The desolate streets are quiet except for the howling wind. Disrupted by boots grinding loosened rocks against the pavement.
The shadow of a wanderer makes its way across the street towards the corner. She stops at a vagabond cat, asleep between two trashcans under a blinking neon sign. Not meaning to disturb it – just admiring the simplicity of it all.
After a brief moment she turns and walks to the entrance, opening the door and closing it behind her. Her footsteps intruding on the silence of the tavern. Boards creaking conspicuously under her steps.
Bartender sees her coming a mile away. Few other patrons spread out among the shadowed tables, keeping quietly to themselves.
The bartender blinks. "You lost?"
Don't think so, she says.
Hand emerges from under her tattered cloak to move her goggles from her eyes to her forehead. She sits at the stool closest to the confused badger. He blinks again.
"Sure is dangerous around these parts," he says.
Can be.
"What's a pretty little thing like you doing out here by yourself?"
She rolls her eyes. Lookin' for someone. Maybe you can help me.
"Is that so?"
Mhm, she says. Why don't you fix me up a glass of ale, bartender.
"Sure thing, ma'am," he says, fetching a glass. "You got a name?"
Yeah.
Angling the glass to minimize the foam. He sets a full glass of beer down in front of her.
"You gonna tell me what it is?"
Maybe. She closes her eyes and takes a long sip. What's yours?
"Jeffrey."
She sets the glass down on the table. Jeffrey, you got any beds available tonight?
"Sure thing. We don't get much traffic out here. Just barely enough in trade to keep ourselves afloat."
Good. I'll need a room. I'll be heading into the city in the morning.
"The city? Lady, I can help you with the room, but this is about as far into the city as I can recommend going before it gets dangerous."
Looking for someone. Kintobor. You heard of him?
Jeffrey's eyes widen. He doesn't respond.
You look like you've seen a ghost.
"Lady, you can't certainly mean-"
I do mean. I'm looking for him. Supposedly hangs out around Lower Moebius. You know how to get there?
"Ah," he stumbles with his words. "Lady, listen-"
Tails.
"Hrn?"
Name's Tails. She takes another long sip of her beer, almost draining the glass. She wipes her mouth with the wraps on the back of her wrist.
"Tails. Kintobor IS Lower Moebius."
Excuse me?
"The sewers are alive. And the deeper into the heart of them you go, the more likely you are to get swallowed up. Nobody gets far down there and comes back. I mean nobody."
I aim to try.
"I can't in good conscience send you down there to die."
So don't. You aren't sending me anywhere. Just tell me where to find it.
"It's a maze down there. You're going to need a schematic just to know where to enter the sewers and viably find an open entry to Lower Moebius."
You got one laying around?
"I don't-"
Tails sets a gold coin on the counter and slides it towards him. His eyes widen again.
"Miss."
Tails.
"Tails. Right. Sorry. Look, we get a few copper a day from the regulars here, maybe a silver every now and then. I don't have change for this."
Keep it, she says nonchalantly.
"I can't accept this," he says in disbelief.
Sure you can. You're helping me and it's all I got. You get me a schematic of the sewer system, and a room and a beer when I get back and we're square.
"When you get back."
When I get back.
He sighs, rubbing his temples.
"Look, I'll help you. But I'm telling you, it's suicide and I really don't feel good about this."
Don't feel bad about it. You didn't make my decisions for me.
"I guess I didn't. Now, look, there's something else I need to tell ye about the city before I-"
The door opens and it cuts the bartender off entirely. His expression drops.
She notices this and drops the rifle strap from her shoulder and places the weapon between her knees. Under the bar.
He quickly snatches the gold coin off the bar and pockets it. He moves over to a different spot at the bar. Three canines enter the room. All carrying weapons on the belts at their hip. Two of them fall back, surveying the area, while the other appears mighty friendly.
"Howdy!" the dog says with a smile on his face.
"How d'you do," the badger responds.
"Oh, I'd be a lot better if you'd give me my fuckin' money," the dog says, grabbing the bar and leaning against his two hands.
