Welcome to Penisville
“Nine Gild and you got every game from gen one to four ever made, and up to gen six in handhelds. Or maybe you’re in the market for a refurbished wand? That comes with an amulet of protection.”
In the shadows of a dockside warehouse, a grizzled sailor peered down at my goods. His eyes roamed across the grid of pockets lining my trenchcoat, but when those eyes stopped in the middle of my chest, I closed up shop with a swish of leather.
“My tits ain’t for sale, seadog. You want a bit of action, head down there. Tell ‘em Jacques sent you.”
His eyes followed the tilt of my head to a dark alley. “I got enough to drink myself stupid or buy some company, but one don’t feels right without the other.”
“Then might I suggest something for a lonely night?” I slipped open the right of my trenchcoat again and pointed to a nondescript case. “A hundred hours on one disc, perfect when you go off-grid.”
“Porn?”
“If you like. But I also have the complete Next Generation, complete Family Dad, and in the pocket just above, we have this lovely set of eight containing every single episode of Doctofz Oho. And all its spin-offs.”
Somewhere in the distance, the flare of magic preceded a strangled scream. The sailor tensed and waited for the echo to fade.
“You say these come with an amulet of protection?”
“Buy the eight set, I’ll throw one in.”
“How much?”
“Oh, ask that from a girl selling her goods by the wharf, you get charged by the hour, my man. Let’s call it eight Gild, even.”
“How much?”
“Did I mention it also comes with a free drink at the Coxswain?” I flashed him a coupon.
He scratched at his beard, showering his jacket in either crusted sea salt or dandruff. “What’s a Monkey Skull? Is that some kind of potion? ‘cos I don’t put magic in me.”
“Relax, seadog, it’s just a cocktail. Coconut rum, mango juice and banana milkshake, all served in a coconut.”
“Ugh. Who’d buy that?”
“No one, that’s why it’s free. Free with a purchase from yours truly, of course. You interested or not, ‘cos I got other clients waiting.”
He palmed over a stack of greasy notes and slipped the eight disc set from their pocket, as well as the hundred hour disc below it. I raised an eyebrow when his pinkie brushed my tit but held my tongue. After all, a happy chump is a repeat customer.
“Pleasure doing business with you.”
I slipped the notes into the emptied pocket and tossed him the amulet, then slipped past him as he pocketed his gains and admired the shiny trinket. I stepped out from under the iron bridge connecting two warehouses, where enough of a crowd, mostly longshoremen, worked and bustled in numbers that let a lone girl breathe easy while navigating the alleyways and arches. Still, I breathed even easier stepping out to the more illuminated seafront. Stevedores tramped up and down gangways, clad in power gloves that let them hoist shipping containers over their shoulders. Each crate was a small room packed to the roof with cargo, but the dock workers stacked them in the yard like they were weightless.
Beyond the yard, a handful of drunken sailors brawled in a dark corner, throwing punches and fireballs and each other around without mercy. I ignored them and rounded the corner to the Coxswain, my local dive, where two pretty faces waved me over for a drink. Or possibly waving off the gentlemen passing me at the gate to the beer garden.
“Jacques! Over here!”
We grabbed a table and the three of us looked down at what we were wearing. Me, Theresa and Julia. Bulging olive nylon, skintight black leather and frilly pink lace. The busboy who took our order performed an impressive show of nonchalance, even when I slapped a coupon down for a Monkey Skull between real money.
Theresa shook her head. “Monkey Skull again?”
“It’s within my budget.”
When the busboy returned with our drinks, I eyed his cute little tush, then caught the crusty sailor from the alleyway shaking his head.
“Double standards?” he said with a grin, slipping inside before I could fire back.
Julia blew him a kiss. “Friend of yours?”
“Client.”
Theresa took an elegant sip of something black from a tall glass, then dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Well, I’m glad you have a client to show off, darlin’. Hardly any of mine can afford a session no more.”
