(A/N: This is another excerpt from my novel! It's not in order, this is a piece from the middle, so it might be a bit confusing, but please read it! I'd love feedback!)
Namikk had truly screwed up this time, and there was no denying it. He had no food, only a few hundred dollars that had to last him for god knows how long, and he was in a strange city he didn’t even know how to pronounce the name of. (Was it pronounced May-tune-shire? Or Mee-ton-shirr? Or something else entirely…)
Not to mention it was freezing outside. No, that didn’t even need to be mentioned. He dearly wished that he had taken a warmer coat. A longer one, too, would have been nice. The wad of money in his pants pocket was making him nervous; it was too visible, wasn’t it? He was likely to get robbed.
“Damn coat doesn’t even have pockets,” he muttered to himself, looking around for someone to ask directions from. There were few people out that night, which was more than understandable, but quite annoying. The only people who were out looked like the kind of people that Namikk used to work with. As in, not someone you’d want to ask directions from.
Namikk stopped as he passed a window spilling comforting light out onto the street. The curtains were open, allowing him to see a group of adults, probably all sisters and brothers and cousins and all that shit, sitting at a small table and drinking what he presumed was tea. He scowled, suddenly growing quite angry at the people. He didn’t know why, exactly; he supposed he was just mad at Kiato Amiere, really. But god, those people sitting in there, all warm and comfortable, in the company of people they supposedly liked… and drinking tea, for god’s sake! Piping hot tea, while he was stuck out in the cold. That’s what really topped it all off for him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had tea, and those people probably weren’t even appreciating it as much as he would have been.
He clenched and unclenched his fists, glaring into the window. He stepped closer to it, until he was bathed in its light, and he cupped a hand around his mouth.
“Bastards!” he shouted, as loud as his freezing lungs and vocal chords could muster, his yell shattering the nighttime quiet. The people in neighboring houses and apartments were quite alarmed when they heard this spontaneous bellow, and would wonder for days afterwards who the “Bastards!” fellow was and how on earth he could shout that loudly. (He became a sort of town legend among the boring middle aged men of the town; “well I heard the ‘bastards’ fellow, I did, ain’t nothing in the world louder than that, I’ll tell ya…”) But nobody was quite as startled as the people sitting at the table drinking tea. Namikk would have enjoyed their reactions much more if he had been any less angry at their tea consumption. Really, how dare they.
He quickly began walking along once more, feeling much less frightened and much more angry. When he had not been walking again for more than fifteen feet, he saw a young woman in a large, ugly, warm-looking coat (which he was quite jealous of at the moment, to be honest) standing in the middle of the street about twenty feet away, giving him a look that, even though it was dark out, quite frankly communicated the fact that she had seen the whole thing and thought him stone-cold crazy.
But she didn’t look like she would be the kind of person to rob him, and that was a good thing. In fact, she looked like the kind of person that he would be able to rob himself, slight of hand or no slight of hand. Not that he was going to. No, he would just ask her for directions, that was all. Also, how to pronounce the name of this damn town. It was driving him crazy that he didn’t know.
“Hey!” he called, and she jumped, alarmed. She pulled the hood of her jacket up, and began quickly walking in the other direction, presumptuously the direction in which her home or her friend’s home was. Namikk ran after the woman, slowing to a fast walk as he caught up with her. She didn’t stop walking, frightened enough that she wanted to run away, but smart enough that she didn’t try to. Namikk frowned.
“Look, I don’t know where I am, and-” he broke off, flustered, trying to think of how to phrase himself. He had never been any good at talking and walking at the same time, and in the state he was currently in, he found it nearly impossible. Not only that, but this woman was a very fast walker, and he was so spent. “...I really want tea…” he panted, attempting to keep up with her, cringing even as the words were coming out of his mouth. “And -god, you’re so fast! How do you pronounce the name of this town?”
The woman didn’t answer. In fact, she didn’t even look at him.
“Listen-” without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Can you just tell me where-”
In the blink of an eye, the woman had reached into her coat pocket and pulled out what at first looked like a knife, stabbing at his hand with it.
