Life-sized Bytes

Tuesday evening, sunset

His day had left him feeling like a stranded cockroach wriggling upon its back but still looking for all the world like the existentially alienated and resentiment-ridden assistant-manager of a DairyKwik somewhere in a largish city in the American Midwest, which is what he was. The Cathedral glared down at him where he stood on the street corner amongst a croud of irritated commuters. He had just bought a handgun and wasn’t afraid to figure out how to use it. His redneck, racist boss had him all wrong; despite his long hair and the tattered copy of Beyond Good and Evil which went with him everywhere, Max had purchased and flipped through two copies of Soldier of Fortune and once gone into an Army/Navy Surplus store. In truth, he’d been shopping for a pair of combat boots for his pale and lovely then-girlfriend, Vix, but it had been a huge step in light of his liberal, pacifist sensibilities.

He spit the innocent cigarette, unlit and immaculate, from between his lips and ground it half-hearted beneath his faded, black Converse like a helpless roach. He glanced down the street at the huge Swatch billboard lost amongst the clutter of buildings and lights hovering over swarms of bobbing heads and taxi roofs. Official Timekeeper of the 1996 Olympics 5:48. He was going to be late for work. Stuck in the morass of traffic below the clock he spotted his bus edging towards him at glacial speed. One had to marvel at such a misnomer as “rush hour.”

“Oh darn it,” he muttered under his breath. He didn’t swear much.

It was warm, but he was wearing his heavy leather biker’s jacket out of habit. The twilight swallowing the city further depressed him. “Tuesdays always suck.”

Even the weight of the pistol in his backpack failed to console him. After two robberies, he’d decided to fight back despite his normal squeamishness about firearms. He’d had it. During the first robbery he’d literally pissed himself. When a skinny black kid fired the gun through the store roof, his bladder’d followed suit. Just four days later he found himself staring backwards down the sight of a shotgun at a nylon stocking stretched taught over a corpulent face and praying for a Hell in which petty thieves could eternally suffer. No more! He was going to make a stand!

His eyes rested on the abandoned cigarette for a long time. Before stepping onto the bus, he retrieved the crushed, unlit Marlboro from the pavement and tossed it towards the angry red trash bin which commanded him Keep Your City Clean For a More Beautiful Tomorrow. He missed and stopped a moment, debating whether he ought to step out of line and dispose of his litter. A bulbous Hispanic woman, leading two large-eyed children recently liberated from black velvet, prodded him with a bag of groceries. She hacked with a phlegmatic impatience and Max abandoned the cigarette to its fate.

Fate had singled Max out for frustration. Vix had left him three months ago for no reason; he had never understood Nietzche or Kafka, but heard from helpful friends that German authors occasionally got one laid; he had asthma so he couldn’t smoke; he was lonely and angry and suffering from a painful rash he was too self-conscious to ask a doctor about. Posing with unlit cigarettes made him feel better, though. He was still feeling very film noire about the breakup with Vix. Over the last month he had thrown away half a pack of Marlboro Menthols after casually dangling each from his lip, usually while waiting for busses or under street lamps on lonely, tortured walks in the early hours of the morning. Sadly, the smell of mentholated cigarettes made him ill but he couldn’t really justify buying another pack while he still had menthols left.

More importantly, the DairyKwik he crawled towards would be robbed that night resulting in the net loss of a carton of unfiltered Camels, a case of Bud Dry, one hundred and sixteen dollars and forty-three cents despite the posted sign attesting Register Contains No More Than $50 and the immortal and inexplicably pure soul of Maxwell D. Fallink, assistant manager. In light of these events, it is fortunate this story is not about him--not really. Nor for that matter were the cigarettes, the Bud Dry, or the $116.43; they were all unimportant.

Wednesday morning, twilight

Vix lit a cigarette, threw the news paper in the trash, and watched the smoke curl up from the red ember, vanishing as it escaped the narrow beam of light cast by a battered table lamp. The smoke wasn’t gone, of course, but when we can’t see things it’s easiest to assume they cease to exist--like credit card statements and shit and promises made in moments of passion. All gone.

“Poor Max,” slipped from her lips with a billow of purple-grey smoke, curling back over itself like a narcissistic Ostrich plume. “Poor, stupid Max.”

