Polite Fictions

When Claudette felt the pistol slide up and out of her waistband, her instinct propelled the knife on its coast-to-coast journey across the throat of her yeast fetishizing and stripteasing daughter.

When Charlie felt the blade catch the express east, her nervous system sprang her body back and her finger to clutch the trigger. As she fell, one lone slug burrowed into her chain-smoking, slatternly mother.

The forces of two bodies on each other may always be equal but -- fuck Newton's Third Law -- when the force is derived from the basest of the worldly elements, in the end they are directed in same, pitiful downward spiral. Claudette and Charlie hit the floor, their ink-like life spilling and cooling around them.

Their story had ran its serpentine course to an inevitable finish in a dimly lit room of thugs, thieves and incomprehensibles.

Silence.

No rumble of trucks in the sullen streets. No echoes of bells in the church steeples. No birds.

The day had come to a rest.

"You. Must. Be. Fucking kidding me!"

Roman, laid out flat, started to laugh the laugh of a man who watched so much death in the past hours that it all seemed grossly comical that he was one of the few to survive it.

"Oh, Jesus, God All-Motherfucking-Mighty. You see that shit? Euri! Get your pathetic-clown ass over here and cut me loose, man. Mother-and-daughter-fucking fuck, man," Roman almost sang. "Euri, where are you, man?"

Euri, abandoned by his captors, abandoned by life yet still full of it, walked behind the bar and helped himself to the first green bottle he spotted. It would do for a start.

"Euri. Euri! Man, c'mon. I know you're there you stupid Greek bastard," said Roman, staring up at the finite emptiness above. "I know you are there."

"No," Euri said, draining a second shot and smiling as a strange new warmth filled his body. "I'm not anywhere near here."

He hobbled around the bar and hunched down, his creaking and popping knees be damned, so Roman could get a full close view of his creased, weathered face as he lit the last of his hand-rolled black cigarettes. "That is, my friend, unless you start talking about the Laughing Whore."

Roman couldn't even muster the strength to blink which allowed him, for he thought the first time ever, to see Euri break into something resembling a smile.

Charlie thought about the moments. About the possibilities.  How everything curled around everything else. Relative moments in subjective space.  There were no longer absolutes in her head. She wasn't sure how she even managed to wander the corridors she couldn't perceive and yet that's exactly where she was. She knew that in her toes. 

She glanced at Slick, glanced around the room, glanced inward and upward and outward.  Her fingers curled and she tensed and…

"None of the poetry in your head fucking matters," Slick whispered.

"What?" Charlie asked, unsettled.  A curtain dropped. The world grayed out and faded back in with Technicolor highlights, blinding clear and diffuse enough to lick the edges clean.

"You heard me. Tell me you heard me," Slick said, voice rising.

"I heard you."

"Then you know."

"Not at all. What the fuck? What do we do? What's even going on?" Charlie took a deep breath after speaking, holding it until her lungs burned.  She exhaled explosively. Then she smacked Slick.

"You planned this!" she accused, a finger jabbing out toward him, "You planned all of this!"

"No," he said calmly, "I didn't. Think it through."

Charlie thought. She thought about the placement of people, the actions of each and the forces that engulfed them.  No, none of the poetry in her head fucking mattered. None of it. The here and now, the yesterday and tomorrow - those held her close again.

"I…" she started, uncertainly.

"You planned it," Slick said, "way back when.  Remember? You told me once, before you forgot. A concert. A song. You said you were running split head.  You were moving.  Don't ruin it on me. Remember?"

Charlie wanted to throw up. "If I planned this why didn't I…"

"Remember until now?  You planned that, too. 'None of the poetry in your head fucking matters.' was the key. You told me when the time was right to say that to you. To end it. To start it fresh." Slick sighed and rubbed his cheek.  He was thoroughly sick of being slapped.

"But then… why? Now what?" Charlie asked, her own memories slowly fuzzing back into life.

"You tell me. You always do," Slick said with a hint of a smirk. "You always do."

Hand in hand they walked off, the world left behind them, into tomorrow. The bodies, the violence, the fear and the blood all got left behind, ignored and drained of their life. Because she had planned it that way, you see.  She always did.

Charlie laid her palm against the piece, forever the dutiful daughter. Claudette relaxed slightly, giving her daughter a subtle attagirl with her posture. When Charlie was uncoiled and ready, she would turn on her heel and—

“I had wondered how this moment might finally find you, Charlene.”

She knew his voice as well as her own, but had never been allowed to see his face until now. Charlie bared her teeth in a grimace before turning abruptly to face this interloper; the knife at her throat became just a postscripted nod at hilarity. If the Maker was here, then none of the rest of them were getting out alive.

