Free Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale by Red Tash Page B

greasy wax paper.
    I’d snarfed down as much of the delicacy as I could before I started thinking about the slimy green skin of the frogs in my Bio lab. The food, the beer, the near-rape, the escape … it was all catching up to me.
    “I’m gonna be sick, dude.”
    Moe pointed me toward the back corner of the bar, and I made a run for it. The band finished the last verse of an Iron Maiden song in shrill ecstasy as I hit the dirty swinging door of the unisex bathroom.
    A girl lay on the floor in the corner of the restroom. Two guys stood over her, smoking and talking quietly. I didn’t want them to see me puking, but there were no doors on the bathroom stalls, so I did what I had to do.
    “You here with Moe?” one of them asked, when I was done.
    I shook my head.
    “Good guy, Moe. Makes short work of it, too!” the other said. They both laughed.
    “Short work of what?” I really didn’t want to talk to them while I blew vomit chunks from my nostrils, but something told me Ms. Manners was out of style in these parts.
    “Eh, never mind us,” the first one said. I looked at him closely. No tusks on this one, or his friend. I felt only slightly safer for the knowledge. There was something shifty about everyone in this place that went beyond the setting and their strange company.
    “No offense kid, but you look like shit,” said the second. “There’s a shower back there—water’s hot and everything. I’ll go get you a new shirt to put on, how about that?”
    “You’re not going to stay and watch, are you?”
    They laughed again, and made mocking faces at one another, in imitation of my shock. I was too tired to be angry.
    “I just want to lie down,” I said. I glanced at the girl on the floor. I could see her breathing, but she hadn’t moved.
    “That’s what she said!” the first man hooted. These two were cracking each other up, the creepy sons of bitches.
    “Look, we’re just giving you a hard time.” The second man leaned down and patted the girl on the floor. “Angie. Angie! Get up, bitch. Get up and help this girl here. She’s a friend of Moe’s.”
    The girl rolled onto her back, right into a puddle of liquid that I hoped for her sake wasn’t urine. She had on way too much eyeliner, and her hair was the blondest I’d ever seen—practically white, but with no hint of silver to it. Despite the unsanitary bathroom and her heavy makeup, she looked clean. Why did everything seem too clean tonight? I was expecting Courtney Love, not a CoverGirl spokesmodel.
    “You two get outta here,” she croaked. “I’ll help Tinkerbell into the shower and get her some clean clothes.”
    “Tinkerbell!” The two guys guffawed as they left the bathroom.
    In a flash the girl was off the floor and had turned a deadbolt on the door. She moved quickly, graceful as a cat. I hadn’t been expecting that, considering she’d just been passed out.
    “You do want some clean clothes, don’t you?” she asked. “Does it matter if they’re a little tight? All we have left are extra small.”
    She moved to a closet built into the wall behind the bathroom door, and pulled it open. A moment later she handed me a pair of stretchy black polyester bell bottoms and a bright green tee advertising the Rustic Frog.
    “I’m going to look like a waitress in these,” I said.
    “They’re left over from the restaurant—before it was the Fog, when it was the Frog. Previous owner left all this stuff.” She eyed my clothes. “Good thing, too, from the looks of it.”
    She walked me to the back corner of the bathroom, where a flimsy shower curtain was attached to the ceiling on rusted hooks.
    “It’s clean. Sorta clean.” She swiped her hand in the air, quickly, and suddenly the shower area sparkled and gleamed. “Probably better to keep your shoes on while you’re in there, but, you know—chance it if you want.”
    She hung a stiff white towel on a nail in the wall next to the shower, and left me alone. I didn’t see