She stood up from the battered chair in which she nestled every morning before her daily sleep. The blanket fell away revealing a body men would kill and die for. “An alabaster kitty-cat,” one had called her--she couldn’t remember who, but that wasn’t surprising. She stretched up, reaching for the ceiling, rose up on her tip-toes, arched her back and let out a yawn, her mouth gaping, nipples taut, toes curled tight. Goose-flesh crept up her slender legs and then claimed her pale arms and back. She was completely naked except for thick, fuzzy acrylic socks and a little amulet of St. Anthony which hung between her large, firm breasts.

Beside the chair lay a small bag, a heavy army trench coat, and the scant clothes she’d crawled out of before sittining down to read the paper. She only read the paper when she or someone she knew was in it. From the bag Vix pulled a carton of Camels, a punctured Bible, and a crumpled wad of bills. She tossed all but the bills back to the floor. There were brownish stains on the wrinkled bills and she stared at them a moment.

As she started straightening and folding them up she whispered to herself, “It’s just ketchup. It’s just ketchup. It’s just ketchup.” From a pocket in the coat she pulled the night’s tips which she commingled with the rest of the cash.

“Shit it’s cold.” Stating the obvious was her trademark. “Pilot must’ve gone out again,” and that was the end of the thought. The money she deposited on the floor next to the Bible. She went into the cluttered and crusty bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower full blast as hot as it would go. Not that she would take a shower but the landlord paid the water, she paid the heat. She would stay in the bathroom until it was time to go to bed, another hour or so, cozy as could be. As long as the pipes didn’t freeze like last winter, she’d be all right.

From the shadows where they lay, the topmost bill studied the squalor of the room, pronouncing his judgement on the world

IN GOD WE TRUST

ONE DOLLAR

THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

Tusday night, dusk

THE BIBLE SAVES SOULS the billboard said.

The dirty, old man struggled up from where he lay prostrate on the sidewalk before Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Cathedral, his treasure gripped between holey-gloved fingers. It was complete and perfect, if a little squished at one end. A miraculous find, his lucky day.

“People throw away the damnedest things!” he shouted at the wrought iron gate. The stalwart gate scowled down on him. Beyond the gate stood the huge grey towers of rough hewn stone, unviolated by the moral threat Crazy Billy represented. The specimen lurking in the God’s late-twilight shadows was heavily bearded and a dirty, tangled mat of unwashed hair protruded from below a baseball cap. Retired and Loving It the hat explained beneath layers of dirt, grease and less identifiable filth.

“It’s fucking perfect!” he proclaimed in ecstatic disbelief. The rapture swelled within him.

The cigarette had only been stepped on once. The filter was crushed, but he tore what remained away and placed the end between chapped lips so dry they cracked and bled when he smiled. He searched through the tattered pockets of his outer coat for a lighter or matches, but found nothing but scraps of paper and half a Burger King Whopper. In the pockets of the varsity letter jacket beneath he fingered through the coins collected that evening during the rush-hour press as he squatted on the steps before the cathedral. He also discovered a flask whose tattered label boasted Mad Dog 20/20 Black Cherry and an all-but-illegible State Identification Card proclaiming its bearer to be William J. Hanover of 1785 Apple Ct. Forty-eight years old. An organ donor though few would brave said organs if acquainted with their host. A generous appraisal might guess Mr. Hanover’s age to be 55, but when he went to collect his S.S.I. check every month, the clerk only looked at the social security number anyhow. The photo, clean shaven, sideburns neatly trimmed, the gaze perhaps merely a touch worried, was of a long-forgotten dream. So was the address.

No matches.

“Move it along, Billy,” Sgt. Fergeson ordered.

Startled from his inventory, Billy stared up at the tall, handsome black man in uniform and snarled something obscene and anatomically impossible. The stony scowl of the cathedral deepened.

“Come on, Billy. They got mass in twenty minutes and God’s got an image to maintain,” he pointed out the hours of the church posted on the wrought iron fence for corroboration. Mass Daily 6:30pm All welcome “Besides,” and here he tapped the white metal placard below with his billy club. No Loitering

“I need a fuckin’ light fer my cigarette!” Billy exploded. “I’ve got no fucking light for my cigarette!” He was frantic and deranged, but that was nothing new.

Fergeson produced a lighter. He’d been a leg in the neighborhood for two years and he knew Billy was one of the less despicable street bums. “Now get a move on,” he ordered with an authoritative murmur.

“Fuck you,” Billy muttered as he ambled towards home. They respected and even liked each other after a fashion.

Tuesday, moonrise

Vix looked at her watch. 7:06 She still had two hours.

