The Katakomb Kabaret in a Komedi of Errors
Jan. 2nd, 2019 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snakechahmahI'm waking up to ash and dust…
I'm waking up…
****************
"Sorry, wat da fuck did you just say?" Micah asked with the rough switch blade symphony of an accent from her adopted home, the Bronx.
"Garlic. Start smashing up the garlic. Then, then," Ezera said, lifting a finger in the air, her voice straining poignantly as she zipped around the industrial kitchen sorting out blenders, "we'll mix it in with fresh orange juice. Yes. Yes! That'll work."
Ezera was dashing around the kitchen so quickly that Micah considered that perhaps she had crushed up and inhaled the Road Runner in two neat little lines.
Ashayah Salifah, nicknamed Habibi, BB for short, narrowed her heavily kohl rimmed eyes with suspicion. "W-wwwhy?"
Ezera must have gone crazy, that's why. Micah shook her head in response to BB's question and slowly leaned back like the Tower of Pisa, her dark eyes muddied with concern but not devoid of humor as she subtly checked to see if Ezera was bleeding from the ears or had, you know, visible head trauma. Her brow vaulted to the sky cartoonishly when she found nothing. BB shooed her off the kitchen island when she was about to pop a squat on the food prep table. Instead, Micah leaned her hip into the metal counter and crossed her legs at the ankle. Her chunky unlaced Doc Martin's looked humongous on her feet just like the leather jacket that was two sizes too large. She rubbed a hand over her shaved head and exchanged a concerned look with BB who was biting her lip to prevent her from saying what her large appraising eyes were unapologetically conveying.
She's gone fucking nuts.
Jettisoning off the counter with a push of her boot, Micah tried again, "So, what you're saying is that-"
"Vampires are real. Real-real," Ezera said, clapping her hands on the syllables of the two words for emphasis.
"Vampires." BB repeated flatly.
"Yes. People, c'mon. Please, process faster." Ezera pleaded impatiently. She had called in her club managers to the Katakomb Kabaret for a "staff meeting".
Silence.
"And we need to figure out if we have vampires in the clubs. Working, I mean. We definitely have guests who are vampires. I mean clubs must be such hunting grounds and the wards have been going off like crazy recently, which is why I think it's one of us. I noticed that its been happening before we even open for the night," she said in one breath.
"The…wards?" BB grumbled out, looking to the other managers for support.
"Forget about the wards," Ezera hissed, her voice so high with frustration that it sounded like she had inhaled helium.
"But…"
"Forget about the wards," Micah reiterated, mimicking Ezera's voice and flailing her arms around before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Ok, ok. Sorry. Iz, listen, you know we got your back. There's no question that we're all in this together but are you ok? I mean, really ok? Vampires?"
Groaning under her breath with a soft sigh, Ezera gripped the counter and reflected a moment. She could imagine how ridiculous this sounded. "Micah, I know, ok? I know. But, but just humor me, alright? And if I'm wrong, you guys can shame me for the rest of our short lives." Ezera's eyes darted to each of them, taking stock of their expressions and gave them all a pleading look as her voice strained to make them believe her. "C'mon, please, I really need you to just ride this out with me, ok?"
Micah sighed in resignation and put her hands up. "Ok, ok. I'm totally onboard. I do think that you're having, like, a proper mental breakdown," she mumbled as she pulled a cigerrette out of a crumbled pack with her teeth, "but, I'm here for it." Yolanda Suarez, the manager of Club Diablo, pulled the cigerrette out of Micah's mouth before she could try to light it, only to have it repossessed by Micah again.
Yolanda's eyes darted to BB who wouldn't be able to resist rolling her dramatic heavily made up eyes. She wasn't wrong. Arms folded against her chest, BB was holding back. "Seriously? I gotta club to manage with fucking Crips up my ass. Tomorrow's the community rap event so they're pushing us for more "protection" money and trying to harass us, and you want me to entertain this bullshit?"
"Wait. Hold on." Micah drawls tartly, almost reflexively, raising her hand as if she was in a fifth grade classroom. "S'cuse the fuck outta me," she shot back dryly, plucking the unlit smoke out of her lips before crossing her arms, "remind me where and who would you be entertaining right now if you were still some fucker's property dancing in some seedy-as-shit club and chained to the radiator at night, hm?"