“Nobody wants to get spanked or handcuffed to a Berkeley Horse? What is this world coming to?” I tried not to laugh. “What about you, Jules?”
Julia downed an espresso. “Eh, you know punters. They cum and go.”
I half laughed, half choked on a strawfull of cream and got a wry smirk in return. Theresa rolled her eyes and began a retort, but a new, longer scream cut her off, and we knew the different kinds of outcry in the docklands. We knew what sound would inevitably follow.
“Incoming!” The voice boomed over the beer garden’s muzak. “Everyone back from the water!”
Emergency klaxons booted up and stevedores put cargo down. Two drunk fighters stopped mid-punch, and all eyes turned to sea. Something churned under that black surface, two glowing red points trailing a wake of boiling froth. Then, in an explosion of spray, a tendril whipped up from the sea, over the warehouses and slammed into a defenseless crane.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Theresa said, downing her drink. She pushed her chair back and clacked off in her stilettos. “How can I afford to keep living here if we have to keep putting up with…this?”
The sea boiled, blasting steam into the air, revealing the “this” against growing clouds. The tendril was a tail that led to the back end of a gigantic body erupting over the wharf, drawing eyes with outstretched talons and a screech that shattered windows. It surveyed the dwarfed buildings beneath it and strode through the shallows, each step kicking up a deluge that crushed vehicles and cargo containers, before it stepped onto land and crushed them underfoot instead. Then the lighthouse beam flashed across its face and there was no mistaking what we saw. A skull. The barnacle-encrusted skull of a skyscraper-tall sea dragon. An undead titan. It roared at the beam.
“Is that DemiGodLizard?” Julia peeked over her shoulder as we hurried after the crowd. “He lost weight. Like, a lot.”
Power and gas mains blew with each step, sending plumes of fire and smoke into the mix. The spike of its tail ripped through a warehouse wall like sodden paper as it reared over the lighthouse, a mere lamp beneath its gaze. Then it grasped the shaft, wrenched left and right until it snapped in half, and lifted the lamp to its jaws. Its bite showered the land in crushed concrete and raining glass, and the light of the lighthouse died behind its teeth.
The flash of those teeth were seared into my eyes. “That ain’t DemiGodLizard. Not unless he also shed skin on his weight loss plan.”
“But lizards shed skin, right?”
Theresa kicked her heels off and pushed us with a hand on each shoulder. “Shut up and get to a shelter!”
The growing screams heading our way told us we had a time limit on getting to said shelter. Once it reached capacity, the blast doors would close and any stranglers would be left to fend for themselves.
A sonic boom from above silenced the cries, marking the arrival of a blur of grey that parted the clouds. It locked onto the dragon and crashed into it faster than the eye could see, and the explosion rocked the bay. The clamor of feet and screaming stopped as everyone, us included, turned to see our savior, but whatever or whoever that grey blur was, all it earned from its attack was a gigantic snarl from the dragon. The blur focused into the shape of a man, who immediately dodged a claw mid-flight and summoned a ball of crackling white light. He flew forward and fired it point blank into the dragon’s face, and watched in horror with the rest of us as the dragon simply swallowed it, gulping it down in one go. The man in grey scratched his head. The dragon burped.
“Well, that’s it.” Theresa let out a groan. “They’re gonna raise taxes again to cover that lighthouse. Girls, I love you, but I can’t afford to stay in this berg no more.”
The flying man fired another light ball and the dragon ate that as well.
Julia shielded her eyes. “I might join you.”
Unsurprisingly, I found myself nodding along at the idea. “Wanna pool chips and find a more affordable dump?”
“What, all three of us move together?”
“Why not? What we sell, we can sell anywhere.”
The dragon ate a third ball of light and wagged its tail, and the flying man slapped his forehead.
“What about your magic?”
I snorted. “Please. Those artifacts I sell are just disposables cobbled into one working wand. They last about fifteen hours before they fizzle out.”
