JUNK!: The Opening Line

content warnings: slavery & abuse of one character, childhood trauma (if I’ve forgotten any please let me know!)

Szu Szu and Axl know junk. Artefacts, weapons, adornments, whatever. They collect anything with a magic aura and sell it to the highest bidder, usually the cowboy hat-wearing, moustachioed Leming, for a profit. It may not be honest, but it pays the bills, of which they have many.

Today their work takes them to an auction at the Whittaker mansion in Tannawha. Like most mansions owned by incredibly wealthy dabblers in the occult who usually succumb to the malicious intent of their latest item, the Whittaker mansion is filled with junk that Szu Szu Badeaux itches to get her hands on. As they wander through the foyer, Szu Szu’s eyes flit across the wealth of junk from fetuses in jars to weapons from serial killers of the past, all generously displayed in glass cabinets trimmed with pearls and sapphires. This place, judging by the lack of locks on the cabinets, is most likely protected by a warding spell. She might lose a hand if she tries to steal something.

“Fancy,” she says, with a low whistle. She looks to her left, where the blonde, triangle shaped hunk of muscle, known as her best friend and adopted brother Axl Grace, scans through his messages on his phone. “What, are you bored? Come on.”

“I’m just reading the message Leming sent us,” Axl says. He has a voice like a lawnmower, gruff, rough and low, but he’s harmless. He may look like a brick shithouse grew limbs, but he’s a sweetie underneath the scars covering his face and body. He doesn’t like getting into fights, but he will end them; it’s good that he follows Szu Szu everywhere, because fights tend to happen to her wherever she goes. Through no fault of her own, of course. The 16 year old who never leaves her alone, Harmony, made Szu Szu and Axl mismatching shirts that say something to that effect. “Can I see the scroll?”

Szu Szu reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out a cardboard cylinder, which Axl opens to peer inside.

“Yeah, all good.”

“Did you think I lost it?”

Axl shakes his head. “No, I just wanted to make sure.”

Szu Szu narrows her eyes at him. “Have you been taking your medication?”

Axl sighs and shakes his head in a way that means he doesn’t want to talk about it.

“‘Cause you should be taking your medication.”

“I know,” he says. It’s not defensive, even though Szu Szu is on the offensive. She can’t help but be worried about him. He’s a closed book that she can’t pry open no matter how desperate she is, and she still knows him better than anyone.

“If you need me to call your doc—“

“I know,” he says again, this time just a fraction irritated.

“Good. Stop making me Mother Hen you, it’s embarrassing.” She walks off, leaving Axl behind to further investigate the mansion before the auction begins. Rooms upon rooms of ancient, cursed, or otherwise historic objects make up the house, but as much as Szu Szu longs to touch, steal and rob the dead bastard Whittaker of everything he amassed in life, they’re only here for one thing: item #401. She wanders through the downstairs rooms until a bell jingles from the foyer, jingling until she and the rest of the interested parties assemble.

An elderly woman dressed in a lemon pantsuit and adorned in, at Szu Szu’s count, 22 scarab beetle broaches in various shades of red, holds the bell. “Well, isn’t it lovely to see you all here. I expected more sophisticated clientele, but a ragtag group of misfits is fine by me, if you’re paying up.”

A short jitter of laughter sounds from the civilians gathered in the room. Szu Szu leans against a banister, glancing between them in case any of them are interesting. She locks eyes with a headhunter, who glares at her with suspicion. Even though he’s wearing a simple black suit, the smell of silphium gives him away. Putti tend to gather on the coast, so it’s natural to run into a headhunter here, either shopping for a weapon or a ward stronger than the Cyrene flower the headhunters use to sedate the horrible cherubs.

“Pzzt,” she whispers. “You wanna trade?”

The headhunter looks her up and down, taking in the purple, velour jumpsuit and worn-in Crocs. “For what?” His bald head and European accent mix into a hilarious caricature. “Your cousin’s best friend’s second-hand lambo? Nah, I’m good.”

She shrugs and chews on a fingernail. “Suit yourself, Baldy.” She spits the chewed off bit of nail on the floor, missing his leather loafers by centimetres. Lemon Pantsuit prattles on about the history of the house and the Whittaker archive. Szu Szu doesn’t need to listen because Axl takes notes and catalogues everything with his tablet, meaning Szu Szu has a chance to shmooze and secure anythign she can. “But I got a Romanian stake that could go to the right guy, with the right sack of silphium.” She reaches into her shoulder bag, pulls out a silver cylinder no bigger than her middle finger, and twists it like a tube of lipstick until the sharpened wooden stake emerges. “Made by The Unifier himself.”

