The King of the Mothers

Previously: Batya inherits the playing cards of the recently assassinated cowboy, and learns that one of them will tell her how she’s going to die—if she loses the game. This seems like a reasonable turn of events and makes a lot of sense to me.

— 62 —

The Dandy Gorgon ventures farther out to sea, rolling, pitching, oaken creaks and glassy rattles. The crowd of doofs surrounding the game settle into a kind of genial stupor, passing bottles of experimental Snakehair liquor among themselves. Kleina the sniper gets the jets in the hot tub just to her liking. And as for Batya, well, it occurs to her that she’s never been hungrier in her whole life. She’s had nothing today aside from the crab coffee, which is currently gnawing an angry hole in her soul.

“The gloaming phase came to an abrupt, gory conclusion,” Captain Nia Muto says, and Bat is starting to get pissy at all this lingo beyond her ken, “and now we enter low noon, the final phase, the time when we pull out all the stops from our organ and pound upon the keys for one last mighty blast. And to the victor goes the Merciful Wind, this unforgiving blade of legend. Best of luck to you and your extremities. Mister Jack, if you would.”

The old man doesn’t hesitate, throws a card out onto the table. Bat sees it’s called the Garrote and has a lurid illustration of a severed head, eyes x’d out, tongue a-waggle, gore dripping from the neck-hole. Seems pretty tough, Bat thinks, then nods, then makes sure everyone sees her nodding so they know how astute she is.

“North is muted,” Jack says.

Roger the Harbormaster eagerly throws down a card called the Hi’iaka. “Nice try but this begs to differ.”

Jack says, almost to himself, “Tis quarter till. Terrestrial cards only.”

Roger’s mouth falls open in surprise, then closes, then opens up again: “Are you joshing, granddad?”

“I do not make the rules, I merely abide by them.”

“See, that’s what I like to hear,” Nia says.

“Pull that terrestrial bull-roar in a real parlor and see where it gets you,” Roger says. “Strung up, I’ll warrant.”

“Play, will you,” Nia says.

“I played.”

“You are silenced, pallie,” Jack says, his raspy voice a smidge louder. “Your card does not negate that.”

Roger makes a show of looking at his overlarge watch. “Well. Let’s see here. It is now…forty...six past the hour. Hi’iaka stands.” 

Sister Aether makes a sound like a python strangulating a rat. Nia sighs and says, “I, personally, would be ashamed to play that way, but there is no rule against being a sickening reprobate. At the moment, anyhow. Miss Batya, table is yours.”

Bat sees no point in belaboring things, so she picks a card at random and tosses it on the pile.

Everyone looks at the card, then at her.

“Hm,” Jack says.

“What?” Bat says.

“Look at her, playing dumb,” Roger says, relighting his damp putrid cigar.

“Promise you I ain’t playing.”

The wraith flickers, glares at Nia. “That is not the tack of a greenhorn.”

“Oh stop,” Nia says. “She strikes me as genuinely ignorant.”

“And yet she opens with the Spanking Machine?” Roger says. “At high tide?”

Nia pats Bat’s arm with her manicured hand and then keeps it there. “It does seem unlikely, doesn’t it.”

“It suddenly occurs to me that this entire rigmarole with the cowboy was perhaps a way of smuggling in a ringer.”

Nia seems delighted by this idea. “You’re saying I staged that ghastly attempt on my life? To what end, Roger? I want this monstrous sword out of my life, not in.”

The Harbormaster jabs his cigar at her. “What you want is to get the most money possible for it, so you dispense with Dezzetti and bring in your card sharp to fatten the bets.”

“I swear to you on my mother’s grave,” Bat says, something she would often say to her mother (who is all too alive), “I have never played this game before. And I’m pretty sure I’ll never play it again.”

“Indeed,” Aether says.

“Then it’s settled,” Nia says. “You are in the lead, acushla, and you get another turn.”

“Oh nice. This game is easy. Can I play two cards?”

Roger pounds his fist on the table. “Outrageous!”

“I was just asking.”

“It so happens you can play two cards,” Nia says. “Since you are the youngest player, by a long shot, and it’s the last day of the month.”

“Sweet,” Bat says, throwing down the Intestine and—why not—the Black Curtain.

Roger pounds another fist. “Villainous!”

“Fare thee well to my entire gambit,” Aether hisses.

“If that scuttles your gambit then you never had a gambit,” Jack informs her.

