The Patron
By Derrick Boden
On a sweltering winter morning, at the edge of town where the wailing desert clawed at her shanty door, the Patron held court. The preacher’s son knelt before her, trembling with fury and fear. His gaze lingered on the tuxedoed bodyguard fingering her wheel-lock pistol, the guitarist plucking at dissonant chords. His breath hitched at the sight of the daemons, that amorphous mass of shadow that writhed in the shanty’s darkest corner. Sweat roamed his cheeks. His eyes said: see what I have endured. I have nothing left to lose.
The Patron’s lip curled. Visitors always brought such thoughts.
They were always wrong.
The preacher’s son lifted his gaze with surprising confidence. “Good afternoon—”
“This relationship is purely transactional.” The Patron waved an impatient hand. “State your terms.”
But as the hiss of blood locusts rose beyond the shanty walls, she hesitated. Beneath this man’s conviction, rarer urges haunted his eyes. Tolerance. Virtue.
Could this be the one? The month was drawing short. Time was running out.
“My name is—”
“I know who you are.” The Patron maintained the illusion of disinterest, left leg flung over the arm of her rust-and-rivet throne. “Your terms.”
The young man’s fingers twitched toward a picket-line of knives at his belt. His gaze flicked to the bodyguard’s gun, massive in her bony hands. He did not breathe for a solid minute.
Then, visibly, his mind was made.
“I need you to kill my father.”
Another father. How banal.
“It must be painful.” The grout-lines of his face deepened. “He must know it was me.”
The Patron ran her tongue across her cracked lips. Perhaps this was the one, after all.
Her pulse quickened. The cold metal around her right ankle felt suddenly present. Heavy, with the weight of seven wretched years. This commission, this prison, this curse.
Perhaps the preacher’s son would buy her freedom.
But old habits drew her tongue. “So kill him yourself. You have my blessing.”
His teeth flashed, bestial in the candlelight. “The Cult protects him.” A hint of derangement in his words. “His cult.”
The Patron understood. To every church in town, every other was a cult. But the intonation—the uttered capital C—could only mean one.
“The Goodlads. Hammered a red cross to my lover’s—” He hesitated, then, “My doctor’s door in the Night Quarter. Same kind they post at the casinos, the saloons, the brothels. As if the poor man were on the Skin Inc payroll. They didn’t leave enough of him left to bury.”
The guitarist picked a bluesy riff. Trails of incense stuttered.
The Goodlads condemned homosexuality, wore their bigotry like a badge. For the son of their own preacher, they would not make exception. They would make example. Inside their painted crosses: black powder and nails. The red was contagious.
But this young man’s woes neither started nor ended with the Goodlads, the Patron knew. She’d already noticed the bitter stench on his sweat. Shift; by its pungency, an addict’s dose. Only one shift supplier had survived last year’s drug wars. Elixir Co’s secretive honcho governed the Night Quarter, with its tarps strung across every street to stifle the burn of the noonday sun. By proximity, this man’s lover—his doctor, his dealer—no doubt had worked for Elixir. Elixir’s pushers would strangle infants for the promise of an enduring client. Feigning love was but a trifle.
It wasn’t the Patron’s duty to assign nor assuage guilt. Still, she felt compelled to offer him one last chance.
“Get out.” She ignored the anxious swell of the daemons. “Find another township to haunt with your petty problems.”
The preacher’s son hesitated. She seized the shred of hope.
“You don’t qualify. Leave, before I bury you.”
For a moment he seemed ready to comply. Then, slowly, his brow furrowed into an angry knot. “I demand an accord.”
The Patron sighed. Not once had a visitor heeded her advice. They were always too invested.
She knew how they felt.
“You know the terms,” she said.
Like clockwork, the bodyguard twitched at the Patron’s side. Thirsty for action, some might have thought.
The Patron shot her a warning glance.
“I’m no longer afraid.” The preacher’s son lowered his gaze. “I’ve already lost everything.”
