A Life Half Lived

[Dusty Lens]

David Chambers leaned terribly close to the pyramid of soggy cards stacked before him, breath brewed to shatter time and space contained behind pursed lips, bloodshot eyes moving uneasily between the tower he was crafting and the Queen of Hearts lightly held in his lightly trembling hands The oily card alighted gentle alongside its brothers. Another pillar received its foundation. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bearded face with a sense of supreme satisfaction. The tower had reached its fourth level and it was time to pull out two things, another deck of cards and another shot.

He gasped like a diver as the Midnight Hobo seared a path to his belly, no warm afterglow with this blend, and giggled as he noted the name of the deck: proxies and women, epic stacking material indeed. He leaned back his head and belched the laugh reserved for the drunk and the mad, enjoying the salutary retort issued by the dusty corners of the lonely hangar. He returned to humming some moronic bopper ditty that had been playing in the Holstered Pistol, the bar sitting some three decks above in this particular wing of Barrier Gate, from whence he had secured both the bottle and the compliment of cards before retiring to his post for the evening.

He lay a pair of cards against one another, the edges long since warn from their former crisp plasticity to a fuzzy cloth. He noted with some amusement that the corner of the ace in his hand was marked. The cards fit cleanly, their surfaces virtually adhering to one another. There was something magical about cards which had years on their shoulders. Books without words, just the fold of places where a hundred deals had softened
their edges or, in this case, the odd mark which doubtless had a story behind it.

But those were the thoughts of a thinkin man. A thinkin man was not what he wanted to be that night and, as such, he picked up the bottle again with a salutary wave towards some unknown figure or ideal and tipped back another soul shattering bolt of the vile stuff. He didnt know which dog had been drowned in what tub of onions but, god damn, it must have been an ugly fraking dog.

The hanger of the Reaver Mercenary company stood silent save for the noises produced with no small effort by its sole inhabitant; as they had every night following his initial employment. The job had seemed, at first, to be a god send. A chance to drown his mind in work. The complexities of solving the mechanical and logistical needs presented by the wide variety of ships employed by the average merc outfit, a means by which to secure a place on this station before someone figured out that the best place for a vagrant was outside. What he had gotten was a silent hanger replete with ships settled under tarps. It felt like he was the night watch as a gaddam sepulcher.

They didnt fly. Which means that he didnt work. Weekly maintenance routines turned into busy work, clean grease emanating from bearings which hadnt been put to task in months. Engines turned over purred like newborn kittens. Day after day of checking in to a room silent save for the sway of plastic moving under the gentle urgings of the stations ventilation.

A little peace and quiet as the last frakking thing he had been looking for and, so, he figured it was just as well to give circumstance a little company in the second to last thing he was looking for. With that thought he wagged his finger at himself and giggled, causing the tower to wobble wildly before his whiskey soaked breath. A wonder, he thought, that it didnt burst into flame. But, ah, there was the think word again! Gascon! Another belt to the hatch!

He didnt know what had killed the outfit. But he could guess. The hangar was a graveyard of ships carefully labeled and cataloged. He had strolled over and attempted to squeeze labor from each enough times to be familiar with that, at the least. Amidst the Falcattas, GMG craft, IMG bombers and other miscellaneous testaments to the diversity of her staff there lay one empty series of slots. Labeled in the hangar and on the ship manifest as belonging to one Violet Reaver. He had seen enough wings fold, felt enough spirits die with a name, to formulate a guess that whatever heart and spirit had once driven this place had taken a nosedive when Missis or Mister Violet had decided to take a bit of a powder.

The fifth level of cards began to take place and, with dismay, he realized that he was coming dangerously close to being bored. Just as well that the ships were locked down. While amusing he doubted that his evening would be well served with a DUI in a Praetorian on the slave trail. He placed the final card on the fifth row with something akin to regret, as though signing off on a chapter of the evening which took the sense of good times with it. He took another obligatory pull from the bottle but his mind, drowning in the cheap **** as it is was, hardly noticed the difference.

Slave trail. Thats what did it. Thoughts back on the Innocence Lost. Hah. Frakking apt name.
He eyeballed the tower before him for a moment, wondering if he should upset the table and have a grand dramatic row. But, like scraping your knee as a kid, the fun wasnt really in it if no one else was there to pat you on the head.

He chuckled ruefully as he suddenly recognized the connection of that night so long ago with this one. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took another long pull then, raising it above the tower let it fall. The cheap thing shattered on impact, causing the tower to collapse around it. David allowed himself to fall backward in his chair, head spinning in its bath of whiskey.

He pointed a finger upwards towards the florescence above. A circle of dimming vision conjuring the elevator all over again.

Bang
He fell back into darkness.