They stood around her like an unholy halo, each in place like a number on a clock. Euri straddling the door which was twelve, Claudette at six by the bar, Roman at seven shoved to the side, collateral like always, just barely there, and Aloysius at ten. Slick was the little hand.

Half-blind, head-smacked, he made his way to her: a half-step. a mis-step. a half-step. a side-step. a mis-step. He moved as he could: slowly, desperately, deliberately in time toward her. 

Euri licked his lips, tickled the roof of his dry mouth with his tongue. Roman felt his jaw relax and the duct tape went slack at last.  Claudette's ash broke in pieces on the floor and then the cigarette fell, hit the wood without a sound. An ember burned.

Aloysius watched Claudette. He saw only her: not her daughter's blood seeping closer to his patent tips, not that skinny boy, beaten and on his knees now, not his brother Roman tied in silver tape to a chair and bug-eyed. He saw Claudette. Just Claudette. It was almost enough to forget the only proof -- that fucking picture -- of the only real crime he ever did.

Euri's healthy wife handed Claudette's stupid husband the phone and he took it. It was fast money for him -- a delivery, a quick drop-off -- and he needed it for that girl, his daughter, and her what? cake-cooking school? Something like that. The tricked-out phone had enough blast to wound when it popped -- a threat was all, just a slap and an i'm fucking her now kinda thing -- but he bled there, right there, enough blood leaking out to kill him and it seeped all over Charlie's track meet and all over Charlie's shoes. Claudette never looked Aly's way again.

And now? Still now: her eyes were not on him. Just on her. 

Slick crawled the last bits: a grasping hunch this way. a moan there. nails to dingy floor. On time, he collapsed his body over Charlie's. Not to cover her up, not to protect her, but because it was all his body would do. His blood, her blood, a sticky mess: an ink of another kind written out on their shirts, the only letters that ever mattered.

Outside, the crows got sober, straightened up and bombed a dead mouse. The pigeons fought over crumbs laced in cinnamon and anise, her crumbs. The mourning doves preened and prepared.

Claudette met her cigarette on the floor. It made a sound the heart can't bear.

Comments

[Jett]

Girl, I dunno if you saw my tweet to you, but I was all, "Holy cow, Picket, I could practically hear the skidding when you turned that thing on a dime. Aces."