Originally posted at my 6 Sentences account, a social network for writers.
"They kill the ducks," hissed the scrawny young woman, leaning into the garbage can behind me, so that at first I could only see the forest green bandanna hugging her sweaty, dirt-blond hair.
I faced her with my trademark inadvertently-indignant eyebrow scrunch, which I never intend to come off as malicious as it always does. She squeezed her eyelids to retaliate my superficial intensity, latching onto my eyes as she mechanically ripped open the rings of my freshly discarded six pack, staring me down like a fighter, pristine blue icebergs beaming within.
She smelled like really good weed or very bad body odor, perhaps both, which was perfect because she was that unwashed, save-the-world hippie type that really cranks my engine. Sure, they like to pretend they want all of us Suits gone from "their city," the hipness of which my people--and our evil, icky money--allegedly diminish tenfold. But I knew upon first contact with my little eco-heroine, hours before we took turns burrowing one another's perspiring backs into the muddying forest floor, that all she really wanted was to set me right; make me see the light.
Short stories and flash fiction ranging from romance to science fiction to downright creepy.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Swing and a Miss
In my dream, it was someone cheering at a baseball game while I was trying to have a conversation with my cat (if you think that part’s weird, you should also know I fucking hate baseball).
My first thought, as I awoke to hear his final cries for mercy, was of the last thing he had said to me before leaving camp that night: “If there’s grass on the field, play ball.” Now, if there’s one thing I hate as much as a twenty-something pedophile who hides behind the anatomical similarities between an impressionable teenage girl and a grown woman, it’s a slob who takes sports metaphors in vain.
My first thought, as I awoke to hear his final cries for mercy, was of the last thing he had said to me before leaving camp that night: “If there’s grass on the field, play ball.” Now, if there’s one thing I hate as much as a twenty-something pedophile who hides behind the anatomical similarities between an impressionable teenage girl and a grown woman, it’s a slob who takes sports metaphors in vain.
I wasn’t sure when his screams had ended as I was too focused on walking silently toward their fire. Around it, the raucous group--who were very clearly not, as she had said, a group of friends on spring break--lauded the girl’s performance in trapping their dinner, as they passed portions of my buddy from grubby hand to grubby hand.
For hours, until they were all asleep, I hung as soundly as moss to the bark of that tree watching them with dumb, cold reason; a two-hundred-pound man, I calculated, couldn't satisfy a dozen haggard mountainfolk and I’ve never really been a “dessert” kind of guy.Hallowed be What's-His-Name
The Almighty sulked ascetically in his throne, while the angels and saints tried not to acknowledge such, even though he would instantly forgive them.
Michael, in all his haughty glory, voiced without fear, "Oh God, what's
you're problem?"
Omniscient and thereby patient, He tolerated the irreverence--He'd tamed a bit since the fall-out with Luci--and reminded Himself of the promise not to "bottle it up" anymore.
The cork flew and He bubbled quickly, stung by the reminder of His own words, "Why don't they say 'please' in any of their prayers? And when they improvise, it's always 'Lord we
just ask...'; 'We just wish...'; 'We just!'"
Then as any good father would, He laughed it off and soldiered on, grateful to be beloved enough to be taken for granted.
Originally posted at my 6 Sentences account, a social network for writers.
Michael, in all his haughty glory, voiced without fear, "Oh God, what's
you're problem?"
Omniscient and thereby patient, He tolerated the irreverence--He'd tamed a bit since the fall-out with Luci--and reminded Himself of the promise not to "bottle it up" anymore.
The cork flew and He bubbled quickly, stung by the reminder of His own words, "Why don't they say 'please' in any of their prayers? And when they improvise, it's always 'Lord we
just ask...'; 'We just wish...'; 'We just!'"
Then as any good father would, He laughed it off and soldiered on, grateful to be beloved enough to be taken for granted.
Originally posted at my 6 Sentences account, a social network for writers.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Athrogarr the Fool
Athrogarr is the central character in a book that I've been working on for a while now. I'm trying to exercise his character in some settings where I can't rely on the strength of his adventures and the cool characters I'm surrounding him with.
Athrogarr sipped his warm beer at the bar, his massive frame supported by an arrangement of three stools. His skin was covered in a thin layer of mud, a mixture of his sweat and the dust from the trail.
Athrogarr sipped his warm beer at the bar, his massive frame supported by an arrangement of three stools. His skin was covered in a thin layer of mud, a mixture of his sweat and the dust from the trail.
Finril stopped behind Athrogarr and sniffed the air exaggeratedly, his pointy blue nose digging through the air like a spade breaking up soil. The slender Nymph on his arm, her skin tone similar enough for them to be a socially accepted couple but a bit greener, laughed deliciously at his show.
