The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Read online

  The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady

  The King Henry Tapes #1

  By Richard Raley

  Copyright 2011 by Richard Raley

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Richard Raley

  http://richardraley.blogspot.com

  www.twitter.com/richardraley

  [email protected]

  Edition: 2014b

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events are fictitious and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, places or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  NOVELS BY RICHARD RALEY

  THE KING HENRY TAPES

  The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady

  The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes

  The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm

  The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny

  The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (forthcoming)

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Sky-Island 1827-E (forthcoming)

  The Betrothal: Or How I Saved Alan Edwards from 40 Years of Hell

  NOVELLAS AND SHORTS

  Prime Pickings: An Eater Short

  Little King Henry: A KH Short

  Conquering Hero: A KH Short

  Friendship is Madness: A KH Short

  Second Take: A KH Short

  Griefing: A KH Short

  A toast to Jeff, Josh, Matt, and Brandon

  Who taught me so many wonderful new words in high school.

  Table of Contents

  List of Mancy Types

  King Henry’s Class

  Session 1

  Session 105

  Session 2

  Session 106

  Session 3

  Session 107

  Session 4

  Session 108

  Session 5

  Session 109

  Session 6

  Session 110

  Session 7

  Session 111

  Session 8

  Session 112

  About the Author

  Sample: The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes

  List of Mancy Types

  Mancy Type – Element (Ultra Title)

  Necromancy – Death (Bonegrinder)

  Pyromancy – Fire (Firestarter)

  Geomancy – Earth (Artificer)

  Aeromancy – Air (Winddancer)

  Hydromancy – Water (Riftwalker)

  Electromancy – Lightning (Stormcaller)

  Cryomancy – Ice (Winterwarden)

  Sciomancy – Shadow (Shadeshifter)

  Spectromancy – Light (Beaconkeeper)

  Floromancy – Plant (Forestplanter)

  Faunamancy – Animal (Beasttalker)

  Mentimancy – Mind (Mindmaster)

  Corpusmancy – Body (Facechanger)

  King Henry’s Class

  Child’s Name (Mancy Type)

  King Henry Price (Geomancer)

  Heinrich Welf (Necromancer)

  Valentine “Boomworm” Ward (Pyromancer)

  Asa Kayode (Hydromancer)

  Miranda Daniels (Aeromancer)

  Estefan Ramirez (Electromancer)

  Debra Diaz (Electromancer)

  Curt Chambers (Spectromancer)

  Malaya Mabanaagan (Spectromancer)

  Quinn Walden (Spectromancer)

  Ronaldo Silva (Cryomancer)

  Raj Malik (Cryomancer)

  Hope Hunting (Cryomancer)

  Miles Hun Pak (Sciomancer)

  Eva Reti (Sciomancer)

  Naomi Gullick (Floromancer)

  Preston “Pocket” Landry (Floromancer)

  Tamiko Lewis (Floromancer)

  Nicholas Hanson (Floromancer)

  Sandra Kemp (Floromancer)

  Patrick “Rick” Brown (Faunamancer)

  Jesus Valencia (Faunamancer)

  Jessica Edwards (Faunamancer)

  Robin White (Faunamancer)

  Athir Al-Qasimi (Mentimancer)

  Isabel Soto (Corpusmancer)

  Samuel Bird (Corpusmancer)

  Yvette Reynolds (Corpusmancer)

  Jason Jackson (Corpusmancer)

  Nizhoni Sherman (Corpusmancer)

  Session 1

  I suppose it’s considered rude to start one of these things with a question. Too abrasive—like a first kiss that includes some tongue. Well . . . screw it, I guess. I’m an abrasive kind of guy, a tongue on the first kiss kind of guy too. A question is how I want to start this bitch; best way to put your mind into the receptive place I want it. To get you thinking outside your cozy little life.

  That question is: have you ever heard of Necromancy?

  Quite a question, ain’t it? Bit dangerous, bit insane. It’s a question that should never be asked. Might as well ask you: do you believe in flying pigs? Simple to answer—you think—but you’re wondering if there’s strings attached.

  That’s good.

  Always look for the strings in life and always have yourself a good pair of scissors. It’s not a simple question, nothing’s simple.

  The answer is: they make TV shows about it. So sure you have, everyone has. Raising the dead, zombie armies, skeleton warriors. All that bullshit. Of course you’ve heard of Necromancy, because necromancers are douchebag showoffs—and a few more of my favorite words on the side—who think too much of themselves. I’ve never met a necromancer I ever liked.

  That’s a string right there. I’ll point it out to you beginners. A big one—need some industrial sheet-metal shears to cut it. Would it surprise you to find out that necromancers ain’t the only mancers around? Well, it probably wouldn’t since that pretty string just confirmed necromancers themselves exist and your mind’s open to possibilities like I want it, but forget that shit for a moment.

  Focus on the story.

  That’s what this tape is supposed to be about—my story for your benefit. So you see the strings I didn’t. So you don’t make the mistakes I made. So you go in knowing there is a game and you are playing it.

