Author's Note: Well, I couldn't resist. Really, I couldn't. With the one year anniversary of Diabo's first chapter being posted, I decided that it called for some kind of celebration. I wasn't sure at first what I wanted to do, but then I decided that maybe I would write something to commemorate its birthday. And, given that the topic of this short story was touched upon but I wasn't going to explain it further in the text, I figured that it was a perfect thing to expand outside of the main fic. It will be four chapters long – here's the first one.

(and, of course, if someone would – oh, I don't know – like to do something in celebration of Diabo's birthday, that would just be swell… )

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor stake any claim, to any of the original newsboy characters – they are the property of Disney. The characters Stress belongs to me. This short is part of the a Maldição de Diabo universe.

--

Prelude to a Curse

--

August 3, 1900

Jack Kelly's head was throbbing. Not that that was unexpected, really. Ever since he hit the darkest and seediest pub down on the south end of the Tenderloin, he had been downing glass after glass of some unknown dark, thick liquid. It wasn't sarsaparilla – the drink he had started the evening off ordering – but it was doing exactly what this trek into the wickedest part of Manhattan was meant to do: dull the pain.

Not the physical pain, of course; the amount of liquor he had surely ingested was bringing about the worst headache he had seen in all of his eighteen years. No… he had chanced entering a dive such as this in the hopes that he could just forget.

There were beads of sweat popping out along his furrowed brow. With a halfhearted swipe at the slick moisture, he brushed the sweat away before it had the chance to drip down and sting his already bloodshot eyes. Groaning, he then raised his hand and pushed his shaggy, sandy hair back. His face was nearly drowning inside his umpteenth glass; the front locks kept falling forward, irritating him.

In a way, the irritation – even the damn pounding – was better than the grief. Far better.

He lifted his head, gently so as not to agitate the rhythmic pounding, and lazily reached for his drink. He lifted it to his mouth and tilted it back, only to find that the sip that followed was nowhere near the mouthful he had been hoping for.

Placing it back down on the sticky surface of the bar, he slid his brown eyes over. He made out the balding fat bartender down at the end, carefully wiping out the inside of a pewter tankard with a damp rag. Crooking his finger, Jack motioned for him to join him at his end of the bar.

The man caught Jack's eye and raised one of his rather bushy eyebrows. Nevertheless, he placed the semi-clean tankard down and slung his rag over his shoulder. He waddled over to where Jack was currently hunched over his empty glass. "Another one, lad?" His rich brogue was evident and Jack could not but help smile sadly again, just as he had done every other time the bartender spoke. The Irish accent was just too familiar and the pain was still too real; he had not had enough to drink yet.

Jack rapped his knuckles against the wooden top, ignoring the dirt that coated his fingers when he lifted his hand up. "Keep 'em coming," he replied, his voice thick and only slightly slurred.

A look of faint concern flittered across the man's face. Torn between retaining Jack's business and giving the boy enough to drink that he eventually killed himself or refusing the boy and having Tiny toss him out onto the street, he was not sure what was the better of two evils. On the one hand, he appreciated the boy's business but, really, was it worth it to deal with a corpse later on in the evening?

When the bartender did not automatically reach for the green glass bottle, Jack thought he might understand what was going on. Grumbling under his breath, he reached into his trouser pockets and pulled out a handful of coins: coppers, nickels, and even a Barber quarter. He slammed them down on the bar. "How much can that get me?"

Any qualms that the bartender might have had prior to that disappeared as soon as the coinage was splayed out before him. With a greedy smile, he made a great production of tallying up the money that Jack had offered before hurriedly scooping it up and moving it out of the reach of any of the patrons sitting at the bar. When he returned, he had the green bottle back in hand. "Taking in account how much of me special brew you've had, I figure that about covers your tab. But you do get one more drink." He placed the mouth of the bottle against Jack's empty glass and started to pour.

Jack lifted his head so that he could watch the slow, sludge-like flow of the drink. The bartender could see how far gone the boy already was and, when that thick, dark liquid only halfway filled the glass, he pulled the bottle away. "There you are."

