The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm (The King Henry Tapes) Read online

  Especially if one of the four was Leo.

  “Don’t try to find him. Come to my voice instead.”

  I finally said something, “Don’t listen to him, boys.”

  “Come to me. Watch your feet and don’t kick up the ash,” Leo ordered, voice carrying fine through the murk. “Do it.”

  Not much time left. One foot became two feet became three feet. Soon as they stopped bumbling about the air quality improved quick-like. All my life in smog filled valley and just when I’m using it to my advantage . . .

  “Not very smart, Leo,” I told the ‘08er team leader.

  “And now I know where to aim, Foul Mouth.”

  I chuckled. “So do I.”

  There was a gasp from the same direction as his voice.

  I charged it, snarling.

  A corpusmancer outline formed at my right, saw me, took a swing. Nicked my vest, but not hard enough to put me all the way out. Low beep from it. Yeah, yeah, I’ll change your battery tomorrow.

  Two more figures formed in front of me. Jacob looking awkward. Leo in his usual white and blues. Behind, the corpusmancer followed after me. Three more shouts, could be anywhere, focusing in on Leo just like me.

  Visibility to five feet but it didn’t matter any longer. I was a freight-train, a locomotive, running to tackle. Choo, fucking, choo. Didn’t matter that each of them outweighed me. Didn’t matter that they were taller. Didn’t matter that they were older. I knew what I was doing. They didn’t have a clue.

  I gave a shoulder into each gut, hearing a small beep from two vests for the effort. One of them twisted with the momentum and fell away from me. Whoever I’d caught blubbered up some cries as I wrapped my arms and drove him into the ash. He screamed some more as we rolled, throwing up extra dust. Five feet back to four feet.

  I popped a couple hammer-fists at his vest, but didn’t even earn beeps. Not hard enough. Trying to push up off his body, I saw he didn’t have a glove and realized Leo had gotten away. Jacob Walden, not who I wanted . . . but I’m looking forward to telling everyone how you—

  The world went starry out of nowhere.

  I was pulled off the spectromancer, head ringing. Full Nelson under my arms, up my shoulders, Hercules Hernandez style. Big muscled corpusmancer showing off, lifting me into the air. I growled, cursed, kicked his shins. Whoever he was, he laughed at me. “Someone punch him and finish it.”

  Leo materialized. Black hair swept back, blue eyes sharp, tanned skin tight over a scowling face. The fist without a glove bunched up. “Honor goes to the captain, I think.”

  “Fuck you,” I told him, trying to throw my head forward into his nose.

  “Just do it! We don’t have time for this . . .” Jacob Walden called, still on the ground, still keeping his distance from me.

  Only Leo didn’t quite listen to his buddy. First thing he did was kick me in the balls. “That’s a favor for Welf, Foul Mouth, hope you enjoyed it.” I didn’t answer, seeing as how getting kicked in the balls hurts a whole shitload. I almost had enough of a pool for iron fist . . . if only I could get my arms free. “I don’t enjoy it or much care, but the price paid was worth taking up the task.”

  Welf, payback for earlier in the year. I should have known. I worked up some words. “What he do, give you Vicky for a night? Or he suck you off himself?”

  Leo was too busy being all Summer Movie Villain, “Now . . . to eliminate you and then to close my trap on your friends.”

  Can a fucker get a MUAHAHAHA up in this place? “Hope the suck off was worth it, man, all this waiting around punting my nuts gave my friends plenty of time to win this thing.”

  The scowl went the way of pleasure, of satisfaction. Hitting me, he might not have got a rise out of that, but Leo enjoyed winning. “It’s only delayed my victory, only delayed, Foul Mouth.”

  Next bit was simple. A punch to the gut. A beep and an extra-red vest. A little shock to remind me I’m out of the game and should exit the Mound without interfering . . . or else . . .

  Or else . . .

  Fuck your ‘or else’!

  Anima snapped, not flowing into my hands but into my feet. Not so different from a hanging sit-up is it? Just with a kick on the end. Not iron fist—no, sir—got us a new name for this beauty. Iron boot. Right into Leo’s so satisfied face. The second that I connected with the kick Leo disappeared from view. I hit him so hard he almost vaporized into the mist. There was a soft thud of impact from down below us.

