The Intrepid Badass and Cyberpocalyptical Wild West Gun for Hire: Sqollstown.
By VKlaus • Jan 4th, 2010 at 1:10 pm • Category: Fiction| Hot: |  |  | | | |
PREFACE (which means before the face): I wrote this a while back, in the ye olde days of yore a long long time ago, and since then I have tweaked, fiddled, poked around, and jiggered (which means added a fuck ton of commas) with it then I completely re-wrote it and repeated the process, and lucky for you, I felt that the end result this time was acceptable. What I have here is the first two chapters in what I hope will be a continuing series. About a a bunch of crazy mother fuckers killen and breaking shit. (pardon my french) Anyway with out further to do, here is the story and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did writing the bastard. Oh and I also put up a supplemental stuff up on my blog for more Sqollstown Silliness HURH
-Chapter 1: The Devil Arrives In Town To Get Drunk And Kill Assholes-
“Fuck shit, asshole.” was the family credo of M. Skullburg Dregingstone known back then by his Christian name Sqollstown. The man stood six feet nothin’ and nearly 3 barrels of piss beer wide. Grown up in the dark desert of what was once Arkansas before the bombs dropped. Raised in a cesspool of radioactive waste and sin that was the Wild Mid-West, Sqollstown grew up fast, mean, and always with a gun in someone else’s mouth. He was the most dangerous type of mutant around. One that didn’t think twice about blowing your irradiated nuts off and wouldn’t take shit from no thing living or dead. Including some contrary horse saddles, shame they were still on the horses at the time. Would stick his knife in you rather than shake your hand. It fact its where I got this knife, and it was the day he came to town was the day your mother died.
Eighteen years ago it was 199X, and we had been trying our damnedest to rebuild our society after the great nuclear war ravaged the land. Unfortunately the marauding Techno Hounds, that appeared the same day of the apocalypse lit up the nation, had stolen anything resembling a complex machine. So all we had left was a few simple tools, a couple loaded pistols, and more than a few barrels of sweat from our brow. A simple trader settlement, we had a quaint little inn ran by Sweet Marian’s family and a peaceful little diner. But as the world grew dryer, our crops fell off and the usual stream of travelers and traders began to slow we had to turn to less desirable measures. Our dinner soon became a saloon the inn became a brothel and Sweet Marian became Sultry Mary-Ann who did her best to run it proper.
Traffic to our town began to pick up again, however it was not the kind we were used to seeing out in daylight. No more lost wanderers, hardworking traveling settlers, or enterprising young trades. All that came where the worst of the worst on their way to a bigger city to commit bigger crimes and piss of bigger men. The filth started to build in the creases of the little slice of civilization we worked so hard to create in this dreadful waste land. Soon most of the good folks left and only a few stayed, though, most of them are dead now. I thought about leaving too, but I was young, the new kinds of life and enterprise were interesting to me, so I choose to tend to my fathers bar.
The more normal people left the more the mutants came to town. Simple fist fights between the normal humans and the mutants could grow to get riotous and deadly. It wasn’t until enough “things” died that everyone was satisfied with the amount of blood on the ground and then decided to retired to whichever girls room they could afford. In this wasteland dark times only got darker, and that’s what exactly what happened.
That day was a real black one. The dark and poisonous clouds hung low, trembling with death when he walked into town in the late afternoon. Like the Devil was trying to make up for the years of neglect to his only begotten son by giving him a natural cover to come quietly into town. The man’s face looked as if it had never seen a drop of water his entire life. A bottle of whiskey in one hand and bandoliers of bourbon and tequila hanging off his shoulders. Bloodshot eyes and chipped lips, he looked like the baddest mother fucker around, no matter where he was. But that alone can‘t keep a man safe these days, and even if it looked like it might rain acid at any minuet it’s a rare day anyone can walk down these streets and not get into trouble.
A tall effeminate man stepped out of an ally way jollily ruffling his crotch like it was pillow needing fluffed.
