![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leePrompt: ‘Christmas’
Word Count: 7106
Summary: Biff and M.D. have plans for Christmas. Biff’s involves a liquor store; M.D.’s involves giant larvae. Her plan wins.
Notes: This takes place a month or so after ‘Six Weeks to Recovery.’ If you haven’t read it, all you need to know is that M.D.’s brain crashed, and Biff made her a deal: he quit drinking, and in exchange she quit isolating. He also ended up owing her a favor, which is something nobody should ever do.
Biff holds out for a month. It’s got nothing to do with willpower; he just doesn’t have time. The kid is such a mess, he doesn’t want to give her any leverage, and for a while, she seems to be crashing at his place every night while the bandages climb her arms and he chain smokes harder than he ever has in his life. He’s so busy holding her together, everything else slides, and right as she pulls out of her nosedive, the Rose comes out of the woodwork with surprise late season work. Even the Rose’s boys don’t want to work through the holidays, but Biff’s been out of action for two months, and he needs the money bad. It’s not like he’s got anything better to do, and so he’s out busting heads and guarding boxes and paying off all his back-rent and bills right up till—
Fucking Christmas. Right in time for the shock cold snap.
Biff’s got no heat, no tolerance, and no distractions. He wakes up shivering in a ball, hears the traffic and the Salvation Army ringer outside, and fuck it. Fuck everything. It’s over.
Or it will be. First he has to get out of bed.
It takes a while. The day feels like an iron weight, and he’s had barely any sleep, thanks to doing a thing for a guy all night. He planned to sleep through as much of the day as possible, and now here he is, feeling like hell, and it’s not even noon. But finally, he realizes his breath is fogging and he grabs some pants and goes looking for a drink.
The cabinet’s empty. So’s the fridge. Damn it, the kid even got the emergency under the bathroom sink. Fuck her. The hell did he let her? And why didn’t he restock?
Well, he knows why. But dammit, now he has to go outside, in the cold snap, on Christmas, sober. All because of her. Shivering and swearing, he pulls on a shirt, his only vest, and his only jacket, and he heads out. At least outside isn’t much colder than his apartment, and hey, maybe he can at least pretend the holiday doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t work. Every goddamn shop seems to have decorations in the window. Plastic Santas, an army of animatronic snowmen, enough light-up reindeer for a national park. The tenements have flickering Christmas lights in the windows, and the Salvation Army guys are out in force. Biff tries to block it out, focus on the liquor store. Just one trip, and then he can lock himself in his frigid apartment for the next week, not look at any of this shit until next year.
God. Next year.
The bells over the liquor shop door have been replaced with sleigh bells. Inside, the speaker’s crooning about how it’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on it.
Biff rubs his eyes and stares blankly at the shelves. Feeling like this, choosing seems like too much effort. What does it matter, long as it puts him out for the rest of the day. Week, if he paces himself. Finally, he leans on muscle memory, just lets his hand find what it wants without looking too hard at the labels.
The girl in the hijab behind the counter is new. When he dumps the bottles on the counter and digs for his wallet, she asks, “Will that be all for you today, sir?”
Biff grunts and tries to ignore the shop soundtrack, which is now going on about shoes and dying mothers and learning what Christmas is all about.
“We’re having a special today on eggnog, if you—”
“No.”
“Would you like to take advantage of our low, low prices and stock up on our champagne for—”
“No.”
His apartment is still dark and cold, but at least there’s no lights, trees, or songs about dying moms. The whole place is deserted. The bag lady, the girl, all the rest, they got somewhere else to be. Nobody to bug him, nobody to pity him, nobody to care. Just him, his apartment, and a big bottle of—
The kid’s sitting on the windowsill.
Biff halts in the door and makes a sound that—it isn’t a whine, he’s too old to whine, it’s just… no. No. It’s not fair. Despite himself, he almost wants to vanish the bags, hide them behind his back even, like no, it’s not what it looks like, it just…
The kid looks at the bags. “That’s a lot of alcohol.”
Shit.
He’s not going to feel bad. He’s not. He lasted a whole fucking month, okay, way longer than anyone could hope for, and she didn’t even make it a week, so yeah, fuck her, he’s not going to feel bad, no matter what she says.
But she’s still not saying anything, and he’s too tired to get a proper mad going. He doesn’t want to fight with her. He doesn’t want to do anything with anyone today, and finally he decides to just pretend she isn’t there. Going to the counter, he turns his back to her and starts unloading.
“We had a deal.” She doesn’t sound angry.
“’S Christmas. Deal’s off on Christmas.” He thinks about it, then adds, “New Year’s too. Whole week, it’s off.”
He stares at the bottles, trying to choose a starter and ignore her eyes burning a hole in the back of his head. The fuck with it, he’s falling off the wagon anyway, he might as well go balls out, and so he reaches for the Everclear. He’s not really surprised when the kid’s suddenly between him and the counter and tugging the bottle from his hand. He doesn’t really have it in him to resist.
“Please tell me I caught you before you started. Please tell me you’re still sober.” She leans in, trying to smell his breath.
He shoves her back. “For now. Why you here?”
“You owe me a favor,” she says. “I’m collecting.”
“’S Christmas. Collect it later.”
“Oh yeah, because,” she gives the bottle of Everclear a little shake, “I’m obviously interrupting some very important longstanding traditions.”
He crosses his arms and examines the cracks in the wall.
“I don’t have time to lecture you on your behavior.” She sets the Everclear back on the counter with a thud. “I need your sober, clearheaded help—or rather, a bunch of baby Dead-Carrier Beetles do.”
He wants to be offended at the resigned look on her face. He wants to get pissed and tell her to fuck herself, fuck her favor, and fuck her baby— “Dead what?”
“Beetles. Dead-Carrier Beetles.” She puts her hands out like she’s holding an invisible breadbox. “About so big. They’re a combo of garbage men, priests, and—” she sees his face. “You’re hungover, aren’t you?”
“What? No.” He wishes he was hungover. “’M tired.”
She still looks skeptical. “Not used to a diurnal existence, are you?”
“Nnnnrgh.” He slumps back against the table, rubbing his face. The sleep deprivation isn’t the problem, but it sure isn’t helping anything.
“Anyway, it’s hatching season, and at the larval stage, Dead-Carrier Beetles are like maggot piranhas. We need extra hands, and our usual woke up sick. Congratulations, Biff. You’re it.”
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Don’t you got other shit to do? What about—” no, can’t call him Fag Boy, supposed to stop doing that, “White Boy and… that other guy?”
“The one whose name you never bother remembering?”
“Yeah. That guy.”
“Too happy. Too sane. Too busy with their families, celebrating the day of Holy Consumerism, which I prefer to ignore completely.”
Biff wants to pitch a fight. He wants to kick the kid out and systematically work through all the bottles on his counter until the holiday’s over, same as usual. He might as well; it’s obvious she already thinks he’s caved. But now his pattern’s been interrupted. Tossing the kid out isn’t impossible, but it’s still a pain in the ass, and she’s not above throwing his bottles out the window, which means another liquor store run, more awful Christmas carols and decorations and money out of his pocket—money’s he’s only just gotten. And even if he does end up alone in the peace and quiet with his bottles, he doesn’t really look forward to it anyway…
He freezes. He doesn’t look forward to it?
He drops his hands to his sides. Frowns. Pokes at the thought a little. It holds up.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to. Oh, he wants to. But he’s been dry a month now—not nearly enough to break the wanting, but enough to break some of the habit. He’s gotten used to being clear-headed and regular. He hasn’t broken any furniture or cookware for a month, or gotten kicked out of anywhere, or woken up with bruises he can’t remember getting. And though he still doesn’t see that as worth giving up drinking for, it is a nice change of pace.
The kid sits, watching him. Her knee is jumping, and she keeps tapping one of the jars on her belt, doing everything short of checking her watch. She can’t really take the time to have a drag-out over this. If he tells her to fuck herself, she might bust his bottles, but that’s about it. And from the look on her face, she knows it.
His apartment suddenly feels very cold and dark.
“You never taken me to your place,” he says.
She shrugs. “It’s dangerous, and not in the way you’re used to. Also, you’ve never evinced interest.”
“What’s weather like over there?”
“Right now? Summer, so maybe seventy-five degrees.”
“Let’s go.” Before he changes his mind.
…
They don’t get to go right off. Apparently bug babysitting is messy; the kid insists he change into clothes he won’t ever want again. He’s antsy, already regretting telling her yes, and the bottles on the counter are calling to him, so he snaps at her, and it works. A baseball bat and some gloves, and they’re gone.
The arrival helps shake him out of his funk, and not just because it always makes him feel sick. When he first met her, he swore never to give the kid any reaction, no matter what weird shit she brought on, but it’s so green. Full of trees and moss and—
And it looks like every 60s monster movie on coffee break.