BB glanced at Ezera and looked down in embarrassment, her dark lashes fanning the floor. When she spoke, her voice was more measured. "Look, don't be a cunt, Micah. It's obviously not because I'm not grateful," she started by throwing Micah a barded look, "but this is some shit, Iz. And you know how important tomorrow night is in helping community relations. We get this right and Club Vandal is on solid ground and then we can begin doing the work we're meant to there."
"I know," Ezera emphasized quietly, "I know, and I know we're all overstretched and tired. I'm asking a lot." She looked at BB. "I'm not crazy. One hour."
It was Yolanda that interrupted what would have been BB's stubborn refusal. "Ay, idiotas, listen. We do this, one hour." She shrugged. "Big deal. C'mon. Dio, stop making such a big deal about it. We're spending more time arguin' about dis shit." She was thinking that maybe Ezera needed help and what better way to have her face her delusions then be met by them. "Now, whadda'ya need us to do?"
BB sighed with resignation. "Seriously? Fine. Fine. Whatever. But how do we figure out if got vampires up in here? We can't just call a staff meeting and be like, "hey, anyone here a vampire? It's ok, we know you've had some major lifestyle changes. It's all good. We're ready to make reasonable accommodates to fit your needs.""
Ezera ran a slow hand through her hair and glanced back at them sheepishly, too embarrassed to meet their eyes. "Actually, I already changed the Human Resource manual and added some inclusive language."
Micah looked at her incredulously and shook her head. "You're fucking kiddingme?" She sighed and rubbed her temples. One thing at a time. "Riiiiiight." Micah tilted her head in consideration. "Wait, how do we know it isn't one of us?"
"Because I asked you arrive when the sun was still out." Ezera said and then pressed her lips together in consideration. "Even though it's down now, so."
"So vampires don't walk in the day?" BB asked.
"Actually, I don't know," Ezera admitted with a shrug. "I assume that they can't."
Micah looked confused. "So, why didn't you just ask that vampire you said you met?"
Ezera rolled her eyes. "Edmund? Sure, that would have gone over so well. "Excuse me, can you tell me your weaknesses? It's for my team-building exercise at work." No, we're just gonna have to go through what we know. Vampire lore…or whatever."
Yolanda had ignored them and was amassing huge quantities of garlic and tossing entire bulbs into the industrial blender. The rest were arguing about whether they should get holy water when she put some orange juice into the concoction and threw the switch on high.
BB looked over curiously as they all fell silent.
"What?" Yelled Yolanda over the noise with a flippant shrug. "Garlic, right? It's in all the bad vampire movies, too. I don't get it though, why garlic? It's so stupid," she mused out loud. "What does it do, like give them the shits or what? Vampire anaphylaxis? Eh, so stupid. It's like, you want me to be all scared of you and you're fucking allergic to garlic? Pendejo, please. My Dominican grandmother is scarier than that."
Micah's eyes suddenly went wide and her back rail straight. "Oh! I gotta idea. I'll be right back," she yelled over her shoulder as she ran out of the kitchen.
"Ok, so what else?' BB whipped out her phone and started Googling vampires. "Yo, it says something about stakes."
"That…that sounds a bit dramatic. It's not like we want to kill them. They might be, you know, fine? Like mutants. We don't want to make assumptions." Ezera read down the list - sunlight, holy water, bodies of water. BB frowned and pointed to a paragraph on movie depictions of vampires. "Irr—fuck, what's that? Irradia-"
"I got it!" Micah shouted. With some difficulty she lifted up a sizable cross with a silver Jesus lounging, er, crucified on it.
"Oooooh, that's right. Crucifixes." BB whispered with an approving nod.
Ezera narrowed her eyes at Micah suspiciously. "Where…where'd you get that?"
"I just borrowed it from that church three blocks down." She mumbled, a bit breathy as if she had run.
Ezera looked at her with a look that said, bullshit. "You borrowed it?" Right, yeah. "They gave it to you?" She finished standoffishly, crossing her arms, angry that she hadn't thought of that before more than she was mad about having the club involved in the theft of religious relics.
