Post by Eden Morgan on Jul 27, 2009 17:20:38 GMT -5
About a year and a half ago…
Captain America's been torn apart
Now he's a court jester
with a broken heart
He said-
Turn me around and
take me back to the start
I must be losin' my mind-
"Are you blind?"
I've seen it all a million times
The monotonous lyrics to Guns N Roses’ Paradise City echo throughout the smoky bar. Neon signs, one displaying an advertisement for a particular beer product and the other with a nude silhouette of a woman, seem to flash in time to the beat, but what is, in reality, just a series of shorts in the wires. A cough and a yell here and there as the drunk, patrons call out to this week’s topless trailer park trash who is at the moment gyrating half-heartedly on a pole. Only a handful of the drunks sit stage-side to see the show and leer drunkenly at the girl’s very obviously fake breasts, the rest in various games of pool, cards, and attempting to flirt with the bartender, who does not seem to be very receptive to their advances.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green
And the girls are pretty
Won’t you please take me home
“If she picks this song again, I’m going to pop one of her tits!” Jezebel Saint, the bartender at Twilight Nights Nudes, Booze and Tattoos, yells to her bar back.
The bar-back, Sherry, grins in conspiracy and yells back, “Best not say that too loud, you know she’s Jerry’s pet this week!”
“Fuck Jerry.”
“He’s the boss,” Sherry yells as she spins to grab various beers, handing them off to Jezebel.
“No, our boss is Mr. Bryson. Jerry is just the manager,” Jezebel responds, fluidly placing 4 beer bottles on the bar counter and moving down the line popping their caps a smooth motion, smiling at the patrons.
“Like Mr. Bryson really cares what happens in one of his little bars in Black Cypress, Louisiana. Come on, Jezebel, he’s a very rich man with more to worry about than this little hole in the wall crapper.”
“It’s his establishment. He should care.”
“Yeah, he cares… Skye is grinding on a PVC pipe instead of a real stripper pole, but yeah he cares,” Sherry says as she tosses Jezebel a towel to wipe down the bar for the next customers.
“Point taken.” Jezebel shrugs off the discussion they’ve had several times before and turns to the new customer, wiping a glass down, with her sales smile firmly in place.
“What’s your poison?”
The man leers at her drunkenly and her smile changes to one of a more sarcastic nature. “You have 5 seconds to tell me what you want, sir, beyond that, you can fuck off.” She smiles sweetly at him.
The man looks confused for a second before coughing and gruffly saying, “My buddies and I would like a bucket of beer at that table over yonder.” He turns and points to a table in the corner.
Jezebel nods her head in acknowledgement, all business.
“Coming right up, sir.”
Already ahead of the game, Sherry has a bucket out filled with ice and is even now piling the beer bottles into it. “Jez, there’s another table over there that just ordered a couple of beers, so you can slip them into the belt and take them with the tub.”
“Roger, roger,” Jezebel says as she flips bottles and pours shots, sending cheers up from those at the bar. Some of them have seen her trick bartending skills before and that is the only reason they keep coming back to the shoddy bar. With a graceful fluidity of motion, Jezebel flips a bottle of tequila into the air and catches it on her bent elbow, holds it for a second or two, before launching it off of her elbow, back into the air and upside down into her waiting hand to pour a shot. She juggles with a few bottles and watches the tip jar fill up.
“That bucket ready, Sherry?” she calls as she mixes, pours, and flips.
“Ready, Jez.”
Jezebel pours the last of her bar drinks and snatches up two ice cold beers, slipping them into slings on either side of her before grabbing the bucket and moving to the back of the bar. The steady buzz of a tattoo gun fills her ears like an angry bee. She nods her head and smiles at Randy, the resident tattoo artist, as he goes to work on a burly biker who is in tears from his first tattoo. With an amused grin, Jezebel walks over to the table full of men and places the bucket in the center. As she starts to leave, one of the men grabs her and spins her around in his arms, his sour drunken breath hot in her face.
“You were rude up there, darlin, and I’m thinking you might want to make up for that.”
Jezebel’s eyes narrow and her pulse races a bit as she anticipates the violence to come.
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
The man’s eyes narrow and his fingers dig in to her ass as he pulls her roughly towards him for a kiss. Jezebel dodges the kiss and, with lightning accuracy, grasps the neck of a bottle from the bucket and forcefully slams it into his temple, smashing the bottle. Glass, beer, and blood spray outward and a scream of pain echoes through the bar before the man hits the ground unconscious. Jezebel stands looking down in contempt at her would-be assailant, the broken neck of a beer bottle in her hand. She tosses the glass down and it shatters just before one of the man’s buddies stands up and rushes her. Thinking fast, she grabs the two bottles from the slings on either side of her body and brings them together around the man’s skull.
