Twin Cities

5 September 2020 | R-18 | 36,344 words Jacklyn Whitewood brushes closer to the dealings of the Black Thorns than he can stomach. That same day, Jayden Blackthorne glimpses an underbelly to the Black Thorns that even she fears to touch. Peace is ever a rarity in their city of East Welding, rotten from its very heart out.

EPILOGUE: Our Home

To the solid thunk of the dart into corkboard, Winston's patrons roared up cheers and groans.

The megaphone squealed under Winston's wiggling moustache. “And that's it! Enzephaimon – out!” Winston sliced his arm wide into the air, the pronouncement mayoral.

“Count it again bint,” barked someone.

“Piss off!” chorused another, punctuated with the boom of a steel cup upon tabletop. More discontents flared: “Ten dracht I put on 'im.”, “that ain't what I counted,” “you lot’re bald grouchers.” Atop his small podium, Winston splayed his arms to shush the crowd’s growing rancour, while Enzie slipped away from the thrower’s stage and needled between stinking reeds of people. A sudden arm cupped his back and smoothly rolled him out into an alcove, and he was looking up at Jacklyn, who smiled slyly over the mob.

“The lads's looking to riot,” Jacklyn said.

Enzie thumbed the corner of his mouth. “Looks like. Wager someone's let slip I'm a bowman.”

“Didn't tell 'em a crossbow ain't darts, eh.”

“Cor, quick brains, quick profit, Jackie. Exactly. Shooting's in the eye. Now this, is in the fingers. You gotta balance between the dart and your arm – you felt it on your try?”

Jacklyn poised his hand, remembering the dart. “Yeah. They look small, but you feel the weight.”

Enzie nodded. “Can’t throw a bolt too hard, but sure can a dart. Cor, whoever's gone spreading the rumours, he's a happy dick on his money tonight.”

“Cause he then bets safe on the regulars, huh. Supposing we got a true plot, our culprit’s all chances himself a regular...” Jacklyn rolled his shoulders and smiled a grin so carelessly silken it could snag angels into the gutter. “Gauging how he’s worked, well I’ll tell ya, I’m out fifty dracht myself.”

Enzie thumped Jacklyn's back. “Very happy!”

The clanging of cups swept in rage off of tables, and the puddling of frothy skog disgorged on the floor, outlined smeared figures in the crowd rising quick into tumult. Muscles bulged, to what to explode: a bar or a bullpen?

“Hope this don't get out of hand...” Jacklyn murmured.

“Ahh, Winnie's got them. Look.”

Winston flit out his palm and bowed over the crowd. The cartoon donkey embossed on his podium grinned. “Fat pot night, fat pot night, pockets get hungry on the big fat pot night!—whooo’s the slicksy slugger who can eat up the big fat pot!? Step up! Step up! He’s starving to play, next is our friend, always here every day, pays Winston’s skog many and makes so fat up the pot! Fast he throws the darts, he is here the Scarlet Needle! Pzow! Out like that goes his darts, so fast! Can he eat up the fat pot!? Watch quick, fast darts, first time? Fat pot!” Even the red-faced louts with tears prickling their eyes watched quick. Out from gaps betweens patrons slid a man with a youth’s mild face, but the weak weathered skin of a retiree, who wore a tattered, red-pleather coat. He accepted the darts and raised them high over his head. With a daredevil grin, he wobbled his hands back and forth, so strange, so silly, the crowd started to wonder, when in one throw like a blur—

flt,flt,flt—Thunk, thunk, thunk!

“A twenty, triple-twenty, twenty-trip—” Winston’s announcement drowned under a celebratory swell of: “Eyyy!” Cups clanked endless through the bar like clinking coins. “—one-forty! Total one-forty! Scarlet Needle for next round goes on!” And the whispers lingered, as Needle bowed and bowed, and darts were winched out of the corkboard, of, ‘fat pot, fat pot...’

“Woah,” said Jacklyn.

“Now there's how anyone was boldgutted enough to stake against your fifty dracht. Heavens, he's good.”

“And now!” Winston announced, with a flourish and shriek of the megaphone. “Another good friend, not always here, because on Winston he cheats with other pubs!” ‘Booo!’ “Or is it other pubs he cheats on with Winston!?” ‘Ghahaha!’. “But he is good—yes, very good, a thickly slow-running clotted-grease-streak sniffing for the fat pot! Winston’s is always home for the fat pot! Ah and here he comes, he is the big thinker, he thinks and thinks and thinks... and never gets a single single! A sneaky pot-gobbler! There he comes up the man, the Stinky-Starey-Scary-Shadow!”