He waited a moment to see if the boy was sober enough to argue that he had been gypped. Jack did not say anything – he was too busy taking a swig from his glass – so he moved away. The boy would thank him in the morning; too much of that stuff was enough to give even the most hardened of drinkers a painful hangover.

Jack smacked his lips together, his glass still in hand. For a moment, Stress's face vividly flashed before his eyes, cutting through the haze of his stupor. He could just imagine what she would say to him if she could see him now. Hiding away in some dank, derelict tavern, getting piss drunk so that he would not have to deal with the truth of the date.

August third. One whole year, already. Shit. I just… I just can't believe it. One year… I need more… more… more whatever the hell this mug keeps giving me.

Taking another mouthful of his drink, he let it dribble down his throat slowly. It was a sharp taste and he could almost feel it burning his tongue but he refused to swallow it entirely. It was strange, and it was painful, but it reminded Jack that he was alive.

She wasn't, though. And, if she was, she would have smacked him upside the head for the cowardly way he was acting.

Tears were welling in his eyes but, whether they were from the strong liquor, the upset that was continually gnawing at him or shame at the way he was hiding, he was not sure. He swallowed, ignoring the growing lump in his throat, before wiping roughly at his eyes.

The warm moisture – he refused to think of the dampness as tears for real men, regardless, do not cry – caused the near permanent ink stains on his hands, remnants of a childhood selling newspapers on a street corner, to smear messily. He snorted at his own weakness before forcefully dropping his hand.

It took a few seconds for his dulled senses to register the fact that his hand fell rather hard against the hard, wooden countertop. It smarted and, when the rest of his body knew that his hand was in pain, he winced, a curse word muttered before he could stop himself.

He stood up from his barstool, shaking his hand fervently in an attempt to dispel the throbbing that had transferred from his head to his hand. Continuing to curse under his breath, he glared at the offending counter top. Maybe it was all the liquor he had had, but it was almost as if the inanimate wooden structure was smirking at him. He just glared back.

Nothing seemed to be going right for Jack. First he had to deal with the fact that it had been an entire year since Stress Rhian's unexplained slaying. Then he had to endure David's insistent comments that, sooner or later, the truth would be revealed and they would finally understand who killed the girl and why – the Mouth's voice had gotten pretty preachy after awhile, which explained why, perhaps, Jack had chosen a night alone in the grittiest bar in the Tenderloin over spending another moment in David Jacobs' company.

And now this. An evening of drink – two days worth of earnings spent – and he was worse off now than when he began. Maybe it would have been better, as Kloppman had kindly suggested, staying in his bunk, with his thin blanket pulled over his head.

The room was beginning to spin just then and his hand, the hand that was still twinging, shot out to steady him. For one brief second, Jack's head cleared and his eyes widened. The moment passed before he knew it and his stomach decided it was high time for a revolt. His shoulders jerked, his knees buckled and his stomach heaved.

Now, Jack did not drink very often – his visits to the pub surely increased following his girl's murder, but not by much; however, whenever he did, he was quite good at holding his liquor. But this time… it was close. He was able to keep the contents of his stomach down but only just.

Burping silently, his nose wrinkling at the rancid smell of regurgitated booze, Jack steadied himself a second time. He blinked and lifted his head up. Not a one of his fellow pub-goers had even noticed his spell and, for that, he was grateful. This was not the sort of place that he wanted to get sick in.

He took a tentative step forward. The ground seemed much firmer – or, perhaps, his knees weren't so wobbly – so he took another one. He rubbed his hand across his face, glad that the wave of nausea had let him be.

Taking that as a sign that his night was coming to a close, Jack decided that it was time to begin the mile and a half walk back to the lodging house on Duane Street. Earlier that night, it had seemed like such a brilliant idea to head into the Tenderloin; the red-light's ill reputation coupled with the distance from the lower east side meant little chance that he would be disturbed. But now… he was beginning to think that it wasn't that great of an idea, after all.