Midas. Sin city. A Caligula seaming the silent, tranquil passing of the midnight hours.
Or perhaps a Mephistopheles more evil than any conniving sovereign. Or an embodied Shangri-La hiking up the hems of her layered, neon-bright kimono, seducing souls while wanton laughter spilled from the corners of her mouth.
Midas' rotting will and heart and intellect collected hither and yon in stagnating pools and ruled without question over a darkness beholden to no one.
For all these reasons it was called the Midas Pleasure Quarters. The infamous city was an urban satellite of the central metropolis of Tanagura, itself ruled by Lambda 3000, the giant mainframe known as "Jupiter." Its virtual precincts served up every imaginable mode of amusement, answering to the wants and needs of mortal flesh. There one could find casinos, bars, brothels, and all facets of the entertainment industry.
Within the boundaries of Midas, morals and taboos did not exist. Only the night filled with salacious, suspicious, and patronizing glitz. Here, the loud and garish hours wasted away until the dawn.
But beneath its dazzling outward appearance hid another, more repulsive face: the grotesque visage of Midas supping at an endless banquet table of pleasure, where unfettered basic instincts entwined with human desire stripped bare.
The boundlessly promiscuous and enticing lightbeams floated on the darkness, and at the foot of these gigantic, fluorescing bug zappers, the jam-packed hordes bathed in the sluggish, lukewarm breezes. The clinging breath of Midas coiling about a man's listless limbs was nothing if not an aphrodisiac, numbing rationality and turning the heart and mind to jelly.
But heading across the overpasses away from the two concentric rings that formed the core of Midas—Area 1 (Lhassa) and Area 2 (Flare)—these besotted sensations faded. In the time it took for the cold night air to dissipate them, the urban landscape changed completely.
The outskirts of Midas. Special Autonomous Area 9. Ceres. The scorned "Crotch of Midas." The slums. Even the proprietors of the Pleasure Quarters furrowed their brows in distaste and never broached its boundaries.
There were no hard, high walls isolating it from the adjoining areas, no interdicting lasers preventing intrusion or trespass. Nevertheless, the avenues separating here from there marked an abrupt change in scenery obvious to all but the blind.
No signs of human habitation could be seen on the rubble and trash-strewn streets. Needless to say, the flood of garish neon staining the Midas nights was a world away, setting the crumbing walls of the buildings alight with a dirty brown afterglow.
Its odd and dissolute appearance suggested that the indifferent passing of time had suddenly refracted upon itself, warping past and future in an unexpected direction.
As did the relentless enthusiasm erupting from the Pleasure Quarters. As did the coquettish voices, smothered with flattery, scattered on the wind. Nothing reached this wasteland except in surrender to the confusion of ominous and ghastly colors.
Ceres was home to the night soil left behind in the dust of the era. Any determination to clean out the steaming piles had long since exhausted itself. And any capacity for self-renunciation and purification that could have resurrected the community as a community had died long ago.
The only sound reaching the ears were the occasional stirrings of deeply-held resentments and depraved sighs, day and night sowing the stench of rot and death. Nothing could thrive in this poisoned ground, not people and not a city. Growing accustomed to the constant drizzle of scorn, a man's dreams rotted away and died in the slums.
To the citizens of Ceres, the central metropolis of Tanagura (where everything was and would be shipshape to the end of time) was a long, long way away. An unimaginably different world. Here they were not even permitted to lick the boots of Midas, that vainglorious despot of the night.
They lived in Ceres with the painful realities of the present and the ghostly dreams of the wrecked past. No one ever promised them a rose garden.
.
.
.
That day the heavy leaden clouds moved through the skies with an unexpected quickness. The weather somehow held throughout the morning, turning bad just past noon. In the space of ten minutes, a sudden downpour became a violent thunderstorm.
The rain drummed incessantly on the ground as if to pound the slums themselves out of existence. The drains in the garbage-laden streets clogged and overflowed. With nowhere else to go, the runoff grew into a rampaging river that washed everything away with it.
