The New Mate part 4
The New Mate
A Tale of The Pirates of The Tax Free Zone
by Chad Boudreau
Characters created by Chad Boudreau & 3!LL
Dramatis Personae
 The Captain |
 Numbers |
 Basil |
 Greasy Jesus |
 The Skid |
Part 4
In Which A Friendship And A Worry Begins, And The Author Admits There Are No Ninjas In This Story
“Come, friend,” said Greasy Jesus tenderly. The bird stepped onto his arm.
The denotative death startled everybody. It is difficult to jump out of one’s seat when one is settled in a booth, but The Captain, his crew and Pat, the pet store proprietor, managed it. Glasses and bottles toppled as five pairs of knees clipped the table’s edges. Unfinished lemonade pooled on the tabletop. A tumbled tumbler spit beer onto Pat’s pages.
Pat gasped. His hand went to his mouth in a reflexive gesture that still managed to be flamboyant. The Skid scrambled onto his seat, and toppled over the back of the booth with a yelp cut short by a heavy thud. Basil stabbed the air wildly with his knife. Greasy Jesus wailed. The peace that had been settling over him had been destroyed as violently as the parrot. The Captain drew his two flintlocks and waited for the killer to show himself.
The effects of the commotion spread outward from the booth like a shockwave. Soon all eyes were fixed on the group of men sprinkled with parrot blood and bits of beak. Remnants of beautiful plumage hung in the air like confetti. Through it all the bent old man had kept his tower of cages upright, even when the occupants had throttled the bars and raced about in answer to the bird’s demise. The number ten held each other for comfort.
“Who did it?” shouted Greasy Jesus. The lad was fuming, his nostrils flaring. His lips fluttered with each short and quick breath. He was clutching his twin cutlasses so tightly The Captain could hear his knuckles creaking. “Show yourself!” Greasy Jesus’ voice cracked, he yelled so loudly.
A length of butcher’s twine fell from somewhere in the rafters above, uncoiling as it descended. Its end stopped a fingernail’s width above the table. All eyes went upward, probing the thick haze of cigarette smoke that clung to the ceiling like a dirty blanket. There was movement, a small, darker smear deep in the smoke, and then the rope jiggled. All eyes tracked the progress of the slight figure as it slid expertly down the twine, rotating counterclockwise in a speedy yet controlled descent.
The rat let go the twine, freefalling the last few inches to land lightly on the table. In one smooth motion it whipped a small gun out of a holster strapped to its back. There was a crack and the rat’s body jerked backward. Basil shouted in pain as a hard projectile struck his hand, causing him to drop his knife and stop his attack. The fallen blade pierced the table and stood quivering only inches from where the rat stood.
“A rat,” said The Skid, popping up from behind the booth like a cherubic jack-in-the-box.
“With a pea shooter,” snarled Basil, favoring the welt that was forming on the back of his hand.
The Captain steadied the grizzled Pirate by placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Hold fast,” he said. “Let’s see what the rodent intends to do next.”
The rat was like any other of its kind. It was male. Its fur was brown and slick. It had a patch over one eye and earrings in its little pink ears. The weapon it brandished looked a lot like a sawed off shotgun, though much smaller. Dried peas were fed into the gun via a metallic split-link belt, the length of which crisscrossed the rat’s chest and back like the bandoliers of a Mexican bandito.
The rat strutted across the table, treading through the wet remains of parrot skull. When it came to the headless corpse, it paused. Its whiskers twitched, and it then it deposited a few cylindrical turds beside the carcass. The Skid gasped. Greasy Jesus growled. The rodent resumed its strut.
It came to a stop directly in front of Greasy Jesus. The lanky Pirate locked his wet, red-rimmed eyes on the little black beads that were the rat’s peepers. No one in the large room dared make a sound.
The rat stretched out one paw and snagged Greasy Jesus’ hanging shirt. It slung its weapon back into its holster, and was soon scampering up Greasy Jesus’ chest and onto his right shoulder. The lad stiffened but let it happen. The rat put its nose close to Greasy Jesus’ ear. Its whiskers brushed tenderly against the fuzz of fine hairs on the Pirate’s lobe. The others around the table heard some quiet squeaking, a pause, and then a few more short squeaks.
Greasy Jesus relaxed. He patted the rat on the head.
“This here is the Marquis de Lafayette. He’s coming with us.”
There was a collective sigh of relief throughout the room.
“How much?” asked The Captain.
Pat didn’t respond. His mouth worked up and down a few times but no sound came out. He shook his head, licked his lips and stammered a price. The Captain didn’t want to delay any longer so he accepted and started counting coins into Pat’s open palm. Pat didn’t bother double-checking the count. He was distracted. His eyes never left the rat now perched comfortably on Greasy Jesus’ shoulder.
The Captain and his crew left the way they had come, winding their way through the still quiet crowd, stepping over the sprawled old man, up the stairs and into the night. When they were out of sight, Pat slumped into the booth.
“Poor Polly,” said a voice under a lot of strain. Pat looked down at Jim who was still on his hands and knees. The man’s features were barely discernable through the accumulated animal droppings and discarded cedar shavings.
“Indeed,” said Pat. He thought a moment. “That rat wasn’t one of ours was it?”
“No,” answered Jim. “Never laid eyes on him before.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Pat quietly. He was weighing the money in his hand, the jingle of coins not making him giddy like it normally did. In fact, to his ears the rhythmic chinka-chinka sounded a lot like a distant alarm.
[end]
) Your Reply...