Chapter 16
Life’s a Peach and then You Die
CORMAC
“What’s your problem?” Skyler asks, pulling me from flicking through the camera angles on my phone of Brigit’s apartment.
I barely shoot a glare up to him before going back to watching her storm around her apartment in a flurry, “What do you mean?”
“You’re even more of a sourpuss than usual,” he shrugs. “More like who you were before you got your eggs scrambled.”
Deciding to tackle what’s bothering Brigit in person later, I finally give Sky my full attention. “Are you sure you’re ready to talk about before my incident now? You haven’t even drunk yourself half to death yet.”
“Fuck you for that,” he laughs, but the sound is laced with a rage I imagine he only lets out during his fights when he’s wailing on someone until they’re unconscious. "I'm just saying, your different personalities are throwing me for loops man."
"You can't keep dodging my questions about what happened, Skyler," I open the door to the distillery, the malty scent assaulting me immediately.
While the smell of yeast and fermentation certainly isn't the most pleasant, it feels like home to me.
Like the only part of the real me I have left between the scars, the tattoos, the fucking think pieces on the news about why I turned out this way and how the justice system needs reform because criminals like me shouldn't get a trial.
Everyone around me, even the strangers, seems to know me better than I know myself, and it's exhausting. The paranoia, the instinctual drive for violence, the depraved thoughts constantly barraging my mind— it’s all twisting me into a perversion of who I once was.
"I'm not dodging," he shrugs. "I'm choosing not to tell you."
With a scoff, I walk away from him, headed towards what I do remember. The barrels that hold my first love.
Since long before I should have been drinking, I felt the pull to create beauty out of this strange chemical reaction. Turning what is essentially rot into something to be enjoyed. Decay can be transformed into growth.
"But we're partners. We're supposed to be friends."
He shrugs, "We are friends. But dragging you into my personal life almost got you killed. Now that you're free from the knowledge of it, it feels like a betrayal to you to bring you back into it."
"I'm fucking in it," I argue, checking my phone again, Brigit's strange mood tempting me to abandon this altogether and go force my way into her head to see what's happening in there. "But you not telling me how or why leaves me rudderless."
He groans dramatically, "You're ruining a perfectly good day of drinking."
"We're taste testing," I remind him. "Nobody is getting drunk today."
With a wild grin, he lets himself into the private office, holding the door open for me, "We can at least get a little buzz. A little tipsy turny, ya know?"
"No, we can't," I remind him, holding back a laugh at his ridiculousness. "I'm driving and you have to manage the front of house tonight since Stella is off for a few days."
"Boo."
My eyes land on a spread of whiskeys and mead, each with its flavor profile and creation process on a little card propped up in front of it.
From what Skyler wouldn't tell me and I had to piece together, some of our staff still don't feel super comfortable near me.
They set it up before bolting—not that I blame them.
They didn't quit, and that's good enough for me.
Sipping the first one, I feel a balm settling over my soul, like returning home after years away. It may not be the best-tasting whiskey I've ever had, but the familiar smooth, smoky flavor is warm and comforting.
"If you're not going to tell me, I'll just keep asking Stella," I threaten between sips.
"I don't tell her shit either."
"Fine. Then you're fired."
He spits out his drink, laughing hysterically, "You can't fucking fire me, Fomori. You're stuck with me even when you can't fucking stand me. Which, is like, a lot. But I think most of the time you're pretending."
"I'm definitely not pretending right now," I mutter.
His smile shrinks. "Look, man, it's just ugly stuff. I wish I could get my head knocked open a few times to shake some of the memories out. I'm fucking jealous that you get to forget some of the shit we've seen."
"Jealous?" My jaw drops in disbelief.
He nods, moving onto the next dark liquor, swirling it in the glass before inhaling the aroma, "You've seen your crime scenes.
Those are nothing compared to what we've seen others do.
Every one of your victims deserved what they got and worse.
I can't close my eyes without seeing some of the shit.
Can't fucking sleep without drinking myself to it sometimes. "
I swear for a second I can hear emotion in his voice, a clogged throat, and a stuttering of his words.
