The Woman Who Came from Smoke Part 4

Azrael’s Circus of the Bizarre

The Woman Who Came from Smoke

Draft 3

By: Chase L. Currie

Charon bowed his head a little, tip his hat and stood up. Lucille followed suit, and they both left the room with Daisy still sitting there drinking her beer. They head out of the club not stopping to see if anyone was following them or if anyone was watching them. They stepped out into a lite snowfall and four men in long black coats wearing fedoras on the side of their heads came up to them. Charon stops dead looking at the men as Lucille stepped behind him, noting the door being closed behind them and locked.

“Mister Frank,” the tallest man said, “wants you to come with us.”

“Look, fellows,” Charon told them, “we are a little tired, so I think we are going to call it a night.”

“Not how this works,” the man replied. “Both of you are coming with us.”

“How about we just get up for breakfast, tomorrow?” Charon grinned a little.

“Like I said,” the tall man told Chardon pulling out a small pistol, “you are coming with us.”

Charon grin faded fast as he asked, “Do you like magic?”

“Quit fucking around,” one of the smaller men said stepping closer to Charon.

They reached out to take Charon’s by the collar, but Charon punched the poor fool right in the nose causing him to fall backward and busted his nose open. Blood poured like a faucet truing the snow red and blinding the man with pain.

Charon didn’t give any of them a chance to react. He nailed another one in the jaw harder than a hammer hitting a nail into wood. The man fell to the ground like a sack of stones and did not move. Then he hit the tall man holding the gun in the side causing him to let the gun go. Charon moved to take the last man, but he was faster than the old Irish man thought. The last man jumped away from Charon's fist, dropping his coat and throwing up his arms.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” Charon mumble to himself. “See something,” Charon said to the man flipping his hat in front of the man’s eyes. A blinding white light shot from the pool of shadows in the hat like a train racing from the night. The man shook his head trying to stop the pain from his eyes, but they were already burning from within. He started to yell holding his face and falling to his knee, his eyes boiling in his skull. “See nothing.”

“You’re a damn fool,” the man who was holding the gun said on the ground. He held his side where his rips were broken from the hit. “Bossman isn’t going to let you leave alive.”

Charon kneed down to the man with a big smile on his face. “Tell Frank we’ll be seeing him in the morning.”

“Fucking Irish nut.”

Charon left the man there in pain, he knew his friends would wake up sooner or later. The poor man who looked into his hat would never see a thing again, but it was a price Charon was willing to pay. He was sure all four of those men had done far worse things to people then he did to them.

Lucille followed behind him, not saying a word and keeping Stanley warm from the cold. They walked a couple of blocks to their motel. Some building barely holding itself together and made it up to their room on the third floor. They could have gone to a better motel or hotel, but Charon didn’t want to waste the money. He would rather save what dough they had for drinks at any bar he could get too. The old Irish cures ran deep in his blood.

He opens the door for Lucille to the one room motel with one bed and radio. She let Stanley down from her arms and the cat jump right up on the bed. He went right to sleep as if he had been there all day doing nothing more.

“You should get some sleep,” Charon order Lucille.

She quickly asked a little upset that he was already planning on going out, “Where you are going?”

“To feed the devil, clown,” Charon said. “Where else?”

“Now?”

He stopped at the door, looked back at her and nodded yes.

“Could you wait?” she asked looking down at her feet. “Until I fall asleep. I don’t want to be alone.”

“You have Stanley.”

“Please,” She smiled.

He groaned, “Tell no one I did this for you. Now get ready for bed.”

Lucille rushed into the bathroom to turn into her nightgown and emerge back into the room. Charon was standing against the wall watching the snow fall onto the city. He turned to face her as she jumped in the bed and under the blankets.

Lucille said sitting up on the bed, “I don’t like her.”

“Why?” He asked turning to watch the snow again.

“You know why,” she quietly said.

“You can’t blame her for using what she got to survive,” he sincerely said. “You don’t know what she has lived through and sometimes, people have to do whatever it takes to make it to the next day that is all she is doing.”

“She seems like she enjoys it.”

“She doesn’t know what she is doing, clown,” Charon tried to explain. “All she knows how to do is to survive, just like you when you had to steal to eat.”

Lucille shook her head a little, “It doesn’t seem like it is the same thing.” She never liked the fact she had to steal. She knew it was wrong. She could feel it in her bones, but she had too. She had steal to eat and nothing else.

“One day you might understand.”

“And why doesn’t she just leave?” Lucille asked.

“Franke,” Charon said walking over to the bed, “tattoos his people so he can control them. He enslaves them. It is a really nasty spell if you ask me.”

“So she does want to leave then?”

“No one wants to live in Hell,” Charon said leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. “No one wants to dance with the devil.” He headed for the door and told her, “Good night, clown and sweet dreams.”