He stopped and took one final deep whiff above Athrogarr and painted a look of disgust across his face.
“Oh!” he laughed, “It is you Athrogarr! I thought some fishermen might have left their day’s catch behind. “
Athrogarr poured the rest of his mug down his throat and slammed it down on the counter, banging for a refill. Melinor was swift to the rescue.
“Anything to do for you, Finril?” the stern old Hill Elf asked, as he poured Athrogarr a fresh cup.
“I’m just consulting the local vanguard, Elf. Thank you,” he said, shooing Melinor away with a dismissive backhand wave.
Melinor, who had other business to attend, did not move. He might have recognized tradition and obeyed reverently when called for, but he wasn’t listening to anyone--Nymph or otherwise--tell him what to do in his tavern. He simply leaned over the counter and glared.
“Athrogarr. Let me ask you this. I hired a guide--that is an actual guide; someone who knows their way around the mountain--to take my lovely here and myself on a little adventure some weekends ago. I think we paid thirty-five-hundred round for it.” He threw out the number as if he hadn’t complained about it for hours, at the time. “Tell me… You bodyguards, vanguards, whatever it is that we’re supposed to say… Do you make thirty-five-hundred round per trip?”
Athrogarr looked at Finril incredulously. “What would I do with thirty-five-hundred round?”
Finril laughed obnoxiously. “Anything you want, you brute!” He slapped the Barbarian on the shoulder and his hand bounced like it had smacked the head of a drum. “Go on a holiday! Buy some wine instead of that muddy grog you all seem to like wallowing in!”
“I like this beer,” Athrogarr reasoned.
Melinor smiled sarcastically at Finril, deflecting his insult.
Finril, guffawed again and started off with his woman in tow. “Alllll right,” he condescended.
As the two rode off on their self-satisfaction. Melinor and Athrogarr met eyes, a silent conversation swapped in mere moments. Their eyes and cheeks seemed to swell until they were both pouring raucous laughter across the bar.
“Can’t believe anyone would actually pay to go up in those mountains,” Athrogarr huffed, as soon as he caught his breath.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
For Dolls and Demons
" 'Sgonna kill ya."
I nearly swallowed my cigarette, its tip not yet fully ignited as my broadened gaze slid toward the cartoon-witch voice coming from the shadows in the alley behind me. The blanket of darkness split and peeled backward, as my confusion did the same, pitifully illuminating both the vagrant woman and her actual meaning: the cigarettes would kill me.
I snorted a single heavy, anxious laugh that made my head tilt back and my chest puff forward, like a six-foot-three PEZ dispenser in the flesh. I shook it off and returned to my vigil.
If the door to "the Casino's" secret entrance were a pet, it would've been put down long ago. It grunted and groaned as it trudged open into the alleyway, rather than in like a proper door. I had read the archaic concrete scrapes perfectly and the door stopped maybe an inch from my nose, the proximity affecting a reflexive wobble in my crow-footed stance.
My balance is always lousy, but if you factor in my nerves, the awkward stance--I could've just stood further back, hindsight has shown me--and the three hearty sips of courage from earlier that night... well, simply put: I was screwed. I lost my balance completely and headbutted the door soundly. The collision swatted the inner doorknob into the kidney of one of Benny's two bodyguards; a bonus.
"What the..." Benny Delgado's shocked expression as I rounded the door was a far sight more intimidating than my toughest, most concentrated war face, I'm sure.
I almost shrieked in horror as I felt my left arm rear back and deliver a blow right between Benny "The Demon's" eyes, my index knuckle in his nose and my pinkie exchanging loud cracks with his front teeth. The blood spewed across my fist, an odd reminder; this was the first nose I'd bloodied since fourth grade, and back then that kid--full disclosure--that chick tackled me and kicked my ass.
But Benny Delgado didn't kick ass, he made ass disappear from the face of the fucking planet. So I was already hauling mine around the corner of the next block by the time his goons could decipher his bloody, screaming mumbles, "No naftner 'im, ya funkers!"
There was no time to waste. I grabbed the corn husk doll--you can take the boy out of the country...--from the pocket of my hoodie and pressed it against my fist until it had sopped up more than enough to fulfill my purpose.
The hoods' fancy shoes, the spoils of money much bloodier than Benny's corn-husk effigy, rapped the pavement like a heavy metal drum solo.
My guts plummeted into my pelvis. Faster than my conscious mind could navigate, I went from being horrified that I wouldn't get control in time, to mortified that I had. No turning back now; the shit was real. I must have looked like a ghost when I spun to face my pursuers, because they simultaneously skid to a hault, their expensive heels chirping on the asphalt.