"Look, in this situation you have to ask yourself, What Would Jesus Do, ok?"
"And Jesus wants us to…what? Knock someone senseless with that and yell, the power of Christ compels you?" Ezera sassed dryly.
"If it fucking works? Yes!"
"Isn't it supposed to be silver?" BB quizzed scrunching up her nose, finding something offensive in religion.
Micah scratched at the silver, testing it. "It is. At least I think this Jesus part is."
"Silver? They're allergic to silver?" Yolanda scoffed under her breath garnishing the garlic-orange juice with orange slices before grunting out, "because that's not fucking random n'either."
" Look", Micah says leaning the piece over to Ezera who tilts it toward the light to examine it.
"Usually silver is supposed to have a stamp on it, marking it with the level of purity." Ezera says, squinting. "I can't see."
"Here", Micah turned around and flicked one of three large newly repaired stage lights that were being stored with the glitter cannon in the corner of the kitchen. It flooded the entire room with neon purple light.
"Ow! Jezuz! Turn that off!" Ezera yelled out, throwing her arm across her eyes to protect herself from the glare as Yolanda cursed violently in Spanish
"Wait! Does that mean you're a vampire?!"
"No!" Ezera spat out angrily as she stubbed her toe on the kitchen island as she twisted away from the light. "It mean's that I'm going blind! For fuck's sake, turn it off!"
"Shit, sorry! Sorry, hold on." Micah fiddled with the light, half-blind, her fingers fumbling for the switch. "Ahhhh shit, these things get hot fast," her voice trailed off as she veered to the right and hit the pots piled up with the end of the cross. They tumbled in a loud clatter across the floor. "Shit!"
Quick footsteps clacked outside the door.
"Hey, what's going on in here?"" Natalia, the bartender, tossed open the kitchen door and sailed through it when she heard the clatter. She walked right into the high beam of the UV stage light. The scream that tore through her mouth made them all jolt, recoil, and squeeze into a tight group huddle. Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong. Natalia was writhing painfully in the light, caught in its intensity.
"What the actual fuck is happening?" Yelled Micah nervously over the screaming.
The skin was turning patchy read and charred black in places.
"Jezuz." Whispered Ezera as wide-eyed Yolanda crossed herself and cursed in Spanish.
Their mouths hung open in shock and surprise.
Micah took a step forward, shakily pushing the cross forward like a body shield. "The…the power of Christ c-compels you…maybe?"
When Natalia snared they took another collective step back.
"Wait!" Ezera yelled. "The UV light! It's killing her! Turn the light off, turn it off!"
Micah dropped the cross and fumbled for the switch, worse now that her fingers were shaking and now that she didn't want to take her eyes off Natalia. Ezera knelt down and roughly jerked the plug out of the socket.
Natalia, roasted to a near charcoal color, dropped to the ground when the light went off. "Ooooooh, irradiation. Got it." BB whispered.
Micah grabbed Ezera's arm and shook it violently. "Oh my God, oh my God, I killed someone! I killed someone!…Again."
Ezera winced into her soul. "Could you please stop yelling that out loud!? In the club?!"
"Fuck, does this….does this mean…" The huddle took a step forward.
"Vampires." They stopped and all collectively leaned forward.
Yolanda crossed herself again.
"Ho' fuck. But is she really?" Micah began.
"Dead?" Finished BB, still wide-eyed. "Inshallah."
"Oh, no! …But I just spent money printing up these new human resource manuals!" Ezera moaned.
Micah grimaced. "Yeah, but can you still technically call it a human resource manual?" She blurted out conversationally.
"That's fair. Shit. Is this a OCHA violation? It's an OCHA violation, isn't it? Fuck me. Fuck me!" Ezera wailed into her hands. "My insurance premiums."
They all froze like a herd of deer - eyes wide - when the door sailed open again and the cook stepped through. He came to an abrupt stop, quizzical expression teasing the hard lie of his mouth while he tried to puzzle out the apocalypse of a mess.
"What happened to my damn kitchen?"
The women all glanced at each other and straightened up, immediately shuffling more tightly in front of the body.
"Um. Uh…" BB was a terrible liar. "She's..."
