The Big Palooka (and Other Stories) Read online

  The Big Palooka (and Other Stories)

  Tales Among the Mythos

  Ruthanne Reid

  4th Floor Publication

  NEW YORK, NY

  Copyright © 2015 by Ruthanne Reid

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Ruthanne Reid/4th Floor Publication

  www.ruthannereid.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  The Big Palooka/ Ruthanne Reid.—1st ed.

  Contents

  The Big Palooka

  Shadow Seed

  Wolf

  Need More? Read On!

  ● Chapter 1 ●

  The Big Palooka

  A girl’s gotta dance before she knows she’s alive.

  Don’t give me any bushwa about that, either, because I know the truth. Until she’s out there, letting her body do what it wants, glowing for the world to see, she hasn’t lived at all.

  Me, I’m no choice bit of calico, so folks don’t watch me to please their eyes. I’m no Oliver Twist, either, and I don’t dance I been trained or did ballet since I was small. I’ll tell you my secret: when I dance, I do it knowing the room belongs to me.

  It doesn’t matter if it does just yet, ya follow? What matters is it will. The whangdoodle (that’s the Jazz band to you, you boob) does its deal and the music just crawls right into my skin and makes itself at home, and dancing’s the same as breathing.

  Better than breathing. Nuts to breathing!

  When I dance, the music moves with me. We heat up the place, turn it inside out like a stained sweater, get it all going hard and strong, and in less than five, everybody’s dancing with me.

  Everybody. Even the wet blankets in the corner become hoofers. It’s like magic. Magic, birds and broads.

  But that night, the night you wanna know about, that night, there was this guy, and he wouldn’t dance at all.

  I was hitting on all eight. Even half the band was tapping their feet and wriggling in their seats, and the bartender (what, you think this wasn’t a speak-easy?) nearly spilled the hootch.

  It was good. Real good. And then I spotted him hanging by the door, not drinking, not dancing, not doing anything but just staring at me.

  He was giving me the willies. So still it was like the room moved around him, like running around a body in the street. Now, isn’t that goofy? He made me think of dead guys, and I didn’t even know why.

  Anyway, he stood there in dark blue glad rags, his hair all big and curly like he was some kinda three-letter man, but he didn’t feel like a Nelly. The way this fella looked at me, I just felt it all over, like he had invisible hands.

  I don’t need a sugar daddy, you know that. You’re the only palooka I ever hooked up with, and that didn’t go so well, so I thought, whatever this guy wants, he can just beat it because I’m no chippy. I dance more, wilder, until it feels like the music’s going to rip out of my skin and dance away with my bones.

  But he still doesn’t dance, even though some of the saps around me are gasping and dripping sweat.

  Like water around a rock. There, that’s better than a dead guy, right?

  I must’ve taken my eyes off him for a second. Must’ve, though if I was goofy, I’d swear he just vanished and appeared in front of me like a ghost.

  And finally, he was dancing.

  I don’t know what kinda dancing that was. It wasn’t like anything I ever saw before, and I know dancing. I’ve seen everybody do it from molls to bulls, and this was ...

  Look, I don’t know what it was, okay? It was like quick smoke. It was like how snakes move, but in the air. It was like the breath of a big, mean dog, but sweet like Coca-Cola. It was like Absinthe, and no, I won’t tell you where I got hold of that. But now I say it, that’s about right. Smoky and strong at the same time, he made the room spin. That’s this guy dancing.

  “Good evening,” he says to me, like we’re putting on the Ritz.

  “I’m not looking for a daddy,” I tell him, because boyfriends and I don’t get along.

  But you know all about that, don’t you, you big palooka? Yeah, you do.

  Anyway, “I am aware,” he says, like he’s been following me around.

  And I keep dancing, but I really want to be far away right then. “Then go jump in the lake.” And though it costs me, it really costs me, I turn my back to him. He is dismissed like some fancy manservant!

  Only he doesn’t go. I feel his breath on my neck, my ear, and it’s warm. And it smells strange. Nice-strange. Like cloves. “I will not stay here long,” he says.

  If I scream for help, somebody will help me. I gotta believe it, you know? “Then leave already.”

  “I will offer you what you need,” he says in my other ear, and suddenly he’s in front of me again.

  And he’s moving like water down a funnel, like the sun sliding down the sky, and I’m a feather caught in that water or I’m clouds caught in the sunset, getting dragged down with him. My mouth goes dry.

  He never blinks, you know that? Those green eyes ... he never blinks. “You need freedom,” he says.

  And I can’t breathe anymore.

