We are running. Through the forest. Away from city walls.
The night is black and. Cold. Orange-yellow eyes, dotting the distance. Our lives are declared forfeit by the barking of dogs and shouting of men alike.
But, we do not stop; we cannot stop. Starving desperation drives our heels forward, and the gold spilling from our cheap bags litters our paths back.
The night is cold, and the wind is strong. And our scent is heavy and full of sweat. When they catch us, they will beat us.
But I’m shaking, and I’m numb. My skinny legs collapse, and my pockets, into the grass, empty.
Yellow eyes, nipping at the leaves. Closer, then larger.
Drooling teeth sink in, and I, alone, begin to sob.
“So, did it hurt?”
“Huh? Did-? Excuse me, are you talking to me-?”
“When you… Fell from Heaven…”
I hiccuped with the deliverance of the line, shining the woman a drowsy smile as my vision blurred her into some sexier, more desirable thing.
“Haha! Come on-,” I slurred my words as I pointed up a finger and reached for my pint, “Answer the question, yeah-? Bet it diiiIiiid…” I sang.
She scoffed at me, and with some hazy motion she turned away and vanished. The room was spinning, and my head was rattling. I furrowed my brow at the floorboards as they wheezed underneath me. It was harp night. Every night was harp night.Every day was harp night.
“Hey!”
I spun around as heavy stomping shook the rotted floors, an earthquake approaching. It made my stomach churn.
“Yeah-?”
Sudden pressure, then an instant loss of breath. I hunched over, gasping and gagging, a string of spit dancing off my lip as the fist removed itself from my gut. It was big, maybe as big as my head–tough, too, tough and hairy. Tough and hairy.
“Keep yuh eyes off’a ‘er, filth.”
“Filth…?” I slurred the word about, shaping it with my tongue as best I could. “Sorry,”I belched, straddling the barstool as I pulled myself up to meet the wolfish man, “Didn’t… Know the bitch was yours. She’s pretty, though. For a dog.”
He hit me again, harder. The air was ripped from my lungs, and the atmosphere tightened.
But, my throat was getting dry, and the music was getting louder. I reached for my drink again, but this time I couldn’t reach it. Red dots speckled my arm as he grabbed me, blackened knuckles clouding white as his uncut dirty nails dug deeper and deeper. It drew a groan from me, but not a tug. The harp was too slow for me to offer resistance, too methodic. It didn’t feel right–didn’t sound right. It continued unchanged, complimenting his milky white eyes as they stared with an un-yellowed hatred. They were beautiful, I thought. Beautiful white eyes.
“Low-hanging drunk!” he spat and threw my arm back towards me.“Just ‘cus you’ve a lot’a coin don’t mean you can…”
His voice faded off, overtaken by the harp as he barked and barked. It rang in my ears, scratched at my drums. Each pluck, slow and intentional–each strum, precise and deliberate. I thought to let my head roll along to its stupor, but some glob of moisture hit my face and the pearly-eyed man was blurred away. And I was thirsty again.
So I drank.
I grabbed the pint, sweating, glistening, and I partook in its communion. Deep breaths, heavy swallows. The contents warmed my throat like honey, dousing my mind in sweet, dumbing ecstasy. My temple, my church atop… I pray, with every sip.
And all the while, the jeering rang. Applause and limelight–they cheered for him, the dogged man. They applauded him.
“He put down the drunk!” they shouted.
“Oh, what a man!” they cheered.
“What a man,” I muttered along with the crowd and flicked my arm with a gurgled scoff, glittering the floor red as I grabbed onto my glass tighter and threw it again over myself. It slid down my gullet like threaded mud, and I choked it down until its final drop. ‘Honeysilk,’ the brand was called, golden letters singing its name across the bottle behind the counter. They sparkled in a way that burned, mixed with the orange torch-light and ways that made me flinch.
It was nothing, but a nothing in a way that mattered.
When I turned towards the harp, I squinted my eyes. Its golden vulgarities burned through the miasma with ease, and even muffled I heard the harpist’s fingers pluck along its strings. It was glossy, pristine. Had I not been here for so many befores, I would think it’s brand new. Untouched.
It sat on a stage at the end of the tavern, its masked companion plucking along as the animals surrounding it danced and cheered and hurled and spat. Commonplace yet, still, there wasn’t a scratch on it. No, not even a chip in its paint. Undulled, it plagued me. How did it stay so clean? How. Did it?