If he was stinky, booze covered it, and if he was scary, the patrons were terrifying. A spindly silhouette wrapped in grease-stained rags lumbered, as a spider would lumber, out from total nonexistence, onto the steps of the dart-floor. An unsettling rigidity hung about him, with a white face that expressed less than a stone, and clear blue eyes that neither blinked or looked at anyone.

The dart waited poised in his hand.

flt. Thunk. Triple twenty—so deliberate and slow was the landing, Winston didn’t need to call it.

flt. Thunk. Triple twenty—patrons leaned in, yanked into suspense then suffocated in a pause murderous as tar. Stinky’s posture leaned neither this way or that. His fingers were statues, the angle of the dart did not twitch. Boring. He’s boring! Legs shifted under tables and steins screeched against table-tops but not a single man could unglue his gaze from that waiting dart.

flt. Thunk. Double eightee—“OOOOOOUO!!!” went the wave, “OO! OOH! OO!” and a battering of steins like bongos, “one fifty—,” even with the megaphone, Winston struggled to speak. “One, one fifty—! Shadow is, one fifty—” hoots pulsed in rhythm, with many bouncing hands pointing at the dartboard, as if not everyone had seen, “—one fifty six! Shadow goes to the next round!” And even through this tumult, Stinky-Scary only slunk back into quiet nonexistence, where he could peacefully stand and stare at nothing and nobody, though smiling quite chipper.

“He's maybe better!” said Jacklyn.

“Tight fight this’ll be. Here, let's settle in, grab us a skog...” Enzie shouldered a step toward the throng.

Jacklyn lurched forward to breeze a touch down Enzie's arm. “Ah, I got couple friends waiting upstairs. Business...”

That the word so effectively dropped Enzie’s glee to sobriety did make Jacklyn wince.

“Better get to ‘em,” Enzie concluded, not completely comfortably.

“Good seeing you Enzie. Thanks for the invite, was a lot of fun.” With a quick smile and a fleet farewell kiss on the cheek, Jacklyn departed him. He jaunted 2-by-2 up the steel steps abutting the wall, striking a bassy ‘clang!’ on every footfall, to the Winston Ass’s VIP section, a squat shaded platform dignified with a railing, table, and chairs atop the ceiling of the bar.

The rumpus of patrons below blended into one creature, their noise mute as if underwater, though only short seconds away. Comfortable, though not luxurious, the space oversaw the vantage of the whole lower floor, and would fit a party of about six before straining.

Lizard and his lady-friend were seated at the table. She leaned sullenly against his arm while he slouched over the railing, eyes flitting to follow the darts. Jacklyn took his seat across from them.

“That red-jacket guy’s gonna win this whole thing,” Lizard said with a grin. “But my nutty duck,” he squeezed the girl closer. She set her head on his shoulder; sleek hair spilled over his pecs. “Thinks that greasy creep gets the pot. Tell her she’s crazy, Jackie.”

“Takes the money-changing before anything's crazy.”

“I got eyes like a sniper, babe, listen,” Lizard said to his girl. “Red's hitting triple-pointers regular, right, barely gotta watch the board t’land ‘em. Bullseye, babe, he’s a showster. He ain’t doing tops cause’s he’s buzzing the crowd up. See him? How he’s doing that?”

“Mmm.” Lizard's girl churned the ice in her spritzer with a straw.

“Guy who just got out's an actual sniper,” Jacklyn leaned back in his seat and struck a cigarette. Lizard's girl raised her brows and pointed at him around her grip on her glass, as if to say, Oh, see?

Thunk. Thunk. Lizard grunted and cringed at the next round’s proceedings, as Jacklyn sipped the chilled glass of skog already set for him. He squinted over its rim, licked his lip, and set it down. How to right cut this? This business.

“Liz, I gonna harp on this 'till the little angel strumming my voicebox resigns. Jay's day's been real shit. She's in the right mind to gut a guy, real. You—”

“Fuck's sake, Jackie.”

“—don't wanna be 'round her when she...”

The door screamed open. A pulse of crimson lamplight burst in from the street, that flooded over the walls and over the crowd as stark as a spatter of blood. No patrons noticed, or even cared, immersed ceaselessly in the game of the darts.

