Breadcrumb #123
DANIELLE VILLANO
It would be a lie for Declan to say he had noticed her the first time she’d come into the bar. It was probably a Friday, and she had probably ordered a white wine spritzer. It was all anyone drank in the hot weather here, and sometimes Declan felt like he was getting secondhand bloat just from mixing up all those bubbles.
So on a quiet Tuesday night in September when she sat down at the bar and asked for a dirty martini, Declan had been struck by her auburn hair and the way her blouse hung on her shoulders, and he had asked “what brings you here?” in the Irish brogue that drove girls wild. When she said, “I’ve been here before,” he was shaken. He catalogued all of the possibilities that could have led to his temporary blindness on such a night, because there was no way he possibly could have missed her otherwise. A squeeze of lemon juice in the eye? One shot too many? Maybe he was below the bar switching out a keg. Stupid.
He pushed the martini in front of her, and she had smiled and asked for change. He wished she had paid with a credit card so he could find out her name. At the register he had to stop and ask himself if he had put any vermouth in the martini, and from the slight grimace on her face he knew he hadn’t. Declan decided not to say anything to correct his mistake. He didn’t want her thinking he was an incompetent bartender. Confidence was everything, in this kind of situation.
To his surprise, she slurps down the whole thing.
Eventually, a friend joined her at the bar, calling her Della.
Normally Declan liked playing a game with the names he heard around the bar. What could the name mean?
Nicola is an armchair created by a Swedish designer.
Roland is a cough drop, a certain cut of turtleneck sweater.
Meyer is already a lemon.
If Declan had not been so taken with the auburn-haired girl at the bar he would have said:
Della is a type of porcelain, or a thin-sliced Italian meat on a charcuterie plate.
Instead all he could think was: mine.
The bar where Declan works is called Maxwell House. This has nothing to do with the coffee, much to the chagrin of overtired tourists who come in seeking caffeine.
The owner of the bar has a deep love for English romances, from Austen’s tales of Pemberley to the upstairs and downstairs melodramas of British television. He wishes he had an estate of his own, one worthy of a grand name like Maxwell House. Instead, he has a pub. He was born in Queens, which has nothing to do with the British monarchy. Instead of servants he hires British waitresses and bartenders, and Declan, who is Irish, because there was an Irish scullery maid on his favorite television show. His shock of red hair adds a bit of color to the place.
The women who come into the bar are smitten with Declan, with his funny gold beard and his wardrobe of rotating plaid shirts. It’s almost a guarantee that one girl will slur a bit about a trip to Ireland and tell him she “visited the Guinness factory once,” as if every person in all of Ireland lives in the Guinness factory, and on some nights he will be polite and flirt back. But Della’s been in the bar more frequently and he cannot help being distracted by the shine of her hair. Wasn’t there an O. Henry story about her? Should he buy her a set of combs? Did women wear combs nowadays?
And the owner comes out and scold Declan for his poor customer service, telling him to give the girls he was ignoring a round of shots in the plastic medicine cups they use on busy Saturday nights. Declan swallows his displeasure with a shot of cinnamon whiskey, and the girls scream like the tea kettle whistling in some far-off British manor of our owner’s daydreams.
_____
“And who wants to be chased anyway, really?”
Della stirs her dirty martini with a vigor, already bracing herself for the next burning sip. She doesn’t quite like the taste of this drink—and at this particular bar the bartender is always too light on the vermouth and liberal with the vodka, so each sip goes down like diesel fuel—but it’s worth it for the olive at the end. She likes when the olives have pimento or bits of blue cheese in them.
Maybe that’s why it’s easy to confess to third-date Todd who sits across from her that she does not see the appeal in being chased when it comes to relationships. The bartender–the one with the red hair–presses a cocktail napkin in front of her without a word.
“A guy once told me—in bed, no less—that I wasn’t fun because I wouldn’t put up a fight.” A vague buzzing in her skull tells her it is uncouth to bring up past lovers on third dates, but she’s already committed to the point. Confidence is everything, in this kind of situation.
“He told me I didn’t present a challenge,” she says. “Why would I want to torture myself? I see something, I want it, I go for it.”
