Handshakes Turn Into Fistfights

[Alton (DELETED 7665)]

The place was an absolute dump.

Outside, the brick was crumbling and the grime clung to the windows so thickly that the inside looked like a haze of dirt and smoke. Black dirt ringed the window, layered thickest against the pane and only marginally less opaque in the center of the glass. The sign, or what was left of it, dangled precariously from a single, rusty iron chain anchored into a bracket of rotten, peeling wood. White chips of paint flaked from the once-ornate extension to drift slowly to the sidewalk like tiny bits of ash. Only half of the sign actually remained attached to the end of the chain, squealing every time a breath of wind swept down the river and simply deeming the establishment “Bar.” The entire dilapidated structure looked ready to collapse into the river.

The glow of the lights washing into the street through the window was dim, not nearly enough to actually read the watch on his wrist. He could only assume, with nightfall only a few moments behind him, that it was sometime close to six. That was perfect. The “up-tights” were flooding into the bars, just starting the night. The “low-lifes” with little more to do than to sit around the bar and drink their days away were well into their drink by now. It was the latter that he was more concerned with tonight, the only reason that he had made his way down to the end of this dockside street. A place like this was where a man went for the kind of danger he sought.

Tonight, he was looking to die.

To be more clear, he was looking for another life. He was seeking something he knew, beyond doubt, to exist in this city. He had been a willing source of food for one, offering his own life up so that the girl might survive unmolested. Soon, however, realization had struck him. She, like the rest of her kind, would not age with the passage of time. She would be forever young, beautiful, strong. She would last a thousand lifetimes after he was dead and gone.

What, then, does a man do when he is trapped in this predicament?

His youngest cousin, still a typical tween herself, had nattered on about her romance novels enough to plant the seed in his head. Things were different here, of course. Vampires did not sparkle, and most of them were much less friendly or capable of comingling with people, but the premise was still the same. The core idea remained. So what does a man do, when the woman he loves is doomed to live forever, and he is assigned a short, mortal life meant to be spent and wasted away in a flash while she remains?

The answer was easy enough, honestly.

That man has to die, to become something more than just a man.

He had stood outside the bar for near an hour, watching the people coming and going. More the former than the latter. The few that did make their way outside stumbled into the gutter, some falling on their faces and not bothering to get up. They would likely sleep the night off there, or wake with their faces frozen in a pool of their own vomit. The people going in, though, had remained inside. The crowd was gathering. In numbers, this kind of ‘people’ found their courage, leaning on the strength of one another until they were a kind of communal badass. What they failed to realize was that if the center of that structure of courage was suddenly to vanish, then they all came crashing down like a house of cards.

Shoving the door open with a shoulder, the tall Quebec native pushed his way into the shady bar, the low din of a score of conversations snapping into a disturbed silence at his intrusion. Every eye in the room was on him. He stuck out like Christina Aguilera at a GWAR concert. The patrons here matched their beloved establishment, many of them caked in the same grime to a point that he could not help but wonder if, perhaps, they were a part of the building itself. Their state of dress was appalling, those lucky enough to own a coat wearing them in tatters over hunched and tired shoulders. A group of men sat in a dark corner, a large stack of greasy, wrinkled bills piled on the table among them, one of them holding a knife.

He only had one good eye, the other an open and ugly wound; red and raw and disturbing, like looking into the mouth of hell. A ratty knit cap clung to his scalp as he ran a thick, red tongue over toothless gums. The men at either of his sides stared at the newcomer with the same intensity, their heavy frames causing the booth benches to sag. None of them appeared to have shaved or showered in years.

At the bar, a small knot of women appeared to make themselves as visually appealing as possible, though falling abysmally short of anything attractive. The shortest one, a dwarf, sat between the other two. Her thick, curly hair fell down her shoulders in a scarlet tangle. She might have been pretty, had she not made herself so gaudy and over the top. Her lips twitched in a smile at the man in the door, her associates, a pair of blonde twins that appeared older than the building itself fighting a losing battle with their aging bodies both offering him gap-toothed smiles. Time had ravaged their once beautiful features, and to look at them now was only a sad reminder of lust that might have been. Leopard print clung to their curves in all of the wrong places, the three of them looking preposterous as a result.

