Seam:. Hey kid! Was wondering if you were ever gonna show!
Captain Kris: Just had a long night, Seam, had to fight just to pull myself out of bed.
S: Well, hey, you won. Let’s celebrate. You want the usual?
CK: Just a few additions, get me a pack of the St Nicks
S: St Nicks? Thought that’s what the lollipops were for
CK: Not for me; it’s for Noelle. She helped us make a big breakthrough on the case we’re working on, and I thought I’d pay her back.
S: Ah, fair enough…young folks like you shouldn’t smoke.
CK: You acting like I can’t see that pipe in your mouth?
S: Ehh, I’m too old to give up the habit. You want your butterscotch pop too?
CK: Two of them this time, gonna be a long day today.
S: Whatever you say, kid. Better rotting your teeth than your lungs.
CK:...didn’t just come for that though.
CK: I need to know more about that alloy we talked about last time.
S:...that’s treading on very dangerous territory kid, kinda stuff you don’t talk about even with the curtains drawn in the middle of the night.
CK: I need to know what I’m dealing with. Berdly’s around that stuff, Noelle’s around that stuff, I can’t…I can’t risk them getting hurt cause it was affecting them and I didn’t know it.
S:...flip the sign to ‘Closed’ will you?
CK: Seam, I don't have much time.
S: Shit, it's not the kinda story that takes all day, but it's the kind that I don't want to be interrupted for…you get it?
CK: I just need to know about the alloy.
S: Just flip the damn sign kid…okay good….You know when I pointed you in the direction of that killer a while back?
CK: Yeah, that old friend of yours?
S: Heh…friend? Was he a friend? I suppose so, maybe. Anyway, I ran with him when we were both still in the Spade gang. Just some two-bit hustler running scams and magic tricks for the mooks down at the boardwalk. He wasn’t anything to anybody but me…but…God, on some days I could look in his eyes and see the whole world turning, just in a look…I was young then, everybody was.
CK: Seam it wasn’t that long ago.
S: You don’t know what I’m talking about, kid. That’s good; it’s good you don’t know. Anyway…word gets around about this new gang that’s been kicking out a space for itself, not by whacking folks or taking territory but just…flowing into the cracks, taking up all the shadow, the roots of the whole damn city. Anyway, my old friend gives me a call about how the boss told him to keep an eye on that particular gang, and while he was snooping he found something that belonged to one of them, a shard of some kinda metal, or a crystal, or glass. Said it was something bad, something that couldn’t be, that shouldn’t be…I listened to him talk about it for a loooong time; some of it was nonsense, and some of it wasn’t. So…I packed up my stuff, and I headed over to his place…only to find our two…mutual FRIENDS stuffing him into the back of that old Coupe Deville of theirs.
S: I ran after that car until my feet bled, I thought I could catch it kid. I got a layer of resin on my lungs thicker than my thumb but I swear to all the angels in the sky I really thought I could catch that car…but I didn’t.
S: Right as I fell down on the asphalt, I heard the two of them laughing. Goddamn hyenas. They drove off…didn’t see my friend for a week, and when I did…I…
CK: Seam you don’t need to tell me what you don’t want to say
S: I ain’t gonna cry kid, too old for that too…next time I saw him he wasn’t himself. They’d taken him away, hollowed him out, made him into one of them. He told me nothing matters, that life was just chaos and he could do whatever he wanted. I tried to make him see sense, he took that as a threat. I fought him, had him on the pavement just as the cops rolled by. I tried to look him in the eyes one last time, try to see that whole world that I’d seen before…but it was gone. Just midnight between those eyes now, and he took out that knife of his and he stuck it in my left peeper, so I could keep that piece of midnight forever. I was bleeding into the concrete while the cops were clapping the irons on him. Then he started laughing, just like those two hyenas in the car, laughing and laughing. They booked him, stuck him in jail, he broke out and…well you know the rest, you got the medals to prove it.
CK: So…it wasn't the shard that did it.
S: The shard is some bad juju on its own, and I’d recommend your friends use gloves and not stare at it too closely…but it's not what turns you into something like that. It’s when those two come to visit and they take you to where they lay their heads…
S: you know what the worst part of it was?
S:...they made him think he was FREE. That his eyes had opened and he could see further than he could before. Not realising that he was still just some clown in a circus, just a puppet attached to their strings…
CK:...He was happy, they let him be happy. Doesn't sound so bad to me
S: It's always better to see your chains.
CK: Maybe…I just wish they’d stop rattling in my face. Either way I'm out of time, thanks for the info. You take care of yourself okay?
S: Best as I can… hey wait, just a second!
CK: What? Seam I really gotta-
S: The girl you’re grabbing that extra lollipop for, that big girl right? I see you two around.
CK…yeah, I care about her. I didn't think I still could, but I do.
S: Thought so…whatever you do, you keep her away from those two hyenas you hear me?
S: Good. Leave the sign on closed, would ya? I need a minute
S:...Shit, kid, not as old as me, but older than you should be.
Semi sequel to this post. I actually wrote this story not long after I made my last Deltanoir post (AU by @thelostmoongazer), couldn't get it to flow and so it sat as a WIP in my back files. Found it again during my Google Docs purge and decided to finish it!
