Friday night at Club Rouge radiated lust, want, and dollar bills. The Club Rouge strippers lined up on stage sporting their stilettos, bathing suit-like attire, and lustful ambitions. Men were the only audience in the crowd, hollering as the woman would work their way up the poles and erotically swing down.
I stared at the scene, sick to my stomach as my eyes were unfortunate enough to lie smack at a g-stringed behind. I really will never get how men find strippers so erotic, if everyone knows some of them also sell themselves after their shows. I looked over at Shadow, surprised to see him deep in a crossword. The only movements he made were pushing up his glasses and glancing up for any customers, who strangely didn't come over much tonight.
I decided to be nice to Shadow after he returned from the hospital Wednesday, and even past my panty incident. So what better way than to strike up a conversation with the moody hedgehog?
"So enjoying your night?" I spoke while pulling up next to him with my stool. A few seconds past before Shadow nonchalantly replied.
"That woman in the green has herpes all along her ass cheeks." Shadow said earning a stifling barf sound from me.
"W-what the hell Shadow? I did not need that visual!"
"And I see you do not get humor." Shadow just flipped to the back of his crossword.
Wait that was a . . . Joke? If that's Shadow's attempt at a joke then clearly we both have different notions of humor. I placed my head on my fist giving up entirely on the conversation with the dark hedgehog. I felt my eyelids slowly close due to the relaxing electropop music sounding through the club, until someone came and caressed my cheek. I opened my eyes to stare into green irises.
"Sonic? What are you doing here?" I said a bit surprised that Sonic was here on a weeknight.
"Well I noticed a hell of a lot of strippers' tonight, and thought that you'd be off. But I'm surprised your still working, doesn't your boss know that no man drinks when his getting a boner?" Sonic said smiling a bit.
"Well, I guess not. But my shift still doesn't end till three tonight." I took out my phone to see it blare 11:47 PM. Dammit.
"I don't mind, guess I can chill with you till your shift ends." Sonic's eyes diverted to the black hedgehog sitting next to me, who now had glaring red eyes staring at Sonic. I silently sighed to myself then introduced them.
As I looked at them, something just clicked. The two of them awfully look a like . . .
"Well, well. If it isn't my angsty older cousin, thought you'd be working as a G.U.N. executioner, instead of a bartender." Sonic's voice changed from carefree to a mocking, and daring tone.
"This is just a part-time job. What the hell are you doing here?" Shadow took off his glasses to give Sonic the full-force of his red hot glare, but still kept his nonchalant composure.
"You two know each other?" I said at a bit of a loss of any other words between the two hedgehogs.
"Yeah, Shadow use to come by our place pretty often, until he joined the military, got a job as a G.U.N. agent, and moved to Station Square." I looked at the two, completely astonished that I didn't even know Shadow had been anywhere near my previous home, much less, a relative of Sonic's.
Shadow had gotten up from his spot, took his jacket from the top of the bar stand and stalked off to the kitchen, possibly going to get Mami and leave. I frowned a bit and then my face changed to annoyance. Wait, how does he get to leave when I'm stuck staring at the asses of a bunch of strippers'? When Shadow didn't come back for fifteen more minutes I presumed he used the back exit and went home. It was quiet, not including the 'entertainment' and crowd in front of us until Sonic sighed.
"He's always been like that whenever he sees any of his family members." Sonic said.
"Why is that?" I sat back on my stool and leaned in a bit to get better hearing of Sonic's story.
"Well, when Shadow was about thirteen-years-old. He used to live in a small city called Ark. The place wasn't as busy as Station Square, but it wasn't as boring as Knothole. Shadow had lived with his father Gerald, his mother Joyce, and his older sister, Maria. Shadow and Maria were really close and spent most of their time together. But all that changed one night when Shadow came home late one night, after a student council meeting. He came home to see bullet holes all over the place. The first one he saw was his mother, she was shot several times in the head and her arm was clean off. Then he seen his father, he was at the end of the stairs. His neck was broken and his face shot in. Shadow then ran upstairs to his sister's room, where he seen some man clad in black with a magnum pointed at his sister's head. Not even a minute later, the man shot Maria in the head and her brains splattered all over the side of the room. But the next thing Shadow knew he was standing over that man's mangled and ripped body, and Shadow was covered in blood." Sonic's face and voice fell as he told the story. My mouth could barely hold in the vile as my mine reeled to visualize the graphic scenes of Shadow's family's murder and then him killing the man.
"Who was the man who killed his family?" I gasped, trying to hold back tears.
"A violent drug lord named Black Doom. It turned out Gerald was doing part-time in a drug cartel, when his boss found out that he was taking some of the money for his daughter, Maria. She had a disease known as NIDS, and his regular job couldn't afford all of the hospital bills. The police said that it was lucky that Black Doom wasn't one of the big drug lords, or else Shadow would've been sent to witness protection."
"So how did Shadow survive after that?" I asked a bit skeptically to hearing any more gory details.
"Well to keep him out of the orphanage, the family tossed him around until he ended up staying with Auntie Debby and then he left for the military."
Silence followed Sonic's voice as my mind tried to wrap around all of the information. I got up from my stool and turned from Sonic.
"I don't feel very good Sonic; I'm going to turn in for the night. I'll talk to you later, okay." I ran upstairs before Sonic could protest and didn't even bother take off my clothes before my head hit the sheets. My mind was flashing through all of the events that took place my time here in the city and Shadow's story. Before I knew I was fast asleep and in the peaceful chambers of dreamland.
Alright, I'm happy that I'm starting to get back into updating more often. I negelected finishing up my on-line class too . . . So something that came up when I was writing this chapter, the violence described here was a bit M-rated. So as my lovely little viewers and reviewers, do you think I should change the rating from T to M or just keep it the way it is? Just a small question.
So please R&R, its like the written form of ecstasy.