… How?
My knuckles burned white for a moment, contemplation wringing my mind of sense as I stared at the empty glass wetting my hand. I thought of it many times for many days. The harp in the bar. Just a shove, maybe a scratch. Maybe just a pluck. It,
It didn’t take much.
“Quincy!”I tapped the counter with two fingers, gritting my teeth as I turned my throbbing head back towards the counter. Not a moment later, and the foxy bartender came trotting over, running down the counter with his tight black suit and stainless, bright red tie.
“Evening, Harpa!” he exclaimed, catching his breath as his lips flickered into a professional grin. “Tab time already? Yea, I saw that whole short rundown. Can’t imagine you’d… wanna linger long… after a near tussle with that… big bulk’a muscle, huh?”
His words broke apart, then his voice. The bar burned itself together, then tore itself apart.
“No-, no. I-”
I blinked my eyes shut, then forced them wide and aware. The smog felt lighter; my hand was empty of its glass. Muffled thoughts, string-song, they bubbled backwards towards the surface.
“Get me another, Quincy,” I stammered. “Yeah?”
His ears flickered a bit. Hesitating. An old habit. He developed it from when we were boys. When I used to drag him along in the night.
His eyes weren’t so white back then.
So pearly.
“Harp’r-pal,” he tapped his padded feet; the sound made me nauseous, “Are you sure? This-… This is your fifth. Even for you… I’m not too sure you should-”
“Quincy!”
I snapped forward, grabbing him by his red tie, gripping it between fingers and thumb. The tapping stopped. But my ears still itched. My head was pounding.
“Quincy, please. Please.Last for the night’n-” I shook my head; I tightened my grip. The voices and song, the melody all throbbing against my skull, “And I’ll be done. Promise.”
His attention shifted, and so did mine. Faces, smeared to blurs, passed me as I turned my head. The harp, still playing, went on but, but the people. Stopped.
And they stared.
I let go.
Their eyes shifted away, and Quincy’s darted between mine and my lowered hand. He sighed with relief.
“Alright,” he nodded his head and backed off the counter from me, “Last call then, Harp’r, then you’re cut off… Same order?”
I tried to stare, but my eyes were shaking in their sockets. There were two of him, then one. Two again. My fingers clung to the wooden counter. “Neat. No, no ice. Thank you,” I felt something foaming up my throat, but I swallowed it down with the rest of me. “Please.”
Quincy nodded, and I found my legs bouncing against the stool as he poured the flaxen Honeysilk into a glass he’d just finished drying with a black rag. It shimmered underneath the torchlight like worms moving through sand, and the foam bubbling onto the surface made his eye twitch.
“Honeysilk, neat,” he returned with my glass, carrying it over in both hands. The pint was bigger than my palm. “Once you’ve finished this up you’re done, though, Harp’r. I want you-,” he paused, “You need to go home.”
I’d already been nodding, eyes affixed to the remedy. In my head, I was already drinking in. “Dea-”
“This for me?”
The counter shook as a heavy hand fell onto it, the returned darkened mass towering in my peripheral. He was drunk, drunker than me. Drunk off the cheering, slurring off praise.
“Ain’t lookin’ like you need more’a this, drunk.”
He grabbed the crying glass, and the hairs on my neck prickled as I watched it leave through Quincy’s sharp eyes. One of my fingers grazed its sweat.
“Ought’a just leave it all to me, yuh? Redeem yaself a little.”
He leaned into me, standing next to my perch. I felt his breath before I heard it, smelled the honeysilk before he brought it up to his canid lips and tasted it.
“Ahh,” he shook his head with a brisk smile and slammed the drink down beside me, spilling its excess over the rim,“Tastes like happiness, don’t it? Tastes like gold…”
He shook it off for a moment, then he laughed. Some of it spilled and Quincy’s eyes reflected the small pool. The whites of his eyes seemed golden, like two small glowing specks in distant woods. He had that same look back then. When the wolves gnawed into me, when the men, heavy-handed, beat me. He didn’t run, but he didn’t fight. He left me. To their mercy.
My skin. To their open maws.
My flesh. To their hammers and sticks.
My bones.
To their splintering.
… They’re pulling me apart.
And I’m screaming.
