The History of Pure Mayhem

Previously: The old man turns out to be the original mayor of Fort Hook? And he wins the game but then loses the game? And Batya wins the sword? And the mayor gets the card that tells him how he’s going to die? And the card says Bat is going to kill him? Who’s in charge of this novel? Can I speak to a manager?

— 65 —

The Mayor seems to truly perceive Batya for the first time. He looks back and forth between her and his death card. A smattering of sailors, emboldened by drink and the assumption that the festivities are finally winding down, gather around to eyeball it as well.

— that supposed to be her?

— she’s got all her teeth tho

— you ain’t never seen cheap alleyway dentures before?

— that’s definitely her

— it’s a good likeness!

— yeah kudos to the infernal fiend what painted it

The Mayor, perhaps for the first time in decades, appears to be rattled. He angrily stashes the Courier card in one of his fishing vest’s many pockets, and then tells Bat—bosses her—to put the scimitar back down on the table, now, and to be delicate about it.

Bat, sick to death of being bossed, and currently enjoying the queasily erotic mojo of the Harmattan galloping up the tendons of her sword arm, has no interest in doing what she’s told. She swings the blade around in a fancy way—or rather, the blade swings itself around in a fancy way—and it nicks off the corner of the table.

Sister Aether shudders, the Harbormaster slaps his knees in a welp it’s getting late I should probably be heading out sort of gesture, and the Dandy Gorgon hits an especially troubling wave and every piece of furniture in the stateroom slides a couple yards.

Once his chair stops moving, the Mayor gets to his feet. This takes a while and involves a number of unpleasant noises. Then he scans the room, somehow looking every soul in the eyes, and all falls silent except the creaking of the ship, the rain against the windows. And if there was any doubt about his true nature before, it is certainly gone now, because we all feel the true weight of his history, his vile sour heart palpitating within Fort Hook, two centuries of sister killing sister, stabbings, gougings, chokings, gunplay, boating accidents, infidelities, well poisonings, trees crushing horses, detonations of every stripe, welts, one fire after another, hangings like you wouldn’t believe, kicking feet, fixed contests, rigged elections, car wrecks, overturned trucks, slaughtered cattle, men cleaned like fish, drownings, endless drownings, too many to count, suffocations, draggings, beatings, dislocated shoulders, the history of pure mayhem that we all feel gnawing inside us as we walk the Hook’s streets, even as we hoist a child to our shoulders or kiss a lady on her neck, even as we think ourselves good and honest folk.

And so the Mayor turns to Bat and makes a proclamation, saying that whichever jack-tar here snuffs the life out of this girlie will be the new first mate of this vessel, reporting directly to him, the new captain.

At first this causes more head-scratching than decisive action. Then someone in the depths of the crowd manages to run some numbers and says oi, grand-dad, you callin a mutiny?

The Mayor says aye, of course you fools, why else would he subject himself to this grueling tedious card game that he personally invented and mastered eons ago? He and the late Dezzetti came here to commandeer!

Mutinies are a cherished and bimonthly tradition aboard the Gorgon, and though they typically end in the crushed dreams of all parties involved, the crew can’t help but be buoyed by the alleged prestige and authority of the Mayor Himself. Some start ululating while others shout out half-remembered shanties like:

Shin up th’ mast & don’t look down! / Coz to-night! we rage! in old Hook town!

Meantime: Captain Nia Muto does some raging of her own, furious beyond intelligible speech at this turn of events. She is, however, still compos mentis enough to see that this mutiny, unlike last month’s, has a kind of primal ferocity thanks to the Mayor’s involvement, so she shuts her trap and positions herself behind the muscular haunches of the courier.

Simultaneously: Something heavy thwacks against the windows, something heavier than rain.

Concurrently: Bat’s a little hurt that the Mayor—the Mayor!—doesn’t want to be pals. She has a brief dreamy vision of the two of them forging an unlikely friendship, finding common ground in their no-nonsense approach to life, him handing down hard-earned wisdom, her keeping him young at heart, maybe meeting up for a meatball lunch at a burlesque show every Thursday—her reverie getting oddly specific here but whatever, it’s gone, evaporating in the heat of the sword’s desire to cut a hole in the very fabric of this world.

As the seamen knock each other down in their enthusiasm to come kill her, Bat snatches the Harbormaster’s lighter off the table, flicks it to life, and hurls it at the bar where it ignites the many broken bottles of Snakehair liquor with a mighty whoompf. Flames spread fast, and there is some panicky swatting of sleeves and head-hair.

Then Bat, giddy, chops the table in two, and each half teeters on two legs for a moment before toppling over, almost exactly like the cow did in Folly Dairy. Then she moves toward the Mayor, sword leading the way, Nia still cowered behind her.

Another thick, meaty thud against the glass. Then another, then ten more.

Bat tries to say something conciliatory to the Mayor, something about hey man let’s talk this over, something about unlikely friendship, something confusing about Thursday meatballs, but it’s all lost in the hullabaloo, and anyway the sailors are almost on her.

So she raises the Harmattan and I swear you can hear it slicing through the molecules of the air between her and the Mayor, and then the Mayor yells something lost to history and then the windows explode and a flood of icy seawater pours in, along with a few thousand cod and halibut and flounder and haddock.

This tsunami careens through the stateroom, first socking the sniper in the skull, then knocking everyone else off their feet. The fish look more surprised than anyone. Then they all hit the planks and slide the length of the room and crest against the entryway.

The sword goes flying out of Bat’s hand, makes a couple rotations in the sea spray, then plummets point-first into the floor and vanishes into a hole of its own making.

“Um,” Bat says.

Then she’s under. She swallows a great deal of water. She isn’t sure which way is up. She surfaces for a moment and hears various pained cries and complicated oaths, then goes back down into the blurry drone.

Panic hits, but then she remembers the words of June Petroski: You should be below and not above / You are a denizen of the briny depths. She hums the Bedouin song to calm herself.

It doesn’t work. She slams against something hard and things get woozy for a spell.

Then she feels tiny sharp hands against her cheeks, then she’s dragged back into the air, and then she sees Captain Nia’s deranged face right in front of her, spiked headdress tangled up in her hair.

“Get me out of here with my head still attached,” she hisses, “and I’ll be your best friend.”

“I prefer cash,” Bat says, getting up. “I owe three large to the Hand.”

“Not anymore,” Nia says, spitting in her palm and holding it out to seal the deal.

Bat ignores that, coughs up a liter of seawater, then throws the little captain over her shoulder and goes into berserker mode.

+++

This has been Chapter 65 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.