Orphan of Mythcorp

by R. S. Darling

  We made it to the end of the bleachers, where I could hear Coach Pangborn’s class of yahoos running around. We set Kant down there at the end. All I wanted to do was run to the bathroom and check myself for serious injuries, but the Morai chick, panting, stepped up to me and gazed in my eyes. “You will help me take him to Nurse Little.”

  I looked down at her. Her face was frigging perfect, white skin drawn taut over sharp cheekbones. But this only made me feel worse about what I’d just done. Guilt-sick? Sure I was, but not enough to turn myself in.

  “Didn’t Ash tell you,” I said to her, “your Mesmer thingy doesn’t work on me.” She stepped back and pouted. “Listen,” I pursued, “I’m sorry what went down in there. I only meant to smack him around a bit. But I am not going down for this. I did this for you and your Morai pals for what he did to Garfield.”

  “Gareth.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to walk away now to check myself out for injuries. Give me a head start and you can pretend you just found him like this. Cool?”

  Ava sneered. “No, it’s not cool. You are not cool. But . . . maybe you did it for the right reason, I don’t know.” She paused. “You got ten seconds. Then I’m screaming.”

  I ran out of the gym. When I was twenty feet down the hall, the screaming began.

  Chapter 14

  “Who’s Knox?” I asked.

  The gingersnap looked set to answer, but then his jaw snapped shut and he turned. “You hear that, tiny?” he asked Kana.

  She finished cleaning off her short swords with the shirt of one of her victims. “Yeah I do,” she said. “Sounds like a couple of Knights. We better scat, get Morgan here to Court before they filet him.” She zoomed over to me quicker than thought, grabbed my arm with her child-sized hands and proceeded to drag me away from the obamafest.

  “Knights?” I said. “Like real knights? And why are we going to a Court?”

  My new kooky saviors led me along one of the aisles in a real slap-dash manner. All the folks along the jammed lane skedaddled out of Kana’s way with fear in their eyes. The only reason I was able to keep myself from being dragged behind was that my legs were longer than theirs. Hundreds of peepers fell on my face as we rushed past.

  For the first time since entering this freakazoid city, I could hear music, and I noticed speakers stationed high on the graffiti-decorated walls. It was some type of rap, old school, the rappers babbling in a sort of African accent.

  “What’s with the music?” I mumbled through a haze of pain.

  “Die Antwoord,” Faustus declared with a snort. “The King’s favorite band. He even tried to have Yolandi shipped over here so she’d perform live. He thinks . . . hey, watch where you’re going, fatso!” He’d paused in the lane to yell at some fatty-patty who’d had the nerve to step backwards into traffic. “Anyway, the King thinks the music keeps everyone in a buying mood.”

  “Right.” I’d never heard of the band but the music did make me want to haggle. “But why is it I have to go to Court? You two are the ones who . . . is that blood? Are those people drinking blood over there?” I said, noticing a group sipping from tall slender glasses filled to the brims with a disturbingly red syrupy substance.

  “Well they sure ain’t drinking Mai Tai’s,” Faustus quipped.

  “Are they . . . like, vampires?” In a place this crazy, anything seemed possible.

  Kana snorted, continued to drag me through the crowd towards the dark end of the lane. Faustus said, “Don’t be a druid. There’s no such thing as vampires. They’re so cliché that if any did pop up, I’d stake and burn them myself and then piss on their ashes.” Then he added in a lower tone, “Thank God congress passed the Meyer Law.”

  I recalled reading about that in the old papers they gave us back at the Home. (Occasionally we’d find cutout sections—likely things the government didn’t want us second generation freaks to know about.) The Meyer Law made vampire literature illegal. Apparently there’d been one too many vamp-novel-inspired groups out there attacking people for their blood.

  But it seemed that it was perfectly cool to down blood here.

  “Can you please release me?” I asked Kana. “I’m losing circulation in my arm.”

  Faustus shuttled over to her, nodded slowly. Kana released me and I exhaled. “Thank you.” Too quick though. Faustus went and grabbed my other arm as I wobbled, and then he resumed the march. “What gives? I’m not going to try to escape.”

  “But it needs to look like you are,” Kana said. “We bring the troublemakers to Court so Arthur doesn’t send his Knights out to do their thing.” The handles of her short swords protruded from a sheath on her back, bounced as she did. She caught me peeping at them.