The kid’s elbow jabs into his side, making him jump. “Don’t stare, don’t speak, and for the love of god, don’t punch anything,” she hisses, and she grabs his sleeve to drag him after her.
Biff has lived in Vaygo a long time. He knows better. Still, it takes a moment to wrestle his face straight, and he can’t keep from twisting the bat in his hand. He always knew the kid was from Out There… but he always figured she was exaggerating for the laughs, that Out There was pretty much like the outer counties. It never occurred to him she might’ve understated.
Everything here is curved.
He doesn’t get the time to really take it all in. They’re in front of a fucking stegosaurus with teeth like steak knives, and it’s dumping wood into his arms and the kid’s hauling mud and barking at him to hurry up. Biff doesn’t have much choice but hustle along after her, because he’s sure now that nothing here speaks any English.
They follow a road (also curved) till it ends in a forested area. He starts to follow everyone else, but the kid hauls him away with a hasty, “No, not those trees, they’re violent,” pulling him down a different path.
Biff doesn’t ask, doesn’t retort, sure as hell doesn’t think about what a violent tree might be. He just obeys.
They come to a clearing, where apparently they’re building… well, he’s not sure what they’re building, but it looks something like a cross between a very small sports arena and a very large anthill. Judging by how everyone’s rushing, they’re behind schedule.
The next few hours, Biff is parked in front of the arena, hauling wood and mud and holding things in place while giant blue beetles seal it all. The kid ditches him periodically, doing… something… but always comes back in time to keep him from getting into any fights. Everything else manages to get communicated with pointing.
It’s frantic work, but Biff is used to heavy lifting, and soon the adrenaline kicks in and wipes away the lingering fatigue. Everyone’s moving, everyone’s busy, and the only time anyone pauses is to slug down water and hit the bathroom. (Which, he finds out, is outside. He still hasn’t seen anything he recognizes as a building.)
They get the thing built, whatever it is. The word ‘arena’ still fits best, a ramping wall surrounding a flat circular space in the middle. They start moving big chunks of half-rotten wood into the center, then a bunch of carcasses. And yeah, hauling the dead meat is pretty bad, they look like they got mauled by a tiger or something, and they haven’t been bled, but the kid hurls herself in and he doesn’t want to get shown up by her, even if it means tripping in something’s intestines. No wonder she told him to wear shitty clothes.
Eventually, the arena’s ready, and everyone takes up positions, some on top of the wall, others (including him and the kid) down on the ground in the middle. A bunch of bugs haul in what looks like just some more dead animals, but everyone gets real quiet and watches intently. Biff doesn’t know what he expects, but nothing happens except the meat gets put down, the bugs leave, and everyone seems to relax a little.
The kid puffs some hair out of her eyes. “Okay, we’ve got a little breathing room now.” A red pterodactyl makes a humming sound at her, and gives her a couple doughy lumps. The kid strips off her bloody gloves to take them, then passes one to him. “Here. Eat while you can.”
Biff doesn’t ask what’s in it. He just pulls his gloves off, wipes his hands on the inside of the back of his shirt and grabs the lump to tear in; it’s the first he’s eaten today. He can’t place what the dough is made out of. Inside is some kind of sweet nutty gunk whose texture reminds him a little of peanut butter.
When he looks up from the whatever-it-is, he sees that the pterodactyl is flapping around, spitting fire to light torches up around the top of the wall, even though it’s still daylight.
The kid looks up from her own dumpling thing and catches him frowning.
“She can do that,” she says.
Biff gives her a look. She doesn’t have to act like he’s stupid. “I know. What’s it for?”
“When the torches go out, we’re done,” she explains around a mouthful of food. “That’s all you need to care about, anyway.”
“So we ain’t done.”
She snorts. “You wish. No, that was the easy part. Now we wait for them to hatch.” She smirks. “Eat fast.”
…
It doesn’t take long for Biff to find out what the big deal is with the special dead things. The kid calls them ‘brood carriers;’ apparently that’s where the beetles lay their eggs. Once they hatch, the larvae eat their way out. It takes a couple minutes, and it’s just as well that he did eat fast; it isn’t pretty to watch.
When the brood carriers start to writhe and collapse from the inside, everyone gets ready. The kid pulls a bandanna over the lower half of her face and pulls out a crappy old hockey stick.
“This is the simple part,” she announces, tossing him his bat.
“Thought you said that was before,” Biff says, adjusting his hat.
“No, that was the easy part. But this is simple. All we’ve got to do is keep the larvae inside the brood hill, don’t beat them up too bad, and don’t get eaten.” She braces her stick and gives him a salute. “Fare thee well, soldier.”
Then the larvae burst out, and things get crazy.
The maggots are about the size of cats, but even less pleasant. They’re covered with short, spiky hairs, and prickly sets of little black legs, and they have sharp biting jaws. They’re a lot faster than they look, smear gore on everything, and when one attacks, they swarm. And they can jump.
There are hundreds of them.
For the next eternity, Biff’s life is guerilla dodgeball. No time to think, no time to feel, no time for anything but blind reflex and blood-soaked chaos. Somewhere between getting acid vomited on him the first time and nearly punting a maggot over the wall by accident, he forgets it’s Christmas. When the maggots start exploding, he even forgets about the bottles. Mostly because the first one explodes on him.
And damn her to hell, the kid starts laughing.
Biff asks her what’s so funny and backhands a maggot in her direction. It bursts in the air, and they duck the spatter.
“This is good!” She says. “It’s all downhill from here!”
“The hell you say!”
But it is. All the weakest larvae are in the tougher ones’ stomachs, and now all the nastiest ones are starting to burst—which is disgusting and distracting, but not that dangerous. The rest of the grubs have eaten enough that they’re starting to get sluggish. Things start slowing down, enough that the kid can pause between slapshots to explain why the hell Mother Nature decided to make maggots that explode when they eat too much. She blathers on about defense mechanisms and birth rate regulation, but Biff just figures she’s fucking with him and tunes her out.
Right around the time it starts getting dark, the remaining larvae start burrowing into the blocks of rotten wood and curling up to sleep the whole gorefest off. At first, Biff doesn’t notice, so used to smacking everything that crawls, but eventually it registers that the arena has gone still and he finally gets to look around. Everyone’s covered in mud, blood, and filth, and the stars are out. Everyone looks worn out.
Finally, the torches are put out. The kid pulls her bandanna down and whoops hoarsely, and the bugs and the dinosaurs chitter and stomp. Biff just stretches his aching back; the ground’s too disgusting for him to want to sit down.
“Never owing you shit again,” he mutters.
But she isn’t paying attention. She’s off, wiggle dancing at the pterodactyl, who’s wiggle dancing back. She doesn’t translate for him, but judging by her face, they’re happy with how everything went down. The kid props her hockey stick on one shoulder, the pterodactyl perches on the other, and they start to head out.
“Come on,” she calls back to him, “Let’s scrub off the offal and have some grub.”
He refuses to notice the pun. It would only encourage her.
He still doesn’t get to sightsee. There aren’t any streetlights, and for some reason, nobody seems to notice how dark it is but him. Everything has gone from shades of green and gold to blue and black, and the kid has to grab his shirt to keep him from blundering into the wrong (violent) trees. He still doesn’t know what they do, but he could swear he sees them move out of the corner of his eye.
Getting back into town doesn’t make anything better. It’s still as active as it was during the day, but there’s still no light, so all he can make out is that everything is round. Everything. The houses (which look like towers, and he can’t tell what they’re made of), the stalls, even the roads go in circles. He tries to figure out what everything’s made of, but he keeps almost crashing into things, so he has to give it up and take a grip on the back of the kid’s hockey stick.
He can’t see if the townspeople at night look any better than the ones during the day. The quick impressions he does get raise his hackles. Maybe it’s better that he can’t see them properly.
Biff follows the kid to one of the towers. This one is thicker and squatter than most of the others. The pterodactyl gets off the kid’s shoulder and flaps in, then turns to watch them expectantly, but the kid is walking on.
Biff starts to follow her, but the pterodactyl is looking at him now, fluttering its wings, hopping up and down, obviously trying to get his attention.
“Uh, hey.” He pulls on the kid’s hockey stick, forcing her to stop, and cocks his thumb back at the pterodactyl. “Dinosaur wants you.”
“What? She’s not a—” then she sees it waiting for her, and her face looks how he felt when she showed up on his window. She even says, “No. Noooo…”
“What’s the matter? You owe it money or something?”