.
.
.
Then came the night.
Having wrecked its mayhem and retreated, the storm left behind a sky shot through with stars. On this night alone the typically dull darkness was strangely, and refreshingly, clear.
The night's ambience alone proved refreshing. In honor of the afternoon's downpour, the youth of the slums had whiled away the hours isolated in their hovels. Now they busily vented all that stored up heat.
Mates poured down the alcohol and rushed through obligatory bouts of sex abetted by further helpings of drugs. There was nothing at all unusual about gangbangers prowling this cramped territory, knocking heads and causing trouble.
The balance of power in Area 9 changed with the seasons. Which was to say, despite the generous application of herbicide, some new species of weed would eventually spring to life after the rains went away. Yet for the most part they possessed so little spit and fire that even gossip about coups and internal rivalries was rarely taken seriously. These gang conflicts could hardly be said to constitute a "rivalry of warlords."
The place stunk to high heaven with rogue males and beasts of burden, but no one had the strength of personality to drag them into line and begin to conquer. In the end, however, there was no denying these ongoing turf wars, whose violence could in large part be blamed for the deterioration of public order in the slums.
.
.
.
Recently, the struggle for supremacy in Area 9 had arisen between Jeeks (one of the new breed of "Hyper Kids"), and Mad Dog Maddox, fighting to retain his lost power base. It was said that this constituted a battle between the old and new regimes, and all the while, powerful third parties hung back in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.
It was in this fashion that, for almost four years, rather than putting their own lives and credibility on the line and simply taking what they wanted for themselves, it was the scrambling after scraps—the ensuring of mutual restraint through mutual spinelessness—that had become common practice.
Back in the day, Bison had run the Area 9 free fire zone, also known as "Hot Crack." But at the pinnacle of their success they abruptly disbanded, and a successor had not since been decided upon.
Now it came down to either Jeeks or Maddox.
"All that remains is the timing of the coup de grâce," boasted the big mouths. But to pull that off, one decisive element was lacking: a strength of will that would charm followers and multiply the collective power of their individual strengths.
The slums had once known a man possessed of such extraordinary charisma. The boy left the Guardian foster center at the age of thirteen with no special position or privileges, yet in a surprisingly short time he'd made a name for himself in the slums.
It was not because of his striking appearance. Nor did he curry favor needlessly, nor was he quick to bend the knee, nor was his trust easily earned. Everybody who knew him agreed that it was because of the superior nature of his personality that belied his mere thirteen years.
"He's a regular Varja," they said. "Beholding to no one."
All of the residents of Midas knew of the mythical beast Varja, also known as Ragon, demon god of the underworld, or Grendel, the soul destroyer. A beast of prey that could crush a limb to the bone with a single chomp of its steel jaws and razor-sharp fangs. A disdainful chimera taking to the air with the four wings on its back, its coat glowing with a bewitching black luster.
On one hand, he was compared to that Varja because of his jetblack hair and obsidian eyes, unique even in the slums that scorned him as a mongrel and a half-breed.
On the other, it was due to the calculated ferocity that could never be imagined behind such a delicate appearance. If "survival of the fittest" was the law of the jungle, then the weak seeking out the patronage of the strong and drawing close to them was a particular quirk of human behavior.
However, he took no notice of those sucking up and lavishing meaningless compliments upon him. And though well connected, he demanded no particular quid pro quo in return. It was because he always had at his side a "pairing partner," someone who could be called his "better half." It was no exaggeration to say that he had eyes for none other than that youth.
Assuming that a person matures over the years as the trials of life accumulate, there are also those whose superior character yields neither to age nor gender. Every move he made was studied with an almost blatant interest and a curiosity, and yet, he gave all this attention little thought in the course of his day-to-day life.
