Fictober 2022 | Day 7 | Deep Water Prompt #2611

Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash

❝I wake up in a bed that isn’t mine, with a cursed ring on each stupid, beautiful finger.❞

Now I know what you’re thinking--hello, it’s Vegas, I really should’ve expected this. The problem is, I didn’t drink anything but virgin drinks last night, because I needed a clear head but also to blend in at the club. So I had one of my henchmen (Dex, a whizz at mixing drinks and poisons) replace the bartender for the night so I wouldn’t blow my cover of party woman by obviously imbibing non-alcoholic drinks.

So how did I end up here, in a heart-shaped bed in a room liberally decorated with red and white kitschy romantic decor, with a floor strewn with wilted rose petals, wearing the cursed rings I was trying to track down?

As I’m blearily staring at them and their twinkling malevolence in the light streaming through window to my left, exacerbating the pounding of my head, I hear footsteps approaching. The unfamiliar bedroom’s door opens, revealing--

My favourite henchman.

Bewildered betrayal lances through me. “Bane?”

“Hey boss,” he says, with his usual bashful smile. Bane’s holding a tray with a glass of water and a bottle of pills on it, looking comically small in his enormous hands, as most things besides weapons do. “How you doing?”

“How am I—what the hell happened last night?” I splutter, scrambling upright and discovering, to my relief, that I’m not naked, soon followed by a wave of unease, since I’m wearing a shirt and shorts that are not mine, which I do not remember putting on.

“Ah,” Bane says, setting the tray carefully down. “Well…long story short…the rings married us.”

I blink rapidly at him, wondering if I’ve temporarily lost my mind or something, to have heard him say what I just heard him say. If it weren’t Bane I’d think he was joking, but Bane doesn’t joke. He doesn’t get jokes. It’s why he’s my top henchman as well as my favourite; he’s totally honest, and that’s a miracle to find in any circles, never mind the ones I run in.

That kills my suspicions of him flat, thankfully, but it doesn't resolve anything else, not even a little bit.

“Married us,” I repeat flatly. “Married us.” 

He nods placidly, like this isn’t utterly and completely a deviation from the plan. No, I'm no surprised about the rings doing anything; they’re cursed, they’ve got a consciousness of their own, which is what makes them so damned—and I mean that literally—valuable. No, it’s the married us part I’m struggling with. I was supposed to be out of their range of influence!

They weren't supposed to affect me at all. Last night was recon only; until I could find a way to nab the rings without them doing anything to me.

I exhale slowly, trying to keep my panic and fury at bay, squeezing my eyes shut and flapping my hand blindly towards the glass of water. Bane helpfully hands it to me and shakes out two pills so I can knock it all back and try and remember anything from last night that could explain how things could have gone so badly when I planned everything so carefully.

But the last thing I remember was spotting my mark saunter towards the VIP section of the club, and then it’s like I got clocked over the head, nothing but blackness. It certainly feels like I got clocked over the head—my skull aches, but in that way that feels like blunt force trauma rather than a roofie.

(Trust me, I can tell the difference, and anyway, Bane and the others wouldn’t have let me get roofied.)

I open my eyes and fix him with a firm look, even though it makes my head throb worse. “Bane, honey, long story short isn’t gonna cut it. Give me the full story. ”

“Ok boss,” Bane says, his craggy face going apologetic. “So it mostly went just like you said it would; Mr. Ponsonby came in and went straight for the VIP section, and he had the rings with him…”

Fictober is a challenge where writers respond to a prompt a day for the whole of October.
This year's prompts are from Deep Water Prompts on tumblr.