Poison Coast - Scene 1

Two intrepid, tragedy-loved teenagers work odd jobs in the weirdest city in this universe and the hundreds before and after it.

I’m in a hole, laughing, cackling to the heavens which I can’t even see. I guess one could say I’m lost. I’m alone in this purgatorial wasteland of debauchery and sin. Let it be known, I see this as funny, this situation, these cuts, gashes, and wounds. She carved my skin up something fierce with that sword of hers. It hunts evil. I’m evil now. I don’t want to be evil. I don’t want to be a monster. But, I can’t, and won’t, help what I am…. They’re funny, all of them. Ha-ha, there’s something wrong with me �" I think. In truth, I can’t be sure. I’ve been a little … weird lately. I hurt. I hurt a lot. My stomach turns, knots up, aches whenever I think about her…. I want to kill her…. It’s fun though. Pain, it’s fun, more fun than people give credit.

 

Oh, I’ve felt hungry, so, so hungry. I’m starving, you know? He-he, have you ever had a surgery done where you can’t eat anything for a day and then, then you’re ravenous? That’s how I feel, right now, how I feel. I haven’t a clue as to what’ll satiate my hunger…. I don’t care for any regular, boring food…. I want … ha-ha, I want … meat. I want long pig. I want to devour, to consume human flesh �" nothing else.

 

It’s weird. I’m a good boy. I’m the hero. I save the day. That’s what I was brought up to do. Yet, in a conflict of lifestyles, here I am, lusting after the bitter, oddly delicious and warm flavor of internal organs. I desire to inhale the smell of death that wreathes bodies near, or close to, death. Don’t you get it? I’m not human anymore. I’m not me. I’m new, a newer person. Ah-ha, I’m not the boy I once was…. I’m not the boy I once was.

*

Reagan, from her office across the hall, yells, “Wake up!”

 

My eyes snap open as she wakes me from my favorite dream. I had been having a hell of a time; it was the dream where I got to cut down monsters alongside my favorite half-demon, duster-wearing monster slayer. I cannot hope to voice how pissed I am at being woken up during the climactic boss battle. I have the urge to turn back over, put a pillow over my head, and go back to sleep for no other reason than to spite her �" she knows I don’t care for being woken up in such a hostile manner.

                         

However, I do not get the chance to do that.

 

While thinking, ‘One of these days, Reagan,’ my thoughts are cut off, interrupted by Reagan, yelling, once more, for me to wake up.

 

“Aiden!” she begins, her voice sharp, pointed like a killer’s dagger. “I swear to all things you hold sacred, if you do not wake up I will come in there, get on top of you, and punch you in the face until you decide that it is time to roll your a*s out of bed. We have a customer!”

 

‘Yes, Ray, that’s it. Swear, emasculate, and threaten me in front of the customer, that’s how you increase our credibility and clientele list. They're already scared of us; why not make them think we're incompetent as well?’

 

I close my eyes and lay in bed for a few more seconds, savoring the relaxing feeling my grimy old bed always brings about. ‘I should probably get up,’ I reason. ‘I wouldn't put it passed her to actually do what she says she'll do.’ I yawn, throwing off my SpongeBob comforter, and roll out of my couch-bed. I cautiously edge through the trash, not remembering if there’s broken glass on the floor or not, making a careful path to the closet to find a pair of jeans.

 

Everything in my wardrobe is either black or some other dark color. It’s always a dark color. I, for the life of me, can’t buy my own clothes. I don’t know why, haven’t a clue, in fact, but I just can’t do it. Not only am I completely hopeless in that area, shopping for them, clothes, scares the Jiminy Cricket out of me. “It’s boring,” I always find myself saying in my defense. “It’s time consuming, and those retail clerks are vicious.”

 

Reagan does my shopping for me, and she keeps, much like her own, my closet stocked with murky-colored garments. She says some sensible, yet inane, thing about people being more intimidated by gloomier colors than sunnier ones. I understand the twisted logic behind it, but still find myself under the impression a tad bit of variety never kills or killed anyone �" well, except that guy who pissed off Mr. Variety. That guy, he is as dead as a doorknob and, in fact, in an ironic turn of events, a doorknob is what he was murdered with - a brass one, to be precise.

 

I slide on the first pair of jeans I see that aren’t black. I ruffle my hair, walk across the room, unlock my office door, and make my way out of the extremely messy, unorganized room I call home. I hadn’t put on a shirt. In this sector, wearing a shirt is superfluous, money-squandering, and plain silly. It’s too hot; it feels like I’m right smack dab on the equator, in an oven, in a volcano �" in a volcano on the equator, sitting in an oven, having hot flashes. Besides, they always wind up torn to smithereens on even the simplest cases and �" in the degenerated state Miasma City’s economy is in �" are costly to replace. Ten seconds later, I walk into her office, rubbing my eyes and purposely yawning obnoxiously.

 

Reagan’s office always manages to look neat and professional �" as neat and professional as our meager living conditions allow. There’s an ugly fur couch by her bedroom door off to the far right of the room. There are photos of me, her, and our friends on all of the walls �" some are in frames, some aren’t. Behind her old wooden desk sit three beat-up filing cabinets. 

