Weekly Drabble #208: Don't Worry; Be Happy! (Patreon)

This week's drabble prompts are 'theme park' from EBB and 'the lost and the damned' from Xpholia. In this story, we return to the setting of Where No Light Shines. Specifically, we're back spending some time with Charlie Chuckles and Party Central as she continues her self-imposed mission of putting a smile on everyone's face. Enjoy and remember the forty-eighth Rule of Acquisition! "The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife."

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Don't Worry; Be Happy:

The voices were whispering to her again, drawing her back to consciousness as they chattered, giggled, sang and called to her in a never-quite-ending cacophony that stilled only when the Ringmaster’s insensate presence stilled them. Charlie inhaled sharply as she felt him brush against her in greeting. Even in these brief caresses, he was almost overwhelming. It was as if she stood in the shadow of an eclipse that would never end, but instead of being cast into the cold and dark, Ringmaster brought light, life and excitement.

He never spoke, at least not in words but she understood him. From the first time she’d woken in her cell aboard this ship shivering and terrified, Ringmaster had been there, like a second heartbeat pulsing inside her head. He’d sensed something in her, something special. Something joyful.

Not too long ago, this ship hadn’t been a happy place. Its former captain had been a husk of a man who only felt alive when blood was on his hands. He’d never smiled so much as grimaced and the Ringmaster had tired of him. In Charlie, Ringmaster had seen potential. At first, she thought she’d been going mad. But she hadn’t. She was just... learning how to be happy. Ringmaster’s old captain hadn’t understood, even though Charlie had done her best. Some people just wouldn’t let themselves feel simple, unabashed joy. Not her, though. Every day, she did her best to put smiles on everyone’s faces and be madly, constantly, furiously happy.

Charlie cleaned up in the shower. The walls shivered and pulsated along with her body under the hot, steaming water. She dried herself off, looking at herself in the mirror. One side of her pale hair was dyed pink, the other green. The colour was fading. She’d have to dye it again soon, but there was still a little life left there.

The door to her quarters chimed. “Come in,” she called. Emily entered, summoned by the Ringmaster. She was Charlie’s favourite helper. Emily was about ten years younger than Charlie herself and a very petite thing. She had smiling suns and moons all over her clothes and there were bright streaks in her dark hair. She was always smiling. At first, she’d been all moody and dour, completely lacking that can-do,upbeat attitude that Charlie liked to see. It had spoiled the atmosphere more than once. Ringmaster had suggested putting Emily in one of the entertainment vistas, but Charlie had disagreed.

Every proper entertainer needed a good sidekick; though none had so far worked out for Charlie, she’d seen the potential in Emily. The other woman just needed a little help, that was all. Help just like Charlie had needed to see the bright side of things. Originally, Charlie had been more direct in putting a smile on Emily’s face, but these days, the smaller woman’s grins were completely genuine, and once her makeup was on, you could hardly even see the scars on her cheeks.

Emily opened Charlie’s closet. “What would you like today, Chuckles?”

Charlie smiled. Everyone here called her that. Charlie Chuckles, that was who she was. The woman who brought laughter and joy to everyone around her. “I like what you have,” she said. “Let’s match today.”

The petite woman found a set of overalls with suns, moons and stars on them and laid them out along with a stained white shirt. It was hard to keep anything truly clean here, but Charlie didn’t mind. Each discolouration was a mark of joy from spreading happiness from the parties and festivities she threw for her guests. Why be sad or irritated about that? It was proof that she was doing good.

Emily came up behind Charlie, gathering up locks of her hair. “What style shall we do today?”

“Let’s keep it simple, Emily. Just twintails for now. They’ll only get messy again later.”

“I don’t mind helping clean them.”

Charlie patted Emily’s arm. “I know. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

The small woman beamed at that.

Soon, Charlie was dressed and with her makeup on. She looked at herself in the mirror, a lovely, happy harlequin. But something was missing... “Oh!” she exclaimed. “A dash of red!” A nice bright red to tie everything together.