Micah lied like a pro. "She's, ah, sick." She just wasn't very good at it.
"Yes. Really bad staff infection." Ba-dum-TSH. Ezera added with a smirk before grunted and nearly buckling sideways when Micah jabbed her boney elbow into her ribs.
"Staph infection?" The cook repeated flatly. Ezera shrugged and cringed at the same time.
All the women looked at the cook and tried to shift their bodies in line with the movement of his eyes, which shifted to the body on the ground that smelled like last weeks barbecue.
"Mmmhm." They nodded solemnly.
Micah shook her head, feigning concern. "So unfortunate."
The cook looked from one to the other. Whatever mask he wore suddenly dropped when he became enraged. Baring his fangs at them, he hissed.
"You've got to be shitting me…"
"Dio! Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre."
"Just keep thinking of your Dominican grandma, yea Yolanda?" Poked BB, her shapely dark brow lifting to the sky as if it has its own personality, while Yolanda crossed herself for the eighth time.
"Micah," Ezera started alertly, reaching down to pick up the cross and swinging it over her shoulder like a baseball bat while Yolanda jerked BB back as the cook lunged forward,"the light."
"I got 'choo!"
The kitchen door swung back and forth on its hinges, before it closed entirely, Dean Martin's 'Sway' could be heard softly wafted through the club.
Like a flower bending in the breeze.
Bend with me, sway with ease.
"Where'd the fuck did he go?!"
"There! Iz, watch out!"
Bend with me, sway with ease.
"Oh, shit, be careful, she ain't dead n'either!"
When we dance you have a way with me
Stay with me, sway with me.
The suave notes were punctuated by more crashes, cursing, and large human objects being thrown around and curtly being stopped by large solid objects, like the wall.
"What the hell?? Do they all fucking know kung-fu!?"
I can hear the sounds of violins
Long before it begins
Make me thrill as only you know how
"Ow!" Crash! Thud! "Yes. The answer is yes."
From the bottom of the door a bright purple light finally streamed out.
On the other side of the door, the women collected themselves, groaning as they untangled their body parts.
The cook was ash on the ground. "Oh, that's gross!" BB fanned her hand in front of her nose and then pushed her shirt over her nose as if she was scared to inhale bits of the cook. Yolanda groaned and splayed out on the ground, examining a piece of hair that she held up in her hand. "That sonofabitch messed my weave up."
"What about her?" Micah asked, jerking her chin toward Natalia.
Ezera lifted an eyebrow and looked down at Natalia. The body wasn't moving when she poked it with a dirty mop. "Not moving. But I'm not taking any chances."
She walked over to the blender and picked up one of the jugs of garlic orange juice and dumped the entire contents on Natalia with little ceremony.
"All that you're missing is honey and some Thyme. Makes a nice orange sauce." Micah said, her voice ending in a near whisper as Ezera glared at her, her humor uncharacteristically extinguished hours ago.
"Whoa! Wait, wait, wait. Guys, look!" BB slapped Micah's arm to get her attention and pointed at Natalia. "What…what's going on now?" She asked, taking a step back. Natalia's body hissed and buckled at the chest cavity before bursting into ash. "It's the garlic." Ezera confirmed. Yolanda snorted and mumbled "Lame. But, hey, that's good for us."
"Clean up on aisle nine?" Micah coughed. "Fuck, my eyes are watering." Her voice was strained with the garlic fumes. She rubbed at her red and irritated eyes, making them worse.
I just killed someone. Thought Ezera, swallowing the bile burning the lining of her throat.
"Look on the bright side," Ezera deadpanned dryly through her pun, "at least there's no body to get rid of this time. If you ask me, that's the most thoughtful way to die that I've ever seen. Vacuum them up."
BB, Yolanda and Micah exchanged looks. "Sorry, what?"
"They need a proper send off. Just us. Tomorrow. Let's meet at the docks at 5am." Ezera pushed the kitchen door open. "Until then, club's closed. If anyone needs me, I'll be drinking myself into a AA meeting." Before she walked out of the kitchen, she turned back to look sternly at her crew. "Oh, I want UV lights at every club, every entrance and exit. And I don't care if you put a garlic martini on the menu and bathe in the stuff to protect yourselves, until we know what we're dealing with, vampires aren't welcome at any of my clubs."
