The Agoraphobic Suede: #6 - Without You I'm Nothing

Silver: 'It's a matter of choices.'

Silver washed his hands under the sink and rolled his knuckles with his apron. Barbecue squatted firmly on a table by the wall, watching her visitors with her glassy eyes.

Silver: 'Some point of your lives, you had made a choice to come to this place. Whether you like it or not, or even know it at all.'

Silver examined his drinking glasses and mugs in the kaleidoscopic lights of the ceiling.

Silver: 'There is never a safe bet to a choice, but whatever it turns out to be, you have no one to blame.'

Silver peered at one glass cup and decided that was the right one. He fished out a bottle of persevered urchins and filled the tiny glass with a quarter pint.

Silver: 'Judging from you two poor fellowings, I guess you people had learnt a valuable lesson that choices can be irreversible.'

Silver shook some drops of lemon fruit into the brew and brought out a packet of powder. It smelt of rough spices of an exotic taste. He sprinkled some into the drink and the color immediately turned purple.

Silver: 'Like I said, whatever it turn out to be, good or bad. Just be glad that it's your choice.'

Silver placed a metal shaker canister on the table and doused the bottom with six different alcohols that Benny had never known. Silver shook the canister with might and zeal.

Silver: 'I hope at this stage you guys still possess the ability to choose.'

Silver poured out a snake of mixed genres into the glass of purple beverage.

Silver: 'If so, choose wisely.'

Silver struck a match and set the drink on fire. The Ultimate Shot was completed.

Silver: 'Now you all come so far for this crap. Is it worth it? Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.'

Liz: 'There is only one shot?'

Silver smiled and grabbed his shotgun. His smile was dry and humorless. Barbecue mewed softly, enjoying herself.

Silver: 'Yes. Just one drink. You people have to choose whom to drink then.'

Benny: 'Liz. I won't beg. I know we want it badly. I will fight you for it.'

Liz: 'Even if it won't perch us anymore than the red rain. Okay. I want it too. Just to feel a dream running down my throat. Just to see if a dream is really worth the shitrun.'

Benny gave a muffed cry and slammed his shoulder into Liz. Liz obviously was much more apt in combat, gave away and swirled Benny's arm around his back, making him yelped.

Liz: 'I will break it if I have to.'

In tears and sweat, Benny arched his head and smiled nervously: 'Then you better kill me, because I am really kill you for the drink, hell I will kill everybody here for that lousy drink!'

Crack! Benny's left arm broke like a twig.

Liz dragged Benny by the hair across the floor to a corner of the wall. She felt for a sword at the altar and slipped it out in glory.

Liz: 'I don't want to kill you. Back off.'

Benny: 'You are a man-eater. Get me before I get you. I can pretty much finish you off even without this arm. Look straight in my eyes, you know it.'

Benny's eyes were bloodshot with insane motivation and hunger.

Liz punched Benny's face, drawing blood and a few teeth. She swung her fist again and again, hammering Benny into a whimpering dead.

Benny: 'Kill me! You have to kill me! Or I will haunt you like the walrus!'

Liz shouted a war-cry and drove the sword into Benny's stomach.

The floor was stained with Benny's blood.

Liz could only think about The Ultimate Shot. Nothing else mattered.

Benny croaked in his murky blood and began to howl in humor. He laughed like the first time he knew Liz was not a human. He wailed like the babies in the dark of the forest. Benny screamed and spat happily.

The front door flew opened and a vacuum of snow drifted and came flying indoors.

The abominated walrus roared at them.

Barbecue snarled at the monster with her furry back arching to a slope and her tail spiking.

Silver: 'Relax, Barbecue. It is not here for us.'

The walrus stormed through it's entry like a meteoroid train, crashing everything its path and cried at Liz.

Liz pulled out her sword. She saw shadows falling. She saw the crater hole of wound where the eye of the walrus should be. She saw the walrus' wrath. She witnessed the darkness.

The walrus' tusks ran through her like a voodoo doll, killing her in an instant.

The snow in the room trembled as the walrus screamed deafeningly.

Glasses shattered at the bar.

Benny pulled himself up with the edge of the wall. He tried to hold his spilling guts with another hand, but it was pretty wasted by Liz's dislocation. His blood smeared his lower body thick.