The night seemed unseasonably warm with a strange, ticklish wind blowing the bare trees in swaying fits. Clouds skittered southward across the sky, probably seeking cheerier company and a more congenial climate. The moon exploded from behind a thick blanket and dazzled startled gazers across the city. It was one of those impossibly large moons which cast shadows and captured the will of mortals foolish enough to meet his gaze. The flat silver disk seemed to loom impossibly close, but the wise knew better.

Vix swallowed what remained of the scrap of paper she rolled beneath her tongue, tripped, and fell into that moon. The big, white-faced man looked down at her and a smile gradually spread across his luminous face. His eyes got big and round as his mouth began to open and close. He was saying something but Vix knew he was too far away. Way too far. She’d never hear him. She started to explain this to him but a frustrated look squeezed the old man’s face together and she decided to shout louder.

“It’s too far!” she screamed into her cupped hands. Shaking her head, sending shoulder length platinum hair whipping back and forth, “I can’t hear you.”

“Shut up!” someone screamed from a nearby tenement building. A window slammed.

The moon’s face continued to contract in consternation, then exploded in another burst of communicative convulsions, at last resolving into a broad, grandfatherly grin. Realizing the old coot was probably loony or suffering some kind of dementia common among old people, Vix shrugged and headed for work. She wanted to go to the DairyKwik to buy some orange juice and two boxes of Twinkies, one for now, one for breakfast. She’d forgotten about cigarettes. She quickly forgot about the DairyKwik, too.

Hers was the good life.

Tuesday night

Standing rule: Men are like lipsticks. Some women only want one and that works for them. For Vix, it was a mixture of curiosity and boredom. As soon as he got familiar, the thrill was gone; if she looked and he wasn’t a little startling--well, what was the point?

An old guy out walking his little white terrier was staring at her. She flicked her platinum mane at him and looked up at the numbers on the building. Kent’s apartment. Kent would lend her a few bucks for Twinkies. Kent needed her like smack. She knew it. Crazy, tough, cruel as hell to everyone, and hooked on her so bad he’d kill if he heard her mention another man’s name. Kill the other man, of course. For her, Kent was a toy. She could throw him away any time and he’d yo-yo right back.

But Kent was usually good for a few dead presidents when she was short. Whatever he had was hers for the asking. Not that she ever took advantage of him. With her natural talent for social ecology and conservation, she took only what she needed. What made her irresistible was that she really did care about them. All of them. She just couldn’t care about any one of them all the time.

Vix pushed the buzzer next to the name-tag Hampton Cask Kent never advertised his location with good reason, so there was only his roommate’s name on the little plastic plate.

While she waited, the names on the plate started dancing. They swayed like palm trees in a gentle tropical breeze which, she realized, would explain why it was so warm in late December. It was a beautiful night and the diesel exhaust from a passing truck smelled like coconuts.

“It’s the Gulf Stream pushing up from the Gulf of Mexico. That must be why it’s so warm” she stated to the incredbly old black woman in a bright floral dress. She had graying hair tied back in a tight bun and skin the color of coffee with a touch of orange juice. “Maybe it’s all part of the NAFTA thing.”

Mrs. DuBois had just emerged from the apartment complex with a groan. She groaned a lot, more out of habit than pain.

“I know that’s right, honey,” the woman replied with a knowing smile and nod. “Comes up with all them immigrants. Damn ‘em!” and she punctuated by spitting tobacco juice out the corner of her mouth, over the steps’ railing, and into a open trash can.

“Killer shot!” Vix shouted.

“My first husband was in the Army, God bless his soul in heaven. When he got back he never let me out with ‘em all ‘lest I could, you know, ‘keep up’.”

“I know how it is,” Vix encouraged, fascinated with the yellow-brown color of the woman’s eyes. The pupils seemed to shimmer, impossibly black.

“So I learnt how to do it all then. Spit, piss in a field, drive a fork-lift. Wasn’t no man could shoot better ‘n me, neither.” And she leaned over conspiratorially, “And it come in real handy once when they come t’ bust up the Speak. Y’know honey? His half-brother, Jonathan, was part owner by then. Now, he was my second husband. A real good man, y’hear?”

Vix nodded by way of assuring her that she was right there with her. The words flowed over her like tropical waves and she had no idea of their meaning, only their flavor. The pupils had divided into couples and were circling each other in a fascinating endless spiral.

