“You wanna do something for me?” She sputtered out. I think I nodded, too scared to respond vocally.
I was in no danger of drowning. Yet. The rain was still mostly a pitter-patter on the still hot summer asphalt. I could smell it evaporating on contact even down here. I’d played in these sorts of places as a kid enough to know that all it would take is a sudden surge in the storm and I, all my weapons, about 2 liters of booze, and my slightly used New Balance would be violently whisked away to the closest outlet to the river. The Schuylkill. Under the bridge, where I first saw her—without her seeing me, of course.
She ran down the trail madly. Almost losing her footing halfway down and taking the plunge head-first. My small campfire was still smoldering but she was too drugged out or worn out to notice or care. She kept going, right to the edge of the river. Slowing down finally. For a second there, I thought she was going to keep running. Skipping like a blonde stone over the river to the other side. Overhead a tractor trailer passed; the tires on the poured concrete sounded like a freight train in a tunnel. The reverberations lingered as I watched her plunge her face into the oily water and breathe out. In.
My internal monologue, the Jerkoff, was telling me I should rush the front door guns blazing lead death. “Take ‘em by surprise.” A car ran over the grating above me, thankfully drowning him out. The rubber made a strange noise on the rusting steel. The dissonant note it struck sounded nice—no, appropriate to my ears. That would be my theme song, I decided, when I made my move. I removed the bullets one by one from their plastic baggies. Rubber on Steel.
I was the knight-errant now. About to storm the Garden from the story. There were two gates in the wall I could choose. I’d hesitate before the one labeled Love in a gaudy, neon sign. The demande d’amore does not appeal to a tough guy though; especially a slightly buzzed tough guy; most especially a slightly buzzed tough guy who lost touch with reality a few months ago and holds near constant conversations with himself. I would be kicking down or blowing in the other door. Death, it read, in the stone above after tearing away the years of ivy. Love’s door was well-oiled and the path was beaten flat. It was even paved. Death’s door hadn’t been opened in a long time. Trees bear no fruit there, the signs warned, Disdain and Despair will be your only guides. Good.
That didn’t mean I had to die right away. There were good ways to die, and there were bad ways. My present approach seemed to fit in better with the role I chose. The one I placed myself in on her behalf. All my movements were made as if in a dream. My body didn’t feel like my own. My mind moved me— at least the parts of my mind that were still mine. “Slowly, now.” Inexorably, I loaded my miniature armory. Enough to outfit a small country; albeit a very small and very poor one. Jesus! When did I acquire all this stuff?
Some glocks, sigs, even a usp. A few snub-nosed revolvers I stuffed into my socks and belt. Harnesses. A black leather doo-dad that wrapped around my chest like a girdle for the set of nicely balanced throwing knives that never, ever hit where I wanted to throw them (which made for some interesting situations in the past).
A grenade? No, a concussion device. A flash-bang which, if you stood to close when it went off, could really burn you quite bad.
“That’s nice of you, but I still don’t believe it.” She could’ve been a fucking movie star, easy. She was beyond gorgeous. The burn mark, now just scar tissue covering the right side of her face, reaching over her eye a bit and touching parts of her lips, only served to amplify her uniqueness. Her quintessential beauty. “There’s a cause if I ever saw one. Finally.” Jerkoff was heard to remark.
The water had slowly started to rise. It enveloped my chest like a lover and squeezed my lungs with a clenched, icy hand. Time to go. “Know thyself to be immortal,” Jerkoff told me.
“Shut your mouth” I muttered aloud. Even my voice sounded foreign to me. I stood and pushed up with all the force I could muster on the underside of the grating, not bothering to listen for oncoming cars.
---HK_Newbie