“It’s time for Rapture,” he said, low and sure, and everything in Charlie stood up, surging, beating back the intensity of the four words that she’d been prepared so long ago to hear. It was of no consequence that she’d wanted out; some matters don’t allow for things like changes of heart or resolved about-faces.

By this time tomorrow, she’d be someone else entirely. She would be dissolved and evolved; Charlie knew now that the Maker had come to excuse the sighing saint from the premises and usher in the laughing whore to take her place. Exultation and terror tugged her mind in two.

Good, thought the Maker, as Charlie’s eyes gave him a front-row seat to the goings-on behind them, reprogramming is an easier process altogether if she’s already broken.

Then, just before extending a languidly beckoning hand to Charlie, he cleanly placed an expert's bullet into Claudette’s forehead, sparing her the double-tap he delivered to the rest of the room’s occupants.

He rolled over and listened to the floor show taking place on the other side of the wall. The players- one resigned, the other raised - and their fine-tuned routine were respectable, but he could imagine how it might quickly grow old. Oh, this was a long-running show, of that he was sure, but sooner or later, one of the players was going to want top billing and the other would be a footnote in the archives. "Don't you know you fool, you never can win..." The classics. Don't let my surroundings fool you, he thought, burrowing in a bit deeper. I do have an appreciation for such things. He also appreciated quiet, and it had been a long time since he'd had that.

What was it they were fighting about this time? Yesterday it was something about a bridesmaid's dress, and today? What? Today's first act set the stage nicely when he heard the word whore waft through to his box seat. If that doesn't bring drama! The thing about mothers and daughters was they never really learn to just separate, and he figured that every time one of them told the other to fuck off, it was really their way of saying they weren't giving up on each other. He'd heard that somewhere. Maybe he'd read it. Doesn't matter. Love gets itself worked up and takes a stab at whatever was closest.

Not literally, he thought, though that might be pretty awesome. And he smiled.

The three-beat rhythm on the door dropped him back into time. Just as well. He could use the intermission. The door cracked open and the man's head poked around the edge, disembodied and floating like the money shot from some bizarre magic trick. Ta da! He lifted his gaze slightly to meet that of the man's and waited for the small talk. "Hey there. Whatcha readin,' Slick'?" the man asked. "Some kind of comic book?"

He hated when his father called him Slick. Who does that? Fictional gangsters and annoying men trying to act cool in front of their kid, apparently. For the millionth time, he reminded the man, it's not a comic book. It's a graphic novel.

"Any good?" the man asked.

"Meh..." he said, tossing it over the edge of his bed where it landed among a pile of like-minded reading. "It's alright, but this last chapter kinda sucks. The chick's kinda hot, though. Hey, can we swing by and get a donut on the way to school?"

"There is a dangerous moment between being a child of someone and not being that child anymore. It's a knife edge moment that can turn a child toward love or very far way from it. Resentment can manifest many things in a person, as love can. There is power in both equally."

Sob sob sob, she thinks, crushing the thought, the paper, that stupid letter, at last her in hand.

She had blood on her hands already and now she adds her mother's blood.

She turns to the man, the one who stayed, the bleeding puddle of a guy hunched and shaking near her feet. She turns to the man she loves and cannot love. She wipes her mother's blood off her brow with a brisk swipe.

This story will end badly, she thinks. That sucks.

She pulls the trigger.

It's funny, or something like funny. This discovery; finding that I no longer care. They are the last men standing, these two women. One who once loved me and one I never believed capable of love. I heard them talking to one another in voices gone hoarse with exhaustion and rage and decades of slow-burning tar. But their voices are distant, the words growing farther and fainter. I know I heard one of them say, "The Laughing Whore," and that was funny, too. Because I realized that I wasn't panicking when I heard it, and that was when I realized how tired I'd become. Don't know, in all honesty, I've ever felt more tired than I feel right now.

I try to flip my wrist, in a gesture of gentle frustration and fatigue, to indicate my current state, but the muscles don't respond to my wishes any more. Catching up with God, I suppose, on that front. I feel my one arm pulling closer to me, spreading a slow blood angel across the floor. Sketching my own ghost.

I feel my lips pull back over my teeth, just a bit. One more smile for the crowd.

This is going to be one hell of a getaway, I decide. When I walk away from this, they're going to say: how did he..? And I'll just give them that look I have — the one that says I know something you don't. The men will hate me for that look, but the women... they always find their way through that lure to the shiny hook.

Charlie deserves better, anyway. We both know it. That letter... it seems funny, now, that I carried it for so long. Reminding myself of what I'd lost. What we'd lost. Reminding myself of how it felt to feel capable of something more.

This will all make sense, later. When the air doesn't feel so thick on my tongue. When the weight of these words no longer ties me down. After I rest, for a bit. This will all make sense.