Never doubt the value of spectacle. The two oafs murdered offenders as routinely as you or I might say "Bless you" to a sneezer; just a habitual reaction, a recitation. But when they saw a grown man, moments from an ugly demise, turn to them wielding a doll, they were thoroughly unprepared to respond. The doll danced through the air, hopping across before my chest like a game piece in my trembling hand.
I'm pretty sure the fella on my left was about to laugh, the one on the right about to draw, when they heard the unnatural clicking of much nicer shoes than their own; both heels coming down at once, then toes coming down at once. Rat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat.
Thugs love to brag. And, no story could ever top the one about the guy who broke out the doll right before they shot up his knees and tossed him in a trunk, and then... But they wouldn't get to tell that story. Their boss bounced toward them as if riding the world's greatest pogo stick, each bound taking him fifteen feet up and out.
With the goons distracted, I had time to concentrate, but barely. I closed my eyes and pinched the doll's arm. As I bent it from direction to direction, Benny likewise groping about in response, I tried to find his thoughts--namely the thought "Where is my gun?" His mind was like a steel cage, though. Couldn't make out a thing. Luckily, on the doll's third reach, "The Demon" Delgado caught hold of his pistol and whipped it around front.
The befuddled thugs had plenty of time to draw down on their boss. But, they wouldn't and I knew it--I didn't have to make him kill them. Without their boss, they were as good as dead anyway. Those types don't really function properly on their own; I'm sure they were as afraid of losing their orders as they were their lives.
I shook the doll's arm, visualizing firing at the other two men, until I heard several clicks from his empty gun. I had complete control of his limbs, but I wasn't taking any chances with a monster like that; I wanted that gun empty. I stepped over the goons, but stopped just on the other side. Entranced or no, I still couldn't stand face-to-face with the head honcho.
Angrier than courageous, my voice quivered, "You ever hear the name Candy Ferrari?"
His eyebrows wiggled, struggling against my control. A hot coat of fury wrapped around me and before I knew it, my puppet was pistol whipping himself into unconsciousness.
I took his keys, ran to pull his car around, and shoved him into the trunk of his own sedan. I slammed it shut with a loud sigh of relief--no, respite. I shivered off the heebie jeebies, like I'd just plucked a brown recluse from my hair.
When I reached Mr. Fuller's mansion, the guard at the gate asked me to pop the trunk, "Just need to check."
I clicked the already-locked doors, for effect and rolled my window only half way. "I'll let Mr. Fuller check. Thanks, though." Rude wasn't my usual approach, but I was almost done. I was ready to be done and if he didn't open that gate so I could go through, I was going over it.
The guy sighed, I'm sure reminding himself how grossly underpaid he was. After rolling upward in frustration, his eyes fixed widely on the pistol in my hand. As he realized the butt was toward him and the business end aimed at my thigh, he remembered to breath and took it with a loud, visible gulp.
The platinum-plated handle had the engraved head of a laughing demon on one side with "Benicio" inscribed below in an elegant script, on the other side was the crying face of another demon above "Delgado." The guard swung behind him, keeping his eyes locked suspiciously on me as he slapped at the wall until making contact with a faded gray button. The gate clicked and then hummed and rattled aside for me to pass.
I've been a conjurer since I was knee-high to a duck, but until that moment, watching that tough guy lock his eyes on me like he was worried I'd do something to him, I never really felt powerful.
I sat on the trunk, my plaid high tops swinging back and forth with a soft tap of the bumper. I was in baggy blue athletic shorts, and an aging red hoodie that said "Dragon Slayer" with a faded-but-colorful illustration of a beheaded dragon above the pocket.
The wind carried a chilly haze of water from the massive fountain centering the driveway outside Mr. Fuller's front door. Every few minutes my glasses would begin to slide from the moisture or the lenses would fill with specks of water and I'd have to remove them and wipe them off.
I hate fidgeting with my glasses. I feel it draws unnecessary attention to my nerdiness. Talk about fueling a well-stoked fire.
At his leisure, almost as though he'd just happened across his driveway, Mr. Fuller approched the trunk wearing a silk smoking jacket--and I believe nothing else--and carrying a highball. He was the portrait of ill-gotten gains with his perfectly manicured mustache and falsely black semi-circle of hair.
"Let's see it," he grinned impishly. He looked like he expected a trick; maybe someone dressed up like Delgado, or maybe an out-and-out double-cross ambush. Or a mermaid, any damn thing but The Demon Delgado.
"I want to see the girl." I tried to sound like the hero in the movies but I could tell from his laughter that I had failed.
"Fuck you, buddy," he chuckled, his harsh words almost dispassionate, and motioned for me to hop up and pop the trunk. I did.
"Well God damn, boy!" he beamed into the trunk at his opponent, tied up in bungie wires and the string that should have been holding up my shorts--you work with what you have.
