Sick Again

The moon was a half coin in the sky, all pretty and silver. My feet started doing that thing as I stood at the sink in Jak’s kitchen. Plates, mugs, cups, forks, my apron wet, my head itching form my sweat, I hopped from foot to foot but the three-man band in the main room playing music for my half-sister to dance to was not the reason why.

“Boy. You break a dish, you pay for it with an extra work day.” Jak said from behind me. He had a big cask of his fine ale on his shoulder. The yeasty smell of it, fresh from his brewing cellar, crawled up my nose and into my throat, making me want to gag.

He didn’t stay to chat. I heard the door swing as he left this part of the kitchen. Jak’s place offered beverages and a few food choices prepared behind a long bar and served by a couple of farm widows. The big sink was in the farthest back, half the space taken up with storage and food goods. Here, I avoided the nightly crowd. I couldn’t be more thankful.

It was happening again. I could count each instance on one hand, but I needed this to stop. Have to do something. This was bad news. The last purge had been a nasty I didn’t want to repeat. No more mineral oil purges. Instead, I found a stomach purge in a bottle next to the pepper mill that would make everything come up quick and fast, mouth first.

It went in fine. Barely tasted it.

A few minutes later, my stomach twisted in my belly like a dirty wet wash rag and things started to move. Hand covering my mouth, I rushed to the slop bucket. The spew of my churning stomach was leaking through my fingers before I bent over the thing.

Well, this was another fail. My efforts to cure myself got me ten minutes of spitting bile and hacking phlegm. I’d never been so cleaned out in my life.

When I raised my head and wiped my mouth, all I could smell was sulfur and ash. My feet were hot when they shouldn’t be. I looked down at my leather shoes to see if they were on fire.

Nothing. I was imagining things.

But my limbs from my toes to my ankles tingled, and above that was a growing pain. A weird feeling in my bones, like they were being used as drumsticks. The feeling crawled up my body to my belly and towards my chest. I’m going crazy. But nulls don’t go crazy.Our race birthed only rational, earth bound forever-void and sturdy as rock. Nulls had not a lick of anything special about them. We’re a plain bunch without a magical bone in our bodies. Not even intuition. Everyone knows that. I know that. And I know how to behave like a proper null citizen.

This wasn’t proper. This very improper thing attacked me from the outside in, from the floor up. Was anyone else feeling it? Were others being similarly attacked? I needed this thing to go away.

As far as I knew, there were no magic users or magic detectors in Little Indio. The patrols hadn’t been by for month and months. Not since they dragged off a farmer’s pretty daughter. Since patrols kept track, and already had the wife, and that girl was the last actual witch for miles and miles, they had no reason to come here. Bredonna’s little trickle of shine wasn’t enough to register as anything but an attractive void, and they turned away from her horse face whenever they saw her. They had prettier tits aplenty in the city, I guessed.

It couldn’t be magic messing with me. Little Indio was played out, mined so deep of every resource that the forest died. Some of the better off folk had machines. The mayor's house even had lights powered by illium batteries. Any creature holding hid themselves from the patrols and the Consortium’s experiments. There was no magic, no witch or mage, that would expose themselves to an inconspicuous null like me.

So, what was happening to me?

It scared the puke out of me in more ways than with just a purge. Was I finally losing it?

I was born crazy. I knew how to deal with crazy.

There was always water on the hearth in the other room in a giant kettle that was refilled via pipes outside the pub.

I grabbed the pail I used for dishwater. Purging didn’t work. So maybe I could match the sensation with heat? Hot water cleaned things. Maybe. Had to do something. I didn’t want to feel this thing, whatever it was.

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“Boy.” Jak eyed me with suspicion when I walked through the doorway.

“I need hot water.”

“Hurry it up.” His forehead bunched, and he pursed his fat lips at me in a Jak frown.

The pub was busy. The waitresses were at their back and forth, and there were at least fifteen male heads around the tables and in three booths.

“Oh, look. It’s Jak’s pretty boy!”

I ignored the drunk. It was a man I knew. We’d worked the farms together as kids. We shared bad memories of a childhood yet somewhere along the way the blick had forgotten that I was female.

“C’mere, pretty boy,” a guy at the same table slurred.

“And there’s the dick,” I said out loud. They like to travel in pairs. I ignored them both and went to get water.

“How come that boy is so pretty? You sure it’s a boy?” Man two asked his partner.

