Bad Day
Tick-tock goes the clock,
Tick-tock birdie.
Tick-tock goes the clock,
Tick-to....
The rhythmic, child-like poem that had begun to play itself on repeat in Carly's head was rudely interrupted by a steel-toed boot jamming itself in her belly. Well, if you wanted to get really specific, it struck upwards on her right side, actually catching in her protruding ribcage as she fell, allowing gravity take hold of her dense form and force her into a crash-meeting with Mister Floor, the local face catcher. Though her innards were still wriggling freshly from the impact, she didn't seem to react, at least not on the outside. Her icy blue eyes were still wide open, holding that dead, crystalized zombie look that made her so distinctive. Most women who had eyes as beautiful as hers batted them in a number of flirty, coquettish ways. Carly kept hers wide, staring, open and vacant and full of all the memories she shattered and pieced back together, missing those little sand-grain bits that slipped between her trembling fingers. Even when she was face-down against the rickety floorboards of the unstable warehouse, her eyes were wide, as if she were unafraid of collecting obscene amounts of dust and grime.
A sinister creaking signified the approach of that man, the one who employed Steel Boot. His rotund stomach jiggled slightly as he laughed, rolling with his joy and expressing a satisfaction that his stretched face could never convey. A rumbling tummy was the ultimate expression of happiness, whether you wished to admit it or not. Even in this dingy, cramped warehouse squished between the tires and the crates of long-empty liquor bottles, lit by a few meek lightbulbs that would crackle and fizz on occasion, beating up on a twisted once-human, this man could achieve the ultimate of ecstasies. This was the mark of a truly content man.
Though the toes of his boots didn't 'clink' with dangerous steel plates hidden inside, they creaked with the burden of his condensed weight, all sorts of thug crushed into five and a half feet of man. The space pooched out slightly, one could suppose, though nobody could argue that muscle lied beneath those blubber layers. That's why he wasn't necessarily a 'loan shark,' but rather, 'The Loan Orca.' He got capital letters and everything, that's just how special this man was. So special, in fact, that he could more or less use up any resource he wanted, human or otherwise. So special that he lorded his superiority over the tiny vampire, completely renouncing any and all credability she had held before the day she had officially pissed him off.
"Carly..." He murmured, tracing a small oval around her doubled-over shape. His flat-faced thugs stood broad and burly at the two doors that connected this smaller room with hte rest of the vacant warehouse. While they probably could have held this meeting out in the open, it seemed to add to the putrid malice of their mission that it was held in such a tiny space. Such a tiny space was more claustrophobic, it was more dangerous. There was always that hint that your body whispered in your ear that the walls were going to cave in on you, collapse, and then jeer with ghost-masks as you screamed and pressed against them, trying to free your frail body from their eternal pressure, their ongoing presence.
Snapping the hitman from her stupor, the short man knelt down beside her head, the right knee of his pinstripe suit grinding into the grimy floor as he reached a plump hand beneath her chin, drawing surprisingly wiry fingers into to clamp around her jaw. "Carly..." His voice was thick of musty anger, overcooked hatred that was left on the stove for too long. Already the signs of decay were showing in his words, the way he curled his 'r's around his tongue and spat them towards her cheek, as if she could catch and reform them. Make them better. Inhaling slowly, as if reveling in the noxious stench of the cramped, wooden room with the two musky bodyguards and the scrawny, rat-faced vampire, he allowed a satisfied smile to spread across his thick lips as he let out a short scoff, glancing to the meaner of the two guards before turning his gaze back to the disjointed redhead lying at his feet. "Are you awake, little weasel?" He asked with feigned concern, the idea of his own malice tickling him pink and setting little wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. "I know you are..." He crooned, his voice mingling with the moldy taste of the air and producing a rather grating picture. All the senses mixed, splatterpainting her world. "Let me know, mmmmm?" As he spoke, one hand gripping her jaw, he roughly caressed her short, dark red hair, teasing up little cowlicks and imprinting valleys, all the while keeping his gaze on her open, vacant eyes.
After a few moments during which she did indeed appear dead, a small wheeze came to her cracked, thin lips, a ripple running up and down her scrawny throat that bobbed against his sausage fingers, whining that they get out of the way. A small spark of life came to her eyes, a tiny signal that there was still something in there, battered as it was. Her pink tongue slithered out between her lips to lick at them, as if slicking her mouth would in any way help her situation. The gesture seemed to please him, widening his already jack-o-lantern grin. He stayed silent, though, waiting for her words. They were so obviously coming, he could feel them. Hanging in the air around them like little misplaced jewels, they waited for the right time, waited for her mind to gather them up in her basket and string them together. "Are you trying to crush my head?" She coughed up, trying to shake her head slightly though his grasp prevented her from even starting to.
