That Jovial Drunken Medusa

Previously: We wrapped up Part Four with a sex scene that, as you might expect from this project, skipped the sex part. Then the author didn’t send out anything for a while because he was pouty. Now we’re back with the fifth and final part where every single loose end will be neatly tied up ha ha.

— 56 —

It’s the last day of October. Fort Hook doesn’t really celebrate Halloween in any serious way (we do have little kids wear masks and go door-to-door demanding candy, but that’s just the Thumbscrew Gang, and they do that year round) so the day dawns like any other: hazy, seasick, troubled by a frigid wind that blows through the gaps in its teeth.

Batya Hull is perched atop the seawall, cradling her cup of crab coffee (another surprisingly non-disgusting Sal invention) for warmth, waiting for the Dandy Gorgon’s weekly return to the harbor. She is starting to regret her new vest-only outfit.

Fifteen minutes ago, before stumbling out of Hawthorne Grain HQ, she’d stopped to check on her convalescing sister. It hadn’t gone how she’d hoped.

“Hey, stud,” Mina said, still mostly asleep, her voice a thin rasp.

“Sheesh,” Bat said, sitting at the foot of the bed. “You sure look puny.”

Mina smiled Bat’s least favorite smile, the fakest smile in her repertoire. “I’m fine. Me and my ex-knee are just fine. We heard you had a satisfying time last night.”

“What? Who told you?”

“Nobody, I literally heard it. All the caterwauling.”

Bat shot her a look. “You couldn’t hear me. Did you hear me? You didn’t hear me. I was way out in the pod.”

“Plenty of vents down here to keep everyone oxygenated.”

“You didn’t hear anything,” Bat said unconvincingly.

“Oh my special tiny prince!” Mina wheezed. “Spank me with your gentle little man hands!”

Bat snorted. “Scared me for a second there.”

“If I could’ve heard you, I would’ve done everything in my power to block out the sound.”

“You mighta learned a thing.”

“Well, I hope the festivities cleared your mind. Emboldened you for the day ahead.”

“Sure.” 

“You still have the wee envelope?”

“Somewheres,” Bat said, patting three or four of her secret pockets. “OK, better shove off. Gotta go meet up with that hearty old corsair.”

“Sam’s kindly,” Mina said. “But he is serious. Came up in a different era. The least squeamish person I’ve ever met.”

“Hope I don’t fall in love,” Bat said, then leaned forward to put her forehead against her sister’s, to whisper their ancient incantation—we do the job / and then we nap—but Mina pulled away from her, didn’t look at her.

“Good luck,” she said, which was basically the same as slitting Bat’s throat.

Bat feels sorry for herself for a while. She’s freezing and lonely and there’s a knot of dread in her gullet. Then she sees the galleon finally emerge from the fog, and it’s as if that knot has come to life. Just fireflies of lantern light at first, then the bowsprit stabbing through the mist, then the figurehead—that jovial drunken Medusa stamped into every bottle of hooch they sell—then the ship itself, seemingly endless. It docks at Locust Pier. The anchor drops, ropes are belayed, gangplanks roll out, the crew debarks.

Then she spies Capital Sam slowly ambling her way, huddled in his peacoat. She raises a hand to greet him.

“Howdy,” he says. “Nice morning for sitting outside while your blood ices up and your undercarriage retreats unto itself.”

“You want the rest of my crab coffee?” Bat says.

“Thank you, lass, but I’ve never wanted anything less.” He squints down at the Gorgon, now a humming hive of sailors and lackeys. “Any sign of our treacherous confederate?”

“I dunno know what he looks like.”

Sam takes a small spyglass from his coat and extends it with a sh’clack. “Wan, haunted, jittery as the lid on a boiling kettle.”

“They all look like that,” Bat says.

“Oh dear,” Sam says, scanning the dock. He points to a wooden pallet, heavy with cargo, being lowered via pulley onto the pier. It thuds to the ground and a half-dozen bodies flop gracelessly atop each other like sea lions. “Who do you reckon is at the top of that heap?”

“Our boy?” Bat says, taking the spyglass from him. “Which one?”

“In coveralls, barefooted. From here you may just be able to discern his attempt at a mustache. Is he dead?”

“Never seen anyone deader,” Bat says, adjusting the eyepiece. “Hang on, he’s moving.”

“Is it a post-mortem spasm?” Sam asks. “Or a perhaps the release of putrescent gas? I myself have seen both simulate the appearance of life.”

“Naw, he’s getting up,” Bat says, untelescoping the telescope and handing it back to Sam.

“A miracle. Let’s go have a word.”

They find Daniel Suwannakintho lying belly-down at the end of the pier, alternating between loudly vomiting and loudly weeping.

Capital Sam crouches down, rolls him over. “Morning, seaman.”

“Please don’t touch me, whoever you are,” Daniel says, his eyes a crimson roadmap of misery. “Please just let me lie here and expire.”

Aside from a few times in the mirror, Bat has never seen a human being look so desperately wretched. “Smells like a hangover that puked up another hangover.”

Daniel moans. “Please stop saying…phrases.”

“I do believe he’s aged one full decade since I saw him last,” Sam says.

Daniel closes one eye and tries to focus the other. “I know you,” he croaks. “Are you the pale horseman here to gallop me to the netherworld?”

“I escorted you to the next worst place, the Dandy Gorgon. Do you not recall our enjoyable boat ride? You pointed a precious little pistol at me and I kept mum about your true identity?”