  More mancers than necromancers and what is your mind going towards? Pyromancers? That’s right, they exist too. Give yourself a pat on the back, or a cookie with some chocolate chips, you play too many video games and read too much. Pyromancers . . . showoff douchebags too. Throwing around fireballs like they’re in some summer movie with special effects teams to back them up.

  That’s okay though, I like pyromancers. They got style.

  Here’s another string, kiddo: these powers have been around for thousands of years. They have made myth and legend, and go beyond necro and pyro. The oldest of the bastards who taught it to me call it Elementalistic Harnessing of the Anima Natures of Mankind, but to anyone born after the Culture Clash of the 70s, it’s the Mancy and if you use it, on whatever you use it on, you’re a mancer.

  There’s a lot more kinds of mancers than you’d think, lots more mancers than you’d think too. They even got a school for gifted youngsters; some real Charles Xavier meets Hogwarts kind of shit. It’s even called an institute of some sort or another, all official like. Like I ever paid attention to official titles like the Institution of Elements, Learning Academy and Nature Camp or the Elemental Learning Council or all the rest of that turn-of-the-last-century, still-speaking-Latin bullshit, to me it’s just the Asylum.

  The Asylum keeping us all locked away . . .

  I cursed my mother as a selfish bitch every day of my first couple years enrolled for sending me to the place instead of keeping stupid-young-me from
signing his contract, but hell, not like I never called her worse for less.

  What?

  You thought someone with this filthy mouth had a good upbringing? Up until fourteen when I was—expunged—my best parent was my father . . . and he whipped me every other month.

  If you don’t want to hear about it, don’t want to hear the bad words that might burn those ears of yours—then turn off the tape. One click, story ends. I’m only doing this because the woman who owns my soul forced me to, what do I give a crap if you listen?

  Take the string, don’t take the string.

  Stick around though, you might learn a lesson or two, especially if it’s like I expect and this is being used for new students. It might rob you of your expectations of greatness. Get you all good and ready for the disappointment we all experience.

  So fourteen.

  Four-teen.

  I was screwed up beyond all repair by then. Only reason I hadn’t been to Juvie was that I had an extra something the other delinquents didn’t have, not that I realized it at the time of my crimes. All I knew was that I was lucky. Yeah, cursed more like it. But back then, it sure was nice to be sitting in the ShopsMart contemplating stealing some magazines or candy bars or Chinese-assembled electronics when a display magically fell apart to be the distraction I desperately needed.

  Cigarettes and electronics had been my steals of choice right before I was co-opted into another life and if it wasn’t for the Asylum, I’d be well on my way to lung cancer by now, or dead twenty times over. Not from hard stuff like you’re thinking—worse I can admit to is bumming some weed when I could—but from fighting. I loved to get into a fight.

  Still do.

  Here I am, twenty-one years old and I’m lucky to hit five-foot-eight on some very generous tape-measures. Back then, middle school and elementary shitholes with babysitting teachers and cruel lunch-ladies, it was even worse. Some district counselor got all doctor on me and diagnosed it as a Napoleon Complex; that I was trying to prove I was tough despite my size. But it wasn’t that.

  I liked to fight.

  And a little shit like me? Draws bullies like girls with daddy issues to bad boys with motorcycles. And I should know—I’m a bad boy with a motorcycle.

  One word: magnet.

  High-schoolers do nature well, with the hormones flaring they ain’t doing any actual thinking, and picking on the runt to improve the genetic pool by killing it off—that’s as natural as you get. Genetics was the other half of what started the fights, usually when some bigger shit would say I fought so much I had some Mexican in me.

  Racist shit to get pissed over, but I was big on knowing I was pure white trash, something to hold onto back then I guess, as if being an arky-okie hybrid cast-off whose family tree was almost wiped out by a dustbowl is something to be proud of. But back then, I grabbed at anything I could. Even strings.

  Really, playing the racist white boy in a city that is as America is affectionately called, a ‘Melting Pot,’ and unaffectionately called a ‘Shit Hole’—where whites ain’t majority so much as morejority—that just gave me more opportunity to fight, more Mexicans and Asians and Blacks who want to try the little cusser. And that’s what I wanted, and it was the best part of my week to thrown down back then, and it was every week, if not every few days.

  Me fighting someone after school damn near became a school sponsored sporting event by that last year. I can’t say I never lost, but I won a lot too. Hands like steel—more than you know assholes . . . more than you know.

  More than I knew.

  So fighting and stealing and cussing, limping by on ‘Ds’ and the occasional ‘C,’ since the California school system didn’t and still doesn’t give a crap as long as you’re drawing them funds for sitting in your seat. Fucking too. Fourteen and I was well on the way to getting my also white trash girlfriend pregnant by thinking pulling out before the big bang was the best trick ever invented.

  One of those ‘Ds’ was in Sex Ed.

  Probably would have stolen some condoms with the cigarettes if I’d known better.

  Guess you could say I was saved, born again in the blood of the Mancy—by the Asylum, by the Institution of Elements, Learning Academy and Nature Camp. Guess I was. I might be screwed up to this day, I might have never got any of the cussing and cursing out of my system, and only some of the fighting, but they did a good job putting in some education and drawing out that racism, stealing, and all the rest.

