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Cory's Place
Posted By: Neil Yudsponwy<mark_price@hotmail.co.uk>
Date: 11 December 2007, 5:44 pm
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The first thing to thwack John gently across the face with a starched silk glove was the smell, from incense in the form of inexpensive stogies, to the lumpenproletarian sweat marrying knock-off perfumes of the underachieving; the jarring collision felt nasally comfortable. Made more so by his own cheap aftershave and the sibling smell from another of the 'Christo lineage doing a mid-air tango with all that would dance with her.
The cigar smoke yapped like playful puppies around stoic bulldogs, adding to the aurora a vague sense of imagined prestigious camaraderie and treacle-coated tension. At least that's what John's mind brought to the scene.
The room itself was a complimentary mishmash of lights and sounds all cosily lounged about their own space in the universe. The barstaff, busying themselves with lots of nothing, were coated with a thick neon blue similar to the strain on the front of the building. The bar stood as a small rectangular temple near the door, its worshipping props subjected to a gentle golden haze while the cloverleaf shaped lounge made do with a velvety purple taint and the vintage green of a random paintball splash. The decor never won any awards.
It was a bar that appreciated the piss and spittle of its regulars more than the fast buck of a young buck, the kind that usually ended up shooting one another after shooting pool on a vodka shot too many. Progress denied admittance on the grounds of being too flash, and while any liquers, spirits and ales found without their fundamentals were turfed out for having fake ID: alcopops daren't even ask.
John let the jazz take the cold from his bones and strode over to take his usual throne at the bar, a familiar enthused smile greeting him as he did. Corinne Danah was a sassy young girl hip enough to freak a cat square, all smiling eyes and short bobbed hair.
"Hey, 'Chief."
It was cool, calm and coloured with grades of affection. The bluebird had nicknames for all her regular customers. With all the scars adorning his face and the dance of shifting light that played over them at the bar where he'd sit, she got the impression of war paint and that he was an old indian chieftain; nevermind that it just so happened to be a custom fit.
'Cordana.'
After hearing her full name for the first time, he had laughed so hard everyone thought he would have a seizure. Since then he had always called her Cordana, a portmanteau in-joke she wasn't privvy to at first but nevertheless thought sweet.
Another local voice lent its weight, speaking directly to him as if he were a voice in John's head.
"John knows it's wednesday, right?"
The robust, masculine growl dropped the bombshell from the first knot of seats in the lounge nearest the bar. John didn't even look round, instead he rummaged around in his pocket for the little talkie that had gone walkies, or at least hidden from him in plain sight by sitting on top of the all-but-empty coffee table back at his apartment. Phones could be so deceptively cunning in such fields, using an active camouflage that exploited everyday mundanity in order to disguise itself amongst the glass-centred habitat.
The accumulative consciousness of the greatest military tactician in earth's chequered military history ruminated in deep, extensive analysis.
Bastard. John lamented.
He rarely sweared except on birthdays, shrove tuesdays, weekdays and weekends; today proving itself no exception to the fuzzy rule. Wednesday night. A night dedicated to a little known pastime called poker, a game that involved holding cards and pulling peculiar faces at strangers, usually the look of pained constipation. The Chief made a start for the games, passing by as he did, a buffet to slay even the heartiest of appetites.
The husky tones behind him belonged to Arthur, another local and regular scheming cynic. He had two horizontal scars running parallel lines over his cheeks after a run-in with a ropey airport scanner, one that malfunctioned and clamped down hard on his face. Since he'd tried to pull away, clearly in agony, the airport security won their libel case by saying he was resisting the scan. The judge had even gone so far as to order Arthur to fork out for the facial scanner to be replaced and pay witnesses compensation for their emotional trauma. The whole charade left lasting impressions and mental lesions that gave him a penchant for shelled pistachios and talking in third person. These days he rarely travelled abroad.
When he did, he was the only heterosexual male that preferred the obvious discomfort of a full cavity search rather than face the facial scanner a second time. Suffice to add, Art was bitter at the world and the rare shafting he received from the razor sharp manicured nails of women with trace moustaches. The sort that loved to ride bareback in revenge for the jocks that gave them syphilis in the shadows of the high school fete. The pleas he offered that he also hated football never stopped them from prodding his prostate. Every man was the same to them; most turned lesbian at the first opportunity of easy minge. Little realising they would take up the mantle the jocks had played in their own lives, perpetuating just another facet of human misery. Still, airport security had never been so rigorous nor so feared.
Nothing scared the semtex stuffed up the quivering sphincters of extremists more than the beckoning talon pinkies of lesbian trolls. Much to Arthur and various extremist organisation's displeasure, they even fronted their own terrorising ad campaigns, urging frequent flyers to 'stay sharp'. Arthur felt his bum tremble uncontrollably and in trepidation every time the adverts aired. He swore blind it was the same woman on the screen that cold-cuddled his colon from the inside.
Bitter Arthur was always under a black cloud or in with a bad crowd, a staple case in the serious study of sod's unforgiving laws. When he was younger, Arthur got involved with a cult, a covenant that believed in ancient aliens seeding life, technology and wisdom: expecting their followers to be reclaimers of that same divine dynasty...
Sadly, scientology turned out to be a bit of a scam. One that was fronted by sex-withholding hot chicks and controlled by power hungry fiends with micro-dicks.
At his aptitude test he noticed a familiar pattern, all around him were these beautiful sirens, from golden-legged secretaries to golden-eyed luminaries, they all had that same mad glint and grin. He picked up on the fact that all the people taking the aptitude tests were sad, lonely, horny men: noting that the list included him.
He'd been convinced to part with thousands of credits to boost his confidence, enhance dependence and heighten low self-esteem. The last he remembers of that life is paying tribute to the guarded, silver-lined matchbox remains of some diminutive star from the twenty-first century. It wasn't the actual cremated remains, they'd been stolen and melted down when the gold that lined the original matchbox tripled in value. It was while worshipping this fake idol's fake ashes that Arthur realised the absurdity of life as a cult follower. He started his own cult in defiance and their number currently stands at one and a third; his sectioned schizophrenic brother still had two personalities that needed more evidence to believe life was truly absurd.
The writer eventually pulled himself from the tenuous tangent pit he had dug and returned to his hero of sorts. John had waited with the patience of an angel while this babbling narrator waffled over erroneous cavorts. The phone: like the time it was mentioned, was a moment that had long been passed. John had journeyed the wednesday night poker tables, and was haemorraghing money fast.
He'd stuck to his familiar bluffing game of playing like they couldn't see his face, unfortunately for him they could see his face and his hand was written all over it. He retired from the table, losing nearly a fifth of his retirement fund. Still, he'd broke the mould that had suffocated him for the last few years; even if he was left financially stunned. John had never gambled on anything without first knowing the odds, this sensation felt great to be wrong about a game. The element of chance and the inconsolable loss that only an opponent's royal flush beating your lousy hand brings to your brain, that and the straight face and smiling eyes of the bastard hoovering up your three thousand credit pain.
Loss, the kind of loss that might incur emotional damage, was altogether a different sensation and completely alien to the rock he'd been sculpted from. This substance gave him the sense that he was alive, the only thrill he could call a thrill these days and the only excitement for which to strive. Playing it safe and planning ahead may have saw him through galactic wars, but those days were done. Tonight he was just another schmoe, looking for purpose, desperate for some fun.
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