Finally he looked up at me. When he did, I saw a look I'd never seen; not directed at me anyway. He was impressed and he didn't have the words. His lower lip protruded slightly and his head bobbed slowly in an approving motion. He sized me up, trying to figure out whether it was worth asking how I did it. He must've decided it wasn't.
He realized he was inadvertently praising someone, someone he would just as soon have seen fed to Delgado's Rottweilers. He snapped out of it, with a sigh of disapproval--which he pretended was for me--and slapped his eyes across Delgado. Rage filled him like a balloon. "Go get the whore," he shouted to any of his men, sending his misguided hatred my way.
"She's not a whore." I felt that sense of power again and from the look on his face, he could feel my power too. We both knew I didn't know what to do with it anyway.
Laughing away his concern, be it ever so mild, he regarded me like a child. "Sure, she ain't. Good to know." He might as well have patted me on the head and called me "little fella."
They brought Candy out of the front door, her curly red hair pinched by the black tie around her eyes. Her hands were untied, but either elbow was held by a man weighing no less than two of her. They released her hands and she untied the blindfold. She looked at me apologetic but grateful. She scuttled down the stairs and to my side. As she passed Mr. Fuller, he looked at her with a smile that made my insides sizzle, my chest and ribs pressed out to their limit until it felt like my skin would rip. He winked at her and raised his glass. I took the black tie from her hands and rubbed the rim of his outstretched glass, distributing a bewildered pause to all around.
"With just your saliva, I can do much more than I did to him. Leave us alone." Now that I wasn't trying to be hard, only granting fair warning, I think I sounded much tougher.
His face shifted from anger to a sort of pity to a disgusting amusement. His gross smile returning, he taunted, "Well, alright, hero. Hope you and your princess live happily ever after." His laughter was a rumbling chuckle as he looked back and forth between us. As my face hardened his amusement grew until he could hardly speak the words, "Fuck off, you moron." He shooed us away as he began directing his men on proper Delgado disposal.
Candy started off without a word. I followed her, clumsily as I always am, and finally caught up with her at the gate.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said shaking her head and averting her eyes. She looked pitiful, miserable, at her wit's end. But, she didn't look like she would cry.
"What are you talking about? Those men were going to kill you."
"So?" She looked almost mad; sympathetically disappointed. "What does it matter if they were going to kill me? Now you crossed Benny, he's going to kill you."
"I don't think he's going to get out of there," I felt the morbid smile creeping in and disguised it quickly by contorting my mouth from side to side. The improvisation, as usual, made me look much more foolish than the smile would have made me look cruel... or whatever I was worried about looking like. Dammit, I'm a nerd.
As I berated myself quietly, Candy started to walk away again.
"Wait!" I shouted.
"He's going to get out. And he's going to get you. And then, he's going to get me back. It was sweet of you to try," as she said this a shit-eating-grin built in my heart until she continued, "but you're a goddamn idiot. You shouldn't have involved yourself." She started away once more, her high heels squeaking with her gait.
"How can you say that? We're..." I didn't know what to say.
She stopped, spun and stared daggers through me. "We're business associates. You pay me, I dance."
I tried to at least look like I shrugged it off, "Pay you well." I could tell from the look on her face she didn't have the heart to contradict me; our understanding of money was quite different but she wasn't the type to make someone feel bad over a thing like that.
There was a clamoring mixture of shouts, gunshots, and profanities. Then, from beyond the gate came the loud, moan of bending metal. From the darkness and confusion, the sedan shot into the air and landed on the fountain, sounding like a train wreck caught in an avalanche.
"Oh no," her voice collapsed.
"I'll protect you," I swore.
She looked at me, dumbly, her beautiful lips parted silently as she watched me as though expecting me to go "Just kidding!" She took a deep breath and her ample breasts distracted me with their ascension. When I looked back to her face, I saw the fugitive tears finally making their way home. She tried not to look at me, "They aren't after me. Benny's already got me. I'm not like... one of you."
From the smoke cloud engulfing the front lawn, I saw the form of seven or so men and women, their path apparently ending where we stood.
"But they are." She looked from the figures to me urgently. She was frightened, but unsurprised, as though she'd known exactly what was going to happen. "Go, please."
I could see in her eyes that there was something. Maybe not feelings--not real, actual romantic feelings. But, there was something. And that was enough.
"Wanna see something cool?" I smirked at her. I could feel her anxiety as I stooped and dug around in the foliage along the gate. Finally, I found an agent, and it was a good one: a pill bug; roly poly; man's original best friend.
I held the little fella in my right hand and grabbed her hip with my left. It was hard to stay focused and ignore the remarkable sensation of touching her hip, finally; the club has rules, you see.
