Wonder Willow

01: LOBOTOMY

Martina hadn't slept properly for 4 days.  She was working late shifts at Lobotomy, an off road bar for all types of beings, creepy by it's appearance but warming once you got used to big eared elves, fairies that would fly around naked and stained glasses of premium blood carried around by waiters - all human. 

She loved working at Lobotomy. Well, love might be a strong word, Martina didn't really love things or people, but se didn't mind it, it was paid well. The owner was an old banshee, he had had this building in ownership since the early twentieth century. Nobody knew how he got it and exactly how much names it has had over the years, but they all knew that it was old and that it will probably stay here in the corner of the Passenger square next to the statue of saint Marie(which was even more ancient) until the banshee breathed his last breath. 

He had always hired humans and exclusively humans. He was of the opinion that humans were a very neutral race of beings - nobody really paid much attention to them, except for the constant mocking, they were mostly harmless and didn't really understand the complexities of the supernatural world surrounding them and they were better at being nice than most others. You see, other races all had history between each other - they either had ancient wars going on between them or deals that had no more meaning, old Groover thought that hiring one or the other would disrupt the traffic.

And he was right, hiring humans paid off, but it was hard finding a human who would work in a bar meant for supernatural beings. Most humans were scared of this world, of course they knew it existed, but they would rather stay away from it than try to understand it. And it made sense completely,  trying to understand why some children lived forever without remembering their existence, seemingly without a known origin was a brain fucker, knowing that there were hundred year old witches appearing as trees was scary and  realizing that every house had a ghost, who would have tea parties with its friends when the owners weren't home - all of that was too much information for poor fragile humans.

But Martina had always liked this part of the world - She grew up in it, she lived it through her teenagerhood, she thought it was fascinating. Most of her co-workers were the same, they all came from relatively fucked up backrounds, in some way connected with the supernatural world which left them with a likiness of this way of living. 

But she was tired that week, the dreams bothered her to the extreme in which she was afraid to fall asleep. Martina rarely dreamt, she smoked too much weed to have coherent and rememberable dreams, but that week was different. She had been dreaming so vividly that it scared her. She hasn't dreamt shit like this since she was a child and good 10 years had passed since. It scared her so much that she took a sedative(and she rarely took anything) called Doypmin, an opiod extracted from the magic mushrooms that most people deemed useless, the previous night and it worked for sure, it left her in a sedative state for 6 hours, but as soon as she fell asleep the dreams came back. 

Sylvy was usually part of them, always somewhere in front of her, usually running. Martina tried to catch her once but fell off of a skyscraper, waking up just to fall back asleep in the same nightmare. It was messing with her, she hasn't thought about Sylvy in a long time, she hasn't thought about the little child or her home land and she was completely okay with that - Martina wasn't a person who was meant to hold on to things. But these fucked up nights prevented her of letting go of these things and she had no idea where they came from, that was probably what frustrated her the most. 

"Maybe a change of pace is coming up for you" told her Stephan, the only regular human costumer, a 60 year old punker who lived out his youth in the underground clubs in New York. 

"I don't know if I like that." She liked him, she often smoked a cigarette with him if she had time. But currently she was standing in front of his table with a platter full of cinnamon coffees for the group of grannies in the corner and a bottle of Jack for a young man sitting in the hearing distance. It was 2 o clock, a bit early to get hammered, but she predicted that he was waiting for his friends.

"You don't have the privilege of choosing my dear."

"Mhm. I'm sorry, I have to work. I'll sit with you later if I have time." Stephan laughed and gave her a thumbs up as she hurried off to carry the rest of the beverages.  Stephan was too wise for his own good. 

When she put the Jack bottle on the table the man's head which was previously resting in his hands shot up and he pierced her with his eyes. She was to deep in thought when taking his order to really take a look at him, but now she could do so. He seemed a bit dozed off, tired maybe by the look of his disheveled dark hair, but his eyes were clear, maybe a bit distant as if detached from this world, she had a feeling that he wasn't really looking at her, more like through her into something deeper inside of her than flesh and bone.

But all the signs of tiredness disappeared when he grinned, a devilish smile showing his teeth. "What a pretty girl. What is a sweet thing like you doing in a place like this?" 

Martina was rarely called "pretty", she was to strong willed to be considered sweet. Her long hair filled with gray stripes was put up in a bun exposing her muscular shoulders and a tattoo from a lifetime ago. Her bone structure was sharp, with high cheeks and a strong chin, accompanied by eyes that were so mean looking that they drove people away. She didn't like being called "pretty", for her it was usually a pervy connotation that made her grimace in disgust.

"Oh well, what is such a cute baby boy doing here? You know, there a ghosts around here so watch out or you might get tripped." The man mused, taking his glass and filling it with alcohol half full. 

"By the looks of it, it seems that somebody else will do that if I don't shut up." Martina could  already tell that he was a charismatic person by his confident and playful way of speaking and she didn't like charismatic men, her mother always dated charismatic men, flying around them like a trapped fly. These people had a way of getting exactly what they wanted without the other person involved noticing it. Unlike her mother, she was very sensitive to this kind of mannerism. 

"Don't worry, I don't think they'll bother with you."

"You are being very mean to a customer." He started sipping on his drink.

"You are being very mean to a waitress. Enjoy your drink." She turned around to take another order and on her way back heard his shouting voice.

"Bring me some ice! And a menu, I just got hungry!"