Yet there was neither restraint nor mercy in the hand that so modestly brushed away the sparks alighting on his own person. Even so, the circle of those enchanted by his charisma continued to expand, and with him commanding the troops, it was only logical that Bison should have risen suddenly to prominence.
But then that day. Like a bolt out of the blue, Bison disintegrated in mid-air. The slums looked on in disbelief, speechless with amazement. Gone, just like that.
There were no two ways about it. The word went forth that Riki had retired from Bison.
Why? What were the reasons?
An extraordinary shock raced through the slums, accompanied by a flurry of obscenities and exaggerated rumors masquerading as conjecture. The truth of Bison's dissolution remained wrapped in mystery.
Only he could lead them. Regardless of the truth behind Bison's demise, Bison lacked Riki's fierce center of gravity and simply ceased to be. And so Bison all but went extinct, leaving only garish urban folklore behind in its wake.
.
.
.
Almost four years had passed since then.
The original Bison members had steadily reestablished themselves in their own way (though it'd be hard to say they'd done a good job of it), and the neighborhood had grown restless.
Naturally, over these four years a great number of pretenders had attempted to win them over and jack up the street cred of their own groups. Bison may have dissolved, but its strong presence continued to be felt, and young bloods eager to grasp even the tiniest share of that glory made transparent attempts to win them over.
While there were those who both publicly and privately proclaimed themselves remnants of the Bison fringe, Riki's old partner and the rest of the Bison veterans resisted the urge, no matter how solicitous the flattery became. After tasting the thrill of standing shoulder to shoulder with Riki and running with his pack, nothing could take his place.
The same way standing water goes bad, the qualities of a conflict changed with time. Those who couldn't ride the rising tide of the era were destined to fall behind and kiss somebody else's ass.
Seen in that light, the choice of the former Bison members was a heartfelt one. Their past glories had been cruelly reduced to rubble. Avoiding the humiliation becoming somebody else's bitch could at least be counted as an accomplishment.
And yet now there emerged those who held their presence in pure contempt. Clinging to the ultra-right wing were Jeeks and Maddox. Jeeks of the Hyper Kids and Mad Dog Maddox. No matter how much they extended their power and influence into the slums, other groups gave them a cold shoulder.
"They're not anything like Bison!"
"Posers! Nothing but pretenders!"
Calling them out and drawing the comparison to Bison—always the same, loathsome, knee-jerk reaction.
Bison. Bison! Bison!
Undoubtedly, those who saw themselves as the two power brokers of the slums had gotten fed up with the sound of that name. They could take no pride in facing off against the pretensions of a legend that was now a shadow of what it used to be. And that was why they promised once and for all that they would smash the rotting remains of the name "Bison" and everything associated With it.
The two circling moons had never been so beautiful, dyeing the night sky in bright relief.
"Haa—haa—haa—"
Panting, Kirie pressed his face against a crumbling wall in a vacant back alley and took a long, hard breath. He'd left his room and come to the usual gathering spot, intending to hook up with his mates. So what the hell was going on?
Sons of bitches! Bunch of dirty, low down—
The surprise attack had come out of nowhere. He'd somehow parried the first blow, and after that he'd taken off, running like crazy, trying to shake off his pursuers. Now, he didn't have the slightest idea where he was.
Shit!
His heart pounded like a drum and the sweat streamed off of him. All that escaped the iron trap of his mouth were the muffled bellows of rage.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Cussing was the only thing he could do in his current state of mind. Kirie wiped away the sweat coursing down his forehead. It was then, as he surveyed his surroundings, that a dot of red flame unexpectedly popped up in the darkness at the far reach of his eyesight.
He ducked his head instinctively, startled. As he did, he cast a quick glance beyond the wall and dimly observed someone sitting on the rubble of the destroyed building opposite. The corroded alleyway was painted in the shades of the night, lit up only by the precarious blue light of the two moons turning overhead.
The dot of red light was probably from a lit cigarette. What the hell was that guy thinking, lighting up in place like this? As he raised his eyebrows at the question, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed down the alleyway.