“Or explode in your hand.” Julia raised her palm to show a small scar. “How have you never been arrested for that?”
Flashing red and blue, and the stampede of boots marked the arrival of the cops. It wasn’t every night the tourists got to watch a superhero fight a kaiju. Not rare, mind you, but not every night. A thousand phone screens recorded the event from the sidelines, and the cops lined up to mark the edge of those sides. They formed a human wall near the abandoned cargo crates. Wouldn’t take a genius to take advantage of the distraction, and they’d seen enough over the years not be distracted by the flight and flashes. One cop, though, a familiar face, stomped on over.
I waved to our incoming guest. “Girls, I don’t get arrested ‘cos I got a warlord eating out of my hand.”
Said warlord scratched his butt and shot a snot rocket onto a crate. He ignored the underwhelming battle and returned the wave. “Jacques, you waited for me. How thoughtful.”
“Oh, you know me, sergeant. I don’t welch on a deal.”
“Yeah, well you might want to reconsider that. Boss just changed our deal, so I gotta be cruel. Gimme fifty.”
My smile dropped. “Fifty? Fifty Gild? That’s half my night’s profit!”
“Can’t be helped. City’s been attacked thirteen times in damn near as many months. I don’t know what makes this place so tasty to these creatures, but hiring all these extra-dimensional guardians? That bleeds revenue. And that’s before all the rebuilding efforts.”
“Yeah, well I only got thirty.”
“Fifty, Jacqueline. Half your night’s profit, like you said.”
“C’mon, I thought you were cool.”
“You rather I charge a percentage? From now on, it’s fifty a night.”
I glared, but at some unseen signal, two gorillas in uniform marched up to flank him. The sergeant held out his hand, and after a token “fuck you,” I drew the cash from my pocket. He nodded as I split the wad, tucking half back safely. The other half, I threw in the face of one of his cronies. As the notes fluttered to the floor, the other one stepped forward, but the sergeant stopped him with a raised hand.
“Get outta here, Jacques.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, I intend to. Come on, girls, let’s leave this dump. Permanently.” I turned to storm away with my friends, but there was a conspicuous lack of them at my back.
The sergeant clamped a hand on my shoulder. Not unkindly. “They already left.”
As his lackey chased bills across the lot, a triumphant roar echoed off the coast. The dragon, under the biggest orb of light yet, was illuminated fully. He was a colossal beast, a serpentine skeleton encrusted with coral and barnacles and filled with shipwrecks from all different eras. Masts and guns poked through its ribcage, easily five centuries of naval warfare, yet it splashed about in the ocean like a puppy waiting for a ball.
“DENSITY TIMES ONE MILLION!” the flying super wizard screamed, and dropped the ball.
The dragon leaped, swallowed it, and from the depths of its bones the light of stardust glowed brighter. Then it burped again and somehow smiled more despite its permanent grin. It bowed and sank below the waves without resuming the fight, if “fight” was the right word for the exchange. The hired hero floated back to the ruins of what had been The lighthouse and sat, not celebrating victory but tugging at his hair in what I could only call the defeated pose of “Dafuq?”
But the onlookers cheered anyways. Whoops and whistles and cries of victory tore along the docks, and the sergeant and his heavies strolled back to control the crowd. I stood alone in that empty lot, abandoned by my friends, the ones I’d been planning on running away with just minutes before, fleeced by the one corrupt cop in this city I trusted to actually keep his promise of protection in a protection racket. And on top of it all, somewhere along the way I’d dropped my Monkey Skull.
“Could tonight get any worse?” I screamed at the sky.
The sky didn’t answer. Instead, the answer came from behind. I glanced back at a clatter, almost ignored it, but double took just in time to register the sound as galloping hooves under a… neon green horse? Made of fire? I stood dumfounded as it ran straight into me, knocked me off my feet and filled my vision with an explosion of electric lime. Then my head hit the ground, and the lime faded to black.