Core of Stone

by King, R. L.

  “Just keep it coming, and that’s all the looking out I need,” Stone said.

  “You’re the boss. You—oh, damn.” The bartender’s eyes cut toward the door and he frowned.

  “What?” Stone didn’t follow his gaze. Things were beginning to blur a bit as his comfortable buzz morphed into uncomfortable disorientation. Maybe having those last two so close together might not have been the best idea.

  The bartender didn’t answer him. Instead, he appeared focused on something behind him.

  Suddenly, Stone was surrounded as three new customers took the stools on either side of him, two on his right and one on his left. “Hey,” one of the pair on the right said to the bartender. “Give us some beers.”

  Stone glanced to the side. The newcomers were young, possibly too young to be drinking legally at all. One wore a leather jacket, the other a hooded sweatshirt with UNLV emblazoned across the front. The one on the other side wore a basketball jersey and a baseball cap turned backwards.

  “You guys got ID?” the bartender asked.

  “Naw, man, we left it in our other pants,” the leader said. “C’mon, just get us some beers.”

  “Sorry, guys. No ID, no beer.” He shrugged. “State law. Go on—you ain’t even supposed to be in here.”

  The one in the hoodie slammed his fist down on the bar, making Stone’s glass jump. “I don’t think you listenin’, man. He said give us some beers.”

  “You lot want to go somewhere else?” Stone asked, picking up his glass.

  The bartender froze.

  The two young newcomers on either side of Stone swiveled their stools around to face him, and the one in the hoodie dismounted his and came around behind Stone. “What we got here?” the one in the basketball jersey said. He was smaller and skinny.

  “This ain’t your business, man,” the one in the hoodie said.

  “It is when you’re sitting so close to me you’re practically in my pocket,” Stone said.

  “You callin’ us fags?” the one in the jacket said, glaring.

  “There it is.” Stone couldn’t keep the disgust from his voice, though the largest part of his mind felt as if it were watching the exchange from somewhere above him. “Homophobia—the first refuge of the pathetic.”

  The one in the hoodie grabbed a handful of the front of Stone’s shirt and yanked him around. “We ain’t no homos, motherfucker. You gonna pay for that.”

  Stone blinked a couple times—suddenly there were two kids in hoodies in front of him instead of one—and then looked pointedly down at the kid’s hand. “Get your hand off me, or you’ll regret it.”

  “Ooh,” all three of them said in unison. “We scared,” the one in the jacket said. “What’cha gonna do, asshole? Unless you Superman or somethin’, you gonna be in a world of hurt in a second if you don’t get the fuck out of our way.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?” he asked, looking once more at the kid’s hand gripping his shirt. “You don’t think things through too well, do you?” He was still on autopilot, with that other guy, the one he became when alcohol joined up with depression, driving the bus. It was strange: he could see it just fine, but at this level of intoxication, he couldn’t affect it if he wanted to. Right now, he didn’t want to. In the far back reaches of his mind, a little voice that didn’t even speak with words was telling him, if somebody else kills you, you aren’t breaking your promise to Madame Huan, right?

  “How about like this?” the kid said, and flung him backward, hard, in the direction of the tables. He staggered and crashed into the middle of the nearest one, scattering the three burly workmen sitting around it and sending their beers cascading to the floor.

  “Hey!” one of the guys said, as the other two grabbed Stone and tried to set him back upright. They all looked back and forth between Stone and the three newcomers, obviously trying to decide whether and how much to intervene.

  The three kids faced Stone now. “That answer your question, fag?”

  Stone, swaying, leaned against the table. Rage rose in him as some part of his brain recognized the situation for what it was and reminded him how easily he could have dealt with it in the past, and some other part forgot—or refused to acknowledge—that it was no longer the case. “I could kill you,” he growled, raising his hand. “I could kill you where you stand.”

  All three of them laughed. “This guy fuckin’ nuts?” the one in the hoodie asked the room at large. “He like your batshit crazy uncle you let out late at night or somethin’?”

  “Damn you, do not push your luck,” Stone said, and the other guy in his head made sure it was loud enough so nobody could miss it. He took a step forward and lost his balance, falling and flailing his arms to catch himself. As he pitched toward the bar, he caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror behind it: all wild hair and burning eyes and belligerent glare. He barely recognized himself.

  The guy in the leather jacket stopped him and threw him back. This time one of the workmen caught him before he hit the table again. “You’ve had too much, dude,” he said under his breath. “Just be cool.”

  “Let me go!” Stone roared, struggling against the guy’s grip.

  “Hey!” the bartender yelled over the general din. “I just called the cops. They’re gonna be here any minute. You assholes better be gone before they get here.”

  “Aw, fuck,” the one in the basketball jersey said. “C’mon, guys. My dad’ll rip my head off I get arrested.”

  The one in the hoodie and the one in the jacket glared at Stone, still twisting in the grip of the muscular workman. “This your lucky day, asswipe,” the one in the hoodie said. “You better hope you don’t see us again, or we’re gonna fuck you up good.” He waved angrily at his friends. “C’mon, this place is fucked up anyway. Let’s go.”

  They swept out of the bar, still shoving each other and yelling things Stone couldn’t make out.

