The bar is packed. People standing around tables, laughing, drinking, telling stories. Just about everyone in here seems to have some sort of weapon on their person - the occasional sword, axe, or bow and arrow, but mostly its just whatever people could find and fashion on their own. Brooms sharpened to a point, butchers knives, and of course there’s one guy who has a baseball bat with barbed wire and nails sticking out of it. There’s always one. Zombies and baseball bats, tale as old as time. Whatever the weapon, though, this crowd is tough. As tough as they are, they’re even more loud. However, one voice is louder than the others, and it belongs to a man in a lacrosse uniform, our friend Cannon, sitting with his elbows on the bar. Next to his elbows sit his lacrosse helmet and three boxes of pizza.
“See, people used to think the idear of eatin’ bugs was gross. I don’t know when, but they used to, no doubt. And yeah, listen. I get it. They’ah gross as hell.”
The bartender starts to raise his hand. “Can I--”
“And yeah, shuah, if some jackass who doesn’t know theah ass from theah elbow tries to cook ‘em up, you take one bite and you’ah dead as a dooah nail.”
“Erm, excuse me--”
“Yeah you see, that white shit inside ‘em is basically poison. Burns up ya throat and basically cooks you from the inside out, turns ya guts into pahty streamahs. Tastes like piss, too. Oah so I’ve heard. Nevah had the stuff myself. Foah obvious reasons.”
“Great, umm, I--”
“But if you cook it at juuust the right temp foah juuust the right amount of time? Stir it up just right?” He kiss his fingers and blows it into the ether. “You got yourself a somethin’ like a nice creamy burrata, only with way moah flavah. Umami, you know?”
The bartender hesitates. He detects an actual break in the “conversation”. He lifts his eyebrows and opens his mouth, trying to bait Cannon into interrupting him, but the pizza boy is silent. The bartender finally nods and says, “You gonna order something?”
Cannon slaps his knees. “Oh, hell yeah! Almost forgot. This pizza shit gets me goin’, you know? Anyway, what kinda beeahs you got? I was up neah Burlington a few weeks back, they got some crazy shit up theah, wicked good stuff. Usually I’m not into all those weiahd fancy beeahs, but--”
The bartender slams a pint on the table.
Cannon nods. “Okay, alright, house specialty. How much that cost--”
“Three York.”
“Damn, alright, guess we’ah dinin’ with the queen tonight, eh? Nah, I’m fuckin’ with ya. Yeah, alright, three York.” He unzips a pocket in his messenger bag and fishes around for a bit before plopping four coins on the bar. He flashes a grin at the bartender. “Don’t say I nevah did nothin’ for ya.”
The bartender barely regards this and is only too excited to be done with the transaction and on to the next customer, a woman in a beige tunic with her thick, brown hair tied up in a bun. Cannon hardly notices her. The only thing he cares about right now is the brown, cloudy liquid in the mug in front of him. It looks and smells vaguely like beer. Or, more specifically, what would happen if you took beer and left it out in the sun for five million years. But, hey, beer is beer. He takes a huge swig and gulps it down, wincing a bit as he does. He does so three more times until the glass is empty. He massages his belly until he’s able to coax out a large burp, large enough to get the attention of the people sitting right next to him. One person in particular, a blonde with two long braids a little ways down the bar who we haven’t seen before, gives him a raucously drunken thumbs up.
Cannon’s happy with that, but he needs a little bit more attention. He stands up on one of the rungs of his bar stool and loudly proclaims, “Excuse me, excuse me, hello everybody. Hi, how we doin’? Cannon, here. Anybody order some pizza? We got a Daisy Montego here? Daisy Montego? Anybody?”
In a heartbeat, the bar goes silent. People have stopped mid drink, mid joke, mid laugh, to turn to see the crazy bastard who just had the gall to call out Daisy Montego’s name like he was calling a dog. The crowd parts like the red sea, clearing a straight line between Cannon and a table in the far back corner of the room. At the table is a burly looking woman sitting by herself, nursing a beer. She stands up and it becomes clear just how burly she is. Big, round, tall, scars all up and down her face and arms, this is a woman who’s seen a lot of shit. And, more likely than not, she’s the one who both started and ended most of that shit.