Tenting his brows, he let out a low chuckle, removing his right hand from the crown of her head and instead bringing her chin up higher, tugging on her neck and shoulders as he pulled her upper body towards him, away from the floor she collapsed against. "I wouldn't dream of it..." He murmured, flexing the fingers of his right hand at his side while he began to massage her jaw with his left, harshly wedging his thumb against her gumline from the outside, as if he were preparing to extract a tooth. "You're no good to me headless, cockroach." Though he was most savagely insulting her, he kept his tone soothing and concerned, as if he were a father talking to his emotionally distraught little girl. "I can't afford the time to squirt water down your throat to keep you alive. You have to be able to do that on your own..." Never mind that decapitating a vampire was instant death, like with a human. To him, she wasn't even close to humanoid. She was, indeed, an overgrown cockroach with hair. How pleasant.
In her normal state of mind, she would have yanked back from his crazy man and showed him what mad really meant. Of course, this would be all before his two guards had been set loose on her, bound at the wrists and ankles, with cudgels in their hands and malice behind their meaty knuckles. This would be before the shiny bruise that had extended over her trademark half-moon scar that lingered on her cheek, a reminder of a past she couldn't piece together. This would be before the internal aches, the feeling of her crusty lungs being forcably deflated time and time again, kicked and punched and beaten until her stiff muscles lie exhausted and her rickety bones heaved in the hopes that they would just tire and stop. Of course, when you were big and dumb and had a free shot at a tiny wise-a** like Carly, why would you ever tire and stop? The ability to pound an ego into a malleable doubt, then twist that further into self-loathing...that was a power beyond all. The power that Henderson Ames and his thugs exercised over the bent Carly. The power above.
"No smart comeback?" He asked curiously, head falling to the side as if lolling against his shoulder. "What a shame...that's what I liked about you, weasel. Always with the comebacks." Continuing to rank on her jaw, he finally sighed, his fingers coming to a standstill and just squeezing, the pressure intending to wake her. "Look alive, Carly." He commanded. They needed to get this over with. Fun as it was, he had to get this over with soon before sending her off on another little mission of sorts. But first, he had to brow-beat her some more. "You need to tell me why you are here."
Coughing weakly, she stared up at him, that familiar steel coming back behind her eyes as she set her jaw in his hand, feeling her neck and shoulders tense subconsciously. "Because you're a sadistic b*****d that doesn't know what the hell he wants." She was about to go on, that short breath told him that. That's why he slapped her.
His thick knuckles rammed into her previously clean cheek, leaving a small series of budding welts in their wake. Growling, he shook her head slightly, as if to re-scramble her brains and try again for another answer. "Wrong answer. Try again." So this was like a quiz show. Smirking, she prepared to speak when her face was met with yet another slap. "Real answer." He muttered, using repetition on her as he would with a poorly trained dog.
Rather than endure this longer than she had to, she sighed, glaring slightly. "I killed Jed." She growled, snorting out all the tire and empty booze bottle smell. As if one short breath would clear her of this, take her name and make it clean, good again. Of course, this wasn't all about name, but if Ames threw a fit, she wouldn't be able to find work. Work was important, especially when you were an alcoholic chain-smoker. And yet she still managed to press weights like no tomorrow...how peculiar.
"Exactly, you little toadshit." He snarled, letting go of her face and throwing her back against the floor, standing up abruptly and stomping his foot, as if prompting her to stand. "I told you to cause him pain! Hurt him! Not cause the b*****d to go belly-up, you stupid c***!" His voice dripped of disgust, bile and hatred, all oozing together in his mouth and hanging in slippery ropes from his bulldog jowls.
Standing up unsteadily, she wiped her mouth with the back of her shaky hand, spitting a short stream of air down towards her shoulder before looking up at him, squaring her scrawny shoulders. She barely made it to five feet, and with an emaciated, flat-chested, no-waisted build, she looked like a man in her slashed wifebeater and cargo pants. All her clothes were mucked with blood, either hers or victims's, nobody could be sure. But it made her look all the more defeated as she stood there on her tipsy feet, trying to get her balance as she looked him in the eye. "I've heard death is pretty painful."