Emily held out her right arm as Charlie drew the butterfly knife she carried and slashed it deep across the younger woman’s wrist.  Blood oozed out of the severed veins and arteries and Charlie dragged her fingers through it, daubing the crimson liquid across her face as she drew a red smile over her lips and added lines going down from her eyes. “Much better,” she said as she examined herself again. She kissed her left index and middle finger and pressed them to Emily’s bleeding wrist. The wound closed up again, lickety-split. The blood that had dripped onto the deck was already gone. Charlie could feel a satiated murmur in the back of her head.

“Come on!” Charlie called as she got up and skipped out the door. “Time’s a-wasting!”

Emily bounced after her, following her up to the bridge. The heavy blast doors that protected Party Central’s command center were decorated with bright graffiti and doodles and they rumbled open at Charlie’s approach. As she leapt through the doors, she felt Ringmaster again. Another deep pulse that seemed to both travel from the outside of her body and down into the deepest part of her, while also emanating from that same part and exiting through her tingling skin. Emily gasped and stumbled, her cheeks flushing and the woman bit her lip, trying to catch her breath.

Charlie wagged a remonstrating finger teasingly at her assistant. Everyone seemed to feel Ringmaster’s presence differently. Charlie felt him more like a giant, bubbly warmth that welled up inside her and only came out with enough giggles and big, red-red-red smiles, but Emily tended to have a rather family-unfriendly response. On the times that Ringmaster wanted to be particularly involved in party events, Charlie made sure not to involve her assistant if children were around. It just wasn’t proper, and Party Central always kept its events age-appropriate.

Besides, she had Mopey and the Clowns for the games and jubilees with the little ones. Children loved clowns. She always had. She’d never been scared of them and had always clapped and shrieked with joy whenever she got to see them perform as a little girl. Listening to the excited, eager screams of the children in the audience now always gave her a warm feeling. Everyone loved clowns.

So while Charlie’s favourite sidekick couldn’t attend family events, she was right at home in the more adult-themed soirees. The woman waited for her assistant to regain her equilibrium and then waved her on. Party Central had a large bridge, filled with all sorts of doo-dads and consoles that Charlie was sure was very important. She’d never commanded a ship before, but she learned as fast as she could, and her mission to spread joy across the Ten Stars kept her motivated. She passed by a few attendants. She’d put clown hats with streamers on them to make them look a little more festive. They barely talked, looking straight at their viewscreens or at nothing at all. Their limbs were fused with their consoles, the distinction between flesh and machine becoming blurred.

Charlie skidded to a halt at the captain’s chair, plunking herself into it. The covering was fine human leather, sourced from Party Central’s former captain, his flensed and (very frowny) face now shaped into a permanent grin. In the end, Charlie had indeed made him smile, and he would do so for all time now. “What’s been happening, Pat-A-Trick?”

Patrick O’Neal was her first officer, a man who’d been aboard Party Central since before it was Party Central, one of the passengers that the former captain just hadn’t gotten around to before she’d taken charge. She’d asked him if he wanted to be a stick in the mud feeling sorry for himself in a cell or if he wanted to be happy like her. He’d made the right choice. Sometimes Charlie thought he wasn’t quite as positive as he could be, but he did a good job with Party Central and Ringmaster liked him. I suppose some people just can’t be happy all the time, she thought. It was unfortunate, but the important part was being as happy as you could as often as you could, and that’s what she’d gotten out of Pat-A-Trick.

“Ship’s flying strong and free,” he told her. “No systems issues or technical faults. The plasma shunts are finally back above 95% efficiency. You really motivated the new press-gangs.”

Charlie blushed and waved off her first officer’s compliment. She just had a knack for getting people to see the best way to do things. It didn’t work out all the time, as her chair’s covering attested, but it was like the old saying went: you caught more flies with honey, and she was just a bustling hive of sweet, gooey goodness. It hadn’t taken much, really. Just an inspiring speech and reminder that they were doing their part to spread joy and wonder everywhere they went, along with an example of what happened when you couldn’t turn your frown upside-down.