This statement causes Todd to peek up at Della, to shift his eyes from “polite listening” position to “actually listening” position, and Della can feel her cheeks flush with alcohol and pleasure.
“I think the exciting part is the actually being together, you know?”
And Todd, who is already half-in-love with her, nods his head.
_____
Declan is listening, too, and he crumples the rest of the cocktail napkins in his fist. Two weeks ago Della had brought Todd to Maxwell House and they had conversed over the mussels special and drinks in a table off in the corner, and Declan had been in hell at the bar, listening to a young woman mispronounce “Claddagh” so horribly that he was convinced she was going to hock a loogie.
Todd had settled the bill. They had hugged goodbye at the door and walked in opposite directions, and Declan was able to breathe for the first time that evening.
The situation was this: Declan hasn’t spoken to Della after that first night. She is always in conversation with someone else, only speaking to him when she is ordering another martini, only making eye contact half of the time. He had started distilling meaning into mundane interactions, like dropping change into her palm. Each time he went out of his way to do something he wanted to pinch himself, to man-up and talk to her, growl in the brogue that all the other girls loved. But he was rendered mute, and the flame went out of his hair, until he only smoldered on the inside.
Todd is the name for those flimsy metal tabs on the backs of picture frames that hardly ever get the job done.
_____
Della heads into the bathroom after drinking three dirty martinis, and everything is bleary around the edges. She’s smiling the contorted smile of someone who is inebriated but also happy.
“Your dress is nice,” one girl at the sink says to her.
“It’s called a bandage dress,” another girl says. “It hugs you in all the right places.”
Della stares at herself in the mirror and thinks: bandage dress.
She thinks: Am I hurt?
_____
Todd is kind. He is an investment banker with an affinity for sushi and singing competition reality shows, which she finds charming. And maybe she blew it when she told him what she wanted. But maybe she didn’t.
“And maybe she blew it when she told him what she wanted. But maybe she didn’t.”
Della takes in the Christmas lights and the vintage British advertisements for toothpaste and candies that decorate the walls. The bartender is looking at her and she warms at the eye contact and even gives him a little wave.
“I’m a regular,” she thinks. Then she crosses back to Todd and swallows down the rest of her martini. When he touches her hand it feels like a promise.
_____
The owner is wearing cufflinks in the shapes of little golden castles. They do not go well with the rough green button-down he sports, but they make his night a little brighter.
“Take five,” he tells Declan. “You’re scaring away all the ladies with that scowl of yours. There are dozens of other Irish boys who would kill for a chance to work here.”
_____
From the corner of the room Declan watches as Todd helps Della into her coat, so eager that he nearly knocks her sideways. This time they do not part ways when they reach the door.
Declan is a wool blanket, muted and heavy.
It’s only when he’s back behind the bar does he realize the green olive in his hand. He pops it into his mouth and bites down. Warm. Salty. A bit of brine.
Breadcrumb #122
CHRISTINA MANOLATOS
Before, people had asked her about her short-sleeved shirt at work. Why, in the middle of the summer, she insisted on wearing the long-sleeved version of her uniform, reserved for the winter months. For different people, at different times, she fumbled through versions of:
“It’s missing.”
“I ripped it.”
“The drier ate it.”
The anxiety of constructing a new lie for each individual co-worker, and wondering if they would talk to one another and figure out she kept making shit up, was nerve-racking. That anxiety was dulled only by the inability to admit to herself that the short-sleeved shirt was actually neatly folded at the bottom of a drawer. But she couldn’t wear it until the bruises healed. Until her skin turned its standard, pasty, white-pink color again, and the grey-violet and green-yellow heaving - almost breathing - raised places faded away. Again. Untraceable. Again.
She thought of grade school. There was a vivid memory of sitting in the swing on the playground. While grasping the chain links of the swing, she would catch whiffs of that dirty iron scent, so specific to holding onto metal in warm weather with the grubby, sweaty hands of a child. She couldn’t bear it, but didn’t want to leave, because there were some cool girls nearby, talking about cool, mature things. She wouldn't miss a moment of their conversation. They were talking about hickeys. How when a boy kisses you on the neck, you'll get pretty rosy marks where his lips were, and then everyone will know you were special enough to be kissed. She stopped swinging. Her thighs were uncomfortably stuck together and to the plastic seat, so she shifted her weight but remained sitting. She stopped listening and started trying to imagine what that would feel like. Not the kisses, or the hickeys, but the ‘special enough.’ The idea of being chosen.