But the kid’s not paying attention. She grabs Biff’s arm, tries to turn him away, muttering, “Don’t make eye contact, don’t act suspicious, just let’s go down and pretend…”
But she’s too small to move him if he doesn’t want to be moved, and he can tell when she’s bullshitting him. On top of it, the pterodactyl’s hopping up and down and flapping its wings and jerking its head like some kinda dinosaur Lassie trying to say Timmy’s trapped down a well. Add that to it only being about as big as a turkey buzzard, and it looks more goofy than intimidating.
Biff breaks out of the kid’s grip, grabs her arm, and twists it up her back, even though it gets him whacked with the hockey stick. She whines and drags her feet, but doesn’t really fight as he frog-marches her towards the pterodactyl.
The tower is lit on the inside, at least, though that doesn’t give him any better clue what it’s made of. The pterodactyl flaps over to the toothy stegosaurus, who’s standing by a low table. On the table is a basket, closed with a lid. The handles (there are three of them) are covered with colored string, all tied into careful, lopsided bows.
“Aw, look at that, they got you a present,” Biff croons.
The kid tries to back out, only to smack into him. She doesn’t sound happy. “Thanks Holmes, I kind of noticed, what with the bows and all…”
“Yeah?” He gives the kid a hard shove through the door, where he stays. Just in case. “Then stop fucking around and go get it. I want to get out of here.”
The pterodactyl does a wiggle dance. Still looking pissed, the kid wiggle dances back, and the stegosaurus starts quaking and shuddering, making a cavernous wheezing sound. The kid looks like she just got a mouthful of soap, and Biff raises an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to translate.
She crosses her arms, hunches her shoulders, and says, “He’s laughing at me.”
“No shit, Sherlock. I meant the rest. The wiggle dance.”
She looks pained. “Pidgin Sign, and you embarrass me sometimes, you know that?” She strains at the basket. “Look, she said ‘happy Godbirth and many blessings on your meat,’ now shut up and help me move this thing, it probably weighs twenty pounds and I’ve only got one hand…”
But the stegosaurus is looking at him and drooling, and Biff is reluctant to leave the relative safety of the doorway. The kid looks at him, then the stegosaurus leaving a little puddle on the floor, and scowls.
“Will you unclench already? He won’t eat you— unless I ask him to because you’re being such a balky pain in the neck. Now get over here.”
Biff grimaces, but he comes over, tosses the bat to her, and takes the basket, bracing it on his shoulder with only slight trouble.
“I hate your upper body strength,” she says.
“Hate you too.” He shifts the basket, takes his bat back. He has no idea whether the stegosaurus would even feel it, but it makes him feel better. “Now stop fucking around, I’m hungry.”
She leads him out of the tower and glares at the basket. “I told them not to give me anything. I told them I don’t celebrate this stupid holiday, but no…”
“Godbirth,” Biff says.
“Closest Pidgin Sign gets to ‘Christmas.’ They think it’s some weird solstice celebration.”
“What’s in this thing, anyway?” If the basket’s contents have a smell, the amount of shit on him blocks it out.
“Were you not paying attention? It’s meat, a big basket of much-blessed Godbirth meat. That’s their idea of a good present. Thank god they don’t understand the concept of stockings, or I’d have a really unpleasant surprise tomorrow morning—whoa, watch it!”
Only an arm across his chest keeps Biff from toppling headlong into the tunnel. In the dark, it’s nearly invisible.
“Little warning, huh?”
“Right. Night vision,” she says, and with a frown of concentration, reaches for the rim of the tunnel. A string of Tiki lamps light up in green, blue, and purple. “That better?”
“It’ll work.” The tunnel is low enough that Biff has to take the basket down from his shoulder and hunch to get in. For once, he’s glad he’s short.
After a short descent, they make their way down into what would be a basement, if the buildings here made any sense. More lamps are staple-gunned up, and they flicker to life when the kid passes them, displaying a round room that’s tall enough for them to stand in, but not by much. When he touches the walls, he realizes they’re clay. They have slots for shelves, which are filled with vials, jars, books, and random other crap. Dried bunches of plants hang from the ceiling, which seems to be a mass of roots, and only then does Biff realize that all the towers—the buildings—are trees.
The only piece of proper furniture in the room is a short, squat, round thing that seems like a combo of night table and bookshelf. Biff sets the basket on top and cracks the lid to take a look. True to the kid’s word, it’s filled to the brim with cuts of meat.
“What’s this shit from?” Biff calls.
The kid’s looking at her filthy clothes with revulsion. “The answer wouldn’t mean anything to you. Just cook it thoroughly and it should be fine. Here, you want some of it? Please, take as much as you want; there’s no way I can take on that much protein in a go…”
“Sure.” Biff still can’t identify most of the cuts, but what he sees certainly looks good.
At the back end of the room, there’s a fireplace, and a nest of blankets. No pillow or mattress, just a thin mat. He kneels down to get a better look at the fireplace—a bit of a trick, since the nest is in the way, and Biff doesn’t want to touch it in case he smears shit all over it.
“You always sleep this close to the fire?” He asks.
“It has a perfectly functional guard, just so you know.”
“How many times you set the bed on fire?”
“Only twice. Give me a break.”
Biff grunts, paying more attention to the fireplace. It’s big enough and has a grill on it; not great, but he can cook on it. “What you got to eat in this place? I can do some of the meat, but…”
When he looks up, the kid is scrabbling around in what looks like a cabinet next to him. “Would you even recognize the ingredients?”
Biff gives her an offended look, though she can’t see him. “Better’n you. What, you live on space goo or some shit?”
“Hey, you have the energy to cook dinner after all that, be my guest. I think I’ve got some vegetables and grain puffs around here somewhere. But first, we get clean.”
She crawls out, and the ‘cabinet’ turns out to be a dumbwaiter. She reaches up and does something that causes a bell to ring. The dumbwaiter lurches and there’s a creaky sound, then a dubious clunk. The kid dives out of the way, just in time to miss a tub of steaming water that falls with a crash, splashing water everywhere. At least it doesn’t tip over.
“Right. I was supposed to fix that thing.” The kid hauls the tub out, grabs some rags and soap off one of the shelves, and she strips off her gloves, over-shirt, and sleeves. “Who cares, I can’t wait to see my fingernails again…”
Biff gives her a jab in the side. “You want me to cook? You want me clean first. Move it.”
The kid rolls her eyes and whines, but leaves the tub to him. “Well, be quick about it. I’m starving.”
“Yeah, yeah, you find me shit to cook with.”
The water’s a little too hot, but Biff doesn’t care. His arms and face are still crusted with muck, and his clothes are a lost cause. Even his hat has shit smeared across the brim, which he finds out when he takes it off. He strips to the waist and starts scrubbing. The kid keeps her back turned while she searches for basic cookware.
“I’d offer you clothes, but there’s no way you’d fit into anything I’ve got.” She sounds cheerful. “Oh hey, I’ve got a pan! Wonder where that came from… aha! I’ve been saving this for a special occasion, but after that hatching, I’m feeling celebratory.”
Biff remembers the blood, the mayhem. “That was a good hatching?”
“It was a fantastic hatching. And everyone was so worried, what with building running behind and the hatching coming early. The last generation got torched. The brood hill was badly constructed, and the carriers didn’t hold long enough, and they had to burn the whole thing to the ground to keep the larvae from getting out and trying to eat town.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone would’ve gotten eaten to death. But the Dead-Carrier Beetles are one of the most respected families in town; their scrip is the closest to real money this place has. If they ever had a social FUBAR like a brood plague, the local economy would insta-bomb.”
Biff blinks, trying to imagine this, then starts washing his face. “Why they so important? They’re giant bugs.”
“They are funeral garbage priests who dispose of corpses without offending anyone or violating sanitation norms. Believe me, Biff, in this town, that sort of cultural sensitivity is gold. Shampoo?”
But he isn’t paying attention. Something has just clicked in his head, and he doesn’t like it. He pauses in washing, glances at the kid sidelong. “So people like the bugs, huh?”
“Adore them. Seriously, my employability just skyrocketed from this hatching.”
Biff turns away from the water, towards her. “Why you doing this?”
“Huh? Biff, you’re filthy, plus it’s December and you don’t have hot water—”
“Not that. This.” He waves his hands at everything.
“What, the job? I told you, our usual—”
“Sick, needed new hands, uh huh. But why me? You got this whole damn town kissing the ass of these guys. Why not ask one of them, huh? They can whack maggots. They speak Wiggle Dance.”
“Pidgin Sign.”
Biff smacks the tub, and starts scrubbing the filth off his neck with a vengeance. “I don’t need you to fucking babysit me, okay? I don’t need no fucking savior, and—”
“Wait. Hold on a second here.” Now the kid is staring at him with a weird look. “You think I shanghaied you… to keep you from drinking?”
