pathos hous

The Three Intruders

Mud encrusted boots, unshaven face.

“What connected us was the death of Nina Hall.” He said, voice strained by years of smoking and sickness. The girl opposite him was popping another black orb and was saying,  “I don’t think you should’ve talked about Nina like that.”

“She was the front runner, she brought us the map of the lingers.”

“Still...” She lit an ancient leaf wrapping black flowers, the stench turning the old cowboy on, “woman should get her peace.”

“Where do you think she is right now?”

The girl shrugged, propping her legs up on the tavern table. Night was nearly long gone and the bartender had turned in to his camp behind the bar in a square container room filled with stacks of clean, white towels. Everything else around was black or a deep dirty brown, the walls were brittle hardened sand, mixed with cheap cement and held in with decaying wood planks. Soot smeared the orange ceiling where faulty lights hung from wires and cardboard spheres. It was Cheron month, where violators of the orbs came in from the south to escape the harsh nuclear rains that ruined ambience and soil. The potatoes and turnips would drown and die in the filth and everyone else would die from starvation. SO they migrated part-time to drier places in search of bone like meat and robust herbal beer to pass their lives.

That night three strangers rode in on an ox dragging a cart. A woman was sprawled in the back covered by rich man’s comforter and goose feather stuffed pillows. Two men, one walking next to the ox, the other riding it, wore garbage collector suits and criminal masks, apparently to fend off the flies that attacked travellers by the river Ga. The rusty cowboy spat into the mopping bucket as the young chic watched the visitors ride in. One of the men was starting at her and the cowboy’s mind drifted to his flick-blade in his left jacket pocket.

“Anywhere we can get a room?” The man on the ox said.

“Who you running from?” The girl asked, smirking.

 They pretended not to understand.

“We want no trouble here, just a place to eat, re-gather our energies.”

The cowboy sat up straight now and peered at the cart. “The woman dyin’?”

The two men looked at each other.

“He’s a healer.” The girl said, “could fix her up if you have some orbs to exchange or fresh water.”

Coughing came from the cart, a deep chested messy churn of slime and virals.

“What can you do for three orbs?”

“Color?”

“Black.”

The man sighed and the girl said to no one in particular, “no one carries any reds anymore…” She crushed out her leaf-roll as the cowboy got up and walked to the cart. He could already sense the very specific viral.

The man by the ox took out a destroyed box and handed it to the cowboy but he didn’t want to take it just yet. He stood there a very long time looking at the woman who was shivering with her eyes closed, body twisted. Some kind of bother was growing on his face. His girl came up next to him and knew why the bother was present.

“You crazy fuckers.” She said under her breath. The two men stared at them and she turned to stare in return, terror growing in her stomach. “You’re from earth aren’t you?” It was rhetoric.

The cowboy backed away while starting to cover his face with a scarf while drawing up a protection spell for himself and his girl. “I think you fellas just brought a whole lot of trouble to this realm.”