never gonna get what's coming to you {charity}

i wake up with my shoes on
and my whole life thrown around the room
and i swear like a sailor
as i choke on smoke and cheap perfume

The air is humid on the summers evening, light fading quickly from the orange sea above me. A light breeze trickles by, flowing through the gaps between my fingers, stroking my palms. The tall grass dances as if people run through it, but there is nothing to cause the separation of the field, the way it sways in random directions is haunting as I cling onto the last of the day’s light. My innocent eyes are widening, the pupils want to eat more of the fluorescent evening glow, but it is being sucked dry and consumed by the wicked night. The silhouette that is the avenue of trees becomes fainter by the second, the dull throb of the moon is all that allows me to identify them - A silver outline in the wind. My sweaty hands clamp at the air, balling into tiny fists. I’m not scared. Big boys don’t get scared.

I hear a commotion stirring in the grass nearby, and an unnatural groan tells me that it’s not just the wind. My childish imagination frenzies into possibilities of creatures that roam the night in search of little children to gobble up. No such thing as monsters, no such thing as monsters. The growl gets louder, I spot the rustling zig-zagging towards me, a fissure in the tall grass.
“Sh-Shianne..?” I murmur, my high pitched, eleven year old voice is a crack in the hot air, a sweat trickles down the side of my head. No bark of a dog returns to me, no bounding lump of a pup approaches to jump up at me and lick my face and comfort me. Which begs the question: What on earth is in that grass?

“H-He… Hello?” I squeal, a shape grows in the shadows, feeding on the darkness and transforming into a round ball of everything I am scared of. It calls me, making no noise. I feel it drawing me in with it’s dark presence. I back away slowly, scared out of my skull with whatever it is. I turn, the beacon of light oozes from my house that sits at the end of the meadow. I could run. I could make it. The orb of fear morphs, two stumps protrude from it’s sides and another two stick out of it’s base. A round sphere forms on it’s top as it begins to clear, forming some sort of humanoid creature. No, not humanoid… Human! It’s a person. Large and fat with a bushy ginger beard and… Ripred, it’s my Uncle.

Only, he’s not my Uncle. He’s larger, with hollow eyes and blood waterfalling out of his mouth. He screams a hollow sound, advancing towards me. I turn and run, run for the house at the end of the field, but it is not there anymore. The house is gone. All that is in front of me is an infinity of field. Trapped. Trapped in the dark with this creature. I scream, but no noise escapes me. Blood is flickered all over the twisted form of my Uncle Daryus, scars are drawn onto him, like he has been chopped up and stitched back up again. I run, but he chases me, getting closer and closer. I try to throw him off by changing direction, and it works. He slows and I am getting away.

Away to where? More field is all I find. I look back, not seeing the shape chase me anymore. Now what? Now what do I do? My breathing quickens, my legs are in the open, my eleven year old self shivers in the unrelenting cold. Another rustle in this unending grass, I scream as another creature is forged in the night, taking on a form I barely recognize. A man, in his late twenties? I know his face, I’ve seen it before. He walks briskly towards me and I am transfixed, unable to move away from him as he gets closer still. I see his mustache glitter in the moonlight and know that I am looking at myself. He is coming to kill me. I am his innocence. His hand wraps around my throat and-

Snap.

I fall off my bed, dragging the covers with me. A loud groan escapes my dry mouth, a hand reaches up to the light, like it’s trying to grab onto what is real and what’s not. I lie a crumpled mess on the ragged carpet, groaning in the comedown of reality. Clutching at the covers, pulling them over my face to drive away the nagging light. My head nods with drowsiness, almost drifting off again. I shake myself and shove a hand deep into my pocket to pull out a fog watch. I flick it open and adjust my eyes to the moving hands. Ripred, it has barely gone midnight and I am already awake from my own nightmares. What’s new? I must have fallen asleep at around sevenish, because I’m still fully dressed. My eyes droop with the urge to return to dreamland. The visions of Daryus leave my mouth watering for blood.