"He there?"
"Naw. Looks like he took off."
"I told you we shouldn't have pussy-footed around like that. We should have gone straight at him."
"The hell you say? That little bastard was fast.
The high register of their voices suggested boys young enough that their voices hadn't broken yet. The shadowy figures blustered on irritatedly.
"What are we gonna do now? He saw us." The atmosphere surrounding them was thick with fear and loathing.
Kirie was outnumbered. If he was discovered here, he had about a one-in-ten odds of emerging without considerable battle damage. Cognizant of the realities around him, he sank down further into the darkness, only now managing to catch his breath.
"Big deal. We lit a fire under his ass. That should be good enough, huh? No second guessing ourselves next time. We'll beat the shit out of him."
Kirie curled up his fists and ground his teeth together at the sound of these chest-thumping declarations. Smart-as kids. Kirie himself was a third-year colony-dwelling kid, but the word on the street said that the members of the Jeeks gang were all teenagers less than fifteen years old. In other words, they were fearless kids only beginning to accustom themselves to the differences between life at the foster center and life in the slums.
For the same reasons, Bison in its heyday had been even more precocious and extreme than Jeeks. At the age of thirteen, whether they liked it or not, the Bison kids were cut loose from Guardian. Left to their own devices, they had no choice but to get their shit together, and fast.
It was for that reason alone that the gang's surviving members had become for Jeeks a constant pain the ass. He never passed up the opportunity to diss the revived Bison as a pale imitation of its former self, because as long as Bison existed, everything Jeeks did would be compared to that "graven image."
That Riki was no fallen idol only made things worse. Bowing out on an unbroken winning streak made him a ghost with references and a resume.
But regardless of what had been then, just hanging with Bison these days meant a knife in the back in a dark alley, and Kirie was getting fed up with the current state of affairs. Regardless, he knew that making lame excuses about the corner he'd painted himself into was just spinning his wheels.
The kids that hung with Jeeks weren't going to rest easy until they'd torn out anybody associated with Bison by the roots.
One of the hot-headed Jeeks kids finally noticed guy lighting up on top of the pile of bricks. "Hey, motherfucker! What you doing over there?"
The insolence and arrogance in the question were the kid's way of venting the irritation over letting his previous prey escape. But the answer was not what he expected.
"This is no place for kids to be loitering at all hours of the night. So piss off and run along home."
The guy responded unexpectedly in a commanding tone of voice, and beneath its sportive tone was an edge that must have sounded all the more barbed to these fearless kids. Kirie found himself growling under his breath. "Some kind of idiot, that guy is."
He knew the kids there in front of him ran with Jeeks. If this guy was looking to pick a fight with them, then he must have brass ones the size of boat anchors. If not, he was the biggest fool on the planet.
"If you knew who you was talking to, old man, you'd think twice about opening that big mouth of yours." The kid went on, trying to salve his bruised honor as a member of the Jeeks gang. "If you don't, then we'd be happy to teach you. Try not to wet yourself." Obviously feeling he'd been dissed, the kid was going to give back twice what he was given. "It's too late to go crying to mama."
They were determined now to get it on with him. Looking to blow off some steam, the guy must have seemed the perfect target. "Yeah, that's right. You're talking to the Jeeks gang."
"Jeeks?" the guy shot back with a lack of affect that bordered on disappointment. "Sorry, don't know him. Is he the one who changes your nappies every night, then?"
Even sans the sarcasm, his manner of speaking suggested this was something other than a bad joke, and Kirie could not but gape at him. He's gotta be wrong in the head, he thought, the words nearly coming out in a gasp of disbelief.
"You don't know? You don't know the Jeeks gang? Just how stupid are you?"
"It's okay. If he doesn't know then we'll teach him." "Damn straight. Within an inch of his fucking life." The kids had already gotten their hackles up.
And yet the guy spoke again. "You think you know the slums. This is different." He was taking things at his own pace, right up to the end.