“Hey there studles, looks like you could use a little moisturizer, I think I got the right kind for ya,”
The man continued to continued to fluff his junk but this time with more ferocity and began to waggle with his disturbingly slender hips in the air while making mumbled squeaking noises to an unheard song. His name was Buggery Bill. Bill was owner of the local distillery and Queerer than the 3 dollar bill that’s been shoved up his ass for the last three years. Sqollstown didn’t even blink when he pulled out a revolver and shot Buggery Bill right between his painted eyes.
I walked back from door where I was watching to behind my counter of my bar, and waited. Just as I figured it wasn’t long till he walked in. Those kind of folk always found their way to the bottoms of my bottles. Mutants, men, and unnatural badasses alike all look to make some sorta sense of this radiated land that once was called America even if that sense comes in the form of drunken haze. Most people can’t make it in the techno hound gangs and the cybertopias hate anyone who ever spent time in the real world. So, they find acceptance in my clean mugs of blurry reason.
Sqollstown walked up to the bar and, with a voice like a bowl of broken glass eating train full of coal and sandpaper (a kind of voice that would of given even Tom Wait’s a chill), said
“Need a bottle of scotch”
“Here ya go… Say son, you don’t look real familiar, what’s your name?”
The knife sunk in. But as painful as it was, it wasn’t too deep and I’ve had a couple shots of whisky already.
“Name’s Sqollstown… You can keep the knife.”
He tips the bottle and drains it.
The bar is silent. Its wasn’t everyday a guy got stabbed for askin’ someone’s name. I pulled out the knife, only flinching a little, and slipped it into my pocket and went to the sink to wash and dress my wound. I shouted over my shoulder,
“Fuckin nice way of a greetin you got there. Shit.”
“The last guy to talk to me today got a bullet between the eyes.”
“Yeah, I saw. Name‘s Max by the way.”
“Another bottle”
“Here ya-ugh-… How can a man drink like that?”
“Ya know, you‘re the chattiest bartender I‘ve ever met. Most of them are too busy pissing themselves to think of anything to say.”
“Believe me if I wasn’t already half drunk, Im sure I would be”
“Hmm. Well to answer yer question, you may not no it by the looks of me, but I’m a mutant”
He looks around at the rest of the patrons briefly and says out loud.
“Sad thing when I’m the prettiest one around”
“Anyway,” he continued “My mutation is I don’t need no water tah live. Never had a drop of the stuff, no liver neither. I drink booze, cause to me, it taste like home.”
“I see.”
By this time a small group of mutants were huddled up in a corner talking in whispers and it didn’t take an rocket scientist to see what was goin to happen. I gave a quiet nod at Sqollstown in their direction, he nodded in response and took another drink from his bottle while I walked away to the farthest corner away from Sqollstown. Soon the group of grotesque twisting of once humans walked up behind him. Six of them. Big guy in the middle, kinda green, a bone popping out of his chest, and a lazy eye in the bottom of his jaw was the only one who had the balls to speak.
“Hey uh… faggot! Heard you sayin’ you was the prettiest boy in the mutant club, hate to tell ya but you got yur facts wrong, that honuh belongs to me. Know ‘specially a few girls up at Miss Mary’s who’d agree.”
Sqollstown remained silent and just tipped his bottle and took a sip.
“Hey… HEY! Yo you think you betta than us in here? … I said HEY!”
The mutant rested his hand on Sqollstowns shoulder, and leaned in and said into his ear
“Listen close boy -”
Sqollstown lifted his bottle again.
“The queer you wasted made some of the finest brew around town -”
His chipped lips met the edge of the bottle,
“and we were what you could call friends and we -”
Every drop of the sour liquid found its way into his mouth.
“have decided that its our duty to teach you-”
He sighs with satisfaction
“ a – “
The bottles upside down now. The bottles’ neck in his hand now.
“ lesson!”