Standing silhouetted in that doorway was Jayden, features dimmed by the intensity of the light, but discernibly in her hoodie and without her eye. The civilian getup, though, softened nothing when juxtaposed against her flat scowl, badge of the Thorns. She craned to scan over the crowd until, upstairs, she sighted Lizard, and demanded him down with a single, sharp crook of her finger.

Lizard scooted off his chair. In grim anticipation, even smiling when the stitches of his own stoic veil broke, he descended the stairs, each footfall the peal of a gong beat. Wisping smoke coiled through Jacklyn’s chest, the sentiment sickening but so pathetically fragile, as Lizard escaped his grip, and the pair disappeared outside with the slamming of the front door.

What better could he have done? Bitterness wafted on his tongue.

Hey, best care there’s a girl here. At least for politeness’ sake. Jacklyn breathed in and swallowed to refocus his smile, when her voice cut into him first.

“He's such a drag.”

“Hey, now.”

“He is. You must see dozens like him... thinks he's god in the jacket.” She rolled her eyes. “He's not even shackled. Well. He is sweet, though.” She brushed her hand over a lock of her hair. “Overeager, but sweet.”

Maybe he'd misjudged her. “...Must be hard. Not knowing proper if he gonna come home every night.”

“A little.” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger, then paused, disgusted. “A lot. I'm Valerie.”

“Jacklyn.”

“Of course.” She grinned. “I was surprised. When he told me you'd covered for him.”

“Weren't nothing big, so figures why not, eh.”

“It was big to us. We hadn't had time together for a long while, so... are you watching this?”

“Only a lil. Go on?”

“...so having the opportunity to see each other meant a lot.” She smiled gratefully.

A flush of warmth bubbled up from Jacklyn’s heart despite himself, that flew upwards and lifted his cheeks to reciprocate. Doing good did feel good.

Her eyes squinted warmly, with a quiet, calculated chuckle. Yeah, Jacklyn was a bit of a sap. A blush lanced across his face, as though her presence was a sunbeam, cooking him pleasantly.

Still soundlessly laughing, her gaze lowered to her spritzer. With her straw, she swished around the ice, once, twice. Then her gaze locked back on him, and finally, the falling payload, in the question:

“Are you going anywhere, after this?”

Jacklyn clicked his lighter. “Lady, you got a man.”

“I'm just asking. He wouldn't know... or, it wouldn't matter.”

“Thinking it would, mamacita. Playing with a guy's heart—”

“—it's you, though.”

Pain—Jacklyn flinched—like a needle’s point struck his breast. On every quickening heartbeat, blood speared through the widening puncture.

‘It’s you, though’? Because, what did that mea... just as reflexive as came the question, did the answers rise in tides of thick, deep nausea. What did he think it means? It’s obvious what it means. People didn’t care if Jacklyn nabbed their spouses because that exact thing happened all the time, and as the goods went, he was pretty high-class. When partners did confront him about it, (and Jacklyn himself barely knew how this happened), they’d themselves within ten minutes be whisked to a suite full of silks and peaches and citrusy oils, (and yet somehow never the same damn room), suddenly willing to forgive their women.

Drunkenness disproportionate to the half-glass of skog he’d sipped battered him abruptly light-headed. Lights smeared together; silhouettes blurred.

This lady, Valerie, leaned forward. Her face looming in like a lamplight wasn’t unattractive, little it mattered, sexier prospect right now was chucking his guts in a pea potage front of her. Most articulate way he could fashion, through the incendiary heat and uncertain dizziness, of saying ‘no! No, I really don’t wanna.’ But did he really not wanna? Uh no, he really didn’t. Under the table, she touched his knee.

“Aieek!” she squealed. With a clatter and thunk, she disappeared under the table and the world snapped back to sobriety. Jacklyn jolted at how abruptly it cleared: once passed from the tempest, a tornado lolling to the horizon could dare to seem a trifling breeze.

On the floor was Valerie, splayed aside her was her chair, and--

“Looking for a job in the brothels, go ‘n get one, slut!” Jayden stood over her, barking. “Coz happens today we are offering, to skimpy little shitbags like you! Getcha in a cage, doll you in chains, mash up your guts on ‘nough-hundred dicks ‘till that pussy’s ‘smuch loose as your brains, recompense, your exclusive shot to put a fucking hand on him again! Eh? Izzat sound fun, scamp?” Jayden straightened, struck a cigarette, and flicked her gaze to Jacklyn. “Coz the man you do have, happens, got a case of the ‘weeping blood’. Doctors on the northside padding up his mug. Gonna do a single good thing with your night, you go n’ get yourself to him.”