The headhunter’s nostrils flare at the offer, and he glances around as if to check if anyone else sees it. As he opens his mouth to speak, Lemon Pantsuit rings the bell again.

“Now, the auction must begin. Everyone, please head into the sitting room. We will bring out each item at a time, so keepsies handsies to selvsies.”

The headhunter huddles in close, reaching into his jacket to pull out a small pouch. The perfume of silphium is intoxicating even to humans, although it doesn’t do damage to us like it does to putti. The rumours are it heals any ailment, and despite her calm, insouciant demeanour, Szu Szu is desperate to get a hold of this flower, which, until a wandering serf unearthed a tomb in Cyrene, people thought was extinct. She’ll even trade a one-of-a-kind, 20th Century vampire stake from the king of vampire killers himself, King Ferdinand of Romania, to get silphium, because she’s shit out of luck finding it anywhere online.

The deal is quick: one hand over, one under, four meeting, their respective purchases secured, and Szu Szu walks into the sitting room with a pouch full of the rarest flower known to the underworld. Yet another piece of junk to add to their collection.

She takes a seat next to Axl, oozing smug confidence. “Mate, guess who got her hands on some silphium.”

Axl throws her an impressed look. “Good work. It’s almost like you do this for a living.”

Szu Szu laughs. “You never know.”

Axl has the cylinder in his hand, bouncing as his leg jitters. His back is straight, too straight, and he throws glances at everyone who passes them.

Szu Szu sighs. “Did you take your medication today?”

Axl doesn’t answer, and instead opts to gaze forward and pretend his ears suddenly don’t work, like they used to do as kids whenever Mrs Glock went around shouting that it was bed time. Szu Szu gives up and slinks into her chair to wait for the auction to start.

She doesn’t have to wait long. The first item called is #893, a Gideon’s Bible with a truth curse placed on it. While Szu Szu and Axl sit there waiting for their item to be called, the rest are still interesting. That’s why they got into this business: the underworld—the name affectionately given to everyone aware of the supernatural, magic, and anything that would usually belong to pulpy fantasy novels—is something they discovered when they met at the Glock Community Home. Axl had already been there a week, six years old and shellshocked from the fire that killed the rest of his family, when Szu Szu turned up, out of her mind on some sort of mystic drug that caused her to forget the entire seven years of her life. They were the only children there, and when she woke up sober, Mrs Glock sat Szu Szu down and told her about the “things that make you go crazy if you look for them. Don’t go into the backyard at night. Ever.”

But of course, Szu Szu did, because the story has to start somewhere, and of course, she almost had her leg ripped off by the band of four-foot-tall imps that nested there. When Axl heard her screams as she fist-fought the little shits, he grabbed Mrs Glock, who pushed a hatchet axe into his hand and told him to swing first and ask questions later. After the imps were dead, mostly thanks to Mrs Glock’s BRNO .243, she sat them down and told them the truth that normal people didn’t understand. “Ghosts are real, goblins, vampires, and werewolves, too. And given half a chance, they will kill you, so you have to protect yourself from them.”

A month later, Szu Szu came home with a spell written on the back of a resume in red lipstick—a few pinches of powdered ageratum, three chicken bones buried at each corner of the yard surrounding the home, and one recitation later, the house was safe, for the three of them and all the children that passed through in the last 19 years.

Lemon Pantsuit looks down at her paper again as a lucky bidder walks off with a tarantula the size of a large dog on a leash. “Item #401. This one was rescued recently, after the exhibit it was a part of was destroyed. No juicy details, I’m afraid, so keep your pants on. Although the provenance on this item is yet to be determined, it is fit, attractive, and has a special, well, let’s call it talent.”

As Lemon Pantsuit speaks, Szu Szu’s interest piques. The room grows quiet enough that the squeak of a chair sounds like a thunderclap heralding a storm. No one speaks again, and in the silence, the rattle of chains and the shuffle of footsteps echo throughout the cavernous sitting room. Even Lemon Pantsuit’s eyes are wide and gluttonous as everyone turns to look at item #401, pushed forward by the assistant who has been handing out prizes all morning.