You can almost hear the whistle and then the shatter as they connect at the same time, making a sandwich out of the man’s head. Another shower of beer, glass, and blood, followed by a thump as the man crumples down next to his friend. Jezebel throws the broken bottlenecks down, stares at the rest of the bar, daring one more person to take a step. The bar is strangely silent, save for the crunch of glass underfoot and the occasional sniffle from the tattooed biker. The remaining men at the table just stare, unmoving and slack-jawed, at the woman who just dropped two of their friends in a matter of seconds.
“Get your friends and get out.” The men at the table comply and Jezebel makes her way back up to the bar, normal sounds resuming.
“Are you okay, Jez?” Sherry asks, concerned.
“Of course I’m fine, “Jezebel replies as she starts serving patrons as if nothing has happened. “Could you run upstairs and check on Havyn? I’ve got it down here.”
Sherry takes off at a sprint, any chance to get away from the bar and its patrons a vacation to her.
Jezebel smiles and turns back to the bar and her waiting customer, whose eyes are watching her very intently and not without some curiosity.
“What’ll it be?” her voiced clipped and unamused.
No answer.
Jezebel lets out a sigh and leans forward, talking to the man studying her carefully. “Look, fucker, I’ve had a long night, a hard night, and I want it to be over, but it won’t be over if assholes like you take so long giving their orders or even verifying their existence, so I’ll ask again… what’ll… it… be?”
Her only clue that she has been heard is the amusement showing clearly in the eyes. Finally, an Irish accent issues forth.
“Surprise me.”
Jezebel cuts her eyes at the strange customer before leaning closer over the bar. “You want some, too, is that it?”
“If by some, you mean alcohol, then aye, I want some.” Even the tone of the
voice is amused.
Jezebel lets her breath out in an aggravated huff before turning and flipping up a rocks glass, shoving ice into it, and filling it with Jack Daniels, pushing it towards the stranger, sloshing some of the liquor on the top of the bar. She stalks off in search of a rag to clean up the mess, bristling at the weight of the stranger’s eyes on her.
“What’s your name?” he asks, taking a long drink of the whiskey as she furiously wipes the counter.
No response.
“I think, from the looks of things, that you’re wasting away here. Does this place and this life not depress you? Chill your bones? Working such a useless, soulless job as this when another one could be just around the corner for someone with talent the likes of which I have just witnessed.”
Jezebel throws the rag into the sink. “Who are you and why do you care?”
The man takes another drink, draining the glass before handing it back to Jezebel for more. Jezebel refills the glass.
“I care because, well… how could I not? I look around this sordid place and, amongst the debauchery and filth, I see someone try to shine even though their full potential is darkened by the weight of this life. Who am I? Saviour. Destroyer. Whichever anyone needs at any given time. Whatever I need to be ay any given time. But, for the sake of not fucking around, you can call me Raenius.”
Jezebel, only half-listening as she refills the ice tray, pauses at the name. “Raenius… as in the brooding schizoid wrestler?”
The man who she now knows to be Raenius scowls at her.
“How about we just stick to Raenius for now, hmm?”
Jezebel straightens up and studies Raenius carefully. “What’s this about a job and me having talent?”
“It’s funny what you can learn from the dejected and depraved. Some of the people here have made mention that not only are you the barkeep, but you’re the security
as well. For someone that looks like you to create an act of violence along the lines of what I just saw impresses me much. I do so hate to see misuse of ability.”
Jezebel crosses her arms, impatient. “Would you please get to the point, it’s almost closing time and I still have to clean and close up.”
Raenius’ eyes narrow slightly. “Heh, you saucy minx.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a card and a pen, scribbling his name and writing a few numbers on it with one of them underlined before handing it to her.
“Call this number,” he says as he points out the line for the recruitment office, “I’ll be sure to make them aware that you’re going to call them.”
With that he pulls a wad of bills out and throws some on the counter in a haphazard fashion and turns to leave. Jezebel stares at the card, her possible ticket out, turning it over and over in her hands before speaking to the dark retreating figure.
“What’s to guarantee I’ll make it in? I have a sure job here, I have a kid, I can’t just up and leave.”
Raenius pauses at the door and looks over his shoulder. “Of course, I apologize. What was I thinking? I’m sure that you make more than enough cash in a place like this to throw at your child, to give it the best life and promising future possible. A splendid place to be raised in, sure as sure. I’ll see you soon.”