"Look, I have your money," he says, nervously digging in his jacket. He produces the gold coin. "How long does this cover me for?"
The dog grabs it and speculates. "Where in the fuck did you get this?"
Jeffrey freezes up. "C-customer."
"What the fuck did you give this customer that was worth one whole gold piece? Hrn?"
"She j-just gave it to me."
"She?" Tails catches the corner of his eye and he starts chuckling. He turns and strides his way down the bar. He hangs on his elbow, casually facing her. "Hey darlin'. You handing out gold coins, is ya?"
She finishes off her beer and taps on the glass. She nods to the bartender to get her another one. Not to you.
He laughs at this. "Well, ain't you sweet." He puts his hand on his pistol's grip. "I think you're more charitable than you give yourself credit for."
Tails spins around on her stool to face him. They're just about nose to nose when she stands up and he feels two barrels of a shotgun pointing downwards into his stomach. And how about I just blow your guts through your asshole instead?
His brow furrows in response.
I mean it. One move and I'll cut you in half with this thing.
As the click from the right side of her waist registers in his ear, he looks to his companions.
Tails pulls the trigger.
Big casually picks up his cigar cutter off one of the tables and holds it in the hand opposite his cigar.
He paces the room, licking the back of his hand and wiping it against the fur on his brow.
"Interesting thing, to think of just how far we've come these past two years, isn't it?" He snaps the bottom off the cigar and lets it drop to the floor before biting down on the newly cut mouthpiece with the corner of the back of his mouth. "Dead getting up and about. Population thinning. What was once a lively and thriving city reduced to a graveyard. Stragglers and looters digging up corpses and setting them on fire. Both figuratively and literally. Happy shitting, indeed. I used to have to hide from people like you. And Froggy? Forget it. Out of sight, out of mind. Betrothed to the gutter, unseen and unheard so you can go on living your happy fantasies of sunshine and rose-scented turdlets. Oh no. Not I. Not Froggy. But Froggy tells me it's better now, yes sir he does. Froggy tells me it's better now."
Muffled whimpering sings to him. Froggy whispers. He lights the cigar.
Flame flowering out from the center of the end of the cigar to its edges until it is burning bright and hot.
Smoke. Lots and lots of smoke.
"I once knew a filthy piece of shit, kinda looked like you. Froggy, too, as Froggy knows everybody I know." Froggy floats in a jar of formaldehyde on the counter behind him. He continues pacing. "I liked him. He was real filth, let me tell you. He'd peel the skin off his dad's nutsack for a copper and a shelled peanut, and let me tell you, brother. He was allergic to peanuts. Now, I notice you noticin' me talking about him in the past tense, like he was dead or somethin'. Keen eye. Sure enough, he's dead. Dead like you'll be. Not yet, but eventually. Y'see kiddo, we all die eventually. However, there is one thing the two of you will have in common. I'll have had a hand in it. As much as I loved that filth, it's not exactly the most loyal of servitude you can ask for. I fed him his own intestines and I stabbed him in the face, I did. And Froggy watched. Froggy watched because Froggy wanted to watch because Froggy told me to do it, didn't he?" He looks at the jar. "Didn't you?"
He looks back at his prisoner tied to the chair and gagged. His personal guards waiting patiently and silently behind him. "Froggy's telling me we've got special plans for you. Don't you, Froggy? Don't you tell me those things? Tell this man. Put his mind at ease." he's speaking through clenched teeth and drool is running down his face. As he approaches. "Can't you hear him? Can't you hear him putting your mind at ease?"
Wide eyed and frightened, terrified and unsure what to do. The prisoner nods, sobbing into a mouthful of rag duct taped awkwardly to the back of the rat's maw. He nods, uncertain. Eyes leaking, fur soaked.
"Mmmhm?!"
"Mhm indeed you little fucker," he says, forcing the rat's pinky out of his fist and fitting him gently for the cigar cutter. A simple snip and an eruption of noise.
Wrists digging into the wire restraining him. Breaking more skin.