Eyes widening, Ames lashed out once again, smacking her in the face and sending her reeling to the side, knees folding and chest brushing against her rocky thighs. Wake up, Carly, keep it straight. Watch him. Stay focused. "You f****** b***h!" He roared, stepping forward and slapping her again upside the head, causing her skull to bob in a most unnatural way. "One simple order. One simple f****** order, that's all you had to obey! But no, you killed the G******** man, and leave me fifty thousand short!"
Coughing, she felt a bit of metal stinging her gums. Hmmm. Vampires bleeding was always such a funny concept to her. So funny, in fact, that she almost started laughing right there. Key word 'almost.' That would send Ames into a trailer-trash frenzy worse than this, and leave her toothless and possibly knocked up, or so they say in Alabama. With a glare, she rubbed the side of her head, looking up to him and shrugging. "Blackmail his mom, I'm sure there's something she'd trade fifty thou to protect."
Obviously, he didn't want to hear that. "I wouldn't do that to the man's ma..." He murmured, as if she were the scum of the earth for proposing that. How was she supposed to know that blackmailing little old ladies was wrong? She only killed people for a living, how much more f***** up could you get? Old ladies were bowling pins for her. "Instead, I'm takin' it out of your hide." His voice got more rollicking, as if he were giving in to some intoxication that was creeping up along his spine all this time. As if cornering her like this were bringing out the best in his worst behavior. "For one year, you are working exclusively for me. You do everything I say, no exceptions. I say 'kill,' you say 'who?' I say 'maim,' you say 'there's still a pulse!' I say 'wipe my a**,'"
He was cut off by her unstable drawl, lilting with a hidden laughter that meant only she could find this situation funny. "I hire a zookeeper, since I think you need a license for those kinds of things. At least, with endangered whales and all." Another slap. More welts. Little molehills rising on her skin like the acne she either missed or forgot as a teenager. "Damn...you slap like a b***h..." She chuckled, the rumbling in her throat a strange comfort as she rubbed the rising welts with the back of her own hand, feeling the thick scars of the past colliding with the new wounds of the future, mingling in a clash of textures and colors, gray and ashen versus red and swollen. Memories and the world to come. Pre-life and post-life. Beyond. It was all the same to her. All one big whitewashed picture with cracks in the paint revealing the puzzle pieces bit by bit, chip by chip.
Lights out.
Tick-tock goes the clock,
Tick-tock birdie.
Tick-tock goes the clock,
Tick-to....
The rhythmic, child-like poem that had begun to play itself on repeat in Carly's head was rudely interrupted by a steel-toed boot jamming itself in her belly. Well, if you wanted to get really specific, it struck upwards on her right side, actually catching in her protruding ribcage as she fell, allowing gravity take hold of her dense form and force her into a crash-meeting with Mister Floor, the local face catcher. Though her innards were still wriggling freshly from the impact, she didn't seem to react, at least not on the outside. Her icy blue eyes were still wide open, holding that dead, crystalized zombie look that made her so distinctive. Most women who had eyes as beautiful as hers batted them in a number of flirty, coquettish ways. Carly kept hers wide, staring, open and vacant and full of all the memories she shattered and pieced back together, missing those little sand-grain bits that slipped between her trembling fingers. Even when she was face-down against the rickety floorboards of the unstable warehouse, her eyes were wide, as if she were unafraid of collecting obscene amounts of dust and grime.
A sinister creaking signified the approach of that man, the one who employed Steel Boot. His rotund stomach jiggled slightly as he laughed, rolling with his joy and expressing a satisfaction that his stretched face could never convey. A rumbling tummy was the ultimate expression of happiness, whether you wished to admit it or not. Even in this dingy, cramped warehouse squished between the tires and the crates of long-empty liquor bottles, lit by a few meek lightbulbs that would crackle and fizz on occasion, beating up on a twisted once-human, this man could achieve the ultimate of ecstasies. This was the mark of a truly content man.
Though the toes of his boots didn't 'clink' with dangerous steel plates hidden inside, they creaked with the burden of his condensed weight, all sorts of thug crushed into five and a half feet of man. The space pooched out slightly, one could suppose, though nobody could argue that muscle lied beneath those blubber layers. That's why he wasn't necessarily a 'loan shark,' but rather, 'The Loan Orca.' He got capital letters and everything, that's just how special this man was. So special, in fact, that he could more or less use up any resource he wanted, human or otherwise. So special that he lorded his superiority over the tiny vampire, completely renouncing any and all credability she had held before the day she had officially pissed him off.