  I’m probably better off than the other me, twenty-one with lung cancer and a kid or two of his own to beat just like Dad did me. You’re falling . . . strong enough string will save your life.

  Of course I’m better off; I’m a fucking geomancer, a fucking Artificer. But at the time, fourteen-year-old-me thought he shit gold. Like I’ve said, I was a little screw-up.

  [CLICK]

  September 2009

  It was a hot September day in Visalia, California when I first heard of the Institution of Elements. I’d just gotten home from school, which meant 6PM after I’d finished an hour of detention for cussing in class, followed by some time with the girlfriend if her mom was working, time with the friends if she wasn’t. Friends . . . dickheads-I-hung-with more like, just to keep boredom away. Another bit of nature is safety in numbers, even if you can’t stand the people who make up your numbers.

  Three digits still that year, an extra hot year in an extra hot town and our little shitty house had to make due with a swamp cooler that only worked half the time and probably spewed more mildew than cold air when it did.

  I’d stolen a portable fan from Wal-Mart that I treated like it was gold-plated. I had it chained to my bed with a bike lock to keep my sisters from taking it. Especially JoJo. Or at least . . . that was the reason at the time, they were both moved out by then, one the day she turned eighteen and the other didn’t even wait for then.

  But the fan . . . the fan never got free.

  Just me and my folks, miserable all three of us. Mom was continually drunked out on the couch, but at least she wasn’t a mean drunk, just dead to the world and one time when an older friend came over—frisky. Dad was a mean drunk but he only drank on the weekends. During the week he’d come home after his long day plus four in overtime and smoke a joint in the backyard to help numb out the physical pain, maybe the mental pain too. He’d cook dinner also, which is probably the only reason I ever came home during the week. I’d learned not to come home at all during those weekends when the booze started flowing between Mom and Dad.

  I was a bit surprised to see an unknown car in the gravel driveway. It wasn’t expensive but it was new, which was out of the class of anything Dad or Mom could manage. As far as ours went we had a truck and a SUV, both over ten-years-old and one of them always worked, though which one had a habit of changing every few months.

  So . . . new car and I know something’s up. None of my dad’s friends from the warehouse had new cars either. You’re probably feeling bad for how poor we were, but don’t. Lots more worse off, Dad always said, and he’s right about that. We had insurance at least, and when I got my arm broken in a fight during fourth grade taking on a sixth grader just a bit too big for me, I got it fixed no problem. Plus checkups. Plus dental.

  Take your pity somewhere else, assholes. Turn off the tape and go read “The Note Book” or some other weepy crap.

  Mom and Dad were waiting for me in the kitchen, which on accounts of Dad being the cook made it the cleanest room in the house. Couldn’t do anything about the heat though. Fucking Central Valley summers, never ended when they were supposed to and always tried to sneak their way into Halloween.

  Mom was having a ‘Good Day’. Doctor got his doctor on and said she’s Bi-Polar, an extreme case of it, which means good as in up or hyper and happy. ‘Good Days’ always freaked me out way more than bad ones.

  There was a woman I didn’t know sitting at the table with them—probably just past thirty I guessed, the kind of just-past-thirty you only see in mo
vies or in those celebrity magazines my girlfriend loved to read so much that I stole them for her.

  Wasn’t I romantic?

  This woman would have fit right in. Well, her face and blond hair at least. She was too thick for Hollywood, not enough bone showing, though normal people would call her thin. Her blue eyes were sharp as she took me in, all of five-foot nothing, ratty shirt with some MMA fighter on the back and jeans that probably needed replacing. She had a sharp smile too, so sharp it cut.

  “King Henry Price, this lady wants to speak with you,” Mom said—she only took the lead on ‘Good Days’. Mom smiled too. Pissed me off at the time . . . what woman deserves to smile when she named her kid King Henry? And no, I am not joking about that crap. King Henry Price. Like the height didn’t start enough fights already.

  “I don’t know her,” I eloquently back-talked, resisting the urge to call the lady ‘bitch’ while pulling out a can of generic soda from the fridge.

  A whole three seconds of heaven wrapped itself up in that burst of cold air. Popping the can, I took a sip. If the words I spoke and the cigs I smoked didn’t rot my teeth, I wanted the high fructose corn syrup to do the job for me.

  “Son,” Dad told me, “best be respectful this time.” Dad hunched over a metal chair, his frame settled so heavy on it that if gravity magically turned off it still wouldn’t have floated away.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said to the lady. Huge lie. I’d always done something.

  Her smile cut at me again, amused by me. Annoyed I could do in spades, but amused was new. And, funny enough, I found it annoying. It actually threw me off enough to forget about respect. “What you laughing at, bitch?”

  Dad moved to cuff me across the table—and who can blame the guy?—but the lady waved him off quick enough to stop the blow.

  “My name is Ceinwyn Dale,” she said, “and I am a recruiter for a very special school.” Like I told you, some real Charles Xavier shit. “Would you prefer to be called King or Henry?”