Valerie trembled on the floor, only now uncurling from the ball she’d been braced in. Confusion eclipsed fear: why had she not been attacked? And in flickered clear on her face, still addled, the daring thought of: if she didn’t attack me, does that mean I can take Jayden?

“Said get the fuck out. You need help finding the way? Piss me off more and I smash up your ribs, they’ll hook you up in a bed right next to sugarplum’s. Hah!”

This threat dispersed the confusion. Valerie looked to Jacklyn with tears sheening her eyes, as though his silence had betrayed her.

“You better go,” Jacklyn said, coming into step beside Jayden.

At that, she did hoist herself to her feet and scamper away, tripping down the stairs in her heels. Jacklyn and Jayden both watched her go; a thick smear of eyeliner painted her coat sleeve—he saw—and Jayden stared for full seconds, after the empty doorway, until the threat was gone, and she deflated with a sigh.

“Shit’s incredible,” she laughed.

“Ma made me too good.”

“Cor ‘s half Ma, half you bein’ too nice,” she muttered, and shouldered down the stairs. The crowd had converged more tightly around the dartboard, which left a narrow, but definite pathway for the twins to take back to the door. “Jackie been a bullshit day and you put your hands in a dollop of that. Who likes the stink of bullshit? Flies.”

“Yeah.”

“You gotta stop doing it.” She pivoted at the doorway to scold him with a stare. Receiving only a dispassionate look in return, accidentally the exact same as Desiree’s, she was the one who wavered, and conceded in gentler voice, “Thorns shit’s a hellhole.” He glanced aside apologetically.

Thunk. Thunk. Hoots of despair and celebration roiled raucously from the drunk mob. Jayden shook her head bitterly, grinned to share the joke, then shoved for the door. “C’mon.”

Flicking away his cigarette, Jacklyn followed.

Outside, the crimson lamplight sucked them into its hold. Whimsical mascots perched atop shuttered shopfronts smiled cheerfully at them through the wee street, presently more populous company than any fellow pedestrians. Though not a strict curfew, and meant more for the slave-vaults, the turn from whitelamps to redlamps did signify to most East Welding establishments Seacrest’s chiding instruction to close shop and rest—and demonstrably, most did. Without people jostling about, what permeated the gap of the silence was the buzz of the lamps and rattling of water-pipes.

Yet it wasn’t lonely. If anything, Welding’s peace under the redlamps spoke to how many thousands of people weren’t involved in precarious dealings, and with their wages surely in surplus, of everything, just went to bed.

Sometimes it became easy to imagine, by the stranglehold of the Thorns, that the whole city only bred hustlers and gangbangers. But no, in their absences, the safe people boldly appeared. Ones like Marinne, Enzie, or Grace...

Jacklyn smiled at the ceiling, then frowned at Jayden’s back. Blood had stained into her hoodie.

An unoiled crank shrieked stuck, graunching against the gallstone in his guts. Jacklyn glanced over his shoulder over the street behind them—also empty, and, had she taken Jayden’s instructions, the direction Valerie would have gone.

“She gonna be alright...?” Jacklyn asked.

“You’re a sap. Ain’t even touched her.” Jayden shoved her hands deeper in her front pocket.

“Yeah, ‘strue. Just rattled up,” Jacklyn conceded. “How ‘bout Lizard?”

Jayden pinched her brow, then sighed. “Well he ain’t dead. And I ain’t fucking dead. If an eye didn’t kill me, it ain’t gonna kill him.”

“You’re kinda stronger than Lizard. Impressions, but, ‘yknow.”

She fell silent, then snorted. “Yeah. Hey, Jackie, how’d you get looped in this anyways? Know you don’t care, but know you ain’t getting free on this either.”

“Said he was having a kid...”

Jayden again fell silent, her gaze sharp as it drifted from Jacklyn to the street. Really, now? She was questioning. Facts fit together. Lizard wasn’t shackled. Chance existed that he could quit. Quiet implications from half-complete sentences sufficed for her to wholly discern Jacklyn’s motives, and they were ones with which she herself did quietly agree.