Years later, in college, she would give it up to the first boy that tried to get it from her, purely out of enthusiasm to be desired. She had lain there, unconfident, longing for him to place his lips on her neck and give her a hickey. Instead, his kiss had been an awkward puckering around her mouth, like a fish suffocating out of water. After he left, she remembered going to the mirror to admire her neck, and feeling disappointed that her skin remained unchanged. There were no hickeys. There was no proof that she had been chosen.
Years later, after college, she would meet him. His kisses were, at first, gentle and passionate, and made her feel exclusive; deserving. The marks they would leave on her were soft and admirable. Over time, those marks distorted from pretty rosy patches into misshapen, painful welts. They were no longer created with his mouth, but by his hands, gnarled up into fists.
“They were no longer created with his mouth, but by his hands, gnarled up into fists. ”
Now, after he leaves, she goes to the mirror, and she can see the blood rise up to the surface of her flesh and begin to discolor it. She has conditioned herself to be fascinated by the process, rather than horrified. They are hers, and he gave them to her. He marked her as special enough.
She remembered the first time her friends noticed, and asked her what happened. She has been unable to come up with an excuse. Flushed with embarrassment, she had remained silent. But that was years ago, before she knew better than to have friends who ask questions, or to leave the house in a short-sleeved shirt. Now, the denial comes easily. The excuses are second nature. So when her co-workers ask where her uniform is, she can look them in the eye and say, "The dog chewed it to shit."
She didn’t even own a dog.
Breadcrumb #121
CAROLINE REDDY
“I think we should take it.” Otto threw the last body into the trashcan. It was a short bald woman whose charred body was found in the middle of the road by the night crew.
“An upgrade huh?” Quentin wiped the sweat off of his forehead and squinted. It was a hot afternoon. The sun was beating down on them hard, without mercy, like the devil on the drum, and the desert wind was tame that day.
Quentin had seen his share of gruesome bodies: a woman stoned to death for killing her husband and a young, pregnant girl, hung after she stole a week’s worth of water and food supplies.
And then there was Clive.
Clive was buried alive, in a wooden box, when he refused to give Glaster his last cigarette. His fingers were dried and bent with blood. His knuckles-raw, scraped in tiny diamond shapes and spheres revealing bone…
Endless...endless clawing….Quentin thought.
The wooden box had been dug up and left in the middle of camp for a few hours for the folks who thought that Clive had been brave.
The stench of rotting flesh, feces, and urine was beyond foul. There was nothing brave about Clive’s corpse.
After Clive was put away for good, Glaster received a few items including two of the rarest of gifts in their camp: a small bottle of tequila from one of the Navajos and Quentin’s last spiced cigarettes. Glaster rewarded them both with a small piece of chocolate. They swirled the melting square in their mouths for a while before swallowing.
Quentin could still taste the cocoa in his mouth.
“He can get us out in the open. And you know good offers are hard to come by around here...” Otto was a pale man with dirty blonde hair and hollow circles under his eyes. And Otto knew better than anyone about a good deal. One had come to him at The Rumblin’ Diner a few days before it happened.
A young redhead, not older than eighteen, licked her plum lips seductively and told Otto that his diner had the best ice-cream float in town. The next day he bought her a turquoise bracelet from an old toothless Navajo woman, selling trinkets by the side of the road, wearing a green scarf, and a silver belt.
It was a good deal.
Otto had sex with the redhead in his trailer while his wife was visiting her cousin Ruthie. He never saw the redheaded whore or his fat wife again.
Then the world went to hell within a few hours and none of that mattered anymore
And he didn’t mind.
Nor did he mind the bodies that had piled up.
Once in a while, he would find a pin, a button or a bead and would quickly bury it in a little box lined with red cloth and decorated with white-pink seashells. Glaster knew about the secret box, but Otto was Glaster’s favorite so the boss let him keep it.
“He talkin’ to anyone else yet?” Quentin asked.
“A few folks...”