I'm waking up…
****************
"Sorry, wat da fuck did you just say?" Micah asked with the rough switch blade symphony of an accent from her adopted home, the Bronx.
"Garlic. Start smashing up the garlic. Then, then," Ezera said, lifting a finger in the air, her voice straining poignantly as she zipped around the industrial kitchen sorting out blenders, "we'll mix it in with fresh orange juice. Yes. Yes! That'll work."
Ezera was dashing around the kitchen so quickly that Micah considered that perhaps she had crushed up and inhaled the Road Runner in two neat little lines.
Ashayah Salifah, nicknamed Habibi, BB for short, narrowed her heavily kohl rimmed eyes with suspicion. "W-wwwhy?"
Ezera must have gone crazy, that's why. Micah shook her head in response to BB's question and slowly leaned back like the Tower of Pisa, her dark eyes muddied with concern but not devoid of humor as she subtly checked to see if Ezera was bleeding from the ears or had, you know, visible head trauma. Her brow vaulted to the sky cartoonishly when she found nothing. BB shooed her off the kitchen island when she was about to pop a squat on the food prep table. Instead, Micah leaned her hip into the metal counter and crossed her legs at the ankle. Her chunky unlaced Doc Martin's looked humongous on her feet just like the leather jacket that was two sizes too large. She rubbed a hand over her shaved head and exchanged a concerned look with BB who was biting her lip to prevent her from saying what her large appraising eyes were unapologetically conveying.
She's gone fucking nuts.
Jettisoning off the counter with a push of her boot, Micah tried again, "So, what you're saying is that-"
"Vampires are real. Real-real," Ezera said, clapping her hands on the syllables of the two words for emphasis.
"Vampires." BB repeated flatly.
"Yes. People, c'mon. Please, process faster." Ezera pleaded impatiently. She had called in her club managers to the Katakomb Kabaret for a "staff meeting".
Silence.
"And we need to figure out if we have vampires in the clubs. Working, I mean. We definitely have guests who are vampires. I mean clubs must be such hunting grounds and the wards have been going off like crazy recently, which is why I think it's one of us. I noticed that its been happening before we even open for the night," she said in one breath.
"The…wards?" BB grumbled out, looking to the other managers for support.
"Forget about the wards," Ezera hissed, her voice so high with frustration that it sounded like she had inhaled helium.
"But…"
"Forget about the wards," Micah reiterated, mimicking Ezera's voice and flailing her arms around before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Ok, ok. Sorry. Iz, listen, you know we got your back. There's no question that we're all in this together but are you ok? I mean, really ok? Vampires?"
Groaning under her breath with a soft sigh, Ezera gripped the counter and reflected a moment. She could imagine how ridiculous this sounded. "Micah, I know, ok? I know. But, but just humor me, alright? And if I'm wrong, you guys can shame me for the rest of our short lives." Ezera's eyes darted to each of them, taking stock of their expressions and gave them all a pleading look as her voice strained to make them believe her. "C'mon, please, I really need you to just ride this out with me, ok?"
Micah sighed in resignation and put her hands up. "Ok, ok. I'm totally onboard. I do think that you're having, like, a proper mental breakdown," she mumbled as she pulled a cigerrette out of a crumbled pack with her teeth, "but, I'm here for it." Yolanda Suarez, the manager of Club Diablo, pulled the cigerrette out of Micah's mouth before she could try to light it, only to have it repossessed by Micah again.
Yolanda's eyes darted to BB who wouldn't be able to resist rolling her dramatic heavily made up eyes. She wasn't wrong. Arms folded against her chest, BB was holding back. "Seriously? I gotta club to manage with fucking Crips up my ass. Tomorrow's the community rap event so they're pushing us for more "protection" money and trying to harass us, and you want me to entertain this bullshit?"
"Wait. Hold on." Micah drawls tartly, almost reflexively, raising her hand as if she was in a fifth grade classroom. "S'cuse the fuck outta me," she shot back dryly, plucking the unlit smoke out of her lips before crossing her arms, "remind me where and who would you be entertaining right now if you were still some fucker's property dancing in some seedy-as-shit club and chained to the radiator at night, hm?"