“I saw the way you looked at me. Well, fuck you, I was doing just fine, I didn’t need—”
“Oh my god.” She cups her face in her filthy hands. “You think I’m a codependent. Biff, you… you are an idiot, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I think I’m offended…”
She makes a weird hiccuping sound and grinds her teeth for a second, then throws her hands down.
“Biff, a lot of people in town could’ve done what you did. But none of them can reboot my brain like you do.”
Biff blinks. “Huh?”
The kid sighs and sits—flops, rather. “Remember how the past few months I was a mental mess and my bosses kicked me off the junior healer employment roster? Yeah. They didn’t want me at the hatching. But then our replacement got sick, and they needed me to help with the brood mothers—and the whacking would’ve been a nice bonus too. So they let me on provisionally, as long as I brought along someone to reboot my brain if I cracked. You were the only one available on Christmas, because you’re the only one with even less of a life than me.”
Biff is silent. After all the talk of employability and the local economy and how big a deal these hatching things are, he can guess what it’d mean for a junior healer to get kicked out of one.
“So, no, Biff. I didn’t come to ‘save’ you. I came to save my job and prove that I can still function. Sometimes.”
With her sleeves off, he can see her arms. The scars lace up almost to the shoulder, pale against her dark skin. No open wounds. “Your arms look good,” he says. Then he stands up, shaking water off his arms, and kicks the tub in her general direction. “It’s all yours.”
She snickers in a way that’s not really funny. “Functionality upswing. Here’s hoping it sticks. Now get to work, kitchen slave; I got out all my kitchen supplies on the table.” She goes to plunge her arms into the bucket.
Biff looks at the table’s contents with dismay. The sorriest excuse for a dented frying pan he’s ever seen, a knife that’s obviously not used for just cooking, some spongy vegetables (mushrooms?), and something that looks a bit like popcorn. Plus a couple bottles. He uncorks the bottles, but one holds water, and the other smells like mentholated Vapo-rub, nothing he wants to experiment with. He puts them back and starts chopping the vegetables. At least they smell and look like they’ll complement meat okay.
The kid undoes her ponytail and dunks her head, then starts lathering up her hair, which has turned into a rat’s nest of mud and gore. “You know, I almost wish I were that big a codependent. I could pretend interrupting your relapse was my main goal, and not just a bonus.”
“I ain’t fucking relapsing. I just drunk through the last seven Christmases, and I’m going to drink through this one.”
She glowers at a knot in her hair. “Wow, and I thought my holiday traditions were sad.”
“Hey, least you got some Happy Godbirth meat out of the deal.” He rummages in the basket for something cut thin enough to cook fast, lucks out on some lard too, and uses it to grease the pan. “Me? I’d rather be shit-hammered the whole week. Better that way.”
“Funny, you seemed to disagree when I tried to pull that with my favored brand of self-destruction. Or is alcoholism somehow more okay?”
He grimaces and tosses everything into the pan. “You got to call it that? And you got some herbs for this shit?”
“No, I don’t. And relax. I’m a cutter; you’re an alcoholic. We’re all screw-ups here.”
Biff scowls and rummages in his pockets. In a stroke of luck, he finds an extra packet of salt and pepper, left over from McDonalds. It’s better than nothing, so he tosses it on and nudges the pan onto the grill with a quick shove, then sits to keep an eye on it.
The food is easier to focus on than what she said, but it nags at him. He wants to protest it, but the words won’t come out.
Finally, he says, “Don’t call me an alcoholic. I don’t got no fucking disease, all right?”
“Fine. You binge-drink like a frat-boy with a deathwish and have a psychological dependence on alcohol, which you heavily abuse.”
“See, now, that’s better. I’ll take that.”
“Really now.”
“Yeah. It’s what I do, not what I am. My old man was an alcoholic; I’m just a drunk.”
“That’s not—” Then the kid blinks and slumps over the tub, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Of course. I’m an idiot; I know it runs in families…”
“Yeah, so don’t pull that Twelve Steps bullshit on me; I know ‘em better than you do. I spent plenty of time with the Big Fucking Book as a kid, and it did jack shit. If I’m going to quit drinking, I’m doing it my way, not theirs.”
“And what, exactly, is your way? Biff, when I arrived today, you had what looked like half a liquor store on your kitchen counter.”
“I ain’t been drinking behind your back, okay, I… I was just about to start.”
Still combing, she gives him a look, checking for bullshit. He passes. “My timing is singular.”
“Yeah. It is.” He wraps his hand in one of the kid’s discarded sleeves; it’ll work as an oven mitt. He shoves it back in, and adds, “Thanks.”
She gives him a wary look.
“No! I mean it, okay? I wasn’t exactly looking forward to being shit-hammered all week. It’s—it’s just the only way I know how to deal with this time of year. Like, maybe you keep fighting with me, it would be okay, give me something else to go to, but now all I got’s cigarettes, and it ain’t the same. Ain’t all that good for me either.”
She wrings her hair out and starts pulling it back again. “Biff, I told you, I don’t do that anymore.” Her voice is tired. “I’m trying to find less maladaptive coping mechanisms.”
“It ain’t—it’s blowing off steam! We put gloves on, we’d call it boxing and it’d be a goddamn sport. Just because once—” he sees her face and tries again. “Look, you got problems with White Boy, you hash it out with him. But that ain’t got nothing to do with us. You ain’t going to break me.”
But they’ve had this fight before, and she isn’t budging. “No, Biff. I mean, for once, you actually said something useful, but… no.”
There’s not much he can do with that. But hell, she’s fessed up to being a work fuck-up, and he’s fessed up to having a drinking problem, maybe honesty will get him what he wants. “I miss it, okay? I ain’t got nobody else to fight with.”
She raises her eyebrows at him skeptically. “Biff, you get paid to hit people.”
“It ain’t the same!” He cries. “They don’t like it like you do! And don’t say you don’t; I know.”
She sighs and pushes the tub back in the dumbwaiter to be reeled up. “We are two very screwed-up people, you know that?”
Biff snorts and reaches for the frying pan. Like that’s news. He gives everything a stir and a flip, and goes, “That mean you’ll think about it?”
“Maybe. I’m not about to promise anything until you feed me.”
Despite the kid’s crappy kitchen, the meat and vegetables cook well enough, and though he knows by smell that it won’t be spectacular, he’s sure it’ll be better than anything she could whip up. She gets up and pours cups of water, plus a little of the mysterious mentholated stuff. They move the basket and use the short round thing as a table; it’s low enough that they don’t need chairs, which is good since there aren’t any.
Biff looks at the shot’s worth of Vapo-Rub stuff. It’s pale blue. “What is this shit anyway?”
She steeples her fingers. “Well, there’s this thing here kind of like a giant aphid…”
“Forget it.” He should know better than to ask. “What’s it do?”
“Clears out your sinuses, boosts your immune system, and insures a good night’s sleep, which I’d say we’ve earned after today. As a bonus, it doesn’t taste entirely terrible.”
The amount in the glass warns him not to toss it back like water, so he waits for the kid to take a sip of hers, then follows her example. Good thing, too; it hits like saccharine minty horseradish, and his eyes and nose start running instantly.
“Jesus!”
“Impressive, huh? Expensive too; I only lucked into this bottle because I helped realign the keeper a while back.” She takes another sip, twitches. “Hoo. But after that mess, I say we deserve it.”
They eat. Everything’s bland and a little overcooked, but it’s filling, and after he finishes, Biff starts feeling the exhaustion creeping up, the sleep dep and hard work finally catching up to him.
He rubs his eyes and stifles a yawn. “What time’s it?”
She shrugs, reaches for her belt to dig out the jaunt watch. “By your body’s clock? Past midnight. Jeez, no wonder I’m thrashed; I can’t remember the last time I did evening work.” Then she blinks, checks the watch again. “Huh. Congratulations, Biff. You made it through Christmas without drinking this year.”
“Huh. Broke my record.” He doesn’t know what to think about that. He remembers all the liquor on his shelf. Part of him wants to let it slide. But he says, “Hey. When we go back, could you…?”
“Sure. I’ll hang on to your hooch for you.”
“Yeah. Okay. Don’t bust them or anything, it cost me, just… I don’t know. Give ‘em to White Boy or something, have a laugh. And don’t go celebrating shit yet; I still got the rest of the week to go.”
“Enh. Maybe I can find you more distractions. Seems only fair, after last month.” She smiles. “And hey, think of it this way. Right now, you’re sober, and I’m sane. We’re here, eating much-blessed Godbirth meat, and we helped bring a new generation of Dead-Carrier Beetles into the world. I don’t know about you, but that’s more than I thought I’d accomplish today.” She raises her cup to him. “To baby beetles.”
Biff snorts. “Sure, whatever. Baby beetles.” He raises his cup. Clunk. “Happy Godbirth, kid.”
“Many blessings upon your meat,” she replies.
