The Chair

[Sholto]

The only piece I have written for Malifaux was a narrative battle report, but I thought I would try my hand at a full story. The plot is all worked out, and this is how it begins:-

The Chair - Part 1

"Never thought I'd hear a bunch of girls so frightened by a chair," Bill Coolidge remarked, casual as you like. Out the corner of his eye, Bill saw the bartender shuffle sideways to stand nearer his hidden flintlock, but Bill didn't have a taste for fighting tonight.

His comment had been aimed at the yellow-stained wall, but the men at the table beside him weren't deaf, or stupid. They turned as one, day labourers and night soil collectors from the look of their frayed shirts and sweat-stained neckerchiefs. Four men doing all the talking, two lads nursing some watered-down liquor.

One of the lads stood up, his Adam's apple bobbing on his scrawny neck. "Ain't none of your damn business, Mister Coolidge. Ain't that so, Jed?"

"Easy, Tom." So that was Jed. Foreman with the Eastcheap and Red Cross shit-wagons. The witch's description had been on the nose. Bald, pig-eyed and as meaty as anything in a butcher's yard, his left cheek had a brand on it from selling illegal firewood. Jed put a slab-like hand on the young lad's arm. "Man's got a right t'express an opinion."

Bill turned, eyeballing the youth back onto his stool. Just so.

"Ain't got no quarrel with you, Mister Coolidge," Jed said, wiping beer from his thick moustache, "and if you're takin' a gentlemanly interest in our conversation, like as I'd be happy to explain the chair t'ya if ya got a minute."

Bill took a moment to tap some cinnabar and pepper from a silver flask into his whiskey. He knocked it back. Better. "Oblige me."

Jed nodded, then started what sounded like a well-versed pitch. "It's not the chair itself, it's what you do with it that counts, Bill. I hope you don't mind me being familiar with ya, but I reckon the lad here done introduce us, like. The Beggar's Lane Rowdies used to use the chair like an initiation test. Before that, some of the riverboat men used it to run stakes, see who could last the longest. These days, well, the Rowdies fell foul of the Guild, didn't they, and the riverboat men got them some better action in the faro tables and dog pits and now me and a group of ent-epreneurial citizens," Jed's sweeping arm took in the three older men at the table, but not the two younger lads, "got the old chair and we're running a pot."

"How much?"

"Three hundred, now. Mite over."

Bill nodded, tamping the spices back down in his flask. "Who's holding?"

One of the men at the table, pale and jowly with boot-blacked hair, tugged his neckerchief down to briefly reveal a dog-eared dog collar.

Bill snorted. The witch hadn't mentioned a reverend, but no matter.

Big Jed was back in snakeoil mode. "We put the chair in the Hall. Man goes in the chair. We wait outside, us and the preacher with the pot. Man lasts the whole night, the pot's his. He don't last, his stake's ours and the pot goes up for the next man."

One of the lads started to ask which hall, and where it was, but Bill could see Jed had lost interest in them. Bill Coolidge was bigger fish, in every way.

"Tonight," Bill said, standing and brushing off his hat.

"-now a man like you should be-" Jed stopped mid-flow, surprise in his inkwell eyes. Bill guessed it usually took a lot longer to persuade a mark.

"I'll be back here at sundown, with my stake," Bill said, fixing his hat. "Ya'll be here, now. Don't want to come lookin'."

"Stake's twenty, Bill, for a workin' man like you."

He should haggle, he knew. It would look wrong if he didn't - twenty was more than he made in a week breaking his back at the docks - but Bill was already half way to the door and closer than he'd ever been to finding her again. "Be seeing you, Jed."

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Edited April 27, 2010 by Sholto

[Iron Man]

really liked your westernise dialogue, and im intrigued to see where this goes

[Kagelong]

Eagerly waiting for part two.

[Sholto]

Thanks - here is:-

Part 2

Outside the whiskey-stop, Brummagem Market was winding down as the shadows lengthened across the town of Malifaux. Up and down the narrow, sinuous length of Clapper Wynd butchers called their wares while legless beggars hawked paste jewellery and sent their brats out to cut purse strings.

In front of dark alley-mouths, stall-keepers arranged their remaining cabbages and turnips to hide the more diseased or wilting specimens, while the crowd milled and bustled in a beehive of noise. Laughter and shouts echoed off the brick storeys, rising above the rattle of wheels along the cobble ruts, the braying of donkeys and the ringing of the fishmonger's knives.