I’m sobbing,
I’m reaching.
And they break a finger.
They break two more.
“I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry.
I’m
“Harp’r, pal, you okay, friend?”
My focus snapped, miasma fading. Friend. I muttered the word, tasting its familiarity. It tasted like honeysilk, but sweeter. My tongue chased after it, but my lips couldn’t quite catch up. I babbled like a newborn; I groaned like a beached and bloated whale.
“Yeh, you okay? Friend?”
The dog drank of the honeysilk, chugging it down in deep and aggressive gulps. It spilled from his lips, trickled off his chin. It wet his chest, it stained his hairs. I felt my fingers fluttering–I felt my fingers dancing, and scratching. First my head, then my face. The fox’s eyes were wide, but his mouth remained closed. He heard me screaming, but he didn’t help. I had to help myself. I,
I have to help myself.
My left hand reached for something in my coat pocket; my right hand continued to dance. The harp was getting too loud–every pluck, every strum. It was a maelstrom of noise, a cacophony of sound. Bellowing, as an ensemble. Of noise. And cheers. And coughs. And laughs. And drunken hollerings and laughter and.
The wolf.
The wolf is beside me.
The wolf is next to me.
And my arm is bleeding.
And his teeth are gnashing.
But I,
I can change it.
I can change it.
I can-
“Gentlemen!”
I blinked at the exclamation, looking at Quincy instead of staring. With a confused yowl, the man did the same.
“How about… It’ll be my treat then–just for the two’ve you, ah? One free drink,” he offered, already backed from the counter, eyes fixed between us, professional grin jittering. “You’re bothmy regulars, after all. What kind’ve a host would I be for not rewarding loyalty, ey?”
“Loyalty, eh?”
Loyalty?
A heavy slam, a happy groan. Another sweating pint on the counter, and a smile reached across my face.
“Loyalty…”I murmured the blessed word as I lifted my hand from my pocket and grabbed ahold of the glass. Quincy had one, too. A smaller one, a shot. The wolf was staring. “To loyalty,” I slurred.
I downed a chunk of it, then half. I hammered my palm against the table as I drowned. To loyalty, the word scraped against my head, etching itself onto sickly-wet dunes as my brain shook and rattled back into bludgeoned submission. To loyalty, friend! To loyalty!
To loyalty.
The hound didn’t drink his; he held onto it, and he turned his back. He returned to his side of the bar, and Quince and I were left alone. The harp played methodically behind me, pushing against me as he stared and I drank.
“Harp’r,” he raised a finger, then he lowered it. His nail tapped against the glass. “How are you? Today, I mean.”
My throat made a noise; I shook my head of its smoldering. My arm was sore, and my ears ached with a deep, impossible itch.
“I’m… Fine?” I asked my answer, then I said it. “I’m. Fine.” A small giggle escaped me, then a hiccup. I felt nearly weightless, nearly dead. When I looked up at Quin, I saw eyes hiding behind a bush. “How… Are you? Quincy?”
He didn’t respond; I felt he couldn’t. He stared at the wolf on his left, eyeing the sight as he danced and spilled more of the drink he had snatched from my hands. I was watching too, through his eyes, through the leaves. It’s gnawing into my arm, and he’s watching. They’re raising their fists, and he isn’t even crying.
“I’m… Sorry, Harp’r,” he muttered. “I-, maybe. Maybe I could’ve-”
He rambled on; I stared groggily. His eyes were watery, and the leaves shook with his breath. When I began to scream, he closed his eyes. He dug himself down into the dirt and hid. And I hated him for it. I hated him for the money he saved, for the bar he bought. I hated him for the food he fed me, the drinks he gave me. The home he furnished, the harp he commissioned.
From the first bite, to the last laughing fist.
“I’m sorry,” his nose wrinkled with a deep inhale, and he wiped the tears dewing his eyes with a red handkerchief from his pocket. “I… But that’s in the past now. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t, no. I’m sorry. I-”
I hated him.
“I’m sorry.”
And I didn’t care.
“-Oi!”
A pair of fingers hit against the table, and his eyes left me to voyage for their owner.
“Whiskey!” the voice blurted, “And a round of shots for the table over…”
His face stiffened, his professionalism renewed. He nodded to the patron, and he grabbed a glass from off the shelf behind him.
“Coming right up, sir.”