They drink.
Word Count: 7106
Summary: Biff and M.D. have plans for Christmas. Biff’s involves a liquor store; M.D.’s involves giant larvae. Her plan wins.
Notes: This takes place a month or so after ‘Six Weeks to Recovery.’ If you haven’t read it, all you need to know is that M.D.’s brain crashed, and Biff made her a deal: he quit drinking, and in exchange she quit isolating. He also ended up owing her a favor, which is something nobody should ever do.
Biff holds out for a month. It’s got nothing to do with willpower; he just doesn’t have time. The kid is such a mess, he doesn’t want to give her any leverage, and for a while, she seems to be crashing at his place every night while the bandages climb her arms and he chain smokes harder than he ever has in his life. He’s so busy holding her together, everything else slides, and right as she pulls out of her nosedive, the Rose comes out of the woodwork with surprise late season work. Even the Rose’s boys don’t want to work through the holidays, but Biff’s been out of action for two months, and he needs the money bad. It’s not like he’s got anything better to do, and so he’s out busting heads and guarding boxes and paying off all his back-rent and bills right up till—
Fucking Christmas. Right in time for the shock cold snap.
Biff’s got no heat, no tolerance, and no distractions. He wakes up shivering in a ball, hears the traffic and the Salvation Army ringer outside, and fuck it. Fuck everything. It’s over.
Or it will be. First he has to get out of bed.
It takes a while. The day feels like an iron weight, and he’s had barely any sleep, thanks to doing a thing for a guy all night. He planned to sleep through as much of the day as possible, and now here he is, feeling like hell, and it’s not even noon. But finally, he realizes his breath is fogging and he grabs some pants and goes looking for a drink.
The cabinet’s empty. So’s the fridge. Damn it, the kid even got the emergency under the bathroom sink. Fuck her. The hell did he let her? And why didn’t he restock?
Well, he knows why. But dammit, now he has to go outside, in the cold snap, on Christmas, sober. All because of her. Shivering and swearing, he pulls on a shirt, his only vest, and his only jacket, and he heads out. At least outside isn’t much colder than his apartment, and hey, maybe he can at least pretend the holiday doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t work. Every goddamn shop seems to have decorations in the window. Plastic Santas, an army of animatronic snowmen, enough light-up reindeer for a national park. The tenements have flickering Christmas lights in the windows, and the Salvation Army guys are out in force. Biff tries to block it out, focus on the liquor store. Just one trip, and then he can lock himself in his frigid apartment for the next week, not look at any of this shit until next year.
God. Next year.
The bells over the liquor shop door have been replaced with sleigh bells. Inside, the speaker’s crooning about how it’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on it.
Biff rubs his eyes and stares blankly at the shelves. Feeling like this, choosing seems like too much effort. What does it matter, long as it puts him out for the rest of the day. Week, if he paces himself. Finally, he leans on muscle memory, just lets his hand find what it wants without looking too hard at the labels.
The girl in the hijab behind the counter is new. When he dumps the bottles on the counter and digs for his wallet, she asks, “Will that be all for you today, sir?”
Biff grunts and tries to ignore the shop soundtrack, which is now going on about shoes and dying mothers and learning what Christmas is all about.
“We’re having a special today on eggnog, if you—”
“No.”
“Would you like to take advantage of our low, low prices and stock up on our champagne for—”
“No.”
His apartment is still dark and cold, but at least there’s no lights, trees, or songs about dying moms. The whole place is deserted. The bag lady, the girl, all the rest, they got somewhere else to be. Nobody to bug him, nobody to pity him, nobody to care. Just him, his apartment, and a big bottle of—
The kid’s sitting on the windowsill.
Biff halts in the door and makes a sound that—it isn’t a whine, he’s too old to whine, it’s just… no. No. It’s not fair. Despite himself, he almost wants to vanish the bags, hide them behind his back even, like no, it’s not what it looks like, it just…
The kid looks at the bags. “That’s a lot of alcohol.”
Shit.
He’s not going to feel bad. He’s not. He lasted a whole fucking month, okay, way longer than anyone could hope for, and she didn’t even make it a week, so yeah, fuck her, he’s not going to feel bad, no matter what she says.
But she’s still not saying anything, and he’s too tired to get a proper mad going. He doesn’t want to fight with her. He doesn’t want to do anything with anyone today, and finally he decides to just pretend she isn’t there. Going to the counter, he turns his back to her and starts unloading.
“We had a deal.” She doesn’t sound angry.
“’S Christmas. Deal’s off on Christmas.” He thinks about it, then adds, “New Year’s too. Whole week, it’s off.”
He stares at the bottles, trying to choose a starter and ignore her eyes burning a hole in the back of his head. The fuck with it, he’s falling off the wagon anyway, he might as well go balls out, and so he reaches for the Everclear. He’s not really surprised when the kid’s suddenly between him and the counter and tugging the bottle from his hand. He doesn’t really have it in him to resist.
“Please tell me I caught you before you started. Please tell me you’re still sober.” She leans in, trying to smell his breath.
He shoves her back. “For now. Why you here?”
“You owe me a favor,” she says. “I’m collecting.”
“’S Christmas. Collect it later.”
“Oh yeah, because,” she gives the bottle of Everclear a little shake, “I’m obviously interrupting some very important longstanding traditions.”
He crosses his arms and examines the cracks in the wall.
“I don’t have time to lecture you on your behavior.” She sets the Everclear back on the counter with a thud. “I need your sober, clearheaded help—or rather, a bunch of baby Dead-Carrier Beetles do.”
He wants to be offended at the resigned look on her face. He wants to get pissed and tell her to fuck herself, fuck her favor, and fuck her baby— “Dead what?”
“Beetles. Dead-Carrier Beetles.” She puts her hands out like she’s holding an invisible breadbox. “About so big. They’re a combo of garbage men, priests, and—” she sees his face. “You’re hungover, aren’t you?”
“What? No.” He wishes he was hungover. “’M tired.”
She still looks skeptical. “Not used to a diurnal existence, are you?”
“Nnnnrgh.” He slumps back against the table, rubbing his face. The sleep deprivation isn’t the problem, but it sure isn’t helping anything.
“Anyway, it’s hatching season, and at the larval stage, Dead-Carrier Beetles are like maggot piranhas. We need extra hands, and our usual woke up sick. Congratulations, Biff. You’re it.”
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Don’t you got other shit to do? What about—” no, can’t call him Fag Boy, supposed to stop doing that, “White Boy and… that other guy?”
“The one whose name you never bother remembering?”
“Yeah. That guy.”
“Too happy. Too sane. Too busy with their families, celebrating the day of Holy Consumerism, which I prefer to ignore completely.”
Biff wants to pitch a fight. He wants to kick the kid out and systematically work through all the bottles on his counter until the holiday’s over, same as usual. He might as well; it’s obvious she already thinks he’s caved. But now his pattern’s been interrupted. Tossing the kid out isn’t impossible, but it’s still a pain in the ass, and she’s not above throwing his bottles out the window, which means another liquor store run, more awful Christmas carols and decorations and money out of his pocket—money’s he’s only just gotten. And even if he does end up alone in the peace and quiet with his bottles, he doesn’t really look forward to it anyway…
He freezes. He doesn’t look forward to it?
He drops his hands to his sides. Frowns. Pokes at the thought a little. It holds up.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to. Oh, he wants to. But he’s been dry a month now—not nearly enough to break the wanting, but enough to break some of the habit. He’s gotten used to being clear-headed and regular. He hasn’t broken any furniture or cookware for a month, or gotten kicked out of anywhere, or woken up with bruises he can’t remember getting. And though he still doesn’t see that as worth giving up drinking for, it is a nice change of pace.
The kid sits, watching him. Her knee is jumping, and she keeps tapping one of the jars on her belt, doing everything short of checking her watch. She can’t really take the time to have a drag-out over this. If he tells her to fuck herself, she might bust his bottles, but that’s about it. And from the look on her face, she knows it.
His apartment suddenly feels very cold and dark.
“You never taken me to your place,” he says.
She shrugs. “It’s dangerous, and not in the way you’re used to. Also, you’ve never evinced interest.”
“What’s weather like over there?”
“Right now? Summer, so maybe seventy-five degrees.”
“Let’s go.” Before he changes his mind.
…
They don’t get to go right off. Apparently bug babysitting is messy; the kid insists he change into clothes he won’t ever want again. He’s antsy, already regretting telling her yes, and the bottles on the counter are calling to him, so he snaps at her, and it works. A baseball bat and some gloves, and they’re gone.
The arrival helps shake him out of his funk, and not just because it always makes him feel sick. When he first met her, he swore never to give the kid any reaction, no matter what weird shit she brought on, but it’s so green. Full of trees and moss and—
And it looks like every 60s monster movie on coffee break.