“Henry got killed in that shoot out, poor man,” she shook her head at his poverty. “Poor, poor man. But Jonathan, he took real good care of me. An’ it weren’t nothin’ funny neither!” Her eyes grew huge and the pupils absorbed into each other like sperm and ovum combining to manifest new life, a beautiful thing to witness. “Just kin watchin’ out fer kin as best he could.”

The door opened and Kent stood before them in faded jeans held on only by a belt. His bare chest and feet testified he’d been sleeping. He rubbed his eyes again and blinked at her. His shaved head had three day’s growth on it, his chin only two.

“You’re home,” Vix observed, smiling vaguely.

“Honey! you is a sight. But he’s a cute one,” the old woman assured Vix. “If I was just thirty years younger--Ewww-wee! That boy’d be mine.” Her laugh rattled in the back of her old throat.

Kent completely ignored the old woman. “Buzzer’s fucked. What’d yah want?” He had an almost sheepish look to him, sleepy and unshaven. His fly was down and Vix noticed he wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

“I wanted to see you,” she giggled, but couldn’t quite remember why she was there. It must have had something to do with cigarettes. She wanted a cigarette badly.

“C’mon in,” he pushed the door open and she passed easily beneath his arm, he was six-two, she was five-four, leaving Mrs. DuBois to watch the couple ascending the old stairs inside.

“Y’all be good to each other, y’hear?” Mrs. DuBois said as the door slammed shut with a sinister clatter. “People always forgettin’ th’ important things,” and she spit into the trash can again.

(Obligatory sex scene here--Under 18 Not Admitted.)

He: _______ her: ______ with his: _______.

stroked thighs hands

tickled clit tongue

squeezed nipples fingers

worked pussy cock

While she was: ______ his: _____ with her: ________ till he: __________.

licking shaft tongue begged

raking back nails screamed

sucking balls lips moaned

squeezing waist thighs came

(Add:

greedily magnificent delicate

desperately aching talented

slowly quivering perfect

savagely throbbing agile where appropriate and repeat as necessary.

Genders and roles may, of course, be altered to taste.)

The panting man was left alone in the booth, the penis in his hand still throbbing and engorged. The booth smelled of sweat, stale liquor and funk strongly enough to gag a sober patron. So did the man. Stains mottling the dark paneling didn’t invite closer inspection. A box of Kleenex on a makeshift shelf and a trash basket were the only furnishings in addition to the video screen and the narrow, vinyl-upholstered seat. Insert Coin invited the screen congenially.

Metro Sanitation Department Manufactured in Dartmouth, IN (Abandon Hope all ye who enter here)

The iron grate was rusted and scarred, but twenty years of storms and snows, the daily pounding of daily traffic, the passage of decades and countless souls over its icy steel porticuss had not distracted it from its vigilant guard nor had it rendered illegible the cleanly cast letters left behind by the founding fathers.

She was in complete darkness. She floated on a river of blood and vomit. The ride was rough due to the enormous quantities of waste in a city of this magnitude. Echoing up from the depths she heard laughter and shrieks, the voices of the sinned against and the sinning. It was cold. The smell was awful: rot, decay, maybe something dead, definately shit. A sense of the immense weight above her was the first evidence she was in a sewer.

She felt hands upon her. The hands were coarse and rude. They pinched and squeezed her. One of them was cupped up between her thighs, a thumb lodged along the crease of her ass. With a detached curiosity she realized she was screaming. It was what she was supposed to do, playing her role. She decided to stop and the sudden silence mingled with the awful stench engulfed her. Her body was being carried by horribly strong hands. There must have been five or six of them at least. She was completely powerless. For a moment she imagined she was floating on a river. The hands held her were a raft and she floated down stream towards a black ocean. The River Styx defined the border of Hell, didn’t it? She was adrift on that river.

“Lethe,” whispered a voice as ambiguous as the shadows.

She flowed down the fetid river. The current was not strong, but it buoyed her body along like a twig adrift in a lazy, summer stream. The fecal smell had vanished. The air was merely dank and stifling. Had she considered her predicament, claustrophobia might have claimed her. She could not think in such abstractions now; the darkness was everything for a very long time.