"Come on down, old man. We're gonna put a plug in that mouth of yours and tear you a new one."
"Okay, okay. Let's play, then. Time's a-wasting." The guy descended from the pile of rubble.
A laser knife tore through the darkness. Instead of staggering backwards in a panic, he nimbly stepped aside, grabbed the kid's slashing arm and delivered a solid blow in return. Then, catching the kid off balance, he mercilessly slammed a roundhouse kick against his body.
A strange shadow fell around them. No way. Sheer amazement. No fucking way! They must be dreaming.
It wasn't simply a difference in physical constitutions. That kind of precise parry and attack caught everybody by surprise. They staggered back and gaped. The "Jeeks" way of doing things was to track down and corner their prey, then gang up and hit where it was weakest. They didn't dawdle. They made up for their physical shortcomings with numbers and delivered the pain, so that the one pleading for mercy, blubbering like a baby, crawling away a misshapen wreck, was always the prey.
But this well-practiced game plan had been easily turned around by a single guy—
Draped in the darkness, Kirie murmured to himself. "Holy freaking cow."
"An eye for an eye, that's the law of the slums. And while we're at it, the same thing goes for muscle and bone." The guy nonchalantly stepped into the light of the dingy streetlamp, as if stepping out of the dark wings and into the spotlight.
"It's the same to me either way. If you plan on running away, now's the time." He slightly curled the corners of his mouth. "Otherwise, how about we go at it until we're hacking up blood?" he asked, laughing with gay abandon.
.
.
.
Friday night.
An unusual moon rainbow arced across the sky of the deep, still night. In a room in the broken-down building they used as their safe house and headquarters, the now legendary members of Bison idled away the long and tedious hours.
Once upon a time, these ruffians had made names for themselves, running wild in the slums, turning the place upside down. But for the time being they'd reformed, no longer baring tooth and claw to every provocation. Or at least that was how the casual onlooker now perceived them.
The employment rate was miserable for the kids who spent morning and night pursuing gang rivalries, leaving the slums chronically Shorthanded for labor. Setting aside the actual quality of the jobs, putting food on the table like "regular people" wasn't a problem.
Granted, as slum dwellers they had no idea what "regular people" expected in terms of living standards.
Even without dreams or desires, laboring under the weight of impotence and stagnation, human beings had to eat. Hunger constitutes the foundation in man's hierarchy of needs. Nobody in the slums wished for catered meals and six-course dinners, but nobody wished to starve and die a dog's death, either.
Food was not distributed equally, but rather according to hard work, and it was only when they hit their late twenties, when the high spirits of youth had grown stale, that they came to grips with this painful reality. Though this reckoning no doubt came to them faster than they ever expected.
.
.
.
Passing around a bottle of "tripper," a hard, hallucinatory stout, Kirie paused and spoke, as if the thought had suddenly occurred to him, "Did you hear? There's a market opening in Mistral."
"A market?" Sid queried, surprise evident in his eyes. "A Pet Auction, you mean?"
Kirie nodded curtly. "The word is, this time it's Academymanufactured pets. They're positively jumping up and down with excitement, including the new money types in Kahn and Regina. Rumor has it the bid prices will be ten times the usual."
Where in the world had he heard that? They all fancied themselves street-wise bastards but Kirie was always the first one in the know.
"Pedigreed pure bloods, eh?" Guy said to himself. "Ain't got nothing to do with us," Luke shot back.
"Not to compare us to those Academy-manufactured pets or nothing, but given the time and money, plus a little spit and polish, and we wouldn't turn out half bad neither. Aside from a bit of an attitude problem. Eh, Riki?"
Kirie turned his mismatched gray and blue eyes on Riki and laughed. As if to express his lack of interest in the subject, Riki took a swig of stout. This overt display of attitude made Kirie knit his brows. After all, being ignored in front of everybody was more irritating than being disagreed with.
