my first posted work here.... its supposed to be anachronistic....
suggestions for a different town name?
*
The dusty streets of Sprouleville had long ago turned to muck, and at many times of the week its lowly outskirts were no less than a moat. Deluvian waters had bathed and battered the town and its country for months now, its skies splintered by lightning and hidden by oppressive, wooly clouds. The village was a brown primordial stew, peppered with jutting blemishes of buildings and carriages and the children who played in the mud-rivers, their scolding mothers calling out only so close to the threshold of their soggy homes. A heavenly tap had been opened and abandoned over the city, and all the while that moat with no drawbridge rose and fell about its charge, guarded by the haggard, scrawny homeless who crept about the muck like reluctant alluvial gargoyles.
Upon the gentle embankment that carried the road from Sprouleville to the flat country and the mountains beyond sat a simple tavern, eternally encrusted with the stench of liquor, vagrants, and now the mud brought in on the bare feet of its patrons. Humble folk would soak their throats in the cheap, stinging ale there with their daily alms, cursing and singing and weeping, telling of their adventures and aspirations before drifting outside to sleep.
It was the dead of night now, and the rain was a merciful pitter-patter. Chairs were stacked upon tables and the bar was empty, left hours ago en masse in search of reasonably dry sleeping quarters. A hollow drum for the rain, the room was empty now save for two figures that sat at the table tucked away in the corner. Hands fumbled through a filthy tunic, producing a cigarette lighter which opened and clicked and closed again gracefully.
“I rather dislike it when you try and peek at my cards, Mr. Strithington,” said Julius Rudd. His eyes, buried in sleepless hollows, darted with intensity from his hand to his opponent across the table.
Rudd spoke, biting indignantly on his cigarette and rifling through his cards.
“And don't think you're such a clever card player only because you dealt me a rainbow of a hand. You shouldn't be one to forget the score.”
A card flapped against the table to punctuate Rudd's monologue. He stared pensively at Mr. Strithington, awaiting his next move with impatient curiosity. Strithington looked back indifferently, doing absolutely nothing to satisfy Rudd's curiosity, because Mr. Strithington was a man made of straw.
Rudd took a drag from his cigarette, eyes never straying, and snickered.
“For such a clever card player you certainly are predictable, Strithington. How you even occasionally beat me is more than I can fathom.”
Rudd drew up another card, growling, and tapped the filter of his cigarette against the table. The scarecrow sat beneath his lopsided tophat, button nose impervious to the smoke filling the recess of the tavern. His eyes, as well, were buttons, and for a shirt he wore a potato sack. Playing cards had been jammed into his crude, knob-like hand, condeming him indefinately to a pair of threes, the seven of spades and the makings of a flush.
Had the scarecrow lips, he might've hummed.
“Never much of a talker, you....” muttered Rudd, discarding again.
He took another slow and thoughtful drag from his cigarette, exhaling the smoke towards Mr. Strithington's oblivious visage. The room was silent once again, besides the muffled rain shower and Rudd's resumed percussion on the table. His foot began tapping with exuberance and slid against the leg of the table, upsetting Mr. Strithington's twine-jointed elbow, knocking face up from his hand the ace of clubs.
Rudd's tapping abruptly stopped, vein-rippled eyes shooting wide open as if his heart had pumped a burst of hot air into his head. His pulsating pupils fixated on the clover-studded card before him.
He jammed out the flitting amber light of the cigarette on the table, and whispered.
“Strithington, you son of a bitch.”
Again, his heart pumped violently, sending liquid fury through his arteries like a cannon. His fist slammed against the table, spilling Strithington's entire hand willy-nilly onto the table. Rudd flung his cards into the darkness and screamed.
“YOU GODDAMNED SCOUNDREL SNAKE SON OF A BITCH!”
Rudd had shot out of his chair, sending it flying into the wall behind him, and was now bent over, face thrust before the scarecrow's sightless eyes.
“Had I a single coin staked on this game I'd slit-”
His head snapped back, leering into the pitch-black tavern, words falling abruptly into oblivion. Heavy footsteps echoed in the room behind him.
This interruption seemed to fill Rudd with a sort of hysterical glee, cracking a maniacal smile between his unkempt whiskers. He called out to the movement in the darkness.
“And that'll be the fat old innkeeper coming to shoo me away, Mr. Strithington, aren't you lucky?”
A deep, powerful voice sounded from the innards of the tavern.
“Julius Rudd, haven't I told you a thousand times-”
“Have you got the cat o' nine tails for me tonight, my girthy captain? “
The voice, the footsteps grew louder. Rudd's head was locked in place, turned like an owl's, panting softly. The image of madness.
“Aye, Rudd, I'll break your bony, impudent-”
“Save your breath, Henry, so's you can catch me first.”
A moment passed, and the final footstep landed on the stone floor with the weight of an anvil. A towing, gargantuan silhoutte had appeared amongst the tables.