  “My dirks,” she beamed. “Venus and Serena. Knox bought them for me years ago.” She whipped one out and sliced a big X through the air. You could actually hear a pop, like when you snap a belt.

  “Who’s Knox?” I asked again.

  “Your father, I suspect,” she whispered.

  Could she be right? Had Anne Thrope been right? Had I stumbled on old friends of my father here? Did they know where he was? “What happened to him? Why’d he abandon me?”

  Kana seemed ready to answer, so of course Faustus interrupted her with “We’re here.”

  Turning the corner of the last vendor on the lane, a plastic-constructed booth housing what I took to be a butchers shop, due to the abundance of meat-selling advertisements. But there were no bundles of meat and no salami’s hanging from the ceiling. In fact, the place was pristine. As the gingersnap led me past the booth, called Studmans’s Fine Cuts, I noticed something on one of the neon signs that seemed a real funny way of advertising slabs of beef: THE FINEST YOUNG WHITE MEAT IN VERA CITY. PROCESSED RIGHT HERE AT HOME. FRESH AND TENDER AND VEGGIE-FED VIRGIN MEAT. DARK MEAT ALSO AVAILABLE. ALL PRODUCTS VERY LOW FAT. LATHERED IN COCOA BUTTER EVERY NIGHT.

  Right.

  Around the corner of this flesh farm we stopped at a holy-moly steel door that had been lurking behind a purple curtain along with a guard sporting a handlebar mustache. Kana craned her neck to see his face. “This one’s from the tussle outside the Keen Edge. Used a Mesmer.”

  Whoa. Were they tattling on me?

  Handlebars cocked his head, peeped down at me. “No one’s tried to pull a Mesmer here in five years. He don’t look like no Morai. You wouldn’t be playing me again, would you be, Kana? Cause I don’t care how strong you are or how much she likes you, I’ll take you to Mina myself, say you been flaunting your gifts.”

  “Flaunting? Wow,” Faustus piped up. “That’s a big word, Carney. Have you been watching Pinky and the Brain cartoons again?”

  Carney’s left fist rocketed forward. Faustus ducked just in time to avoid the blow, apparently deciding that it was the perfect moment to tie his shoes. “Good thing I felt the need to run the rabbit through its hole,” he smirked. “Attacking a Ward is grounds for the Boo-Box.”

  “For the eighty-fifth time,” Kana said, “it’s the Boubex. Stop quoting your blasted vids.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but this seemed like a routine; the whole scene had a recited quality to it. Handlebar Carney snorted, thoroughly miffed. I wondered how many times he’d endured their parody. Without another word, and while Faustus and Kana traded smirks, Carney unlocked the monster door. “Enjoy Court. I hope she finds you in contempt of the King so he sick’s his Knights on you. I’d pay to watch them tear you limb from limb. Those guys don’t mess around.”

  The door slammed behind us. I could’ve sworn it made a sound like DOOM!

  Darkness. The sudden shift from neon-brilliance to sleepy-time blackness hurt my peepers. I had a million and one questions, starting with Knox, ending with the Knights and Court, but it didn’t feel like the right time to ask anything.

  The sound of fluorescents flickering on accompanied the shaky glow of light and the unveiling of what you might call a dorm, a long room lined with beds and wooden dressers, the carpeted floor
colored by shirts and jeans of various hues. Kana marched down the row straight ahead, stopped at a twin-sized bed. She yanked on one of the larger drawers of the dresser standing beside it and pulled out something gray.

  I thought it might be a grody pair of socks, or perhaps a stuffed animal. It was a squirrel. That’s right, she pulled a raggedy squirrel out of her dresser. The thing looked about five years into its eternal buggerment; patches of missing hair, twisted limbs, tail all limp.

  “Hey,” Faustus shook the person sleeping in the bed next to me. “Hey, waky-waky.”

  The person grunted, farted, and then turned over to face us. He squinted as he looked up at me. Baldy threw the blanket off and sat up, feet on the carpet. He was naked save for a pair of knee-length black socks, but he didn’t look all that nude thanks to a fleece of black hair and a collection of black tattoos slithering along the less hairy parts like a nest of anorexic snakes.