Big replaces the unlit end of the cigar with the bloody end of the finger and his mouth lights up with the taste of coppers. He places the burning end of the copper where the bloody end of the finger used to be and the screams get louder. He bites down on the finger and as the screams get louder he spits it out and puffs on the cigar, assuming the wound has been cauterized.
He dances to a song that only plays in his head. Waves one of his guards over and asks him close to his ear, still dancing "where are my dogs?"
"Extorting the inn down the street sir."
"Goode!" He does a spin. "They'll be back before I'm done with you," he says, nodding and pointing at the screaming rat in the chair as he comes to a dead stop. "Long before Froggy tells me how to-"
As the buckshot tears through his midsection and drags him to the floor she drops the gun to hang on its strap and brings her other hand around to steady her drawn .357.
Shots firing before she can. Bottles shatter around the bartender as he ducks down behind the bar. She catches the dog's face in her sights and closes her left eye and pulls the trigger. A slug tears its way through the corner of her mouth. Tearing away her cheek. Revealing her teeth. Lodging itself in the back end of her jaw. The one goes down and she locks in on the other. Click. Fire. The mist of his brains clouds around him and trails his body down to the floor like a burst can of spray paint.
FUCK! more a sound than a word emits itself from her damaged, bleeding face. She holsters the handgun and her right hand follows her left palm to her face. Fuck. she says again for good measure.
Jeffrey's eyes pop open behind the bar. His hands covering the back of his neck. Face on the floor. He looks up.
Planting his fingertips carefully on the glass covered floor in front of him. He gets up.
It had all happened so fast.
"Holy shit lady, are you okay?"
Fine, she says. Still alive.
"You killed them."
I did. Do you have any tape.
"Sit down, I have sutures," he says, digging under the bar for the first aide kit.
She replaces the empty cartridges in her weapons and discards them.
He digs out the slug wedged into her cheek with a pair of needle nose pliers. After disinfecting the wound, he awkwardly digs the needle into the flesh remaining on her face. "Some of your teeth are just going to be showing now," he says.
Fine.
"You seem awful calm about losing your looks to a bullet."
Aint got much use for 'em.
"Fair enough."
There gonna be more coming?
"You'd better believe it."
I'll wait. You'll tell 'em where I'm sleeping. It's the least I can do.
"If you say so."
Wouldn't much figure you for a doctor.
"I'm not," he says, cutting the line. "My medical knowledge reaches the extent of basic field medic."
Sounds lucrative.
"I don't do what I do for money, miss. Just enough to keep things running."
Doesn't seem to stop others from trying to cut in.
"We live in a cruel world."
That we do. Do you have any fishing line?"
"I do."
Bullets?
"Not much but you're free to take a look at what I have."
Hammer and nails?
"You plan on renovating?"
Something like that.
Jeffrey sighs. "I could get killed for this."
Tails sets a small handful of gold coins on the counter between them. I know, she says. I'm sorry.
Tails helps Jeffrey dispose of the bodies in a dumpster out back. They set them on fire and make sure they're burning right before turning in. Making sure they don't come back.
After, Tails has another glass of ale before retiring to her room. She drags the bed over to the corner adjacent to the doorway and fashions her shotgun to the bedpost. Thumbing the hammers back. She routes fishing line around the trigger and hammers the other end into a taught line at the frame of the door. She removes the mattress from the bed and sets it in the opposite corner.
She checks the chamber of her repeater by half cocking the lever. Loaded.
Tails lays down next to her rifle, hand on the strap. The revolver tucked away into the belt she's still wearing.
She closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep.
She has a shovel in her hand for some reason.
People tell her what a wonderful job she's doing.
They pat her on the shoulders and they tell her it's alright. That she did good and that they're proud of them. Trembling under the weight of consolation.
Fearful of emotions she herself doesn't understand.
The tears she is so afraid of are freed from the prison of her face. They drift to the sky, she thinks to herself even though they don't.
She reaches upward to a star blinking out of existence. A star that blinked out years before she noticed and now, now she knows the star she took for granted.
And as she grips her shovel tightly in two hands gravity brings her down to her knees and she tries to catch her breath.
But there in the hole is Sonic, Sally, Dulcy, Ari. She gets back to her feet. Still crying. She feeds the earth back to itself one spoonful at a time.
