Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (14 page)

“I don’t have parents but I have money and I’ll pay for it. I haven’t eaten in two days almost I just want something to eat and drink,” I said dully. I can’t wait until I’m an adult.

The man smiled and shook his head. He dashed his cigarette and nodded behind me. I looked to see what he was nodding towards and as he spoke I spotted a wooden table with two wooden chairs in a corner.

“Sit tight and I’ll get you something from the kitchen.” The man turned around and disappeared through a doorway that led to a brightly lit place I assumed was the kitchen. I sat down and was sitting quietly when a lady came over.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked nicely.

I thought for a second and decided I was going to reinforce my status as an adult, or an almost-adult. “I’d like a bottle of whisky please.” I pulled out the dollar that the hotel lady had given to me and handed it to her.

“Is that for your mom or dad?” she chuckled. “You’re a bit young.”

I sighed and waved my hand at her. “Yeah, yeah, it’s for my dad.” I was getting tired of this.

The lady said nothing more and she left with my dollar. A few moments later she came back with a bottle of clear liquid and after a few more pleasantries she left.

I opened the bottle and smelled it. Immediately I recoiled, it smelled gross but it always smelled gross. I had smelled Gill’s whisky many times and I knew it tasted like battery acid throw up.

Though I had always been curious about it so I took a drink. Immediately I made a noise and stuck out my tongue. How can people drink this stuff? I lit a cigarette to kill the taste and tucked the bottle into a pocket I had inside of my jacket.

“You can’t sip it… you need to just take a shot and bear it.”

I looked up and saw a man standing near the jukebox, holding a cigarette in his hand.

The man had greasy dark hair that was a bit crinkly and thick eyebrows. He was willowy and was dressed in an old blazer and trousers. Fancy clothes in the old days but these ones showed their age and were ragged. His shoes were also leather loafers but they had foam on the seams like he had patched them with a sealant.

I took out the bottle again and made the liquid tip back and forth. “Maybe on the way home. I don’t want to get goofy like Gill did.”

The man drew on his cigarette, his eyes fixed on me. “On the way home? I heard you tell the bartender you don’t have parents. You live all by yourself in the greywastes?”

I nodded and took another small sip of the whisky, that helped me hide my teeth. I made a face at the taste and that made the man laugh. He seemed friendly enough, relaxed at least.

“Can I sit down with you? I’m visiting this place myself. I’m a merchant and I have a large house on a farm a few miles away.” The man smiled and it was a nice smile so I nodded and he sat down.

He looked at me before reaching up to poke my sunglasses. I recoiled away and made sure my mouth was closed. “I need those.”

“You’re inside though, who wears sunglasses inside? I bet you have nice eyes.” The man pulled back his hand though and didn’t try and take them from me again.

I decided to try out a new lie I had been working on. “My eyes are really sensitive to light I need them on all the time or it’s too bright.”

The man nodded and I guess he bought it. Then he reached into a bag he had with him and brought out a similar bottle of whisky. “Want to take a drink with me? Ever clinked a bottle with a friend and said cheers?”

I shook my head and took out my bottle. The man picked up his and nodded at me to do the same.

“You say something you’re thankful for and then you say
cheers
and clink the bottle with a friend,” the man explained. “What are you thankful for?”

I thought for a second and smiled with my mouth closed. “I have a TV in my hotel room and I’m going to watch The Lion King tonight and eat for the first time in days. I’m thankful for that.”

The man raised his bottle and clinked it with mine. “Cheers!” he said and I said it too but I mumbled it to hide my teeth. It was dark in here but I didn’t want to take chances.

“I’m thankful for finding a new friend,” he responded. We clinked bottles again and said cheers.

“What’s your name? My name’s Jasper,” Jasper said. He took a drink from his bottle and I took a drink too but I still made a face and Jasper still laughed at that face. It was a nice laugh though not a making-fun-of-me laugh.

“I’m…” I paused and decided in that moment he could know me by my friend name not my enemy name. “I’m Sami.”

“Jasper…”

I looked up and saw the bartender man walking out the door, he was holding a cloth bag full of what I think was my food. It smelled really good; I could smell human meat.

Jasper turned around and for a fleeting moment, just a tiny one, I saw his eyes darken like he was mad about seeing the bartender, but in an instant it was gone and he smiled at him. “Good evening, Gordon.”

Gordon the bartender put my bag of food on the table and I started getting out my money.

“Can I help you with something?” Gordon asked. His tone was dark and I think I might’ve done something to make him mad. I hope he wasn’t mad he had to get me my food himself, or maybe he had seen my teeth? I had been extra careful.

“Nope, was just leaving.”

“Home?”

“I was planning on it,” Jasper said crisply.

Gordon nodded and took the money I handed him. He handed me my change back and skidded Jasper’s whisky back towards him.

Then he gave me a hard look. “Off you go, boy. You have no business being in a bar unless you’re ordering food and you have your food.”

I cowered and nodded, wondering what I did to make the man angry. I wanted to say goodbye to Jasper but he was glaring at Gordon. That made me a bit more comfortable with him because it showed me he knew Gordon was being mean to me for no reason.

I left even though talking to Jasper made me forget about all the people around me. I got my food and ran all the way back to my hotel room keeping to the side of the road so I could avoid everyone and their stupid questions.

When I got home I opened up my bag of food and squealed from happiness when I saw it was full of shredded human meat and warm cracker-like bread. There was also some fried canned corn in another container and even a handful of pre-Fallocaust hard candies! I would go back and tell Gordon thank you for giving me some candy. I had eaten Nero’s chocolate bars real quick so this was the first sugary good stuff I had had in months.