“Nobody’s sure. We should find out.” My nemesis from childhood answered. I didn’t know his name anymore and I didn’t want him to know mine or remember anything about me. Even above the music from the corner and the conversation at the other tables, I could hear the benches scrape the floor when they scooted out of their booth.

They stumbled over, shouting at me. “Hey, boy-girl. You got a cock or a cunt? Show us.”

I poured the hot water, protecting my bare skin against the pipe spigot with my sleeve and kept my back to them, listening. Deciding what to do. Bredonna was upstairs, she wouldn’t be here to stop me. Jak was behind his bar. He didn’t do two things at once very well. Serving customers and actively talking to them at the same time was about all the doings at a time he could manage. I was on my own, left to my own devices.

The tingle I’d been feeling went to heat, and then had moved up right into my chest to become a ball of cold, knotted pressure. With the idiots baring down on me, that pressure felt like a rage that needed to someplace to go. This was gonna get ugly, and I had a hard time caring or finding good reason to stop myself from doing something stupid.

“I gotta be reasonable.” I said out loud, reminding myself. “Dick and blick are just here drown away the day. They are blowing off steam.”

My words sounded like important advice. Even to me. I knew what I should do. But I didn’t think it was going to happen.

“Say something there? You talking to us? Do I know you, pretty boy?” Asked the blick who should know me.

“How do I know what you know? But, but the looks of you, I can say it I doubt it is very much, is it?” I gave him a thorough examination from over my sholder, searching for intelligence. Yep, not a bit of it.

“Let’s see what you got.” He reached out, getting close enough to take in my smell. “What in the shadow-damned-days is that reek?”

Keeping my filled bucket between us, I turned to face him fully. He needed to get the full effect of my scent. My handmade perfume worked perfectly with Jak’s special brew. I could see the man’s eyes start to tear up. “You want to know what I am, then, do ya? Well, it will cost you copper. I don’t give peeps away for free. You got chips?”

He looked at me with confusion.

“I got copper chips.” Said the dick.

I got between them. The blick turned green and the dick went for his pockets. At the same time, my fresh hot water sloshed all over their legs. They shouted as the scalding hot liquid soaked through the cloth of their pants.

Dick swung for me. My smell was getting to him too, finally, but he was holding his breath. I emptied the pail on them both before hitting Dick in the head with it as he curled into the pain.

The ruckus was enough to get Jak bellowing. I could feel the emotional surge of his thick energy at my back, the barely contained inhuman element of him he worked so hard to hide. He hated anyone mucking up his place, but his natural impulse would make him attack the two drunk troublemakers first.

Jak could move fast when he was angry, legs eating up the space. The two landed yodles were behind me, one hand reaching out and catching the back of my shirt. Jak stepped right over me to get to them without missing a beat. Their drink fuzzy heads didn’t even see him coming until he was there.

Whoever had by the back of my shirt let go. Time for me to leave the scene. A woman called my name. From the corner on my left I saw Bredonna by the stairs with the shadow form of a customer at her side. Her purple and gold skirts were the only colors in the room. No time to answer. Jak wasn’t the forgiving sort. He’d come for me next and enjoy every moment of it. I had enough of his bruises.

I ran for the kitchen without thinking, as if that known place was safety. The unwashed dishes laughed at me and I knew better than to waste time laughing back at my poor choices. I don’t like to use Jak’s front door anyway, so this had to be my escape.

The back door was wood pannled and knot holed, with a rickety appearance, but it had an old-fashioned puzzle locking mechanism from pre-landing days. Ancient safety measures were the worst. I was trapped if Jak had it locked. Two damn years working for the pub master and I still couldn’t figure it out. Puzzles and I didn’t agree.

I could hear the Jak stomping and yelling. Dick and Blick had put him in a smashing mood. Everyone could be angry at me all they wanted, I wasn’t taking the blame for what drunk idiots started. The farmwives would let them paw and pester, glad to be here, I think, rather than at home with their children and dissatisfied men.

My stepsister invited attention like that with her witch-style clothing and encouraging smile. But not me. It was the last thing I wanted. Who did dick and blick think they were? Why did their dangling bits and their wide shoulders give them the right to be ugly and think they could touch me? Insulting me like I don’t matter. Nobody got to treat me like that.

Get to the alley. Get outside. Outside.

My inner voice and I rarely agreed. But this time it pushed me hard. I grabbed onto the door, ready to break the damn thing if I had to, heaving and pushing with my urgency. The latch clicked I fell through

Right into doom.