One of the tables in the center of the room was hosting a card game. A broad man, nearly the size of the outsider, sat leaning back in his seat as he flicked a bone-white toothpick from one side of his dirty mouth to the other. The shift caused thick, ugly lips cracked and dry with the winter cold to ripple in a wave as they passed along the slender splinter. Stubble covered his face from ear to ear, thick and unchecked, like a sort of permanent five-o’clock shadow. The man to his left, a bent, elderly dock hand, stared at him through thick, bushy brows and a beard that covered his face, falling nearly to the greasy, splintered floorboards. He worked his gums in his mouth soundlessly, rolling something along his tongue before tucking it between his gum and lip again. He turned, and spat into the floor. The thick, brown ooze that left his mouth slowly trailed across the heavy slant of the floor into one of the many cracks in the wood.

The other man, sitting to his right, wore a ratty old flannel shirt. His head was shaved and polished to a fleshy sheen. It was probably the cleanest looking thing in the bar. Tattered jeans showed more flesh than they covered, his old boots nearly falling off his feet as his foot shifted against the floor.

Alton lifted a hand, pulling the cap from his head and tucking it beneath his arm. He was richly dressed, an expensive Armani winter coat hung from his shoulders, falling all the way to his shins. Lambswool lined the interior, broad brass buttons, polished to a shine, held the coat in place. Gloves kept his hands warm, made from genuine imported Italian leather, custom tailored for his grip. He knew, without a doubt, that he had a target painted right between his eyes walking into this place. He offered the room at large a smile, and made his way through the silence to the bar.

One of the twins moved to lean against his side, pushing a pair of over-large fake breasts against his arm as she tried to show what she really had to offer. The implants and injections made her aging face look too tight, her entire body had a sort of plastic look to it. She was barely holding herself together, and he doubted there was any part of her that had yet to see the knife. He waved her off without a word and looked to the bartender, a short, fat lout cleaning a greasy glass with a greasier rag. His hair had fled him early in his years, the thin wisps left to him combed over the mostly bald pate of his head in an attempt to grasp what little bit remained of his dignity. The greasy, unwashed strands of ugly brown stuck to his sweaty scalp as he offered Alton a glowering stare. His girth allowed him little room to move behind the bar, but as the Canadian man ordered a simple house beer, the tender moved with a surprising agility and precision, darting across the bar to the ice chest.

The movement came with obvious years of practice. The man was an old hand at this game, and that alone made him a man to look out for. Anyone that could survive a scene like this for long was bound to be a tough son of a *****. A single bottle of the cheap, pisswater swill only a bar like this one could call a beer slid across the dimpled and pocked bar surface to clap into Alton’s heavy hand. He offered the man his thanks, and pushed him a twenty dollar bill. “Keep the change.” he muttered, and lifted the beer before parting from the bar. He stepped around the timeworn whore, leaving her in a wroth and bewildered fit as she fell back into her stool with a flop of her flesh against the leather seat and a loud, distressed huff.

It was that moment that the rest of the room slowly returned to what it was doing. First to speak was the dwarf woman at the bar, snapping at the older woman for her inexcusable failure, or her stupidity for even trying, he was not really sure. It was clear, though, that the old broad had gotten herself into plenty of trouble for the evening. Maybe she would be the one to do it, to follow him out and slip a blade between his ribs. He stole a glance at the woman, shooting him a dark, murderous scowl. She was a candidate, for sure.

Quietly, the large, barrel-chested man moved back through the bar the way he had come, and stopped at the table with the cards scattered across its splintered and poorly treated surface. He said nothing, and kicked the fourth, and unclaimed, chair from the table and sat. It could be any one of these, if things unfolded like he planned. He reached into his coat, feeling around in the pocket against his breast for the billfold, flipping it open and laying five crisp, neat hundreds on the table. Five hundred dollars rested on the table, a fortune for the trio around the table. It was only a drop in the bucket, barely scratching the surface of his winnings, laid back for years now. Even that, now, was just a shade of what he was really gambling with tonight. He put his life on the line this time, completely unsure of exactly how the night might really end.