Benny: 'I... knew you.'

The walrus peered intensively at Benny.

Benny: 'We were at the highway of signs. Right? It was pointing to The Ultimate Shot. You... didn't want me to proceed onwards. You tried to caution me, correct?'

The walrus sniffed the air strongly and barked at Benny.

Benny: 'You stand in my way, I will kill you. Get it?'

The walrus flapped its flippers and started fuming.

Benny took the sword from the bloody floor and walked to the bar.

The walrus bellowed disapprovingly and tried to block Benny's way.

Benny grind his teeth and charged with the sword. He threw himself into the mess of walrus.

They whirled into this beautiful pain of massacre. Liz laid like a mannequin by the wall among the companionship of the turned chairs. The snow settled like dust on her, dyeing her carcass pink. Something bleed. The walrus hawked in agony. It chewed the dead arm of Benny. The walrus blind in one eye, rolled the fight with imbalance and uncertainties. But it's massive weight was the beast's armor, with the side squashing Benny's leg into parts. Benny no longer responded to his pain. He was focused so much on his thirst that he was no longer Benny. For Benny had died back then when he walked into the discotheque with the desire to drink himself to death.

As the killer tusks clambered down, Benny hurled his sword into the jaws anchoring it. The left tusk drove into Benny's chest, but an assault shallow to kill, due to the blade of the sword in its mouth. They pushed haughtily towards one another, driving stakes into each other's vampiring hearts.

Benny: 'DO IT! DO IT! COME ON! KILL ME IF YOU CAN!'

Benny slashed the long blade through the lips of the elephantine walrus and pushed it all the way into the flesh until his entire arm was inside the mouth of the bleeding fiend.

The walrus fell over to its grey side and remained there. Snow as if talented at identifying death, like flies they hurried over to the walrus. With butterflies smooches and restless youth.

Benny crawled to the bar, inching leaving a trail of his blood and bowels. He settled moistly on the seat and smiled his toothless at the old pirate. He wanted his prize.

Liz was buried in the snow, she was a distance memory.

The walrus wheezed on breathlessly and saw death with filthy wings.

Silver: 'I will persuade you no further. This is your choice. However, I will advise like I would to everyone whom I had served this drink. All you will ever feel is regret once you take this shot.'

Benny: 'No one will be unscathed after seeking destruction.'

Benny drown the burning shot, feeling better than before. It was tasteless, but his thirst was finally quenched.

Benny heard a buzz in his ears and he found himself walking out of the tavern. He left prints in the snow. The cat and her owner followed him to the porch.

Benny coughed and huddled in the comfort of the dusty snow. His blood milked upon the white intenseness of the climate. He felt himself changing. He couldn't tell. Benny would never know.

It's all about choices.

Benny metamorphosed into a grey gargantuan with ivory for weapon and fat webbing for limbs. He couldn't no longer felt pain. He couldn't no longer felt himself.

Long John Silver fired a warning shot in the freezing air, echoing for hundreds of yards. The new gigantic walrus trembled lightly as if aroused from sleep, peered insipidly at the pirate.

Silver: 'Now go away. If I ever see you again near this part of the land, I will fucking shoot you myself! You heard me!'

Barbecue gnarled in aid.

The walrus barked in acknowledgement and made its way to the frozen iron sea. It slided it's body into the icy waters and was never seen again.

The snowstorm shrieked loudly and their prints were covered.

Silver: 'Come Barbecue. Let's grab some warm clothing and seek accommodation in the bomb shelter. We will clear this mess up once the storm lightens.'

Barbecue mewed in response and trotted gently behind the pirate. She looked at the the snow drifting happily into the huge crack of entry at the tavern which sucked away the skies like a black hole, the lizard-woman in the dirt hill of snow, the original walrus in its blood and goo. Barbecue remembered the true form of that walrus. It used to be a lady. But nobody tried to warn her the way she warned Benny. Nobody. Barbecue remembered something else too, it's about herself. Once, many hundred years ago, like Benny and that nameless lady, she too drank that infamous shot. She was never thirsty again. Barbecue mewed yearningly at her memory. These days, memories were luxury at her age.


The owner and the cat disappeared under the bomb shelter and waited out for spring.




End.