Charlie's hand curled around the grip of Claudette's pistol, a little Beretta tucked away in her waistband. What was it, a .22 caliber? But you'd be amazed at what a tiny bullet can do when it's launched a millimeter away from your neck.

The barrel snagged in the fabric of Claudette's clothes. That's nice, thought Charlie. Old lady underwear is going to be listed as my official cause of death.

"Have a piece of pie, you little bitch," snarled Claudette, and bit down hard on her shoulder.

The move was designed to shock, to sneak underneath the thrumming wire of Charlie's reflexes.  Charlie grunted but kept her grip on the gun.

Claudette bit harder.

"Oh, fuck off!" screamed Charlie. She tore the gun from Claudette's waistband and shot her twice in the stomach.

Claudette stepped sideways and dipped her hand into a pocket of her sweater, as if looking for something.  Then a leg buckled and she went down.

"Ah shit," she whispered. "I'd tell you to shoot me in the head but that fucking gun is out of bullets".

"Don't worry. I could kill you with one good kick".

Claudette wheezed out a laugh. "Of course you can, baby girl. Ah shit. This one hurts".

"Don't bite me next time". Charlie sneezed violently. "I hate that gunpowder smell. I think I'm allergic".

"When I get better we're going to have some words".

Then the room was suddenly full of people, men with flashlights and weapons cutting through the pistol smoke and the amber fug of the bar, pouring in as if the contents of a great slop bucket had been hurled across the threshold.  Blades of blue and red light swiped at the walls.

I died after all, thought Slick. Died and went straight to SWAT team heaven.

Charlie spun around and dropped down over Slick's body.  Her hands circled around his chest, her lips filled his ear. She whispered something urgent and quick.

"Claudette Sestina! Lana Horowitz! You are under arrest! Ah Christ, that one's shot, let's get the EMTs in. And get that one off the floor".

Hands pulled Charlie up and away, into the mass of uniformed men.  SWAT team heaven is not for the likes of us, Charlie. And it's crap.

A man in a beige suit stepped over Slick, looked down and snorted. "Of course you're still alive".

Slick grinned in his patented Slick way, but his teeth were bloody and the effect was grotesque, like a corpse on a game show. "Doug.  You're alive too".

Doug nodded, then snapped his finger at Slick. "Got another one here! Get him on the pro-verb-i-al stretcher!"

Men in jumpsuits wheeled the stretcher over, weaving around chairs and bodies.  Someone pushed an IV needle into the crook of his elbow.  Hell yes.

"What do you know," said Doug. "I ask for a proverbial stretcher and they bring a real one.  You lucky shithead".

The EMTs wheeled him out on the stretcher.  The last thing Slick saw as the morphine rolled over his nerves was Doug crouched over Euri's prone and taped body.

---

"Wake up," said Doug.  He gave Slick a light cuff on the cheek.

"Wake up," he repeated. "You've earned it".

"What have I earned?" Slick said.  The lights in the room twinkled at a nice distance, like stars.

Doug thought about it for a moment. "I don't know.  Free medical care?  Good drugs?  Not getting arrested?  Take your pick, kino winner".

"Where's Charlie?"

"Who?"

"Charlie".

"Oh her," Doug nodded. "I wish you could smoke in here.  She called herself Charlie?"

Slick said nothing, waited him out.

"A smoke would be good". Doug scratched his chin.  "Yeah, you're in love with her.  Who can blame you?  She was perfect.  And she's not yours, Slick.  She's a ghost".

"If you close the door and open the window," Slick said, "you can have a smoke.  We can split one".

Doug fished in his jacket pocket for a smoke.  "Witness protection, Slick.  She was supposed to stay on the other side of the country.  She came back for something.  Money, I think.  And maybe family".

"She shot her family in the stomach".

"Claudette?" Doug pushed the door shut with his foot and lit up.  "She's her family like I'm the king of shitsville". He passed the cigarette to Slick and tucked it into the corner of his mouth.  "There you go, you look like a fucking warning ad now".  He took the smoke back.  "That girl you're panting after is named Lana Horowitz.  She and Claudette have been pulling crap ever since Lana was ten.  Together they've got a jacket that would fit Marlon Brando and leave room for two Pacinos.  I think Lana's parents actually sold her to Claudette as a child, can you fucking believe that?"

Doug took another puff and pointed to a little kidney-shaped receptacle on a tray by the bed. "They probably want you to puke or take a dump in that or something," he said.  He took out his pack of smokes and placed them on the nightstand.

"Thanks," Slick said.  "Thanks for all this".

Doug folded his coat over his arm. "Don't bother," he said. "This comes courtesy of your Charlie.  She's providing us with more information on Aloysius, Euri, the whole lot of them.  Even Charlotte. In exchange, we're saving your life. And burying her in a hole so deep she'll never find daylight again".

