The Woman Who Came from Smoke Part 3

Azrael’s Circus of the Bizarre

The Woman Who Came from Smoke

Draft 3

By: Chase L. Currie

Lucille coughed inside the room with the door shutting behind them. The smoke choked her as it hung thick in the air, almost like a fog on the streets of London; not that, she has ever been to London, but she has read about it. She coughed again stepping to the side of Charon who was keeping a watchful eye on the shadows in the room. It was all they could make of the people who were there, shadows and nothing more.

                “How can I help you?” A woman asked stepping out of the smoke with a long pale face and a coldness to her stair. She had no idea who these people were and most of all she did not care. She came a little closer and Lucille couldn’t help but notice how tall and thin she was. She almost seems to look like a shadow on a long summer day right before the sunset, in her midnight black dress and blacker hair and eyes. “You just going to stand there or tell me what I can do for you?”

                “You Daisy?” Charon asked.

                “What if I am,” she said pulling a drag from her cigarette.

                “My friend and I,” Charon said nodding at Lucille, “want to speak with you.”

                “And if I don’t want to talk?” she coldly asked him.

                Charon grin, “How do I make you want to talk?”

                Daisy said nothing for a moment and then looked back through the smoke as she fades from the room along with the shadows. Soon the room was empty other than the three of them and a pool table. “Beat me in a game,” she told Charon, “and lover boy we can talk all night.”

                Lucille didn’t like Daisy calling Charon ‘lover boy.’ She didn’t like the way she pushed her thin red lips together and batty her eyes to make Charon’s blood run warm. She used what God gave her to get what she wanted, and Lucille knew she did it all the time. She was not a big fan.

                But either was Charon, and the little witch knew it.

                Charon didn’t care how this woman looked or how well she could use her body in the bed. He didn’t care how she made his heart feel or if she could make his blood run hot. Sex, love, or anything of the sort meant nothing to Charon. He rarely believes in it or cared about it; to him, it was all a big waste of time. It was one of the reasons Azrael sent him to find Daisy.

                Charon was nice letting Daisy started the game and break the balls. She tried her best all game to distract him, to lead over the table, to show her legs but it wasn’t working. She tried even harder when he started quickly winning the game. The more her seductive action had no effect on the old Irish man the colder she became, and the more Lucille laughed on the inside.

                Not even an hour later all three of them were sitting at a round table in the back room with a round of beer and whiskeys in front of them. Lucille didn’t want the shot, so Charon took it for her with a big smile on his face. He may not buy into love or even really give a damn about it but he such did care about this girl sitting beside him.

                “You play a mean game,” Daisy said, sitting sideways in the chair with legs crossed while she held smoke in one hand. “I like that in a man, playing hard to get.”

                “We didn’t come all this way to play pool and get drunk,” Charon told her.

                “Where did you come from?” She asked.

                “Out west,” Lucille said.

                Daisy glared at her and said, “So the little doll can speak.”

                “I can also do a lot more than that, ma’am,” Lucille groaned.

                Charon cut in before they could say anything more. “We work with Azrael’s Circus of the Bizarre

, you know it?”

                “Who doesn’t,” Daisy said. ”The whole world knows about that freak show.”

                “Well,” Charon growled while lighting up his cigar, “Azrael is offering you a job.”

                Daisy laughed, shaking her head and saying, “This must be a joke, right? No way Azrael wants me to join his Circus? He has to be out of his bloody mind.”

                “He thought it was a better job than riding Frank’s pole when he wants,” Charon boorish states. “Or being his whore for the rest of the family when he gets bored with you, and you just go along with it because he is good at messing that pretty face up. He has the police and everyone else in the shitty town in his pocket, and you have nowhere to run. You’re too afraid to get away.”

                Daisy's face went dead with the mention of Frank Boerio the biggest and most powerful mob boss in New York City. She couldn’t speak after what Charon rudely said to her, but that was his way, blunt and to the point. There were tears in her eyes along with hints of fear and rage.

                “You know a lot,” she brought the cracking words up after Charon sat back in his chair.

                “We know what we need to know,” he told her. “You want the job?”

                “Frank won’t let me go,” Daisy said. “He would kill me, you, the little doll here and your boss before ever letting me go.”

                Charon smiled big at the thought of the fight. “We’ll take care of him. Do you want the job or not?”

                Daisy started to shake her head yes but said, “No.”

                “What? Why?” Lucille asked.

                “You think you tow are the first people to roll into town saying they can free me,” Daisy calmly told them. “Well, you are not, and they all fucked up, ended up dead because of Frank. Shit,” she pulled a long hard drag on her smoke, “he already knows both of you are here. Now get out and don’t come back.”