She lumbers slowly towards Cannon, keeping her eyes on him while also being keenly aware that every other set of eyeballs in the room is trained unfalteringly on her. It only takes a few of her gargantuan steps before she’s right up next to Cannon, looming over him as if he was a child.
“You looking for me?” Her voice sounds like an elephant, Cannon thinks, and her breath smells even worse.
“Depends. You Daisy Montego?”
Daisy snorts. “You new around here? Or you just stupid and wanna die?”
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“Uh neithah, except for maybe that middle option. Listen, ah you Daisy or not? I’m just tryin’ to sell these pizzas, and if you’ah not her then I gotta kindly ask you to fuck off so I can go find the kid I’m lookin for.”
The bar was already silent, but now the entire place can feel the collective breath that everyone is holding. Nearly every set of eyes bulges out of their sockets in anticipation of what’s going to happen next. To everyone’s surprise, Daisy simply sits down at the bar next to Cannon, opens up one of the pizza boxes, and chows down on a slice.
Cannon smiles and nods. “Okay, alright, so I guess you’ah tonight’s lucky customah. Pretty good, right? Wrong, it’s wicked fuckin’ good. I know, I made it. Best damn pizza you’ll find anywheah. Old family recipe, authentic New England.”
Daisy slurps down the rest of the slice, polishing it off by licking her fingers clean. She closes the box, grabs the stack of pizzas, and starts lumbering back to her table.
Cannon cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s 10 York per pie. You got three pies theah, so, let’s see. That’s one, two, three... 20 York pieces, kid.”
It isn’t entirely clear whether Daisy doesn’t hear him over the sound of her own chewing, or if she doesn’t care. It’s probably not the former, considering just how fucking loud Cannon is all the time. Either way, she’s already back at her seat, slurping down the next slice.
“Uhh, hello? You deaf or stupid? I said 20 York for the pizzas, let’s go. I ain’t runnin’ a charity heah.”
The silence in the room starts to percolate with an excited, nervous buzz. Cannon looks around and sees people starting to laugh and point up at him. He sees a few people exchanging coins, making bets, quietly debating what’s a fair over/under for how long it’ll be before Daisy turns him into a ground beef.
“What’s the mattah, with you, kid. Am I talkin’ to a brick wall heah? You raised by goddamn bugs?”
“Get lost.” Daisy flings the words out of her mouth like crumbs.
Cannon’s eyes grow wide. “Excuse me?”
“I said, beat it.”
Cannon’s about to open up the flood gates of his mouth, but he feels a tugging on his arm. It’s a woman, the one who gave him a thumbs up earlier. She’s got a half finished beer in her other hand and is very visibly teetering back and forth. She reeks of beer, her eyes are practically rolling backwards in their sockets. “Hey, man. I think it’s, it’s, you’re so cool for you to stand up to her. So cool. Cool. Cool. I’ve always ammired that aboud you. I was gonna, was wondering, if when you’re dead, I can have your stuff?”
Cannon pushes her away like she was a mosquito. “The fuck? Do I know you?”
“I dunno, do I know you?”
“You should, I’m the guy who’s about to beat the shit out of that kid over there who’s not payin’ for my pizza.”
“That’s awesome, so cool, woah. Pretty bad idea, I think.
Daisy chimes in, finishing off another slice. “Listen to Rach, pizza boy. Back off.”
The girl extends a wobbly hand to Cannon. “Hi, I’m Rach. Nice a meet you, you should listen to me.”
“Chill, damn,” he says, slapping Rach’s hand out of the way. The crowd, now alive with the electricity that can only come from the anticipation of bloodsport, has formed a circular arena with Cannon and Daisy on opposite sides of the ring. Cannon isn’t much for reading, but he can read the writing on the wall here. He puts on his helmet, slings his messenger bag around his shoulder, and hoists his lacrosse stick up at the ready in front of him. “I think you oughta pay up right now.”
Daisy finishes the last slice from the first pizza and tosses the box aside. “Oh do you?” She stands up and everybody in the crowd takes a big, healthy step back. She lumbers back over to Cannon and looks down at him. She dwarfs him. She dwarfs everybody in the bar. Her head is nearly touching the ceiling. With one hand, she grabs the neck of Cannon’s jersey and lifts him up into the air, then hurls him across the room into the wall next to the bar.