The craving is too much to handle. I have felt it before, so long ago. More than five, six, seven years ago now. That was when I last killed… That was when I first killed. I had panicked, frenzied at the sickening feeling of snapping someone’s neck. So quick, but not at all painless. He looked funny with his head on backwards, did the drunken slob who came at me with a knife, but I bested him… I wanted more. More blood. Like a sickness, it was. Like a sick man with a sick addiction. Sucked under after one kill, one life taken and it’s not enough. My mind was made for this, and now that I have had another taster of blood, my mind and body wants more. No, no, no! Control yourself, Doyle. I shake my head, slapping myself in the face, the stubble is rough on my palm. I can’t get lost. I need to find my feet and focus on what I want. I have a list, and there are people to be dealt with accordingly. No murder.

I crawl out from my cave of covers and lie on the living room floor like a beached whale, groaning. The noise from the tavern below vibrates upwards, and the stench of alcohol seeps through the carpet, making my nose retract and my mustache twitch. I press my hands to the floor and push myself to my feet, almost tripping over as I do so. I glance around the mess of a room, trying to re-establish myself in the world. I am no longer in the slaughter-shack from Tampleweed Ranch, not like I was last night, I have since moved to the apartment above the bar. It’s shoddy little place, but I picked it for it’s location, not for accommodation. The ranch is secluded, so very far away from the rest of my beloved underworld. Yet here I can put my ear to the ground - literally - and get information.

I shake my head of the weird dreams I’ve been having. Dreams of the man that I murdered in cold blood: my Uncle Daryus. More twisted and aggressive forms of myself have seeped through. I see myself as a strong figure, even if I am relatively weak at the moment, still lost and broken from my time in the Capitol. After eating well, maybe in a couple of months I’ll be back at full strength. I’ll be able to chase down the leads in my book and find out what’s really going on in this district. Priority one is complicated. I have this place, and I have Tampleweed Ranch… But I need one more. I need to finish what I started..

It all started a year ago, when I was still in the Detention Center. I got a letter from an old friend of mine, a business partner in fact. Goes by the name of Che Wickham. Che and I have always been close, striking up several deals in the past. He knew about my scam with life insurance, and when I got caught, we made plans for when I got out the Detention Center. You see, Che had always eyed a piece of land that a family named the Poers owned. He had seen it as a financial haven for him and myself to set up our own ranching enterprise. The potential of the plot was massive, and it was being seriously underused by its owners. A deal was in place with the owner of the ranch, whilst I rested in prison, Che was busy trying to get the ranch for us. It seemed to be going well, that was until things made a sudden shift downhill. I got the letter from Che about a year ago, stating that the deal had fallen through - Poer’s son, Elias had taken over the ranch following his father’s sudden death. Of course, Elias developed into a powerful and wealthy man, and there’s no way he’d sell to Che or I. The dream was dead. Elias was at least making the most of the land, like I said he had become incredibly powerful.

No one is as powerful as I.

That’s what’s inspired me to move forward. That ranch has always been mine, in my eyes, and just because some snotty teenager has inherited it and made it into a goldmine, doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest. What’s bad news for me is that Che was arrested a few months before my release, and we met up in the Detention Center in the few months we were together in imprisonment. Che told me a lot about Elias - His cunning, his mentality and his physical size. Not many things worry Che Wickham, but I did not like the tone in his voice when we spoke… And now I have to find a way to do this on my own. Believe me, I will get that ranch, be it financially, tactically or, if it comes down to it, physically. I need more information on Poers, that’s why this hotspot of an apartment is so important. I need to know everything… Absolutely everything about Elias. And I know just the guy.

I search the dirty forest of carpet that lies ragged under my feet, rushing to find clean socks. I struggle to slip on a pair of black ones that I find under the settee, still half-asleep. I lace up my shoes systematically, like clockwork. I rush to the door, pausing before I get to the doorframe. I need my book. That book is everything to me, and like it is part of my own body, I know exactly where it is. My head turns slowly to look at the glass table adjacent to me. Sure enough the red leather book sits there, waiting to be picked up. I hear it’s heartbeat pulsating, drawing me in. It talks to me, it wants me. My hand is magnetized to it, and carefully lifts the book and slips it into its natural habitat - My pocket.

I exit the rotting apartment and stick the key in the rusting lock, jimmying the key because it sticks. I stare down the fading green of a hallway, at the other lodgers rooms. I wonder who lives in them, if anyone. I clamber down the metal staircase that comes out the back of the bar, my feet clang against the metal. Down the spiral staircase and into the haze of the tavern below.