A twang from the guitarist, as if to say: I wouldn’t be so sure.
The Patron stifled her frustration. “Very well.”
The candles flickered out; darkness saturated the shanty. As if already realizing his mistake, the preacher’s son gasped.
Only through experience did the Patron know what happened next, in the dark.
The daemons divided, encircled, embraced. First he would feel euphoria, then agony—as if brought to sexual climax, only to find he’d been dismembered. But this wasn’t the pain the accord promised.
This was only the discovery.
The Patron awaited the results with closed eyes. A familiar nausea gripped her as the daemons’ tendrils invaded her nostrils, her ear canals, the pores in her eyelids. Thoughts gestated, hatched, festered in her consciousness—thoughts so subtle it was near impossible to distinguish them from her own. Only the bruising left by the daemons’ psychic bridge served as proof of their molestation.
Until now.
This time, as the daemons severed the link—a half-second slower than usual—she noticed something different. Something tantalizing.
An opening.
The inkling of a plan wormed into the Patron’s brain. If she couldn’t buy her freedom, perhaps she could steal it.
She shelved the thought, opened her eyes to an uncomfortable brightness. Sweat slicked the young man’s unshaven face. In his eyes: relief. It was over.
If he only knew.
The Patron could not hide her disappointment. The discovery was complete—this was not the visitor she’d been waiting for. Hope was dwindling.
A clutch of daemonic tentacles—separated from the whole during the discovery— slithered through the threadbare curtains, back from their malefaction. None would’ve seen them leave but for she who never blinks. As the daemons reclaimed them, the Patron spoke to the preacher’s son for the last time.
“It is done. Now go.”
The preacher’s son balked. “Already? Impossible.”
The guitarist produced an off-tune twang, her feet propped against the kitchen door.
The preacher’s son stood. “What about my payment?”
The Patron slouched, too tired for words. At such times, she couldn’t help but dwell on the life she once knew. The brother she’d lost to this chair. This transaction.
She nodded, as if to say: that, too, is done.
After an awkward silence, the preacher’s son departed.
As the curse dictated, a single daemon strand shadowed him. This was how the Patron knew what came to pass. This was how she felt every fiber of his pain, as if it were her own. How he traveled first to the town crier, then—upon confirming his father’s death—to the saloon, where he drank to justice, and to vengeance, and woke with the cold sweats of shift withdrawal. How he clawed his way to the Night Quarter for a fix, only to learn that Elixir—blaming him for the death of his own lover, their pusher—had no further interest in accommodating his needs.
The days grated on, too bright, too hot, and the preacher’s son withered to bone and burns. The mites burrowed into his ears, and the sweat bled from his body. All the while, his loathing for the Patron mounted. She’d tricked him, c
onnived with Elixir, cursed him to this living hell to bolster her reputation. When his joints swelled and his gums bled, it was only his hatred that kept him alive.
And so, when the man with the soft smile arrived in the alley with a double dose of Shift, the preacher’s son could not possibly have declined. Besides, this stranger—he seemed like such a good man.
Such a Goodlad.
And so, like his father before him, he fell hard and swift into a role most unsuited to his temperament. He donned heavy robes. He hammered crimson crosses. He preached whatever the Cult would have him preach. And he proved the Patron right.
There’s always something more to lose.
The shred of his former self that remained, so gnarled and deranged as it was, dwelled on the Patron and felt only spite. On his third day as preacher, he proved as much by doing something none had ever risked.
He put a bounty on the Patron’s head.
The chain that bound the Patron’s ankle to her chair weighed heavy the morning of the apothecary’s visit. Although the chain was largely symbolic—the daemons served as her true shackles—its heft and its chill proved an effective reminder of the lengthening days. The waning month. The dwindling chances.
“Eat.” The bodyguard only spoke when no visitors were present. A ridiculous superstition, the Patron thought; consequence of her own unseen chains. “You aren’t well.”
