Grave New World

  “And why don’t you believe that?”

  “Primarily, because Jimmy Brant and The Overlord are sworn archenemies.”

  “Why?”

  “The Overlord murdered Brant’s entire family. In his attempt at revenge, Brant tried to assassinate The Overlord, but it was not successful. All he managed to remove from office were The Overlord’s eyes, which he now has permanently mounted on his den wall. Needless to say, my dear, naïve fairy, I strongly suspect those two would never play in the same sandbox willingly.”

  I had to consider it. “Maybe they buried the hatchet and figured bygones were bygones if only in order to face the bigger threat of the ANC?”

  “Perhaps, but not very likely,” Bram disagreed. “There is more,” he continued as he glanced up at me. “Dirty Shelly has a sordid history of fornication with both Shade and Brant. Consequently, neither one likes the other. According to rumor, Shelly told Brant that Shade’s todger was exceptionally smaller than Brant’s. Naturally, Brant went directly to Shade, touting that fascinating information. Not much later, there was a hit out on Shelly for a while.” Bram shrugged with a long sigh. “I find it utterly incomprehensible how or why either of them would ever consent to lie with that smelly, old goat …”

  “Oh, my God, Bram, enough!” I snapped wearily. Shutting my eyes tightly, I shook my head. “Your gossip is giving me a splitting headache.”

  “You, on the other hand, my fair damsel,” he started, and I eyed him with daggers. “Now that would be a romp between the sheets that I would most certainly show up for.”

  “Next subject,” I answered with a yawn. I was growing very tired of pacing the small room. I decided to sit down across from Bram while I examined the predicament we were currently in. Unfortunately, no answers came to my mind, and I was also fresh out of pertinent questions that might have shed some light on the subject. For lack of anything better to do, I closed my eyes and tried to reach out to Knight, my boyfriend. He also happened to rank very high up in the ANC.

  “I fear it will do no good,” Bram interrupted me. “There are wards in place; they will prevent you from reaching him.”

  “Was I that obvious?” I asked with a sad, disappointed smile.

  “It would appear that way.”

  Without any chance to respond, the door suddenly swung open, nearly nailing me behind it as it did so. In my effort to launch myself out of the way, I rammed my face directly into the floor. Moments later, I felt a strong pair of hands wrapping around my arms that lifted me up and placed me back on my feet. I glanced up and saw the face of one of Jax’s thugs. He smiled down at me, revealing a gap-toothed mouth and eyebrows that met in the middle to form a unibrow. He was definitely a goblin. Even though I’d never laid eyes on him before, I knew that was true. As a fairy, my abilities allow me to detect the genus and other traits of the Netherworld creatures just by setting my eyes on them.

  I watched helplessly as Jax’s other two men entered the room, both of them eyeing Bram. They were on him in less than a blink of an eye. One of them lifted Bram up and held him while the other began pummeling his massive fists into Bram’s stomach relentlessly.

  “Stop it!” I screamed at them, and the goblin behind me chuckled. I pulled my attention from him and looked back at Bram, only to find him hunched over. The thug holding Bram as a target raised him up again, and the other thug resumed his attack. I thrashed violently against the goblin who was restraining me and tried repeatedly to kick him with my foot, but he simply slammed my legs together, clasping them between his before pawing both of my breasts.

  “Unless you want me ta feel sum more o’ that pretty, little body o’ yers, you better behave,” he warned me, although his breath was a much more offensive assault than his roving hands.

  “I’ll behave,” I grumbled, throwing my shoulder into him sharply when he didn’t drop his hands right away. He laughed and squeezed each of my breasts before gripping my arms roughly again.

  “I’ve received new orders from the powers that be,” Jax announced as he entered the room. He offered me a smile before honing his attention in on Bram. “And the use of reasonable force has been duly authorized.”

  The two thugs who were beating up Bram chuckled before punching him in the face and head mercilessly. Bram was helpless with his hands and feet bound and could do nothing but grunt and take it.

  “Jax!” I yelled at the bastard, finding it unbearable to witness anymore.

