3MA

3MA | Chapter 8

8
WORK HORSE

The owner of The Drunken Sailor, Sheamus Ludlow, only has one arm. I would sympathize with him a bit more, if he didn't use that arm to constantly order me around from one insulting task to another.

Currently he stands behind me in the bar's storeroom, watching me prepare the kegs for the hordes of drunks who will be teaming through the front doors starting at 8pm and will continue to pack in until well after four in the morning.

I prepare the kegs the way Sheamus taught me years ago, by twisting off the metal tops, pouring out three quarters of the already watered-down beer into a separate holding container, and refilling the quarter-full keg with buckets of rusty water from the faucet in the corner.

Watering down the beer, according to Sheamus, is a free service he provides for his patrons, to keep them from getting too intoxicated too quickly. After the water has been added, I pour in a half-bottle of hot sauce: Sheamus' self proclaimed "secret ingredient".

"The water keeps 'em sober enough to keep drinking all night and the hot sauce makes 'em too thirsty to stop!"

Like all of Sheamus Ludlow's ideas, it's crooked and immoral and self-serving, with a dash of clever; a good combination of characteristics for a successful existence in Camelot.

"You have a talent for this, you know," he calls out from behind me as I finish tipping just the right amount of hot sauce into the last keg. "Best damn keg preparer I've ever had. Between you and me, I'm glad you're such a miserable fighter. Wouldn't want to lose you to the Octagon."

"No, we wouldn't want that," I grumble.

I spend the next hour lugging the kegs from the back storeroom and lining them up along the filthy underbelly of the bar. By the time I'm finished positioning the last keg it's 9pm, and the bar is already jammed with sweaty bodies and thick with smoke and body odor and slurred conversation.

I take my place hulking in the corner by the front door, like a stuffed Grizzly Bear in a lodge, strategically positioned to scare away troublemakers. But I can tell that no one here is afraid of me. I can see it in the way they all step on my toes without apology and spill beer across my shirt without care and slap my cheek in mock greeting with their rough sandpaper palms.

I don't even look in their eyes. I just stare straight ahead, keeping my arms crossed and my eyes glued to the TV crouched on a tilted shelf surrounded by dusty whiskey bottles. Tonight it's playing a live 3MA match, The Gallows versus Black Heart.

The Gallows earned his fight name in a famous incident in which he snapped the neck of one of his opponents with a single bolt of static. Black Heart earned his from his famous Black Lightning, which according to the rumors, fills his opponents with a paralyzing dread.

By the looks of the Gallows right now, splayed on his knees in the center of the Octagon, gripping his heart and crying into the arena's ceiling like a toddler having a tantrum, it appears Black Heart has decided to end this fight a bit prematurely tonight.

Someone throws a beer at the TV and it switches off. My focus returns to the bar, which is now little more than a collection of greasy heads drifting through a sea of cigar smoke. I watch them all like they're moving in slow motion; singing over the jukebox, standing on top of rickety tables, raising glasses of hot sauce beer, vomiting under chairs, playing dice on the bar counter, the occasional cackle rising above the din of singers and howlers and criers.

This is my future.

Standing here in the shadows. Just another invisible relic decorating Sheamus Ludlow's tavern, watching the hours on the old cobweb-coated clock in the corner sweep by.