“Hmmmm…” Quentin circled the area where his wedding band had been. A nervous habit. Otto grabbed his hand, quickly, squeezed it tight and looked at the bleached-ring around his smooth black skin.
“You know we are supposed to forget about all that,” Otto said raising his chin and clenching his teeth.
“Yeah...I know.”
Quentin released his fingers.
“Your kind has always been so sentimental…” Otto grinned.
Quentin looked down at his dark skin-it was so dark that it was almost blue. Some folks thought that Quentin was a seer. But Quentin wasn’t a prophet, just a black guy, who worked at the post office and missed his family--Kingsley, his goldfish and Alahna his wife.
“What kind of work?” Quintin took a small swig of water from his dusty canteen. They were running out of cactus fruit and water was precious.
Half of a cup per day.
Otto’s left eye twitched like a dying roach. He scratched his right arm where a red blotch had formed, a common effect in the desolate wasteland that had once been Arizona. Luckily, they had a few doctors and nurses in their camp and the rashes weren’t deadly.
Just itchy.
Nevertheless Quentin worried about Otto
Quentin had learned about ergot poisoning on a routine cleanup. A few people had begun to hallucinate and died shortly thereafter. Quentin noticed dry grangrene and with the help of one of the books in their small library, along with Doctor Peterson, they were able to confirm it. Ergot.
He feared that it had gotten a hold of Otto.
Quentin wondered what would happen if he just took off beyond their camp borders...but he knew what was out there.
Except for a few brutal punishments, like Clive and the two girls, their camp had been pretty civilized: Stored food. Toilet pits separate from where the sleeping bags and tents had been lined up. A small library containing fifteen books. A few bikes people signed out for recreation time. Even a game night where people played cards or dice, betting on scraps of shiny metal or lost and forgotten keys. Murder and rape were rare and everyone worked on their given assignments given out by Glaster’s soldiers.
Refugees had been crossing into their camp starved and -wild eyed with weird tales. The strong ones were kept alive for work and the weaker ones were stripped of their possessions and killed. Quentin didn’t like it one bit. But he didn’t like what he had heard from the refugees who had escaped their tribes: unidentified diseases worst than ergot, cannibalism and a few camps who had taken children in promising them shelter only to use them as sex slaves instead.
“The strong ones were kept alive for work and the weaker ones were stripped of their possessions and killed.”
“The new assignment would get us out of this dusty graveyard,” Otto said looking around at pile of bodies scattered about like demented mannequins.
“And out in the road…what does he want us to do?” Quentin asked. The Grand Canyon wasn’t too far. And he had never seen it. Maybe they could witness its magnificence…one last wondrous thing before it all went to hell for good.
“Cults are formin’. One thinks the savior is comin’ back. Another, a bunch of kids… wild kids who lost their parents. They want revenge... and then there is a female cult.”
“Jesus freaks, orphans, and women. Hell...since when is Glaster scared of orphans and women?”
“Cortez was found half-dead on the road a few days ago with an arrow in his chest and a letter for Glaster. The orphans and the Jesus freaks are just punks. The women. Well….they been followin’ some weird shit like choppin’ off their left tit.”
“Hmmm...sounds like the ways of the old Amazons….” Quentin had read about them in a mythology book.
“They offer protection to girls who have been raped and girls who want their protection from the savages out there.”
“Cortez wasn’t a savage.”
“These women are. They capture men and take them as slaves, castrate and kill ‘em.”
“What does Glaster want?” But Quentin knew the answer.
“He needs folks he can trust to take their supplies and put an end to the cults. Easy as pie...” Otto said.
“Upgrading from garbage men to assassins and thieves...any paid vacation days?”
“This ain’t a joke. People are getting restless collecting scraps and pissin’ in pits. We runnin’ out of dried fruit. And the meat that was salted is crawling with maggots”
“Scouting…it makes sense. How much time we got?” Quentin asked which was a ridiculous concept. Time didn’t seem to really exist in the dessert-even though a few folks had been able to keep time going as if it still really mattered.
“We got until tomorrow.”
“And you already said yes.”.
He listened to Otto explain the plan and wondered what Alahna would have done. The scouts would be killed along with the women. Their camp burnt to the ground.