Then with a few words that I can't spell and you wouldn't know what to do with anyway, I channeled the tiny agent's might and matter into a towering black dragon. I looked at her and for a moment I swore she was going to laugh delightedly at my skill, but then she just fainted.
Oh well. I may not be smooth, but I get the job done.
I nearly swallowed my cigarette, its tip not yet fully ignited as my broadened gaze slid toward the cartoon-witch voice coming from the shadows in the alley behind me. The blanket of darkness split and peeled backward, as my confusion did the same, pitifully illuminating both the vagrant woman and her actual meaning: the cigarettes would kill me.
I snorted a single heavy, anxious laugh that made my head tilt back and my chest puff forward, like a six-foot-three PEZ dispenser in the flesh. I shook it off and returned to my vigil.
If the door to "the Casino's" secret entrance were a pet, it would've been put down long ago. It grunted and groaned as it trudged open into the alleyway, rather than in like a proper door. I had read the archaic concrete scrapes perfectly and the door stopped maybe an inch from my nose, the proximity affecting a reflexive wobble in my crow-footed stance.
My balance is always lousy, but if you factor in my nerves, the awkward stance--I could've just stood further back, hindsight has shown me--and the three hearty sips of courage from earlier that night... well, simply put: I was screwed. I lost my balance completely and headbutted the door soundly. The collision swatted the inner doorknob into the kidney of one of Benny's two bodyguards; a bonus.
"What the..." Benny Delgado's shocked expression as I rounded the door was a far sight more intimidating than my toughest, most concentrated war face, I'm sure.
I almost shrieked in horror as I felt my left arm rear back and deliver a blow right between Benny "The Demon's" eyes, my index knuckle in his nose and my pinkie exchanging loud cracks with his front teeth. The blood spewed across my fist, an odd reminder; this was the first nose I'd bloodied since fourth grade, and back then that kid--full disclosure--that chick tackled me and kicked my ass.
But Benny Delgado didn't kick ass, he made ass disappear from the face of the fucking planet. So I was already hauling mine around the corner of the next block by the time his goons could decipher his bloody, screaming mumbles, "No naftner 'im, ya funkers!"
There was no time to waste. I grabbed the corn husk doll--you can take the boy out of the country...--from the pocket of my hoodie and pressed it against my fist until it had sopped up more than enough to fulfill my purpose.
The hoods' fancy shoes, the spoils of money much bloodier than Benny's corn-husk effigy, rapped the pavement like a heavy metal drum solo.
My guts plummeted into my pelvis. Faster than my conscious mind could navigate, I went from being horrified that I wouldn't get control in time, to mortified that I had. No turning back now; the shit was real. I must have looked like a ghost when I spun to face my pursuers, because they simultaneously skid to a hault, their expensive heels chirping on the asphalt.
Never doubt the value of spectacle. The two oafs murdered offenders as routinely as you or I might say "Bless you" to a sneezer; just a habitual reaction, a recitation. But when they saw a grown man, moments from an ugly demise, turn to them wielding a doll, they were thoroughly unprepared to respond. The doll danced through the air, hopping across before my chest like a game piece in my trembling hand.
I'm pretty sure the fella on my left was about to laugh, the one on the right about to draw, when they heard the unnatural clicking of much nicer shoes than their own; both heels coming down at once, then toes coming down at once. Rat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat.
Thugs love to brag. And, no story could ever top the one about the guy who broke out the doll right before they shot up his knees and tossed him in a trunk, and then... But they wouldn't get to tell that story. Their boss bounced toward them as if riding the world's greatest pogo stick, each bound taking him fifteen feet up and out.
With the goons distracted, I had time to concentrate, but barely. I closed my eyes and pinched the doll's arm. As I bent it from direction to direction, Benny likewise groping about in response, I tried to find his thoughts--namely the thought "Where is my gun?" His mind was like a steel cage, though. Couldn't make out a thing. Luckily, on the doll's third reach, "The Demon" Delgado caught hold of his pistol and whipped it around front.
The befuddled thugs had plenty of time to draw down on their boss. But, they wouldn't and I knew it--I didn't have to make him kill them. Without their boss, they were as good as dead anyway. Those types don't really function properly on their own; I'm sure they were as afraid of losing their orders as they were their lives.
I shook the doll's arm, visualizing firing at the other two men, until I heard several clicks from his empty gun. I had complete control of his limbs, but I wasn't taking any chances with a monster like that; I wanted that gun empty. I stepped over the goons, but stopped just on the other side. Entranced or no, I still couldn't stand face-to-face with the head honcho.
Angrier than courageous, my voice quivered, "You ever hear the name Candy Ferrari?"
His eyebrows wiggled, struggling against my control. A hot coat of fury wrapped around me and before I knew it, my puppet was pistol whipping himself into unconsciousness.
