Midnight Metropolis: Chapter Three (1/2)
Friday Night Bunker
A serialised novel of sunless planets, hallucinogenic mushrooms, daemons, and... pizza rats. 🍕🐀
New chapters posted every Tuesday!
Available Chapters — Content Warnings
“What’s the take?” Caggoty whispered in Ginx’s ear. “Place seems quiet.” His breath against her neck was warm and unpleasant, shrouded in a sweet-sick fog of cheap beer.
Ginx turned her head away. “Not too bad, actually. I’ve stamped in four hundred and seven.”
It felt like four thousand and seven. Ginx shifted in the hard metal chair, grimacing when the doors opened to pump stale street air into the narrow corridor. A couple entered, their arms slung around each other.
“Make that four hundred and nine,” Ginx said.
Caggotty sucked in acne-scarred cheeks and crossed his arms over his faded denim jacket. “Barely enough to scrape rent. Let’s hope they’re all bloody thirsty. Make these the last stamps, Ginx. It’s almost three.”
He disappeared back into the club without waiting for a reply.
The couple stopped before Ginx’s booth—little more than a wooden box caged against one wall—and held out their wrists. Ginx scanned out their credits, grateful when neither chirped with the red beep of death. She had already tussled with four no-credit losers tonight and was in no mood to make the tally six. She could have guessed from their appearance that these men rarely had credit problems. The larger one was wearing an expensive-looking leather jacket, far too warm for the weather and definitely procured off-world, and his companion’s teeth were white and straight as marble slabs.
“Is Tattiana in tonight?” Teeth said. He was overly excited and grotesquely sober.
“She is, but it’s late. If you want to see her you’ll have to hurry. She might be three sheets to the wind already and then you’ll get nothing out of her but hexes.”
The man recoiled slightly, his bright smile fading, and Ginx grinned as she reached for her stamp. Winding up the blow-ins was eternally amusing. They both waited patiently as she wetted the club’s rubber logo on an ink pad and pressed it carefully against the backs of their hands. They stared at them for a moment—blow-ins always did—admiring the way the logo, a crude pair of women’s lips puckered around a razor blade, shone pink and purple against the blacklight.
“That stamp’s only good for tonight,” Ginx said. “You try to reuse it, you’ll be banned.”
“How would you know if it’s been used?” Leather Jacket said. He smirked at his partner.
“Boss changes it every night,” Ginx replied, wishing they’d just hurry up and fuck off. “The colours will scan different tomorrow.”
They finally wandered away down the short corridor—wallpapered with band posters and blasted with graffiti—into the bowels of the club. Ginx leapt up to lock the street doors.
“You all done?”
She turned to find Luke leaning against her booth.
“Yes. Finally.”
Ginx raked a self-conscious hand through her hair, wishing she’d had time to dye it the bubblegum pink colour she’d been considering for a week. Not that it would have made any difference. Luke was a beautiful mirage. She would never actively pursue him; the idea of him was too salt-sweet delicious to ruin with the messy prospect of reality. He was like a deep-soul song with perfect lyrics. She didn’t want all that beauty dismantled by finding out he farted in bed or picked his teeth, or was in any way an actual revolting human being with flaws and moods.
“Drink?” she suggested.
Luke nodded and followed her into the club. They found Riven in his usual place against the bar, the usual cantankerous scowl etched on his face.
“This place is full of kids now,” he moaned when he saw them. “I feel like an old hag.”
“Hags are cool,” Toni said, placing two warm beers on the bar for Ginx and Luke. She’d been bartending at the Bunker for over a year and knew how appalling the majority of the cocktail menu was. Her friends’ budgets only stretched to half-priced, watered-down cocktails, or local beer, and she’d long stopped asking them which they’d prefer.
Ginx smiled gratefully. She lifted the flimsy cup to down half the beer in one short swallow, almost burped, and glanced at Luke in alarm. Thankfully, he was distracted by Riven.
“You’re only twenty-six, Toni,” Riven pouted, freshly glossed lips puckering like a raw wound. “I’m twenty-eight next month. I’m practically dead.”
A woman Ginx didn’t recognise was surrounded by a clutch of old-timers, preening in their midst like a minor celebrity. The woman turned to show the group her right shoulder, bare and gleaming beneath the heavy palette of the club’s blacklight. It was scored with red, wet-looking lines, weaving in and out of each other to create the angular image of a phoenix, wings spread in flight and beak open in a triumphant scream.
Ginx thought the bird’s face was ugly—pointed and irritable like a wizened old man’s who was too tired and bent with pain to tolerate your bullshit. The scartat was as silly as the interlocking pentagrams the so-called wraith-witches carved on their foreheads. Ginx often wondered what the witches would look like if they made it to old age. She imagined the scarlet-limned scars would disappear into the deep slits of their wrinkled foreheads like angry snakes being swallowed by pudding.
Scartat had caught Luke’s attention. The woman noticed him peering past Riven’s scrawny frame to study the raw phoenix, then dropped her shoulder towards him so he could get a better view.
“That tat looks fresh,” he said, flashing the woman his lopsided smile. “You just got that today?”
“I did.” Scartat beamed as though she was being congratulated for curing some terrible disease. “I designed it myself.”
Ginx bristled. The laser-scored monstrosity rippling across the woman’s shoulder blade was as far from a tattoo as she could imagine. Ginx held deep love and respect for the old tattoos. Her grandmother had had a full sleeve of what looked like cartoon characters to child-Ginx, the colours remaining bright and vibrant even as Grandmother’s hair and eyes grew pale and brittle. She used to beg Grandmother to roll up her sleeve, loved to hear the stories that came with each finely etched face.
“This one is a warrior. He saved a princess.”
“Why do the princesses always need saving, Gran?”
“Not all of them do. Remember this one?”
Then Grandmother would turn her arm over, flash Ginx the underside of her forearm and the riot of colours splashed across it. Rising from the centre of the rainbow storm was Ginx’s favourite character, a tightly-muscled woman wearing pearly blue armour, hoisting a sword and turning amidst the blazing stream of a lightning fork.
“That’s Zin-Hara.”
“That’s right, darling. In the old stories, Zin-Hara was the one who did the saving.”
“Can I be her?”
“You can be anything you want if you’re strong like Zin-Hara.”
What a shitty lie that had turned out to be.
“You being served?” Sevi said, appearing as though summoned from the ether. The bartender was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a shaggy mane of salt and pepper hair.
“Toni sorted us out,” Ginx replied. “But I’ve just worked a thousand-hour shift, so fill me up.” She finished the rest of her beer and pushed the empty cup across the bar.
“A thousand hours?” Sevi said as she poured the beer. “And I thought my pitiful six-to-four was rough.”
She returned Ginx’s cup, refilled with the dark, pungent liquid that passed for beer in Noctara, and leaned across the bar, one unkempt eyebrow raised.
“You told that skinny musician you want to rock his boat, yet?”
The club was loud, and Sevi spoke in a theatrical whisper, but Ginx still wanted to slap a hand across the bartender’s mouth.
“Shut up, Sev. He’s right there.”
They both regarded Luke. He was comparing tattoos with Scartat, who was laughing far too loudly. Riven skulked beside them, preening like a Bhume Valley dilettante as he competed for the woman’s attention.
“Never mind,” Sevi said. “Looks like he’s going home with someone else.”
So, what do we think of Luke? Should Ginx go for it and “rock his boat”, as Sevi so delicately put it? Or should she forget him? (This poll is just for fun!)
Content Warnings
Alcohol use, swearing.