But I would eat it slow since sugar made me throw up in Nero and Ellis’s car and that was the reason I was almost killed by celldwellers.

All the food helped me forget about the incident with Jasper and Gordon. I grabbed a candy piece, put the movie on, lit a cigarette, and relaxed in my bed with The Lion King playing on the TV and a pile of food in my lap.

The cigarette made me drowsy and since it was nice and warm in here with the small heater that came with the room I found myself getting too sleepy to stay awake. I snuffed out my cigarette halfway through and decided it was time to have a good rest. My stomach was all full of delicious food and one of the candies. I knew tonight was going to be out like a light.

Though in the middle of the night I was woken up by yelling. I got up and yawned and put my ear against the door. When it was too muffled I opened the door just a little and tried to listen better.

“If you don’t get the fuck out of here I will get one of the guards to escort you out, Jasper.”

Jasper? What was he doing here?

“He invited me to come and visit him.”

“Bullshit. It’s fucking 1 am… I’m giving you one more fucking warning and if I catch you trying to sneak around my hotel you’ll lose a hand.”

“He asked me to…”

“NOW!”

I jumped as the angry man yelled that. I closed the door really quiet and snuck back into bed. I wonder who Jasper knew in here and why the man was getting so angry at him. I was tempted to poke my head out and wave to Jasper but I decided the other man sounded way too angry. I didn’t want to get kicked out at 1 am if I did I’d freeze to death.

I burrowed back into my blankets and ate some shredded meat which I had resting on one of the milk crate night tables. It was quiet outside again and a few minutes later the main light turned off and I could only see a faint glow underneath my doorway.

Poor Jasper. If the person had told him to come and visit I didn’t see why it was the other guy’s business but maybe the hotel had a curfew like Sunshine House did. Well, whatever, it was over now. Jasper would just have to go and visit him in the morning I guess, if he was still in town.

I closed my eyes and grabbed Barry, I wound his butt and made him sing the Daisy song to me, though like he had been doing lately he sang his version in my head, the one where I bit them in half in the end. I liked that one better.

I fell asleep with everything quiet, Barry held to my chest.

The next morning I woke up feeling nervous about having to go outside and buy my supplies. I kind of wanted to stay in my hotel room and watch movies all day but I wasn’t here to watch movies and I needed stuff so I didn’t keep starving. There were so many people outside though and I didn’t want to be around them, it made me anxious.

But the sooner I got this over with the sooner I could go home. So I put Barry in my backpack and put on my sunglasses and ventured out into the cold day.

And it was cold too. There was a layer of frost on everything and the people outside were blowing their own smokes from their breath.

That reminded me though. I reached into my pocket and lit a cigarette for comfort. I took a moment and stood beside an old white van that was sitting outside of a mechanics shop and let the smoke hit me.

When I was feeling nice and dizzy-warm I walked quietly and unassumingly through the main part of town until I found the general store.

The man inside was busy chatting with what looked like a merchant since he was dressed for greywastes and not town. So I started looking at the rows of pre-Fallocaust, scavenged, and Dek’ko items, and started putting what I needed on the wooden counter that the store man was standing behind. I had never ever had anything from Dek’ko before so I grabbed a can of Good Boy and some antiseptic in case I ever got hurt.

They had some canned food most of it mystery and some cracker things called tact that I recognized from my pub food. They were cheap and had vitamins according to the package so I grabbed a case of that and some water purification droplets.

While I was doing this I noticed everyone had stopped talking. I looked up and around and realized the merchant and the store owner were staring at me.

When they realized I was looking back they started acting casual and going back to their conversation, something about a new supply of meth coming in.

I put my hand on my face just to make sure I was still wearing my sunglasses and picked up a bag of marshmallow candies for a treat.

“What’s wrong with your eyes, kid?”

Anxiety shot through me like a loaded gun had gone off. I looked at him and immediately felt my pulse rise. I didn’t know how he saw my eyes but they had.

“I… I got an eye infection when I was little and blood bled into them,” I stammered. I quickly reached into my pocket and grabbed my handful of money. “How – how much?”

The merchant looked grumpy but he counted up all of my items. I started putting them quickly into my backpack though I needed an extra bag for the box of tact.

“Twenty-two,” the merchant said in a voice that was as sharp as a razor. I quickly paid and turned around to walk out the door.

“And what the fuck is wrong with your teeth?” the man called. “Are you half raver or something?”

“No,” I said and quickly walked out the door. My heart was beating up against my chest like a battering ram, each hammer urging me towards the gate to the greywastes. Without going back to the hotel room I started down the road to leave Melchai. I had another day paid for in that hotel but there was no way I was going back. I had been nailed to wooden boards, hit with rocks, and chased out of places before and I knew the warning signs. I knew I had to go.

My eyes burned but I was almost nine so I yelled at my tears inside of my own mind and made them go back into my eyes. I squinted hard and kept to the shadows of the streets, my head hung low and my lips pursed tight.

Though the tears wouldn’t listen to me, they felt cold on my face as I ran towards the gate and to my humiliation Barry started taunting me.

“Demon-monkey!” Barry laughed. He was running beside me his fluffy bear ears pressed against his head like he was a mad cat. “Bad Sami, you can’t be around people. You even hate being around lots of people now, that just means you don’t belong anywhere near humans. You have no family, no friends and the only people who do like you left you behind or kicked you out!”

Barry laughed his high, cackling laugh before he tripped me and made me fall onto the ground.

I landed on my face and burst into tears. I cried harder when I realized my sunglasses had flown off of my face. They skidded along the cracked pavement and came to a stop.