If they were anywhere, he would expect a creature so affiliated with the dark and seedy side of the world to be in a place like this one. He laid his life on such cursory knowledge, but such a great reward required an equally great risk. His night was going to end in one of two ways. He would meet dawn as a corpse, or he was going to be one of them. Either way, he was better off than living on like this, knowing what waited for him in the twilight years of his life.

He folded his fingers together and stared into the dull eyes of the big man in the center of the trio, waiting for his cards to be dealt.

[Enver Marshall II]

Enver just wasn't the same man that Crash knew anymore, so it was no surprise he was alone, again, in a bar tonight. But instead of feeling down about the man that was lost, Crash was busy checking out the scene, feeling the crowd and looking for a client base. There were women at the bar, three or four of them that had his eye. Some of the broads looked like they needed a pick me up and he might have what they were looking for. It wasn't the best cut, and was three-fourths cocaine, the other fourth was some store brand, generic baby powder you could find at any large retail chain's shelf. Did he make a few enemies doing that? **** yeah. Did Crash care? Nope. Most nights no one could find him anyways, he hopped around from district to district or stayed in Keara and Enver's home until people forgot about the guy that scammed them. Hey, everyone wanted a profit and he was no different. This way he could give his dealer what he expected in return and make an even bigger profit by cutting the quality down with some crappy stuff. Everyone wins in Crash's mind.

"Hey there." Crash honed in on the one in the middle, the shorter one. "You new in town?" He cozies on up to the woman, almost pushing the one on her right to the side as he made his move. She laughed and looked at the other two women nervously, as if in disbelief that anyone would be talking to her. Evena guy who looked like he might be a little rough around the edges,. She engages him in small conversation, letting him know she comes here a lot and that he should buy her a drink. He does. Nothing expensive, something cheap. A rail drink, but the other woman doesn't care and soon the other two are wondering what is so special about the short woman between them that they try and get his attention too. And he lets this go on for a little bit, playing them all, until he asks if they're looking to make the night a little more better than what it is now. For only fifty bucks. The smaller, uglier woman of the bunch hesitates and then is prompted by her other two friends to go ahead. "You only live once." They tell her before they all chip in some money to buy what he's offering. Crash takes the cash, finishes his own house beer and decides its time to move on. To get out of here before they realize they've been scammed. Or maybe they never would know. He doubted they did anything harder than attempting pot at some friend's party or in a back seat of some car in their teens.

He decides not to risk it anyways and heads to the bathroom. That's what Crash tells them, so they don't get suspicious. After a few 'awws' and huffs, he's able to slip away, only to be distracted by what was going on in the middle of the place. Crash was a gambling man. He gambled his own life away time and time again, but the opportunity to turn fifty dollars into anything more is what drives him. Not only is he a gambling man, but he's a greedy man too. And his greed always wins him over. But, so is Enver. He knows this. And that's just who he texts.


To: Enver Marshall II
From: Crash

Hey. There's something big going on at this pub. Big money. Spot me twenty?

Crash didn't want to use all his money. Only idiots bet everything they had on them and Enver had enough money to spot him a couple tens. Especially if one of them won big. Crash took a picture of the guys at the table before sending it to Enver and waited for his reply as he moved to the bathroom to drain the lizard.

Crash had just finished doing the shake when the phone went off, vibrating it off the tall porcelain urinal and to the ground where a startled Crash jumped and howled in pain as his fly zipped the sensitive skin of his boy bits. Tears welled in his eyes as he hunched over and took long, deep breaths and counted to one hundred before Crash attempted to stand again. He only got to a seventy degree angle or so when he took a few more breaths in and then pushed himself to stand.

Crash hugged the side of the urinal, not caring what was on the side of it as the tears clung to the corners of his eyes. He cursed and then waddled to the sink where he washed his hands, dried them from the air dryer and then to make this **** situation manageable, Crash pulled out his own personal stash of coke that wasn't part of the splitting he'd done earlier, put it on the corner of the sink, leaned down and snorted it up one nostril. He followed suit for a second round through the other nostril and then rubbed at his nose and wiped his hands on his jeans before he stood and clapped his hands together shouting "Whew!"