She tried her best, she really did. But some people just wouldn’t let themselves be happy, so you had to encourage them, and if one bad apple could spoil the barrel... well, then you had to get rid of that surly, mean, rotten old apple, didn’t you? And sometimes you had to show the rest of the apples what happened to grouchy people, especially grouchy people that didn’t want to do their work and tried to interfere with what Party Central was doing.

Charlie just hated that so many people were so opposed to having a little bit of joy in their lives. She just didn’t understand it. She remembered the days when she hadn’t felt like this; naked, filthy and afraid. Sobbing on a metal deck, terrified, whimpering and flinching at every sound and footfall. It was all state of mind, though. Why feel bad like that when you could be happy? And that was important. She wanted everyone to be just like her, but some people... she felt bad for them. But what could you do? You had to stay positive. Now the work crews were back on track, so a lot of good came out of it.

“The laser tag peewee semi-finals ended in sudden death last night,” he reported. “The Winston Wildcats were wiped out, so it’ll just be the Harvey Hammerheads and Jose Jaguars facing off for the championship. Once everyone’s recovered.”

“Good,” she said with a bright smile. “Let the nurses take care of our boys and girls. We’ll move the final match back a couple extra days so they can rest up more and so we can give them a bigger audience.” Party Central always had events going on, from endurance runs and extreme sports for their adult passengers, to wonderful amusements for the children that they brought on board. Laser tag was a perennial favourite and the Jose Jaguars had successfully defended their title for the last two years, but the Hammerheads were strong up and comers. Charlie was excited to see how it would play out.

“We did have a bit of a problem; one of the blue events last night ran out of service staff.”

Charlie cocked her head. “How did that happen?” Blue events were adults-only parties, where special guests and very special attendants could have a very special bit of fun together. She’d been to several, and always enjoyed herself immensely. Sometimes the guests could get a little out of hand, though. But Party Central always had a decent menagerie of eager staff on hand, and a lot of them were just as happy to play as the rest.

“After the festivities started to get... out of hand, the staff that were on call refused to go out and barricaded themselves in a storeroom. They’re still there.”

Charlie made an annoyed huff. That was not the kind of thing she liked to see on her ship. Everyone should be having a good time, whether they liked it or not. “Send the Gentlemen in to dig them out,” she told Pat-A-Trick. “But they’re to be gentle,” she affirmed. “We want them back at work, not being mopped off the walls. That’s all yucky and sad. If even one of them gets hurt, I want to know why.”

“We can always get more...”

She raised a finger in warning. “We make people happy,” she reminded her first officer. The bridge seemed to shiver with Ringmaster’s confirmation of his captain’s statement and the few new members of the crew ducked their heads and looked around anxiously. “If our staff aren’t happy, we aren’t doing our jobs and it’s pretty clear that they weren’t happy last night.”

“They’re not staff,” someone muttered, a young man in a freighter crew’s uniform. He turned pale as his whispered comment suddenly echoed through the bridge.

Charlie leaned over in her chair,looking around Pat-A-Trick. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he lied.

“They’re not staff.” The words repeated from a half-dozen different places, all in his tone of voice.

Charlie hopped down from her chair, prancing over to the officer. “What was that?” she asked again in a cheery tone of voice that made every press-gang on the bridge shiver.

His nostrils flared. “They’re not staff,” he said, finally owning his words. “They’re people that you took from colonies and ships and thought looked pretty so you force them to-”

She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down to her. He had at least six inches and nearly a hundred pounds on her, but he couldn’t pull away. She wasn’t even straining to hold him in place. With her other hand, she flicked open her butterfly knife and pushed it into his mouth. “Everyone has their own way to being happy,” she told him. “We’re just helping everyone find theirs. Don’t you want to be happy?” Ringmaster flickered and throbbed, surrounding her and her people, pressing in. Emily was rasping out fast, quick breaths, her eyelids fluttering, her hands moving under her clothes. Pat-A-Trick looked like he was in a blissful, half-asleep haze. Charlie felt warmth and a glowing, shiny sort of excitement filling her up, making her tingle just as if she was a little girl, watching the clowns in the circus. “Don’t you want to be happy?” she asked again, staring into the officer’s brown eyes.

