Bitches Love Covenants
An Against the Grain Adventure. Part 4.
4
Steven lounged against his bag in the dirt of his squat. A loading dock gracing the rear of the old armory, it was covered and faced only a heap of shrubbery. It had been sealed up long ago by some sadistic armorer and didn't allow access inside, but it stayed dry and out of sight.
The climate was technically a desert one according to nerds. Steven didn’t know what made a desert, or a desert language for that matter. All he knew was tonight burned particularly hot in a town of relative climatic extremes. The winters were cold. So cold some pine trees exploded last winter, the sound like a shotgun blast.
The night was hot. They usually were in the summer, of course. Dry and hot. But downtown behind the armory, all one could see was the freeway over shrubbery. All they could hear was the bang of a skatepark a block down and the crashing waves of cars cruising above.
A cold freeway lamp overhead gave Steven more than enough light to see as he ate his dinner. A family size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, drenched in chili and delicious, plastic-nacho cheese, shaken-not-stirred, and eaten with a plastic spork. Ninety-nine cents from the local 7-11. Sometimes, he dumped relish in there too for veggies. As balanced a meal as it gets.
Hardly cuisine by any standard but beggars must be choosers. Poverty forces philosophy and there is nothing like thinking about thinking to justify eating out of the trash or anything else at all. Like necessity itself, philosophy allows all things and forbids none. He put his meal away half-finished with his belly half satisfied.
“Little Corvus,” an oil slick voice oozed from the night, startling Steven. “There you sit.”
Steven opened his eyes to see a stranger standing before him at the end of the loading bay. He was tall and stood perfectly still. The hot, summer breeze in the air excited his long, wiry red hair, but couldn't conjure the force to stir his long black coat. He grinned a savage grin, his glaring white teeth on full display.
“Holy shit,” Steven gasped. “Scared the hell out of me.”
“Invoking above and below without a care in the world,” the stranger intoned. “Just as a crow. Hop, fly, murder, and go.”
Another lunatic. The city kept throwing them his way today. Steven moaned aloud, putting his pounding head in his hands. He hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. “What have I done to deserve this?”
“Nothing,” the stranger hissed around a toothy grin. “No one deserves a thing. All deserve nothing. Still, some deserve what they get. Others await their due yet.”
“Wow,” Steven sighed. “A bad poet. Go away, I already hit my strange quota today.”
“Quota? Quid pro quo. Quo cum quota. Not without an exchange,” the stranger insisted. “Not without an agreement. A pact, a bargain? A covenant? Bitches love covenants. Are you a bitch, too? Only able to argue?”
“I don't have any smokes or anything else to give you,” Steven lied. “And you’re gross.”
“How dare you,” the stranger demanded. He never once blinked his eyes, despite the huff. “I am not gross. I am of the earth.”
“Whatever, man. Can you please go away? God, I say that a lot lately.”
“You do, yes. I will go, but are you not hungry?” He unblinkingly eyed Steven’s unholy Dorito’s and chili mix. His grin still quite fixed. “Starving at their feast, flavor labs have called the beast.”
“I have food.”
“You have that,” the stranger pointed. “That is not food. That is… crap.”
“Do you mind blinking, man? Or making sense? You don't always have to rhyme,” Steven cursed. “Jesus.”
“A life in a blink. None deny he lived and died. The question is in the rise.” The stranger’s rictus grin managed to grow.
“What’s it going to take for you to piss off, bro?”
“A trifle. A sacrifice to comport. A token of no real import.”
“I doubt I even have to ask,” Steven began. “But do you like drugs?”
“I am drugs. I am hugs.”
“Perfect,” Steven replied and fished out the teener of crystal the moron brothers had given him earlier. “You want a meth? You can have it if you go away.”
The stranger positively hissed and shook his head. “None of their works will satisfy. I seek man’s expression only. The rest is already mine.”
“Wow, okay,” Steven sighed. This dude was nuts. That grin. Those yellow eyes. Only they weren’t yellow anymore. They were green. No, red? What the hell was going on? Dude was creeping him out and the changing streetlights above were helping his unease right along.
“A token only. The work of man’s hand,” the stranger repeated, yellow-blue eyes flaring. “A token only. The work of man’s hand.”
“Go away!” Steven screamed, throwing a single GPC brand cigarette at his tormentor. The stranger caught it, keeping Steven’s eyes locked with his, and laughed a hysterical laugh, like steel scraped over dry bone. The cigarette in his hand was now lit, its cherry end tracing unfamiliar symbols in the air.
“Yes,” the stranger hissed ecstatically. “Yes, young Corvus, like the elder crow. You shall meet, indeed. And history will repeat. Rhyming in scheme most pleasing.”
The stranger’s unblinking yellow eyes and grin grew to fill Steven’s vision completely. The freeway, the crashing waves of the cars passing overhead, even the irregular bang of skateboards down the block vanished. The cold, anemic light of the streetlights overhead winked out as darkness swallowed his mind and sleep overtook him at last.