"Carly..." He murmured, tracing a small oval around her doubled-over shape. His flat-faced thugs stood broad and burly at the two doors that connected this smaller room with hte rest of the vacant warehouse. While they probably could have held this meeting out in the open, it seemed to add to the putrid malice of their mission that it was held in such a tiny space. Such a tiny space was more claustrophobic, it was more dangerous. There was always that hint that your body whispered in your ear that the walls were going to cave in on you, collapse, and then jeer with ghost-masks as you screamed and pressed against them, trying to free your frail body from their eternal pressure, their ongoing presence.
Snapping the hitman from her stupor, the short man knelt down beside her head, the right knee of his pinstripe suit grinding into the grimy floor as he reached a plump hand beneath her chin, drawing surprisingly wiry fingers into to clamp around her jaw. "Carly..." His voice was thick of musty anger, overcooked hatred that was left on the stove for too long. Already the signs of decay were showing in his words, the way he curled his 'r's around his tongue and spat them towards her cheek, as if she could catch and reform them. Make them better. Inhaling slowly, as if reveling in the noxious stench of the cramped, wooden room with the two musky bodyguards and the scrawny, rat-faced vampire, he allowed a satisfied smile to spread across his thick lips as he let out a short scoff, glancing to the meaner of the two guards before turning his gaze back to the disjointed redhead lying at his feet. "Are you awake, little weasel?" He asked with feigned concern, the idea of his own malice tickling him pink and setting little wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. "I know you are..." He crooned, his voice mingling with the moldy taste of the air and producing a rather grating picture. All the senses mixed, splatterpainting her world. "Let me know, mmmmm?" As he spoke, one hand gripping her jaw, he roughly caressed her short, dark red hair, teasing up little cowlicks and imprinting valleys, all the while keeping his gaze on her open, vacant eyes.
After a few moments during which she did indeed appear dead, a small wheeze came to her cracked, thin lips, a ripple running up and down her scrawny throat that bobbed against his sausage fingers, whining that they get out of the way. A small spark of life came to her eyes, a tiny signal that there was still something in there, battered as it was. Her pink tongue slithered out between her lips to lick at them, as if slicking her mouth would in any way help her situation. The gesture seemed to please him, widening his already jack-o-lantern grin. He stayed silent, though, waiting for her words. They were so obviously coming, he could feel them. Hanging in the air around them like little misplaced jewels, they waited for the right time, waited for her mind to gather them up in her basket and string them together. "Are you trying to crush my head?" She coughed up, trying to shake her head slightly though his grasp prevented her from even starting to.
Tenting his brows, he let out a low chuckle, removing his right hand from the crown of her head and instead bringing her chin up higher, tugging on her neck and shoulders as he pulled her upper body towards him, away from the floor she collapsed against. "I wouldn't dream of it..." He murmured, flexing the fingers of his right hand at his side while he began to massage her jaw with his left, harshly wedging his thumb against her gumline from the outside, as if he were preparing to extract a tooth. "You're no good to me headless, cockroach." Though he was most savagely insulting her, he kept his tone soothing and concerned, as if he were a father talking to his emotionally distraught little girl. "I can't afford the time to squirt water down your throat to keep you alive. You have to be able to do that on your own..." Never mind that decapitating a vampire was instant death, like with a human. To him, she wasn't even close to humanoid. She was, indeed, an overgrown cockroach with hair. How pleasant.
In her normal state of mind, she would have yanked back from his crazy man and showed him what mad really meant. Of course, this would be all before his two guards had been set loose on her, bound at the wrists and ankles, with cudgels in their hands and malice behind their meaty knuckles. This would be before the shiny bruise that had extended over her trademark half-moon scar that lingered on her cheek, a reminder of a past she couldn't piece together. This would be before the internal aches, the feeling of her crusty lungs being forcably deflated time and time again, kicked and punched and beaten until her stiff muscles lie exhausted and her rickety bones heaved in the hopes that they would just tire and stop. Of course, when you were big and dumb and had a free shot at a tiny wise-a** like Carly, why would you ever tire and stop? The ability to pound an ego into a malleable doubt, then twist that further into self-loathing...that was a power beyond all. The power that Henderson Ames and his thugs exercised over the bent Carly. The power above.
"No smart comeback?" He asked curiously, head falling to the side as if lolling against his shoulder. "What a shame...that's what I liked about you, weasel. Always with the comebacks." Continuing to rank on her jaw, he finally sighed, his fingers coming to a standstill and just squeezing, the pressure intending to wake her. "Look alive, Carly." He commanded. They needed to get this over with. Fun as it was, he had to get this over with soon before sending her off on another little mission of sorts. But first, he had to brow-beat her some more. "You need to tell me why you are here."
