He busied himself emptying some powder into the glass bottle, carefully. He knew where to get more, and this would be good. Not right away, but in time.
Buttsack considered making it a regular thing, even. If he could somehow get his hands on her stuff…
His thoughts were cut off when the door behind him opened. He moved his hand, ready to turn the attention aside.
The bitch focused on him right away. He moved his hand, ready to divert her attention and head in the other direction, but she didn’t budge.
Blond hair, long and silky, a nose ring and more rings in her ears, with bright green paint around her eyes.
He stared at her, she stared at him. His gut was cold and hollow with fear, and fear wasn’t far removed from anger. If she made a problem for him, what could he do to her in return?
“What?” the cunt at the window asked.
“Nothing,” the new bitch said.
One of the Duchamps. She wouldn’t say a thing. The goblins left the families alone, kept it all on the down-low, the families left the goblins alone.
That was the deal.
The girl headed to the furthest bathroom stall, giving him a warning look.
He had to admit disappointment, and briefly considered peeking all the same.
He finished lacing the medicine and then put everything away.
Fuck her, cheap cankly slut.
He picked through the bag, curious if there was anything else he could fuck with. Condoms and the pill-cases were fun, but the bitch didn’t have any.
He settled on papers.
Almost smug, he thought, lesser goblins wouldn’t know how to do this.
Look at the papers, figure out the names. Stuff with red markings and circles all over it was useless to mess with.
Find the papers with no markings, toward the end.
Find other papers to get clues. Best if he did it clever-like. Make it make sense. Sometimes a nice colorful threat to the teacher, referencing an old mark if they were low, or drawing a picture at the edges of the ages,
Allusions to violence and guns worked well. Something suitably strange, even, like a bit of blood used to draw a heart, and a line written within saying something like ‘I like to cut myself where nobody can see the marks.’ Get dumb humans sent to doctors to have their brains poked and prodded and their bodies looked at.
Except he’d done that one not so long ago.
But here she gave him nothing. A simple, stupid, boring bitch.
One of the papers in the booklet had two people’s names at the top, two different kinds of writing. Working together?
He went back to the unfinished work and erased the name at the top, copying down the other, mimicking the writing style. Two copies might be turned in. A stupid mistake. Eyebrows would raise.
He put it back, and then stowed the little bag of powder at the very bottom corner of the bag, inside a fold.
Mix things up a bit.
Buttsack didn’t always understand their ways, the language or the changes from yesteryear. He did understand the ugliness that came natural to them, and he could figure stuff out fast when it made him better at what he did. He understood how easy it was to mess them up, to push them off course. One incident, an oddity. A string? A bit of drugs, a cheating allegation? People would worry, they would stay away from her, they would-
He grabbed the pipe beneath the sink and pulled his feet away from the floor, hiding in the shadows as Cankles collected her bag.
If she was still coming into the bathroom with a friend to keep her company a week from now, then he’d find something else to do to her. He’d find her again, find where she lived, and he’d make a campaign of it. He’d convince her she was doing it to herself. Isolate, with a few other tricks, dismantle, destroy.
She’d suffer. His grin was toothy as he watched her leave.
What now? He had to wait until the hallways were empty before he could crack open the machine of food and cash.
Two stalls were occupied. There was one he didn’t dare touch. That still meant one possible view.
He smiled wide.
There were a number of fun things he could do here. Scare them at the right time, snatch their bag and run, spit a loogie into their pants or panties…
This one wore hose, which he could scratch, or he could dig in his pockets for something to drop inside. He kept a lot of things. A live roach, two centipedes, a bundle of flea-infested hair, fresh shit in plastic wrap-
He’d decide depending on what she looked like. Maybe do all of them. Then he’d make a marking so the fear would stay, the bad feelings, but the impressions would linger, staying with her.
He ducked his head low to crawl under the stall door.
A chain settled around his neck.
“No!” he shrieked, clutching at the metal loops. “No, no, fuck you!”
“Shh,” the practitioner said, tightening the chain. Her dark brown hair was cut short, pushed out of her face by a metal hairband. She still wore her winter coat, alongside a checkered scarf.
He could feel his essence draining out of him, bleeding into the metal.
This was what dying felt like. Except he wouldn’t die. He’d become less, he’d take years to recuperate.
“Please, give mercy,” he said, lowering his voice, pretending to comply with her wish for quiet.
She smiled, showing her teeth, her eyes crinkling a little with mischief. “What makes you think I’m the merciful type?”
Buttsack started shrieking, full-volume, lashing out with his claws. She kicked the wind out of him, pulled the chain tight enough that he had to grasp at it to try and spare his throat, and then wound the chain around his head, into his mouth and around his hands, binding them in place.
Shit fell out of his pockets as she hauled his feet up, bending them brutally backward. A second chain came out of her bag, winding around his feet and through his elbows until one was bound to the other. Each loop of chain took a measure of his strength, until he was too feeble to work his hands out from under the metal.
He’d never live this down.
■
Maggie finished tying up the goblin, then dragged it out of the stall, slinging it over so it skidded off to one corner of the bathroom, chains scratching against the tile.
“You’re one of the gross ones, aren’t you?” she asked, as she bent over the sink, washing her arms up to the elbow.
The goblin grunted in a way that very strongly suggested he was cussing at her.
“Yeah, well, same to you, Wrinkles.”
The other stall door opened, and the Duchamp girl stepped out. Lola Duchamp, was it? It was hard to keep track of them all. They looked so similar.
Lola went to the sink two spaces away from Maggie and began washing her own hands.
The goblin, unable to speak, resorted to pelvic thrusts in their general direction. Lola glanced down, then looked away, disgusted.
“Quit it, goblin,” Maggie ordered, her tone sharp. “Or I’ll step on it.”
The goblin went still.
“Sorry,” she said to Lola. “Problem of dealing with goblins. They have a way of bringing you down to their level.”
“There’s a deal in place,” Lola said. “We don’t mess with the goblins, they leave us alone.”
“You guys have a deal in place,” Maggie said. “I never agreed to anything, and I don’t benefit. Am I missing something?”
“It’s the way things are done here.”
“Consider me an anarchist,” Maggie said. She finished washing her hands and shook them dry.
“Anarchy doesn’t work,” Lola said. She picked at a fleck of black near one eye with a fingernail.
“It doesn’t work for countries. As personal philosophies go, it’s fantastic.”
“Until you realize you’re utterly alone,” Lola said. “Are you happy being alone?”
Maggie shrugged. She walked over to the window, tested her ability to touch the metal, then used the scarf to insulate against the cold as she hauled it open.