A man. The item is a man. His hair hangs past his shoulders and obscures his face, his head down and gaze at his dirty sock-clad feet. His wrists and ankles are bound by chains, but he looks like he’s too broken to struggle. The bruises and scars all over him, some fresh and some faded, tell a story of pain. Every time Szu Szu looks at the left side of Axl’s face, she’s reminded that some people’s suffering is written on the body, like a map that graphs history, legacy, and the people, things, whatever that put them there. Apart from the flesh wounds that litter her body like shitty drunken tattoos, Szu Szu’s pain is on the inside. This man—she shudders to think as little of him as an item at a fucking auction—is a masterpiece of violence in shades of white, pink and red.

Except—there are no scars on his left arm. While it looks like it’s made of flesh and bone, from the shoulder down it’s as black as oil, with crack-like veins spiderwebbing along it. His muscles are prominent, as though whoever was holding him captive worked him to the bone. She hurts looking at him.

Axl lets out a gut-punched noise. “Szu…”

“Fuck,” Szu Szu says. “Fuck Leming, for real.”

“We can’t—you know we can’t—they’re a person.”

“I know, fuck.”

Szu Szu takes a breath to think it out. Buck Leming, by all accounts their boss, or at least the client that pays them the most money, can be summed up as a psychopath in a bolo. He once drove a 16th Century Bolivian spear through his assistance’s neck because of a typo on a memo. When asked why, Leming replied, “The kid’s dyslexic. He’s not cut out for this kind of work,” and then went back to his conference call with the former prime minister of Japan. He wouldn’t let anyone clean up the body until the blood stained the rug so deep it couldn’t come out; the patch of dark red, almost black on the orange stripes of the tiger’s pelt, served as a reminder to all who would think about crossing him.

It’s this anecdote that dominate’s Szu Szu’s mind. She really, really doesn’t want to make him angry at the risk of being on the end of that spear. While it’s likely she could take Leming in a fight, he has armed guards, two samurai, and a witch on staff who follow him wherever he goes. Even if she could get close enough to—what? Knife him? Blow some belladonna onto him?—he is so highly protected that it either wouldn’t do anything, or he’d recover if it did. Either way, both she and Axl would be staining his carpet soon enough.

Or maybe they could run. They could run away forever, and ever, and ever, and ever. They’d never be able to go back home, they’d never be able to see Mrs Glock, and Szu Szu would never get to take Harmony to her first abortion when she’s old enough. They’d be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

Szu Szu takes another breath. They’re not only talking about disobeying a client—and not just any client—but they’re also talking about rescuing a guy who doesn’t have a name, is covered in scars and bruises, and is also shackled for some reason. Szu Szu goes through a list of questions in her mind. Who is he? They may never know. Why would they save him? Because they’re good people. Probably. Maybe. Where would they take him? Back to his family or his home. What if he doesn’t have a family or home? Then they’d drop him off at a hospital and tell him good luck.

Even before she turns to Axl, she knows what’s going to happen.

Axl stands up without warning, quick enough to push the chair back. He holds the scroll above his head, for some reason—probably for the drama. “I’ll trade a 7th Century scroll written by the witch Dionora, consort of Queen Brunhild.”

Lemon Pantsuit turns her attention from a man holding what looks like a cross between a giant snail and an octopus to stare at him. “And what, per chance, is written on this scroll?”

“A spell in Old Friesian to destroy crops.”

Lemon Pantsuit purses her lips. “Sold.” The gavel banging on her lectern is a scarier sound than the imps screaming as Szu Szu stepped onto the grass, barely seven years old, shivering in her hand-me-down cardigan. Even then she didn’t back down from a challenge, and as scared as she is, she’s proud that Axl stands up when he needs to.

They trade twin expressions of shock. Axl glances to the assistant, who pushes the scarred man forward for the last time. He holds out a key, and Axl hurries to take it.

“Be a dear and wait until you’re well out of the grounds to unlock this one, won’t you?”

Axl nods, his face pale. As gently as he places a hand on the scarred man’s arm, the look of concern he wears is plain for someone as adept at reading Axl’s expressions as Szu Szu is. The look snaps her out of her reverie and pulls her out of her seat. Lemon Pantsuit and her assistant stare at her as though she’s taking a shit on their picnic rug, and in response she bares her sharp teeth in a savage frown.