  “You crave it. The need burns you, gnaws at your fingers, withers your flesh and tingles through your blood. If you thought you could find freedom by leaping from a rooftop, you would. If you thought you could find it in the heart of fire, you would set yourself ablaze. If you thought you could find it by slitting the throats of men and women for days, you would sharpen your blade right now.”

  And I’m still dancing, still moving, because the music has control like it always does, and maybe nobody notices that I’m crying, that there are tears on my face and I can’t catch a good breath because this bird ... this scary, hairy bird is right.

  I never thought it to myself because I’d do those things. I’d do anything to find a way, to follow that yellow brick road until I found my freedom.

  But there is no such thing as free. Everything’s got a cost.

  “Yes,” he says, but I know I didn’t say that out loud, and his green eyes are all I can see or read or feel, like he’s blown smoke between me and the world. He is smoke. And I ... God help me, I wanna get closer to that fire.

  “I offer you freedom,” he says. “There is a cost, but it is not one you can guess.”

  “I can guess a lot, big six,” I manage, but it sounds croaky, dry and dusty and nothing.

  “Not this.” And suddenly, he’s dancing close, so close, so close—“I can see the fire in you. I can feel your need. I would offer you this freedom—my gift—if you ask.” His lips almost touch mine. “All you need do is ask.”

  And then he’s gone.

  Gone, and I’m shaking like some boozehound trying to go straight.

  And I tell you, I tell you, when he left, all the life and warmth and power in the room went with him.

  It all felt so empty. So trapped! Like some starving rat in a sack!

  So that’s why I did it, see? That’s why I stopped dancing, and kissed a few too many people and drank a few too many snorts. That’s why I left later than I should and didn’t go home, but went up the fire escape to the roof of my mama’s old walkup. And up there, in the shivery-cold dark before dawn, I asked him.

  Don’t
cast a kitten, you sap. You weren’t there. You didn’t feel what I did. I knew. If I asked the night air, he’d hear me.

  And he did.

  So I gotta go now. You understand. I’m taking back my things from you. My pictures. My mama’s jewelry. My gun. You’re lucky you still had her necklace. I might’ve gotten worked up if you’d sold it.

  Your fists can’t stop me this time. I got my freedom. And he was right, too: I’m okay with the cost.

  Sweet dreams, creep. I’m sure someone’ll find you in the morning. It’s time I hit the road, anyhow. After all, what’s a little blood between such good friends?

  Slang:

  Buswha: nonsense

  Choice bit of calico: an attractive woman

  Oliver Twist: a good dancer

  Whangdoodle: a jazz band

  Wet Blankets: killjoys

  Hoofers: dancers

  Birds: men (could also be women, depending on context)

  Broads: women

  Hitting on all eight: doing really well

  Goofy: crazy

  Glad rags: fancy clothes

  Three-letter man/Nelly: homosexual

  Sugar daddy: older boyfriend who gives his girlfriend money in exchange for sexual favors

  Sap: a fool

  Palooka: a weak man who usually goes down in a fight

  Chippy: a sexually promiscuous woman

  Hairy: crude, clumsy (obviously, she meant this sarcastically)

  Big Six: a strong man

  Snorts: alcoholic drinks

  Walkup: apartment

  Cast a kitten: have a fit

  Creep: thief

  ● ●

  ● Chapter 2 ●

  Shadow Seed

  Here is a fun piece of trivia: those born of the Darkness: we cannot reproduce among our own.

  Oh, there are male and female Shadows, complete with complementary parts and able to cavort in any gendered configuration. No, no: the problem is a simple one of substance.

  Of all the seven Peoples of the earth, only two have trouble maintaining substance: the people of the Dream and the People of the Darkness. I, of course, am of the Darkness – but you knew that when you came here.

  We collapse upon our deaths into simple Dark essence, returning to the earth the energy we borrowed during our short lives. Until that time, we are solid enough, as you have ... personally observed.

  But where was I?

  Yes: regarding the question of reproduction, we require those who, when they die, remain – the Fey to stone, the Ever-Dying humans to mulch, the Guardians to dust, etcetera. It’s always been this way. We aren’t suffering from a curse, or the sad result of some demented and hubris-filled experiment. We are of the Darkness, and that is the way it is.

  Don’t look so nervous, lover. I would hardly consider procreating with you.

  I haven’t chosen anyone yet to bear my offspring. It’s such a process. The choosing, the capturing, the convincing, the housing ...

  After all, aren’t you grateful it isn’t you? When we’re done here, you’re allowed to leave.