Bill buttoned his wool coat against the chill stealing up from the river, and had to step smartly to avoid passing under a potman's ladder. The sounds of tuneless whistling came from above as the man lit one of the gas lamps that would keep Brummagem Market open until close to midnight.

He stopped. Across the cobbles, a Chinese woman was berating her five children. Strands of her black hair had come loose from her tight bun, and her face looked drawn and tired as she snapped at them each in turn. It looked like she had had a long day. But it was not the woman or the children who had caught his eye.

Standing just behind the woman was a small, old man wearing a filthy, brown longcoat with tattered ends that bulged in odd places. Bill couldn't see his face clearly, but the man was mostly bald. What hair he had hung in grey, greasy strands. He was talking to the woman.

Bill edged closer to hear what the man was saying, as the woman and children seemed to be paying him no attention. As he did so, he realised that the man's coat was covered in dozens of pockets, and from each pocket there poked the head of a dead kitten. Feral cats were everywhere in the ruins and old buildings, and there were people who caught them for fur and meat.

"…just the smallest ones, love," he was saying in a cracked, wheedling voice. "Give 'em ta Blind Jack. They're too much trouble for ya. Won't no-one blame ya. Blind Jack'll take good care of 'em, love. You won't need ta worry yerself about 'em no more."

The man had taken out one of the kittens from his coat, but the woman was ignoring him. She seemed to be getting more and more agitated with her children, and was babbling at them in her own language. She grabbed the youngest roughly and pulled her alongside her. The man grasped the kitten in both hands and it was then Bill realised it wasn't dead. "That's it, love. One'll do. Blind Jack's yer friend."

Bill took his hat off. He was fairly sure he knew why the woman was ignoring the old man, but he might have been wrong. "Pardon, but is this man bothering you, ma'am?"

The woman glanced up at him, but it seemed she didn't understand him and went back to shouting at her children. Blind Jack, however, rounded on Bill with a snarl, his gums black in a toothless mouth. Bill only had a moment to realise that the old man's eyes were closed and had been all along when Blind Jack opened them. As he did so, every kitten jammed in his coat opened their eyes, too, and turned their tiny heads to stare at him, mewling pathetically. Their eyes were all white as wax, but none were as white as Blind Jack's. They seemed to shine in the fading daylight like evening stars, cold, hard and very distant. Bill took a step back, and was nearly knocked off his feet by a passing potter's cart.

Blind Jack opened his reeking mouth wide, hissing at Bill like a snake. With a simple twist he broke the neck of the kitten he was holding and hurled its mangy, emaciated body aside before turning back to the woman and her children, the youngest girl still standing to one side. "C'mon now, love, you won't miss this one. I'd lay odds she's the most trouble, too. Give her here, love. Blind Jack'll take her in. Blind Jack won't stand for her mischief. That's it, love."

The woman, who showed no sign she had heard Blind Jack, let alone seen him, had started to walk away, pushing her children before her, but leaving the youngest one behind. Blind Jack reached out a long, bony hand for the child. "Don't look back, love," he whispered, with a triumphant leer on his pale face.

"Touch that girl, Blind Jack, and I'll break your skull." Bill was holding a loose cobble firmly in his hand. He hefted the cobble as threateningly as he could, his heart hammering. He had no idea what would happen if he swung. Blind Jack might simply laugh at him, or do worse. He swallowed his fear. "And I'm willing to bet there's not a man or woman in this street who'll even notice if I do."

Blind Jack's ragged fingernails brushed within an inch of the girl's face, her gaze untroubled. Then the hand disappeared back under the filthy coat and Blind Jack was standing right in front of Bill, hissing black spittle in wordless rage as his cold eyes burned. Every kitten on his coat had their eyes open again, and were hissing along with their master, thrashing around in their deep pockets.

The girl sighed, and kicked her heels. Bill raised the cobble up as Blind Jack's fury grew.

Then Bill winced as the shard of glass moved deep in his eye, a stabbing pain that lanced right to the back of his head, and felt the warmth of a drop of blood slowly trickle down his cheek. He wiped it away with his free hand, and when his vision cleared, Blind Jack was gone. Only the sound of his toothless hiss remained as the faintest of echoes, then that too faded to nothing.