The kid’s elbow jabs into his side, making him jump. “Don’t stare, don’t speak, and for the love of god, don’t punch anything,” she hisses, and she grabs his sleeve to drag him after her.
Biff has lived in Vaygo a long time. He knows better. Still, it takes a moment to wrestle his face straight, and he can’t keep from twisting the bat in his hand. He always knew the kid was from Out There… but he always figured she was exaggerating for the laughs, that Out There was pretty much like the outer counties. It never occurred to him she might’ve understated.
Everything here is curved.
He doesn’t get the time to really take it all in. They’re in front of a fucking stegosaurus with teeth like steak knives, and it’s dumping wood into his arms and the kid’s hauling mud and barking at him to hurry up. Biff doesn’t have much choice but hustle along after her, because he’s sure now that nothing here speaks any English.
They follow a road (also curved) till it ends in a forested area. He starts to follow everyone else, but the kid hauls him away with a hasty, “No, not those trees, they’re violent,” pulling him down a different path.
Biff doesn’t ask, doesn’t retort, sure as hell doesn’t think about what a violent tree might be. He just obeys.
They come to a clearing, where apparently they’re building… well, he’s not sure what they’re building, but it looks something like a cross between a very small sports arena and a very large anthill. Judging by how everyone’s rushing, they’re behind schedule.
The next few hours, Biff is parked in front of the arena, hauling wood and mud and holding things in place while giant blue beetles seal it all. The kid ditches him periodically, doing… something… but always comes back in time to keep him from getting into any fights. Everything else manages to get communicated with pointing.
It’s frantic work, but Biff is used to heavy lifting, and soon the adrenaline kicks in and wipes away the lingering fatigue. Everyone’s moving, everyone’s busy, and the only time anyone pauses is to slug down water and hit the bathroom. (Which, he finds out, is outside. He still hasn’t seen anything he recognizes as a building.)
They get the thing built, whatever it is. The word ‘arena’ still fits best, a ramping wall surrounding a flat circular space in the middle. They start moving big chunks of half-rotten wood into the center, then a bunch of carcasses. And yeah, hauling the dead meat is pretty bad, they look like they got mauled by a tiger or something, and they haven’t been bled, but the kid hurls herself in and he doesn’t want to get shown up by her, even if it means tripping in something’s intestines. No wonder she told him to wear shitty clothes.
Eventually, the arena’s ready, and everyone takes up positions, some on top of the wall, others (including him and the kid) down on the ground in the middle. A bunch of bugs haul in what looks like just some more dead animals, but everyone gets real quiet and watches intently. Biff doesn’t know what he expects, but nothing happens except the meat gets put down, the bugs leave, and everyone seems to relax a little.
The kid puffs some hair out of her eyes. “Okay, we’ve got a little breathing room now.” A red pterodactyl makes a humming sound at her, and gives her a couple doughy lumps. The kid strips off her bloody gloves to take them, then passes one to him. “Here. Eat while you can.”
Biff doesn’t ask what’s in it. He just pulls his gloves off, wipes his hands on the inside of the back of his shirt and grabs the lump to tear in; it’s the first he’s eaten today. He can’t place what the dough is made out of. Inside is some kind of sweet nutty gunk whose texture reminds him a little of peanut butter.
When he looks up from the whatever-it-is, he sees that the pterodactyl is flapping around, spitting fire to light torches up around the top of the wall, even though it’s still daylight.
The kid looks up from her own dumpling thing and catches him frowning.
“She can do that,” she says.
Biff gives her a look. She doesn’t have to act like he’s stupid. “I know. What’s it for?”
“When the torches go out, we’re done,” she explains around a mouthful of food. “That’s all you need to care about, anyway.”
“So we ain’t done.”
She snorts. “You wish. No, that was the easy part. Now we wait for them to hatch.” She smirks. “Eat fast.”
…
It doesn’t take long for Biff to find out what the big deal is with the special dead things. The kid calls them ‘brood carriers;’ apparently that’s where the beetles lay their eggs. Once they hatch, the larvae eat their way out. It takes a couple minutes, and it’s just as well that he did eat fast; it isn’t pretty to watch.
When the brood carriers start to writhe and collapse from the inside, everyone gets ready. The kid pulls a bandanna over the lower half of her face and pulls out a crappy old hockey stick.
“This is the simple part,” she announces, tossing him his bat.
“Thought you said that was before,” Biff says, adjusting his hat.
“No, that was the easy part. But this is simple. All we’ve got to do is keep the larvae inside the brood hill, don’t beat them up too bad, and don’t get eaten.” She braces her stick and gives him a salute. “Fare thee well, soldier.”
Then the larvae burst out, and things get crazy.
The maggots are about the size of cats, but even less pleasant. They’re covered with short, spiky hairs, and prickly sets of little black legs, and they have sharp biting jaws. They’re a lot faster than they look, smear gore on everything, and when one attacks, they swarm. And they can jump.
There are hundreds of them.
For the next eternity, Biff’s life is guerilla dodgeball. No time to think, no time to feel, no time for anything but blind reflex and blood-soaked chaos. Somewhere between getting acid vomited on him the first time and nearly punting a maggot over the wall by accident, he forgets it’s Christmas. When the maggots start exploding, he even forgets about the bottles. Mostly because the first one explodes on him.
And damn her to hell, the kid starts laughing.
Biff asks her what’s so funny and backhands a maggot in her direction. It bursts in the air, and they duck the spatter.
“This is good!” She says. “It’s all downhill from here!”
“The hell you say!”
But it is. All the weakest larvae are in the tougher ones’ stomachs, and now all the nastiest ones are starting to burst—which is disgusting and distracting, but not that dangerous. The rest of the grubs have eaten enough that they’re starting to get sluggish. Things start slowing down, enough that the kid can pause between slapshots to explain why the hell Mother Nature decided to make maggots that explode when they eat too much. She blathers on about defense mechanisms and birth rate regulation, but Biff just figures she’s fucking with him and tunes her out.
Right around the time it starts getting dark, the remaining larvae start burrowing into the blocks of rotten wood and curling up to sleep the whole gorefest off. At first, Biff doesn’t notice, so used to smacking everything that crawls, but eventually it registers that the arena has gone still and he finally gets to look around. Everyone’s covered in mud, blood, and filth, and the stars are out. Everyone looks worn out.
Finally, the torches are put out. The kid pulls her bandanna down and whoops hoarsely, and the bugs and the dinosaurs chitter and stomp. Biff just stretches his aching back; the ground’s too disgusting for him to want to sit down.
“Never owing you shit again,” he mutters.
But she isn’t paying attention. She’s off, wiggle dancing at the pterodactyl, who’s wiggle dancing back. She doesn’t translate for him, but judging by her face, they’re happy with how everything went down. The kid props her hockey stick on one shoulder, the pterodactyl perches on the other, and they start to head out.
“Come on,” she calls back to him, “Let’s scrub off the offal and have some grub.”
He refuses to notice the pun. It would only encourage her.
He still doesn’t get to sightsee. There aren’t any streetlights, and for some reason, nobody seems to notice how dark it is but him. Everything has gone from shades of green and gold to blue and black, and the kid has to grab his shirt to keep him from blundering into the wrong (violent) trees. He still doesn’t know what they do, but he could swear he sees them move out of the corner of his eye.
Getting back into town doesn’t make anything better. It’s still as active as it was during the day, but there’s still no light, so all he can make out is that everything is round. Everything. The houses (which look like towers, and he can’t tell what they’re made of), the stalls, even the roads go in circles. He tries to figure out what everything’s made of, but he keeps almost crashing into things, so he has to give it up and take a grip on the back of the kid’s hockey stick.
He can’t see if the townspeople at night look any better than the ones during the day. The quick impressions he does get raise his hackles. Maybe it’s better that he can’t see them properly.
Biff follows the kid to one of the towers. This one is thicker and squatter than most of the others. The pterodactyl gets off the kid’s shoulder and flaps in, then turns to watch them expectantly, but the kid is walking on.
Biff starts to follow her, but the pterodactyl is looking at him now, fluttering its wings, hopping up and down, obviously trying to get his attention.
“Uh, hey.” He pulls on the kid’s hockey stick, forcing her to stop, and cocks his thumb back at the pterodactyl. “Dinosaur wants you.”
“What? She’s not a—” then she sees it waiting for her, and her face looks how he felt when she showed up on his window. She even says, “No. Noooo…”
“What’s the matter? You owe it money or something?”
