Samedi
Bourbon Street 1.1
This was even better than I had hoped.
Sophia was staring at me, mouth agape.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Hebert?" The scent of bile and the squirming of maggots.
As the lights in the common room grew gradually dimmer, I began to laugh. My voice swooped around the room, a raven trapped in a library, brushing past her head, twisting in her ears.
The pale green gas-light shone across her stunned expression, flickering from the lamp-posts that had replaced the walls and ceiling of this place, this trap. Shadows twisted upon the cobblestones. My laughter began to coalesce into skulls, eye-sockets burning green, still flying around the room.
"Taylor?" Clockblocker hesitated, lime juice suddenly dripping from his lips.
My skulls answered with laughter, and deep inside of me, where my new senses had bloomed like a lily only a few moments before, I began to pull. Hard.
The room grew darker, and my face began to shift. My eyes sank, my ears melted, dripping down my shoulders and leaving pink residue on my shirt. I kept grinning, even as my nose flattened and began to gape, two pits of black opening on my face.
Suddenly Sophia's eyes left mine, startled by something behind me.
"You tried to murder me today. You really ought to have tried harder." Behind me the street stretched out, past where the wall was supposed to be, outside the building. At the end of the street stood a seven foot metal locker, ornately detailed in cast-iron, blood dripping from behind the door. Flies buzzed in the sickly light illuminating it.
"Allow me to return the favor you fucking psycho."
I felt better, happier, more free than I could ever remember before.
Of course, that was before Miss Militia shot me in the face with containment foam.
- - -
Well, shit.
And it had all been going so well up to that point.
I let go of the pull I had been maintaining, and as my senses snapped back to normal, I could feel a tug in the other direction. I let it drag me with it. Had to be better than sitting around in this sticky horse-shit until they got around to letting me out. And who knows how long that could have been. With the threats I'd been tossing around, probably not any time soon.
I stumbled free and looked around.
I was standing in the street at night time. I could see everything clearly, despite the only sources of light being the street lamps I'd seen before, and the occasional flicker of a candle behind some of the windows facing the street.
I whirled around, and there, about three blocks away from me, was the locker.
The buildings were strange, unlike anything I had seen before. In real life, anyway. They twisted around each other like an Escher, impossible geometries everywhere. Stilts too thin to bear the weight held teetering monstrosities of mansions dozens of feet above street level. The colors were muted, faded, worn, but they came in every shade imaginable.
Escher? No, this was more like something out of Dr. Seuss.
I walked to the end of the street opposite the locker. Two blocks later, it dead-ended in a seedy alley.
This was my domain. My power gave me a tiny little universe of my very own.
Best. Power. Ever.
I hadn't even noticed until now, but my cigar didn't taste bad any longer. The flavor hadn't changed, it still burned the back of my throat and irritated my sinuses slightly. Every physical sensation that little fucker caused was the same as it had been before.
But somehow the quality of the sensation was different. It felt right. Proper.
It felt like freedom.
I smiled, and got back to work.
- - -
Mini Interlude – Sophia
"What. The. Fuck."
Carlos, Missy, and Miss Militia were staring at me. Dennis was making a sour face and trying to wipe something off of his tongue.
Miss Militia looked at me very hard, her containment foam sprayer shifting into a powerful military taser.
"Sophia, we should talk about your day."
- - -
Author's Note
This is my first fic. I have a pretty good idea of where this is headed, but I would appreciate any constructive criticism, blah blah etcetera.
But really, any considerate feedback will be gladly taken on board. Any assholes will be fed to the denizens of the street.