I took his keys, ran to pull his car around, and shoved him into the trunk of his own sedan. I slammed it shut with a loud sigh of relief--no, respite. I shivered off the heebie jeebies, like I'd just plucked a brown recluse from my hair.
~~~
When I reached Mr. Fuller's mansion, the guard at the gate asked me to pop the trunk, "Just need to check."
I clicked the already-locked doors, for effect and rolled my window only half way. "I'll let Mr. Fuller check. Thanks, though." Rude wasn't my usual approach, but I was almost done. I was ready to be done and if he didn't open that gate so I could go through, I was going over it.
The guy sighed, I'm sure reminding himself how grossly underpaid he was. After rolling upward in frustration, his eyes fixed widely on the pistol in my hand. As he realized the butt was toward him and the business end aimed at my thigh, he remembered to breath and took it with a loud, visible gulp.
The platinum-plated handle had the engraved head of a laughing demon on one side with "Benicio" inscribed below in an elegant script, on the other side was the crying face of another demon above "Delgado." The guard swung behind him, keeping his eyes locked suspiciously on me as he slapped at the wall until making contact with a faded gray button. The gate clicked and then hummed and rattled aside for me to pass.
I've been a conjurer since I was knee-high to a duck, but until that moment, watching that tough guy lock his eyes on me like he was worried I'd do something to him, I never really felt powerful.
I sat on the trunk, my plaid high tops swinging back and forth with a soft tap of the bumper. I was in baggy blue athletic shorts, and an aging red hoodie that said "Dragon Slayer" with a faded-but-colorful illustration of a beheaded dragon above the pocket.
The wind carried a chilly haze of water from the massive fountain centering the driveway outside Mr. Fuller's front door. Every few minutes my glasses would begin to slide from the moisture or the lenses would fill with specks of water and I'd have to remove them and wipe them off.
I hate fidgeting with my glasses. I feel it draws unnecessary attention to my nerdiness. Talk about fueling a well-stoked fire.
At his leisure, almost as though he'd just happened across his driveway, Mr. Fuller approched the trunk wearing a silk smoking jacket--and I believe nothing else--and carrying a highball. He was the portrait of ill-gotten gains with his perfectly manicured mustache and falsely black semi-circle of hair.
"Let's see it," he grinned impishly. He looked like he expected a trick; maybe someone dressed up like Delgado, or maybe an out-and-out double-cross ambush. Or a mermaid, any damn thing but The Demon Delgado.
"I want to see the girl." I tried to sound like the hero in the movies but I could tell from his laughter that I had failed.
"Fuck you, buddy," he chuckled, his harsh words almost dispassionate, and motioned for me to hop up and pop the trunk. I did.
"Well God damn, boy!" he beamed into the trunk at his opponent, tied up in bungie wires and the string that should have been holding up my shorts--you work with what you have.
Finally he looked up at me. When he did, I saw a look I'd never seen; not directed at me anyway. He was impressed and he didn't have the words. His lower lip protruded slightly and his head bobbed slowly in an approving motion. He sized me up, trying to figure out whether it was worth asking how I did it. He must've decided it wasn't.
He realized he was inadvertently praising someone, someone he would just as soon have seen fed to Delgado's Rottweilers. He snapped out of it, with a sigh of disapproval--which he pretended was for me--and slapped his eyes across Delgado. Rage filled him like a balloon. "Go get the whore," he shouted to any of his men, sending his misguided hatred my way.
"She's not a whore." I felt that sense of power again and from the look on his face, he could feel my power too. We both knew I didn't know what to do with it anyway.
Laughing away his concern, be it ever so mild, he regarded me like a child. "Sure, she ain't. Good to know." He might as well have patted me on the head and called me "little fella."
They brought Candy out of the front door, her curly red hair pinched by the black tie around her eyes. Her hands were untied, but either elbow was held by a man weighing no less than two of her. They released her hands and she untied the blindfold. She looked at me apologetic but grateful. She scuttled down the stairs and to my side. As she passed Mr. Fuller, he looked at her with a smile that made my insides sizzle, my chest and ribs pressed out to their limit until it felt like my skin would rip. He winked at her and raised his glass. I took the black tie from her hands and rubbed the rim of his outstretched glass, distributing a bewildered pause to all around.
"With just your saliva, I can do much more than I did to him. Leave us alone." Now that I wasn't trying to be hard, only granting fair warning, I think I sounded much tougher.
His face shifted from anger to a sort of pity to a disgusting amusement. His gross smile returning, he taunted, "Well, alright, hero. Hope you and your princess live happily ever after." His laughter was a rumbling chuckle as he looked back and forth between us. As my face hardened his amusement grew until he could hardly speak the words, "Fuck off, you moron." He shooed us away as he began directing his men on proper Delgado disposal.