Wooden floorboards creek under my feet as I walk into the dead atmosphere of the bar. The stone walls are spruced up by stuffed animal heads, all of which stare at me with desperation. A flicker of a fire is lit in the hearth, a few people gather around it to ward away the bitter winter air that creeps under the door and through the grubby windows. The innkeeper who runs this whole joint polishes off his bar, his cloth goes round and round in a repetitive motion, he stares until he can see his reflection. It never comes. People lean over their drinks, cradling them with two hands like it’s the most valuable and fragile thing they’ll ever own. A bard stands in a corner, strumming away at his out of tune ukulele, blubbering an equally wrong-pitched tale of a man and his quest to kill a bear in the out-district.

I turn my nose up at the foul stench of the place. My foot catches a sticky puddle of chemical mess, someone spilled their drink and wasn’t courteous enough to clean it up.. I place my hand on the stone cold wall, using it to support my tired body. I push myself further into the factory of forgettable faces and has-been heroes. Someone falls on me, their weight is like a sack of potatoes. I throw the slob to one side, he doesn’t seem to mind. Slowly but surely I make my way to the bar. The whole place is rotting from the inside, but it’s District Ten, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I find a drink in my hands before I’m even fully sat down, compliments of the barman. I’ve worked hard to butter him up over the years, and of course this is on the house. He sorted my room out in such a prime location, simply because I’ve got his balls in a vice. He, like many people I know, are under my control. A lot of people owe me for various reasons, and it’s half the reason that I have such an influence in this backwater district.

I sit at the bar, swirling the bitty brown liquid. Whiskey. I take a sip of the burning fuel and stare straight ahead at the poorly polished wine glasses that sit upside down on the draining board, behind the bar. I smirk, taking another sip of my drink and savoring it in my mouth before a controlled swallow infernoes down my throat.
“They say you’re good…” I murmur, my mouth still half submerged in my drink. I don’t look at him, instead I keep staring at his blurred reflection in the glasses. The top hat is the giveaway, like it makes him taller than he is.
“The best” He corrects me, his voice monotonic and childish. So young and yet he thrives on our twisted little underworld. It has shaped him, made him who he is: An informant.

They say that the Dodger is the go-to guy for information. Whatever you need to know on anyone, he’s your guy. He has more contacts than I could ever imagine, all of which bow to him as the overseer of everything. He places the white handkerchief on the bar next to me, the same one that was sticking out of my back pocket - That’s how you get his attention, they said - He stares at me like he’s waiting for something. A command? A question? He’s too young to know who I am, he wasn’t even around before I was sentenced - He was still an infant. He still is.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Dodger…” I say, when in reality I know nothing about him. No one does. He’s just a middleman, a nameless child who knows all.
“I doubt it.” He says in that same poker-face. I let out a laugh, his professionalism and seriousness is funny to me. Just a child. I wonder if he killed his own innocence long ago. When I was his age, I was playing in a field with my pet dog. Here he is, staring into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer, and he isn’t the slightest bit scared of me. His eyes tell me that he’s seen people like me before. Heh, there's no one like me.

“What do you want?” He breaks the silence with a sigh, leaning against the bar with his elbow to stabilize him. He wants to get to the point, and I don’t blame him - He’s a busy guy. So, I take another swig of my drink and turn to him, looking him dead in the eye.
“What do you know about Elias Poers?” I ask. I want to know everything he’s got on him, because I’m going to need to know all I can if I’m going to get that farm off him. I see the Dodger’s eyes widen at the mention of his name - Fear? There isn’t a lot that phases the Dodger if he’s complacent about me, and I don’t doubt that he knows all about me. Maybe he’s just surprised that I’m asking after Elias.
“Never heard of him…” Comes the shaky voice of the agent, he breaks eye contact. What? Never heard of him? What kind of poxy excuse is that?
“Liar! Tell me what you know!” I demand, my teeth bared. He jumps back in hesitation, his mouth opens.
“Err…”
“Tell me!” I yell, people turn their heads. The Dodger sees that he is now the center of attention. My face drains as I realize I have revealed him, and he runs. He runs away, fleeing like a coward into the darkness. I have blown it. He could have told me and I let my eagerness and anger get in the way.

“Ripred…”