  My choice must be careful. My contribution must genetically override whatever I have chosen, for only those offspring who show themselves to be purely of the Darkness are our own. We are not Kin, not some mixed breed. Anything not one of us is not of us. And I’d rather any child I sire actually be my child. Otherwise, it’s a great waste of everyone’s time.

  If you’ve ever wondered, this is also why we can never reproduce with people of the Sun. It turns out ... poorly.

  No, I haven’t chosen yet, but I’ve seen a few likely candidates. Last year, I even proposed to one.

  She didn’t take it well. Incidentally, that would be how I lost my favorite taxidermy collection.

  But never mind all that. You aren’t here for that. You’re here to enjoy the liqueur, the rare eternal night, sensuous absence of light and all its folly. You’re here to lose yourself in the pleasures which I provide and am provided. I think we’ve done that well.

  I also think your visit is coming to a close soon, don’t you?

  Here’s a funny aside: I still think about that woman who managed to burn all my pretty stuffed birds. She’s Kin, which normally I wouldn’t even look at, but with such a bloodline! She’s descended from Merlin, did I mention? Yes, the Myrddin, the one and only, who defeated both Fey courts a thousand years ago, who rebuffed prince Silverlust’s invasion and then taught him a lesson by stealing all his prize plants! That is one of my favorite stories. He is remarkable, whatever he is, and in my opinion gives a good name to the Kin people. Any child of his is clearly remarkable, as well.

  Perhaps after we’re done here, I’ll pay her a visit – without anything in tow that she or her companions might accidentally set on fire.

  Yes, your visit is done. I hope you enjoyed your time; I did, but it’s hardly worth a repeat. Fare thee well, simple lover. May your next pasture enjoy you more than I.

  ● ●

  ● CHAPTER 3 ●

  Wolf

  If asked, he’d say he was no one. A shadow cast without light, the invisible fist that clenches empty bellies.

  But if you asked again, he’d tell you the truth: he is the monster, and your flesh belongs to him.

  He has no memory of his beginning; it’s lost in a druggy red haze of blood and satiating flesh and screams, fingernails never clean and teeth always in need of flossing. Meat gets stuck in there, between them. He lives with it.

  Name? No, and why would he have one? Everyone knows who he is. He’s that place in the backs of stores where shadows breed deeper than they should, until your brain screams SOMETHING IS WATCHING even though you know behind that shadow is just children’s white tennis shoes, sizes 2-4.

  Maybe he’d laugh at this point and let you go. More likely, he wouldn’t.

  It’s better not to ask him anything at all.

  Dried hide hangs unevenly from his shoulders like caveman regalia, and he chops his matted gray hair when it grows long enough to get in his mouth. He doesn’t stink. He’s like any predator with a healthy coat of dirt in its fur: you smell nothing at all, and if you do, it’s too late.

  He has no one and nobody, though he knows he did once. He doesn’t miss them, whoever they were. Whoever they were, they’re likely too dead to miss him.

  If you see him, don’t run.

  If you see him, look at his hands.

  He has one possession that matters: an old photograph, age-yellowed and crisscrossed with zipper cracks like failing ice. They say it shows a thin woman draped in the drab and ill-fitting garb of the Great Depression. She embraces herself as if both cold and defiant; men walk past her, blurred and weary, their derbies and panamas pulled low. Her eyes are hard and sharp like stones in the dark, and her lips are thin as razors.

  Why doesn’t matter. If he is holding that photo, you have time to get away.

  Go slow.

  Don’t run.

  Walk.

  And maybe, if the stars are right and the meat in his teeth is fresh, he will let you go.

  ● ●

  ● Extras ●

  Need More? Read On!

  There is more to come.

  For other stories with runaway Fey princes, alien Earths and parallel worlds, ancient warriors, and magical mayhem, visit RuthanneReid.com, where you can sign up for free books and sneak-peeks in your inbox, peruse the wiki for trivia, and bug the author via email.

  P. S. Want to know more about Notte? Sign up for the newsletter and be the first to get a chance to beta-read the upcoming epic fantasy, BELOVED NOTTE!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Story-herder, plot-bunny curator, and weird humor connoisseur, Ruthanne is a woman of mystery because most of her hobbies are done in the dark. She’s ventured out to teach classes on world-building and writer’s-voice, and she’s taken some nifty pictures, which she posts on Instagram when no one is looking. She also has a popular Twitter feed which is the epitome of random.

>   Ruthanne is simply herself, and herself is a professional dealer of cat pictures. Currently, she lives in Long Island City, happily married to the IT programmer of her dreams.

  To learn more (or begin an ordinary conversation), subscribe to her free email newsletter or send her an email.

 

 

  Ruthanne Reid, The Big Palooka (and Other Stories)

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