Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Chapter 12: The Code: Human Compassion

One of the batwing doors fell off its last hinge, and the living patrons dropped what they were doing and turned their gaze. All of them except a man in the darkest corner of the room. A man who sat alone at a table surrounded by and covered with abstract art that hurt the eyes. One hand held a skull and in the other was a spoon with... paint? on the end. His focus was held entirely by the former, or more precisely, by something deep in the eye socket.

Similarly alone, but at a booth by the door, sat a man with comically large black pupils and a mouth with a similar ear-to-ear grin to that of the shade at the edge of town, except it appeared to hold the forced shape of a frown. This man was looking at the newcomer almost as hard as the artist was looking at the skull. In fact, the eery gaze wouldn't shift all night.

Against the wall by the fire sat a storyteller named Jackie 'Tree Bark' Mūler. Being wheel chair bound Jackie never moved much, but today, he was moving a hell of a lot less. He was sitting in a raggedy, cracked wheelchair between the fire-pit and the wall. The wooden wheels had been ripped off and broken by the man's own odd growths. His right leg stopped at the knee and spread into roots around the spokes and deep into the floorboards. His torso sported several layers of bark that curled out and formed a pauldron of sorts with one tall sprout from the collarbone.

The sprout was thin but longing for the ceiling. A tuft of leaves reached in unison for the rafters. A few vines ready to flower coiled around Jackie from his root toes up on an endless journey, seeking sunlight but settling for fire. Hungry eyes locked with Jasper's own and from a facial orifice covered in bark dripped a sappy shine resembling drool. Troubled features lit up with the recognition of an old friend, but his eyes still carried the flames they were lost in. An expression both hopeful and terrified settled on his face.

Jasper spoke first, a joke from his journal, or maybe it was just a fact, "Hey Tree-bark, what do dwarves call firing pins? ......... Musket titties."

.....

.....

.....

With spittle stuck to his chin, Tree-bark returned a desensitized gaze to the cooking pot and spoke in a dead tone, "the fire has stories to tell Jasper, so many. Could you bring an old tree a mug, the sugary stuff."

On the way to the bar, Jasper overheard the dice-loving lute player named Eddie Six-fingers (yes, he does have six fingers), "You hear the voices in the fire to?"

On second inspection, Jasper found that the handful of people he'd noticed we're nearly the only ones alive. The rest of the bar was sitting neatly in place as if they were still out for their night on the town. Skeletons; picked clean of all, but the tendons holding them together. Propped up by intricate and chaotic bases, the same principal behind bases at toy army men's feet. They sported mugs and playing cards at the tables.

Others were stood leaning on the pool table or against the sticks as if reaching for wild trick shots. Many sat at the bar with glasses and plates of rotting food. All stages of decomposing corpses gave the room a horrid smell, but no one was concerned with moving the dead.

There were only three open spots at the bar, that is to say, three spots without a dead resident. Only one seat held a breathing human man who seemed about as keen on talking as the other bar-flys circling the corpses of the former bar flies. If the dozens of empty bottles scattered around the edge of the bar were anything to go by, it would make a poor conversation anyway.

However, true to craft, the bartender seemed to enjoy talking quite a bit as he was talking to himself. As in, one of the two heads squished together on the man's neck was talking to the second head.

It seemed they were arguing, although it was hard to tell as the left side only spoke strange words in a hushed baritone. Words such as: UnGralll, KLaskie, BRON, and similar unrecognizable sounds. While speaking to his companion, the other's voice registered to the ears as white noise, but when speaking directly to Jasper, his voice was an average, if not a little raspy, "Whadda ya want!?"

"A bottle of whiskey-grog and somethin for 'Tree-Bark'. And somethin clean to eat. I've got a trade," a long dead Jackrabbit with three antlers, three eyes, and three lucky feet found a seat on the countertop.

A severed head with a bright blue film over both eyes spoke up from its place on the counter, "Not a businessman worth salt would take a radiated roè-tent for trade for something clean. Unless'n you've got gold!?"

The bartender's sane face said something to the head that sounded like a water-fire near a crashing waterfall.

"Neither do you, Ass-face!" Replied the talking head.

"The antlers use 'ta be enough... what did he say?"

"He said I don't work here and such a lucky rabbit's worth a trade. So why'da big bloke like you walk through all that death to sit at our shitty bar? Can't imagine our almighty Lord of Chaos Temnota welcomed you with open arms."

"Well, had to find someone with water. Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?" The awkward looks never stopped Jasper, "because they lac-toes." The only one to laugh was the head that can't speak the common tongue, "So, Temnota?"

"The stitched together smile wider than his face will 'llow?"

"He's dead."

Most of the patrons turned to Jasper. Somewhere in the silence, a chair scraped the floorboards. They didn't seem grateful in the way of men who had noticed their troubles end. Instead, they were solemn and skeptical.

The man at the end of the bar looked up from the inside of a mug for the first time, "Killed him? The demon that lives in the shadows? The embodiment of the night? The-one-who-smiles-at-all-things- that-lack-hope? The one with the two moons in his eyes!? He can't be killed!!!"

"Well, he is."

"I hope you wanderers are as good as they say. If you can't scare Temnota off, then we're all doomed. He only kept us alive to bully for some twisted reason. Most of us look funny."

"But you don't have a mutation, do you?"

"I got 'lucky'! The first time, he came in trailing smoke on his way to the bar. A barfight started up out of nowhere, as if the lot of 'em lost their damned minds. I must've been hit with a bottle cause I was sitting here, and then I was lying on the ground with a split head. I looked around and Temnota was peeling the skin off of Jimbo here," he slapped the shoulder of an almost skeleton causing the head to swivel around and grin from its carved cheek, "while people were trying to crawl away. Tree-bark started shooting the shade, so he dropped Jimbo on the floor in front of me. Jimbo was bleeding and screaming the whole time, I snuck up on the big fucker while he broke apart Tree-Barks wheels. It turned to me and I stabbed it right in the heart. It smiled as it melted. I should've fuckin known."

"What happened then?"

"That guy painting in the corner stared into the puddle of emptiness for three days and then it came back to life, found me in my house with my wife and kids... Every day he comes back to see if I can still fight. He won't let me die."

"What's your name?"

"Throng, like it fucking matters."

"Bartender, make that three drinks, and deer soup if ya can."