As if a spell had been lifted on the girl she sprang into life, shouting something in her own tongue, and raced away through Brummagem Market after her mother. Bill tried to catch her, to ask her what she'd seen, but in a blink she was gone into the crowd.

Gingerly, Bill explored his right eye with calloused fingers. The glass sliver was still lodged deep, but it had stopped moving for now. He fished out an old handkerchief and wiped the blood from his hand. Black flecks studded the dark red smears, and Bill frowned. It didn't feel like it was getting infected, but it had been in there over two weeks now, and showed no sign of working its way out on its own. He really ought to see a doctor, especially if it was going bad, but he didn't have the money for a doctor, not if he was going to give Jed his stake. And there was no way he was going to pass on that.

He'd need to get back to his lodgings on Derry Street to pick up the money, and then back here to meet Jed before sundown. That meant crossing the river when it would be busy with traders returning from Oldfield. He looked up in the sky, and realised he'd need to hurry.

He was about to leave, when a moment's curiosity made him look for the dead kitten Blind Jack had thrown away. He couldn't see it anywhere, until he spotted a knot of concerned looking people gathered noisily by the entrance to a narrow alleyway. He couldn't see what they were fussing over until an elderly man stood up, revealing a bag of skin and bones slumped on the slimy cobbles. It was a boy – a child of no more than five or six, naked and wasted away to almost nothing, with his neck clearly broken.

Bill turned sharply and left, and the boy's staring white eyes followed him all the way down Clapper Wynd.

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Edited April 27, 2010 by Sholto

[AntiZombie]

Wouldn't mind a part three, this is my favorite fan story I've read so far. Very down to earth with finess in the fine details instead of extreme characters carrying things along

[Nathan Caroland]

Nicely done! And damn spooky.

[nebiros]

I don't know where this is going, but I hope you intend to keep writing it. Just an observation: The second part is better than the first. While you have a keen grasp on frontier language, and when you use it in dialogue it works, you should try to keep it out of description. Overall, this is a fascinating story, though. Your attention to detail in the setting and in the characters is very well expressed. Can't wait to see what happens next.

[Sholto]

Thanks, guys. I like creepy horror stories, and that's what this one will be (hopefully). This is my first attempt at Malifaux fiction, so I am still feeling my way in terms of subject matter and tone and pace and whatnot. Not sure I have a handle on it, yet, but the only way to find out is to write it

@nebiros: One of the things I dislike about reading fan fiction is that you're never sure if the author knows where the story is going, either Makes it hard to engage and to critique. I hope I don't disappoint, but the story has a very definite ending.

Can you elaborate on your point about keeping frontier language out of description? I am no expert on frontier subjects, so if I am getting it wrong it would be very helpful to know where, so I can work on it.

Sholto

[nebiros]

I'd be happy to elaborate. Basically, you want the characters to speak like they are from that setting, so you use the "frontier" dialect. Here is an example: "Man's got a right t'express an opinion." This sort of thing is great as is gives the reader insight into the character and the setting all by showing and not telling.

Now, in exposition, you want to avoid language like that. Let me give you an example: "...but Bill didn't have a taste for fighting tonight." This line is used, not as something that the character said, but as something that the narrator has said. In essence, it is something that you as the author have said. I doubt you speak like this in normal life. Furthermore, it limits your ability to employ the really creative (and some might say pretentious) metaphors that make great writing a joy to read.

Basically, you want the drawl in your dialogue, but not in your description. Or, to put it another way, characterful language is a lot like whiskey. If its sippin whiskey your after, you don't want too much. If you just don't care, then you get rotgut.

[Sholto]

Thanks for that, I see what you're getting at now. The choice of narrative voice was a deliberate one (eg. "casual as you like", "Just so"), to tie in with the setting rather than tell it in a modern voice, but I can appreciate that it might not work as well as I'd hoped. I don't want to overwhelm the story with too much sauce on the meat.

Sholto

[DangerousBeans]

Very cool man, I just realised it was yourself what done wroted it too.

I'm slightly confused about the glass shard though, did I miss it earlier or is the "Bill winced" line the first mention of it?

[Sholto]

That is the first mention of the glass shard, which gets explained (sort of) in Part 3 - The Witch's Glass. I did try and work it into Part 1, but it broke the flow too much.

[ChaosLenny]

I just read part two, nice job man:)