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irenemvallone · 6 years

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Black Jacket

A very goofy post-apocalyptic vignette for @doktorpeace. This was basically an exercise in stream-of-consciousness fiction, and I think it turned out well with that in mind.

If you enjoy this story and want to see more like it, consider donating to my Ko-Fi. I’m also planning on opening up commissions soon, so keep an eye open for that!

Sinbad’s is quiet when I walk in. The dance floor, usually packed like a can of road-rash on a Friday night like this, is empty. The holo-juke is a sad gray tombstone in the corner, its usual rotating cast of hologram performers sleeping inside. I can hear their neural nets circling around inside the pattern buffer like teeth rolling around in a sink—clink, clink.

There are two Dollies at the bar, one standing, one sitting. The sitting one holds a gun in his hand while the standing one watches the door. He taps his friend on the shoulder when he sees me come in. They both turn to me, identical twins in black suits and fedoras—ancient stereotypes of G-men, built by an architect fed on secondhand pop-culture and sugary cartoons. Their cycloptic red camera-eyes rotate and whir in their silver-plated faces, staring me down. Maybe a little kid would be spooked.

The bar stands between them and Sinbad himself, a big man—even bigger than me—with a penchant for e-cigs and a tragic allergy to sleeved shirts. He leans against the counter and twiddles his thumbs nervously, eyes darting back and forth between me and the gun, clearly wishing he could be somewhere else.

“Evening,” I say to him, lowering my sunglasses as I approach the bar.

“Don’t ‘good evening’ me, Roja,” he says. He’s got a soft voice for such a big man.

“Didn’t say it was good.” I tuck my sunglasses into my jacket pocket, looking the Dollies in the eye. The spikes on my shoulders bristle like cat hairs.

“I told you to leave me out of this shit,” Sinbad says, ignoring my correction. “Your business is bad for my business. In case you hadn’t noticed, the place is dead as my bastard first husband. Not even the most strapped-for-cash dance-floor Sally wants a Silver Dollar in their pocket.”

“You know,” I say, flipping him a folded-up wad of bills, “I could really go for some cheese fries. How about you fellas, you want anything? I’ve got the cash.”

They don’t answer, but they do let Sinbad go. He grabs the cash and hustles off into the kitchen. That man’s got reason to fear the Dollies—hell, maybe I do too—but fear is a useful thing. It’s the most efficient fuel on this whole bombed-out turd of a planet—perhaps second only to cheese fries. Hell’s bells, I want those cheese fries.

“Physical currency is contraband, Ms. Valdez,” says one of the Dollies.

“Contraband these nuts.”

“We’ll see who’s making jokes when the Banker’s got your guts for garters,” says the other, the sitting one. He’s got the gun, and he definitely talks like it. I pretend to mull this concept over for a moment while inspecting my fingernails. The paint on my left pinky is chipped. I make a mental note to pick up some nail polish on the way home. Something red, maybe. I’m feeling red.

“That would be a considerable waste of my market value,” I eventually respond. “And I didn’t even think the Banker had legs.”

The sitting Dolly doesn’t answer for a little too long. “I told you not to make jokes, Daryl,” says his friend.

“This is no joke,” Daryl says. “Your payment plan has expired, and you’ve defaulted on your loans. It’s time for repossession.”

“You want it?” I ask. “Come take it. It clashes with my eyes anyway.”

“You think we’re stupid?” Daryl asks.

“I think you’re built to absolute minimum standards to save time and money. I think those brains in your shiny little heads were culled from the lowest till-jockeys the Banker could scrape out of his vault. In short, yes—I think you’re stupid.”

I can’t help but crack a smile. Disrespect tweaks the Dollies—tugs at some sinew strung up in their last vestiges of humanity. They think they deserve respect just because the Banker bumped up their credit scores in exchange for turning them into pickled heads. And when they don’t get it, they start boiling in their own brine.

I can almost see the steam coming out of the Dolly’s metal ears. He gets up slowly from the bar, keeping one hand on his gun. His friend looks on.

“I’ve had just about enough of this,” he says. “You messed with the wrong Silver Dollar.”

He lifts the gun and fires. The sound of the gunshot hangs in the air.

Through the window to the kitchen, I see Sinbad peek up.

My jacket is holding the bullet.

“The buck stops here,” I say.

He shoots again, but it’s no use. My jacket explodes into a roiling storm of tendrils and spikes, shredding the air in a swirl of brambles and thorns. They split and spiral, snatching bullets out of the air as they crawl slowly towards me—like the other kind of slug—chug, chug. The Dolly moves in slow motion, hands sliding back as the gun recoils, lifting into the air, dropping the gun and letting it glide down to the floor as tendrils slither towards it and wrap around the grip and trigger and barrel, stripping it down to its base metals and plastics and shredding them like cheese before slurping them up into its hungry, hungry self.

Finally, we all blink.

I’m still standing. The gun is gone. The Dolly is gone. In the place where he stood is a hairless, wrinkled head, lying on the floor in a puddle of brine, wearing only a pair of aviator shades.

The other Dolly steps over him and walks out of the bar.

“Hey,” Daryl says as his friend walks away. “Hey! You just gonna leave me here?”

“Some fairweather friend, huh, prune-boy?” I walk over and look down at him. He looks so puny on the floor. My jacket’s buttons rumble with hunger, but I tug the sides together across my chest, and its spikes jangle with acquiescence.

“That’s ours,” Daryl says, his voice quavering. “You got no right to do this.”

Is it a trick of the light, or do I see a little bit of sweat under that prune juice?

Sinbad comes out of the kitchen, a big platter of cheese fries balanced on one hand. “Is it over?” he asks. “And equally important question: Are you still hungry?”

“Of course,” I say, watching him set the fries on the counter. “But my friend’s pretty stuffed.”

The leather constricts around me, putting gentle pressure on my shoulders, tapping me for attention—“Please, miss, can I have a turn to speak?”

“Pretty stuffed,” I repeat. “If only I had someone to share this with.”

I look down at Daryl, still lying on the floor.

"Hey, no,” he says as I pick him up. “No, I—hey. Put me down.”

"You hungry, Daryl?” I ask him, setting him on top of the bar on his cauterized neck-stump.

“I don’t have a stomach.”

“Fantastic,” I say. “You’ve got no stomach to fill. You can eat as many cheese fries as you want. I envy you, really.”

“Turn yourself in to the Banker. He’ll take out your stomach.”

I grab a fry and stick it in my mouth. Not enough cheese on that one. “Credit score’s not good enough,” I say.

He regards me, then the fries, then me again. “We’ll get you eventually,” he says. “Crime doesn’t pay.”

“It pays for cheese fries.” I grab one and shove it into Daryl’s mouth. I watch him chew on it, then take one of my own. This one has the perfect amount of cheese. It melts onto my tongue—an ambrosia of success, liquid orange freedom, the sun shining in my mouth for another day. Not that the two of us would have it any other way.

Daryl swallows his fry. I don’t know where it goes.

“You know,” he says, “These are actually pretty good.”

“Yep,” I say. “Sinbad’s the best bar in town for a reason.”

“Can I have another one?”

“No.”

#fiction #post-apocalyptic #sci-fi #short fiction #Irene Vallone

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