“Auuh!” Namikk shouted, pulling back his hand and stuffing his perforated ring finger into his mouth. His eyes followed the item in which she had stabbed him with as she raised it again in defence, and his eyebrows shot up.
“You stabbed me with a fork??” he managed, talking quite shrilly around his finger. He tasted blood, and he was suddenly reminded of Kiato’s wildly extreme haemophobia. He grimaced. He’d probably still be with Kiato and the others right now if Kiato hadn’t lost it over the sight of a random person’s blood; they would have all gotten out of that abandoned warehouse at least ten minutes earlier, making it so Dalian wouldn’t have caught up to them, making it so Kiato’s face would probably still be present and well, making it so he would have never gotten upset over Namikk’s dismay concerning the patch of raw flesh that used to be the left half of his lover’s face, (really quite an unpleasant sight) making it so Kiato would have never gone for a walk that afternoon, making it so he would have never met Roger, making it so Namikk would probably be sleeping or drinking tea or something of the sort right now instead of trying to ask a crazy fork-wielding woman for directions.
There, it was quite easy to blame anything on Kiato Amiere if you tried hard enough.
Namikk knew that it wasn’t right to blame his current situation on Kiato’s irrational fear of blood, but somehow it was the easiest thing to blame anything on. “I’m not drinking tea right now because of Kiato Amiere’s extreme haemophobia,” Namikk silently told himself. Or at least he thought he had said it silently. But judging by the look that had come across the woman’s face, he might have possibly said it out loud..? Yea. Probably. She had a look about her that screamed, “I have just witnessed a grown man mutter something about drinking tea and Kiato Amiere’s haemophobia after following me and trying to ask me questions about pronouncing the name of this town, and making more statements about tea, after looking into a random family’s window and screaming “bastards!” at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. Not to mention he is wearing very badly smudged eyeliner, and that is a creepiness factor that just isn’t called for.”
In short, this woman was scared to death of the terrifying, girly, and generally blowsy man in the eyeliner. Also, Namikk’s right ring finger was still stuffed into his mouth, which added to the general air of insanity that surrounded him at all times.
Namikk backed away from the woman, who was still brandishing the fork like it was a weapon, (which Namikk now thought of it as- for the rest of his life he would hold a much higher respect for forks, that was for sure) and began walking quite quickly away, deciding that he could always ask the next possibly murderer but probably forkless person he came across for directions.
After walking for another minute or so, his thought process came around once again to how to pronounce the name of the town. He knew it was spelled M-A-E-T-O-N-N-E-S-H-I-R-R-E, but he had no idea whatsoever how the word sounded. Why couldn’t it just be called happy-Town or Sad-Town or Town-Town?
“May-tune-shire... Mee-tone-shirr…” he tried out loud as he walked. “May-ee-tony-shirray…”
He finally decided to just refer to it in his mind as Fork-Town.
He put a hand into the back pocket of his pants, reassured when he felt that the wadd of money was still there. It occurred to him that maybe James’ coat had a secret pocket on the inside that he could put the money into, and he stopped, quickly unzipping it and searching the lining for a zipper or a button. After searching the sides, he took it off, shivering, to look for a pocket in the back. He froze as he heard a faint rattling sound from somewhere within the jacket as it was taken off, and he grinned. There had to be a pocket in this useless thing, after all. He ran his hand over the lining in the back, his grin growing wider as he felt the metal of a small zipper.
It was a tiny pocket, and most of it was taken up by a small, square, plastic container that was only about half an inch thick and two inches long, presumably what had made the rattling sound. It was probably just something James had stuck in there ages ago and had forgotten about by now. Namikk could just stick whatever it was in his pants pocket to make room for the money in the coat.
But as he took the container out of the jacket pocket, the moon illuminated what it was -or more importantly, what was inside it. Namikk gaped, the cold having been forgotten for the moment.
“What the…”
He opened the container and sniffed at it, his eyes widening. He snapped it closed, smirking at the rattling sound it made.
