NOVEL FROG 10: Bum’s Honor
The meeting room was completely empty – no chairs, no table, not potted plants to spruce up the place. It was just a gray windowless box with harsh fluorescent lights coming out of the ceiling. I had been in a similar room once when I was being questioned by the cops about a liquor store that had been robbed. I should’ve ratted on Mickey then and prevented this entire debacle, but I had some sense of “bum’s honor”, which makes me wince to think about. Any bum that talks about honor is lying to you. They will kick their honor to the curb as soon as it doesn’t personally benefit them anymore – just like everyone else.
I sure as shit wasn’t going to fight Mickey with any “bum’s honor”, I could tell you that much.
The meeting room door cracked open and I sent a slime blast before I could even see who it was. I hit the back of the door and it slammed on Mickey’s face.
“You gonna let me in or what?” he said from the other side.
I didn’t respond, but I let him open the door and stand on the other side of the room. Then I blasted him again. I wanted to peel his skin off with a high pressure spray of slime, like a greasy pressure washer, but Mickey was too squirrelly. It was like trying to shoot a fly with a BB gun. He zipped back in a strange, twitchy dance and got around every one of my shots. It looked like he was being yanked in different directions by an invisible string. He spoke as he twitch-danced.
“Augustus, I don’t want to fight you, buddy. Let’s just talk for a second abou–”
I stuck a finger into each of my nostrils and flicked a booger bomb on either side of him. He was paralyzed in his confusion, just for a second, and I blasted him in the chest with a cannonball of slime. He went flying and hit the solid concrete wall.
“Alright, asshole,” he said. “If you don’t want to listen, I’m gonna fuckin make you listen.”
He got up and ran straight at me, seemingly completely unaffected by the spine-bashing he just experienced. I shot another glob. He stuck his hand out, and the glob became a fine mist in front of him and rained down as a pleasant cloud. He was fast, much faster than I was, even if I had two fully-functioning legs. Each of my shots felt a half-second late, and before I knew it, my legs were asleep again, and then my arms too.
Not this shit again.
I laid on my stomach against the cold floor and Mickey sat down beside me. He could’ve finished me off right then and there, but he didn’t. I almost wished he would have. Being spared by Mickey of all people was not an embarrassment I wanted to live with.
“Wow. Your powers are… really fuckin’ gross, man,” he said. “Still, you could be so powerful if you weren’t such a miserable son of a bitch. Just try to have a little fun with it for once in your life. And listen to your mark, dude. You’re clearly not listening to it.”
“What part of this has been fun to you, exactly?” I growled, baring my teeth like a surfaced piranha. “The only person who could enjoy something like this is you, Mickey. You need to be a fucking psychopath. I don’t want to be hunted down like a fucking animal. I don’t want to be a goddamn freak. I don’t want to kill anyone – except for you.”
My arm started to tingle. He saw my shoulder jerk a little and touched it again. It didn’t even feel like I had an arm anymore.
“I don’t want to be hunted either, yet here you are, trying to hunt me. We can’t be hunted though, because we’re not prey. We’re fucking predators, man. Look at how much more powerful you’ve become just from making it through this compound. You’re welcome for that. You’re definitely not as quick as I am, but I bet you’re as strong as a damn ox. I’m fast, you’re strong. I’m deadly close up, you work best at a range. We’re a natural team. If we work together, I bet we could fuck these guys up. What do you say? If you kill me, you’re dead too. This way, we can both live.”
I took in as much air as I could and snorted a cluster of booger bombs right at his feet. He jumped back and I rolled away, but neither of us were quick enough and we were blown in opposite directions.
Mickey actually looked hurt this time – at least a little. It took him a full minute to get up, and when he finally did, he was breathing heavily and holding his ribs like they had been cracked. Overall, it seemed to piss him off more than anything, though.
“Gus, you fucking moron,” he said, “listen to me. I am the only person on this goddamn planet willing to help you. Those cult weirdos are gonna rip you limb from fucking limb if you try to take them on by yourself, and they’d do the same to me. I don’t want to kill you, but if you’re not going to help me, I’ll take you out right here, right now. You won’t have to worry about them.”
I had a lot to think about and no time to think about it. He was right about one thing: Alec and his boys would kill me as soon as they found me. There was no question about that. It had never crossed my mind that Mickey and I working together could take them on, though. It still seemed ridiculous. We had an arm each of markings, while Alec was almost black from the patterns covering his entire body. We only had a third of an elixir each, while the cultists almost definitely had a full one to themselves – would that matter? Not to mention the sheer number of people that would be after us. Coming into this compound, I fully expected to be killed at some point – by the goons, by Mickey, or later by Alec – but I started to feel the slightest glimmer of hope that I could live, and that I could kill the man who killed Beth in front of me. I still wanted to kill Mickey for setting this whole thing in motion, but I had to admit, flaying that fucker Alec alive would be satisfying too.
Fuck, I hated how Mickey always seemed to get out of things.
“Alright,” I said, “Let’s help each other out.”
“Holy shit. Gus actually listened to me. I need to mark this day on my calendar.” Mickey said. Then he kneeled down and touched my limbs and they instantly regained feeling. I got up and Mickey held out his hand. As much as I hated the motherfucker, I grabbed it and squeezed.
I yanked his arm as hard as I could and flung him to the ground. His face smacked against the floor, and I kicked him in his already broken ribs. Feeling his ribs snap over the top of my foot was deeply satisfying. I wasn’t going to kill him, but I couldn’t let him get away scot-free yet again like he always does. Before he could get off of his stomach, I pistol-whipped him in the back of the head. I didn’t want to touch him again, knowing what he could do, so I backed up and lit the Zippo. If he attacked me, I was ready to set the entire room on fire.
“If we’re working together, I don’t want any sly bullshit from you,” I said. He rolled over on his back and was still breathing heavily.
“That’s fuckin rich, coming from you, right after that cheap shot. But alright, when this is all said and done, if we’re both still alive, we’ll fuck each other up fair and square” He put one hand over his heart and raised the other in the air like he was taking a solemn vow.
“Bum’s honor.”