The Suckhole

Previously: Batya attempts to play this card game with a sea captain, a wraith, a harbormaster, and a really old guy. The rules keep changing. There is a bioengineered scorpion and a picture of a naked lady. Bat could use a snack.

— 63 —

The cards go quick. Batya gnaws a chilled turkey leg. Her brief streak of beginner’s luck is a hazy memory and she is now consistently losing every hand. She isn’t even really looking at what she’s playing anymore, she’s mostly feeling sorry for herself. She’s thinking about the night she got out of dairy jail, and how she went to the Rock Salt office between the engagement ring shops to beat up her treacherous sister but the place was abandoned, so she set it on fire and watched it burn to the ground. Then she went to the ladies’ room in Guncotton Terminal to sleep on a toilet and feel about as pitiful as she does now.

Her opponents’ arcane shit-talking—if that’s even what it is—continues apace, knotting itself into little headaches that are thankfully dulled by her treat. (A neighborly swabbie fetched the turkey leg from the galley’s icebox and then, as he handed it over, gave her a meaningful wink.) (The meaning of the wink? Who’s to say. But she assumed it was a signal of camaraderie between low men on the ladder, and then forgot all about it till later.) There is jabber about double friday only on saturdays and equinox reversal surely you jest and impromptu jackal times infinity, and then there is silence, for which she is grateful, and then she realizes the silence is because it’s her turn, so she plays a card called the Maelstrom, adorned with a lovely painting of a young girl, pigtail’d, her back to us, standing upon the precipice of some vast and unknowable whirlpool, spiraling downward into darkness, which Bat figures is meant to represent the portal to the Afterlife, looking pretty much as her father had described it when she was a (too young) lass, a terrifying and alluring orifice which starts tugging at your soul when you’re born and draws it closer with every passing day until it finally pulls you under forever. Fort Hook locals call it the suckhole.

(Bat then notices the Black Curtain sitting in her discard pile. I guess this’ll tell me how I’m gonna get there, she thinks.)

Captain Nia looks at the girl on the Maelstrom card with an unfathomable expression, then says, “And that’s that. Miss Atropos here steps in and severs our game’s thread. The Maelstrom signals the final round, the round of death-rattles, and of death, and of eternal passage, and as the round goes, so does the game, and as the game goes, so does the Merciful Wind.” She takes the case out from under her heeled boots, unlocks it, withdraws the scimitar, gently places it on the table.

Bat can’t help but stare at the Harmattan, curved and wicked and lascivious, absorbing the late afternoon light. She remembers how good it felt in her hand, how correct, and how, for once in her life, she knew exactly what to do and exactly how to do it, a jagged white fire lighting up her veins as she sliced through the shackles of Donna the Magic Cow.

The Harbormaster lights his cigar for the millionth time, slaps the lighter down with glee. “That blade’s coming home with me, I promise you that. I’ll hang it above my bed so my many lovers can feel its threatening presence.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Nia says. “Now, before we proceed, some administrative business. The maturity date of all promissory notes is today, now. Any deadbeats will receive an abbreviated consultation from Kleina’s rifle. And, of course, all buy-ins and flutters and loosies go to the house.”

Some cheers from the drunken crew along the perimeter.

“Aether, please grace us with your final card,” Nia says. “The courier’s score has taken permanent residence in the cellar, so only the most boneheaded maneuver will keep you from nabbing the bronze, namely a lifetime supply of Snakehair Bonewater.”

“What’s that, one bottle?” Bat asks.

“Aye.”

Sister Aether sits motionless for a spell, then parts her chain-veil. Bat is surprised to see not a desiccated hag skull but a striking and unlined face, almost aggressively attractive. Also: an oasis of stillness amid the anxious vibrations of the rest of her body. She plays the Loblolly Boy and then retreats into herself, abandoning this game, this world.

“Aw, you hate to see it,” Roger says with punchable smugness, then plays the Pendulum. “All rules revert to how they were in the first round, which was about a million years ago but if you’ll recall that means North, who is me, gets spotted three points as long as, quote, the sun shines into the gaming chamber.” He points his cigar at the crepuscular rays streaming through the arched windows by the hot tub.

“Very fine, a tidy ouroboros,” Nia sighs, heart not in it. “Mister Jack? Do you have one last retort for us?”

The old man studies his cards. He makes a wet, guttural sound that seems to travel up through his entire body before settling in his sinuses. His head slumps down against his chest. Time passes.

“Is he dead?” Bat says.

The captain claps her hands to get someone’s attention. “Does anyone have a powder box I can hold to his nostrils, see if he still befogs a mirror?”

“I’m alive, damn you,” Jack says, straightening up, bones creaking. He clears his throat, which takes a while, then throws down a card called the Tsuris.

“What’s that do?” Bat says.

Nia has to think about it. “Long time since I’ve seen it. I believe it upsets the cardinal directions. Which would make Jack here…our new North.”

“Irrelevant,” Roger says, tapping his card. “That does not overrule the Pendulum.”

“You sure?” Jack says.

The Gorgon suddenly lurches starboard. Carrick cards slide hither, yon. The sword rattles. Bat grips the edge of the table, already feeling seasick. Now what, she thinks. She can hear the crew up on deck stumbling around. She just wants off this boat, it’s all she’s ever wanted, it’s her one true passion in life.

The bosun again appears in the doorway. “Another ruckus, cap’n.”

Nia’s frown is in the shape of a croquet wicket. “Of what variety?”

He shrugs. “Excessive sea life aboil ‘neath the keel, best I reckon. Het up for reasons.”

“Very helpful, Dennis, as ever.”

“Uh oh,” Jack says, gesturing with his stubbled chin toward the bow. “Where’d those precious sunbeams run off to?”

It’s now noticeably darker there in the stateroom. They all look to the windows. Icy rain is spattering against the glass, tink-tink-tink. Thunder. They all look back at the old man.

“Is this your doing?” Nia says.

“Who are you, old timer?” Bat says.

Jack makes a sharp, dry noise that Bat supposes is a laugh. “Don’t you fools recognize your own mayor?”

+++

This has been Chapter 63 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland.

Next up: The Kid Who Drowned