“Oh, Jaaaames…” he chuckled gleefully, “someone’s in trouuuuuuble…”
He put the container back into the jacket pocket.
Namikk had truly screwed up this time, and there was no denying it. He had no food, only a few hundred dollars that had to last him for god knows how long, and he was in a strange city he didn’t even know how to pronounce the name of. (Was it pronounced May-tune-shire? Or Mee-ton-shirr? Or something else entirely…)
Not to mention it was freezing outside. No, that didn’t even need to be mentioned. He dearly wished that he had taken a warmer coat. A longer one, too, would have been nice. The wad of money in his pants pocket was making him nervous; it was too visible, wasn’t it? He was likely to get robbed.
“Damn coat doesn’t even have pockets,” he muttered to himself, looking around for someone to ask directions from. There were few people out that night, which was more than understandable, but quite annoying. The only people who were out looked like the kind of people that Namikk used to work with. As in, not someone you’d want to ask directions from.
Namikk stopped as he passed a window spilling comforting light out onto the street. The curtains were open, allowing him to see a group of adults, probably all sisters and brothers and cousins and all that shit, sitting at a small table and drinking what he presumed was tea. He scowled, suddenly growing quite angry at the people. He didn’t know why, exactly; he supposed he was just mad at Kiato Amiere, really. But god, those people sitting in there, all warm and comfortable, in the company of people they supposedly liked… and drinking tea, for god’s sake! Piping hot tea, while he was stuck out in the cold. That’s what really topped it all off for him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had tea, and those people probably weren’t even appreciating it as much as he would have been.
He clenched and unclenched his fists, glaring into the window. He stepped closer to it, until he was bathed in its light, and he cupped a hand around his mouth.
“Bastards!” he shouted, as loud as his freezing lungs and vocal chords could muster, his yell shattering the nighttime quiet. The people in neighboring houses and apartments were quite alarmed when they heard this spontaneous bellow, and would wonder for days afterwards who the “Bastards!” fellow was and how on earth he could shout that loudly. (He became a sort of town legend among the boring middle aged men of the town; “well I heard the ‘bastards’ fellow, I did, ain’t nothing in the world louder than that, I’ll tell ya…”) But nobody was quite as startled as the people sitting at the table drinking tea. Namikk would have enjoyed their reactions much more if he had been any less angry at their tea consumption. Really, how dare they.
He quickly began walking along once more, feeling much less frightened and much more angry. When he had not been walking again for more than fifteen feet, he saw a young woman in a large, ugly, warm-looking coat (which he was quite jealous of at the moment, to be honest) standing in the middle of the street about twenty feet away, giving him a look that, even though it was dark out, quite frankly communicated the fact that she had seen the whole thing and thought him stone-cold crazy.
But she didn’t look like she would be the kind of person to rob him, and that was a good thing. In fact, she looked like the kind of person that he would be able to rob himself, slight of hand or no slight of hand. Not that he was going to. No, he would just ask her for directions, that was all. Also, how to pronounce the name of this damn town. It was driving him crazy that he didn’t know.
“Hey!” he called, and she jumped, alarmed. She pulled the hood of her jacket up, and began quickly walking in the other direction, presumptuously the direction in which her home or her friend’s home was. Namikk ran after the woman, slowing to a fast walk as he caught up with her. She didn’t stop walking, frightened enough that she wanted to run away, but smart enough that she didn’t try to. Namikk frowned.
“Look, I don’t know where I am, and-” he broke off, flustered, trying to think of how to phrase himself. He had never been any good at talking and walking at the same time, and in the state he was currently in, he found it nearly impossible. Not only that, but this woman was a very fast walker, and he was so spent. “...I really want tea…” he panted, attempting to keep up with her, cringing even as the words were coming out of his mouth. “And -god, you’re so fast! How do you pronounce the name of this town?”
The woman didn’t answer. In fact, she didn’t even look at him.
“Listen-” without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Can you just tell me where-”
In the blink of an eye, the woman had reached into her coat pocket and pulled out what at first looked like a knife, stabbing at his hand with it.
