I'm Not Well, But I'm Better

Rin slumped in front of her locker. Kami but it had been a damn day! Onigumo’s fracas was just the start. At least no one coded, no one extubated themselves by ripping a breathing tube out of their throats and no one sprung an arterial line leak. Yeah, all and all - not physically taxing, more like mentally and patience-taxing.

Kagome had called the main desk to tell Rin she was going out the door and would meet her at the bar. Rin had given up on the cell phone after lunch and multiple failed attempts at locating it. She had called the thing a hundred times but there was no sign of it on the floor and no one answered it. Eventually, it must have run out of juice because it just kept going straight to voice mail. Finally in fit of frustration Rin left herself a message.

“Hi Rin, this is Rin and if you are hearing this message, congratulations! You no longer have your head up someone else’s ass! Isn’t that great? Remember, the finder of this phone will win an all-expenses paid trip to their own personal hell, which happens to be one night filled with delicious sexual torment by none other than that warm ball of fuzzy cuteness, Doctor Naraku Onigumo! Careful, ladies, he’s probably a fag Shangri-La wrapped in Happy Fun Candy! Yeah!”

The beep cut her off on the second cheer but venting her crazed aggravation did make Rin feel a whole lot better. Smiling to herself as she replaced the phone on its cradle in the empty break-room, Rin grabbed her bag and keys and went out to do the other thing guaranteed to make her smile. She was going to go shopping for something slinky to wear out to the bar tonight; she was off work the next three days – time to live it up!

~*~

“Rin! Over here!” Kagome waved from a barstool. The girl behind the bar gave her an embarrassed glance and when her eyes meet Rin’s, the age-old question was plainly implied: What’ll ya have?

“Scotch – do you have Coal Ila?”

A blank look flew across the bartender’s face.

“ No? Oban?”

One more time… with feeling…

“Damn – uh, Glenlivet?” Rin tried again, hopefully.

Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner, Rin mused sarcastically.

“Ok. How old?” she asked over the canned music.

“12 and 14”, was the slightly testy reply. Bartenders hate questions. That means they have to talk to customers.

“A shot of the 14, on the rocks please.” Rin replied and made her way over to Kagome, only having to straighten her new dress once – the damn thing seemed to want to float off her body rather than stay on. Cream and dark orange silk floated down around her black booted legs as she strode purposefully up to her friend’s proffered seat.

“Damn girl, how can you drink that shit? It tastes like paint thinner. And you look nice – only you could pull off those two colors together, Rin. The boots are a nice touch, it looks like you’re out to stomp someone’s ass tonight!” Kagome enthused over some kind of red fruity business with a little umbrella stuck in its frozen slushy depths.

“How many of those have you had Kagome?” Rin smiled crookedly and paid for her well-delivered drink. Taking a sip, she decided it wasn’t terribly watered down… today.

Rin caught the bartender, Sakura, with her raised glass and gave the woman an extra 10 bucks. It paid to make the bartender your friend when you planned on drinking for a while. Sakura smiled, leaned over the bar and kissed Rin quickly on the cheek.

“Rin!” Kagome squeaked out and grabbed her arm with a giggle.

“What? She’s just doing it to start it up with the blue-collars who want to see hot women get it on in public. It’s guaranteed she’ll make triple the tips now and she knows it. Now, you were saying how many drinks it’s going to take to catch up with you, girl?” Rin smiled down and parked herself on her barstool.

“Two – counting this one. So – you have a lot of explaining to do, missy. What the hell happened today? What did you do to Onigumo? Oh – did you find your phone?” Kagome enthused and leaned forward eagerly, awaiting her well-deserved answer.

Rin turned this way and that on her stool, hooking her booted heels into the thing and blowing her bangs out in annoyance. Figures Kagome would want to talk about that! Turning towards the dark side on the bar, she noticed musicians unloading gear through a propped-open door. An apparently albino woman was part of the group trudging in mic stands, and her dark pink eyes found Rin’s with a blankly defiant stare. Rin looked over the woman’s shoulder with a slow blink, shrugging off the defiant glare and turned back to her tipsy friend. She had no quarrel with the woman; she was healer, not a fighter.

“Never found the fucking phone. But when I do - there’s going to be some goofy shit to delete. No – never mind, Well basically, the short version is, Onigumo was being his usual sadistic and obnoxious motherfucking self…”

“Oh my god Rin, your father would cringe if he could hear your mouth!” Kagome tittered.