  He reminded me of Naked Charlie. For the first time since entering Vera City, I realized that none of my spooks had bothered me here. Curious.

  Baldy procured a black cig, lit it with a match. After tossing the spent match at Faustus’ feet, Baldy poured himself a glass of whiskey from his side table. He looked at me the whole time he was pouring, and didn’t spill a drop. Nodded at me. I noticed that his peepers were different colors, blue right peeper, green left. The green one winked.

  “Call me Ishmael,” he said in the scratchy voice of a life-long smoker. “Don’t let the name fool you though.” He drank without removing his cig.

  Okay. With no idea how to respond, I let my eyes wander over the room.

  “Where’s Waldo, Ish?” Faustus asked.

  Ishmael downed the last of his whiskey, scratched his balls and burped. As an encore, he ate his cig. “Gee, Fau, I don’t know. Let me check.” Ishmael scanned the entire dorm, turned his gaze back to Faustus, who rolled his peepers. “Well I don’t see Waldo, and seeing as you just woke me up—” he let his words trail off, lighting a second cancer stick. While taking a drag, he looked up at me.

  “What did this one do? Piss in Miss Crystal’s fountain? Looks like a pisser.”

  Faustus pulled a switchblade out of his jeans and started flipping it around. A nervous tick? “What makes you so sure he did something? Maybe he’s just a friend we’re showing around.”

  “Ha and ha,” Ishmael laughed between drags. “You two relics don’t have friends, ‘cept for that nasty old rat. Hey Kana!” he stood. “When you’re done stroking your fur patch you want to get this bag-o-bones to Mina? She probably heard you coming. If she didn’t, then she certainly heard what I just thought to her, so I suggest you hurry.” He spoke all this in a mellow drawl.

  Kana frittered over to us. For a tick there she reminded me of Marie. “Where’s Waldo?” she asked the gingersnap.

  Faustus shrugged, nodded at Ishmael. “Apparently no one knows.”

  “Frigging pissing spiders, you can never find that guy. Fine. We’ll go in without him. Mina’s going to be in some kind of mood, but maybe seeing as how Morgan here is Kn—”

  “You’re right,” Faustus elbowed Kana, “we should get going. What’s wrong with you?” he asked me, noticing my little dance. He traded looks with Kana. They both seemed confused, which made me wonder: Just how kooky are these two kooks? Everyone knows the pee-pee dance.

  “I got to piss, man,” and it was not just that; I was flipping out of my gourd. Court and Mina and a man named Ishmael who could’ve been Satan’s little brother. It felt like I’d taken one really bad turn and fallen into some Stephen King nightmare.

  “I’ll take him,” Ishmael laughed. He led me across the room into a communal bathroom complete with a couch. Like a nice old poof he accompanied me inside, taking the next urinal over. In two ticks he was letting the old yellow water stream, all the while puffing away on his black cig.

  “Whatever you did, slim,” taking a drag “do not think about it in there. Think about puppies and hugs because that chick . . . she’ll—” another long drag “—she’ll get in your head, muck things up.”

  Wow, that makes me feel better. “Can I bum a smoke?”

  “Oh, of course,” he drew the butt out of his mouth, made to hand it over but instead slowly lowered it into the urinal. “You can have a smoke—for a Jackson.”

  “Twenty bucks for one cig?”

  He smacked a good laugh at that. “Nothing’s free in Vera City, pal . . . except for that little piece of advice. Well, maybe not even that.” He shook out the last drops and did not flush. On his way out, Ishmael slapped me on the rump. “Good luck. If you don’t get sentenced to the Boubex, come see me. I might have a job for you, a real no-brainer. It pays in Smith’s Brothers brandy.”

  I tried to ignore the pain and the DT’s wreaking havoc on my body and brain as we trekked down the hall to Court. There, trembling and sweating, I was introduced to Mina Harker.

  “I’ll get right down to the ruling,” she said. “I see no cause for the Boubex.” She was a full on dish, the biggest set of lovely’s I’d ever seen. “However,” she gave me a cross look, “this young man has broken the Extra-Human Ability Restriction Act of 2016, and as a non-citizen of Vera City, he doesn’t have immunity to the Act. So he must be punished.” She was speaking not only to me and my kooks, but to a shadowed man watching from a screen hanging overhead. In the corner of the screen was that strange sword-and-round-table symbol I’d seen earlier on the Keen Edge booth.