Candy started off without a word. I followed her, clumsily as I always am, and finally caught up with her at the gate.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said shaking her head and averting her eyes. She looked pitiful, miserable, at her wit's end. But, she didn't look like she would cry.
"What are you talking about? Those men were going to kill you."
"So?" She looked almost mad; sympathetically disappointed. "What does it matter if they were going to kill me? Now you crossed Benny, he's going to kill you."
"I don't think he's going to get out of there," I felt the morbid smile creeping in and disguised it quickly by contorting my mouth from side to side. The improvisation, as usual, made me look much more foolish than the smile would have made me look cruel... or whatever I was worried about looking like. Dammit, I'm a nerd.
As I berated myself quietly, Candy started to walk away again.
"Wait!" I shouted.
"He's going to get out. And he's going to get you. And then, he's going to get me back. It was sweet of you to try," as she said this a shit-eating-grin built in my heart until she continued, "but you're a goddamn idiot. You shouldn't have involved yourself." She started away once more, her high heels squeaking with her gait.
"How can you say that? We're..." I didn't know what to say.
She stopped, spun and stared daggers through me. "We're business associates. You pay me, I dance."
I tried to at least look like I shrugged it off, "Pay you well." I could tell from the look on her face she didn't have the heart to contradict me; our understanding of money was quite different but she wasn't the type to make someone feel bad over a thing like that.
There was a clamoring mixture of shouts, gunshots, and profanities. Then, from beyond the gate came the loud, moan of bending metal. From the darkness and confusion, the sedan shot into the air and landed on the fountain, sounding like a train wreck caught in an avalanche.
"Oh no," her voice collapsed.
"I'll protect you," I swore.
She looked at me, dumbly, her beautiful lips parted silently as she watched me as though expecting me to go "Just kidding!" She took a deep breath and her ample breasts distracted me with their ascension. When I looked back to her face, I saw the fugitive tears finally making their way home. She tried not to look at me, "They aren't after me. Benny's already got me. I'm not like... one of you."
From the smoke cloud engulfing the front lawn, I saw the form of seven or so men and women, their path apparently ending where we stood.
"But they are." She looked from the figures to me urgently. She was frightened, but unsurprised, as though she'd known exactly what was going to happen. "Go, please."
I could see in her eyes that there was something. Maybe not feelings--not real, actual romantic feelings. But, there was something. And that was enough.
"Wanna see something cool?" I smirked at her. I could feel her anxiety as I stooped and dug around in the foliage along the gate. Finally, I found an agent, and it was a good one: a pill bug; roly poly; man's original best friend.
I held the little fella in my right hand and grabbed her hip with my left. It was hard to stay focused and ignore the remarkable sensation of touching her hip, finally; the club has rules, you see.
Then with a few words that I can't spell and you wouldn't know what to do with anyway, I channeled the tiny agent's might and matter into a towering black dragon. I looked at her and for a moment I swore she was going to laugh delightedly at my skill, but then she just fainted.
Oh well. I may not be smooth, but I get the job done.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Heal, Boy
Rusty was nothing to mess with, to say the very least. He'd been locked up a time or two as he drifted from town to town in his younger years, leaving in his wake a forgotten troupe of little Rustys.
Patricia was across the house and all he could think was "How could she be away for even a minute?" At the thought, he felt an even stronger connection to the girl, since he had accepted some time ago that he was the odd-man out in Patricia's heart, with not so much as a back scratch in weeks. But now he felt a new purpose and for the first time since God-only-knows-when, he felt his tail dancing behind him and his floppy tongue tingling for a kiss.
Originally posted at http://sixsentences.ning.com/profiles/blogs/heal-boy
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Ninety Degrees of Fortune Pt. 3 - 5
The next 3 installments continue along the same six-sentence constraint as the previous 2.
Pt.3: Excommunication
Above the heads of the trembling guards blocking his path, Raverus saw the shanty village where the former Inlanders had taken up residence. The villagers--his wife among them--were gathered behind the Guardsmen to witness what threatened to be quite a spectacle.
As Chief Watchman of the Three Genies, Raverus was proudly famed for his superhuman might and inhuman mercilessness. But seeing his own soldiers amassed in ad hoc armor--slate and cookware mostly--and all of the fearful faces of the villagers--his friends days before--so enfeebled him that his hand dove limply from his sword with the gravity of the pit in his stomach.
He raised his hands in the air and offered a truce, but they would field no compromise and forgive no fault. Without their standard armor and weaponry, he could've fought them all and won, they knew it too, but their traitorous revolt had drained him of his fight, for now.