Even back when Bison had swatted him aside as a precocious outsider, they'd never dissed him the way Riki did. Riki's behavior towards him felt like a hard slap in the face.
Son of a—
Grinding his back teeth, Kirie recalled the night Guy had unexpectedly brought Riki here to their customary hangout. They'd all been too surprised to say anything for a long second or two, and then, in the next instance, everybody was repeating his name in warm and oddly raised voices.
"Riki—!"
"Riki?"
"They said Riki? Seriously?"
Kirie knew him. There before his very eyes were the black hair and eyes that suggested actual Academy-manufactured quality. This was the man who'd once been called the "Charisma" of the slums.
Kirie could even now recall the inexpressible, almost intoxicating sensation that had overcome him, and it was all because of that night three days ago. It'd been burned into his retinas, whether by pure chance or inevitable fate: the man who'd led Bison was the one who went toe to toe with the kids who called Jeeks their leader— the same Jeeks who'd set himself up as the exterminator of Bison— and had subsequently whipped their asses.
"Ironic," he'd have to call it. No, a godsend. Seeing this living legend a second time, this legend that he'd never believed he'd meet again, thrilled Kirie to the core of his being in a manner that was different from the other members of Bison.
But he hadn't made a big deal about what had happened that night in front of everybody. So why did Riki turn a cold shoulder only to him? Was it because, among the gang members, Kirie's was the only face that Riki didn't know? Perhaps the legend wasn't comfortable striking up an overly familiar conversation on their first meeting.
But even after taking these factors into consideration, Kirie wasn't mollified. As a result, he dug in his heels and withdrew from the chit-chat as well. He didn't understand it, though. Perhaps Riki had taken a disliking to him; he'd had that feeling since the first time they met. Or perhaps somebody had whispered something in his ear. Nobody had said anything right to his face.
The severity of the look Riki flashed him had an edge to it that couldn't but leave any other impression. A sarcastic or biting comment would have been more welcome, because in that case, a comeback would have been possible. But Riki wasn't giving him an opening.
Far from it. Kirie was being completely snubbed, a fact he found thoroughly depressing. He narrowed his eyes in anger. Apparently blind to all of this, Riki made no attempt to lower his gaze as he stared off into the distance. Kirie scowled as he considered a cutting retort, all the more pissed off.
Right then, as if waiting for exactly the right moment, Guy softly spoke. "What's with you, Kirie? You want your own personalized collar?"
Kirie lightly clucked his tongue at the lost opportunity. He took a breath to collect his senses and answered with a forced laugh. "Yeah sure. Add in an owner who can keep me supplied with this Dublin hard ale and I'll lick the soles of his feet."
That comment got under Riki's skin somewhere. His indifferent expression suddenly turned so cold that Kirie unconsciously clenched his fists even as he flinched. For reasons he could not understand, Riki's steely gaze made his blood run cold. Feeling the full brunt of Riki's displeasure, his pent-up frustrations were about burst into flames.
What's with this motherfucker!
Kine was pinned down by that frosty, silent gaze, and he simply couldn't find his voice despite his suffocating sense of indignation. All that remained was the personal contempt for his own awkwardness, and it was burning a hole in the pit of his stomach.
At that point, sitting to his right, Luke spoke with the whisper of a smile creasing his lips. "Hey, wake up, you dumb bastard. You're not seriously thinking about becoming some half-breed slum pet, are you?"
Nobody laughed. Because it was God's honest truth, not something people joked or made snide remarks about. In an obvious effort to dispel the unpleasant atmosphere, Norris interrupted in a vexed tone of voice. "The hell with that. What's with Jeeks and those little twerps of his?"
"Yeah, yeah. I got no idea why, but lately they've been really riding our asses."
"But I heard that just the other day they ran into a chap who beat the crap out of them." Calling it a rumor, Kirie related the information casually while stealing a glance at Riki.
Riki didn't react in the slightest.