A heavy slam; a calm, gentle pour.
“Cheers, thanks.”
“Of course,” Quin smiled, and the flick of a coin echoed between us. It clattered on the counter sharply, and before I could lift my eyes to view it the fox had already collected it in one trained, swift motion. “Enjoy.”
And there it was; I lifted my chin to watch him stare at it–watch him feel and caress the coin between thumb and index. He felt the weight of it, measuring its authenticity. It was so shiny, so glossy and gleaming. His eyes were full of it. Golden, shining torchlight.
“Harp’r, would you-?”
His question hung in the air as he lifted his gaze to me, quiet as I had already turned away, feet on the ground and standing. My first step was wobbly; on my second step, I nearly fell. The exit was a few feet ahead of me, just beyond the drunken sea.
“‘Scuse’ me-,” I bumped into someone, then a few someones else. I belched over a man’s shoulders. I nearly wretched on a woman’s new purple blouse. Someone’s hair washed over my face. The door seemed further; my feet felt heavier. And the noise… I clenched my eyes shut, trying to refocus them. Two doors now. I blinked. One again. Someone bumped into me. Someone bumped into me again. The harp, the harp is getting louder. And people are getting louder with it. So loud, that the musician needs to tap his boots. So loud, that-
“Oh! You leavin’ so soon?”
I was halfway to the door when someone grabbed my shoulder. Hazily, I swatted it away. It returned with a heavier grip.
“C’mon, ffffriend! I thought you was loyal to tha place, huh?”
His grip tightened; I turned my head. It was the man, the dog. His mouth was open, jaw agape in drunken laughter as he gripped my shoulder for support.
“Where do you think you’re runnin’ off to, huh, drunk?” his claws gripped my shoulder tighter as he brought me down, forcing me to wobble along with him towards the harp and his group. “We ain’t-… I ain’t done havin’ fun with, with you,” he hiccuped.
His claws dug deeper; I jolted back and shoved him. His grip ripped from me as he toppled forward heavily, bending the floorboards before the stage. He was rabid after that; I heard it in his snarl and in the way he barked.
“Ffff- UCKER!” he steadied himself and approached me; I tried to turn away to leave, but both paws gripped me and I was made immobile.
“Ffff- UCKER!” he steadied himself and approached me; I tried to turn away to leave, but both paws gripped me and I was made immobile.
“Teach you to put your… your fuckin’… Fuckin’ hands on me-!” He removed himself from me and shoved me back, sending me into a table. My world spun, and I hit it with a loud groan, plates spilling and glasses falling. “Fucker!” he laughed. “Stupid… Fucker!”
I tried pushing myself off the table, but my hands slipped and I fell onto the floor instead. They erupted into applause, and the barking dog continued in his howls of laughter.
But his eyes were only white, and the harp continued unchanged. When I found my way onto my feet, I stumbled towards the dog and shoved him again. When he barely moved, I spit into the fur burling down his open chest and smiled.
“Dog.”
His eyes widened, and he bared his fangs. He grabbed me by the collar and pinned me against a wooden beam behind me.
“Say that again,” he snarled, then he demanded. His face sneered inches away from my own. “Say it. Again.”
But his eyes were still white, and my mind was still soggy. When his hot, sour breath wafted over me, all I could smell was the Honeysilk barely clinging on. The harp was slow enough to justify it; I nearly leaned in for a kiss.
But his grip tightened, and his ugly muzzle furrowed. He shouted again, but I barely heard him. Spit sprinkled my face, but I barely felt it as my head dipped in and out of lucidity. Grass, then floorboards, grass again, floorboards. Harp.
A fox amongst the leaves.
The fox amongst the people.
The harp grew louder.
He pushed me against the wood, then he pulled, then he pushed and he pulled and he pushed again. Bark-bark-bark! I shook my head and pushed my eyes shut as he continued. The dog before me, the dog beside me. I flinched away, something nibbling at my arm, hairs prickling.
“You disrespectful little cur!”
He ripped me from the beam and threw me onto the ground, soaking me in the spilled alcohol as traces of Quinc’s voice drowned in the surrounding mass of excitement.
“Look at me! Do I look like a dog to you?”
I looked at him, even stared. There were leaves above his head, then the moon. The speckling of stars, then the bright eyes of yellow and orange. I felt a wire around my throat, a burning behind my eyes. The barking grew louder than the harp, and I could do nothing but nod.