I wouldn't become time, Tails, one of them says.
I wouldn't become vengeance either, says another.
We move forward. That is all.
Her head hurts, even in the dream.
The door to the inn opens and Jeffrey tenses up as Big the cat and his two scat cats follow in closely behind.
That's what he calls them. His scat cats.
He must have a terrible sense of humor.
Big snips a cigar with the cutter and leaves the butt to drop on the floor.
Jeffrey anticipates a thousand things that don't happen.
But Big lights the cigar and approaches the bar. He smiles between a giant gap between the teeth on the top of his jaw and the bottom of it.
He fills his mouth with smoke and spits it into Jeffrey's face.
Jeffrey coughs.
Big stands up straight before drumming the bar and standing up straight. "What's his name?" he asks, turning around to one of his scat cats.
"His name is Jeffrey."
"Ahhh, yes." he says turning his attention back to Jeffrey. "You must be Jeffrey."
"I am, sir."
"I did not want to meet you. Froggy didn't want to meet you." he says fingering backwards at the scat cat holding the jar at heart level. He nods towards the bar. "Say hi to Froggy, okay?"
"Okay," Jeffrey says. "Hi Froggy."
"Froggy wants to know if you've seen some hounds lately."
"Oh," Jeffrey shudders, almost relieved. "I've seen some hounds here. I paid them and they met a lady, they took her up stairs." he says nodding towards the staircase nervously. He forces a laugh. It's almost believable.
"Oh?" Big questions him gleefully. "Pray tell, into which room did'st mine men take thine lady?"
"Last room on the right."
Big scoots one of his scat cats up the staircase with his gesturing fingers.
The pointer and the middle.
The scat cat hikes the staircase and Big leans in close to the boy. Jeffrey.
"So, you run this bar by yourself, do ya?"
"I do."
"Do you know that you owe me money?"
"Yes, I gave it to them. I gave them the money."
"Yes, but do you know that you owe me money.
"S-sure."
"I'll get the money somehow."
"Yes."
"What do you think about Froggy?"
"Uh. Excuse me?"
"Froggy likes you. What do you think of Froggy?"
The conversation is disrupted by a very loud gunshot. Big turns around to check but his other scat cat is headed up the hallway. He turns his attention back to Jeffrey and draws his 1911 from the inside of his coat's breast pocket and points it at the ceiling. Hanging on his elbow.
"What kind of music do you listen to?"
Jeffrey blinks. "Excuse me?"
More gunfire.
A shot a fraction of a second after a shot.
He cries out "Skitters are you alive up there?" There's no answer.
Big fires his gun arbitrarily through his understanding of the second floor.
After awhile more guns fire. It just kind of happens and someone dies.
Tails beats a dead to redead with a dislodged lead pipe segment. Then she beats that horse to death.
There's not too much that happens between her and the sewage she has to wade through.
Flesh and veins pulsate the sewers,
It's a loud coughing reaction as the protagonist walks in.
The whole worlds coughs and she's flat on her ass, the pipes pulsating around her.
Kocc mo ureik 0eih wet.
Eih wet xujd'k mudavojkot akjocv ad jisx ud idtohjkudturco sufusak0 0ok.
A't mubo jiho A taot rik kxo tout uchout0 tat kxuk.
Udt 0ei ned'k, dek 0ok. Kxoho'j cekj ev houjedj 0ei vuac.
Ebu0. A sud hojfosk kxuk.
Udt 0ok A xulod'k vehwalod 0ei veh kxuk edo kamo 0ei juat AIDS ad sxihsx. No fhokodt kxuk teojd'k opajk.
Udt doakxoh te 0ei.
Udt doakxoh te A.
Nxoho aj wet, A ujb.
Kxo0 kocc mo xo'j u fittco udt kxuk'j ucc kxuk mukkohj. Kxo wet feec. Kxo feec ev wet. A vadt m0jocv houskadw ke ak laecodkco.
Joob kxo mummekx. Joob 0eih ehawad. Mubo Mobius whouk uwuad.