Sqollstown spun around faster than anything I had ever seen. I couldn’t tell you if the sound I heard was a breaking of the sound barrier or the sound of the bottle shattering across the green mutants face. Before the green body could hit the floor 5 bullets from Sqollstowns revolver found their new home in the surroundings mutants skulls. Sqollstown looked like something out a film as he stood over the bleeding mutant. In his right hand a smoking revolver and in the other the bloody remains of the bottle. He spoke at the wriggling green mess on the floor,
“Out of bullets, might take me a minuet to reload, and don’t think your gonna be willing to wait while I do that. And well as for this bottle–”
He threw the bottle neck against the wall finally joining the rest of itself in shattered glass on the floor. Sqollstown then lit up a cigarette, inhaled deep and said as little wisps of smoke escaped whatever he used as his lungs,
“– Well I’d rather squeeze the life outta ya myself. That is unless you’re so piss ass weak you can’t stand up to face me.”
The mutant let out a yell and rushed Sqollstown. What followed is the thing that what nearly sent me to heroin. I seen a thing that mostly only dead men get to see. Sqollstown smiled. A terrifying smile of most inane evil that must of started the rumor of him being of the devils blood, and that wasn’t the worst part. The change in expression sent blood dribbling down his face. Every crease that has been baked in the sun, derived of water for years had become so brittle that the slightest change in expression caused the skin to break and bleed.
Later I find out that he smiles only smiles when he’s about to soak his brittle skin in the blood of another. Something in the mixing of the two that seals up the open wounds. Now with Sqollstown, it didn’t take long before the red water works started. The mutant, before he could even reach full height, had already a broken nose, and broken arm that had shattered bone poking its little tips out through the emerald skin.
Sqollstown beat him till there weren’t much left cart off. If times were worse, I’d probably scrapped up the remains and called it soup. He stood up to his full high his expression returned to the normal hard scowl as he sat back down at the bar.
“Bourbon.” he said.
Shaking I handed him the bottle. He opened it up and splashed it onto his face. Wiped the blood and alcohol off with the sleeve of his coarse brown leather coat. Face clean as a whistle.
I looked around, everyone in the bar was terrified, I pulled out a bottle of jack and took a huge drink.
“Jesus Christ man.” I said. “You- don’t fuck around much do ya”
He let out a low growl that must have been the closest thing to a chuckle as he was capable of creating. I took another drink, god knows I needed it for what I was about to do. Even to this day I still regret it.
“Uhm, listen, theres no good way of sayin this but, there’s some real bad folk around here I’ve been thinking… I mean seein how you managed that riff raff… Uh hows about you bein… Our uh… sheriff?… Maybe?”
He looked me hard in the eye, and that was all that was needed.
“How about this,” I said at last, “you help me clean up some of the shit round here, and you can have eight bottles of whatever you want a week, for free, and a permanent bed at Mary’s. Deal?”
He stares hard at his half empty bottle of Bourbon shook it a bit and nodded.
“Great. Hey you lot back there! Yeah you twats, get outta here! We’re closing early!… Alright Sqollstown, follow me up to Mary’s and we’ll get ya all set up with a girl, coupla guns, and a plan to clean up some of the fucking scum that has built up in here.”
-Chapter 2: MARY’S PLACE-
Mary’s place was a dangerous place in its self. Mary had been raised by ex-military commandos who were still alive when the bombs first hit in ‘83. She protected her girls even if that meant pumping a horny mutant full of steaming quantized plasma. Back when we were young me and Mary had a little thing. Stealing her parents grenades and chucking them into the Mayors dog house in the middle of the night and watching the pretty lights and dog gore. But that was way back when our town was “clean“ and the biggest trouble around were me, Mary, and a few other pissed off youths that grew up on Mad Max, Commando, and the cocaine we would steal from our parents.
The place was really shit way before the new dust bowl. It all just went on behind closed doors and back rooms. Only we were the rebels because we had balls to do it all in public. I cant even remember how many times we blew the Mayors dogs up. Boy, do I miss those days.