Rounding a bend, she flowed towards a delta of dim light. Looking about her, she discerned the forms which carried her and, had she located the energy to do so, would have screamed again. They were not quite human. They had human forms, but lacked ears. Their skins gleamed a pale greasey grey but so completely and thoroughly wrapped with rags and so grimy that it might have appeared black. Each was draped with a tattered black shawl over its shoulders. Jagged scars surrounded small holes where their ears had been removed. The heads of her abductors were virtually hairless and she discerned raw soars and scabs on their scalps, necks, wherever skin pierced the filth. Here and there tufts of hair sprang from skin like weeds cracking through a sidewalk. The faces were expressionless, staring absently into the space before them with the disinterested expressions the blind develop. Each of the figures stood over six feet tall. Gaunt, bony arms belied the cruel strength with which they held her. None of them looked at her as they came out of the dry sewer tunnel into a small cavern formed of hewn stone blocks.

The dim light was cast by a briliant fire in a 55 gallon, steel drum. It smoked heavily, greasy black billows of poison which escaped through a drainage pipe in the ceiling. A bright orange extension cord descended from that pipe. The room was cast in an infernal glow from the lapping flames of the barrel. At the far side of the table stood a man with his back to them. He was similarly dressed in dirty, black rags but stood erect and a mane of shiny black hair fell down his back almost to his waist. The man seemed short compared to those who carried her.

“On the table,” sighed the voice she had heard earlier.

The table came into focus. It was cluttered with pieces of junk and scraps of metal but an area down the middle had been scraped clear. Upon discerning leather straps bolted to the table, her terror was reborn. She fought against the cold calm within her. She wanted to fight, to kick and scratch and break free. Now was her last chance! She had to escape to the light, the warmth and safety above her somewhere! In her mind she screamed loud and long and hard in an endless wail. It echoed through the corridors of her soul like the death keen of a banshee in the horror of mist. In reality, she emitted a tiny whimper and twisted her head very slightly. Her lips grazed one of the arms which held her. The creature’s eyes flickered. Otherwise the slow procession continued.

The impossibly strong fingers fit her body to the table. They tightened thick leather straps with heavy metal buckles so she could not move. They stretched her to her full length, binding at the ankles and throat in a cunning system which neither strangled nor hurt but held the length of her body completely motionless. She could turn her head but not so much as arch her back without the tension of her restraints biting at her throat. Her hands were placed on wooden pegs set in the table and similarly strapped down. An additional strap of leather was brought up from below the table and tightened across her torso just below her breasts.

Once rendered completely motionless she discovered her voice. “Let me loose! What are you doing?”

The creatures moved away with the muffled sound of bare feet scraping stone.

It was only then that the man turned around. His face was startling: piercing green eyes and high, sharp cheek bones, wonderfully clean, smooth skin, a powerful sharp nose with narrow nostrils, and thin pale lips.

“You need not fear. It will do you no good.” The voice was a hollow whisper which reachered her despite itself. Was she hearing him or were the words inside her head? As he spoke, he took a leather sack from the table near her head in his left hand. With his right, he brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek, an almost intimate gesture. The skin of his hands was soft and his touch was very gentle.

Her mind reeled. She couldn’t think of words. Her fear raged savagely like the frantic germ in a core of a seed but couldn’t discover the fissure to allow it birth.

He continued to gently pull her hair away from her face, gathering it together into a single thick rope which pulled the skin of her face tight, firm but not painful. Then, with his other hand, he deftly caught the bottom of the sack on her chin and pulled it up over her face. His gesture had an easy, well-rehearsed grace. It was a mask fashioned of smooth, meticulously-crafted black leather. It fit to her head tightly and allowed her to see through two large holes. A similar hole allowed her nose to poke free, but there was no hole for her mouth.

Still she could not scream.

The mask was tied into place. He quickly placed a last restraining strap just beneath her nose and tightened it painfully with a sharp tug.

“I apologize for the discomfort. This is the one thing you must not move. The measurement are very precise, but if you move--” he shrugged with an awful sadness. He had a foreign accent, but she could not discern what kind. It was very slight.

“Please understand, nothing is by accident. Very little risk.” Was he smiling? His lips seemed completely noncommittal, his face emotionless. “Trained by the best universities in the world, I.” Maybe he was German or Austrian. His voice sounded familiar and through the haze it bothered her that she couldn’t remember from where.

He stepped away from her and she could not move her head to see him. She had again forgotten to panic. The cold had washed from her body and she felt herself floating directionless in a vast sea. She was getting warmer.

She heard him scrap something metallic within the fiery barrel. He reappeared above her and fumbled about on the table nearby. He looked down into her eyes. His were so beautiful, so green.

She heard the sharp electric whine of a power drill. Her back arched reflexively in panic. The strap at her throat choked her. She struggled to turn her head, but the strap over her chin and mouth wouldn’t let her.