Coughing weakly, she stared up at him, that familiar steel coming back behind her eyes as she set her jaw in his hand, feeling her neck and shoulders tense subconsciously. "Because you're a sadistic b*****d that doesn't know what the hell he wants." She was about to go on, that short breath told him that. That's why he slapped her.
His thick knuckles rammed into her previously clean cheek, leaving a small series of budding welts in their wake. Growling, he shook her head slightly, as if to re-scramble her brains and try again for another answer. "Wrong answer. Try again." So this was like a quiz show. Smirking, she prepared to speak when her face was met with yet another slap. "Real answer." He muttered, using repetition on her as he would with a poorly trained dog.
Rather than endure this longer than she had to, she sighed, glaring slightly. "I killed Jed." She growled, snorting out all the tire and empty booze bottle smell. As if one short breath would clear her of this, take her name and make it clean, good again. Of course, this wasn't all about name, but if Ames threw a fit, she wouldn't be able to find work. Work was important, especially when you were an alcoholic chain-smoker. And yet she still managed to press weights like no tomorrow...how peculiar.
"Exactly, you little toadshit." He snarled, letting go of her face and throwing her back against the floor, standing up abruptly and stomping his foot, as if prompting her to stand. "I told you to cause him pain! Hurt him! Not cause the b*****d to go belly-up, you stupid c***!" His voice dripped of disgust, bile and hatred, all oozing together in his mouth and hanging in slippery ropes from his bulldog jowls.
Standing up unsteadily, she wiped her mouth with the back of her shaky hand, spitting a short stream of air down towards her shoulder before looking up at him, squaring her scrawny shoulders. She barely made it to five feet, and with an emaciated, flat-chested, no-waisted build, she looked like a man in her slashed wifebeater and cargo pants. All her clothes were mucked with blood, either hers or victims's, nobody could be sure. But it made her look all the more defeated as she stood there on her tipsy feet, trying to get her balance as she looked him in the eye. "I've heard death is pretty painful."
Eyes widening, Ames lashed out once again, smacking her in the face and sending her reeling to the side, knees folding and chest brushing against her rocky thighs. Wake up, Carly, keep it straight. Watch him. Stay focused. "You f****** b***h!" He roared, stepping forward and slapping her again upside the head, causing her skull to bob in a most unnatural way. "One simple order. One simple f****** order, that's all you had to obey! But no, you killed the G******** man, and leave me fifty thousand short!"
Coughing, she felt a bit of metal stinging her gums. Hmmm. Vampires bleeding was always such a funny concept to her. So funny, in fact, that she almost started laughing right there. Key word 'almost.' That would send Ames into a trailer-trash frenzy worse than this, and leave her toothless and possibly knocked up, or so they say in Alabama. With a glare, she rubbed the side of her head, looking up to him and shrugging. "Blackmail his mom, I'm sure there's something she'd trade fifty thou to protect."
Obviously, he didn't want to hear that. "I wouldn't do that to the man's ma..." He murmured, as if she were the scum of the earth for proposing that. How was she supposed to know that blackmailing little old ladies was wrong? She only killed people for a living, how much more f***** up could you get? Old ladies were bowling pins for her. "Instead, I'm takin' it out of your hide." His voice got more rollicking, as if he were giving in to some intoxication that was creeping up along his spine all this time. As if cornering her like this were bringing out the best in his worst behavior. "For one year, you are working exclusively for me. You do everything I say, no exceptions. I say 'kill,' you say 'who?' I say 'maim,' you say 'there's still a pulse!' I say 'wipe my a**,'"
He was cut off by her unstable drawl, lilting with a hidden laughter that meant only she could find this situation funny. "I hire a zookeeper, since I think you need a license for those kinds of things. At least, with endangered whales and all." Another slap. More welts. Little molehills rising on her skin like the acne she either missed or forgot as a teenager. "Damn...you slap like a b***h..." She chuckled, the rumbling in her throat a strange comfort as she rubbed the rising welts with the back of her own hand, feeling the thick scars of the past colliding with the new wounds of the future, mingling in a clash of textures and colors, gray and ashen versus red and swollen. Memories and the world to come. Pre-life and post-life. Beyond. It was all the same to her. All one big whitewashed picture with cracks in the paint revealing the puzzle pieces bit by bit, chip by chip.
Lights out.