But the kid’s not paying attention. She grabs Biff’s arm, tries to turn him away, muttering, “Don’t make eye contact, don’t act suspicious, just let’s go down and pretend…”
But she’s too small to move him if he doesn’t want to be moved, and he can tell when she’s bullshitting him. On top of it, the pterodactyl’s hopping up and down and flapping its wings and jerking its head like some kinda dinosaur Lassie trying to say Timmy’s trapped down a well. Add that to it only being about as big as a turkey buzzard, and it looks more goofy than intimidating.
Biff breaks out of the kid’s grip, grabs her arm, and twists it up her back, even though it gets him whacked with the hockey stick. She whines and drags her feet, but doesn’t really fight as he frog-marches her towards the pterodactyl.
The tower is lit on the inside, at least, though that doesn’t give him any better clue what it’s made of. The pterodactyl flaps over to the toothy stegosaurus, who’s standing by a low table. On the table is a basket, closed with a lid. The handles (there are three of them) are covered with colored string, all tied into careful, lopsided bows.
“Aw, look at that, they got you a present,” Biff croons.
The kid tries to back out, only to smack into him. She doesn’t sound happy. “Thanks Holmes, I kind of noticed, what with the bows and all…”
“Yeah?” He gives the kid a hard shove through the door, where he stays. Just in case. “Then stop fucking around and go get it. I want to get out of here.”
The pterodactyl does a wiggle dance. Still looking pissed, the kid wiggle dances back, and the stegosaurus starts quaking and shuddering, making a cavernous wheezing sound. The kid looks like she just got a mouthful of soap, and Biff raises an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to translate.
She crosses her arms, hunches her shoulders, and says, “He’s laughing at me.”
“No shit, Sherlock. I meant the rest. The wiggle dance.”
She looks pained. “Pidgin Sign, and you embarrass me sometimes, you know that?” She strains at the basket. “Look, she said ‘happy Godbirth and many blessings on your meat,’ now shut up and help me move this thing, it probably weighs twenty pounds and I’ve only got one hand…”
But the stegosaurus is looking at him and drooling, and Biff is reluctant to leave the relative safety of the doorway. The kid looks at him, then the stegosaurus leaving a little puddle on the floor, and scowls.
“Will you unclench already? He won’t eat you— unless I ask him to because you’re being such a balky pain in the neck. Now get over here.”
Biff grimaces, but he comes over, tosses the bat to her, and takes the basket, bracing it on his shoulder with only slight trouble.
“I hate your upper body strength,” she says.
“Hate you too.” He shifts the basket, takes his bat back. He has no idea whether the stegosaurus would even feel it, but it makes him feel better. “Now stop fucking around, I’m hungry.”
She leads him out of the tower and glares at the basket. “I told them not to give me anything. I told them I don’t celebrate this stupid holiday, but no…”
“Godbirth,” Biff says.
“Closest Pidgin Sign gets to ‘Christmas.’ They think it’s some weird solstice celebration.”
“What’s in this thing, anyway?” If the basket’s contents have a smell, the amount of shit on him blocks it out.
“Were you not paying attention? It’s meat, a big basket of much-blessed Godbirth meat. That’s their idea of a good present. Thank god they don’t understand the concept of stockings, or I’d have a really unpleasant surprise tomorrow morning—whoa, watch it!”
Only an arm across his chest keeps Biff from toppling headlong into the tunnel. In the dark, it’s nearly invisible.
“Little warning, huh?”
“Right. Night vision,” she says, and with a frown of concentration, reaches for the rim of the tunnel. A string of Tiki lamps light up in green, blue, and purple. “That better?”
“It’ll work.” The tunnel is low enough that Biff has to take the basket down from his shoulder and hunch to get in. For once, he’s glad he’s short.
After a short descent, they make their way down into what would be a basement, if the buildings here made any sense. More lamps are staple-gunned up, and they flicker to life when the kid passes them, displaying a round room that’s tall enough for them to stand in, but not by much. When he touches the walls, he realizes they’re clay. They have slots for shelves, which are filled with vials, jars, books, and random other crap. Dried bunches of plants hang from the ceiling, which seems to be a mass of roots, and only then does Biff realize that all the towers—the buildings—are trees.
The only piece of proper furniture in the room is a short, squat, round thing that seems like a combo of night table and bookshelf. Biff sets the basket on top and cracks the lid to take a look. True to the kid’s word, it’s filled to the brim with cuts of meat.
“What’s this shit from?” Biff calls.
The kid’s looking at her filthy clothes with revulsion. “The answer wouldn’t mean anything to you. Just cook it thoroughly and it should be fine. Here, you want some of it? Please, take as much as you want; there’s no way I can take on that much protein in a go…”
“Sure.” Biff still can’t identify most of the cuts, but what he sees certainly looks good.
At the back end of the room, there’s a fireplace, and a nest of blankets. No pillow or mattress, just a thin mat. He kneels down to get a better look at the fireplace—a bit of a trick, since the nest is in the way, and Biff doesn’t want to touch it in case he smears shit all over it.
“You always sleep this close to the fire?” He asks.
“It has a perfectly functional guard, just so you know.”
“How many times you set the bed on fire?”
“Only twice. Give me a break.”
Biff grunts, paying more attention to the fireplace. It’s big enough and has a grill on it; not great, but he can cook on it. “What you got to eat in this place? I can do some of the meat, but…”
When he looks up, the kid is scrabbling around in what looks like a cabinet next to him. “Would you even recognize the ingredients?”
Biff gives her an offended look, though she can’t see him. “Better’n you. What, you live on space goo or some shit?”
“Hey, you have the energy to cook dinner after all that, be my guest. I think I’ve got some vegetables and grain puffs around here somewhere. But first, we get clean.”
She crawls out, and the ‘cabinet’ turns out to be a dumbwaiter. She reaches up and does something that causes a bell to ring. The dumbwaiter lurches and there’s a creaky sound, then a dubious clunk. The kid dives out of the way, just in time to miss a tub of steaming water that falls with a crash, splashing water everywhere. At least it doesn’t tip over.
“Right. I was supposed to fix that thing.” The kid hauls the tub out, grabs some rags and soap off one of the shelves, and she strips off her gloves, over-shirt, and sleeves. “Who cares, I can’t wait to see my fingernails again…”
Biff gives her a jab in the side. “You want me to cook? You want me clean first. Move it.”
The kid rolls her eyes and whines, but leaves the tub to him. “Well, be quick about it. I’m starving.”
“Yeah, yeah, you find me shit to cook with.”
The water’s a little too hot, but Biff doesn’t care. His arms and face are still crusted with muck, and his clothes are a lost cause. Even his hat has shit smeared across the brim, which he finds out when he takes it off. He strips to the waist and starts scrubbing. The kid keeps her back turned while she searches for basic cookware.
“I’d offer you clothes, but there’s no way you’d fit into anything I’ve got.” She sounds cheerful. “Oh hey, I’ve got a pan! Wonder where that came from… aha! I’ve been saving this for a special occasion, but after that hatching, I’m feeling celebratory.”
Biff remembers the blood, the mayhem. “That was a good hatching?”
“It was a fantastic hatching. And everyone was so worried, what with building running behind and the hatching coming early. The last generation got torched. The brood hill was badly constructed, and the carriers didn’t hold long enough, and they had to burn the whole thing to the ground to keep the larvae from getting out and trying to eat town.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone would’ve gotten eaten to death. But the Dead-Carrier Beetles are one of the most respected families in town; their scrip is the closest to real money this place has. If they ever had a social FUBAR like a brood plague, the local economy would insta-bomb.”
Biff blinks, trying to imagine this, then starts washing his face. “Why they so important? They’re giant bugs.”
“They are funeral garbage priests who dispose of corpses without offending anyone or violating sanitation norms. Believe me, Biff, in this town, that sort of cultural sensitivity is gold. Shampoo?”
But he isn’t paying attention. Something has just clicked in his head, and he doesn’t like it. He pauses in washing, glances at the kid sidelong. “So people like the bugs, huh?”
“Adore them. Seriously, my employability just skyrocketed from this hatching.”
Biff turns away from the water, towards her. “Why you doing this?”
“Huh? Biff, you’re filthy, plus it’s December and you don’t have hot water—”
“Not that. This.” He waves his hands at everything.
“What, the job? I told you, our usual—”
“Sick, needed new hands, uh huh. But why me? You got this whole damn town kissing the ass of these guys. Why not ask one of them, huh? They can whack maggots. They speak Wiggle Dance.”
“Pidgin Sign.”
Biff smacks the tub, and starts scrubbing the filth off his neck with a vengeance. “I don’t need you to fucking babysit me, okay? I don’t need no fucking savior, and—”
“Wait. Hold on a second here.” Now the kid is staring at him with a weird look. “You think I shanghaied you… to keep you from drinking?”