With that, he walks out leaving Jezebel to a filthy bar, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, and her thoughts.
Captain America's been torn apart
Now he's a court jester
with a broken heart
He said-
Turn me around and
take me back to the start
I must be losin' my mind-
"Are you blind?"
I've seen it all a million times
The monotonous lyrics to Guns N Roses’ Paradise City echo throughout the smoky bar. Neon signs, one displaying an advertisement for a particular beer product and the other with a nude silhouette of a woman, seem to flash in time to the beat, but what is, in reality, just a series of shorts in the wires. A cough and a yell here and there as the drunk, patrons call out to this week’s topless trailer park trash who is at the moment gyrating half-heartedly on a pole. Only a handful of the drunks sit stage-side to see the show and leer drunkenly at the girl’s very obviously fake breasts, the rest in various games of pool, cards, and attempting to flirt with the bartender, who does not seem to be very receptive to their advances.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green
And the girls are pretty
Won’t you please take me home
“If she picks this song again, I’m going to pop one of her tits!” Jezebel Saint, the bartender at Twilight Nights Nudes, Booze and Tattoos, yells to her bar back.
The bar-back, Sherry, grins in conspiracy and yells back, “Best not say that too loud, you know she’s Jerry’s pet this week!”
“Fuck Jerry.”
“He’s the boss,” Sherry yells as she spins to grab various beers, handing them off to Jezebel.
“No, our boss is Mr. Bryson. Jerry is just the manager,” Jezebel responds, fluidly placing 4 beer bottles on the bar counter and moving down the line popping their caps a smooth motion, smiling at the patrons.
“Like Mr. Bryson really cares what happens in one of his little bars in Black Cypress, Louisiana. Come on, Jezebel, he’s a very rich man with more to worry about than this little hole in the wall crapper.”
“It’s his establishment. He should care.”
“Yeah, he cares… Skye is grinding on a PVC pipe instead of a real stripper pole, but yeah he cares,” Sherry says as she tosses Jezebel a towel to wipe down the bar for the next customers.
“Point taken.” Jezebel shrugs off the discussion they’ve had several times before and turns to the new customer, wiping a glass down, with her sales smile firmly in place.
“What’s your poison?”
The man leers at her drunkenly and her smile changes to one of a more sarcastic nature. “You have 5 seconds to tell me what you want, sir, beyond that, you can fuck off.” She smiles sweetly at him.
The man looks confused for a second before coughing and gruffly saying, “My buddies and I would like a bucket of beer at that table over yonder.” He turns and points to a table in the corner.
Jezebel nods her head in acknowledgement, all business.
“Coming right up, sir.”
Already ahead of the game, Sherry has a bucket out filled with ice and is even now piling the beer bottles into it. “Jez, there’s another table over there that just ordered a couple of beers, so you can slip them into the belt and take them with the tub.”
“Roger, roger,” Jezebel says as she flips bottles and pours shots, sending cheers up from those at the bar. Some of them have seen her trick bartending skills before and that is the only reason they keep coming back to the shoddy bar. With a graceful fluidity of motion, Jezebel flips a bottle of tequila into the air and catches it on her bent elbow, holds it for a second or two, before launching it off of her elbow, back into the air and upside down into her waiting hand to pour a shot. She juggles with a few bottles and watches the tip jar fill up.
“That bucket ready, Sherry?” she calls as she mixes, pours, and flips.
“Ready, Jez.”
Jezebel pours the last of her bar drinks and snatches up two ice cold beers, slipping them into slings on either side of her before grabbing the bucket and moving to the back of the bar. The steady buzz of a tattoo gun fills her ears like an angry bee. She nods her head and smiles at Randy, the resident tattoo artist, as he goes to work on a burly biker who is in tears from his first tattoo. With an amused grin, Jezebel walks over to the table full of men and places the bucket in the center. As she starts to leave, one of the men grabs her and spins her around in his arms, his sour drunken breath hot in her face.
“You were rude up there, darlin, and I’m thinking you might want to make up for that.”
Jezebel’s eyes narrow and her pulse races a bit as she anticipates the violence to come.
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
The man’s eyes narrow and his fingers dig in to her ass as he pulls her roughly towards him for a kiss. Jezebel dodges the kiss and, with lightning accuracy, grasps the neck of a bottle from the bucket and forcefully slams it into his temple, smashing the bottle. Glass, beer, and blood spray outward and a scream of pain echoes through the bar before the man hits the ground unconscious. Jezebel stands looking down in contempt at her would-be assailant, the broken neck of a beer bottle in her hand. She tosses the glass down and it shatters just before one of the man’s buddies stands up and rushes her. Thinking fast, she grabs the two bottles from the slings on either side of her body and brings them together around the man’s skull.
