The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady

by Richard Raley

  She hugged me at the door but then turned colder than her AC. She’d heard from a friend that worked in the principal’s office about me leaving the school. And, of course, was mad I hadn’t told her.

  “I didn’t know until yesterday. It was all last minute, baby.” Baby. If a guy ever calls you baby then kick him in the balls. He’s an asshole.

  “And you’re just leaving?” Sally crossed her arms under her tits when she was mad. It’s distracting. Way worse than hot dog girl.

  “My parents are making me,” I focused.

  “This is because you get into fights, I know it!”

  “You like that I get in fights.”

  “Well . . . not anymore. Not if you have to leave. Can’t you promise not to fight and stay?”

  Not fighting, not learning the Mancy, all to stay with the girlfriend. Why didn’t she just ask me to sacrifice my left nut like Lance Armstrong? “They already signed the paperwork, baby.”

  She huffed. She had a lot to huff.

  “Well . . . how long do you have to go to this place?”

  “Like four years.” At least . . . I left out.

  “Four years!”

  “I know . . . it totally sucks.” We should be clear if you haven’t figured it out: at this point fourteen-year-old-me knew he was going to forget Sally existed the next day and was just looking for a way to end the relationship without kicking and screaming . . . okay, maybe a little screaming.

  “Kingy!” I know, fucking ‘Kingy’. And Ceinwyn wonders why I didn’t have stamina at that point in my life. You try going at it with a girl that’s screaming “Yes, Kingy, yes!” Of course I didn’t last. I was trying too hard not to laugh.

  “I know, baby. I just . . . came over to tell you goodbye, and that I love you, and that I’m going to miss you a lot.” One out of three ain’t bad.

  “Oh, Kingy!” And another hug.

  Followed by kissing.

  Followed by undressing.

  Followed by a super-duper, amazing, never before accomplished in my life, ten minute grunting and humping session. Take that Ceinwyn Dale! Hell, I think the girlfriend might have even felt something that time. She sure was yelling ‘Kingy’ enough.

  While Sally was cleaning up our amazing contraception practices, I used the break from her to get some clothes back on and borrow her laptop. Mr. Brett’s flash drive wasn’t even protected. I rummaged through it. Memos. Short stories from college when he thought he could become a sci-fi writer like all the other loser geeks out there. Divorce documents. Couple of movie files of some pornstar tied to a bed.

  Promising.

  Second set of divorce documents. Pictures of his house. Pictures at the school. Pictures of his poodle—Mr. Tibbs. Pictures of Mr. Brett in glow-in-the-dark latex with his ass cheeks hanging out getting spanked by my algebra teacher Mrs. Allison.

  Win.

  Massive win.

  Sent to the entire Redwood High directory. Oh yes. Bridges be burning down.

  Picking up her cell-phone, I did another bad thing and snuck a picture of Sally, still naked and cleaning up in the bathroom, totally unaware of my actions.

  I sent it to her mother’s phone with a suggestion to buy her daughter birth control. Maybe bad is too harsh on fourteen-year-old-me. Sally never got pregnant in high school at least. That’s got to be a good deed . . . even though she didn’t get pregnant during all of freshman year because she got grounded . . .

  My relationship decidedly over and my humanitarian work done, I dressed the rest of the way and gave Sally one last kiss before leaving. She wanted me to stay for a while longer, but I didn’t want to be around when she picked up the return phone call from her mother.

  I wouldn’t talk to Sally again until after I graduated as an Artificer. I was a much different person by then.

  I used a condom.

  . . . What?

  [CLICK]

  I got home just after Dad did again. He was out smoking in the backyard, watering with a spray hose. Cooler than the day before, maybe ninety something, but that’s still hot. Dad didn’t seem to mind. Joint in one hand, hose in the other, he twisted himself around in a circle with his shirt off, chest covered with graying hair.