Given that he’d failed, the request now was for her to be softer. To baby Lizard into gentle places where he likely wouldn’t die. Whether she actually would do that or not—given the ungentle nature of the Thorns—now that part wasn’t Jacklyn’s business to know.

Sometimes people insisted on throwing themselves onto spikes. Was something about ‘pride’, or ‘ego’. Only so far you could bridle it before they got furious you weren’t letting them kill themselves, and as for Lizard, well, he’d already rammed his face on her shiv.

“Ma knew you’d been out,” Jayden said.

Jacklyn froze. Ice seeped from his spine to his flesh, up his throat to his tongue, a plump lump of flab in a glacial cavern that every instinct decided he was best off never opening again. For as much as a lunatic was stuck in a straightjacket, frigid terror stuck Jacklyn’s skin to his skeleton. It was the only reason he didn’t shiver out of his body and puddle onto the floor.

Oh yes, what a fun romp, what a compassionate escapade, and what lovely heartfelt grievances he was pressing on Jayden...

“Anything else?” Jayden asked breezily. Pivoted to face him, she stood at the mouth of a sidestreet, itself strangled between a matting of pipes. From the floor she’d fetched a discarded steel rod.

“Oh. Uh, fuck, could you wire us couple million to Honeyheart?”

“Jacklyn what the hell,” she laughed.

“Uhh-h, not scoping just—taking out some chicks—”

“Pranking Skinny? Yeah yeah,” she said. “Fuck! If you actually wanted ‘em, should know how we hike up the rates. This just outta our pocket, into our pocket. What stupid shit. Damn! Sprung me on that one, hauh. Alright, get in.” Like a peacekeeper with baton, she pointed the rod into the alley.

Jacklyn’s tongue flopped in his mouth. Her glint of joy had flashed a tender underbelly he had to wrestle himself not to ravage with the blade, ‘interjection’. Milly’s still a lot, Jay. Maybe he’d be funny enough they’d think about something else.

So it hurt, it really did, to know how ready he was to slap her to save himself for a few seconds, how indignant and justified it felt to say, ‘you shouldn’t be hitting me,’ or, ‘I only wanted to help,’ when he could barely know how much mess he truly caused. It wasn’t wrong to care about others. It wasn’t wrong to help people like Linnie. If it was wrong, Jacklyn shouldn’t have been born with a heart.

But as a gangster himself, it was pretty stupid.

He meekly squeezed in ahead. Again he was being corralled for a butchering. This time, he couldn’t argue. The alley broke into a closed cyst behind the rears of a circle of buildings, with an outcropping of dead ventilation boxes upon which he seated himself.

Even with him sitting and her not, Jayden barely broke over his eye level. The beetle’s vantage only exposed how ugly, how sore, and how purple had bloomed the bruising over her neck. That itself bothered Jacklyn, and itched the instinct to scold her: Can’t you do better?. But worse, so truly horrific that it shut him up, was the sternness of her face and readiness of that dumb rod, afront that damn soft hoodie.

“Jay, I’m sorry.”

She tapped the rod on her palm, and squinted. For what?

“I’m just sorry.”

Her face cooled. A flash of movement, and the rod struck.

The lashes to his stomach drew from him gasps and tears; the pulverization to his innards, how could any organ survive except ruptured all together as ‘mush’? He strained to breathe, curled on his side, the pain so ferocious his eyes could pop, might already did, he already couldn’t see, ribs creaking, thighs tenderized, lungs held no air between whacks, and yet he didn’t choke up even a single drop of blood.

Until the pain branded into his skull, so he would never forget it—and yet as a punishment, it never burned vicious enough. The lashes of the rod abated, until all that assailed him was the tang of new bruises, pulsing.

“You’re crying less from these,” Jayden said.

“Still fucking hurts,” he whined between wisped weepy breaths. Snot, spit, and tears seeped from his face; not much the mug of a suave philanderer now, he did wish to joke, but too many punters adored this look far more than any other.

Jayden frowned down at him as if to chastise, then closed her eye, threw aside the rod, and sat with him on the vents. She laid her head on his shoulder in a loose hug, her hair a tiny blanket trail, until the hitching of his breath calmed.

At the relaxed, ‘hoo’, ‘hauh,’ of a runner after a sprint, Jayden straightened herself, and curled up with her heels on the seat and hands crossed on her knees.