"And it started with your stepdad?" I ask, not sure if he'll actually answer this time.
He nods, "Yeah. I knew he was into shady shit when I was a teenager, but I don't think I even realized the depths of it. Not until I was about to move out.”
"What was he doing?"
"Selling virginities to the highest bidder," he throws back the drink in one swig.
Jesus Christ.
"And, what? You tried to turn him in, got him busted?"
"Nah," he laughs. "I stole a cherry out from under his nose."
"Whose?"
He doesn't answer, grinning like a madman.
"His daughter? Your stepsister," I fill in the blanks. "Are you fucking stupid?"
With a heavy sigh, his manic grin falls, the mask of indifference with it. "You're not getting it, Cormac. He was selling his daughter's virginity. Getting ready to pimp her out to some fucking middle aged sicko who was going to take it by force."
"So you fucked her first."
The first frown I've ever seen him really wear pulls his lips down, "She fucking begged me.
And not like in a hot please daddy way, but in a desperate, tears running down her face kind of way.
She hadn't been allowed out of the house enough to find anyone else to do it.
Wasn't allowed to date. She was going to kill herself to avoid what those men would do to her. So she begged me and I obliged."
"I'm sure it was a real sacrifice," I scoff.
A sad smile turns the corner of his mouth, "Yeah, well, it wasn't so bad until she fessed up to her dad and he came after me for ruining his product."
"He tried to kill you for that?" I shouldn’t be surprised, honestly. Some people only see others as something to use for their own gain. "What about your mom? She didn't try to protect her stepdaughter?"
He shakes his head, "Nah. She kept her head buried in the sand and pretended she didn't know where all the money was coming from.
I didn't find out Maeve had spilled the beans until her dad's knife was stuck between my fucking ribs.
It had been years since it happened. I thought I was off the hook when Stella and I vanished and changed our last name before he could try that shit with her. "
Fucking hell.
"And I tore him off of you," I fill in what little I do know of this story.
He nods, reaching to finish off my glass. I take the last of it, though it's not much, just to keep him from indulging too much.
The third and fourth drinks are meads with different fruit juices and honey combinations to find a new spring specialty. Peaches and honey from just this side of the border in North Dakota.
Fortunately, it's a lot harder to get someone drunk on mead than it is on whiskey, so Sky is gonna be forced to slow down.
"Yeah you fucking snatched that big bitch like he weighed nothing," he laughs.
"He took his knife with him, which hurt even worse than it did going in. He slid it across your neck, and that was the last mistake he ever made. I swear to god all the color in your eyes was swallowed by black, your blood was running down your arms and fingers while you beat him to a pulp. Then you strangled him so hard I thought his head was gonna fly off.”
"Jesus," I mutter.
Skyler shrugs, "Like I said, not pretty, but I'm not sad about a predator getting taken out before he can hurt anyone else."
"And what happened with Maeve?"
"Haven't seen her since I snuck out of her room that night with her virginity still coating my dick," he reaches for the card.
"This is the one. The whiskeys are fine, they'll make good cocktails, but this is what people will buy the most. Call it something cute like Life's Peachy or Life's a Peach and Then You Die. Then we can make it a Halloween launch. A seasonal exclusive.”
His bouncing back and forth between topics unnerves me. His cavalier attitude about the first time I ever took someone's life just segueing into what to call a drink leaves me feeling sick.
"You're being so... normal about it. Like murder and booze are just another day in the life for you," I comment, scratching the back of my head.
He barks out a small laugh, "I hate to break it to you, man, but it is just another day in the life for us.
Taste testing alcohol and discussing our next murder was sometimes what we did during a day shift.
But, if you wanna get technical, that wasn't murder.
It was self defense. What we did afterwards is murder. "
"What did we do?" I'm almost afraid of the answer.
"I'm so glad you asked, Cormac," he grins. "We took down his whole operation. That was our first real foray into this whole vigilante thing. It's where you learned you like carving them up and I like putting their sins on display for the world to see. You slice, I expose."
"And that's how officer what's his name found us?"