  My vest gave an angry beep, a flash of red . . .

  Can’t say how much it hurt, I was unconscious at the first flash of pain.

  Just like last year . . .

  [CLICK]

  January, 2011

  It’s hard to say which sense comes alive first. Hearing I guess. Never really stops, does it? Keeps on going even when you’re snoring and drooling and probably humping some imaginary dreamgirl if you’re anything like fifteen-year-old-me. Cheering, nothing but cheering. But too far away . . . way too far away, like a ballgame next door and through a window.

  Touch next. Something hard against my back. Rough fabric against my hands.

  Smell, in with the first breath. Sweet citrus, trampled grass. Something clean, like the Infirmary.

  Taste as I wet my lips and mouth. Ash and dirt and grit, everything that doesn’t belong.

  Eyes last, opening to the sun.

  How nice . . .

  Someone slapped me. “Wake up already and get off my cot, Price, you aren’t hurt enough to take up space.”

  I grunted. “So this is hell,” I said to the sun. “Waking up to the crankiest bitch I’ve ever met.”

  A tight-fisted hand wrapped into my coat’s collar, pulling me up hard enough that I had the choice of either going with it or ending face first on the ground. On my feet, I was woozy with a spinning head, but was otherwise fine.

  “No time for sweet talking me, Price,” my assaulter told me, shoving a cup of water and cup of pills into my hands. “Drink up.”

  I grunted again, complying.

  Evelyn Strange, the Asylum’s version of a school nurse watched me. Late thirties I guess, black hair pulled up away from a face that was all eyes. Dark too, those eyes, always squinting, always suspicious about your motives or if you’re trying to trick her into giving you a sick day off class. Once you proved yourself truly sick those eyes kept squinting, trying to diagnose you and get you out of their sight. Hydromancer, Ultra.

  “How long have I been out?” I asked once I’d opened my mouth and proved the pills had been swallowed.

  “Half an hour.”

  “Shit, what happened with the match?”

  She only stared. “Do I look like Erin Andrews?”

  Mrs. Strange was kind of cute in a naughty doctor kind of way. But the imagined fear of her getting insulted over me using her as masturbation material, followed by a needle capable of keeping my dick soft for the better part of a year, kept me from sexualizing her at all. “Nope, she doesn’t have a doctorate in being grouchy for one.”

  She liked when I insulted her though. Got her extra squinty.

  “Stay here for five more minutes and then you can find your way back to the Mound. I’m sure you’ll do something stupid like try to compete in another game today.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s an idiotic tradition, Price.”

  “But a whole lot of fun.”

  “Behave yourself, Price.”

  “Will try.”

  Think I waited five more minutes?

  You know me so well . . .

  I waited until Strange was busy with another student, which turned out to be my chum Leo. I didn’t feel like it, but, judging by how he looked, I’m pretty sure I won the war between the two of us. Doubt he’d have anything to do with me ever again. Double doubt he’d listen to any requests from Welf about putting a beating on me for pay or favors or whatever the deal between them had been.

  Leo was stripped of his colors, placed into
the usual ass-hanging medical gown we all know and love, and was almost bathed in bright blue slop. There’s probably a technical term for it, but ninety-nine percent of the time people call it hydro-slush or Slush. Hydro because it’s infused with hydro-anima to aid healing and slush because it looks like a blue raspberry slushie mix. Worse . . . it feels like a slushie mix.

  Strange or one of her assistants had downright basted every inch of Leo. Around his jaw and lower face they’d even brought out a slush-tank, which is kind of a container for the stuff. They only use the container when they treat you with the really high-quality Slush they don’t want wasting into the atmosphere. Mega-infused if you will. Heal a broken bone in a few hours.

  Leo’s tank ended just under his nose and the slapped on hydro-slush continued up the rest of his face, all the way to the hairline. Shit, I really messed him up. Not on death’s door or nothing, even someone as uncaring to her patients as Strange wouldn’t have been so calm. Wouldn’t have bothered with my wakeup slap neither.