  The water made the backyard shimmer. Made it cooler too. Almost bearable. Central Valley summers. Fuck, I hated them. Fuck, I wasn’t going to miss them. Fuck, why did I move back when I graduated?

  “Where you been, boy?” Dad asked, taking a draw afterward.

  I figured, what the hell, eh? “Gave the girlfriend a goodbye present.”

  Dad’s hose sprayed erratically for a second before he got it under control. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You safe, boy?”

  “Yeah.” I thought I was.

  “Huh.” Dad focused on our only tree. A big willow that made great shade. “Since you’re opening up for once, what girl?”

  “Sally Hendrickson.” I smiled at her name.

  “Not bad, boy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Too good for you.”

  “Yeah . . . true, true.”

  “Your mother was too good for me.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “She was . . . she is, I mean. Don’t hate your mom for being sick, she can’t help it. Remember what she was like before all this.”

  Not knowing what to say to that, I filled in with, “We shopped and had lunch today.”

  Dad looked me in the eye. He always looked you in the eye. “You sure you want to go with this Kind-Wind Dale woman?” Kind-Wind, that’s exactly how he said it. Maybe he thought she was part Indian or something. “Got me, got your mom, got your girlfriend . . . we can still say no. You could do good in school here just as easy if you put your mind to it instead of your fists.”

  It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. I was tempted to call it off but for one thing. I made a chair crack in two. “I gotta go, Dad.”

  Dad nodded, matter decided. “Just know, boy, that you can’t run away from your head. Thoughts, feelings, that’s all going to go with you. All that stuff is tied around you too tight to get away from it by running. People think they can . . . can’t do it.”

  “Ain’t about that no more, Dad. Ceinwyn Dale . . . she told me some things about me that made sense. I got to find out the rest, ya know?”

  “Kind-Wind Dale . . . that woman sure is . . . different . . . but your mother trusts her.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. How about that, eh?” Dad finished the joint and turned the hose off. “Your mother don’t trust any woman, boy, not even your grandmother, but she trusts Dale to keep you safe. How about that?”

  “Guess I’ll try to trust her too.” As far as I could spit on her.

  Dad gave me a hug of his own, much more like a wrestling hold than a hug. “Why don’t you get in the kitchen and start chopping up onions and peppers while I take my shower? I’m thinking for my King’s going away he’s going to have his favorite mole enchiladas for dinner.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure thing, boy, sure thing.”

  Session 106

  The Fog was thick as sewer water by the time my shop neared closing. T-Bone had left after busting my balls over my display of particularly delicate glasswork, some in shapes of animals, others like mythological creatures. Good thing he didn’t know I made them myself. Back off me, I learned it for a girl . . .

  One old lady came in, bought a couple of shot glasses that were probably worth more than she paid, then left. Everyone was gone. Just me. All alone. Nice and quiet—good lighting and plenty of space on the counter for me to spread out my papers outlining my next bit of Artificer experimentation.

  I’d been praying for silence ever since I was three, the very day I started to realize what sisters were and how loud and annoying and bossy they could be. In my shop, I finally got it from time to time.

  Is it wrong that I actually like it when the customers stay away?

  Guess that means I
like losing money. Electricity costs. Water costs. Retail space costs. It all adds up. It all weighs you down. If the static rings didn’t become a seller to more than my already established customer base I was going to be in deep shit. I was burning money at a rate of higher five-digits a month. Eventually Ceinwyn was going to tell me to get lost, call me a failure, and probably kick me right in the balls—no matter how much she claimed she didn’t care about the money.

  Maybe it’s from being born without anything. Anything I couldn’t steal at least. I didn’t like spending money if I could help it. At the Asylum, everything’s provided for you—food, clothes, school supplies, even entertainment—if you needed something black market you either traded or you scrounged or you stole without getting caught. Even for anima. There was no cash. No debt. Especially not at the levels I was dealing with for my shop.

  I burned through more a month on anima alone than my father had made in a year. After two years of operation, I will have accumulated more debt than my father ever made in his life.