Quentin circled his skin again where the band had been and thought of Alahna-her raven-black hair, playful smile...smooth caramel skin.
“I know a good deal…” Otto mumbled.
It happened quickly. Otto grabbed Quentin and sliced his throat open with the blade he had hidden under his shirt.
Quentin tried to gasp for air but he couldn’t. His hands shook below his neck. His mouth made a soft gurgling kha-kha-kha sound, blood spurted out, eyes rolled back and he began to shuffle sideways like a drunk dancer.
“Too sentimental for the upgrade. Glaster said..we can’t have any of that…it’s poison.”
**
The two men on duty threw the two bodies into the garbage can as ordered-for they were new on their assignment. They wore cowboy hats to keep cool under the desert sun.
“Not a lot today,” the first said.
“Nope... just an ordinary clean up,” said the other.
And they moved along to load up a few more before heading back to camp.
Breadcrumb #120
BOB RAYMONDA
Helena tucks one violet tentacle behind her ear and makes a pencil mark on the notepad in her lap, taking inventory. A child wanders through the tent, rubbing its grimy little fingers on everything, and driving her mad. She doesn’t understand how anyone does it--procreate that is. She has a hard enough time carrying on a conversation without wanting to sew most people’s mouths shut.
Helena surrounds herself by the spices and herbal medicines of home, but it doesn’t truly compare. Even here in the upper bazaar, where the air is purified and the water flows freely, the general atmosphere of the city sours her mood. She prefers to be on the ground level, even with its lack of sunlight. The people there are friendlier, more willing to share all of the nothing they have with each other. Every minute she spends at work peddling goods to the wealthy reminds her that she isn’t here of her own volition. That her home in the western reaches isn’t home to anyone, anymore.
“You got parents, kid?” she asks through gritted teeth.
The child, who’s now scrutinizing a vial of ground crimson mytofly powder, looks back at her dumbfounded.
Setting her notebook down on the desk, Helena stands with her arms crossed over her chest. “We both know that you heard me.”
The child looks up at her with doe eyes, his index finger pointed at his face as if to ask, Who, me?
“I’m sorry squirt, but if you’re not here to buy anything, you’ve got to scram” she says, tapping her foot on the ground.
His sky-blue tentacles flush with embarrassment as he slowly edges himself outside. He pockets a vial of shillerbeast droppings before running out. Helena halfheartedly chases after him, but doesn’t bother going farther than a few feet. She returns to her desk and smiles, satisfied that the brat has no idea he’s pilfered cattle shit. Its only purpose past excretion to help burn warts off the feet of rich women.
The scent of cooking flesh emanates from the mess tents on the platform below. Her stomach curls, knowing that a living creature suffered just to feed the pampered clientele that often peruse but rarely buy her goods. She hasn’t ever eaten an animal -- harvested their bones, teeth, hair, and droppings for medicinal purposes, sure, but only after some other predator had done its dirty work. Always scavenged from the wreckage of the food-chain, never purchased from a poacher or the black market. There was no death on her hands or in her stomach, and she preferred to keep it that way.
A dull rumbling from below knocks Helena off balance, followed by what sounds unmistakably like screaming. She gathers as many of her high-value items as she can fit into a satchel and abandons the rest. The rooftop system of bazaar platforms is flanked on all sides by even higher skyscrapers, so she can’t see the cause of the commotion but she can smell the heavy smoke in the air. The same kind that filled her village before it was reduced to ash and dust.
“There was no death on her hands or in her stomach, and she preferred to keep it that way.”
Fellow merchants tiptoe around the square, buzzing with a general sense of uncertainty. Gathering in one of the gardens at the far end of the platform to panic about what is happening. Helena wastes no time on curiosity, heading toward the chainlink ladders opposite them. There are public elevators nearby that are bound to be at capacity soon, full of patrons scrambling to reunite with their families. She heads instead toward the freight elevators used by the working class. Slower, but able to help her escape the sudden chaos.
Halfway down the ladder Helena watches as an unfamiliar warship tears through the southern spire, raining glass shards and rubble down around her. Crushing whole sections of the market and killing dozens in the process. She tightens her grip on the chains and pauses for a moment to grieve the people she couldn’t stand. An alarm sounds as the Queen’s Wolfpac arms the anti-aircraft weaponry to little avail. These ships are unlike any she’s ever seen, even when the armies of this very city ripped her home to shreds, making an orphan of her.
