Private The Beast

[Salem Norongachi]

The Slums of Eve slumbered, at least the parts of it that didn’t ply their trade by twilight accompanied by muffled screams (of pleasure or otherwise). The ramshackle rooftops of the lean-toos and rickety buildings stretching off into the distance, almost touching the outer hull of the great sphere. The streets snaked and wound through it, hard packed dirt walked flat by thousands of feet. From above it looked like a spider web whose arachnid creator was quite possibly drunk, there was very little in the way of planning involved, just necessity. One day a new home would go up; tarp, wood or metal, whatever the builder could scrounge or pilfer and thus the streets would forked off again.

In the quiet of the night (the type of quiet usually associated with a great many people trying very hard to convince another group of people that they weren't, in fact, there holding a club) a song drifted into the air. It was off tune and known across all possible facets of reality wherever there is alcohol to be had. The singer usually doesn’t know where they heard it or why, after sixteen pints of beer, they are compelled to slur it with gusto while staggering home after a hard day at the bar.

“Show me the way to go home….” the singer had a half finished pint of beer in one hand and it sloshed its contents onto the street as he gestured with, what could be considered (By single celled organisms who had no concept of music and lived in the deepest depths of the ocean) the tune. “I’m tired and I want to go to beddddddd…” his feet seemed to have taken control of the situation and turned him down an alley, the darkness slipped in around the singer and the only light came from the end of the alleyway.

He stopped and with a tradition as old as time, unzipped his ragged trousers and placed a hand against the rusted metal wall. “I had a wee drink about an hour ago…” the pitter patter of urine joined the melody. “And it's gone straight to my head…” intense focus dropped the volume of his singing to almost a whisper as he squinted in the darkness trying, and failing, to miss his shoes.

The singer zipped, he took a drink of his pint and tossed the empty glass to the ground. “Oooohh ohhhh ohhh! Show! Me! The! Way! To! Go! Home!” each word in the song was punctuated by a stamp of his feet. If he’d known this was his last drink, he might have savoured it more. The scream drifted into the quiet of the night and it wouldn’t be the last the residents of the slums would hear before dawn.

* * *​

The Kark Off, humble establishment and setting for nightly, impromptu brawls, stabbings and ‘hitting that twat over the head with a chair because he might have looked at you funny’ ings, was quiet. The day had barely begun and the usual faces wouldn’t start arriving for worship at the altar of beer and whiskey for another few hours. It had tables, it had chairs, all arranged in such a way that when, not if, a disagreement among equals took place the least, in theory, amount of furniture would get caught in the ruckus. What remained from the night before were scattered fragments of wood, busted tables and, if wood could get PTSD, a very troubled chair in the corner.

Salem Norongachi, owner, proprietor and barkeep, gazed over the devastation with a sigh. He’d grown numb to it by this point but cleaning it up would always remain a right pain in his arse. The Kid was already hard at it, dumping amputee chairs into a wheelbarrow, his brown hair, as always, mangled into a shark fin by so much product that you could saw wood with it and not a strand would go astray.

“Are you going to help?” he asked hefting a bisected table into the barrow.

“I’m supervising your diligent work.” Norongachi responded and lit a cigarra, he leaned on the bartop and took a long drag.

“Seems a lot like not helping.” The Kid grumbled as he manhandled the wheelbarrow toward the door.

“And that's why you aren’t a supervisor.” Salem responded with a stream of bluish-grey smoke. This was met with mumbled generic grumblings as The Kid disappeared into the street.

“Bossman!” came a voice and then after some grunting two regulars of the Kark appeared with a table between them. “Brought you some replacements, boys have a couple more coming. Sorry about last night, was a hell of a dust up eh? Ha ha” the man grinned, half his teeth missing and quite possibly still on the Karks floor.

“Put ‘em by the door boys. I appreciate it.” Sal replied with a nod. You could always rely on the reprobates to attempt to fix their mistakes before they inevitably made them again.

“Hear about Dave?” one of them began conversationally.

“Dave?” Sal never pretended to care about his patrons, or remember their names, they were walking bags of money as far as he was concerned.

“Short fella, Charr threw him at the ceiling last night. Bounced like five times before he bit Gabot on the leg.”

“Ohhhh DAVE,” Norongachi did remember that, the man was made of sterner stuff. “What about him?”

“Dead”

“Happens to us all.”

“Well yeah, usually you just drink to his memory but they found him in an alley south side of town, some in the west and the rest of him in the east. Ripped to bits, so I heard.” the barfly finished.

“Any idea by what?” Sal wasn't particularly interested but years of hardwired social etiquette made him ask.

“Not a clue boss, just one of those things I guess.” he replied with a shrug and then gave a short wave before he and his buddy departed.

“Just one of those things...” Norongachi said quietly as he stubbed out his cigarra and began sorting through broken glassware.

 

[Salem Norongachi]

The residents of the Slums were true to their word (If only to avoid trying to stand upright while 14 pints and 6 whiskeys deep into alcoholism) and chairs, tables and stools of varying makes and quality appeared, all suspiciously without receipt of payment.

The clean up operation was well on track and the bar looked almost presentable by the time the early crew came through the door, just the old timers whose bodies couldn't take the rigors of the menial and often grueling, physical work that was all too prevalent in the Slums. They had bugger all better to do than squander what little money and time they had left before their significant others came charging in the door and dragged them out by the ear.