  “Ah, my little troublemaker,” Jax replied as he turned around to face me. He was still wearing that puerile, boyish smile, and it suddenly made me sick to my stomach.

  “Tell them to stop hurting Bram!” I screamed at Jax. “Right now!”

  Jax merely shook his head and tsked me. “As you may or may not recall, I don’t take my orders from you! That should be painfully obvious by now,” he shouted. “And I have been formally authorized to use force. Extreme force, even.”

  “You’ve made your point!” I yelled at him, but the two men continued to beat Bram until he was a bloody, bruised mess. “He can’t even defend himself!” I glared at Jax as I shook my head for emphasis. “And what does that say about you? What kind of a man would allow that? Only a cowardly worm would let someone be beaten while they’re chained up and totally defenseless!”

  “What does that say about me?” Jax repeated. “It’s says that I’m the kind of man that you shouldn’t try to fuck over,” Jax replied, his sinister smile fading right off his face. He scowled at me for a few seconds before facing Bram again. “That’s enough,” he said to the two brutes with little interest. “Pick him up and carry him out of here.”

  “What?” I exclaimed as my heart dropped. “What do you mean by out of here? Where are you taking him?”

  Jax approached me, pulling his arm back before smacking me with his open palm. My head jerked to the right, and my cheek stung like a son of a bitch. I immediately aimed my eyes toward his and glowered at him, defying him to try and hit me again. “Third time’s a charm,” I said, spitting a mouthful of blood at his feet.

  “You ask too many questions. Let that be a lesson to you, and from now on, you may only speak when you’re spoken to,” he announced. Then he turned on his heels and started for the door. The two thugs were already carrying Bram out of the room. From what I could tell, Bram didn’t appear conscious. The goblin that was holding me finally released me, but he did it with a shove and I went careening against the far wall, eventually collapsing onto the floor like a pile of bricks. He laughed before closing and locking the door behind him, leaving me to my precious solitude.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bram

  Ache. Pain.

  Those were the only two words I could think of. A dull, throbbing pulse that began in my head and eventually penetrated my entire body was sending currents of agony that reached all the way down to my fingers and toes. Those two words were all I could comprehend. The darkness surrounded me. When I realized it was owing to my closed eyelids, I attempted to open them. But my eyelids seemed extra heavy, as if lead weights were attached to my eyelashes.

  A balmy wave of exhaustion suddenly overcame me. I seemed to be filling up to the brim with a hypnotic pounding and fatigue. I rode the crest of the wave, but eventually had to allow myself to become fully submerged. The pain barely began to subside as the wave took me inside it, tossing me carelessly every direction, this way and that.

  But suddenly, it seemed that I was being lifted up, and when I glanced down, I found the wave growing larger, mushrooming in power and height with every passing second. It still pinned me in its wet and icy embrace, but it was an embrace that was fleeting. I knew it was merely a matter of moments before it became a tsunami and would come crashing down on me again, thrusting me into the depths of the dark abyss of watery nothingness.

  I rose up with the wave, clinging to its crest before the inevitable happened. The wave broke and plunged me downward, sucking me into the raging current and dragging me deeper,
to a place beneath that was ruled entirely by darkness.

  Opening my eyes, I immediately wished I had not. The sunlight was so piercing, it felt as if the sun’s rays were impaling me. I blinked a few times before I could finally concentrate on my whereabouts.

  A cobbled lane, betwixt tall and dark buildings made of knotty timber and crumbling bricks. Heavy, pendulous shop signs projecting from storefronts on large, iron bars, whipped to and fro in the cold wind. The sun continually obstructed by dark and billowing clouds. The sun …

  It took me a moment or two to realize the billowing clouds were not clouds at all but a thick, belching plume of black soot coming from the tenements, shops, and residences on either side of me. Coal, of course.