“Next person who tries getting you working for the Thorns. Tell ‘em if you do I’m just killing ‘em.”

‘Kay, Jay, accepted Jacklyn, for as much as a car shredder could not be stopped, Jayden’s oaths could not be stopped. Like gravity, they happened. Yet, even knowing so—even knowing inevitability—covered in sweat and burning with bruises, breathing heat still through his mouth, it was these dependable words that truly depleted his spirit, and the crystalline fleck of something he had fought for today against every bloody deal and dirty coin in Ordanz, simply withered into dust, with its parting shot, the whip of its tail, the fatigued squint, of exasperation.

They returned to the streets, destined toward home, impetuous ideas flitting through Jacklyn’s head.

“It’s all wrong! It’s all wrong,” he could shout. But the Thorns still reaped and through the oiliest palms the money still slithered.

“Jayden, Ma’s... Ma, but we don’t need to be,” he could insist. But he himself trembled paralysed under her shadow, that stretched so big, so vast, and so dark like a demon inside whose silhouette was trapped the whole nation of Ordanz. (He’d scoff at his own thoughts—because she’s just my Ma!—yet eerie things, subtle things, the mist of them wrapped around her nakedness like feathered boas.)

I have the rest of the city. Maybe it’s just better not to get caught in this stuff, he conceded to himself, thumbing a cigarette. They turned the corner onto the main market thoroughfare, the road burst wide like a fat woman gasping out of her bodice, tram-rails jutting underfoot wound into iron briers, and the pockmark of their residence appeared distantly on the wall, as far above the quiet bustle as a cave on a seacliff.

Even in redlamps, being the main road, some pedestrians still wafted around. Small outfits like Marinne’s Fat Rat, or the tiny new Foreman’s Mechanics laid shuttered, but here and there popped a bar or a billing office with its neon signs yet aglow.

“Jay,” Jacklyn called.

“Mm?”

“You know you...” his voice cracked into a whisper, “...shouldn’t be fighting with Ma...”

Jayden glared, but tempered herself by rubbing her neck. Her voice came equally quiet: “She was thinking sick shit ‘bout you.”

“...Thanks.”

Jayden jerked her head, Yeah. Anytime. And her gaze drifted idly over the streets, the little shops, and the eateries, some still taking humble traffic, as if to scour by such mundanity the reminder of the day she had only recently forgot.

A man hobbled stinking drunk out of the Two-Taps bar, alone. He doubled over to vomit on their stoop when a short guy in neatly pressed overalls (Euryil, the Two-Taps’ adorable attempt to imitate Desiree’s maitre d’s), burst out the doors, exclaiming, “No! No! No stinky on our door!” and ferociously shooed him off. The drunk man, purple-faced, boggled, burped, and stumbled away into the streets, humming a tune as if he was not aware how close he looked to collapsing, or how easy he looked to rob.

“Guy’ll be fine,” Jayden said.

Suppose all’s to hope, Jacklyn thought.

Jayden sighed. “Wanna go check ‘em?”

“Yeah. Sec,” he said, and split off. After confirming with Euryil that the man wasn’t ill-tempered, just drunk, he caught the guy in an adjacent road, and though his call of, “hey mate! All good there?” garnered a hazily suspicious squint, a few quick smiles and a pat on the back—and mentioning himself as Jacklyn, the street’s local insane philanthropist—assured him enough to relax. His home, turned out, was only a minute away on a neighbouring block, and escorting him there went with so little issue that Jacklyn’s urge to protect him in retrospect became rather embarrassing.

Not that he regretted it, or that it felt bad to be the guy’s designated walker, but yeah. He would’ve been fine.

Maybe others didn’t have that instinct to have someone with them, like Jayden? Freaky thought. Nah, even for little things, was best nobody went alone.

Jacklyn returned to the thoroughfare to find Jayden seated on the rim of a stairway, looking over the street.

“Gotta find a day I ain’t busy and can come ‘round when this shit’s all open,” she hopped down, saying.

“Shit, y’ain’t been to Marlowe’s yet, nah? Crazy thing, they got this big—bird, with a mohawk like a lamp-flare what knows his own name. Tell him ‘hello’ and he goes ‘hello’. No fucking clue how they got it. Gotta ask him ‘bout that...”

“Him eh, the bird?”