He continued to stare into her eyes, a touch of a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. “Shh,” he whispered. “Shhhhh.”

He raised his other hand into view. It held a long pair of pliers which in turn gripped a screw almost three inches long of glittering fiery gold. But as he brought it around to fit it onto the bit of the drill she realized it was nothing more than an everyday wood screw, bronze or brass, phillip-style. The room spun around her. Her warm sea had grown rough and angry. She felt dizzy and nauseous. The screw glowed bright red.

“Shhhhh,” he whispered and placed the screw somewhere near the top of her head. She felt its pressure. “The mind,” he informed her, “is a mysterious thing. Wonderful. The brain is merely its cradle. It holds it and shapes it like a goblet shapes wine. But unlike wine, if we change the shape of the container, we alter the contents.” He tested the drill again. Her eyes flew wide open. She strained to see him, to look into his eyes, but he was looking at the top of her skull and she could only see his distorted profile beyond the dark horizon of the leather mask. The smell of the singing leather reached her nose.

“The soul God has made perfect,” he continued, his voice distant like a lecturing professor, moving the screw slightly to the left and studying the curve of her skull carefully like a weekend golfer on the green, “but not always so the mind. Please understand, this is for the best. You will not be dead. No, no! You are going to be--” he paused melodramatically, “reborn. Now,” he looked down into her eyes again with--was it compassion? “Hold very still--”

And the drill screamed for her.

What did she feel? A pinch? A terrible jarring and shaking against the top of her head. A moment of pain, yes, but it passed, like getting a shot. It stung and ached and she continued to feel her head vibrating, but with the strap she couldn’t move. The timid creature inside her resolved she could do nothing. She let the vibrations have possession of her body. She noted the whining of the drill with a detached indifference. She felt him bearing down on the top of her head. Then all was quiet.

Next she smelled burning hair. Had she heard a soft crackling sound beneath that of the drill? She could not remember. She felt the room tossing and turning around her. Her sea grew more violent. She was being thrown about in a maelstrom of waves, rocked and battered by a typhoon. In a panic, she feared she would be dragged under and lose herself completely. She struggle to stay at the surface.

The dark man above her was scraping in the barrel again.

“Very good,” he sounded pleased. “Just two more.”

“No!” she tried to shout beneath the strap.

He cooed to her like a dove, “Shhhh--”

The second screw was shorter, perhaps an inch and a half. It went in above her left temple. She could see him hunched over her, see the drill, a Black & Decker with dried spatters of white paint amongst something red--something wet. It screamed again. She felt the sharp bite. It hurt more this time. She saw it press down quickly, the face of the drill move down to almost brush her mask with the madly spinning socket. The strap bore his pressure as he leaned into her.

The maelstrom intensified. She was foundering. She couldn’t tell if it was the whine of the drill or the ringing in her ears or if she were screaming. Something ran down the side of her head through her hair and across her cheekbone.

“Oops, just a trickle,” he exclaimed above her and touched just inside her eyehole with the corner of a dirty white rag.

The third screw went into the very crown of her head. She never saw it. Her head shook violently as it burrowed into her, then it glided gently into place and silence.

The storm was over. She had reached calm.

Tuesday evening,

Kent held the gun at head height. Women were always getting him to do stupid things.

“Empty out the register, asshole.”

Coarse language rattled Max surprisingly for a man of his age. He dropped his french fries and ketchup went everywhere.

“I’m working on it, take it easy, man.” He quickly pulled the bills out of the register and threw them on the counter of the DairyKwik. “Look, m-m-m-man, I’ve been through this before! Don’t get crazy, ok? Here’s the change, ok?” Nickels scattered across the floor, raining down out of the drawer as his trembling fingers tried to scrape them together. “Oh darn! I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. I’ll get ‘em! I’ll get ‘em.”

Max dropped behind the counter thinking, “I’ve got you now, you jerk!” He scraped at the floor with one hand, rattling the coins loudly across the linoleum which was coated with a thin layer of Lime Slurpy and dirt. With his other Max reached into his backpack.

Up he jumped, 9mm H&K leveled at Kent’s chest, just as Vix walked into the store to see what was taking so long.

“Kent? I was getting bored--” she saw the assembled hardware, smelled testosterone and sweat, and made the squeak a mouse might emit when stepped on by a hoarse.

“Vix?” Max exclaimed, seeing Vix.

“Max?” Vix exclaimed, seeing Max.

“Fuck!” Kent exclaimed, seeing the 9mm H&K semi-automatic pistol leveled at his chest.