"What about the Laughing Whore?" said Slick.

"The what?"

"Never mind".

"Hey," said Doug.  "You remember what you said to me when we met in the diner?"

Slick tried to lift the blanket of opioids that lay over his thoughts. "Nope," he finally said.

"Me neither.  You threw a fucking napkin dispenser at my head, dickwad".  Doug grabbed the smokes from the table and strode out, leaving a smell of burnt tobacco.

Slick closed his eyes and waited until he was sure Doug had left.  In the drawer of his nightstand hid the thing that Charlie had given him when the police had burst in, when her hands had touched his flesh again and her mouth had whispered fiercely into his ear, I love you.  Find me.

He pulled the photo out of the nightstand and studied it.  There was a clue buried in that photo somewhere. He just had to find it.

Find me.

Slick smiled.  Just give me time.

He walked with the arrogant, self assured heel-toe swagger of a dead man.  A man with nothing to lose. 

And nothing to gain.

Fast asleep at the wheel - his brain.  His ears rang with Gregorian Chant and a fine crimson rose of his own lifeblood pooled around his collar all semi-coagulated and, finally, breached and became gravity's bitch.  Running down the ticklish part of his biceps - the back fleshy part, down and out his sleeve leaving a sinister Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail. 

He lit a smoke with the fire on his tongue.  Fire on his tongue, acid in his lungs and Hell to pay.  He was the Devil's messenger, and today, this day, 'Ol Scratch wasn't putting fuck all on lay-away.  Time to pay the Piper, bitches, and all bets are off.

\m/  \m/

When Charlie turned like a Dervish on Claudette - more a graceful pirouette with the fluidity of some opaque vapor and conducting a Symphony of One with Claudette's "just in case" pistol- Slick collapsed in a heap.  Fuck.  I need THIS Now. Not now, you pitiful, beautiful man.  Not now.  There will be time. NO!  Head in the Game, Charlie.  This is Now.  This is Time.  This time.

"Honey chile.  Sweet, sweet baby girl.  What are you thinking in that head of yours?"

Claudette's words.  That tricky, shyster flim-flam psycho babble Charlie was so accustomed to but had a hell of a time straightening out.

"You move and I turn your head into open-face Roast Beef special of the day."

Charlie's words.  Cut and ripe with a new Venom.

"Sweet girl.  You sure that thing's loaded?"

Charlie resisted the urge to look at the piece.  If language could be a magic trick, Claudette damn sure had herself a Vegas act.

"I'm sure.  You always said an unloaded gun is almost as bad as giving a blowjob for free.  So, I'm fairly fucking certain this thing is hot."

Don't look down.  Don't take your eyes off the Snake.  Ever.

"Think this through, Baby.  It could be me and you on that beach.  All those little Caribbean boys crawlin' up your leg, bringing us free Hooch and the like.  It could be just like we talked about.  Think it through, baby girl.  Think good and hard.  Is this the way you want this to play out.  For what?  For him?"

Charlie closed her eyes.  Tight.  The way she said Him set of a long Black Cat strand and the last explosion in the pop-pop-pop of her mind vibrated up to her right shoulder.  When she opened her eyes, Claudette lay in a heap next to Slick on the floor.

Charlie stomped out the cigarette still handing in Claudette's lips.  And wept.

\m/  \m/

Doug almost tripped over the huge bear-man on the floor.  Bear-man's head was the lagoon in a sea of blood.  Human after all.  Hmm.

Fast work, now.  Fast and dirty.

Ripping the blood soaked sleeve from his shirt.  Ripping half again.  And again.  Two, Four, Six strips of blood soaked cotton.  Mix well with grain alcohol, bottles on the bottom shelf and top shelf for his Whistle.  Jamming the dripping rags into bottles only day-drinkers ordered, Doug lit another smoke.  For effect, Doug poured a line of the Good stuff the length of the bar and fired it up.

And God said, let there be light.  And there was motherfucking light.

Tinder was the cheap flea market chairs.  Fuel?  Fuel was everything else.

As Doug walked across the street, he caught a glimpse of the storefront window.  Right before the explosion shattered it into a mosaic of ice and end-time.  The boring olive Sans Serif lettering, trimmed in peeling and pock-marked gold for a "this-is-the-Best-trailerpark-in-town" effect.

THE LAUGHING WHORE

After the explosion and the cries of onlookers, long after the heat and the debris, Doug could have sworn that he had seen, through the tangle of flames licking at the clouds, a silhouette of some sort.  The embrace of two lovers, perhaps.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Who could tell for sure?

Doug turned south and returned to his dead man stroll. 

And Nero played a fiddle.

The End