He waited a minute or two before collecting his phone off the ground and reading the text from Enver who said he was coming, but needed the location. And that this had better be really big money or he was leaving Crash with not only a twenty but a foot up his *** for wasting his time on something that didn't pan out again. Crash hurriedly replied to the text saying he wouldn't be sorry, attached the name of the dive bar with the text and hit send before rubbing at his nose again and vacating the bathroom to get to that table.

"You guys interested in making some more money? I've got some." Crash pulled out the fifty, which got him barely a glance before he sweetened the pot. "I've got a friend coming in a few minutes. He's not shy about spending. Big spender." Crash waited for the invite to be dropped, and it was, in the form of a chair being kicked out slowly to him before he sat and looked around for Enver. "If he ain't here in ten minutes, you're out. Fifty and all." The dealer eyed Crash before passing some cards in his direction.

[Alton (DELETED 7665)]

A long moment of silence passed the table, the crisp, clean presence of the intruder standing out in the bar like a beacon of light on a foggy night. Hard, steely glares bore into one another, neither backing down even as the pair to either side of the man across from him glared him down as well. They were as inconsequential as gnats, as entirely beneath his notice as possible. The only reason the man in front of him held his attention at all was that he held the cards. The crisp bills lay on the table between them, a taunting mound of colorful Canadian currency, too much for any of them to pass up. Without a word, the man reached for the deck, cutting the cards and shuffling them again. As he flicked the cards into place, another man made himself comfortable, sliding up to the table in the chair that had been kicked out for him and dropping his own money into the pot.

He appeared much more at home here. He blended in with the crowd, at least, better than Alton had. It would not have been hard, if he had been bothered to try. The point was to appear as obnoxiously opulent as possible, flashing as much of his money as he could, to gain the patrons’ ire. The mention of his friend only made the situation that much less ideal. He was going to have to make this an extravagant performance, if he was going to be vying for the irrational loathing of the poor fellows in this dive. He thumbed his nose, and stared down the man chewing on the toothpick, who had turned to grin at the newcomer. He laid down the law on the minimal buy-in, assuring him that his place was secure for what might have been all of two hands, before he was out of the game, and leaving anything he might earn with him.

Lifting a hand, he ran his fingers across the rough stubble of his chin. This was becoming more complicated than he had first anticipated, but the plan was still in motion. It was hardly prudent to bow out now. The ultimate goal for tonight had little to do with the game itself, and simply with the cultivation of the hatred of the party around his table. He had to plant a seed of rage, the flashing of his money, the nonchalance of the plight of their economic disposition, and let it grow to fruition. He could already see the seething loathing in their eyes, the way that his indifference toward losing the potential of what was easily a week’s pay for them around the table had set them to a boil. The roll of money in his coat was target enough, and painted him the enemy of everyone in the bar.

It had not failed to notice that the gentlemen at the table were hardly the only group harboring a disliking for him. The women from the bar, charmed by the man that had joined them after his buy in, only disliked him the more. The crowd along the walls, the grimy, gritty fishermen and dock hands, the harbor freighters and deckhands from the ships that travelled the waterways, transporting goods from across the ocean inland, all seemed to glance in his direction from time to time, a low, sinister murmuring of derision rising in volume until the entire bar seemed to buzz with their contempt for the man at the table. He went on, uncaring for the tension that seemed to swell through the building, all surrounding him like a murderous storm, intent on nothing more than bleeding the life from him with a thousand jabs of this knife, that shiv, or some utensil or instrument, improvised or intended.

Harsh, but not ultimately unexpected. It was, in fact, all that he had been counting on for this entire endeavor to succeed. He could almost taste the revulsion on the tip of his tongue. It was a sweet, heady mixture of blood and fire that threatened to intoxicate him on a level that the beer that rested between his seat and the pile of cash in the center of the table could ever hope to approach. It was a mortal sort of pleasure that drew from somewhere deep in his bones. He was one step closer to exacting his plan; toward making that final gamble.