Kent dropped to his knees behind the counter, out of Max’s line of sight. Startled and in fear for his life, Max jerked the gun towards Kent and it went off. Vix screamed another piercing note, this one well above high A.

The bullet was one of those high-power, Teflon, armor-piercing, explosive, in-like-a-thimble-out-like-an-anvil monstrosities favored by the savviest of hitmen, reactionary survivalists, and home-protection buffs. An extremely powerful round due to its magnum charge, the recoil of the pistol surprised Max, strained his index finger and making him wet his pants. Again.

The gun dropped from his hands.

“Darn!” punctuated the clatter across the floor.

The trajectory of a bullet, as every physics student knows, is not truly straight. If the hypothetical shootist pulled the trigger and dropped a bullet at exactly the same time, they would strike the ground simultaneously, one next to the hypothetical shootist, the other, in this case due to the power of the bullet, an obscene distance away. This, of course, is assuming a perfectly flat plane, an initial vectoral trajectory parallel with that plane for the fired round ,and a lack of intervening solid objects. None of these hypothetical conditions were met. The bullet exploded some eight feet away after passing through four cases of Dolly Madison Zingers and striking a section of metal shelving. The drop of mercury in the hollow-tip of the round slammed into the soft, lead cap of the bullet which burst into a dozen tiny shards traveling in obtuse angles from their original direction. A bag of popcorn at Vix’s elbow burst dramatically, scattering artificially orange kernels across the mat set in front of the door which read DairyKwik When you need it bad All but one fragment had struck the bag of popcorn. The last malicious shard of shrapnel ripped through Vix’s bag and would have cork-screwed through her lower abdomen shreading vital organs and lodging at last at the base of her spine if it had not instead struck a copy of The New Testament and Psalms Provided by the Gideons

The acid taste of carbide hung in the air.

Everyone stared at nothing for a moment, stunned.

The first to move was Kent who scrambled away from the counter. Max immediately became aware that he was unarmed and dropped to recover his weapon.

“I thought I told you to stay outside!” Kent screamed, furious at Vix.

“I--um--I forgot. You were taking a long time. I thought you were gonna buy the stuff,” Vix explained, still a little confused.

“I didn’t have any money.”

“Oh.” She shrugged, searching for some reconciliatory exit. “I’m not really all that hungry,” she explained with a smile. “Really.” She looked around at all the popcorn and changed her mind. Maybe just a little handful? Then, checking herself, remembered Max. He might have been hurt in all that noise and smoke. “Max?” she took a half-step towards the counter, concern in her voice.

“You actually know that geek?” Kent demanded, incredulous, as he cowered behind a shelf lined with jars of bean, taco, and cheese dip, assorted species of chips, peanut butter in tiny jars beside marshmallow cream and cheeze spreads in pressurized containers.

“Yeah. We used to--you know--go out.”

“You mean you fucked this nerd.” It occurred to Vix she had said something wrong. Perhaps reviewing her previous affairs to her current lover, a man both jealous and armed, was not at that moment prudent.

“Hey, watch it, you--asshole.” Max retorted with very little conviction from the shelter of the counter. He felt the need to defend his ego despite his fear.

“Shut up you little fuck!”

Max bit his lower lip and looked around for an escape. Then he remembered the weight in his hand was a pistol with eight more bullets in it.

“Oh yeah? Well,” he paused, “fuck you,” the words still lacked for any real heart, but he was getting better. Jumping to his feet he looked for his target which had already scuttled down the aisle to take cover behind the Doritos display. Max scanned the seemingly empty rows in a feverish panic.

Kent, too, was sweating heavily. It was the first time he’d ever been shot at and he was scared to death though still continent. He reached up to wipe the sweat off his forehead and bumped a bag of chips which fell to the floor.

Hearing the noise, Max sprang to life. He gripped the pistol with both hands, stretched his arms out towards the noise, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger over and over again, blasting the room with his loneliness, frustration, and Teflon-coated, explosive rounds.

At some point in his blind-firing fury he 86’d a bottle of ketchup which nested in a condiments tray set aside for microwavable hot dogs and hamburgers. The length and breadth of the store was covered with red splotches, replicating the set of a slaughter flick of a by-gone era of cinematography. Even without the technicolor, the property damage would have appeared impressive.

So was the silence after the loud click after the last round.

