Empty Bottle Saviors - Chapter 1
They parked in front of The Dollar bar on the corner of Main and King. Chris in the front seat smoked Indian cigarettes from across the river, his veins protruding from his neck with each deep inhale as Trai waved the smoke away next to him. “How do you smoke that shit?” He asked, and Chris shrugged his shoulders, looking out the driver’s window, waiting for the man they were here to see.
In the back, Jake was seated in the middle, and snoring away, dreaming of bathtubs filled with money, and big burly men, and a world where he didn’t have to lie about who he wanted to fuck. A world where he wouldn’t be persecuted for the thoughts that made his dick hard.
“Where’s Luke?” Trai asked, and Chris sighed deep, feeling that all too familiar blackout anger, coming closer like a thick black storm.
“With the bitch, I imagine.”
“Fucking dude is whipped.” And Chris thought about that term, and he was going to give Luke a whipping alright, he was going to pistol whip his mouth, and watch that fresh scarlet blood drip into the snow, and he’d watch his eyes go big and face pale, and he’d watch that cocky smirk he wore like a badge of honour, disappear into the cold hard ground. If he didn’t smarten up soon, Chris would kill him, as simple as that.
“Oh, shit, C, I think that’s him?” And Trai pointed to the man exiting the bar, and then he slapped Jake’s leg, and Jake bolted awake. “Is that him?” Jake asked, half-asleep “Is that the fucking Piano Tan?” And he laughed, and then Chris laughed, letting Luke fade into the back of his mind for a while.
He loved this shit, and he knew that because he loved it, there was something wrong, something about the internal mechanisms in his head, or the wiring in his frontal lobe that was wrong. He knew that if he were to see a therapist, and let the therapist give him the rorschach test, those black blobs would be busted skulls, and blood red rain dripping down and running heavily into the sewer, and a man with with a blonde crew cut, smoking Indian cigarettes. A man who could be king. A man who could be king of a town that just birthed him in order to watch him die. But he wouldn’t die. His skin, and his muscles, and his blood would be around for a long time, and even when his body eventually committed the ultimate betrayal, his name would whisper in the wind, it would flow through the smokestacks of the pulp mill. His name would be uttered with fear on the playgrounds of the schools, where kids would look around them before whispering, like he was bloody fucking mary or something. They’d tell stories about him, and when they went camping and roasted marshmallows under a starlit sky, and talked about deranged killers with hooks for hands, who dragged themselves across soft summer soil and scraped tents, and killed kids, they’d call that freak Chris. Even if they didn’t know why, they would call him Chris because they’d know subconsciously, that he was the monster that made monsters hide under the bed or inside the closet in the first place.
Piano Tan stumbled down King waving goodbye to no one because no one saw him out. He smiled and laughed at either a joke in his head, or a joke heard back in the bar that had come back up his body like acid reflux. He laughed and whistled, and sang, “Baby all the lights have turned on you, now you’re in the center of the stage.” And he whistled again, and snapped his fingers. He lit a cigarette, and then leaned up on the brick wall of the antique shop, and let it flow down the cracks of the bricks, onto the collection of weeds that sprouted near the entrance of the shop. “Everybody loves you now.”
“Big crowd tonight?” A voice said from behind the man. Piano Tan jumped and turned at the same time. “Jesus, hide your little prick would ya?”
The guys in the car laughed, and Chris smiled, making the man nervous. Nervous for walking in the bar that evening, for singing Billy Joel songs to a few drunken blue collars, and walking out whistling Dixie, when there was a debt owed.
“You look nervous, or maybe you’re just cold. Lucky for you we’re a man short tonight, so why don’t you hop on in.”
Greg Whistler, aka Piano Tan, because of his dark Italian complexion and love for Billy Joel, felt his heart hit the cage of his chest like a feral animal trying to escape imprisonment. Chris stared at him with those psychotic eyes, never wavering, never blinking, just honing in. He continued to smoke his cigarette with his left arm on the door of the car, like he was patience personified, like he had all the time in the world. But that was the most frightening part of the man. Because he wanted you to think that, he wanted you to feel comfortable, so that when he went to town on you, you were shocked, and betrayed, and that mixed with the physical pain of his hard knuckles that never bruised, and his shit-kicker boots with the pointed heels, was made all the worse because you never thought he'd do it.
Uh, I’m alright, thanks guys. I just live around the corner.”
Hey, it’s no problem,” and Jake in the back opened the door and patted the seat next to him. Piano Tan took a deep breath and looked both ways, seeking something. Salvation in the form of a cop car, or salvation in the form of an out. But there was neither. There was just King St. A closed antique shop, closed furniture store, closed post office, closed high school, closed law firm and accounting offices. The world was asleep. The world except for the Saviors. So he hung his head in defeat, taking one last whiff of the cool evening air, and telling himself to remember it. And then he walked into the car, hoping the calmness was real, and that he had a fighting chance to explain himself.