“I saw the way you looked at me. Well, fuck you, I was doing just fine, I didn’t need—”
“Oh my god.” She cups her face in her filthy hands. “You think I’m a codependent. Biff, you… you are an idiot, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I think I’m offended…”
She makes a weird hiccuping sound and grinds her teeth for a second, then throws her hands down.
“Biff, a lot of people in town could’ve done what you did. But none of them can reboot my brain like you do.”
Biff blinks. “Huh?”
The kid sighs and sits—flops, rather. “Remember how the past few months I was a mental mess and my bosses kicked me off the junior healer employment roster? Yeah. They didn’t want me at the hatching. But then our replacement got sick, and they needed me to help with the brood mothers—and the whacking would’ve been a nice bonus too. So they let me on provisionally, as long as I brought along someone to reboot my brain if I cracked. You were the only one available on Christmas, because you’re the only one with even less of a life than me.”
Biff is silent. After all the talk of employability and the local economy and how big a deal these hatching things are, he can guess what it’d mean for a junior healer to get kicked out of one.
“So, no, Biff. I didn’t come to ‘save’ you. I came to save my job and prove that I can still function. Sometimes.”
With her sleeves off, he can see her arms. The scars lace up almost to the shoulder, pale against her dark skin. No open wounds. “Your arms look good,” he says. Then he stands up, shaking water off his arms, and kicks the tub in her general direction. “It’s all yours.”
She snickers in a way that’s not really funny. “Functionality upswing. Here’s hoping it sticks. Now get to work, kitchen slave; I got out all my kitchen supplies on the table.” She goes to plunge her arms into the bucket.
Biff looks at the table’s contents with dismay. The sorriest excuse for a dented frying pan he’s ever seen, a knife that’s obviously not used for just cooking, some spongy vegetables (mushrooms?), and something that looks a bit like popcorn. Plus a couple bottles. He uncorks the bottles, but one holds water, and the other smells like mentholated Vapo-rub, nothing he wants to experiment with. He puts them back and starts chopping the vegetables. At least they smell and look like they’ll complement meat okay.
The kid undoes her ponytail and dunks her head, then starts lathering up her hair, which has turned into a rat’s nest of mud and gore. “You know, I almost wish I were that big a codependent. I could pretend interrupting your relapse was my main goal, and not just a bonus.”
“I ain’t fucking relapsing. I just drunk through the last seven Christmases, and I’m going to drink through this one.”
She glowers at a knot in her hair. “Wow, and I thought my holiday traditions were sad.”
“Hey, least you got some Happy Godbirth meat out of the deal.” He rummages in the basket for something cut thin enough to cook fast, lucks out on some lard too, and uses it to grease the pan. “Me? I’d rather be shit-hammered the whole week. Better that way.”
“Funny, you seemed to disagree when I tried to pull that with my favored brand of self-destruction. Or is alcoholism somehow more okay?”
He grimaces and tosses everything into the pan. “You got to call it that? And you got some herbs for this shit?”
“No, I don’t. And relax. I’m a cutter; you’re an alcoholic. We’re all screw-ups here.”
Biff scowls and rummages in his pockets. In a stroke of luck, he finds an extra packet of salt and pepper, left over from McDonalds. It’s better than nothing, so he tosses it on and nudges the pan onto the grill with a quick shove, then sits to keep an eye on it.
The food is easier to focus on than what she said, but it nags at him. He wants to protest it, but the words won’t come out.
Finally, he says, “Don’t call me an alcoholic. I don’t got no fucking disease, all right?”
“Fine. You binge-drink like a frat-boy with a deathwish and have a psychological dependence on alcohol, which you heavily abuse.”
“See, now, that’s better. I’ll take that.”
“Really now.”
“Yeah. It’s what I do, not what I am. My old man was an alcoholic; I’m just a drunk.”
“That’s not—” Then the kid blinks and slumps over the tub, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Of course. I’m an idiot; I know it runs in families…”
“Yeah, so don’t pull that Twelve Steps bullshit on me; I know ‘em better than you do. I spent plenty of time with the Big Fucking Book as a kid, and it did jack shit. If I’m going to quit drinking, I’m doing it my way, not theirs.”
“And what, exactly, is your way? Biff, when I arrived today, you had what looked like half a liquor store on your kitchen counter.”
“I ain’t been drinking behind your back, okay, I… I was just about to start.”
Still combing, she gives him a look, checking for bullshit. He passes. “My timing is singular.”
“Yeah. It is.” He wraps his hand in one of the kid’s discarded sleeves; it’ll work as an oven mitt. He shoves it back in, and adds, “Thanks.”
She gives him a wary look.
“No! I mean it, okay? I wasn’t exactly looking forward to being shit-hammered all week. It’s—it’s just the only way I know how to deal with this time of year. Like, maybe you keep fighting with me, it would be okay, give me something else to go to, but now all I got’s cigarettes, and it ain’t the same. Ain’t all that good for me either.”
She wrings her hair out and starts pulling it back again. “Biff, I told you, I don’t do that anymore.” Her voice is tired. “I’m trying to find less maladaptive coping mechanisms.”
“It ain’t—it’s blowing off steam! We put gloves on, we’d call it boxing and it’d be a goddamn sport. Just because once—” he sees her face and tries again. “Look, you got problems with White Boy, you hash it out with him. But that ain’t got nothing to do with us. You ain’t going to break me.”
But they’ve had this fight before, and she isn’t budging. “No, Biff. I mean, for once, you actually said something useful, but… no.”
There’s not much he can do with that. But hell, she’s fessed up to being a work fuck-up, and he’s fessed up to having a drinking problem, maybe honesty will get him what he wants. “I miss it, okay? I ain’t got nobody else to fight with.”
She raises her eyebrows at him skeptically. “Biff, you get paid to hit people.”
“It ain’t the same!” He cries. “They don’t like it like you do! And don’t say you don’t; I know.”
She sighs and pushes the tub back in the dumbwaiter to be reeled up. “We are two very screwed-up people, you know that?”
Biff snorts and reaches for the frying pan. Like that’s news. He gives everything a stir and a flip, and goes, “That mean you’ll think about it?”
“Maybe. I’m not about to promise anything until you feed me.”
Despite the kid’s crappy kitchen, the meat and vegetables cook well enough, and though he knows by smell that it won’t be spectacular, he’s sure it’ll be better than anything she could whip up. She gets up and pours cups of water, plus a little of the mysterious mentholated stuff. They move the basket and use the short round thing as a table; it’s low enough that they don’t need chairs, which is good since there aren’t any.
Biff looks at the shot’s worth of Vapo-Rub stuff. It’s pale blue. “What is this shit anyway?”
She steeples her fingers. “Well, there’s this thing here kind of like a giant aphid…”
“Forget it.” He should know better than to ask. “What’s it do?”
“Clears out your sinuses, boosts your immune system, and insures a good night’s sleep, which I’d say we’ve earned after today. As a bonus, it doesn’t taste entirely terrible.”
The amount in the glass warns him not to toss it back like water, so he waits for the kid to take a sip of hers, then follows her example. Good thing, too; it hits like saccharine minty horseradish, and his eyes and nose start running instantly.
“Jesus!”
“Impressive, huh? Expensive too; I only lucked into this bottle because I helped realign the keeper a while back.” She takes another sip, twitches. “Hoo. But after that mess, I say we deserve it.”
They eat. Everything’s bland and a little overcooked, but it’s filling, and after he finishes, Biff starts feeling the exhaustion creeping up, the sleep dep and hard work finally catching up to him.
He rubs his eyes and stifles a yawn. “What time’s it?”
She shrugs, reaches for her belt to dig out the jaunt watch. “By your body’s clock? Past midnight. Jeez, no wonder I’m thrashed; I can’t remember the last time I did evening work.” Then she blinks, checks the watch again. “Huh. Congratulations, Biff. You made it through Christmas without drinking this year.”
“Huh. Broke my record.” He doesn’t know what to think about that. He remembers all the liquor on his shelf. Part of him wants to let it slide. But he says, “Hey. When we go back, could you…?”
“Sure. I’ll hang on to your hooch for you.”
“Yeah. Okay. Don’t bust them or anything, it cost me, just… I don’t know. Give ‘em to White Boy or something, have a laugh. And don’t go celebrating shit yet; I still got the rest of the week to go.”
“Enh. Maybe I can find you more distractions. Seems only fair, after last month.” She smiles. “And hey, think of it this way. Right now, you’re sober, and I’m sane. We’re here, eating much-blessed Godbirth meat, and we helped bring a new generation of Dead-Carrier Beetles into the world. I don’t know about you, but that’s more than I thought I’d accomplish today.” She raises her cup to him. “To baby beetles.”
Biff snorts. “Sure, whatever. Baby beetles.” He raises his cup. Clunk. “Happy Godbirth, kid.”
“Many blessings upon your meat,” she replies.
They drink.
