Urban Folk Tales Flash Fiction Friday. - Cue: sick, prick, flick, stick, lick.

Trixie break bottle to challenge Fancy the night the boy come and start to work Back Bar.
It was like stick fight and the two drew power from the crowd. The lines were drawn and the crowd behind each stepped quickly, swirling and shuffling, a liquid unit behind them as they as a postured, throwing long shadows into the corners. Some of the people were out for laughs others out for blood. Most of them were looking for a kinda passive vengeance at some slight or hurt feel from either Trixie or Fancy that they hadn’t the courage to carve out for themselves.
It was an ancient dance, slow and rhythmic, with sudden syncopation like lightening when they sliced the air with their chosen bois. Fancy’s was the long barbershop razor she kept hidden in her breasts that she released with a soft flick as Trixie had break her bottle. Is like she know what was coming. The signs was showing that night.  

The noise of the crowd pierced through everything: crying screaming women, men laughing, side scuffles and tables being thrown around the walls. Underscoring the story unfolding just as the drummers would by the fire at the edge of a Gayelle.

Then sirens. Just so the fight mash-up. People start to run out the bar and some of the regulars try to drag Fancy and Trixie away.

“I never once disrespect you and you mad to break bottle for me? Well mam Trixie from today, today yuh meet yuh death with me! Anywhere I see you I goin to lick you down!”

“Fancy you does get on like you know something d rest of we don't know. You so mighty dey on yuh bar stool like you better than some-fuckin-body.”

“I BETTER THAN YOU. I AM BETTER THAN YOU!”  The shout cracked and turned almost to a wail. She was enraged but I could hear real tears in there. In all my days I never see Fancy get on so. Never hear her shout and certainly never hear her talk anything but the queens very English. “Is I who clean you up and carry you to the hospital de two times you lost them chirren right here on the barroom floor. Is I who had to buy bleach to come back to scrub blood off the people floor! After that you went back again and is I who carry you by Mother John for Bush Bath and rituals when you said that God was taking too long to give you baby. Is I who sit down here the j'ouvert morning filling out forms by the light of the Rhythm Section, missing my sweet j'ouvert to make sure the boy get the small scholarship while you in the back, drunk, taking prick for rum money before you disappear with the Indian who yuh say look like a Bollywood star. Same said Ash Wednesday morning you were nowhere to be found is I throw mihself together to get to the school in time to lie and tell the people that he mother home, sick. Is I who…Trixie girl you still don’t know what life is? Well then I’ve failed you because I know exactly what life is. I know that stinking, ungrateful people like you will look back on your life and never remember what friends have done for you. You will sit there in your rocking chair and say boy I had it to do but somehow I made it work. And that's the way it's supposed to be. That's what friends are for to make sure you get through.” 

This was more like the Fancy I knew although now she suddenly looked old and sad.

“I’ve spent all these years trying to make sure that you don't end up like me. An old whore with no one to claim you the morning you wake up dead. How many more years do you think I have out here? You can't be a ho forever and my time has expired twice over. I can barely afford to pay my room and buy toiletries. How much canned tuna will I eat until I turn into a real fish? I tryin to save you from this shit i livin. So if you don’t want him, let me have him because that is my child as much as is yours. Let me have a familiar face to save me from my own black future.”

Life - It ain't easy but it sweet!