BB glanced at Ezera and looked down in embarrassment, her dark lashes fanning the floor. When she spoke, her voice was more measured. "Look, don't be a cunt, Micah. It's obviously not because I'm not grateful," she started by throwing Micah a barded look, "but this is some shit, Iz. And you know how important tomorrow night is in helping community relations. We get this right and Club Vandal is on solid ground and then we can begin doing the work we're meant to there."
"I know," Ezera emphasized quietly, "I know, and I know we're all overstretched and tired. I'm asking a lot." She looked at BB. "I'm not crazy. One hour."
It was Yolanda that interrupted what would have been BB's stubborn refusal. "Ay, idiotas, listen. We do this, one hour." She shrugged. "Big deal. C'mon. Dio, stop making such a big deal about it. We're spending more time arguin' about dis shit." She was thinking that maybe Ezera needed help and what better way to have her face her delusions then be met by them. "Now, whadda'ya need us to do?"
BB sighed with resignation. "Seriously? Fine. Fine. Whatever. But how do we figure out if got vampires up in here? We can't just call a staff meeting and be like, "hey, anyone here a vampire? It's ok, we know you've had some major lifestyle changes. It's all good. We're ready to make reasonable accommodates to fit your needs.""
Ezera ran a slow hand through her hair and glanced back at them sheepishly, too embarrassed to meet their eyes. "Actually, I already changed the Human Resource manual and added some inclusive language."
Micah looked at her incredulously and shook her head. "You're fucking kiddingme?" She sighed and rubbed her temples. One thing at a time. "Riiiiiight." Micah tilted her head in consideration. "Wait, how do we know it isn't one of us?"
"Because I asked you arrive when the sun was still out." Ezera said and then pressed her lips together in consideration. "Even though it's down now, so."
"So vampires don't walk in the day?" BB asked.
"Actually, I don't know," Ezera admitted with a shrug. "I assume that they can't."
Micah looked confused. "So, why didn't you just ask that vampire you said you met?"
Ezera rolled her eyes. "Edmund? Sure, that would have gone over so well. "Excuse me, can you tell me your weaknesses? It's for my team-building exercise at work." No, we're just gonna have to go through what we know. Vampire lore…or whatever."
Yolanda had ignored them and was amassing huge quantities of garlic and tossing entire bulbs into the industrial blender. The rest were arguing about whether they should get holy water when she put some orange juice into the concoction and threw the switch on high.
BB looked over curiously as they all fell silent.
"What?" Yelled Yolanda over the noise with a flippant shrug. "Garlic, right? It's in all the bad vampire movies, too. I don't get it though, why garlic? It's so stupid," she mused out loud. "What does it do, like give them the shits or what? Vampire anaphylaxis? Eh, so stupid. It's like, you want me to be all scared of you and you're fucking allergic to garlic? Pendejo, please. My Dominican grandmother is scarier than that."
Micah's eyes suddenly went wide and her back rail straight. "Oh! I gotta idea. I'll be right back," she yelled over her shoulder as she ran out of the kitchen.
"Ok, so what else?' BB whipped out her phone and started Googling vampires. "Yo, it says something about stakes."
"That…that sounds a bit dramatic. It's not like we want to kill them. They might be, you know, fine? Like mutants. We don't want to make assumptions." Ezera read down the list - sunlight, holy water, bodies of water. BB frowned and pointed to a paragraph on movie depictions of vampires. "Irr—fuck, what's that? Irradia-"
"I got it!" Micah shouted. With some difficulty she lifted up a sizable cross with a silver Jesus lounging, er, crucified on it.
"Oooooh, that's right. Crucifixes." BB whispered with an approving nod.
Ezera narrowed her eyes at Micah suspiciously. "Where…where'd you get that?"
"I just borrowed it from that church three blocks down." She mumbled, a bit breathy as if she had run.
Ezera looked at her with a look that said, bullshit. "You borrowed it?" Right, yeah. "They gave it to you?" She finished standoffishly, crossing her arms, angry that she hadn't thought of that before more than she was mad about having the club involved in the theft of religious relics.
"Look, in this situation you have to ask yourself, What Would Jesus Do, ok?"