We had picked them up, the desk and the filing cabinets, a few months back, after trashing a house belonging to a D addict while looking for clues on where he might have ran off to. The guy had skipped payment on his ill-gotten ‘substances’, and then, apparently, town. If I’m being honest here, I kind of understand. If I got on the wrong side of the drug lords he had, I would probably kill myself or skip town, too. We didn't get paid for the case; we couldn't find where the pancake-f****r went. So, we did what any two adolescent, up-and-coming rapscallions in need do: we stole the b***h’s stuff. 

 

Reagan is sitting in a rolling chair behind her large desk, typing away on a wireless external keyboard she had placed on top of her laptop's built-in keyboard. She claims she can type faster with the external keyboard, I don’t much see the difference, but God forbid I raise the subject.

 

Small cracks run up the side of her desk, and there are scattered holes in a few places across the top and front, making it look like some gun-toting f**k-wad sprayed the desk with bullets. A bunch of our paperwork from previous cases sit in organized stacks on top of the holes in what I assume is her attempting covering them up.

 

Whenever I ask about the paperwork, she says she is going to file them when she has the time. First time I asked? Well, the first time would be half a year ago… next month �" not that I keep track or anything. And, between me and you, I don’t think they are going to get filed until she gets that new desk �" women, so obsessed with aesthetics. But, what are ya gonna do? I know she wants a new desk even though she never admits it outright. I'd buy one for her without hesitation, that is, if I had the money �" which I don’t. Largely thanks to the debts I had run up at my favorite bars and stores. Funny thing is: we’ve only been active in Miasma City for a year.

 

Reagan focuses on the laptop's screen, her icy, crystalline eyes stare at it, giving off an intense air of concentration. Her concentration seems to be mixed with what looks like annoyance �" typical. I walk in, closing the door behind me. She raises her head at the sound of the door creaking and looks up at me. She doesn’t pause her typing to do it, acknowledge my entrance, she doesn’t need to. She gives me a slight nod and turns her focus back to her personally pieced-together laptop.

 

She looks gorgeous as always, in the kind of way a panther or black widow is gorgeous. She is tall, dark, handsome, mysterious, and ruthless. “Dangerous” and “deadly” are perfect words to describe Reagan-Brielle James. If I didn't know her as well as I do, I'd say Reagan was in her mid-twenties. She doesn’t look old �" not at all. She’s a girl in her late teens, but with more muscle and mind, mind you. She doesn’t look older, and shows no signs of aging �" it’s more than that. There is something in her eyes themselves. There is something about the way those endless-winter eyes regard a person, the beauty of life �" the beauty of existence in general. It’s the way she perceives, looks at things through those snow globes of hers. It’s as if she had seen the universe’s glorious birth and its imminent death, the creation of the sun and its subsequent, all-consuming flame-out, as if she had seen reality turn to ash a million times over, as if she had seen the endless slaughter of countless, innumerable worlds. Her eyes reflect all of that, beginnings and ends, births and deaths. They inflexibly hold the intensity of a lion pride’s leader; ruthless when necessary, and merciless in the face of injustice.

 

Reagan's vacuum of space-dark hair frames her face. It’s in a bob that covers her ears and partially obscures her eyebrows. The glare she had adopted as her own that constantly shouts, “Hey, I’m Reagan ‘I’ll Slit Your Throat from Ear to Ear, B***h’ James, and someone or something has pissed me the f**k off! And, to remedy that injustice, I’m taking my frustration out on your sorry a*s!” was set firmly in its usual place. She is wearing a modest black tank top with a giggling, white cartoon skull embroidered on its front. Her mechanical left arm is wrapped in its usual enchantment, quelling her energy's potent presence. She has on that atrocious pair of loose, ‘stylishly’ shredded black jeans which we just HAD to pick up during a commission in the ‘real world’.

 

There is a woman sitting in front of Reagan. She looks to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her hair is long, so straight its almost terrifying, and strawberry blonde. The dress she is wearing is from some, bourgeois designer’s latest collection. Why do I know that? Would you believe it if I said, “I had to work a gig as hired muscle at a fashion show a week or two ago?” Anyways, the magenta dress is clinging to her every curve, and, God, help me, are there a lot of them. I appreciate her shapeliness �" even though I'm not one for fluffed-pillow-like breasts.

 

Her eyes are green, the color of a jade stone. They’re determinedly emotionless. Accompanying the I-don’t-give-a-f**k-about-you vibe they give off, is an air of power and desperation about her that’s never a good combination with someone in possession of all the money in the bank.

 

Her skin is utterly flawless, a light shade of pink with a faint hint of a tan. I deduce she more than likely uses a tanning bed. One can’t get that kind of color living in Miasma City despite the heat �" there’s a reason this place is called “Miasma” city. There has never been sunlight in Poison Coast �" at least as long as I’ve been here.

