwards in the chair before he manages to right himself with his other hand.
“This year?”
“And it’ll be ten next,” John says plainly, sending the contents of his newest drink down his throat.
He is sweating already, which is a pain in the ass. Each year it hit him worse and worse, and each year the room was a little warmer than the last as the surrounding bars closed down or got run out, creating a press of people desperate for cheap booze.
“How many years will you keep it up?”
“Until it stops hurting I reckon.”
“Might be you find yourself in the ground before whatever is hurting you stops. I’ll tell you from experience this ain’t medicine either.” the woman pulls the empty glass behind the counter, already prepping a new one.
“Aren’t you a little young to be giving me advice?” John chuckles, watching her roll her eyes with an extra dramatic flair.
“Aren’t you a bit young to be drinking away memories?”
“Well... I got plenty of 'em to spare. No harm in losing a few.” John shrugs and awaits the second to last glass, though she doesn’t put it down.
John scowls again as he meets her hard eyes. She is around his age, though it’s hard to say in this city.
Her age too then, or rather how old she would have been. For a moment he thinks there might be a passing resemblance, though it is probably just the alcohol talking.
John narrows his eyes, focusing his vision as she refuses to break his gaze
Definitely the alcohol. This woman looks nothing like her. She doesn’t have the same eyes, the same smile or frown. She doesn’t have the right hair or the right voice, but still there is something in the way she watches him.
Maybe it’s that look of pained worry that followed the questions he refused to answer straight, or the way she tapped a finger on the counter when she couldn’t think of the right thing to say just as she did, when he was in one of his moods in the weeks after a deployment.
“How about this?” The bartender sets the drink down gently, though she guards it from John's hands as he reaches out to steal it away. “Instead of next year doin’ one more, you do one less. Every year you do one less ‘till you’re done... I'd hate to see you lumbering around like the rest of these assholes.”
John rolls his eyes, rips the drink away from her hands once again and downs the contents, letting the glass half fall from his hands to roll around the bar.
“How about this? You make sure Patrick keeps his customers instead of trying to shove 'em away?” John grabs his wallet and slaps down the exact change for the drinks, plus a twenty for the bartender. “And if you want a bigger tip, I prefer not to have conversations about the why’s of my patronage.”
John staggers up from his seat and throws his coat over his shoulder.
“You still got one more drink!” the bartender calls out, confusion making its way across her face.
“I'm fixing your damn AC first. Can’t fuckin breath in this place.” John shoves his way through the crowd, parting the mass of bodies as he staggers to the back.
With a heavy crash the metal door swings open, sending John stumbling into the shaded alley behind Patrick’s bar. The smell of bodies and booze is replaced with a slap in the mouth from the chest high piles of garbage that line the space between the buildings, cooked from the desert sun.
Sweat is already pooling at his back, sticking his shirt to his skin. He hates this place, truly he does, but it was the only spot still serving alcohol in walking distance. It would have been better had Patrick at least compensated his repair efforts in free drinks but the asshole is too stingy for something like that.
John has half a mind to leave it be, but not having AC in the bar is making him sweat out the alcohol he’s already paying an arm and a leg for, so something has to be done.
Using the wall for support, John guides himself around from the back to the side of the building away from the main street towards the parking lot.
A number of people sit on the hoods of their cars, playing their own music to continue the party outside. A few working girls make the rounds or stand on the corner, while several homeless shuffle about the spaces fighting the stray dogs for handouts or discarded scrap.
John lets his weight drop against the grease covered wall, and fishes around his shirt pocket for his half crushed pack of cigarettes.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to work his numb fingers around the package before finally being able to pull a mostly intact smoke out and light it up.
Taking a pull, he lets the nicotine clear his head enough to locate the dying AC unit. Staggering over, he half falls to a knee beside it, and has to use one arm to keep himself upright while the other peels off the access panel.
He examines the wires with a grunt, and pulls a cooked rat from the tangle.
A couple of loud laughs and a yelp grab his attention for a moment, but he does his best to ignore it as he pulls out his pocket knife to cut away at the frayed wires while inhaling the old tobacco.
“What, come on, surely you can do a group discount huh?” someone drunkenly slurs nearby.
“I really shouldn’t...” A soft voice responds, uncertain.
John watches the smoke linger around the unit as he lets it fall from his lips, ears tuned to the conversation happening only a few feet away.
Having stripped the wires, John ties up the pieces and secures them. Taking some electrical tape from the roll he left in here last time, he wraps it up and flips the switch to watch the unit kick on with a shuddering whir.
“Quit playing hard to get, would ya? I got a hundred bucks and a few boys willing to make it worth your while.”
It’s just a working girl, she has it handled.