“Father would have kicked Onigumo in the fucking teeth today at his lack of honor. You know that asshole accused a dying man of killing himself with cigarettes, attacked my professionalism in front of a patient and then, oh Kagome, then he tapped the old man without anesthetic – to get back at me when I basically told him it took one to know one!”, Rin snarled out with uncharacteristic anger.

“He did what?! He did not! Kami, how I would have loved to be there! I’ll bet his pretty white face was just priceless!” Kagome spewed with not a little high girlish laughter. Rin took a gulp of her drink and reflected on cooling down. Retelling the events of the day had really pissed her off anew.

The band had set up their board and monitors and the dissonant strains of delayed and distorted guitar began to slink under the slurring purr of a song Rin hadn’t heard in about 15 years… perfect. This musical dystopia suited her mood perfectly – that was, until the booze kicked in. When it did, she knew she would do her best to bury herself in the sonic numbness until the pain of trying to save the world one person at a time wore down to an easily-ignored dull roar. It beat being sober and alone with a stick.

“There’s nothing pretty about that guy, Kagome. He’s brutal.” Rin deadpanned and shot the rest of her drink. Hitching her chin at Sakura, whose friendship had been thoroughly bought for the evening it seemed, Rin found another single-malt quickly sweating in her hands.

“Come on, Rin – you can’t tell me that if it was dark, you were drunk and he didn’t say anything too stupid, you wouldn’t find Dr. Onigumo just this side of delicious in a dark, forbidden kind of way.”, Kagome wheedled, scanning the bar.

“You must be ‘shrooming…” Rin smiled and watched the musicians finish their sound check. There were a few people: singles, two’s, three’s pulled up to the various low tables around the slight chaos of a large band in a tight corner. A group of twenty-something’s apparently out in the full glory of stainless piercings and black everything were doing their best to glower at the straights and simultaneously talk amongst themselves. Rin envied them their camaraderie. She herself had been alone since her adopted father had gone on a business trip and never returned ten years ago. It was like he had gone for a long walk and simply never come back. Rin never really had fit in anywhere even before his disappearance and so she sometimes noticed when she went out with her (singular) friend Kagome that all her urges to care for others, to ease pain and suffering probably stemmed from never assuaging those feelings within herself. Shaking her head at her rueful self-analysis, Rin took another drink.

The band started up about a half-hour later and playing an interesting, if derivative set of alt-rock covers. Kagome was dancing on her stool with her drink in between pestering Rin with gossip about work. There were more people out and the night scraped on the windows to come in. People came and went. Rin was chewing the ice in her latest dead soldier and trying to decide if she needed another drink. Things were getting fuzzy edges and the band’s light set was really throwing weird shadows across people’s faces. She liked the idea that someone could be anyone under those oozing lights.

The band dropped down into a weirdly delayed acoustic bit that Rin remembered all too well. The woman singing shook her long jade earrings and strummed a bass slowly as she shut her eyes and began to wail.

Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved…

“Fuck it.”, Rin swore and putting her spent drink on the bar determined to get this party started. She wanted merriment after her horrendous day. Because, she thought as she began to sway and slide to the heavy throb of the music around her…

I’d like to fly but my wings have been so denied…

Because she knew she was just going to have to repeat her one-woman war against pain and death tomorrow and the next day after that…in her heart she had begun to despair.

Twisting, swaying her hips, she caught covertly appreciative glances from the dark and gothic children she’d noticed earlier. Turning around, she glanced around for Kagome as she thrust one smooth hip out in the vaguely exotic way she’d learned from some half-assed belly dance workout tape she’d gotten somewhere. Before she met her friend’s eyes, she noticed a long form stretched lazily in a deep chair, just out of the light. She noticed long pale fingers like spiders slowly flexing over the chair’s arms and two reflecting lens looking her way. Something looked… off… about the guy. He appeared to have been poured into the chair and was somehow melting out of it onto the floor. He looked like a stoned leopard waiting for something to happen.

Was it live or was it Memorex? Rin thought to herself and then found the smiling Kagome paying for her scotch. That gave her an excuse to catch her breath and point out the freak to Kagome – who enjoyed people-watching as much as she enjoyed cheerleader punch.

A kid with two steel rings in his lip and a blond Mohawk smiled at her as she passed to make her way back to the bar and nonchalantly ran his hand across her silk-shrouded thigh as she walked by.