  When they were gone, the bar’s atmosphere seemed to deflate. The two workmen who had Stone’s shoulders set him back on his barstool and leaned him against the bar, then backed off.

  Stone glared around, blinking as his fast head movements disoriented him and he nearly tipped over sideways. His body raced with adrenaline, taking the tiniest bit of the edge off the alcohol coursing through his veins—but not enough to shut up his inner mean drunk. “Give me another,” he said, panting.

  The bartender shook his head. “No way, man. You’re done.”

  Some of the rage came back. “What do you mean, I’m done? That’s not for you to judge!” He slapped the empty glass down. “Now give me another, damn you.”

  “Actually, it is for me to judge,” he said. “Lemme close out your tab and call you a cab. You need to go home and sleep it off before you get yerself killed.”

  “I don’t want a bloody cab,” he said through his teeth. “I want another drink.”

  The bartender ignored him, He tossed Stone’s credit card on the bar along with a charge slip. “Sign here, please.”

  He started to say something, but one of the workmen who’d caught him at the table came up alongside him. “Just do it,” he said. “You’ll thank him in the morning, trust me. We all been there.”

  Stone sighed. He picked up the pen and scrawled something half on the slip, half on the bar. “There,” he said. “If I can’t get a proper drink here, I’ll go somewhere else.” At least that was what he thought he’d said. It sounded fairly slurred to him. He pushed himself off the stool and nearly fell over.

  The workman steadied him. “Just wait for the cab, okay?”

  Stone shook himself free. “I said I don’t want a damn cab!” he yelled. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was get out of this place, to get moving again. Maybe the non-smoky air outside would revitalize him long enough to find another bar.

  They didn’t stop him. Maybe they felt like they
were better off with him gone. He got to the doorway, stood in it for a moment to steady himself, and then staggered out to the sidewalk.

  Chapter Eleven

  Stone didn’t pay any attention to where he walked; he just walked. Or rather, he staggered. Every now and then he had to stop and lean against a building to catch his breath, and once he fell to his knees on the sidewalk, scraping his hands on the rough concrete. It didn’t hurt. He hauled himself to his feet with a surprising amount of difficulty and kept going.

  That was the thought that kept playing on an endless, monotone loop in his brain: Keep moving. Keep moving. He didn’t question it, or wonder what might happen if he stopped moving. He just walked.

  His awareness faded in and out in fits and spurts; sometimes he trudged forward, one step after another, his breath huffing in his throat, his heart and head pounding, his stomach threatening to rebel with every lurching step. Sometimes he’d get hit by a blast of wind from between buildings, or notice a flash of neon, and it would drag him for a few seconds back to the here and now: he was someplace in Vegas he’d never seen before, somewhere on the south side of midnight, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to get back.

  At this point, he was starting to want to. The rage that had gripped him back at the bar had dissipated, leaving him morose and unmotivated and exhausted. His room back at the Obsidian didn’t just seem impossibly far away, but part of a completely different life. As he kept walking, his feet dragging, the sense of being a passenger in his own body grew. Maybe he should just sit down against one of these buildings and wait for morning. What did he care if someone bothered him?

  Keep moving…

  Even in his current state, some instincts didn’t entirely flee. He was halfway up a block full of mostly defunct shops and mangy apartment buildings when some deep, lizard-brain sense of self-preservation told him he was under observation.

  He stopped, using a graffiti-sprayed, nonfunctional streetlight to hold himself up, and looked around, taking care not to move his gaze too fast. He and his stomach had reached an uneasy accord, but it was predicated on neither of them making any sudden moves.

  A pair of figures drifted out of an alley up ahead and approached Stone.

  At first, he thought they were a subset of the trio at the bar—maybe the little one in the basketball jersey had taken off, fearing his father’s wrath, leaving the other two to continue their night’s activities. But no, these weren’t the same guys. Stone couldn’t see their faces in the darkness, but they were dressed differently. They moved differently. Their entire bearing was different.

  “Hey,” one of them said.

  Stone nodded. His instincts rose through his alcoholic haze as they hadn’t with the kids back at the bar. These guys weren’t just college idiots out for a good time. These guys were dangerous.

  “Whatcha doin’ out here in the middle of the night?” the other one asked.

  “Any reason I shouldn’t be?” Stone asked. His voice sounded deep and gravelly, a little less slurred now.

  “Well,” the first one said, “you might run into us. And that’s not a good thing.”

  Stone glanced around, trying to spot an oncoming car, an open store, or any other sign of other people. He saw none; aside from him and the two men, the street was deserted.

  “And why is that?” Stone asked. “I haven’t any money on me.”

  “We don’t want your money,” the second one said. They both moved in closer. They stank of body odor and something else, something worse. Their faces wore identical odd, slack expressions of pleasure.

  Stone’s stomach clenched, and he gripped the light pole harder. He knew those expressions. This was bad. “What do you want, then?” he asked, keeping his voice even.

  And then, suddenly, there were more people. Stone didn’t see where they came from—one moment the street was empty, and the next, at least five other figures ringed him and the two men in front of him.