The Patron grimaced. As if a plate of millet would heal these wounds any more than a pint of water would slake the desert’s thirst.
The bodyguard knelt, massaged the Patron’s ankle. Her height was so unnatural that even on her knees, her gaze came level with the seated Patron. Candlelight smothered the bodyguard’s bald head in crimson. She wore a trim black tuxedo and bowtie, same as every day before.
“Lupe,” she said. “Please.”
The Patron winced. If not for her bodyguard, she might’ve maintained the illusion of anonymity. The absence of guilt. But despite her irritation, the Patron’s nostrils flared at the scent of clove and sweat. Her skin flushed from the pressure on her ankle. Her lips found the bodyguard’s knotted jawline.
Hesitated.
Outside, the cries of the blood locusts swelled, as they would until month’s end. These creatures writhed below ground for seven years before breaching the surface to feast on fruits and flesh alike. It was during the prior plague that she’d set foot in this shanty for the first time, foolish and desperate, in search of her own bloody accord. By the daemons’ whispers, it would be during another such plague—this one, with any luck—that she’d regain her freedom. But if the daemons lied, or if her replacement failed to arrive—
She sat up, stiffly. “I’ll have some tea.”
The bodyguard leveled a stony glare that would’ve felled nine of ten men. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.
It was just as well. The Patron had no love left to give.
The apothecary slipped through the curtains with arms folded beneath her robes and head bowed. Pious, as if visiting a local saint.
The Patron studied her grimly. This could be the one. And if not...the shadow of that other plan was sharpening in the Patron’s mind. It was a foolish plan, born of desperation.
The bodyguard, now back at the Patron’s side, stood motionless. The tea was poorly steeped, and too hot—the Patron seared her tongue, stifled a hiss. The bodyguard, curse her spite, remained stone-faced.
“You must save my son.” The apothecary knelt—eyes jeweled, voice aquiver. “He suffers from the lung blood. He has few days left.”
The Patron studied the smoothness of the apothecary’s skin, the luster of her hair, the bulge of the cure-all beneath her collar—signs of unwanting rare to these times. The badge riveted to the woman’s robes said: Elixir Co.
“You’re the apothecary.”
The woman’s face tightened. “Desert’s got a hundred pharmacists—”
“I know your reputation.” The Patron showed a few teeth. “Your cures that are timed to last only what it takes for you to leave town.”
The apothecary spat. “Now the incurable plagues are my doing?”
Not far off, the Patron thought, so long as the apothecary wore that badge. Elixir’s faceless honcho had grown rich profiting from the aftermath of the company’s historic malpractice. This woman’s cure-all—which bolstered her own immunity to her clients’ ailments—was surely Elixir-made.
The apothecary collected herself. “It wasn’t always this way.”
That much was true. Now even the most well-intentioned of physicians would trade hope for hard coin. And who was the Patron to judge? What if that coin had gone to her son’s failing health? She was here, after all—she’d exhausted every other option.
Even a fraud deserved a chance.
“Go beg your employer for a cure.” The Patron waved a callous hand. “They have a presence here, I’m told.”
The apothecary’s glare hardened. “I cannot afford their asking price.”
“My price is higher.” The Patron leaned forward. “Believe me.”
The apothecary hesitated.
The bodyguard cleared her throat; this was her least favorite part, for how it agonized the Patron.
The silence hung taut. The guitarist held muting fingers over her strings. Even the hiss of the locusts quieted.
Then, slowly, the apothecary’s lips twisted into a grin. “I anticipated as much.”
Something was wrong. An itch, a worm, a doubt.
Creeping through the silence: a soft wheeze.
“I will not pay.” The apothecary watched the Patron hungrily. Looking for signs.
For symptoms.
The Patron measured her pulse. “You’ve come for the bounty.”
“As I said. I cannot afford Elixir’s asking price. Nor will I take my chances with yours.” The apothecary’s expression contorted with glee. “So I poisoned your tea.”