Not a word had been spoken to the monetary titan, and the gazes of the others were boring into him now, never looking away longer than they had to as the cards were flicked into place with an expert hand. The deck was a common Bicycle brand poker deck, like you could find in any corner service station in town. The cards were newer than anything in the bar, crisp and unbent. They appeared to be unmarked, and genuinely clean. That would make his task all the easier. Without a glance to any of the players glaring at him, he used the nail of his thumb to lift the tips of the cards, making note of their values. His face was like stone as he lifted them off the table, keeping them from the view of the others as he glanced over the faces of the cards.

Two Kings. Off to a good start.

The rest of the cards were dealt and the river cards were laid in the center of the table, just shy of the pot. One by one, the dealer flipped the cards, lying them face up and drawing up to the fourth card. An Ace, a Jack, a King, and a five. Three of a kind. Not bad at all. He reached into his pocket and flipped open his money clip. The solid silver piece made a soft sound as it clicked open, and he pulled a fifty bill from the folded stack, and dropped it into the center of the table. “In.” He muttered, and tucked his money back into his coat. He waited as the others stared in silence as the newest bill on the pile, before pushing their own matches for the amount. Most of them came in small bills, crumpled, greasy, torn, well used. They were as assorted and poor a lot as the louts around him.

He glanced from one face to the next, glaring back into the hard, flinty eyes of the hardened men that had originally occupied the table. He could feel the tension from them, as hard and heavy as stone. Their manner toward the newer of the visitors was much more genial, if you could call anything that these sort did genial. The glares that found him were more inquisitive, and mistrusting, but not a note of hatred, of you could compare to the looks that he received himself. The maintained bald man on their left ran a hand across the polished dome of his scalp, dark eyes finally moving from Alton’s face to the cards in his hand. He frowned, and stared at them for a long moment before he had pushed his own wad of currency into the pile. A greasy twenty, and an assortment of ones and fives, as he muttered his “Call.” The big man, sitting across from him, didn’t so much as look at his cards. He pulled a dirty, wrinkled fifty bill from his cash and dropped it into the pot. “Call.” He grumbled around his toothpick, chewing on it with a vigor that was liable to grind the wooden grain into nothing.

The old man on their right idly stroked the length of his beard, stopping when he reached his lap as he glared into his cards in a long, suffering silence. The wrinkles touching the corners of his eyes drew lines that sank deep in the flesh of his face as a dark stare moved over the face of the cards. Alton could almost smell the burn of the gears in his head as he thought, pondering long and steadily over the hand, and the cards on the table as he ran his fingers through the thin, wispy strands of his silver beard. He moved his mouth, working the object from between his gums and running it along the length of his cheek with his tongue as he squinted at his cards in thought. Suddenly, he tucked the object into his gum again in a new place, and smiled a toothless grin, a dry, cracked sound leaving his throat that Alton could only assume was some kind of a laugh before he took two wet twenties and ten singles, slapping them over the pile of cash with a wet plop.

“Feck it. I’ll call ya, too.” The old man muttered, his voice harsh, like a rake scraping over a rusty length of chain link. Slowly, all eyes turned to the new man, the one with promises of a new wealth to be showered on the table. All eyes, but Alton’s, who was quietly watching the room around him. Each pass only brought new, and more horrible faces into his mind’s eye. The women at the bar were chatting up someone new, some poor sap that had sidled over for a dirty glass of some swill. The dwarf had taken the man’s hand and was leading him into a back room, while the twins were still glaring at Alton as he ignored them.

The man with one eye spat into the floor, before his glower turned to one of the heavy apes they called men sitting at his left and he murmured to the mountain of muscle and bone, before he began to jab the knife into the table between his fingers. The pile of wrinkled bills on the table had grown since Alton had last looked in their direction. The soft thunk, thunk, thunk of the knife in the heavy table top had gone unnoticed before, but the blood dripping from the edge of the table was new, and one of the large Neanderthals sat cradling a bloody stump where his thumb had been moments before. He poured a dirty glass of whiskey over the wound, before he swallowed what was left, shaking his head without a sound.