Pt.4: The Prostrate
Rendered virtually naked by his sudden expulsion from the camp, Raverus wandered the chill desert night until he found himself surrounded by the men riding on what had very recently been his soldiers’ horses, armed with weapons from the Emperor’s arsenal--his arsenal.
“The Emperor wishes to see you,” said the man wearing Raverus’ helmet, as the others inched toward their captive with the business end of their weapons, emphasizing that the invitation was not optional.
When they arrived at the palace, Raverus in shackles and his sword absconded by the guards, the young Emperor rushed to the warrior and wrapped his arms around his knees. The boy Emperor rambled on excitedly about something to do with famine, questions about the land, the structures, the weapons; the Outland dialect was very choppy and Raverus struggled to follow.
His astonishment at the young man’s blind, ignorant gumption--to even imagine Raverus would consider helping the thieving little snot or his people--melted into rage as he assembled the facts: these soldiers who had brought him in hadn't eaten in several days. Raverus swiped his sword from the hunger-stricken guardsman and claimed the heads of the closest three men, ensuring that its skill had not been diminished by captivity. He aimed his blade at the Emperor for several moments before choosing to save himself the trouble; these people were suffering plenty.
Part 5: Enemy to Your Enemy
Raverus had been a celebrity in the Inlands; the Chief Watchman of the palace was the man charged with the proud duty of defending the Emperor’s sacred artifacts, namely the Three Genies. And for his failure to fulfill that honor, his own people, banished from their kingdom into the Outlands, had banished him from their makeshift village.
The Emperor had reached the throne through a tunnel of good intentions and idealism, with one single wish, but looking back from the seat he could see no light. His people were as unfamiliar with the conditions of the Inlands as Raverus’ people were those of the Outlands, and in a very short time Inland and Outland would all be the same: dead as the dirt.
A change must bring them together, thought the man with no land, as his fingers massaged the handle of his sword with a brilliantly terrible suggestion. Raverus had often boasted that it would take two of the Outlanders’ armies to defeat him; now, he would create the opportunity to test that theory.
Pt.3: Excommunication
Above the heads of the trembling guards blocking his path, Raverus saw the shanty village where the former Inlanders had taken up residence. The villagers--his wife among them--were gathered behind the Guardsmen to witness what threatened to be quite a spectacle.
As Chief Watchman of the Three Genies, Raverus was proudly famed for his superhuman might and inhuman mercilessness. But seeing his own soldiers amassed in ad hoc armor--slate and cookware mostly--and all of the fearful faces of the villagers--his friends days before--so enfeebled him that his hand dove limply from his sword with the gravity of the pit in his stomach.
He raised his hands in the air and offered a truce, but they would field no compromise and forgive no fault. Without their standard armor and weaponry, he could've fought them all and won, they knew it too, but their traitorous revolt had drained him of his fight, for now.
Pt.4: The Prostrate
Rendered virtually naked by his sudden expulsion from the camp, Raverus wandered the chill desert night until he found himself surrounded by the men riding on what had very recently been his soldiers’ horses, armed with weapons from the Emperor’s arsenal--his arsenal.
“The Emperor wishes to see you,” said the man wearing Raverus’ helmet, as the others inched toward their captive with the business end of their weapons, emphasizing that the invitation was not optional.
When they arrived at the palace, Raverus in shackles and his sword absconded by the guards, the young Emperor rushed to the warrior and wrapped his arms around his knees. The boy Emperor rambled on excitedly about something to do with famine, questions about the land, the structures, the weapons; the Outland dialect was very choppy and Raverus struggled to follow.
His astonishment at the young man’s blind, ignorant gumption--to even imagine Raverus would consider helping the thieving little snot or his people--melted into rage as he assembled the facts: these soldiers who had brought him in hadn't eaten in several days. Raverus swiped his sword from the hunger-stricken guardsman and claimed the heads of the closest three men, ensuring that its skill had not been diminished by captivity. He aimed his blade at the Emperor for several moments before choosing to save himself the trouble; these people were suffering plenty.
Part 5: Enemy to Your Enemy
Raverus had been a celebrity in the Inlands; the Chief Watchman of the palace was the man charged with the proud duty of defending the Emperor’s sacred artifacts, namely the Three Genies. And for his failure to fulfill that honor, his own people, banished from their kingdom into the Outlands, had banished him from their makeshift village.
The Emperor had reached the throne through a tunnel of good intentions and idealism, with one single wish, but looking back from the seat he could see no light. His people were as unfamiliar with the conditions of the Inlands as Raverus’ people were those of the Outlands, and in a very short time Inland and Outland would all be the same: dead as the dirt.
A change must bring them together, thought the man with no land, as his fingers massaged the handle of his sword with a brilliantly terrible suggestion. Raverus had often boasted that it would take two of the Outlanders’ armies to defeat him; now, he would create the opportunity to test that theory.
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