  Broken jaw I figured, maybe some messed up teeth needed regrowing. Yup, I’m holding my mouth just thinking about remembering the scene. Regrowing teeth—exactly as painful as the bitch sounds.

  Not fifteen-year-old-me though. He shrugged at his vanquished foe. Another asshole who had learned not to screw with the Foul Mouth. I turned around, heading for the exit of the little trauma ward they’d set up by Admin. Near the exit I found another familiar face, slush-tank around his forearm.

  “What the fuck happened to you, Cockatoo?”

  ‘Cockatoo’ being Jethro Smith’s nickname for one Samuel Bird, a classmate of mine who was part of the Curt Chambers gaming/slacker crowd. One of our many corpusmancers, he was surprisingly as small as I was, maybe smaller since he didn’t hit the Gym as often. Auburn-brownish hair, blue eyes, so he just barely missed out on being a ginger . . . lucky break.

  I neither really befriended him nor fought with him. More than an acquaintance based on how the Asylum pushes classes together, but I won’t be going to his funeral. At best he’s a read-his-obituary-and-be-sad-for-thirty-seconds kind of person in my life.

  Bird didn’t look happy about his arm. “Broke the fuckin’ thing.”

  “Mid-game masturbation session get out of control?”

  “Shut it up, Foul Mouth.”

  You notice that ‘Foul Mouth’ has gained some popularity? That and ‘Price’ all the time. By Quad only my best friends seemed to remember my name. Which is okay . . . Foul Mouth is less absurd than King Henry.

  “How it happen then?”

  Bird grimaced. “Sabine threw me down a waterfall.”

  I was impressed. “No shit?”

  “Like a water park except without the inner tube and no big nice pool to splash down in.”

  “Bitches be—”

  “I said five minutes, Price!” Strange yelled at me from across the ward.

  “Back off me, you hag!”

  “And leave my other patients alone!”

  I ignored her, repeating, “Bitches be cruel. Next time dodge.”

  “Dodge a wave of water?”

  “Do a barrel roll or something.”

  Bird just stared at me.

  Clearing my throat, I changed the subject, “You know if we won the first game?”

  He shook his head. “Sabine again, got Welf with some kind of water whip just before he reached the button.”

  “That’s a ray of sunshine at least . . .”

  “Yeah, we lost but Welf got spanked, so Foul Mouth is just happy as can be. You two really need to get over it if we’re ever going to win a match.”

  I showed my teeth. “Match ain’t over yet.”

  [CLICK]

  I suppose I should take a break to actually explain to you what the Winter War is, how it works, and all that shit that’s expected of a good narrator. Apparently, some of you are just too stupid to figure it out on your own, kiddies. Also stupid enough to think I’m a good, reliable narrator, but we’ll ignore that or this whole exercise comes crashing down.

  The Winter War is a twelve team tournament of competitive contests using all the skills we learn for the Mancy. Quick pooling, pooling under pressure, accurate anima usage, inventive use of sources for those of us who can’t make our mojo out of thin air.

  I’ll tell ya true, kiddies: it’s bullshit like all the rest. Another test. Another evaluation. Taped, recorded, weighed and fucking measured. But it’s tradition . . . and it’s tons of fun, broken bones and bruises and all. You get to punch and kick people and no one punishes you for it. That might be my heaven . . . close enough for me to ignore the testing aspect at least.

  The first day of the tourney is always given to the Ultras in the outside brackets. Bi’s play Tri’s, then Singles get their asses kicked by the Quads. After that there’s some tourney-within-the-tourney shit for the Intras. Eight teams, thirty a team, for the top two-forty Intra Tri’s and Quads all mixed up by school rank. This creates some interesting drawbacks and advantages for them. For one, they skew more towards the First Tier of the Mancy, that lovely thing we call the High Five. Lots more corpusmancers and floromancers on the Ultra teams than the Intra teams. I hate to be a stuck-up prick like Welf, but throwing fire is a whole bunch more awesome than throwing ferns.

  The downside, the one Ultras almost always capitalize on, is that the Intras are scrambled, they don’t have good teamwork. Plus . . . there’s that whole being Intra and not Ultra thing, which matters more than you’d think.