  I shook my head and tried to make sense of my surroundings. How could I be standing in the street in the … daylight? I glanced around when I caught the smell of wet horses and human excrement. To my right was an open drain of raw sewage that ran the entire length of the street. As soon as the hideous stench hit my nostrils, I recoiled in disgust. As if on cue, the sky suddenly opened and huge drops of rain began to fall. The torrent of rain flooded the cobblestones, mixing with the animal manure and human waste until myriad cesspools of putrescence puddled everywhere. I stumbled forward, nearly tripping over a dog that was long dead and left to decompose in the street. Half of its carcass was being consumed by maggots. Meanwhile, a horse-drawn carriage with heavy, metal wheels careened down the narrow passageway, splashing through the filthy puddles, and nearly slopping the street’s muck all over me.

  I looked up at the second story of a building just as the maidservant opened the window and emptied a chamber pot into the street below. A few pedestrians stepped aside, and one glanced up and cursed the young woman, after presumably being struck by the reeking excrement.

  “Ah, the poor sot got some shit on him!”

  Hearing the voice, I glanced to my left and saw a smiling face that I recognized but had not seen in what felt like centuries. At the sound of another laugh, I looked to my right, nearly suffering from an apoplexy when I recognized myself. Only I was not myself. I was wearing a full-skirted, knee-length coat, knee breeches, and a waistcoat atop a linen shirt, with ruffles and frills. My lower legs were clad in silk stockings, and I wore leather shoes with stacked heels on my feet. As if that were not strange enough, I also wore a shoulder-length, full-bottomed wig and a tricorne hat with an upturned brim on my head.

  “What do ye say to a dram of gin, old man?” my acquaintance asked, elbowing me encouragingly in the arm.

  “I thought you would never ask!” the me with the ridiculous getup responded.

  Somehow, and I was uncertain as to how, I was caught in a time that had long since passed. I felt like a ghost, watching and witnessing my own life. Like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol when he begins reliving snippets of his life in full detail. That particular snippet existed in my memory bank and was somehow replaying itself with unbelievable clarity and freshness. It was a time in my youth—I could not have been more than nineteen years of age. If that were the case, I was witnessing a memory that must have taken place during the eighteenth century in London. And my friend, what was his name? Ah, yes! Graham Fielding! Yes, Fielding. The two of us were inseparable.

  Fielding sidled up to a gin vendor who had just set up shop on the street corner.

  “Aye, ye nearly got covered in that stinkin’ mess,” the man said in greeting. Fielding motioned for two cups of gin. Apparently, the man was referring to the vile contents of the chamber pot that nearly landed on top of us. “The night soil men can’t come soon enough, eh?”

  I remembered the night soil men, too. They had the unenviable task of clearing out the accumulated raw sewage that stagnated in the cesspools all day long.

  “Aye,” Fielding responded with a quick nod. He paid the man and handed me my cup of gin. I watched myself accept it with a large grin. “Ye missed the ruckus yesterday,” Fielding said, his wide, brown eyes twinkling as his lips parted into a smile, revealing his yellow, crooked teeth. “The water main burst an’ started ah spring. Ye ought ta have seen the likes o’ it, shootin’ up into the street. All the water mixed together with the foul sewage an’ it seemed like ah bloody fetid soup everyone had to slosh through to get to their destinations.”

  “I’ll wager the smell was enough to kill ye!” I responded with a hearty chuckle.

  Fielding nodded before downing his gin in three gulps. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Aye, but not as bad as the stench of Fleet Street or the ‘poors’ holes.’”

  “Poors’ holes” was a term that referred to the communal graves where the poorest dead were buried. They had to be constructed deep enough to contain multiple tiers of coffins. The pits were left uncovered until they were completely filled with bodies of the dead. That sometimes went on for weeks or months, and the resulting odor was repulsively pungent. Between the continuous smoke from burning coal, the garbage, the raw sewage, the decaying bodies, and the stench emanating from the Thames River, people often joked that London could be smelled from several miles away.

  “What trouble should we find for ourselves this day?” I asked.

  The mischievous twinkle in Fielding’s eyes returned just as a dirty child approached us, hawking milk and fruit. Fielding sent him away with a little smack on the child’s head, and the child responded by calling him a name.

  “It seems we may have already found it,” he replied. We ventured upon a crowd that was collecting around a dwarf who was performing with his acrobatic monkey. After he finished a few unimpressive stunts, the crowd booed and hissed, visibly becoming quite irate.