"And Jesus wants us to…what? Knock someone senseless with that and yell, the power of Christ compels you?" Ezera sassed dryly.
"If it fucking works? Yes!"
"Isn't it supposed to be silver?" BB quizzed scrunching up her nose, finding something offensive in religion.
Micah scratched at the silver, testing it. "It is. At least I think this Jesus part is."
"Silver? They're allergic to silver?" Yolanda scoffed under her breath garnishing the garlic-orange juice with orange slices before grunting out, "because that's not fucking random n'either."
" Look", Micah says leaning the piece over to Ezera who tilts it toward the light to examine it.
"Usually silver is supposed to have a stamp on it, marking it with the level of purity." Ezera says, squinting. "I can't see."
"Here", Micah turned around and flicked one of three large newly repaired stage lights that were being stored with the glitter cannon in the corner of the kitchen. It flooded the entire room with neon purple light.
"Ow! Jezuz! Turn that off!" Ezera yelled out, throwing her arm across her eyes to protect herself from the glare as Yolanda cursed violently in Spanish
"Wait! Does that mean you're a vampire?!"
"No!" Ezera spat out angrily as she stubbed her toe on the kitchen island as she twisted away from the light. "It mean's that I'm going blind! For fuck's sake, turn it off!"
"Shit, sorry! Sorry, hold on." Micah fiddled with the light, half-blind, her fingers fumbling for the switch. "Ahhhh shit, these things get hot fast," her voice trailed off as she veered to the right and hit the pots piled up with the end of the cross. They tumbled in a loud clatter across the floor. "Shit!"
Quick footsteps clacked outside the door.
"Hey, what's going on in here?"" Natalia, the bartender, tossed open the kitchen door and sailed through it when she heard the clatter. She walked right into the high beam of the UV stage light. The scream that tore through her mouth made them all jolt, recoil, and squeeze into a tight group huddle. Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong. Natalia was writhing painfully in the light, caught in its intensity.
"What the actual fuck is happening?" Yelled Micah nervously over the screaming.
The skin was turning patchy read and charred black in places.
"Jezuz." Whispered Ezera as wide-eyed Yolanda crossed herself and cursed in Spanish.
Their mouths hung open in shock and surprise.
Micah took a step forward, shakily pushing the cross forward like a body shield. "The…the power of Christ c-compels you…maybe?"
When Natalia snared they took another collective step back.
"Wait!" Ezera yelled. "The UV light! It's killing her! Turn the light off, turn it off!"
Micah dropped the cross and fumbled for the switch, worse now that her fingers were shaking and now that she didn't want to take her eyes off Natalia. Ezera knelt down and roughly jerked the plug out of the socket.
Natalia, roasted to a near charcoal color, dropped to the ground when the light went off. "Ooooooh, irradiation. Got it." BB whispered.
Micah grabbed Ezera's arm and shook it violently. "Oh my God, oh my God, I killed someone! I killed someone!…Again."
Ezera winced into her soul. "Could you please stop yelling that out loud!? In the club?!"
"Fuck, does this….does this mean…" The huddle took a step forward.
"Vampires." They stopped and all collectively leaned forward.
Yolanda crossed herself again.
"Ho' fuck. But is she really?" Micah began.
"Dead?" Finished BB, still wide-eyed. "Inshallah."
"Oh, no! …But I just spent money printing up these new human resource manuals!" Ezera moaned.
Micah grimaced. "Yeah, but can you still technically call it a human resource manual?" She blurted out conversationally.
"That's fair. Shit. Is this a OCHA violation? It's an OCHA violation, isn't it? Fuck me. Fuck me!" Ezera wailed into her hands. "My insurance premiums."
They all froze like a herd of deer - eyes wide - when the door sailed open again and the cook stepped through. He came to an abrupt stop, quizzical expression teasing the hard lie of his mouth while he tried to puzzle out the apocalypse of a mess.
"What happened to my damn kitchen?"
The women all glanced at each other and straightened up, immediately shuffling more tightly in front of the body.
"Um. Uh…" BB was a terrible liar. "She's..."
Micah lied like a pro. "She's, ah, sick." She just wasn't very good at it.