“Nah, Marlowe. Heh. But yeah, they take it out, it talks n’ does dances... cute silly dances, coz issa bird, while you’re having your veggies n’ eggs. And they put a thing of rice on the side shaped like the bird. Fuck, ‘sgotta be expensive getting all the materials for that.”

“Pricey place ue?”

“Crazy thing, it really ain’t. Could go there on an oilman’s budget. But clientele ain’t so much that, ‘smore kids. Guess they like the bird...”

Jayden elbowed him lightly, with a teasing grin.

“It is a funny bird. Nah, how it does alla that, ‘simpressive. Up in the west, where Da’s from, there’s even these people who, uh... orthi... like our rat-wranglers, get paid to look at all the birds n’ talk about what they do. Down here in the East Weld guess’m turning into the first one of those.”

“Jacklyn Blackthorne, erudite of the Weld’s all one birds.”

“Well!” He affected putting on glasses. “Preliminary results from our corporation’s latest survey conclude, that shockingly, the former surburbo-industrial vault of East Welding may sustain up to ten different specimens of avian life! Swear it, there’s Ma’s, then least couple sparrows got in here. Could be more. Big place, you dunno.”

“Alright, professor, you know where they all? I see a quack, but you see any ‘round?”

“Hey,” Jacklyn exclaimed, pointing to a sign for a sorbet shop plastered with a bold, rainbow-coloured flamingo.

“Fucker,” Jayden snorted. “Alright, n’ what’s he do? Saying he gets up n’ does it, 10 dracht research grant.”

“Well that there’s a uh, Harold. What he likes t’do is look pretty and flex up his legs all in callisthenics, they skinny but good, he runs faster than people. Mm, fuck, bet what he actually does is dances.” Like a stripper, with those sassy gams, Jacklyn refrained to add.

“Ain’t sold issa fucking bird even. Looks weird.”

“He got the beak n’ the wings n’ the feet n’ the feathers...” Jacklyn nodded. “Maybe I only met three face-to-face, but I can spot a bird!”

“Crazy shit some places they’re supposed to be everywhere.”

“Yeah...” Jacklyn hummed. “Like you gotta push through ‘em when you walk down the street? Iunno... stretchin’ my vocabulary like a new pantyhose in these radio dramas sometimes, gotta ask Da, whassa whippoorwill, whassa nightingale, whassa Phoenix, it’s all birds. Could fund an aviary... maybe not the right place for ‘em...” About half the patrons at Marlowe’s, while entertained, for completely inexplicably reason also had urges to kill his bird, and would have ripped out its feathers or jabbed it bloody had Marlowe not been so protective. “Yeah, Marlowe’s cool. Self only been couple times, thought it’d be nice to help clean up the cages... ‘swas pretty needing it but after that think my hygiene bug bit him ‘cus always been spic as a lick. Seems a good fella, little quiet little stiff, but works thumpin’ hot passion wholehearted once’s figured out what’s all good. Eh, still dunno him that well.”

A tram rattled by carrying two dishevelled strangers, each huddled at opposite corners of the cart. One was flipping with bloodshot eyes over a folio of thick plastic documents, while the other sunk fully receded into a filthy trenchcoat with both hands fidgeting in his inner pockets.

“Wonder how it went with those darts?” Jacklyn said.

Jayden fell awkwardly quiet. “’Sposed to be regular, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, issa darts bar after all, but that crowd ain’t everyday. They got a huge betting pool with some top-notch contenders in, no joke, those guys could go topside. Someone even ran a scheme knowin’ everyone would bet on this other guy, y’know Enzie?”

“Aw yeah Uncle Enz.”

“Yeah he’s been good. Really good seein’ him. Dunno who tipped him, ‘cept wild whispers musta gone ripping ‘round to scoop up all them seats, then he got hooked in t’try snipin’ with darts. And there’s the nip, lotta bright sods thinkin’ crossbow sniper gonna get stern hit big on the dartboard, but eeehnt, thumb smarts and trigger smarts is different shindigs, and Enzie’s just havin’ fun. Whole pub got near to riotin’ when he fell outta the bracket. Now though if y’prior hounded the premises to see these other guys train, y’never wouldda dared stake a cent. Worked ‘cause place ain’t that popular, guess ‘cause not on the main road...”

“Mm. Hey, Jackie, nothing... weird, happen at Winston’s?”

“No?”

“Aight ‘kay. Never it mind then.”