Fists balled, John raps his knuckles against metal, slams the panel back on, and tosses his cigarette to the ground, crushing it under foot. With a grunt he stands and turns his head to watch the exchange, just to make sure.
“But... usually I’d have to charge at least five hundred, I really don’t think—”
“Five hundred? For a skinny bitch like you? There isn’t enough meat on that ass to be worth half of that. You’re lucky a guy like me is willing to give you the time of day at all.”
He really shouldn’t get involved, it’s not his business.
One of the men in the group gathered around the small girl grabs her wrist and pulls her in close, sending her stumbling forward in a tangle to the man's feet.
“Alright, that's enough,” John grunts the words as he lumbers forward, the familiar flow of adrenaline working the buzz out of his mind.
He needs a good excuse tonight, it’s been a little too long. Surely the girl wont mind.
“Fuck off, yea? How about you mind your own? We got her first,” the loudest of the group of five calls back, his attention turned from the working girl.
“No, I don’t think I will.” John presses closer, struggling to focus his vision.
He recognizes the girl from around the usual spots. She is skinnier than hell, with dangerously pale skin, and a head of bright orange hair that hangs down to her shoulders, with eyes like a kitten in the process of being kicked. The sight of her working these streets makes him sick to his stomach, and that man’s hand around her wrist, her body in a tangle on the ground at his feet makes him want to rip the bastard apart.
Well, he’d want to rip the bastard apart anyway but the girl gives him one hell of an excuse to let off some steam.
He closes the distance to the men, standing only a few feet away now, he towers over the group, close enough to smell the stench of booze on their clothes, see the scabs and scars littering their slimy skin.
“Let. Her. Go.” John doesn’t leave any room for debate. It isn’t a demand, it’s a promise—a promise that there isn’t any guarantee they live through this if they don’t do what they’re told.
He lets his eyes break from the group to look at the girl then, as he realizes her wide eyes on him now—something wrong in them.
The shadows cling to her, bathing her in a deeper darkness the others don’t seem to have. A faint trace of distorted air rises from her, shimmering almost as if the skin on her body is too hot for the air around it, sending up trace amounts of smoke...
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His eyes narrow, something deep within him telling him to get away from her, but the man holding her wrist speaks again, snapping his attention away and back to the jack asses in front of him.
“Aye... aye maybe we just bounce huh?” A man who John deems the smartest of the group offers, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder to try and guide him away.
“The fuck? No. Big guy wants a fight? He’ll get a fight. Or are you just trying to jump the line? We were making a deal first so why don’t you just—”
John's fist connects with the man's jaw, snapping his head sideways, and sending his body through the air to crumple on to the ground with a grunt a few feet away.
“Should have listened to your buddy,” John offers.
A flash of metal glints and streaks through the air, nearly making contact with John's stomach.
John takes a step back and grabs the attacker's wrist, pulls him off to the side and drives a knee into his stomach, lifting the man up off the ground. Blood and bile sputters from the man's lips as John feels a satisfying crack under the force of his knee.
He spins the attacker around, grinding the bones of the man's arm until it twists unnaturally behind his back. John pulls until he hears a snap, grabs the falling knife and kicks the man in the back between his shoulder blades, sending him stumbling, screaming into another of his friends.
John examines the cruel looking blade, folds it back up, palms it, and takes a single lumbering step forward towards the man who suggested they leave.
“I... really don’t want any trouble John!” he stutters.
John places the knife in the man's hand and pats his shoulder. “Why don’t you get your guys and fuck off then?”
“Right! yea absolutely! I’ll—”
John goes deaf as a gunshot rings out over the parking lot. He wheels around to look down at the first man he hit. He is still laying on the ground, gun in hand, barrel smoking, having missed his shot by who knows how much.
Letting out a single breath, John walks his way towards the man on the ground, staring at him as he tries to pull the trigger again, only for his eyes to grow wide as nothing happens.
John squats down in front of the man, and grabs the handgun by the slide, pulling it towards himself.
“Your grip is limp. The round didn’t cycle.” John grips the man's wrist with one hand, and uses his other to drop the mag and rack the slide, ejecting the stove-piped brass. “If you’re going to pull a gun, know how to use it. Otherwise its fucking embarrassing.”
The man's eyes narrow, and it looks as though he is about to say something to get himself killed, so John does him a favor instead.
John tears the gun from the man's hand, snapping the man's index finger as he fails to remove it from the trigger guard in time. In two quick motions John slams the grip of the gun into the man's head, sending him back to the ground, snoring. He then pulls the slide back, pressed down on the locking mechanism and pulls the entire slide off the lower receiver and sends both parts scattering in different directions, though he holds on to the barrel, stuffing it in his pocket.