But time screws all over and as soon as the town changed hands and clientele me and Mary became so busy tending to the vices of others to properly tend to our own. It had been about a month since we had last seen each other. On rare nights when the town was quiet and both our respective joints were empty, she’d come down and we’d have a drink and remember the good old days and discuss the value of old movies, cheap explosives, and good sex. Tonight, however, we were going to have a different sort of conversation but chances were, knowing Mary and our special guest of honor, violence and sex were going to come up at least once or twice.
We arrived at Mary’s Brothel without trouble as the evening was stretching on into night and the clouds weren‘t looking happy. Sqollstown went thought the door first and I had to smile at an entire whorehouse gasping in fear. It would be entirely like Mary to pull a machine gun at first glance on any man and especially a man like Sqollstown so as soon as he walked in I shouted from outside as I hurried on in,
“Mary! Put the gun down! He’s not here to cause trouble!”
By the time I could see inside, Mary was setting a customized three barrel shotgun on the counter of the front desk. Sqollstown was holstering the gun he had on Mary but still had his gun trained on a mutant who was in the middle of reaching for a pistol that was sitting at his table in the lobby.
“Hey you! Piss off, Mary’s closed for the night.” I told the scum bag
“Hey man fuck you, I paid for this, you piss off!” said the scrubby devil,
“What do you think Mary? We closed?” asked one of the girls setting on the mutants lap
“Oh hell, I guess so. Go on get out loser your nights over.”
The mutant flushed, and grabbed hold of his pistol and before I could plug my ears the house sounded with a rolling thunder as Mary, Sqollstown, and the fourteen other girls in the lobby that had pulled revolvers out of that mysterious secret pocket all working girls seem to have, and filled that mutant with 4 and a half pounds of atomic lead.
I wish I could say that all I saw that was left was neck, but really, there was only a few assorted pieces of torso and limbs scattered across the floor. Seemed that not only does Mary protect her girls well, she also trains them well. After the ringing in our ears stopped, Mary spoke up,
“Well, you got my attention Max, I had forgotten how well you knew how to show a girl a good time”
“Oh you know me, nothing I love more than gratuitous violence”
“Heh. Hell It’s been long time Max… Now would you kindly explain why after a month of silence you show up and close my house for the night or why there is a seven foot stone Gollum of death standing in the door way or why my ceilings, walls, and my carpet’s now covered in purple blood!?”
“First off, his name’s Sqollstown, and be happy he hasn’t stabbed you yet, he’s here to take care of some of the shit in the streets. Davil, Moticanis, and hopefully Old Man.”
“You serious, what makes you think this shit head has a chance of even touching those bastards?”
“Mary, I seen the man kill 5 of Davils top boys in, like, 8 seconds. The mans a fucking Terminator.”
“Well if you say so, you’ve never let me down yet. I suppose you’re here for guns, explosives, knifes, and by the looks of him a couple women. Sounds like our first date.” she smirked “A plan would be handy, you got one?”
“You bet your ass, been brewing this up since… well, since those three assholes started working together.”
Sqollstown, who had been silent thus far, looked at me and growled
“Any chance of you telling me this fuckin’ plan of yours?”
Then the strangest thing happened. It was like at the sound of his voice every girl in the joint felt a lot more comfortable and suddenly found themselves with an incredible desire to get just a little closer to Sqollstown another delightful side effect of his mutation no doubt. The man was genetically engineered for sin.
“Of course, Sqollstown, I’ll run it by ya in few hours, first I wanna talk it over with Mary get everything set. Until then, pick a girl or five and grab some of Mary’s finest booze in the cabinets over there and I’ll see you in a while”
Sqollstown looked ,what I guess be called contemplatively, at all the girls milling around looking coy, but before he could make up his mind, a tall girl, who was tattooed from toes to tits, with shocked green twin pony tails, and a hook hand, walked up to him and said she’d “take care of him” and they quickly headed upstairs with armful of vodka bottles. That girl was named Nancy, your mother, Mary’s youngest sister, and the moment she had laid eyes on Sqollstown her life was over.