You can almost hear the whistle and then the shatter as they connect at the same time, making a sandwich out of the man’s head. Another shower of beer, glass, and blood, followed by a thump as the man crumples down next to his friend. Jezebel throws the broken bottlenecks down, stares at the rest of the bar, daring one more person to take a step. The bar is strangely silent, save for the crunch of glass underfoot and the occasional sniffle from the tattooed biker. The remaining men at the table just stare, unmoving and slack-jawed, at the woman who just dropped two of their friends in a matter of seconds.
“Get your friends and get out.” The men at the table comply and Jezebel makes her way back up to the bar, normal sounds resuming.
“Are you okay, Jez?” Sherry asks, concerned.
“Of course I’m fine, “Jezebel replies as she starts serving patrons as if nothing has happened. “Could you run upstairs and check on Havyn? I’ve got it down here.”
Sherry takes off at a sprint, any chance to get away from the bar and its patrons a vacation to her.
Jezebel smiles and turns back to the bar and her waiting customer, whose eyes are watching her very intently and not without some curiosity.
“What’ll it be?” her voiced clipped and unamused.
No answer.
Jezebel lets out a sigh and leans forward, talking to the man studying her carefully. “Look, fucker, I’ve had a long night, a hard night, and I want it to be over, but it won’t be over if assholes like you take so long giving their orders or even verifying their existence, so I’ll ask again… what’ll… it… be?”
Her only clue that she has been heard is the amusement showing clearly in the eyes. Finally, an Irish accent issues forth.
“Surprise me.”
Jezebel cuts her eyes at the strange customer before leaning closer over the bar. “You want some, too, is that it?”
“If by some, you mean alcohol, then aye, I want some.” Even the tone of the
voice is amused.
Jezebel lets her breath out in an aggravated huff before turning and flipping up a rocks glass, shoving ice into it, and filling it with Jack Daniels, pushing it towards the stranger, sloshing some of the liquor on the top of the bar. She stalks off in search of a rag to clean up the mess, bristling at the weight of the stranger’s eyes on her.
“What’s your name?” he asks, taking a long drink of the whiskey as she furiously wipes the counter.
No response.
“I think, from the looks of things, that you’re wasting away here. Does this place and this life not depress you? Chill your bones? Working such a useless, soulless job as this when another one could be just around the corner for someone with talent the likes of which I have just witnessed.”
Jezebel throws the rag into the sink. “Who are you and why do you care?”
The man takes another drink, draining the glass before handing it back to Jezebel for more. Jezebel refills the glass.
“I care because, well… how could I not? I look around this sordid place and, amongst the debauchery and filth, I see someone try to shine even though their full potential is darkened by the weight of this life. Who am I? Saviour. Destroyer. Whichever anyone needs at any given time. Whatever I need to be ay any given time. But, for the sake of not fucking around, you can call me Raenius.”
Jezebel, only half-listening as she refills the ice tray, pauses at the name. “Raenius… as in the brooding schizoid wrestler?”
The man who she now knows to be Raenius scowls at her.
“How about we just stick to Raenius for now, hmm?”
Jezebel straightens up and studies Raenius carefully. “What’s this about a job and me having talent?”
“It’s funny what you can learn from the dejected and depraved. Some of the people here have made mention that not only are you the barkeep, but you’re the security
as well. For someone that looks like you to create an act of violence along the lines of what I just saw impresses me much. I do so hate to see misuse of ability.”
Jezebel crosses her arms, impatient. “Would you please get to the point, it’s almost closing time and I still have to clean and close up.”
Raenius’ eyes narrow slightly. “Heh, you saucy minx.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a card and a pen, scribbling his name and writing a few numbers on it with one of them underlined before handing it to her.
“Call this number,” he says as he points out the line for the recruitment office, “I’ll be sure to make them aware that you’re going to call them.”
With that he pulls a wad of bills out and throws some on the counter in a haphazard fashion and turns to leave. Jezebel stares at the card, her possible ticket out, turning it over and over in her hands before speaking to the dark retreating figure.
“What’s to guarantee I’ll make it in? I have a sure job here, I have a kid, I can’t just up and leave.”
Raenius pauses at the door and looks over his shoulder. “Of course, I apologize. What was I thinking? I’m sure that you make more than enough cash in a place like this to throw at your child, to give it the best life and promising future possible. A splendid place to be raised in, sure as sure. I’ll see you soon.”
With that, he walks out leaving Jezebel to a filthy bar, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, and her thoughts.