This makes him open his other eye. “Dunno what you’re referring to, good sir, but it sounds fabricated.” He props himself up and tries to gauge his whereabouts. “Oh no. Am I on land?”

“Alas. We found you amongst that stack of corpses.”

“Which stack of what now?”

“I gather Captain Muto was ridding herself of underperforming workers and tossed you out with them.”

Daniel cranes his neck and takes a peek and somehow turns even whiter. “That’s…that’s the entire junior bottle washing department.” Bat can see his brain trying to put three or four puzzle pieces together but they won’t quite fit so he has to hammer them into place. “That big one there is my boss.”

“Then let me be the first to congratulate you on your promotion,” Sam says.

“I was merely passed out!” he cries. “I drank to excess as I do every night! To obliterate the memory of the day what passed! That does not merit me being added to the week’s unemployment pile!”

“An innocent misunderstanding, I’m sure.”

Daniel slaps his own face a couple times. “Is it dawn? Oh god. I need to start my shift or I’ll be genuinely dead.”

Capital Sam helps him up. “Before you go, son, I need you to provide some assistance to my colleague here.”

Bat’s presence seems to penetrate Daniel’s benumbed consciousness for the first time. He gives her a toothy smile as he straightens his coveralls, decorated with the Snakehair Beverage Co. logo and a dollop of vomit. “Good morrow, miss,” he says.

“Ahoy,” Bat says, holding out her steaming cup. “Want some java to grease the gears?”

“Cheers,” he says, taking a sip of the crab coffee and immediately spewing it onto the pier. “That’s even worse than what my mouth already tasted like.”

“My name’s Batya and I need to deliver a thing to someone on the Gorgon.”

“I ain’t stopping you.”

“If she strolls up that gangplank,” Sam says, “will she be allowed to go in unmolested?”

“Oh, she’ll be molested,” Daniel says. “Just for starters.”

“I’m just a courier,” Bat says. “Got a tiny little envelope for some cattleman playing cards.”

“Cattleman?” Daniel says, deeply confused. “Wait, he’s playing the game? With the captain?”

“I guess?”

Daniel makes a harsh grunt that Bat supposes is a laugh. “If you’re so dedicated to this venture, I recommend suiciding yourself right here and now, no point in prolonging the inevitable.”

What would Mina do here? Bat wonders. She slaps a fake smile on her face, then touches the kid’s arm in a way that approximates flirtiness. “Hey man, I really appreciate your concern. What about if maybe I go onboard with you, you put in a good word, get me past security.”

Daniel looks at her hand like it’s an overlarge centipede. “Listen, lady, I’m low man here, OK, I don’t exactly have tons of sway. I mostly just wash bottles and get flogged by my team captain. Me with some outside broad in tow won’t end well for either of us.”

“What if you got creative?” Capital Sam says, clapping a heavy hand on the kid’s shoulder. “As a personal favor to me, who could’ve sang about your false pretenses. But instead I let it slide and put you on this ship.”

Daniel glowers at him. “Not sure whether to thank you or bloody your nose, gramps.”

Sam nods. “The gift of life is a double-edged sword.”

That Halloween wind blows Daniel’s hair into his face and he doesn’t bother to move it. He gazes out at the roiling grey sea for a while, then spits, then says, “OK. I got one creative thought. But first, I’d appreciate a promise that your specter will not haunt me from the beyond after you’re killed.”

“I promise,” Bat says.

“All righty,” he says, waving them over to where dozens of crates are piled high, filled with Snakehair ales and liquors and mixers and tinctures. “My job when we’re docked, the job I should be doing right now—and I think the only reason I ain’t getting whipped for not doing it is coz my supervisor is dead—anyway my job is to haul out boxes full of booze, haul in boxes empty of booze.” He starts dragging a vacant crate over and looks instantly nauseated by the exertion.

Bat makes a horrid face. “I’m not getting in a crate with my new suit.”

“This is my creative thought and it’s all I got. You hop in, I stash you in the hold, someplace out of the way. Then you’re on your own and we’re square and quits.”

Bat looks at the kid, then up at the Gorgon towering above her, then at the crate. This is how I die, she thinks. Climbing right into my own coffin like the dipshit I am.

Capital Sam is occupying himself by lighting his calabash pipe. “Times like these are when I weigh the value of the wage against the peril to my mortal soul.”

“I need to get paid,” Bat says.

“Then it’s decided.”

Bat sighs, then lowers herself into the splintery wooden crate.

“Hm,” Daniel says. “Kind of a snug fit. Can you curl up like a little fetus baby? I’ll fetch a dolly to roll you up.”

“I’m sorry I’m so buffed,” Bat says. “Just kidding, I feel great about it.” She contorts herself into a position that, last night with Little Lucas, seemed hot and innovative but now feels like a wide-awake nightmare. The good news, though, is that Delfino’s stitches are holding fast.

She sees Daniel peep around to make sure there are no lookie-loos—like it matters, stuffing people into boxes is hardly worth a second glance around here—then fits a lid into place.

Every cell in Bat’s body immediately cries out: Nope! Pitch black, short on air, unable to move, bits of straw working its way into every cranny she’s got. Her claustrophobia pecks away at her sanity like a wake of turkey vultures.

It’s quiet for a moment, then Daniel starts nailing the lid shut.

+++

This has been Chapter 56 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.

Next up: Catapult the Swollen Bung