Sal stood behind the bar, idly skimming through the holo-net on a datapad that had mysteriously fallen off the back of a speeder. There wasn’t much in the way of work to be done with The Kid around, he seemed born to the trade of general dogsbody and amiable barman. The locals liked him in their own way and he listened to their woes with convincing sincerity.

Norongachi had tried, sort of, when he’d first opened the place but he didn’t have the skill set (Such as empathy) or the patience to deal with mundane problems (Often caused by drinking in the Kark off) blown out of proportion by alcohol and no matter how sound the advice he gave they just went right ahead and repeated whatever had got them there in the first place. In the end he and his patrons had come to a silent agreement that they wouldn’t bother him and he’d let them pay to drink their troubles away.

“Mornin’, mornin’” came a raspy voice before its owner shuffled himself up onto a stool by the bar.

“Morning, Skip.” Sal responded looking up from his datapad. Then there was Skippy of course, who had no woes and viewed pity parties much the same way cannibals viewed a carrot. He had one eye, a prosthetic hand and his age was anyone's guess.

Sal suspected the old man was a veteran, whether a soldier or a pirate, he carried himself with a familiar air. They never spoke about it of course, all the bloody business was bad enough the first time never mind reliving the experiences. Still, he was the only man in the place that could hold something resembling a conversation with the bar owner.

“See the lads paid their penance,” the old man commented, his good eye taking in the new furniture.

“Ever dependable.” Sal replied as he pulled a pint of beer from the tap and set it before Skip.

“Heard Dave bit the big one,” the old man said conversationally before taking a deep drink from his beer that left a foamy mustache on his lip. “Or something took a bite out of him, if you believe the rumours.”

“So they tell me.” was all Sal said and eyeballed a smudge on a pint glass before setting about it with a rag.

“Some kinda monster or somesuch, probably. A guy who knows a guy who heard from his cousin said the thing was ten feet tall and had claws like vibroblades. Saw it skulking around in the night when he was putting out some rubbish.”

“Was this before or after it ate Dave?”

“Dunno, never said.” Skippy shrugged.

“Suspiciously light on details was he? This guy that knows a guy who heard from his cousin?” Sal gave the old man a look usually reserved for idiotic children. “Don’t buy into the rumor mill Skip, if there was a huge carnivorous predator running around the Slums the body count would be through the roof…” then because this was the Slums, added. “More than usual, at least.”

“Probably right boss, probably right.”

And so the day wore on, the tables were filled, the usual suspects made their appearance and the artificial sun bid farewell to Eve. Night crept across the Slums, the more upstanding denizens went to bed and the less-so began their nocturnal trade, all the while the noise of merriment and drunken song filtered through the door and windows of the Kark Off into the dark streets.

The place was a sweat box, even with the windows thrown wide and the door ajar, there was barely a breath of air to be had. Behind the bar Sal and The Kid worked tirelessly, pouring pint after pint to appease the unrelenting horde and Norongachi was already soaked to the bone with sweat, his shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, clung to his chest and back and his dark hair plastered itself to his forehead.

It was like this every night, a press of bodies all demanding his attention and usually it was fine, it was work that required little thought and his body went about its business on autopilot but tonight his head throbbed, like someone had taken a vibroknife and stabbed him in the side of the head and the bastard kept wiggling the blade to squeeze every ounce of pain out of the endeavour.

“I need some air!” he yelled toward The Kid at the other end of the bar.

“What?” came the response, almost lost in the noise.

Sal waved him away, pulled one last pint for a Devorian and then tossed his trusty bar rag onto the counter behind him. The Kark had a side door, as most establishments did in the slums (because you never knew when you might need a quick exit), and this one opened up onto an alley made by the metal walls of the bar and those of a barber's next door.

It was mid-summer on the sphere and the night air hung heavy and humid, insects played their songs in the distance and the muffled sounds of the Kark Off filtered out into the darkness. Sal stood with his back against the wall of the Kark, letting what little cool air there was wash over him. It wasn’t an easy life running the Kark Off, he spent half his days picking up the remnants of the previous nights destruction or chasing drug addicts out his toilets but it sure was easier than wrangling a room full of Corporate Sector board members who wanted nothing more than to strip mine a planet to the core. Still, he thought, it could really use an A/C unit.

He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and soaked up the worst of the sweat on his forehead then lit up a cigarra. The smoke filled his lungs and he didn't stop inhaling until he felt a twinge of pain and then held it for a few beats before casting a stream of blueish grey into the air. He let his head rest against the cool metal and closed his eyes to the world, hoping that calm might evict the drill happy gremlins infesting his brain but after a few minutes he called the experiment a failure and in the same beat something else slithered into his mind.

It stank of primal darkness and even if he were not gifted with abilities beyond the mortal ken, his hairs would have risen on the back of his neck as primordial DNA recalled creatures slinking through the tall grass before jaws ripped and tore. He looked toward the far end of the alley, beyond the dull light from the main street on which the Kark sat. It was near total darkness. There was something there, it radiated in the Force, and imagined shapes began to coalesce, the shadows swirling into grotesque forms just beyond the length of his vision. He could have chalked it up to the tiredness in his body, the ache in his mind or the stories riding in his subconscious from earlier in the day. He could have, if blazing eyes of sulfur had not opened.