He can hear the sound of the other men's footsteps running away, though it doesn’t look like anyone else intends to leave the parking lot party on account of a little gunfire.
The music still thumps, the conversations still roll and everyone minds their own, everyone but the girl.
“Shit! I was working them!” She holds her arms tight to her chest and looks down and away at the ground.
John rubs the back of his head, his now slightly clearer head letting a little guilt rise through. He has to admit it was selfish. He knew she had things covered but damn did it feel good to snap some bones. Still, it’s his fault she’s out of cash now.
“Sorry.”
“What am I going to tell Cross?” she mutters, hugging herself tightly.
“You’re one of Solomon’s?”
“Yea...”
John shakes his head and works his jaw, making a faint clicking noise as he does. He feels like an asshole for fucking with her income, even if those cock suckers damn well deserved a good beat down.
Chances were the money she makes from this is the difference between life and death given how thin she is... but she’s also so small. He couldn’t just stand by. Sure there are probably a hundred more just like her, but this is the one he saw so dammit he was going to do something about it.
“Here...” John pulls out his wallet and thumbs through the remaining cash. “Take the rest of the night off. An apology from me to you.”
“This... this is enough to take the next week off...” She gapes, examining the stack of hundreds.
“Good, a girl like you shouldn’t be out here anyway.” John offers a sympathetic frown.
“Aren’t you a little young to be giving me advice?”
“Guess you’re right.” John rubs his eyes, and turns back towards the bar. “Besides, I got a drink to finish...”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad people like me still have people like you around…”
“For what it's worth, if it was up to me you wouldn’t have to be out here at all. This is the least I can do.”
She holds the money tight, pressing her lips into a thin line and shrugs her shoulders. “It sucks that I'm out here, but it sucks even more than people want it. Give us all the money you want and beat up all the clients. People want what people want, can’t change that.”
“Just wish things around here were different, is all,” John tries.
“Don’t we all?” She offers a faint smile, stuffs the cash into what John barely qualifies as clothes and heads off from the bar, the shadows still clinging to her even as the last traces of sunlight make her pale skin glow.
There is certainly something off about her, but it’s impossible to tell now. Call it a gut feeling, but John can’t help but shake the sensation that she’s dangerous...
Maybe she was trained, and could have fended for herself. Regardless, it felt good to let out a little steam, and get an excuse to have some more drinks as well—after all that his buzz is gone. Looks like he needs to start over.
John returns to the bar, shoving his way through the bodies to a seat at the opposite side, away from the woman who insisted on giving him a hard time.
Signaling the other bartender, he adds the new drinks to his tab and throws them back, one after the others.
It burns on the way down, numbs the faint throbbing in his knuckles, and fades the world around him.
Another one, and he smiles as the tightness in his chest lifts. Two more and John finds himself standing over the biggest man he has ever seen, knuckles bloody, lips curled back, cheers ringing out around him.
Three more drinks and his head is down on the table, staring at a spot on the floor that looks like a blood stain.
Four more drinks has John staggering from the bathroom, his arm around a man whose name he doesn’t know, shoving him towards a woman who is far too sober to handle the slurring confession of love of a stranger.
Five more drinks and John's vision swirls, painting the world in swashes of yellow incandescent light. At some point he must have left the bar, because now he is stumbling home down the cracked pavement, tripping over rotten fences and overgrown lawns.
It all moves in fractured moments stitched together in snapshots of time. He is down the block, then he is on the ground. He is walking again, then vomiting in the space between two peoples houses.
A dog barks at him and he tries to pet it. It doesn’t let him. His hand is bleeding, he must have bandaged it himself, though he doesn’t know where he got the supplies from.
He staggers to the door and fumbles with his key, drops it a few times, and then wakes up on the ground outside. John pulls himself up, and sees the key still in the door. When did he get those in? It didn’t matter.
John throws open the door, letting it slam against the wall, shaking the pictures and sending pieces of drywall onto the entry.
The hallway to his bedroom shifts and warps as he walks, the walls themselves move to slam into his sides along the way.
It feels like an eternity before he makes it to the bedroom, his bed calling to him with honeyed words... or is that the radio he left on?
He tries to let his weight drop him into bed as he shuffles near it, but the bed moves out of the way just as he nearly reaches it, sending him bouncing off the side and tumbling onto the floor, cracking his head against the nightstand.
“Ah... fuck” John grunts, grabbing at his head while the stand’s contents clattered off him and into the ground. A clatter of an ashtray, the twang of guitar strings, the plastic crunching of an alarm clock. A single tap, somewhere nearby as a ring lands on its side and rolls away from him under the bed.
