Title: Meet Me in Mexico
Author: Ponderosa (ponderosa@dragonworld.com)
Pairing: None

Archive: Anyone with prior permission. Others, just ask.
Warning: [R] for Sands' potty mouth. Character death implied.
Spoilers: A few small ones.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to their respective copyright owners, like Robert Rodriguez. Plot, if you can call it that, belongs to me.

Notes: Various lines used/butchered from the Trolley Song as sung by Judy Garland.


-=*=-

Meet Me in Mexico

Ding, ding, ding.

Sands kept hearing the ring of the bicycle bell, but he had sent the kid away hours ago. The sound was an echo, a faint reminder of something he hadn't been wise enough to appreciate at the time.

There were lights too, licking the edges of his brain. Ghosts that danced and teased, swirling and whirling. Beautiful dreams he couldn't quite remember. Ones that tickled and itched like the flies he had stopped bothering to wave away.

Only, he didn't have to worry about those anymore.

Night had chased away the little shiteaters; left him with snakes instead. Cool shadows that wound around his arms and made them hard to move. Sands grit his teeth and clenched his fingers around the the worthless piece of plastic in his palm. He ran a thumb across the buttons.

Reach out and touch someone, right?

But there was no one for Agent Sands to touch. He knew that at some point in the past couple weeks he had stumbled over the line that ensured los Estados Unidos would welcome him back.

Fuckers.

"You pass all the tests, you've got the willingness to follow orders and the moral flexibility to screw people over, but in the end it's dear old Uncle Sam giving you the shaft."

There may or may not have been someone within earshot. Sands wasn't sure anymore. He was tired, and it was hard to focus on little details like footsteps and time.

"The bad coffee at Langley should've been your first clue, but you plug up your nose and swallow it, just like you do for all the shit they give you. You start to wise up when you get passed over for a promotion, but it's too late to drop to your knees and kiss a parade of pasty white ass."

"Pack your t-shirts and run for the border!" Sands shouted. "Yo quiero fuck you!"

Sands would have rolled his eyes if he still had them. Instead, he lifted his head and pressed his cheek against the wall. The stone was a few degrees cooler than the air. It was almost comforting, and he likened it to the memory of his mother's hand upon his face when he was eleven and home with strep. Sands cursed, shook his head, tried to brush away all thoughts of a time before teenage rebellion and asshole stepfathers.

But they lingered, just like that goddamn bicycle bell.

"With my high starched collar, and my high topped shoes, and my hair piled high upon my head. I went to lose a jolly hour on the trolley-

"-and lost my fucking eyes instead..."

Words faded to a hum. Sands drifted off.

He woke with a scream trying to claw its way out of him. It scrabbled in his throat, a frantic weasel whose fur smelled like piss and made it hard for him to breathe.

"Straight out of a trashy novel," he said, when the hand that had risen automatically to rub his eye conjured a fresh stab of pain. "Poetic justice my right eye."

He laughed.

"Left too. Who does this sort of shit?"

Gingerly, Sands' explored the ruined sockets. They were raw, sticky holes, gaping like the stretched out cunt of a donkey-fucking whore. Sands dropped his hand back into his lap. He'd been just as thoroughly screwed and didn't even have a fistful of sweaty tourist dollars to show for it.

"As he started to go, then I started to know, how it feels when the universe reels..."

"Ajedrez, you..." he trailed off.

"Good job, princess," Sands said, and lifted an arm in a wobbly salute before hawking a glob of bloody snot into the dirt. He gasped in a lungful of air - take that, you fucking weasel - and started to sing again.

"As he started to leave I took hold of his sleeve..."

Fucked six ways from Sunday, Sheldon Jeffrey Sands made it halfway through the second encore.

End of the line.


Owari