"Yes. Really bad staff infection." Ba-dum-TSH. Ezera added with a smirk before grunted and nearly buckling sideways when Micah jabbed her boney elbow into her ribs.
"Staph infection?" The cook repeated flatly. Ezera shrugged and cringed at the same time.
All the women looked at the cook and tried to shift their bodies in line with the movement of his eyes, which shifted to the body on the ground that smelled like last weeks barbecue.
"Mmmhm." They nodded solemnly.
Micah shook her head, feigning concern. "So unfortunate."
The cook looked from one to the other. Whatever mask he wore suddenly dropped when he became enraged. Baring his fangs at them, he hissed.
"You've got to be shitting me…"
"Dio! Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre."
"Just keep thinking of your Dominican grandma, yea Yolanda?" Poked BB, her shapely dark brow lifting to the sky as if it has its own personality, while Yolanda crossed herself for the eighth time.
"Micah," Ezera started alertly, reaching down to pick up the cross and swinging it over her shoulder like a baseball bat while Yolanda jerked BB back as the cook lunged forward,"the light."
"I got 'choo!"
The kitchen door swung back and forth on its hinges, before it closed entirely, Dean Martin's 'Sway' could be heard softly wafted through the club.
Like a flower bending in the breeze.
Bend with me, sway with ease.
"Where'd the fuck did he go?!"
"There! Iz, watch out!"
Bend with me, sway with ease.
"Oh, shit, be careful, she ain't dead n'either!"
When we dance you have a way with me
Stay with me, sway with me.
The suave notes were punctuated by more crashes, cursing, and large human objects being thrown around and curtly being stopped by large solid objects, like the wall.
"What the hell?? Do they all fucking know kung-fu!?"
I can hear the sounds of violins
Long before it begins
Make me thrill as only you know how
"Ow!" Crash! Thud! "Yes. The answer is yes."
From the bottom of the door a bright purple light finally streamed out.
On the other side of the door, the women collected themselves, groaning as they untangled their body parts.
The cook was ash on the ground. "Oh, that's gross!" BB fanned her hand in front of her nose and then pushed her shirt over her nose as if she was scared to inhale bits of the cook. Yolanda groaned and splayed out on the ground, examining a piece of hair that she held up in her hand. "That sonofabitch messed my weave up."
"What about her?" Micah asked, jerking her chin toward Natalia.
Ezera lifted an eyebrow and looked down at Natalia. The body wasn't moving when she poked it with a dirty mop. "Not moving. But I'm not taking any chances."
She walked over to the blender and picked up one of the jugs of garlic orange juice and dumped the entire contents on Natalia with little ceremony.
"All that you're missing is honey and some Thyme. Makes a nice orange sauce." Micah said, her voice ending in a near whisper as Ezera glared at her, her humor uncharacteristically extinguished hours ago.
"Whoa! Wait, wait, wait. Guys, look!" BB slapped Micah's arm to get her attention and pointed at Natalia. "What…what's going on now?" She asked, taking a step back. Natalia's body hissed and buckled at the chest cavity before bursting into ash. "It's the garlic." Ezera confirmed. Yolanda snorted and mumbled "Lame. But, hey, that's good for us."
"Clean up on aisle nine?" Micah coughed. "Fuck, my eyes are watering." Her voice was strained with the garlic fumes. She rubbed at her red and irritated eyes, making them worse.
I just killed someone. Thought Ezera, swallowing the bile burning the lining of her throat.
"Look on the bright side," Ezera deadpanned dryly through her pun, "at least there's no body to get rid of this time. If you ask me, that's the most thoughtful way to die that I've ever seen. Vacuum them up."
BB, Yolanda and Micah exchanged looks. "Sorry, what?"
"They need a proper send off. Just us. Tomorrow. Let's meet at the docks at 5am." Ezera pushed the kitchen door open. "Until then, club's closed. If anyone needs me, I'll be drinking myself into a AA meeting." Before she walked out of the kitchen, she turned back to look sternly at her crew. "Oh, I want UV lights at every club, every entrance and exit. And I don't care if you put a garlic martini on the menu and bathe in the stuff to protect yourselves, until we know what we're dealing with, vampires aren't welcome at any of my clubs."