“Nice, girl. Keep it up. I’m Hakkaku.” he leered wolfishly at her and dared Rin to say something about his trespass against her.

Rin ignored it; shit, that was as lucky as she was going to get tonight, most likely. She didn’t like wolfish men; they scared her somehow.

“Hey, Kagome. Come here.” Rin said to her friend over the music. Kagome leaned carefully forward and was all ears.

“Look at that guy over there; he wins the freak award, right?” Rin pointed with her chin at the long dark figure whose black hair was nearly hitting the floor he had slumped so far within his seat.

“What – is he tired? Long black hair, he must be Onigumo’s hippy twin.” Kagome snorted to herself and elbowed Rin in the side happily.

“Ugh – jeeze, can we just leave it alone, already! You know, I left a silly message on my missing phone calling him a fag and offering him as prize to the person who found my stupid cell. You’d have been proud; I was pissed I’d lost it on top of everything else. Oh well. Hey, get off that chair and come dance with me. Maybe if we do others will join in and we won’t look like complete and utter tools!” Rin replied, grabbing Kagome’s hands and pulling her off the barstool.

“Oh we’re going to look like idiots all right – I can’t dance and you know it. I’ll probably trip on my own feet and bust my nose.” Kagome laughed and straightened her filmy top.

“I’ll take the risk, I’m nimble – you go down and you’re going down alone, girl! Besides, my friends over there need someone else to drool over.” Rin smirked and met the eyes of her steel-encased admirer, who winked at her.

Of course it was then that the band decided to change gears totally. The guitarist had busted a string on the last song and was furiously repairing, stage-left. The albino girl working the boards came up next to the pretty dark-haired singer beginning to purr out a rather familiar tune over a jazz beat the drummer was brushing out.

Holly came from Miami, FLA – hitch-hiked her way across the USA

Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs then he was a she

She said hey babe – take a walk on the wild side.

The albino girl did the appropriate accompaniment and Rin was surprised to hear such an arcane song. Kagome looked a little lost and not a little drunk so Rin started simple, moving to the beat. The singer enjoined the crowd to join in, ‘cuz you freaks all know the damn words and continued to improvise a rather slinky bass solo while keeping an eye on the guitarist at work.

And all the colored girls go, ‘Kohaku, you fag, hurry up and fix your damn guitar…”

Obviously, this sort of thing had happened to this band before…

Rin laughed with everyone else and found the hypnotic rhythm was making the world swing a little bit on a tilted axis so she went with it. Turning around, she noticed a couple of girls squirming in their seats with smiles toward the band. The next time she made another gyrating rotation, she noted quite a few people had joined them on the dance floor. Miracles never ceased, because Kagome was still on her feet, probably because she was dancing with Mohawk Guy now. Good thing it appeared he could lead, Rin mused with a grin.

Rin was enjoying herself thoroughly when the instinctive need hit her hard: too many drinks and too small a bladder. Never mind the extensive bladder-denial training Rin, like every other nurse, had cultivated by being always too busy to pee; she decided the crowd could do without her mostly drunk and benevolent presence for a few moments. Nosing her way through the crowd, Rin’s balance was still good but the world did seem to be swaying a bit, now didn’t it? Something hit her leg as she nearly made it to the bathroom doors and by the sick, electronic crunching noise Rin knew it was not going to be good. She’d just knocked someone’s phone out of their hand or something. Cursing her luck and turning back from her important mission, Rin was about to apologize for her clumsiness.

A small silver box had been shattered and apparently trampled by a size 6 heeled boot remarkably like hers – funny, that. Truthfully, the phone was the same model as hers too, but her phone had a lanyard, Rin noted drunkenly and then followed her eyes with a slight delay to the person sitting closest to her faux pas. The band continued on to another dark, smoldering tune…the guitarist, Kohaku had a high creepy voice that harmonized weirdly with the singer Kagura’s throaty rasp. Their menace transferred too well and Rin shivered as she noticed who she’d bumped into.

What I see is unreal, I’ve written my own part – eat of the apple so young, I’m crawling back to start…

“Congratulations. You found Rin’s phone. You win the prize.”, the deep evil voice of Naraku Onigumo spoke up to her as he glared up at the shocked Rin, his eyes red fire over a pair of antique cobalt blue sunglasses.

She heard her name from somewhere distant and then she heard a roaring wind as the world spun away into darkness.
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