The air in the bar was a dark, thick mixture of hate and melancholy. A hopelessness permeated everything around them, deeper even than the dirt and grim that clung to every surface they could see. It was oppressive, as difficult to withstand as the stink itself. The place smelled of stale, old sweat, and blood that had dried and soaked into the floors and walls over years and years. Rot, left unchecked and uncleaned, clung to everything and everyone. It showed in the dark, black teeth of half-rotten smiles, or the gangrenous stumps of some injured wretch, still fighting through a slow and painful death as they slowly rotted into the grave, or the old, dark wood that barely supported the structure of the bar itself. Everything around them was dying, or dead, and was only subduing the advance of time as best as it could. It was fitting, then, that this was where he made his stand against death itself.

Finally, he let his gaze slowly swing from the surrounding bar to the man at his side. He could not say that he recognized the man, or what had drawn him to this table in particular, but his appearance and the ‘friend’ he was bringing with him were a minor annoyance in the grand scheme he had laid. Though, he supposed, if they were going to be a part of the game, he might as well find a way to incorporate the new pieces. His mind began to work through the scenario, figuring in the new money flow, and mentally calculating the roll in his pocket, and how much of it he would really need to make the right impression here. He lifted a hand, and gave a sharp whistle to one of the waitresses as she sauntered by. She paused, and he cracked a broad, perfect smile to the curly blonde hair with legs. “Three bottles of your finest whiskey, doll. And enough glasses for the table, will you?” She could only smile, but the expression failed to reach her eyes, the hard glint of distaste there in her gaze, too. He shrugged off the dislike and turned to the man at his side. “Hope you boys like a good drink. It always seems easier to part fools with their money when a little alcohol greases up the spending process.”

He laughed, the sound as rich as his aura, amused and light in the heavy air of the bar. He was jovial, and nonchalant in a dismal world of gloom and grit. It was obscene, the way he seemed as genuinely oblivious to the plight of the patrons around him. And that was how he meant to appear. “So, are you in monsieur?” He muttered, his Quebec accent lacing thickly into his words, now. Another layer on the thick tower of dislike for the man.

[Enver Marshall II]

Fifty just to play? This guy was a joke and was going to take Crash to the cleaners before he even got into the game. But Crash knew if he could just hang in there...His only fifty was slapped down on the table with a, "I'm in," from the guy with a shy five o'clock shadow on his features as Crash dropped down into the chair offered to him. Hopefully, time and Enver would be on his side soon. The man dressed all in black from neck to toe just nodded his head and sat at the table and watched the cards being passed. His phone buzzed a couple times while the cards were being tossed to each player at the table. Crash would reach into his leather coat to see what the buzzing was about; two customer's needed stock tonight for different reasons and the third was Enver saying he was almost here. He just didn't know where to park his car in the divvy part of town like this.

Crash rolled his eyes, and was interrupted by another player staring him down like he was doing something wrong. "No phones." He grumbled at the thrall, who in turn nodded his head, muttered an apology and shoved the phone back in his coat without so much as a single reply to any of the text messages. Enver could figure out where to park his car-chances of anyone trying to steal a car as expensive as his in a place like this were slim to none. A car like that had to have a pretty decent security system and knowing Enver, anything else that was legally possible to always know where the car's location was at.

Crash picked up the cards passed to far, and looked at each card so far-and it wasn't getting off to a good start. Not at all. He held in his hand, a three of spades, six of diamonds and two of diamonds. He swallowed softly, knowing Enver was going to kill him if he lost the last of the money on him so early in the game, so let his eyes wander to the other players, trying to gauge them. Most were shuffling cards around, trying to make the strongest hand they could make out of what they've been dealt, one just kept his cards how they had been dealt. Either he had a hand full of garbage, or he was going to reveal something really strong at the end, when everyone assumed they had owned his hand minutes before. He was the one Crash was going to keep an eye on-along with the other guy that didn't acknowledge his arrival in any capacity. Something just wasn't....kosher with him, Crash thought. He was too focused on the game and his hand.

But, without any further thoughts, his hand was being called by the guy that seemed to be running the show, and Crash switched some cards out for a pair of sixes and showed those off to everyone-since his hopeful small straight wasn't going to pan out. There was a small chuckle from the card dealer, who shook his head, his eyes now landing on the quiet guy. "What about you?" The dealer leaned back in his chair lazily, after revealing his playing hand, which far surpassed Crash's hand with two pairs, and waited, with a very smug look, for what he assumed would be his win; indicating how his night was going to go for the guy and the other players.