Her heartbeat ratchets up—too quickly, the right speed, or not quickly enough, it’s hard to tell. When she joins Axl, they scurry out of the Whittaker mansion with the sensation of demon dogs snapping at their heels. The scarred man drags his feet and stumbles to keep pace with them, out the front door, down the steps, and 300 metres across the gravel driveway. Szu Szu’s heart pounds the whole time, like it does in a fight, the adrenaline coursing through her body in preparation for the high she’ll get when it’s done. She salivates like a dog at the feeling, coasting on it until they reach Demon Daddy, the truck’s camo pink hull gleaming in the afternoon light. Once they’re inside, Szu Szu breathes again.

They sit the scarred man in the back of Demon Daddy, on one of the bench seats Szu Szu and Axl built into the wall from café booths. He seems catatonic at best. He won’t look at them, his hands rest in his lap, and his feet curl together under the weight of whatever he’s been through.

“Hey,” Axl says, crouching down next to the man, while keeping enough distance to be respectful and not spook him. Szu Szu knows all of Axl’s tricks, especially from the times she’s seen him rescue people from burning buildings and give them care. “My name’s Axl. This is Szu Szu. We’re not going to hurt you, okay? I’m just going to take these chains off.”

Axl holds the key out and reaches towards the man’s wrists. Before he can get the key in the lock, the man pulls his hands back, shit startled, scared shitless, and shitting bricks. Szu Szu reacts within a split second: she pushes Axl out of the way, but the step in his direction brings her within the scarred man’s reach, and the swing of his arms connects his fist with the side of her head. She falls backwards onto her arse, knocked silly. Not her finest moment. It’s stupid of her, actually. She kicks herself mentally as the residual pain of getting knocked flat pounds through her skull and tailbone, two-for-one gold medals in the stupid olympics.

Axl cries out when he sees the scarred man hit her, but neither he nor Szu Szu react against him. He scrambles away from them towards the door. Demo Daddy’s doors are fitted with a suction mechanism to keep them from opening during transport, so he doesn’t get far when he tries to escape.

He gives up on the door, sinking to the floor instead. “Sorry,” he says, the first word out of him burnt to a crisp from his unused throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—“ He curls in on himself, a frightened and wounded animal.

“It’s okay,” Szu Szu says, though she rubs the side of her jaw as it swells. “You got a mean swing, Rocky.”

Axl says, “Can I take your chains off? I think you might feel better.”

The scarred man nods slowly. When he looks up at them for the first time, Szu Szu startles. It’s his eyes—instead of colour, his irises are completely white. He has pupils, limbal rings, and red veins in the whites of his eyes, but no colour. His body may be a work of violence, but his eyes, or his irises at least, are a blank slate. What those whites must have seen, Szu Szu shudders to think about.

Axl doesn’t startle—there’s not much that can upset him, but the appearance of the man, his scars, his lack of shirt and shoes, the fact that he was shackled—clearly had an effect. Axl moves slowly and unlocks the shackles with care. Szu Szu watches the man watch him, and watches Axl look at the man. There is a small moment that she catalogues for later as the oh moment in Axl’s mind. He smiles, looks down, and frowns, but when he looks back up, his expression is clear and innocent. The man swallows and his spectacular eyes well up slightly.

Szu Szu rolls her own eyes. This time next year, she’ll be planning their wedding.

“Okay, let’s get out of here before they try to take him back. You right to stay here with him? I’ll drive.”

Axl nods, not looking away from the man.

“Uh, hey, do you have a name? We can’t call you item #401 for the rest of your life. Which, if we run into Leming, will be short.”

He glances over to her and then down at his feet. “I don’t remember my name. I don’t remember where I’m from, or anything before a few days ago.”

“Hm, okay. What would you like to be called?”

The man glances up again, shock evident on his face. “I don’t…” He takes a breath. When he looks back at Axl, it seems to give him strength. “What you called me before… Rocky. I like the name Rocky.”

Szu Szu smiles. “Rocky it is then. Welcome aboard Demon Daddy, Rocky. She’ll take good care of you.” She opens the back door to get in the front cab, still smiling. Whatever happens next, this is the moment that starts the rest of their hero’s journey.