Kent rose from the wreckage of broken glass, car air-fresheners, and Dorito’s tortilla chips and walked down the aisle. A blush had consumed his cheeks and forehead and was spreading over the dome of his stubble-covered scalp. Max stood behind the counter, black Converse bonding with the spilt Lime Slurpy.

Kent pressed the barrel of the gun to Max’s forehead.

“Don’t kill him, Kent,” Vix looked at him with her most winsome face. There were real tears in her eyes. “Please.”

“You don’t love this asshole, do you!?” Kent demanded incredulously.

“Naw,” she said, which was the right answer where sparing the continuity of Max’s skull was concerned. “I just don’t want to see anyone killed.”

“But he fucked you!” Kent poked Max’s forehead with the barrel. “He came inside you!”

“It wasn’t very good,” she pleaded.

“Hey!” Max cried.

“Shut up or you’re meat, you little ratfuck!” Kent shoved the barrel against Max’s forehead with greater force.

“Ow!” said Max.

Vix saw that the scene was at critical mass. “Kent, if you kill him, we’re through!” She stomped her high-heeled pump for emphasis, sending ripples through the rest of her body.

Kent paused and glanced at her nervously.

“I mean it, goddamn it! You’ll never touch me again as long as you live.”

Sweat was pouring down both young men’s faces, backs and legs.

Kent stared into Max’s big, scared, pale-blue eyes and sneered.

Max stared in Kent’s narrow, angry, brown eyes and prayed.

“Kent,” Vix whispered.

Kent licked his dry lips and inhaled very slowly.

The pimples on Max’s nose and chin whispered to Kent that he should do it. “This gangly fuck came inside your woman,” they were screaming to him. “Blow his head off! Do the world a favor. What’s the matter? Chicken? Come on! Shoot him!!” Which just goes to show you how malignant pimples really are.

“Kent,” Vix whispered again.

Kent glanced over at her. At that moment, Vix was perfect. Her eyes pleaded with him. They were begging him. He saw that the pupils of her eyes, usually grey but now a deep blue-green, were dilated and there was a tear on one cheek. He’d never seen her cry. Her little nose, turned up at the end, sheltered flaring nostrils. His eyes dropped down to her chest which was rising and falling rapidly, still swaying slightly from the stamp of her stilleto. The Army trench coat he’d given her had fallen open revealing thinly concealed breasts, magnificently large and full on such a tiny, little body. He could see her nipples pointing up at him, like little ski jumps even through her bra. Her navel winked at him with a cute, girlish grin from beneath her midriff-cropped t-shirt; a perfect tummy. The skirt below stopped well above mid-thigh, tight over her boyish hips curving gently into legs thin and impossibly long that squeezed him so hard when she came he ached the next day. Was he going to give all this up because of a bunch of zits?

“O.K.” Kent said coldly and lowered the gun. He realized he’d been scared to death to pull the trigger anyhow. He’d never before shot someone he could see clearly.

“Pussy!” screamed the pimples.

Vix let out a long sigh and smiled up at the tall, skinny skinhead. She beamed like a proud mother at her little boy’s first recital. She was going to kiss him.

But Max’s ego had suffered one to many abrasions in the confrontation.

“What does not kill me makes me stronger,” he proclaimed, looking away from them sheepishly. It was the only thing he knew by Nietzche, having never read any of Beyond Good and Evil. The phrase jumped into his head and out his mouth before he’d considered it; it seemed very clever to him at the time. Under other circumstances it might have been.

Kent, however, thought it was stupid and smug. He pulled the trigger and a red splotch appeared in the middle of Max’s chest. His sternum was neatly punctured by a pathetically simple bullet from a mundane .38 Special revolver. Max fell backwards into the magazine stand.

Nearly a full second later Vix screamed again. This time it was a long, loud, full-bodied woman’s scream.

Kent stared at the gun in his hand for a moment, looked up as if startled, and made a dash for the door leaving Vix alone in the DairyQuik. She stared at Max for a moment, started to leave, then stopped. She looked down at the cash on the counter, an untidy pile of bills, shrugged, and scraped them into her bag. Then she hopped onto the counter, pulled a carton of Camels from the rack, and tucked them into her bag as well, pausing only a moment to notice the small hole she must have torn in her bag.

Kent’s car was already tearing out of the parking lot.

“Hey! Wait for me, you asshole!” she shouted after him.

He didn’t even look back.

So Vix shrugged and started walking towards work. She might be a few minutes late, but what were they gonna do, fire her? And besides, it’d been a weird night.

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©1999 Nathan Barnett