“Oooh, I want the elf.”
“Aww, but I wanted the elf!”
“We can always share.”
“Hmm – no, nevermind, I just spotted a girl with cat ears. You know me, I could never resist a girl that purrs.”
“Meet up with the boys in the morning?” Nadine Pascal-Said was seventeen, and kissing her wife goodbye as they split up to get laid. She could not imagine that there was anyone in the world happier than she was, watching the freckled blonde stride purposefully toward the aforementioned cat-eared woman. She tore her eyes away after a moment – fun as it was to watch Billy work, she had her own pointy-eared goals to attend to.
“That’s a nice necklace,” she observed as she slid up to the bar, doing her best to look seductive as she wrapped a curl around one finger. The elf was even prettier up close, but then, his type always was. He was so pale he glowed, cheekbones even sharper than Nadine’s, dressed in a suit just fashionable enough to avoid being trashy.
“It’s not a necklace,” he sneered, and he even managed to do that attractively, “it is a crystal.”
“Well then,” she continued, undeterred, “that’s a nice crystal.” She grabbed a nearby fluorescent drink that had gone too-long ignored by its dancing owner, taking a sip and watching the elf. I wonder if he glows under blacklight.
“It’s not just nice,” he corrected, though he seemed to preen under her interest. “When it is complete, it shall form a star, and then I shall take my true place as–”
This speech went on for quite some time, and though Nadine did a very good job of pretending to be interested, she switched gears almost immediately to listening to the music instead. The important bits seemed to be that it was some kind of quest item, and he seemed very smug about it. She thought it would look nice nestled between Billy’s breasts while they fucked tomorrow.
“You still haven’t told me your name,” she pointed out when he finished, and he had the good grace to look abashed.
“Chet.”
“… your name is Chet.”
“In the superior elven tongue, it is more like Che’tt. I have Anglicized it in order to be considerate.”
Motherfucker, how you gonna be smug about the shittiest white-boy-plus-apostrophes name I ever heard?
“I’m Dean,” she said instead, sipping at her pilfered beverage.
“I noticed you kissing the girl in leather,” he said, nodding his head towards where Billy was grinding against the feline female. “You rolling with Jeff’s boys?”
“I roll with a lot of people,” she shrugged noncommittally, though she was thrown off by the fact that he was familiar with Jeff at all. She generally did not think of them as a group to acquire infamy.
“I bet you do,” Chet smirked, and she gave him a smile to indicate yes, that was the joke you moron.
“I got a bag full of condoms if you’ve got a room,” she said, cutting right to the chase. She was eager now to get him into bed before he ruined it with talking. He already had, quite frankly, but the thought of giving Billy that necklace made her forgiving. It didn’t hurt that he was pretty.
“Baby, I’ve got the best room in town.” Before she could recoil at his unironic use of the word baby, she was whisked into a limo that was more sleaze than class and taken to a suite with the same sense of style. Or rather, lack thereof.
“You’ve got a bed shaped like a heart.”
“It’s great, right? You’re probably not used to this level of class, hanging with those scumbags.” Chet seemed quite pleased by the amount of leopard print and satin in the room. To say nothing of the chandelier.
“No, this certainly is… different.”
“You really should think about joining up with my–” Nadine interrupted this surely idiotic train of thought with a finger to his unfairly perfect lips.
“Let’s see if you’re any good in bed, first, shall we?”
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
Chet had, unsurprisingly, been a disappointment in the sack. Self-centered men almost always were – and it was so hard to find a pretty man that wasn’t. The whole thing would have been a wash if she hadn’t managed to flee while he snored, nabbing his little quest crystal in the process. Closer examination showed that it was two pieces, snapped together. Didn’t really make it very far on your fucking quest, did you, asshole?
Nadine was heading back to the bar that the boys were currently calling their own when she stopped at a gas station for a fresh pack of cigarettes. This would have been a brief detour, but the boy behind the counter was her age, and ginger, and he ran track. It would take a saint to ignore that sort of loveliness – and Nadine was no saint.
They’d just finished fucking in the restroom out back – the sort of clumsy and enthusiastic sex that only teenagers were really capable of – when Nadine heard yelling in the strip mall parking lot.
“Where the fuck is she?”
Buttoning up her little black dress, she cracked bathroom door just enough to see before shutting it again. “Goddammit,” she hissed, and when the ginger tried to see she smacked him away. Chet was in the parking lot – Chet and a few of his gang or whatever the fuck those sleazy looking motherfuckers were. They’d boxed themselves in with semis – are they a fucking trucker gang, what the fuck is this shit – but Nadine could still see them from the shitty little bathroom. If it had just been them, that would have bad enough, she might have been able to work with that, but they had Billy and now she had no idea what to do. “Do you have any powers?” she asked, and when the ginger responded in the negative she swore again.
It had been a long time since Nadine had felt this helpless, had felt this panic washing over her like cold water. She wanted to scream or cry or vomit, or maybe all three at once. She balled her hands into fists to stop them from shaking, but it didn’t seem to be working as well as she would have liked.
I need to go out there. I need to give him his stupid fucking necklace back and then he’ll let her go and she’ll get Jeff and everything will be fine. I need to stop this before she gets hurt.
Her hand was halfway to the doorknob before she stopped, swore again.