  The fuck!

  The! Fuck!

  When I allowed myself to think about it, the situation staggered me silent. Even the glory that is fuck can’t come to describe how screwed I was. Just like the problem I was trying to fix, my shop couldn’t keep going at the same pace, something was going to break one way or the other.

  My fingers found my temples and started rubbing circles as I eyed over my papers for the third pass. I don’t know what’s worse: my ledger or going over anima conversion formulas. At least the ledger’s simple. Got to give it that. The answer’s the answer. A bad answer but it was easy to come to. My formulas . . .

  Thirteen different anima types acting thirteen different ways, plus if I got the formulas wrong bad shit would happen. Like explosions. Like pure, unadulterated anima burns. As Plutarch used to say, ‘you only get one anima burn in your life, if you make it to two you’ll be dead before you leave this school.’ It hurts—a lot. Imagine being burnt by the very essence of earth. Yeah . . . it hurts. That meant double and triple checking every formula I wrote, especially the parts interacting with each other. The last thing I needed to add to my ledger is hospital bills.

  My fingers pressed in on my skull, pushing, trying to relieve my headache. “Maybe I should take up drinking . . .” I muttered to myself. “Couldn’t make it much worse . . . runs in the family . . .”

  That’s when the door opened.

  Tangle, tangle.

  Door had a bell.

  Tangle, tangle.

  That’s broken.

  It took gall to be a million dollars in debt and be cheap enough to not fix a doorbell, let me tell you.

  I glanced up from my formulas to take in a woman as she stepped clear of my door. I grunted, headache forgotten. Old ladies, mothers, the occasional college girl who’s young-cute but not actual-cute hunting accessories, but none like this one walking into my shop.

  This woman was the kind I went to school with. The kind who knew she could burn your eyes out or smother your balls in ice if you gave her too much trouble. It’s in the walk, in the shoulders, in the tilt of the head. It’s not about actual attractiveness, it’s about a mindset.

  For this woman there was no submission to the truth that I’d been born male and she’d been born female. No submission that as a male I was supposed to be the stronger, the hunter. This woman didn’t believe in clubs over the head, in being claimed or sold. Not on the basis of modern feminism but on the basis that it would never have been applicable to her during any period in history.

  I’ve always said that every man only sees two features on any woman. For Ceinwyn, her smile and hands. Cutting you—one after the other. For my first girlfriend Sally it was . . . well, it was her tits really, and only her tits . . . always her tits, but let’s add in her lips too for the few times I was staring at her face. I was fourteen, give me a break. Don’t jump on me for only talking physical either, this rule is only for physical—mind and personality, those are more complicated—don’t all men know it . . .

  For the physical, it’s only two features. For this woman it was her neck and eyes.

  Neck?

  I know, not something you notice usually. But for this one, she wanted you to notice it. It was a long neck, with a great swath of smooth skin that had every man thinking about touching instantly, like they were one of the five-year-olds who ran through my shop breaking merchandize. At her neck’s middle point she had a choker about an inch and a half in width that wrapped around in a complete circle. Real metal through and through, not cheap modern shit that’s fake on the inside. It was made of silver, worked with dark gems in a crossing pattern. At its center was an unmistakable large golden ‘B,’ with teardrop pearls dangling underneath. It drew you to the neck and then the skin and those long lines did the rest for her.

  The eyes were brown so dark to be black, seductive velvet pools. At the Asylum, Valentine Ward’s were similar, but there they were fire—threatening to ignite and burn. Here was darkness, a slow dance of her irises to fall into and be gobbled up, bare hint that the iris is there until you’re looking for the touch of color against her pupil.

  Darkness is more dangerous than fire; don’t let anyone tell you differently. The cavemen in ancient history knew the score. Fire—you respect, you’re always aware of it—you treat it well and it’s your friend. The thing about darkness is that you start to enjoy it, start to sit down and rest, start to think you’re all alone . . . until it’s too late.