"Well, that'd be a godsend. In any case, we should take the opportunity to kick some heads in. For starters, it'd settle things down around here."
.
.
.
With no indication as to whether he was listening or not, Riki lowered his eyes and drained the last of the stout from the bottle. The alcohol touched his mouth with a particular bitterness that stabbed at his tongue, yet this time the grating sensation struck Riki in a way that was different than usual. This time it was vicious and heavy and dark, in a way that was hard to describe.
Must be just my imagination.
Riki slowly swallowed the stout as he turned the thought over in his mind. When it came to warming his chest, it was better to get high on spirits a bit smoother on the tongue, but this was the best he could expect around here.
Between the bouts of gang warfare, he'd stepped back and put some guarded distance between himself and the wild-eyed kids who prowled the Pleasure Quarters for thrills and profits. But that didn't mean he'd abandoned "the cause" and gone over to earning his daily bread by the sweat of his brow.
Every year more young bloods poured into Area 9, but the slums, running like arteries through the heart of Ceres, had already hardened, and none of them possessed the strength of will to tear open the chest and drain the infection from its vital organs.
Without a generous sugar daddy there was no one to scrounge money from. These chaps, who were hardly able to extract any kind of enjoyment from their own youth, found that the luxurious, hallucinatory ale was nothing but a dream.
A dream. Even the stout they were working on now. Three days earlier, Luke had run across a stock of supposed "class goods" somewhere, but that didn't mean he'd sampled the merchandise first to ascertain its true worth. The stout was brewed as an off-label stimulant. It was moonshine.
Downing a slug in one shot instead of working at it was a risky business. If a chap's luck was running against him, it was far from a mere "bad trip": after a good deal of thrashing about and writhing in pain, the end result was death by suffocation.
That accounted for stout's bad reputation among the alkaloid-based intoxicants, and undoubtedly was the reason that the very worst of the brand should suit the slums so well.
Still, once a fellow got thoroughly wasted, it was a trip with no toll booths and no off-ramp. He'd sit there in a phantasm—filled euphoria, his lips forming the mere shape of words, the breath escaping his taut lips sounding like crushed rock underfoot.
The stout shouldered the burdens of slum kids who had no other means of venting their frustrations. Even speaking truth to power, their souls remained unquenched. And always, there was the problem of being lightly cast aside, of being summed up in the simple phrase: "That's just the way the world fucking is."
The stout liberated them, albeit temporarily, from that existence. No one told them a chap shouldn't use off-label pharmaceuticals just because they "might be dangerous."
.
.
.
The conversation having exhausted itself, the empty silences that followed slowly began to dam up the spaces between them.
At that point, some bee having buzzed under his bonnet, Luke roused himself and turned his glazed eyes on Riki. "What's with you, man? Sitting there on your ass, getting shit-faced on this piss. I mean it, you look pathetic."
Something seemed to be lurking in Luke's muddied gaze as his eyes crawled over Riki's body like a cat's tongue licking its fur.
"Don't mean to say you've turned into some old fart telling the same old war stories all day, though."
It was always like this. There was a rawness in the voice and a look in the eyes that was enough to scorch his hair. Riki put it down to the stout beginning to kick in and paid him no mind.
Heartbeats slowly measured out the time, virility gradually returning as strength at last flowed back into the limbs with a strange, undulating rhythm. Sitting back against the sofa ina relaxed manner, Riki stretched his arms and legs, and took a deep breath.
He closed his eyes. He could see nothing, hear nothing. He felt only the faint stirrings of something akin to slumber. His body and soul became enchanted by the mesmerizing sensations, and all the more blissfully beguiled with each breath.
The darkness at the back of his eyes stirred. As a kaleidoscope of colors leapt into his vision, Riki lost all interest in everything but the pleasant numbness filling him.
And then Guy, glancing over his shoulder at Riki, seemed to catch in the faint smile playing across his face a glimpse of those three missing years, and lowered his gaze.