“Shit...” John turns to his stomach and tries to grab at it, but his shoulders get stuck, as the ring rolls to a stop just out of reach.
“Fuckin’ god damnit.” John tries to force his way towards it, his hands scrapping at the ground a few inches away.
Pounding a fist into the ground, John shoved hard against the bed, scooting it slightly, getting him closer. His finger taps the ring, though that only causes it to slide further away.
“Fuck!” John punches the ground, his fist thudding against the hard surface as he bucks against the bed. The frame creaks, jerking upward before crashing back down onto his shoulders, sending a wave of dulled pain lancing through his shoulder blade.
“Fuck, fuck, fucking—!” he growls, grabbing the bed and hauling it up with a surge of rage. The mattress tumbles to the ground, and John seizes the frame, tearing it away and carving grooves into the wood as he roars at the inanimate object.
“Get the fuck—!” John kicks it further away, snapping the wood against his boots, sending the headboard crashing to the ground.
John storms towards the rubble, grabs it again, and throws it across the bedroom, shouting as it crashes into the drywall, punching a hole through it, crushing his old fallen guitar with a dissonant twang.
Panting, John lets his weight sink against the wall his headboard used to be up against.
The energy leaves him then, and his head falls limp, whole body crashing against the wall before collapsing to the ground.
With a heavy hand, John takes the ring from the ground and holds it out in front of him with his arms resting on his knees.
The muscles in his jaw work awkwardly, making another clicking sound.
A tightness built in his chest as he tried to put the ring around his pinky.
It doesn’t fit, not that it ever would have.
Evelyn had two rings, the one she was married with, and the one she wore when her body became too skinny to keep the original one on.
John holds that second ring up to the first traces of dawn that make their way in through the barred bedroom windows, watching as it catches the golden band.
He had known her since they were kids, and it felt like a lifetime, but today marked the date of her being dead longer than they had ever been married.
If he had known all of this would happen he would have married her sooner, gotten out sooner, spent more time with her...
He should have listened when she pestered him about it, he should have buried his fears and asked her sooner... he should have—
John wakes on the floor, head pounding.
His sweaty back sticks to the ground, forcing him to peel himself up. Each movement makes his head thunder, and it feels as though his eyes are going to pop out of his skull.
Her ring still rests closed in one hand, and his beard lingers with the scent of tears.
He must have passed out. looking around at the broken bed, he confirms that. He has no memory of doing this much damage.
He'd have to fix it up later today.... later today....
Checking his watch, he struggles to see the numbers. Straining his eyes to read half past ten, he lets his head fall back to the ground with a thud.
He’s late... not that it matters much, but it is a point of pride for him.
Struggling to his feet, John staggers to the kitchen, downs a cocktail of raw egg, hot sauce, salt, pepper, Worcestershire and gin to take the edge off of his hangover.
John throws off his clothes and enters the shower while brushing his teeth, keeping the cold water on just long enough to wet him before scrubbing down with soap, and washing it off as quickly as possible.
His stomach rumbles, but since he is already late, he doesn’t want to waste any time making breakfast. Instead, John grabs one of the MREs from its spot in the pantry and tears it open. To think, there had been a time in his life when he vowed never to eat one again.
He grabs the keys for the car and a water bottle from the garage, quickly making himself a recruit smoothie by crushing up the contents of the MRE and pouring them into the bottle, shaking it, and downing it all as quickly as possible.
John presses the remote and listens with heavy eyes as the gears grind and the motor buzzes, but the garage door refuses to open.
With a sigh, he pulls out his notebook filled with names from his back pocket and makes a note to get it fixed. Then, he throws the door open manually only to be momentarily blinded by the sun reflecting off an black Lincoln parked opposite his street.
He doesn't recall seeing it before.
John narrows his eyes, but can’t make out anything from the glare, so instead he ignores it and gets back in his car. He drives it out, parks, gets out again and closes the garage in a partially hungover haze.
Remembering that he hadn’t locked the front door last night, he gets out a second time, lumbers to the door, locks it, double checks that he locked it, and finally sits back down in the driver seat with the grunt of a man twice his age.
The big tires chirp and catch as he punches the gas down, sending him barreling through the street toward the first item on his agenda with a pained groan.
The morning sun nearly blinds him, and his headache returns with a vengeance in its heat. For a moment he wonders why he agreed to do all this, but quickly squashes that line of thinking as the bartender's words fill his ears with a ringing more painful than the tinnitus.
End up like one of those lumbering ass holes? No fucking way. Who the hell did she think she was? He’d never end up like those fuckers, not if he has anything to say about it. John might not be a great man but he’ll be damned before he’s useless.
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