  The rest of her was class, clad in three-digit jeans and a hand-woven black sweater that stopped halfway down her forearm. No coat, which should have been the first warning, but I’d forgotten what warnings were in my year and a half away from the Asylum. I’d gotten complacent. Rings on her fingers, bracelets at her wrists, thick hoop earrings. Dark hair, long. Dark eyebrows. Everything about her was dark escaping from soft white skin, except the pieces added by her hand to give a glitter—but those were just camouflage.

  “You’re not closed yet, are you?” she asked in a voice that could make clothes unbutton themselves.

  “Almost,” I murmured, just looking at her.

  “Good,” she said, advancing towards my register with a sure, unquestioning stride. “This won’t take long.”

  My hands shuffled my formula papers to have something to do while my eyes kept on staring like a love-struck freshman. Give me break, okay? I’d been busy working on the rings, it’d been awhile since the stupid part of my brain had gotten to come out and play. You’re lucky I wasn’t drooling.

  “Can I help you with anything?” I asked in an attempt to hang on to some professional dignity.

  “Yes,” she said. She let the word sink in. Then she smiled. Knowing Ceinwyn Dale, I know smiles. This one was damn good. She could bend her lips without really moving them. Something like that can make a man groan just looking at the woman who does it. Makes a crude man like me wonder what else the lips can do. “You own this store, yes?”

  “Last I checked.” My hands put my formula papers away. She might have been hot-stuff but for all I knew she was from the Guild trying some corporate espionage on me. Takes a lot more than a pretty face to catch me completely off guard. Give me some credit. Survival instincts like the ones I learned as a kid were baseline. They worked with either my smart or stupid parts leading the way.

  “You are King Henry Price?”

  Price. My eyes went over her again, searching for clues as to who this magnificent creature was. She knew my name. Interesting. Not here for teapots then. The antique people don’t know about Price. Made the smart part wake up a bit. “I am . . . and who are you?”

  “I’m Anne,” she told me.

  Anne. Simple name. Never trust the one’s with simple names.

  My gaze went to the large golden ‘B’ at her throat. Anne B. A name comes to mind straight out of history, but I didn’t say it. With my name being King Henry, I couldn’t say it. If I said it then I’d know without a do
ubt that the Mancy was playing a practical joke on me.

  “Bonnie?” I guessed.

  Could have been T-Bone’s mommy, right? Named after a pirate chick by parents as screwed up as mine. Sure . . . nurses totally look like this . . . in romance novels and porn movies at least.

  “Not quite,” she said. She was middling height for a woman, so not that much shorter than me. With her heels, we were about even as she got right against the register to study my face. “I expected you to be handsome,” she complained. “I suppose it doesn’t matter . . . but spending time with a handsome face is so much easier, don’t you think? Handsome never ceases to remind me to enjoy my lot in life.”

  An insult. Nothing quicker to get my smart brain back in the driver’s seat. My shoulders set tight. Muscles bunched. I forced myself to keep my hands where they were on the counter, flat against the top. They strained against it, wanting to curl into fists. Eight years from that little boy and I still wasn’t over wanting to smash a person’s face in over teasing. “Does the ‘B’ stand for bitch, then?” I asked. “Anne Bitch? Or Anne Bitchly maybe?”

  She laughed it off with a placating little smile that was still all lips. “You’re King Henry, I’m Anne . . . what could it possibly stand for? Did you study English royalty at your school or have they nixed those classes for creationism?”

  I ignored the obvious again. That would just be too weird. The Mancy couldn’t be so cruel. “My luck with women’s still holding,” I muttered to myself. “You’d have to be a total whackjob to come in here and be as hot as you are.”

  Anne’s head tilted from one side of her shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘B’ on her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through to me.

  “King Henry Price?” she asked again.

  “I already answered you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly, aren’t you? Broken nose . . . so many scars. There’s nothing perfect about you. I thought with all the rumors about you being a hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.