He nodded. “Yeth,” he spoke carefully around the knife in his mouth.

“Good,” she said. “That’s what we do here. We make people happy, no matter how they want to be. Everyone should be happy and our staff help our guests and crew do that. We all make people happy. I like it when people are happy, because that makes me happy. Do you want to make me happy?”

“Yeth.” The young man’s eyes were watering. The cords in his neck were standing out as he kept trying to pull away from Charlie.

“I’m glad,” she said. Her voice had never been less than absolutely upbeat. “I want you to be happy too, but I’m worried about your attitude. Are you going to change your outlook and focus on the positives? We do a lot of important work here and I need people who are positive.”

“Yeth.”

“You promise?”

“Yeth.”

“Good.” Charlie withdrew her knife from his mouth, letting him go. “I’m glad to hear that. But I think your attitude still needs some fine-tuning. Are you willing to work on that?”

“Yes,” he promised. “Yes, absolutely.”

Charlie’s smile split her face like a lantern in the dark. “Excellent.” She pulled another knife, this one a switchblade, from one of her pockets and held it, handle-first, towards the young man. “Then give me a smile.”

He stared at her, not understanding at first. Emily stepped forward. She was grinning, like she always did. She touched each index finger to the corners of her lips and tracing the lines that Charlie had made when she’d given the smaller woman her own permanent grin. “Give Chuckles a smile,” Emily told him.

The air seemed to thicken. The officer looked around the bridge, but none of his fellow press-ganged survivors would look at him. Charlie’s people did, though,a grin on each of their faces. With a shaking hand, the young man reached out and took the knife, lifting it up to his mouth. Charlie only looked away when he started to cut.

“Find out who was responsible for being so rough on the staff last night,” she told Pat-A-Trick. A little turnover was expected – and sometimes it was the staff being hard on the guests – but not that much. “I want to speak with them. Maybe we can find a better way to channel that energy, but if we can’t... well, I’m sure the other entertainment vistas are open.”

“Of course, captain,” Pat-A-Trick told her. He only rarely called her Chuckles. “I’ll get right on that. In the meantime, I saved the best for last.”

“Oh?” Charlie said excitedly, raising her voice a little over the gagging and sobbing of the officer as he knelt on the deck, clutching at his face. “What is it?” She could feel Ringmaster’s excitement; he had been waiting for this moment.

Pat-A-trick gestured and one of his subordinates brought up data tracks on the captain’s personal display. “We detected this crossing the shipping lanes six hours ago,” he told Charlie. “We’ve been following it under stealth since.”

The woman licked her lips. It was a freighter, with a crew of at least a hundred. A hundred bored, unhappy souls going through their grinding daily routines with nary a laugh or bright moment between them. Eking out a sad living, trying to make money not to enjoy themselves, but to make sure they didn’t starve to death once they could no longer work. A banal, tiresome life far from the joy and excitement that she could offer them. A hundred men and women that she could help.

“You did good, Pat,” she told him. “They haven’t spotted us?” She swivelled in her chair, checking traffic reports and long-range scans. There were no other ships in the area. Just this lone and lonely freighter in desperate need of her aid.

“Not yet. Shall we give them a bit of excitement?”

“No, no. Soon, but no. Let’s get a little closer first and give them a surprise. Everyone likes surprises.” She coquettishly covered her blood-stained lips with one hand. “This will be fun, won’t it?” She asked the question aloud, but it was really only Ringmaster that she was speaking to. She felt him tighten around her, like the best kind of hug there was.

This would be fun. “Then let’s go,” she said to her crew, grinning wide and excited to meet all the new people and show them everything she’d learned about happiness. “Let’s go make some smiles!”