The wraith starts to flicker more savagely.

“Quit stalling, Sister,” Nia says. “Don’t make me bring out the sandglass.”

Aether coalesces into a solid form and plays something called the King of the Mothers. The others groan—including Bat, trying to play along.

“That there’s a tiresome detour, cap’n,” Jack says. “Ain’t no way to crown a winner.”

“What would you have me do?” Nia says. “I am but a pawn of the cards, as are we all.”

“Anticlimax is what it is,” Roger says.

“I’m sure you’re no stranger to that,” Nia says. “Now, everyone, please, throw in.”

“Throw in what,” Bat says, over it. She’s dismayed to see her hands are shaking. Hungry as shit, she thinks. Deranged with hunger.

“Reach into the pocket closest to your heart, withdraw whatever you find there, add it to the pot. The dealer, who is I, will judge which item has the most value, based on whatsoever criteria I choose, and its possessor shall take the round.”

“Preposterous!” Roger says.

Bat shrugs, roots around her new vest, finds her little sewing kit, flings it onto the table.

“Hell is that?” Roger says.

“Needle and thread for stitching up my gouges,” Bat says, showing him her battered hand.

“What a tiny precious life,” Nia murmurs, running her fingers over the wounds.

Jack lobs a handful of fishing flies. One barbed hook gets caught in his thumb, he plucks it out and adds it to the others.

“Hell’re those?” Roger says.

“Tungsten bead jighead nymphs,” Jack says with disgust. “How do you not know that? What sort of man are you?”

“A man amongst plebes,” Roger says, taking out a well-worn photograph. “Now here is something of true value.”

Aether examines it through her chain-veil. “Appears to be a floozy wearing one-third of a maid’s uniform.”

“Is that your wife?” Nia says. “Apologies, I forgot your marriage lasted thirty seconds. Is that your ex-wife?”

“That is a tasteful boudoir portrait of—of a distant cousin not of these shores, who—never mind, it is a work of art, is what it is.”

“Looks like a pair of tits to me,” Bat says. “You always carry that around?”

“I like to gaze upon a naked lady from time to time!” Roger says. “That is normal—and healthy!”

“It is good to attend to one’s own needs,” Nia says, sounding tired. “Sister, wrap this up.”

“Gladly,” the wraith says, opening her hand to let a large gold scorpion skitter out onto the table.

There is a collective intake of breath from the players, and the sailors gathered behind them. Shoulders tense, knuckles whiten.

“This is the latest prototype. Boys in the lab call him Spike. That color was very difficult to get right.”

“Aether, you absolute ninny,” Nia whispers, ducking behind Bat. “Get that thing out of here.”

“It won’t sting unless I tell him to,” Aether says. “Or you startle him. Or there’s a shift in the temperature, we’re still working out some of the—”

Bat reaches out and smashes the scorpion to paste with her meaty fist.

The old man cackles, Roger spits out his cigar. Sister Aether shrieks, the sound vibrating Bat’s false teeth. Then she flickers so violently that she’s just a spectral gossamer, hardly there at all, and then she’s not there at all, and then she’s back, gasping. “I cannot begin to calculate—”

“Then don’t,” Nia says. “You know there’s no love lost between me and your little abominations.” She scrapes up the remains of the scorpion and hucks it at a nearby cabana boy. (Who ducks and says, under his breath, “I quit.”)

“Then at least proclaim me king of the mothers,” the wraith says, eyes burning behind her veil. “Spike is—was—obviously more precious than the pocket lint and the, the, the incestuous smut of my opponents.”

The captain considers this, or pretends to, then says, “Granted. The round goes to Aether and her hideous pet who is in Hell where it belongs, thanks to the quick thinking of our courier.”

“I don’t think there was any thinking,” Bat says, wiping scorpion guts from her fingers.

“Good. Perhaps also don’t think about how you came dead last this turn, and how the Curtain goes back into your hand.”

Bat scoops up the card, still unadorned but for the wavy line. She realizes she has almost no arrows left in her quiver, as her corny sister puts it, but she’ll always have at least one: sass-mouth. “It’s fine. I already know how I’m gonna die.”

“And how’s that, courier?” the old man says.

“Of boredom playing this game,” she says. “Say, can a gal get a salty snack in this dump or what?”

+++

This has been Chapter 62 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland. I apologize for the irregularities in the posting schedule here at this late stage, but I appreciate your patience during the grueling artistic process of making up ridiculous shit.