  “Fifteen lashes with a cat-o-nine.” Mina suggested to the man in the screen.

  He nodded approval.

  I swallowed back bile. The full-on shakes had me in their grip now and sweat was pouring down my back. I’d have sold my kidney for a fix at this point.

  “Seeing as Waldo is still missing,” Mina continued to us, “would you perform the honors?”

  Faustus nodded, and Mina faced the man in the screen again. “Is my ruling satisfactory?”

  Another nod.

  And just like that, slam-bang, I was led away to be punished for trying to save my life. Kana took my flannel and undershirt while Faustus retrieved this long whip with bristles on the end. Kana led me to a white wall smudged with reddish brown streaks. Taking my wrist, she slipped my hands into cuffs linked to a chain connected to the wall. “I’m sorry about this,” she whispered, “but the King is always watching. We’re going to have to make this real.”

  She nodded at Faustus before walking out of sight.

  I wasn’t ready. Pain arrived whiz-bang, even before I heard the whistle of the nine-cat-whip thingy. I staggered, would’ve fallen if my hands hadn’t been chained up. The second strike to my back tore a scream right out of me.

  By the fifteenth blow I was ready to call it a life. I’d never felt such agony; my back was crawling with snakes of pain, as if someone had drawn lines on it with gasoline and then struck a match. I was barely aware of Kana when she undid my cuffs. I fell into her strong arms; smelled cinnamon. And then blackness took me.

  I awoke inside the sun. That’s what it felt like anyway, neon lights beaming at me from the ceiling and walls. A few ticks after my peepers adjusted, I puked all over the floor. I was hungry, thirsty, beaten and sleepy. Starting to wish the government had listened to the Zoners and kept us in the Home.

  “Here, drink this,” Faustus handed me a bottle. The plastic jug was hot pink, reflecting the lights around it as if designed to piss me off.

  “Where are we?”

  “At the back door,” he answered, looking out through a filmed-over window, a circular affair like the portholes in ships. “Well, that was awkward back there, huh?”

  I inhaled, bit back a curse. “Why didn’t they beat the piss out of you and Kana? I’m not the one slaughtered those people. And you guys used extra-human abilities, I’m sure of it.”

  He shrugged, continued looking through the window. “We’re Wards. Which mean we’re kind of like the GI Joes of Vera City. We’re paid to keep the peace—by bringin
g the violence. In case you were wondering, yeah, we’re Mythicons. But they don’t much care about that here. Not with the bang up job we do. This city is always on the verge of war. The King and his Knights—”

  “I don’t care about the politics of your stupid mini-city. Just let me out.”

  Faustus sighed, played with his switchblade. “Come over here and take a look.”

  I obeyed. He pointed at the streaks of fire falling from the sky outside the dirty window. “Brimstorm. We have to wait.”

  Brimstorms: a weather phenomenon that occurs roughly every two weeks, and only ever in Philicity. Burning chunks of star stuff plummet from the heavens, burning all in their path. At the Home Mr. Bors had called it ‘A relic from the horrific events of the Mythcorp War’. Now that I thought about it, ‘relic’ was just how Ishmael had referred to Kana and Faustus.

  I plopped my rump back down on the wooden bench. Downed the last of the water from the neon bottle. “How long have I been here?”

  “Fifty-seven years.”

  “What!”

  The gingersnot took a moment to get his laughter under control. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. I was just quoting Paul Reiser from Aliens. You were out for two and a half days.”

  “That’s still hard to believe.” Holy crow. I started freaking out, pacing, rubbing my busted knee and generally trying to jump out of my stinking sweating skin. Every time my shirt ruffled against my back, pain flared. Faustus sat me back down and I laid it out for him. My theories about Ash and Sanson and why I’d left the school probably came out a smidge garbled, what with my jittering voice and constant cursing.

  “You sound like him, Knox, I mean.” Faustus dug into his pocket, came up with a Werther’s Original candy, smiled. “They get you every time, don’t they, George?” He seemed to be talking to either the candy, or himself, and I doubted the candy was laced with doojee, so I l didn’t snatch it.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “when this lets up I’ll take you to a friend. He’s a major league prick, but he’s also brilliant. Picture Einstein raised by Hippies. He’ll give you some answers.”