  Back to our tourney, kiddies: the eight Intra teams play down to two Intra teams over a few days time. The lowest ranked team to survive plays what is always the Ultra Quad spot and the higher ranked team gets to play what is ninety-nine percent of the time the Ultra Tri spot. Continuing with the usual theme, the Quads then play the Tri’s, sometimes after close calls but just as often not.

  Not so fucking complicated, is it?

  You shaking your head? I ain’t repeating it all, damn it. Rewind, bitch!

  Four Ultras to two Ultras. Eight Intras to two Intras. Mix, match, kick some ass. Got yourself a champion at the end.

  If you still don’t get it . . . maybe you should go back to watching Sesame Street or something, I don’t know . . . definitely don’t mate though, the world will be better off without your genes floating around.

  [CLICK]

  I ran into Russell Quilt before I made it back to the Mound.

  “K.H!”

  “Sup, Quilt, kind of busy here.”

  Quilt’s never been the kind of guy I expect to see running towards me. Well, maybe if he heard I’d lucked upon some super rare action figure and was thinking about opening the box, but athletics wasn’t in the guy’s nature. Card games, tabletop RPGs, shit like that, yeah—mind shit, that’s Quilt’s area of expertise. Mentimancer, ya know? One of the few likeable ones.

  He wheezed as he dropped in beside me. “I . . . was . . . sent . . . by . . . C.D . . .”

  “Any day now, man.”

  “To find you,” he finished. “Can we stop for a second?”

  “Depends, did they finish the second game yet?”

  He nodded. “Your class successfully defended the Mound. We’re in the break before game three.”

  “Then nope, no stopping.” I went from a power-walk into a jog. “Got to get back in the game if we’re going to win. Did you see that shit plan of Welf’s last time? Spread them out . . . got to fix that crap or else we’re eating canvas. Can’t go down, Quilt, got to make us some history. First Bi’s ever to win a Winter War! Heard it here first.”

  “About that, K.H . . .”

  “You’re about to shit on me, aren’t you? That’s your shit-on-dreams tone.”

  “I’m just the bearer of the news,” he said, looking offended. It’s hard to look offended while you have a pair of gender bending anime ninjas hugging on your shirt, but somehow Quilt managed it.

  I stopped my jog finally. Almost at the Mound anyway, past the Ultra dorm
s. I could see the crowd of students waiting around in the break, mixing and mingling, some of them heading for bathrooms or the food and drink stalls. You ever want to see how much teenagers can eat then put them in a carnival setting with no economy, thus no money, meaning all the cotton candy, deep fried whatever-the-fucks, nachos, and corndogs are free.

  My stomach rumbled. Are you kidding me? We don’t have time for Quilt then we don’t have time for chili cheese fries, you fucking traitor.

  “What’s the news, Quilt?”

  “Ah . . .”

  “Haste, it’s not just a geek spell.”

  “With his place as Head of Physical Theories, Mordecai Root is Gamemaster of the Winter War—”

  “A fact that fills me with pure fucking terror without you needing to repeat it.”

  “—and he’s decided that your post-elimination foul against Leonardo Sarducci is worthy of a Match-Ban.”

  Good thing I was in my second year at the place. That kind of news during Single would have accidentally broken something metal real damn quick. Bi on, I just did it on purpose. “Bullshit! That’s bullshit!”

  “C.D thinks so too, which is why she sent me,” Quilt kept explaining.

  “She also has money on the match knowing her.”

  Judging how Quilt ignored this comment I took it for confirmation of the theory. “If you head for the staging area directly then you’ll have to accept the penalty as is, but if you first go to the Gamemaster’s Tent and appeal to the Lady, then you can get the penalty removed or at least lowered to only a Game-Ban.”

  I suppose this made sense in the Asylum’s crazy ass bureaucracy. I’d already sat out a game getting fixed up by Strange after all . . . so time served and all that. “Where’s the Gamemaster’s Tent?”

  The Gamemaster’s Tent was in the shadow of the Ultra dorms, not so far away from where Quilt had found me, but a bit away from the Mound. Given what I knew about Mordecai Root’s manipulative personality, his ability to control things behind the scenes, and just his general cold clinical outlook that made cryomancers and mentimancers look warm and cuddly . . . it figured.