“Auuh!” Namikk shouted, pulling back his hand and stuffing his perforated ring finger into his mouth. His eyes followed the item in which she had stabbed him with as she raised it again in defence, and his eyebrows shot up.
“You stabbed me with a fork??” he managed, talking quite shrilly around his finger. He tasted blood, and he was suddenly reminded of Kiato’s wildly extreme haemophobia. He grimaced. He’d probably still be with Kiato and the others right now if Kiato hadn’t lost it over the sight of a random person’s blood; they would have all gotten out of that abandoned warehouse at least ten minutes earlier, making it so Dalian wouldn’t have caught up to them, making it so Kiato’s face would probably still be present and well, making it so he would have never gotten upset over Namikk’s dismay concerning the patch of raw flesh that used to be the left half of his lover’s face, (really quite an unpleasant sight) making it so Kiato would have never gone for a walk that afternoon, making it so he would have never met Roger, making it so Namikk would probably be sleeping or drinking tea or something of the sort right now instead of trying to ask a crazy fork-wielding woman for directions.
There, it was quite easy to blame anything on Kiato Amiere if you tried hard enough.
Namikk knew that it wasn’t right to blame his current situation on Kiato’s irrational fear of blood, but somehow it was the easiest thing to blame anything on. “I’m not drinking tea right now because of Kiato Amiere’s extreme haemophobia,” Namikk silently told himself. Or at least he thought he had said it silently. But judging by the look that had come across the woman’s face, he might have possibly said it out loud..? Yea. Probably. She had a look about her that screamed, “I have just witnessed a grown man mutter something about drinking tea and Kiato Amiere’s haemophobia after following me and trying to ask me questions about pronouncing the name of this town, and making more statements about tea, after looking into a random family’s window and screaming “bastards!” at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. Not to mention he is wearing very badly smudged eyeliner, and that is a creepiness factor that just isn’t called for.”
In short, this woman was scared to death of the terrifying, girly, and generally blowsy man in the eyeliner. Also, Namikk’s right ring finger was still stuffed into his mouth, which added to the general air of insanity that surrounded him at all times.
Namikk backed away from the woman, who was still brandishing the fork like it was a weapon, (which Namikk now thought of it as- for the rest of his life he would hold a much higher respect for forks, that was for sure) and began walking quite quickly away, deciding that he could always ask the next possibly murderer but probably forkless person he came across for directions.
After walking for another minute or so, his thought process came around once again to how to pronounce the name of the town. He knew it was spelled M-A-E-T-O-N-N-E-S-H-I-R-R-E, but he had no idea whatsoever how the word sounded. Why couldn’t it just be called happy-Town or Sad-Town or Town-Town?
“May-tune-shire... Mee-tone-shirr…” he tried out loud as he walked. “May-ee-tony-shirray…”
He finally decided to just refer to it in his mind as Fork-Town.
He put a hand into the back pocket of his pants, reassured when he felt that the wadd of money was still there. It occurred to him that maybe James’ coat had a secret pocket on the inside that he could put the money into, and he stopped, quickly unzipping it and searching the lining for a zipper or a button. After searching the sides, he took it off, shivering, to look for a pocket in the back. He froze as he heard a faint rattling sound from somewhere within the jacket as it was taken off, and he grinned. There had to be a pocket in this useless thing, after all. He ran his hand over the lining in the back, his grin growing wider as he felt the metal of a small zipper.
It was a tiny pocket, and most of it was taken up by a small, square, plastic container that was only about half an inch thick and two inches long, presumably what had made the rattling sound. It was probably just something James had stuck in there ages ago and had forgotten about by now. Namikk could just stick whatever it was in his pants pocket to make room for the money in the coat.
But as he took the container out of the jacket pocket, the moon illuminated what it was -or more importantly, what was inside it. Namikk gaped, the cold having been forgotten for the moment.
“What the…”
He opened the container and sniffed at it, his eyes widening. He snapped it closed, smirking at the rattling sound it made.
“Oh, Jaaaames…” he chuckled gleefully, “someone’s in trouuuuuuble…”
He put the container back into the jacket pocket.
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