"Run"
Eight seconds separate you and the bullet.
xXx
Prologue.
Eight seconds ago, you had the world groveling on the caps of its knees. Eight seconds ago, you had been little Dally Winston, too large for your own brilliant shadow, untouched, untouching, untouchable. Eight seconds ago, you had known none equaling your brilliance. Eight seconds ago, you had your fuse, your own little light, youth—that amusing little flare of light that burns ferociously inside the lassitude of darkness. The blue endlessness of your eyes had held no shame; the snow of your smile had seduced the wits of all but the hardiest.
Flash forward to zero hour. Eight seconds separate you and the bullet.
You begin to tumble: so begins the fucking bullet.
Your blood sloshes in your veins. The eight seconds have passed. Now you are a vessel waiting to be shipwrecked. You are a bomb, waiting. You are the thrill of the spill, waiting. You are an overturning car, twisting, bucking, waiting, breathing heavily in eager fucking anticipation of the crash. Thinking about the moment you crack open, spilling, falling, crashing—sweet Lord, there is something goddamned erotic about the wait.
It knocks before it enters, Dally.
xXx
Chapter One.
Eight seconds separated you and the street below the high-rise. The morning sky glowed an ambivalent Brooklyn band—where the buildings, dipped in blue halo, trembled within vague and pulsing sunlight—and from the clothesline ending at your flat window, a sea of white undershirts stirred slowly with the breath of dawn. Somehow, the gentle morning wind licked your face; you felt the bitter tongue caress you. Your nerves rose as fire from beneath your skin, bubbling oil instead of sweat. God damn. When you were new to the planet, everything hurt. Your mother's kisses had been knives running their flat, hungry sides along your waiting cheeks. Roses that she had placed so effortlessly on the flat windowsill reeked of gasoline. You shivered in your bed during the pit of the night, certain that the needles within the mattress craved the flesh of your spine.
Eight seconds now separated you and your nine-year-old body. Eight seconds, and you were looking down at your release, the eternity of a broken Brooklyn street.
The doorhinges clicked. Your mother came in, made a silent gasp with her eyes, and screamed at you, and pulled you away. Your hypnosis burst apart at hearing her voice, like a bubble landing promptly upon a pinhead.
She had warned you about that window. She had warned you, but did you listen? No. Did you listen the night before, when she had ironed all of your clothes, and the smoke of your cleanliness withered her, and made a cheap cornflower dullness of her expensive blue eyes? No. Did you listen the night before that, when you said you had "accidentally" dropped that rotting bag of oranges out the window? No. Did you listen last night, when she had downed a bottle of your father's sorrow, when she had laughed at life in a glorious amber stupor, when she had leaned against the gasoline roses and fallen out that window herself? No, no, no, no, no. Did you know why?
Because you hated taking out the trash, you thought, where you'd run into the landlord, who always smelled faintly of something that fattened the acids in your stomach. Then you'd have to bend the corners that were crumbling with mice and mold and shadows and—whisperings whose subtle fires were enough to melt the cartilage from your ears. And if you survived that, you'd have to open the door and face the brokenness of the eternal Brooklyn street.
All of this to toss rotting oranges, or riding an eight-second one-way elevator? I don't know, Ma.
You had since learned to tuck a famous smirk within yourself. "No," you said. And she, lit like a fuse, burned with loving maternal frustration. You suicidal piece of shit. You had everything. Why? Because she gave you everything. You had time, you had youth, you had money, you had a home, you had schooling, you had shiny new things every year. Sure, you lived in a crap apartment on the sunlit side of the lower West. But that was only temporary. But, but—there was always a but with one of your mother's wondrous spiels—but, little baby Dallas, but you were rich. How could you possibly want more?
You knew the answer, but not in your mind. It burned from the depths of your toes to that crown of snow that had never laid quite right on your head. It pounded the walls of your lungs, rattled the prison bars of your ribcage. Yet you could never say it, never open your mouth and release it. Part of you thought that it would target your mother like a bullet. Another part of you thought that it was a grandiose idea, too above her to mention. Still a deeper—wiser—part of you kept your silence...for the sake of silence.
Your mother's eyes flared upon you. You must have looked like a little demon in her eyes, with a sharp, knowing face; with small, pale eyes too heavy for black and too light for blue; with short, solid limbs; with a flat white line for a mouth. You knew you looked just like your father. You often didn't know if that was cause for concern or pride. Looking up, you glanced at his picture hung upon the mantle. He, too, held in his eyes that smirking look she loved...or despised.
You looked back at her. You couldn't help but notice the reflection in her eyes distorted you—made you smaller. You were a speck, a flare of brilliant turquoise, drowning in the blue brightness of her anger.
You knew she had wanted someone else instead of you. You knew she wanted a boy who had been like one of those roses on the windowsill—big, red, happy, fragrant, warm. But she got you and you got her. And there you were: small, pale, cold, silent, smirking; smoldering like the heart within a long candled flame.
xXx