This little exchange takes Cannon by surprise. He’s a bit slow to get back to his feet. After all, he’s never seen another human being who’s strong enough to lift someone up with one hand and toss them around like a sack of potatoes. If he had any mental bandwidth available for critical thinking, he’d be worried that he may have barked up the wrong tree. However, he doesn’t really have any mental bandwidth whatsoever. So, instead, he stands back up straight, rolls his shoulders back a bit, and shakes his arms out.
“Good pizza,” Daisy barks. “Nice and hot. Shame you won’t be around to make any more.”
Cannon shakes his head. “We really gonna have it go down like this? Man, all I wanted to do tonight was get money and get drunk, but now I guess I’m not gettin’ eithah until you get unconscious.” He loads a lacrosse ball into his stick and cradles it back and forth a few times. “Daisy Montego, you’ah gonna wish you nevah fucked with Cannon from Old Boston.”
He rockets the ball at Daisy. She lets out a grunt of pain as it thumps heavy against her chest. She staggers backwards.
Cannon smiles. “You’ah dead, kid.”
Daisy breaks into a full on sprint, barreling towards Cannon. He slings a few more balls at her, nailing her in the chest and face, but they don’t do a lot to slow her down. Before he can do anything else, she’s on him. She hoists him back up into the air and pushes him hard against the wall behind him. She’s grinning ear to ear, the smell of half digested bug meat pizza wafting up and out of her mouth. The crowd starts buzzing again, coins changing hands as more and more bets are placed.
Cannon kicks his legs uselessly. “Let go of me you sack of shit!”
He’s smacking her in the head over and over with this stick, but he’s not really getting anywhere. He does see that the really drunk girl is giving him another thumbs up, though, so, hey, that’s a vote of confidence. Daisy twirls Cannon around like pizza dough before flinging him to the other side of the room. He hits the wall hard and tumbles to the ground even harder. The lacrosse padding softens the blow, but being launched into a wall still sucks pretty bad.
“You’ah in for a world of hurt, kid. I’m gonna show you how we do things in Old Boston! Hyyeahh!” He wields his lacrosse stick in front of him like a claymore and charges at Daisy. He leaps at her, using every ounce of muscle and momentum to slam the stick hard against her ribcage. He hears the buzzing crowd around him grow silent. He smirks. “Yeah, you had enough yet?”
He looks up at Daisy, eager to see her coughing blood or vomiting up ribs or something like that. Instead, he finds that she’s actually pretty okay. I guess she teeters a bit, maybe she coughs, maybe she rubs the spot where Cannon hit her, but, that’s about it. She’s not toppling over, she’s not wailing in agony, she’s, yeah, she’s pretty fine.
“Here’s how we do it in Seven Cities.” Before Cannon knows what’s happening, Daisy winds up and socks Cannon over the head with her humongous fist, sending him careening down onto the floor. He tries to quickly get to his feet, but he’s not fast enough. Daisy plants her knee on his chest, pinning him to the floor. He winces in pain, struggles, tries to get up, but he’s powerless against the behemoth on top of him. Her knee is nearly wide enough to reach across his shoulders. Cannon looks around at the rest of the bar goers. They’re all silently watching, waiting for Daisy to deliver the last punch.
“You all just gonna stand theah? None of you gonna help me? What’s the mattah with you people?” His eyes find that one really drunk girl. She realizes that she’s about to watch this guy get turned into pancake, which jolts her into sobriety. They lock eyes. Cannon mouths “Help me.” For a moment, hope pounds in his chest. This girl, whoever she is, could beeline towards Daisy and strangle her. Something. Anything. However, this girl quickly becomes very uncomfortable with what’s happening and decides that the easiest thing to do is open up her gullet and down the rest of her beer. Cannon shakes his head, then looks back up at Daisy, who’s smiling down at him.
“These people, they barely care about themselves, what makes you think they’re gonna care about you?”
Cannon tries to respond, but Daisy digs her knee into his chest, pushing all the air out. He hacks and coughs and keeps on flailing, but nothing’s working. Daisy rips Cannon’s helmet off and tosses it aside, then cracks her knuckles one last time, and winds her fist up above Cannon’s face.
“Any last words?”