- Polite Fictions

There was no warm greeting to ease him into the letter. The time for such things had passed them long ago. Perhaps it had been the moment she noticed he hadn't flinched when she'd confessed to him what she'd done. It's amazing just how loose the body becomes when lubricated with the type of elixirs they liked to commiserate - and sometimes celebrate - in. Sometimes I think I'm still capable of such a thing, she'd said, her words perhaps a bit too loud for the sentiment. Or maybe it had been the morning she dropped a plate of day-old pastries in front of him and turned away before their gazes synched up. Nice buns, he'd said, his voice giving away the smirk without much fight, and in that instant before turning back toward him, Charlie wrestled with the idea of either roundhouse kicking it off his face or tackling him to the ground in a move that wasn't so much about tackling as it was about taking. Yeah, she thought, the retirement plan at the bakery was for shit, but the perks actually did pay off from time to time.

So she simply began. Christ, I had no idea you mattered that much. She hadn't wanted to write the letter. Didn't want to present him with such tangible, perhaps damning, evidence of just how much he mattered. Had mattered, Charlie. Had mattered, she thought. "It would serve you well to start realizing that," she could hear him say. She kicked at the ground like a petulant child, wondering just how long his words would chase her own as they raced around her cranium. Forget chase. His usual won with very little margin of error. Hell, sometimes it was like his thoughts took a victory lap when she actually heard herself saying something she knew he'd say. So, while it may have served her well, she couldn't stop herself from writing the letter. When she finished, she felt like a mosquito that had been invited to feast upon a gifted vein, then thanked for her company with a slap that sent her guts and blood and matter exploding across the host's skin. Her words were smeared and splattered across the pale sheets of paper, and as she began to re-read them, she hoped to see Fuck you written in a continuous loop. But such was not the case.

********************

No signal. He loved words, the way they could play nicely with one another one moment and suddenly be capable of such insane violence against the other the next, but seeing the simple sentence that prevented him from calling Charlie made him question such a romance. He didn't have time to question it long, though. The pain searing across his body made it difficult to think at all, and he wondered when he could start a running tab on that cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline he was hoping would be served up soon. He didn't think it was possible, but he slumped even further down. How low can you go? he thought. "Pretty damn low," he muttered. "How 'bout you?" he asked his lifeless cohort, giving him a moment to consider an answer. "Oh, I see how you are," he chuckled. "The strong and silent type, huh? Well, you're silent, anyway, which, I gotta say, pisses me off because I'd sure as hell like to know what the fuck's up with the zoot suit, brother."

He flipped his phone closed, took a deep breath (Mmmmm! Minty fresh!) and began the painful task of slipping the pointless device back into his pocket. As he did, his fingers brushed against Charlie's letter. Everywhere he went, it was his sidekick. Its once sharp edges had softened with regular readings, though, if he was being honest, he didn't even need to open it to read it anymore. He could recite it so perfectly it was like auditioning for a play. He wanted the lead, dammit. He'd even sing and dance if he had to (though he hoped he didn't have to). He was running a thumb across a corner of her words when the door chimes fluttered, sending ironically cheery theme music across the macabre opening scene that had just been staged. Taking a page from the lesson on Make No Sudden Movements from the School of Unfortunate Circumstances (unaccredited, naturally) he found himself matriculating in at the moment, he focused his gaze once again on the fork protruding from the temple of the questionably hip corpse slumped nearby and caught the inverted reflection of a man on the section of tines that had been spared making friends with the dead man's brain.

"What the fuck?" whispered the guest star, interrupting an admittedly ill-timed moment of self congratulations on the full-blown, all-purpose MacGyver moment that damn fork had afforded him.

"What the fuck, indeed," he thought.