Metalocalypse: Impending Doom

Chapter Seventeen: Pickles

Ever since her birthday party, Nathalia would keep coming up to Pickles to see if he had smuggled any alcohol into Mordhaus (which of course he had), which resulted in Nathalia becoming an unlikely drinking buddy. Eventually she would come over just to ask for some booze and then leave, which made Pickles feel even more lonely but he was usually happy to oblige regardless. Besides, when she did stay, their conversations usually revolved around...

Pickles sighed. He couldn't escape from his thoughts about Salem, no matter what he did. He vaguely remembered one of his drunk discussions with Nathalia that had actually led to Pickles confronting Salem.

"Soooo, you and Salem still..?" Nathalia slurred as she hung upside down from Pickles's bed, alcohol dripping all over her face as she attempted to drink from her position.

"Ye. Dey're avoidin' me still,'' Pickles mumbled. It was sometime after Skwisgaar and Toki had blown up, and he was preparing to go visit them eventually once Nathalia wandered off to wherever she usually went after their gossip time. He picked at the fuzz on his blanket uncomfortably, remembering the way Salem kept flinching and dodging him. What was wrong with him, to have them act that way?

"Don' take it uhm... words... yeah," Nathalia groaned, finally sitting up to look blearily at Pickles. "Personally? Yeah. They're usually like this with everyone."

"Everyone?" Pickles repeated.

"Everyone. Besides well, me 'n' Tobe. But like all their lovers and shit. They're not even good with guckin' froupies. I mean fuping groukies. Gackin frappies. Shit..."

"Fuckin' groupies?" Pickles helped. Nathalia nodded.

"They got very high anxiety. Sometimes worse'n mine... sometimes."

"Yew lit'rally tackle people," Pickles laughed a little.

"Yeaaaah but I don' abandon people when I realize I like 'em," Nathalia snorted, and Pickles raised an eyebrow to this. "Salem ain't right in the head. But that's okay, they deserve to be a lil fucked up."

"How so?" Pickles never heard much about Salem's past and wondered what they could be possibly hiding that made them seem so damaged.

"They killed a fucker before," Nathalia shrugged then blinked. "Wait, that doesn't explain much, does it?"

Pickles stared at Nathalia in horror. Salem? Kill someone? "How does dat explain deir commitment issues?!"

"Fuck, forget I said anything," Nathalia laughed loudly and hysterically, blushing lightly.

Looking back on it, Pickles didn't really know why that conversation led to the argument he had with Salem. Maybe he was just tired of the beating around the bush and not getting any answers. Maybe he felt like Nathalia didn't have an actual reason for Salem's behavior and it pissed him off. Maybe the idea of Salem being aggressive led to him being suspicious about what else they could possibly be hiding.

All the confrontation led to though was more guilt as Salem ran away with tears in their eyes, obviously embarrassed and ashamed. Pickles could tell they were fighting themselves internally, fighting something that maybe Pickles would never know about or understand. All he could think of though, was the pain that it caused for him, and it festered into a cruel bitterness.

So Pickles found more drugs under his bed, got high, and blindly wandered from his room with his face swollen, body dehydrated, and mind completely gone. He was hungry and needed food. Where was the kitchen again?

Pickles ran into a solid body and his first reaction was to loudly laugh, before puking on himself, blood bubbling from his mouth. Someone said something but he wasn't sure what it was. His hand instead gripped a thick arm to hold himself up, his breaths turning into gasps as more blood seemed to clog his lungs. Was he finally dying?