“Nobody ever gets killed with a clean shirt,” says the man at the bar sadly. “Shoes, socks, pants–hell, underwear, mostly. But it’s not like you’re gonna die of a stab wound to the leg, right? The chest is the target. Filled with… with juice. If you hit it, it always spills! And heads!” He pulls at his Bud. “Heads are a mess!”
The man scratches his naked chest and stares morosely at a puddle. Young Emerson, who’s tending bar tonight, acts with remarkable speed of uptake: she drapes her towel over a sign, shortening it to NO SHOES NO SERVICE.
“All this for the price of getting you drunk?” Dakota toes through the pile of clothing on the floor.
James sprawls on the bed, wildly naked. He smiles. “I’m a cheap drunk, too.”
“Cheaper than my fucking therapist,” says Dakota. “Whose appointment I have missed now, and will be charged for…” He finds the underwear and tries to catch them off his foot. He misses.
“I am a fucking therapist.” James sits up and scratches. “I fuck. I… therap.”
“Doctor James,” Dakota asks mockingly, “my mother’s disappointed by my lifestyle.”
James shrugs. “Your mother named you ‘Dakota.’ What did she expect?”
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Terrifyingly, Bob invents the cow-whistle. It leaps off the page and starts itself up right away; it was small and quick to finish.
They can’t hear it, of course, but they both know what’s coming. “Oh shit, Bob,” moans Yvette, looking at it with a drained horror.
“Hurry!” he cries. “The next one–I can’t tell what it is, but it’s big–”
His arms keep flailing, beyond his control, drafting perfectly with a pencil in each hand. Yvette leaps back in with the kneadable eraser, trying to sabotage whatever his subconscious is doing now.
But that’s when the cows arrive.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
MACHINEGUNDICLES SAVES ORPHANS, blares the headline; the blurry photo shows a towering silhouette, chin like a cliff and one arm a Gatling gun from the wrist up. Toe slaps the paper on the counter.
“That all for you?” booms the clerk. His nametag says MAX HINES-UNCLES.
“Could I get some Tylenols?” Toe and Tyler are trying hard not to laugh.
“Sure.”
“Thanks. Hey, you hear about Machinegundicles?” He pokes the paper. “I heard they totally found out his secret identity.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Max says smugly, and accidentally sweeps the painkiller shelf clear with his huge, cylindrical, black-gloved left hand.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
“Farrier! Yo!” Gavin raps on his housemate’s bedroom door and checks his watch. “Wake up, bud, carpool’s going to be here.”
“Don’ hafta,” Farrier muffles back. “Have’m nice day.”
“Isn’t he up yet?” asks Montano, coming around the corner with his tie in two hands.
“Look, I know the floor is cold,” says Gavin impatiently, “but what are you going to do, call in sick?”
“Look outside,” Farrier grunts smugly. “Then check the TV. At my job, we get snow days.”
Montano and Gavin stare at the door, then at each other.
“That’s no fair!” says Gavin.
“That’s brilliant!” says Montano.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” Gillian says warmly as she moves in closer, “that you’re wearing a white shirt and white pants. Not to mention white shoes and white socks.”
“Yeah… and that’s my white bike helmet, actually, over there.” The man seems to enjoy the attention; he puffs up a bit. There’s sweat on the bridge of his nose. “Why do you ask, little lady?”
“Just making sure.” Gillian bats her eyelids, leans in, and shoots him four times in the chest.
The critics are largely appreciative, except that jerk Myers at the Post, who calls it “flagrantly Tarantinoid metasploitation.”
Thursday, October 7, 2004
“One day this guy found a carnival ticket,” says Jarvis. “It said KEEP THIS COUPON, so he did, in his wallet, for thirty-nine years. One day he left it in his pants, and his wife washed them, and when she laid everything out to dry the ticket was white. Completely white. She went to show it to him, and he was dead!”
Carson and Doris wait.
“See?” Jarvis’s eyes are wide. “It’s symbolic!”
“Of what?” asks Doris.
“It’s… just symbolic.” Jarvis frowns. “What, are you guys high-culture snobs? It’s a story, okay?”
“Not every story is a story,” says Carson, shrugging.
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
“Hi,” says the kid as Welch passes him.
“Hello,” says Welch. He smiles.
Around the corner there’s a pair of them–twins? “Hi,” says one, and “hi,” says the other.
“Hello,” says Welch. “Hello.” He starts to walk around them, but they block his path. Awareness prickles his back, then; Welch spins in a panic, but the scriptkiddies are already surrounding him.
“Hi. Hi. Hi.”
“Hello. Hello!” Welch gasps, trying to keep up. He can feel himself slowing down. “Please–stop–hello!”
They close in without hurry, their eyes empty but for a cool curiosity.
“Hi,” they say. “Hi hi. Hi.”
“I was hanging out after school, like thirteen, right,” says Mitchell. “This big older kid comes up and looks around, then he’s like ‘Hey, kid, smoke this Winston or I’ll beat the crap out of you.’ I’m like fine, okay, so he lights it and makes me hotbox the whole damn thing. Right there. When I’m done, he takes it and stomps it out and then punches me in the stomach, and he goes ‘Now I don’t ever want to see you smoking again!'”
“What?” says Dana. “What?”
“So from then on,” Mitchell says enthusiastically, “I always thought smoking was cool.“