  He heard a clacking sound; he didn’t recognize it for a moment, but then some other corner of his brain served it up: a shotgun being racked. His breath picked up again, and his heart pounded harder. His vision blurred. He felt himself swaying again.

  Two, he might be able to get away from. Seven, no way.

  He waited for it all to end.

  But it didn’t. At the sound of the shotgun, the two men whirled.

  “You two better run!” one of the new group called. “Get the fuck outta here before we blow your guts out!”

  “Fuck!” one of the original two snapped, his head swiveling back and forth as he tried to keep all the new group, and Stone, in his line of sight at once.

  Another shotgun sound, this one from a different direction. “Run, you worthless pieces of shit!” shouted a voice from the same general area.

  The two exchanged glances, took a quick last look at Stone, and then took off, running past him and away from the new group.

  Stone didn’t turn to watch them go. For one thing, he was sure turning that fast would upset his precarious balance. For another, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t just been saved from one dangerous situation to be thrust into another. The last group hadn’t had guns. This one had at least two.

  One of the shadowy figures approached him: a heavyset black man dressed in shabby clothes. He wasn’t holding a weapon. “What the hell you doin’ out here?” he demanded. “You damn well oughtta know better than to get yourself shitfaced and go wanderin’ around in the dark.”

  Stone stared at him. That certainly didn’t sound like the kind of thing someone who intended to harm him would say. His brain struggled for the proper response, but all he could manage was, “What—?”

  Another of the group came forward, but not far enough that Stone could get a good look. “Leave him alone, Malcolm. He’s fucked up, can’t ya see? He gotta sleep it off.” This voice was female, rough and raspy.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the black man said. He took Stone’s arm—not gently, but not roughly, either. “C’mon with us. We got a place you can rest. When you’re feelin’ better, we got some things to talk to you about.”

  Stone continued staring at him. His vision was still blurry, but something about the man looked familiar. He couldn’t place it, though. “I—”

  The others moved in as well, watchful and wary, as if expecting to be attacked any moment.

  “Come on,” the man said again, and tugged. “We gotta get off the street before those two asswipes come back with friends.” He leaned in, his dark, drooping eyes searching Stone’s. “You’d think you of all people’d know to stay the hell away from the Evil when you’re too fucked up to make with the mojo.”

  “Wait a minute,” Stone said. He blinked a couple times, trying to bring the man’s face into focus. “You’re—you—the Evil. You’re Forgotten.”

  The man pulled on his arm, less gently this time. “Come on. We’ll talk when the booze ain’t makin’ ya stupid.”

  Stone wanted to ask more questions—dozens of them whirled around in his head, none of them coherent enough to give voice to—but his body made up his mind for him. His vision fogged; he swayed and sagged against the man, and would have fallen if two of the others hadn’t caught him. Through a haze of shifting images, he felt them sling his arms over their shoulders, and the remainder of his memories blurred into incoherence.

  Chapter Twelve

  Stone’s sense of smell woke up before the rest of him did, and none of what it sent back to him was pleasant. Garbage. Brackish water. Unwashed clothes. Body odor. The far-off smell of human waste. He rolled over, mostly unaware, trying to turn away from the stench, but it hung in the air all around him. He moaned something unintelligible and threw his arm over his face.

  “Bet you feel like shit right about now,” a voice said.

  He rolled back over and opened his eyes. In the dim light of some kind of lantern suspended
from somewhere high above, he picked out the figure of the black man seated near him in an old recliner.

  He swallowed—his mouth was dry, and tasted like he’d recently finished a meal of whatever he was smelling. “I—Yes.” He rubbed at his forehead. “What are—where—?”

  “You’re safe,” the man said. “We got you back here without anybody catchin’ us, which is kind of amazing considerin’ you didn’t shut up the whole trip back. And you owe Goat a new pair o’ boots.”

  Stone blinked again. “Er—do I want to know why?”

  “Because you puked all over the old pair ’bout halfway back when he stopped t’check on you,” the man said. He looked more amused than annoyed. “Guess you don’t remember that either, huh?”

  “Thankfully, no.” He tried to sit up, then lay back down when the top of his head threatened to secede from the rest of his body and fly off to seek its fortune on somebody with more sense.

  “You prob’ly got the mother of all hangovers about now,” the man said. He rummaged in a cooler next to his chair and offered a bottle of water. “This might help. Sorry, got no aspirin or nothin’.”

  Stone took the bottle, carefully propped himself on one arm, and opened it. He took an experimental sip and when his stomach didn’t rebel, drank a bit more. Even though it was room temperature instead of cold, it felt good going down his parched throat, and took the worst of the edge off the bad taste. “Thank you.”

  “No problem, man.”

  He sat up a little more, ignoring the throbbing in his head, and looked down at himself. He wore only his black T-shirt and jeans; his overcoat lay in a heap next to him, his Doc Martens arranged next to whatever he was lying on. After a moment, he determined it to be a thin mattress atop a wooden pallet, covered with a threadbare sleeping bag. “Is my memory playing tricks on me,” he asked slowly, “or are you Forgotten?”

  The man smiled, showing yellow teeth with one missing. “So you remembered. I wondered if you was too messed up to remember any of that.”