Helena drops the last fifteen feet to the next platform and sprints to her last hope of safety. Blue-skins from all levels lay strewn about, wounded or in utter shock. Her self-preservation instinct prevents her from helping anyone until she turns a corner and sees the child from her shop weeping over what is likely his mother’s corpse.
“Hey kid,” she shouts over the disarray.
He turns, eyebrows raised, and offers the vial back to her in defeat. His sobs are quiet, but piercing. She flashes back to the moment her own parents were taken from her.
“Oh shove off with that,” she grumbles, grabbing him by the shirt collar. “Don’t just sit here and die like the rest of them. Follow me.”
The boy, still years off from puberty with tentacles barely yet down to his shoulders, hesitates. Clutches at his mother’s lifeless shoulders and kisses her cheek before relenting, and following Helena to the old freight.
A small crowd of custodial workers and merchants face off with a smaller still group of Wolfpac security and upper platform residents. She pushes the child behind a dumpster, holds a finger up to her mouth to shush him, and searches her satchel for the milkroot she always carries with her.
“Now if you’d all just calm down,” says the yellow-robed guard, a lieutenant of some sort with a smokers gravel in her voice, “I’m sure we can all fit in the freight if everyone would line up in an orderly manner.”
“Like hell we can,” spat one of the janitors, his face covered with pockmarks. “This is a one-way trip to our level, your apartments are all in the upper spires. I suggest you head there”
One of the tourists retorts, “You mean the spire that just came crashing down? Or the one right next to it surrounded by an alien armada?”
“Don’t mean shit to me,” grumbles the janitor.
The tourist gasps, “I will not be spoken to this way. Guards, do something about these cretins.”
Helena can feel the tension rising as she approaches the commotion, one side bound to throw the first punch any second now. She ties a mask over her face and drops the vial of milkroot onto the ground, crushing it under her boot.
A wispy cloud envelops both sides in seconds as they all begin to cough. Milkroot acts as a sleep aid in the smallest of doses and can cause temporary paralysis when entered into the atmosphere in bulk. Harmless, really, if you weren’t considering the likelihood of this crowd’s survival. Helena doesn’t allow herself to consider this fact, though. She beckons the child to her side and punches in the coordinates for the lowermost sector. By her logic, the lower they are, the longer it’ll take for the warships to get to them.
The ride down takes a few hours, as fits of starts and stops threaten to halt their progress. The child’s sobs fill the otherwise empty chamber, she hands him a small fern that works as a natural sedative, but he declines. She’s incapable of offering any other measure of comfort.
With nowhere else to go, the two enter Helena’s usual haunt, Reyna’s. The bar’s floor is sticky from spilled liquor and blood from frequent brawls. Reyna herself stands calmly cleaning a glass with a wet rag and raises her eyebrows, “Who’s the runt?”
Helena shrugs. The kid himself offers no insight.
“Why’d you bring him here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
She helps the kid up onto the stool and hands him Reyna’s jar of pickled eggs. “City’s under some sort of attack. I think work’s over for just about everyone today.”
Reyna grunts, “Wondered why the circuit stopped working.” The barkeep presses a button underneath the counter that puts the place on lockdown. The drunks here at this time of day don’t seem to notice.
“Have you heard from Argus?” Helena asks, trying not to sound too hopeful that Reyna’s youngest brother would be present.
“Not since the idiot got himself arrested, no,” she replies.
“Damn, poor kid. I hope it's well guarded enough for him to survive this mess.”
Reyna nods, a solemn look on her face. She pulls a disruptor rifle off the wall and charges it. She tries handing a pistol to Helena.
“You know I don’t do guns.”
Reyna shrugs and presses another hidden button, opening up a concealed door in the floor to the sewers. “C’mon,” she says, “we should find Uncle Vernon and the boys. Hole up somewhere until this all blows over.”
Helena takes the boy by the wrist and together they follow her only friend into the depths, and away from a life she had only ever tolerated. Never enjoyed.