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Spanish Jackie’s bar was a shithole. Unfortunately besides the stench of urine, blood, and bile, the shithole also held Spanish Jackie.
Time and time again, Israel found himself doing the five mile trek up to the worst fucking place in the world, and time and time again, he found it slightly more sticky, hot, and disgusting than before.
He’d caught Jackie on her way upstairs, swaying slightly on her feet, an arm around her newest conquest. A young man with a head full of dreads and her signature scrawled into his cheek. He was quite pretty, in an insane is-somehow-attracted-to-spanish-jackie sort of way.
‘Jackie.’
She ignored him, if she heard him at all. The stairs creaked underneath the woman’s weight, moaning in protest as she slowly but surely made the perilous journey upwards.
Israel sighed. And hurled the knife at her. It wheezed passed her head, embedding herself into the winding wall, three inches deep into the stained yellow paper. He barely had time to jump out of the way as the floor under his feet turned into splinters. An empty bullet casing fell to the ground.
‘Israel fucking Hands, what is wrong with you? You know what? No. Don’t even answer that.’
Israel pressed his lips in a thin line, pushing down the sigh of relief he felt sitting atop his chest.
Jackies’ husband had flattened himself against the wall, eyes round, and was busy trying to weasel out of her grasp. Jackie gave him a somewhat disgusted look, sending him stumbling up the stairs. ‘Why do you always show up when I don’t want you to, hm?’
‘I don’t fucking want to be here either.’
‘You could just….stop coming.’
‘You could just…stop fucking living here.’
Spanish Jackie gave him a toneless look, cocked the gun, and shot the ground at his feet again. Israel jumped back, pretending not to hear the scream from the unlucky patron on the lower floor. ‘Are you fucking done?’
‘You’re keeping me from a much more pleasant activity. So, no, I don’t think I am.’
‘I’ll make it quick then.’
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‘You want me to fucking what?’
Israel sighed, pushing the knife to her across the table. They were seated in her office with two flasks of shitty beer between them. And Izzy couldn’t help but notice the dead body slumped in the background. It had been nearly artistically arranged, knives sticking out of its rotting flesh in a pattern that spoke of target practice.
The stench was nearly enough to make him gag.
‘I want you to carve this fucking thing out of my skin,’ he muttered, lifting the lighter to his cheek. Edward’s x lay there unmarred. It had faded over the years, ink sinking deeper into Izzy’s skin with each name he took for Edward.
Jackie didn’t ask any questions. Any important ones that is. She didn’t give him the hell he’d been prepared against, or allow him the chance to go on a tangent. She did, however, bitch quite a lot.
‘Do I look like a fucking surgeon to you, Hands?’ She asked, even as she strapped him down to a table Israel suspected was used for something that required no clothes and a lot of lube. ‘Do I seem like the person you can run crying to whenever you have a problem?’
‘You’re the only one I’d trust to take a knife to my fucking face, are you done?’
Jackie grumbled something that sounded a lot like ‘idiot’ and thrust a dirty rag between Israel’s teeth. ‘You realize there’s just going to be a hole in your face, right?’
Not that Israel could talk around the rag, but he gave what he hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug, closing his eyes and trying to calm the supid fucking fluttering in his chest, and to unclench his stupid fucking hands, and to pray to his stupid fucking gods that Jackie didn’t bli-
It wasn’t that bad.
It wasn’t that bad at all.
It-
Israel screamed.
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‘Don’t fucking touch that,’ Jackie’s nails dug into his hand, forcing it away from the bandage across his cheek. It had already bled through, and she was busy tying a concerning amount of cloth around Israel’s face.
‘Fuck off,’ Israel mumbled weakly. They could pretend he hadn’t thrashed like a bitch, or that he hadn’t thrown up from the pain as soon as she let him slump off her table. His mouth tasted like something had died in it, and the beer wasn’t exactly helping his case.
He washed another mouthful down anyway. And then another. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drink,’ Jackie said, ignoring the fact he’d seen her inhale a mug of beer right before the ‘operation’.
‘Is it gone?’
‘Yes it’s fucking gone. Are you going to burn all his clothes as well, or is this just a cry for help?’
Israel opened his mouth-
‘I don’t actually care, don’t answer that.’
He promptly closed it, leaning back as she finished tying the bandages a tiny bit too tight. It hurt like a motherfucker, and somehow his first impulse was to dig his fingers underneath the cloth and feel at the massive slab of skin missing. It hurt to talk. It hurt to blink. It hurt to move his head. It hurt to even fucking think.
‘I’m going to sleep. You better not be here when I wake up.’
‘...thank you.’ It hurt to say it.
‘Whatever.’ She wiped her bloodied hands on the couch Izzy had collapsed on. ‘You’re fucking insane.’