Morbid Bite

XI :: A Darker Side

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MORBID BITE

Chapter Eleven :: A Darker Side

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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A hot breeze ran through the centre of the village. Very few people wandered the streets and it was almost silent, except for the constant buzzing from the village tavern that ironically was placed next to the church. Outside the tavern stood two thoroughbred horses; their black and white coats shimmering in the sunlight, their tails waving vigorously to ward off the flies that swarmed around their rears. Inside, the bar was full of life, men drank while the whores danced around them in bright pink dresses, their pushed-up chests - almost falling from their clothes. Their faces were smothered in layers of cheap white tar, along with crude make-up that lay plastered on their grinning red lips like bright incisive cherries.

Nicholas and Sébastien sat in the very corner talking in hushed voices. The alcoholic haze that lay across the room almost hid the two men who would have stuck out like lions among mice. Sébastien held a drink that he occasionally brought up to his lips to take a delicate sip. His concentration hanging on each word Nicholas muttered, not even the whores that danced around him with great eagerness, could tear him away from his friends' disputes. Nicholas tapped his ringed fingers on the table in a fast beat, his eyes constantly flittering between the ale in Seb's beaker and the large barrel that held litres of the abhorrent liqueur.

The tavern owner slandered over, her huge body squeezing between the tightly packed tables. She'd painted her round plump face with her best make-up. She had pretty features, but after years of too much alcohol and unhealthy mercury concealing, she had begun to look like an old blood hound whose face contained folds and wrinkles in all the wrong places

"Good afternoon gentlemen," she tried her best to hide her common accent, "would you like anything else, we have food and some very good whiskey..."

"No thank you Francette," Sébastien answered sharply, his voice stern and harsh, making the woman turn up her nose in discouragement.

Nicholas sighed, running his hands through his greasy hair a worried expression covering his face. He had run the conversation with Belle a thousand times through his head and he could not draw an answer.

"Do you think she will say yes?" Sébastien asked, leaning back and picking up his cup to allow Francette to clean the table.

"I am not sure." Nicholas closed his eyes and clenched in jaw. He could not cope with the uncertainty, the waiting "She just said she had a lot to think about."

"She means no, monsieur," Francette butted in, her lips pursed as she filled up Sébastien's cup.

"You think?" Nicholas asked, all the colour draining from his face.

"She's one of those girls!" A male voice supplied from the other side of the stall. A man stood up his tight black curls wet with sweat and his face was dripping as he staggered around the bench to push in next to Nicholas, pulling a whore behind him.

"One of those girls?" Nicholas asked, as he backed away from the drunken man who had now moved the wench to sit on his lap.

"The ones that lead you one with promise of more but when you offer it, it's all 'oh I can't I'm sorry I'm promised for another, oh sorry'" he imitated a girly laugh as he burrowed his face into the neck of the laughing woman in front of him. "Or 'I only saw you as a friend.'" The bitterness was clear in his voice.

"Oh." Nicholas looked down at his folded hands as he gulped down the sickness that rose in his chest.

"Yeah. It seems every class has them." The man laughed, a cruel deep sound that burrowed a hidden hate.