  “Ye moost improve yer show, little man!” someone from the crowd yelled out in a Scottish accent. “Jist oop the way there’s ah conjurer castin’ spells an’ oop ah bit further, t’is ah learned pig that can perform arithmetic, play cards an’ read ye yer fortune!”

  “Aye,” Fielding concurred with a nod. “Mrs. Salmon’s wax exhibition on Fleet Street rivals this silly fool’s.” His eyes grew wider. “Or we could always pay a visit to Bedlam?”

  Bedlam was otherwise known as the Bethlehem Royal Hospital. It was a palatial asylum for lunatics located in Finsbury Square and open to the public, as if it were a human zoo. Visitors could pay a few pence to enter and gawk at the inmates. Many of the onlookers engaged in poor behavior in order to incite the residents into reacting to them.

  “I was thinking of something a bit more … carnal,” I responded with an insidious smile. I pulled a pamphlet from my breast pocket and handed it to Fielding. It was Harris’s “List of Covent Garden Ladies,” a guidebook to London’s prostitutes in the Covent Garden area. The entries detailed each woman’s age, her physical appearance, including the size of her breasts, her sexual specialties, and sometimes, even a description of her genitals. Additional information included the women’s addresses and prices.

  “Well done, sir, well done,” Fielding said with a genuine smile as he accepted the book from my hand and eagerly pored through the pages. “Mmm, Kitty Fisher,” Fielding started.

  “You can ill afford,” I said with a laugh.

  “Says here ‘the symmetry of its parts, its borders enriched with wavering tendrils, its ruby portals, and the tufted grove that crowns the summit of the mount, all join to invite the guest to enter.” He glanced up with a boyish grin that spanned from ear to ear. “Number Six Hind Court,” he added as he closed the book, handing it back.

  After a few seconds, we were on our way.

  By the time we reached Kitty Fisher’s home, the sun had already disappeared from the sky and night was well upon us. Fielding took the last steps to the front door, rapped on it, and then waited.

  “I suppose I will be paying the bill?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. Fielding responded with a quick smile, and I shook my head. “Perhaps I should demand to go first then?” His smile fell at the same moment that the door opened. We were pleased to see an attractive wom
an with breasts that overflowed her bodice.

  Fielding immediately took a few steps closer to her and, at the same moment, a well-appointed carriage drew up. As I was closest to the street, I approached the carriage first, curious as to who might be interrupting. The two pitch-black horses pulling the carriage clattered on the cobblestones with their hooves, seemingly impatient to be on their way.

  “Excuse me, sir,” a stunning woman said as she opened the carriage window and leaned out before she eyed me boldly.

  “Madam,” I responded, unable to hide my surprise. “How may I be of service to you?”

  Beautiful was too innocent a word for this stunning creature. With her jet black hair piled high atop her head, her almond-shaped, green eyes, red, rosebud mouth and high cheekbones, she was easily the most tantalizing woman I had ever seen. Cooling herself with an alabaster Chinese fan, I assumed it was also to keep the odors outside from penetrating her nostrils.

  “You were about to enter that … very humble abode, I daresay?” she asked, regarding the lavish building with obvious distaste. Kitty Fisher was one of the more renowned, popular prostitutes, which also made her one of the most expensive, so it went without saying that her home would be just as expensive as she was.

  “I was,” I answered. I could not stop myself from studying this beautiful yet strange woman.

  “That would be quite a mistake,” she started.

  I immediately shook my head and replied, “If you have come to enlighten me as to the moral depravity of one of my favorite pastimes, I am afraid you are wasting your time.”

  The woman laughed. “I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. On the contrary, I was about to extend an invitation to spend the evening with me and thereby avoid making a grand mistake,” she finished. With a wave of her hand, she motioned to Kitty Fisher who was now glaring at her.

  “Is that so?” I asked with unrestrained amusement.

  “It is.”

  “A grand mistake?” I repeated as I shook my head. “Madame Fisher is certainly a member of the upper echelon …”