377. This Place is No Place

Jeweled warts glistened upon a worn face of lamellar scales. Taboodja, of eye aubergine, had a plan. Frail John. That was the plan. Simple. Few moving parts. Little to complicate. Just frail the golden boy. Payback was a damn sweet motherfrailing slit of a bitch worn loose from wear. The thought of frailing John, prostrated before heathens and heaven alike, in his cold sphinctered tight arse, a public frailing, before the jaded and bejeweled split-tails, delighted his diseased imagination like warm rancid milk in a goat's bowl.

Tabood stood and measured his leathered tumidity with satisfaction. Looking about, the kaleidoscope of debauchery drifted before his dull eyes, whores and more whores, dancing as hips upon mirrored glass, money sucking sluts with painted smiles, bodies on autopilot, minds long since jettisoned. The lude smell of obscura drifted in the air, poor grade mixed with home brewed. Lights gaudy, stacked like a bad dream, beamed, flashed and buzzed ware and trade in the eternal night of moon life. Drum ribbed children slumped and scattered under weight not seen, their smiles stolen in the wicked commerce, laid bare upon days without end, of tunnels alight with the grin of a soulless master, black of heart, whip of hand; the doors of their souls locked, the windows of their eyes blackened by the faint hand of hope.

Work the rock. Work the hard place. Make the deal. Play the game. Party of the first part dead. Party of the second part desperate. Work it lubeless, work it with jagged rusted prejudice. Into the neon night Tabood smiled in yellow fangs foul with yesterday's substance, pores blistering with milky teeming pus, rank of smell like three day butchered meat.

Tabood picked his neglected nails, spitting refuse as chaff. He had the time of one with all the cards, the visage of a plan weighed and sorted and sorted and weighed. Snorting through his moist purple snout, casting virus-born phlegm upon the dirty silver metal planking, he hacked up a vile custard of hue chartreuse, wiped clean with the back of his golden burnished scaled hand.

John looked at Von quiet as church before those of bended back and crooked knee arrive. "Tighten your shiott."

Leather strained by din of hand prepared. Weapons, cold cocked, ready to frail the shiott out of innocent and guilty alike. Fear confessed, now or later, before no bean frailing counter. "Shiott secured," said Von.

"There is nothing here worth the weighing if weighing deign upon the moment. This place is no place."

"I see what needs not what wants."

John stopped, the circus of light and slut tight on their smell. "Is that some kind of Zing shiott?"

"Nope. I got a hide long for the tannery. And I mean to keep it that way."

"I think I'm beginning to see why Rog likes you. Now--"

"Look, this ain't my first rodeo. You lead, I'll follow. And if you frail it up, I'll pull your arse from the fire before the crew can sniff your Kulmykian bacon."

"Really?"

"No, not really. But it sounded good didn't it?"

John smiled. Von didn't. His scalp begin to itch under eyes fixed of intent not pure from the right of the broadway. A bolt of orange tinged the air as John and Von parted as pages of a book left and right.

"Pick yourselves up. If I wanted you dead, you'd be." Tabood stood above the fallen pair trying hard to suppress the smile behind his large purple oculars.