The bitterness of the herbs clung to the Patron’s tongue. The wheezing persisted. An unfamiliar beast stirred in her gut.
Fear.
The apothecary reveled. “Either grant my favor gratis and receive my antidote, or die and I’ll collect your bounty to pay Elixir’s bill. Either way, my son lives.”
The Patron’s heart thrashed. The daemons stirred in her periphery, but she didn’t dare break the apothecary’s gaze. All the while, the wheezing crescendoed.
The apothecary approached. Her sickly perfume fouled the air.
Another step, then another.
The smile bled from the apothecary’s lips. Her proximity must’ve clued her in: the wheezing did not come from the Patron’s mouth.
The bodyguard coughed. Even this much sound from her—with a visitor present—was so incongruous it tightened the Patron’s chest.
“It tasted spoiled.” The bodyguard’s words came clipped, strained. “So I brewed you a fresh pot.”
The Patron gripped the chair’s cold arm. She couldn’t bear to glance at her bodyguard, in fear of what she might see. Her bodyguard, who insisted as a matter of practice on tasting everything the Patron would consume.
The Patron seethed. A quick snatch and the bodyguard’s pistol would be in her hand. A quick squeeze and a lead bullet would be in the apothecary’s fleshy body. Fast, easy, gratifying.
Folly. The apothecary would not have brought the antidote on her person, and the Patron had no way of identifying the poison—let alone procuring a remedy on her own, chained as she was to this accursed chair.
Against every instinct, the Patron remained still.
The apothecary’s lip trembled. “Will you kill me?”
The question blindsided the Patron. Only as the silence endured—punctuated by the bodyguard’s aching rasp—did she understand. As far as this woman knew, the bodyguard was nothing but a hired gun. Expendable. As far as this woman knew, her plan had failed.
There was still hope.
The Patron narrowed her eyes. “Death is never the most painful option.”
The apothecary backpedaled.
“You’ve come for an accord.” The Patron smiled bitterly. “You’ll get one. But my fees have increased. In addition to the customary payment, you will provide my servant a cure. Agreed?”
The apothecary nodded, forcefully, as if her head hung at the end of a marionette’s string.
Darkness consumed the shanty.
The apothecary whimpered.
Desperate for distraction, the Patron squinted into the shadows where half of the daemons busily invaded the apothecary’s skull. What were they, exactly? Some antediluvian presence unearthed by humanity’s ceaseless conquests—that much she could guess. But why did they thrive on pain? And why the charade—the chain, the accord, the Patron as their figurehead? Were they serving some preordained purpose of heaven or hell, for time without end? Or had they gone rogue—obsessed with exploiting humanity’s greed, their wrath, their envy?
What was their endgame? How many more must suffer for it?
Already the other half of the daemons slunk back inside from their jaunt, rejoined the whole, and tapped into the Patron’s own psyche. Her disappointment hardly registered as she learned that the apothecary—now bathed in sweat and fear—was not the visitor she’d been awaiting. The strange fissure in the psychic bridge—this time even more evident as the tendrils slipped from the Patron’s nostrils—was tomorrow’s concern. Only one thing occupied her mind, now: the dry wheezing that permeated the shanty.
“It’s done.” The Patron’s impatience mounted. “Now, the antidote.”
The apothecary fingered her cure-all. “What have you done to me?”
“An improvement. Rather than staving off the ailments you claim to cure, now you can enjoy their full effects—and then some.” On fear of contamination, the apothecary would never swindle another patient. Elixir Co, on the other hand, would hardly forget her indenture.
The apothecary bared her teeth. “Devil! How will I—”
“Not my concern.”
The apothecary rose unsteadily. Almost as an afterthought, she said: “And my son?”
“He’ll live.” The Patron squeezed her hands into fists. “Now. The antidote.”
“You’re no patron. You’re a gangster.” Spittle erupted from her lips. “Vengeful, isolated, sadistic. You are all of humanity’s greatest faults.”
Derrick Boden - [BCS312 S02] Page 1