It doesn’t fucking matter if I give it back. He’ll fucking kill me. He’ll kill her so she can’t get Jeff. He’ll fucking kill us both, either I let him kill her or he kills us both and this is a fucking bullshit no-win scenario.
Visions played in her head of her going out there, of teaming up with Billy to take down the whole lot of sleazy assholes, of turning the tables and shooting Chet right in the heart for even daring to threaten them. But while Billy was strong, she couldn’t punch faster than a fucking gun. And Nadine wasn’t even strong. Wasn’t strong, wasn’t fast, wasn’t any of the things that could even remotely help.
She is going to die. If she’s lucky, she’s going to die. She’s going to fucking die and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it and I need to come to terms with that right now because there is nothing I can do. Not a thing, not a fucking thing.
Nadine cracked the door again, because if nothing else she had to see, had to be sure, whatever happened. She didn’t stop the ginger from looking, too, this time.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could guess. Chet was angry. Chet wanted to know where Nadine was, so that he could get his stupid rock. Chet looked like an asshole waving a gun around. Billy thought he could go fuck himself. Billy looked lovely and defiant and not at all frightened, even though she must have been, even though Nadine was fucking terrified. There was an ache in Nadine’s chest, a wild hope that at any moment there’d be the roar of engines as Jeff and the boys appeared to save the day. And then the barrel of a gun was pressed against Billy’s chin, and Billy wasn’t Billy anymore.
Nadine shut the bathroom door as the ginger began to panic. “Shut the fuck up,” she hissed, “do you want to get us fucking killed?” It was strange, the way the fear had left her, the way a weight had been lifted the instant everything had gone to shit. There was nothing to lose now, nothing but adrenaline and the need to get the fuck out of dodge.
“You run track, right?” She snapped the little crystal in her pocket in two, stashed away the smaller piece and draped the necklace around the ginger’s neck as he answered in the affirmative. “Well you better fucking run.”
It would never have worked if she hadn’t had surprise on her side. The ginger could have overpowered her easily, could have held on and dragged her with him, could have done any number of things – but it simply hadn’t occurred to him until it was too late that she’d be willing to open the door and kick him out of it, slamming it shut before he could even protest.
She took deep breaths as he pounded at the door, as the shouting started, as the voices moved away at high speed. When she thought it was probably safe she slid out the door, didn’t look at where they’d been, didn’t look to where the body must be. She needed to get away – couldn’t go find Jeff, not now, not after what had happened.
Nadine hopped onto the first bus she found, ignoring the fact that it wasn’t at a stop and had no passengers. “Is this the bus out of town?” she asked, breathless, and the driver looked her over as if she were a particularly unpleasant specimen.
“It can be,” he answered finally, and Nadine noted uncharitably that he had a face like a weasel.
“I don’t have any money,” she admitted, pulling the Claddagh ring from her finger without thinking too hard about what she was doing. “Can I pay you with this?”
The weasely man took the ring with as much disdain as he had for the rest of her, and she’d have told him to fuck off if she hadn’t been busy being scared shitless. “You’d give up your last token of love lost so easily?”
Bile rose in her throat, her blood cold. How the fuck does he know what the fuck does he know. “I – I’m sorry? I got that ring at a thrift store. It’s not – I mean, it should be worth a bus ride, but it’s not anything special.” Nadine was a very good liar. She could even believe it, if she didn’t look at it, didn’t think about Billy sliding it on her finger with a kiss, didn’t think about Billy at all.
“You think you’re very clever, don’t you?” The driver clearly disagreed with this notion.
“I don’t – I’m just trying to get a ride out of town. Can you help me, or not?”
The driver slipped the ring into his pocket, closed the door with that unnerving hissing noise. “I’ll take you where you need to be,” he said impassively, and Nadine dragged herself to a seat in the very back, where she watched the scenery turn into the blackness of a dreamless sleep.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
“Here’s your stop.”
Nadine was still bleary, sleeping surprisingly well under the circumstances, when the bus driver began ushering her out. “Can you give me a minute to wake the fuck up?” she protested.
“I’m afraid not.”
She stumbled out of the bus and into the night, swiveling about as the door closed and the vehicle resumed going… wherever it was going. Somewhere without roads, apparently.
Did that motherfucker drop me off in the middle of the fucking woods?
“Are you fucking shitting me?” she asked after the bus disappearing into the trees, arms wide with bafflement. “I don’t think this is legal!” she yelled for good measure, but it was no use: her only method of transportation had disappeared. She groaned, adjusting her glasses and rolling her head back.
Then she froze.
“Are you fucking shitting me.”
There were two moons in the sky. One bigger than the moon she knew, and one smaller; neither was familiar. She stared at them for a long time, a familiar welling of panic rising up in her throat.
When I said I needed to get far away I did not mean this what the fuck what the fuck.
“Did you seriously just bring me to another fucking planet?” she asked the absent bus driver, gesticulating wildly at the foreign satellites in the sky. “Is this even the same fucking dimension? What the fuck is this you insane old asshole oh my fuck what is this.” Her legs were starting to wobble, and she buried her face in her hands, falling into a crouch and rocking back on her heels. “I can’t fucking take this shit right now,” she muttered, voice muffled by her own palms. Part of her hoped that at any moment, she’d open her eyes and be back in the bar with Billy.
Nadine didn’t believe in karma, but the universe made it very difficult sometimes.
Nadine Pascal-Said 