 

All in all, she has the potential to be attractive. If only she didn’t strut around like a snarky, I-masturbate-with-a-silver-spoon and s**t-in-a-golden-chalice, b***h. The scowl she wears like a one-of-a-kind accessory reminds me of Reagan. I resist an urge to laugh.

 

She turns to face me, giving me a good eyeful of her regarding my shirtless visage, second-hand pants, and tousled, unkempt hair with obvious disdain. I am beneath her on the economic, social, and cultural hierarchy. I know it. She knows it. Reagan knows it �" but she is, too. We all know it. Her body language speaks legions �" hell, it writes books. And, because we’re beneath her, she hates asking middle-low-class trash like us for help. That, I see as clearly as I see my too-pointed nose in front of my face. I see the contempt in her eyes, the embarrassment, and the fury she feels at being forced in a situation where she has to ask two of the most disreputable, and youngest, illegal-citizens in the city for help.

 

I don’t believe she came to us first. In a city filled to the brim with disreputable trash, anal-retentive mercenaries, d***o-throwing assassins, future-telling private investigators, cliché do-gooders, overblown and obnoxious ne’er-do-wells, and guys and gals who will do anything for a buck �" and when I say “anything”, I mean “anything” �", hardly anyone comes to us. I wouldn’t either. We suck. I reiterate: no one ever goes to us first. We’re a last resort. We’re unreliable �" but improving. We make huge, catastrophic messes. You know the Titanic? It’s called time-travel, and, well, people f**k up. On the plus side, we jump into situations most people avoid like crabs �" that might be a bad analogy though; people don’t usually think about crabs until they’re violently, furiously scratching their genitalia. We’re like, lepers. Yeah, lepers, that’s it. �", dumb, I know, but, still. It’s not as bad as you think; remember: carpe diem, and all that. Sometimes a guy’s just gotta be reckless.

 

Lately it seems like we only get paid because, even in a place like this, people still need cheap, acceptable �" not superb �" labor. There are a few more reasons people don’t pay our office visits. For example, we have a sort of … ‘bad’ rep. It keeps most bill-collectors, most douchebags, most twat-waffles, and all chances at being in fulfilling long-term relationships at bay. But, having a pariah-like reputation deters clientele, too. No DID �" damsel-(or dude)-in-distress �" wants to hire someone they think’ll put one or two bullets through their solar plexus?

 

“Well, well, well, you are the infamous Aiden I have heard so much about?” she asks, her attention resting on me. Her voice is perfectly scathing, perfectly practiced. I can almost hear the shrill, piss-annoying voice of her probable childhood eloquence teacher yelling at her to be more formal in her speech, use honor titles for those with status, and be polite to her betters unless she wanted to have her backside paddled with the ruler again.

 

I think, ‘Damn rich people.’

 

“That would be me.” I stifle another yawn.

 

Mornings aren’t my thing. At least, I think its morning. It could be six in the afternoon for all I know. I remind myself to remind myself that if Stark drops by to go out and get wasted for no other reason than because “we can, dumb-f**k” to turn his dumbass down. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he would say. ‘You’ll have fun,’ he would say. Yeah, train wrecks look fun on TV, too. That doesn’t mean I want a seat next to the conductor.’

 

I look at the clock hanging above the filing cabinets behind Reagan's desk. The hands indicating the time were actually that: hands �" silver ones. The longer index finger is outstretched, indicating the hour. It, the hour hand, sat before the skewed, distorted three. The other hand, middle finger extended, indicates the minutes: twenty-one. I had slept nearly twelve-and-a-half hours.

 

I stroll over to Reagan’s desk and sit on the edge of it, putting myself right in Ms. Money Bags’ line of fire.

 

“And here I was, thinking you two would be some scary heathens,” she says. “With all the stories floating about involving you two, I wasn’t expecting an overgrown boy and a rude little part-machine girl. I wonder, are you as good as they say, as cruel? You better be, lest I take my business elsewhere and have this eyesore of an operation shutdown.”

 

‘Children, we’re children now? Damn rich people.’

 

“What exactly have you heard about us?” I ask, feeling a grin creep up. I glance behind me. I’m met with a classic, patented Reagan glare aimed straight at me. She looks like she has something to say, but she refrains from voicing whatever nasty comment was on her mind �" thank Joseph, and Mary, Mother of Christ. Her current look tells me enough to let me know she’s displeased at my half-naked hooligan swagger. 

Author's Note

Please, ignore the tense mistakes. I'm in the middle of giving this story a complete overhaul - tense included. I admit, I may have missed something.

Reviews

[kelly ann]

i loved the off kilter sense of humor, very dark and intriguing. very unique for first person. also, i loved all the idiosyncrasies of the relationship between reagan and the main character, it made the whole story very real! great work, i'd love to see more pieces using this voice!

[Matty Bosox]

You don't think this is done right??? LoL This is an excellent display of wording...Very eerie and creepy story...Confusing, but in a very good way...The best part about it is the very beginning....That is where a writer wants to hook the reader is with a very good beginning...You nailed it!!! Very good job....I myself think my writing is terrible no matter what I do...But this is excellent...Keep it up