“Know’m asking for drubbings dropping the question, but you’re leaving me licking ghosts if I don’t least say ‘why’. Something happen there?”

She shrugged. “Iunno. Couldda been. Shit’s beyond me...”

Jacklyn pursed his lips and fiddled his thumb on a cigarette. If a mystery could perturb Jayden, then Jacklyn had the judiciousness to know he was better off not poking in. What he might not have, however, he dimly consigned as he sparked the fag up, was the helpless, feverish discipline to adhere to such sensible judgements.

To know he was helpless, yet insist that he wasn’t. There was some sick contradiction in that.

Red light coiled through the unwinding smoke. Beaming white eyes of the local peacekeeper’s office, manned with a skeleton crew, shimmered out of the mist. An officer outside, leaning on his prod though at watch, craned to observe the couple, then slumped back into lazy disconcern upon recognizing either who they were, or how plainly they were just passing civilians.

Sobriety of silence loomed with vicious contemplation. Questions that couldn’t be asked and answers that couldn’t be given; when at the bottom of that void came a carpet of buried screams and ravaged corpses, that silence became such a monster.

If he couldn’t fight it, and didn’t want to cry, all he could do was talk. Talk, talk, fill it all dead with fanciful nonsense. On empty levity could he slay it? Or could enough wet, crumpled papers tossed to the ground establish a magical floor they could walk on, foundations bound as stout as paper mache?

So Jacklyn’s tongue scraped for a topic—but none promptly sprung, before in phased the distant neon facade of the eastside hospital. Adorned with icons of moving rabbits, and lit in spectacular white and red decals, that jumped, and swapped hues, and glistened like a fandango, it boasted the modesty of a nightclub, and even at these hours entertained about as much traffic as one.

It was comforting that the East Weld had doctors. Jacklyn’s heart still bled as if he’d been stabbed himself when observing the people who needed its services. Though he braced, a twinge of pain yet forced him to squint at a man stumbling out of a tram, propped on the shoulder of his friend, whose neck lolled down as though forced to carry not a head but a pendulum. Another went by, with bloodstains soaking out from under his shirt, and his palm tamped over the injury, but who gazed at the wound less pained than quizzical, as if by now he thought it wouldn’t be bleeding, and was only visiting professionals to diagnose ‘why?’ and then leave.

A woman strode out the doors, carrying a little boy with curly hair whose legs were bound in iron braces.

“Jay, that kid...”

Jayden glanced away, bowing her head and stuffing her hands deep in her hoodie pocket. Static prickled over her shoulders.

When her gaze peeled off the floor, it shot seething to Jacklyn’s chest like a crossbow bolt, heated so incandescent its tip was melting: What about it?

Jacklyn himself looked away. Jayden quietly sighed and shook out her shoulders, threw back her head as if that would whip the—discomfort out of her. How much it did help, well, she wasn’t much more a live exploding grenade, just one twirling round and around with a finger in the pin.

Every street, every building, every soul, every meal, every dracht. Right-o Jacklyn, how couldn’t they get caught in this stuff? He’d more easily abide that placidity if he slashed out his eyes, tongue, and brain, and thanks for stringing him up in the laurels of gore, ‘cause an idea like that hits a lilly like him, he pukes it right out and rips the guts off him instantly.

Shrouded in what vibrations could a sweet tongue possibly massage out the edge of the East Weld? How? But with his own homegrown heart so sopping with sentiment, he knew it had to be there.

A few steps ahead of him, Jayden’s pace stopped. She craned her head up to observe the ceiling, as though there were any bound to see beyond a plane of rusty metal. Their mother’s sinuous tower rose, amid the jumble of skyscrapers, as a hazed matchstick far behind her, and before them the notch of their house’s balcony loomed imperiously overhead like a distant pupil. Were they standing on it, they would be looking down at themselves as worms, looking up at themselves as titans.

“Sick of this fucking place,” cut Jayden’s voice.

Jacklyn double-took at her.

She grinned, as if it were a joke, or a secret.

Then she shook her head with a laugh and pressed on, as though that moment, and that statement, were only a passing vision, and a dream that did not really happen.

But Jacklyn’s head homed happily many waylaid dreams. Once he recovered from the jolt of hearing those words from that person, and tipped back into step behind her, whether she did or did not truly say them, by that point, already barely mattered.

Because he said quietly, “I think everyone is.”