My vision dazed after that–a blur of motion, a stream of nausea and smearing shapes. Just as quickly, the colors remerged. First a blur, then a fist. A ringing overtook my right ear as my vision dazed again, then a horrible pounding in my left. It burrowed its way into me, scraping and worming into my skull then neck. He beat me to the strum of the harp, to the pluck of its veins.
“Who’s the-” it barked at me, then it bit me. I tried to run, but its jaws snapped around my ankle. Teeth clenching, skin breaking, I screamed, and in its snarling maw it tugged me back and twisted its canines deeper.
“-Now, look at me! Look at me…”
It grabbed my face, gripping it tightly as its claws bore holes into my skin. Steadying my eyes against its own. My hand was in my pocket, and I felt my tongue scraping teeth. Distantly, I thought I heard a fox’s whine.
“There you are, you shitstain…”
Its maw crept closer to me, drool dripping, foam bubbling, vapor crystalizing off its tongue. My blood caked its snout wet and red.
“Now, say it. Take it back, before I rip yer throat out, Harper…”
His eyes were large and full, beaming against their cradles with a gleen that made the white sparkle. I was terrified; I was mesmerized. Accents of gold presented by the harp, buzzings and flickerings of orange complimented by the torches. Not a lick of it was his own, but it was there, it was there. The torchlight. Of distant men. They’ve come to kill me.
“Say it, Harper,” its breath warmed my face with broken excitement, “Say it!”
But, I can’t. I stared at it, I stared at the dog; I don’t have the words, and the forest is too loud. Look, look at the harpist. The room is a flash of colors. He’s tapping his boots because he can’t hear his own music.
Tap, tap, tap.
Thump, thump, thump.
Bark, bark, bark.
And that awful ringing, that awful pounding. My right ear, my left ear, my right ear again. To-and-fro, to-and-fro. A terrible itch, an even worse nausea. When the bone splintered underneath my skin, I had that same nausea. It came after I had no more tears left to shed, after the wailings of my voice had strained my throat hoarse and bare. I wanted to hurl, but maybe that was because of the hunger. We were barely fed, surviving off bugs and. Bunnies. Or molded bread. Or the nettles, of trees. Sometimes, children don’t know how to cook something well enough to eat. I’d bite down, and something would pulse or twitch. But we couldn’t spit it out. We couldn’t. We swallowed, and we survived, and I threw up, all over his boots, all over his black, heavy boots. He kicked me. The harpist, or the man. The guard. He kicked me. Hard, introduced me to the taste of rubber and dirt, gums and teeth. Heavy, heavy boots. Heavier than the musician’s, heavier than his tapping. Hammer, stick, boot, fist. He was tapping louder now–even louder. Tap-tap-tap, thump-thump-thump, faster, faster. Stomping me into the dirt, my fingers, snapping, into the grass like stale bread. Why did he need those? Why did, Why did he need such heavy boots? Heavy and, and, the room blurred again, muddy. Such Heavy and Muddy boots–yes!–those Boots. What business did a musician have with such informality? Where was his delicacy Where was his payment to afford it? We did it so he could pay. For our His Dream, because I lost my other half. Because my dream died. Because I didn’t. His dream… Quincy. Quinton. He’s shaking behind the leaves, sheltering himself within the crowd. Sweeping up glass, covering himself in dirt. And my hand trembles My hand is trembling in my pocket. Because I am angry Because I am afraid and shaking. Because he can’t face won’t face the wolf and because I am alone. Because he can’t help me. And I hate him for it. I hate him for it. For every gold piece For every unbruised mark of flesh For every unbroken bone I hate you Quinton I hate you. Define loyalty. Define
Loyalty. Because I can’t. I can’t. The dog is barking in my ears and I can’t The men are beating me in and I can’t My blood is warming the soil beneath and I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t i
my fingers tremble around retribution and suddenly i
finally can
The music stopped, and I watched with sobered eyes as the red seeping down my hand dripped onto my face. His hazel face was frozen; his white eyes were dull and gray. He was gasping, and gargling; his bearded jaw was slack, and his lips were sputtering.
As I wrestled the knife out of his throat, I cried.
As I threw the harp onto its side on my way out the broken-hinged door, I ran.
END