Repo Man
26 Red Bills
Alternative
"You say it like you're not gonna be okay," she scoffs from across the room, but three gunshots and five steps later, she is wrapped around his middle, and he lives.
Billiards
On some Fridays, after his favorite booze, Vicious gives Spike the victory, only partially teasing; but months later, Spike's rose fragrance is relentlessly familiar, and Vicious, distracted, wins it all.
Children
It is holy, they say, to close the eyes of the dead, but there is something in the dulled, broken green that even Spike (especially Spike) cannot properly meet.
Domino
"Spike, Julia. Julia, Spike," and a century's worth of legend, of the gypsies and the warrior in the stars, begins.
Elephant
He chuckles as she pounds away on his door, not even stopping when he hears her pull out her gun and cock it - "Smoking isn't good for an old woman," he yells, as if he, a dead man, could talk.
Fiction
"It would've made a good novel, in retrospect," Faye finishes, swilling a cup full of booze in one hand, "but even if I did read anything without cash signs, it's still too sad for my bookshelf, right?"
Gardens
In Jet's dreams there are bonsais, tens of plots of them, and they'll never die, with not only one pair of hands to water them, but two, three, four.
Hospice
Once, Faye laughed like a different woman, and Spike felt the countdown begin, the sharp turn of a very large, very full hourglass, and the cascade of yellow hair slipping idly over one shoulder.
Invertebrate
The trigger is cold to the touch, even under the sharp heat of her finger, but Spike is watching and making her eyelids burn with the face of a woman she has never met before; in a moment, the air is thick with gunpowder.
Jester
They'll never understand Ed's chatter when she chooses to go beyond casual function, but they quickly accept the rhythmic sounds of her typing into Bebop ambience like it has always been there.
Kindred
"I want to leave," Spike croaks out, his grip like a vice on Julia's arm, and the rain pounds on the window like a landslide; Julia says nothing and curls toward him, desperate for his warmth beneath the blanket.
Lesser
Faye doesn't trust hospitals but she can almost block out the white uniforms and sobbing in the hallways when she thinks about blood and bandages and shattering church windows.
Moratorium
He laughs and he smiles and he puffs out rolling clouds of smoke because he thinks of this as a daydream, a distraction, something that will end once his eyes blink the darkness back into view.
Navigate
"They say they used the stars to determine where they were and where they were going," Jet says, but Faye imagines them with derision, dim and cluttered all the way from point A to B to C.
Opals
Faye stares as Spike brings the necklace to the cashier, taking out his wallet to pay; "Why the hell not," he shrugs, but his eyes are too empty.
Pomegranate
Her fingers around his arm are slack, her grip like nothing, and yet he's caught, a wild animal leashed, thrashing, powerless against crying women.
Question
"It must be 'cause I like them," Ed answered, looking up from Ein to Jet to the brooding, chain-smoking duo, and she wonders if theirs are the same.
Romani
Romani, he muses, watching her pace with a cigarette between her fingers, and thinks to himself, The worst in the world; she'll be here forever, to watch Jet's bonsais die.
Sahara
They hear legends of green, rolling miles and creatures that streaked rapidly through the sky, but when they gaze downward, all they see is endless desert; all they know that streaked everywhere is death.
Tessellation
She plays the video over and over again and knows she will never remember; instead she draws the bedroom in her mind and imagines morning sunshine on clean walls, aching to find a smile in every mirror.
Ulcers
"Not the bell peppers again," he barked from the sofa; Jet glared at the closed kitchen door and considered the safest kind of food poisoning.
Visitor
It must be a little wrong, they gossiped, to whisper about the woman in yellow like she was a lunatic; but honestly, by coming to the same neighborhood every afternoon, to the same ruins, what can she expect to find?
Wonderland
The crashing sounds of gambling machines and the flashing neon jackpots surround her like a toy store, and Faye fills the blanks of her past with the prizes of the present, the colors of her future.
Xenophobia
On the flickering screen, the girl with dark hair appears in a dress of brazen yellow; Faye flinches back at the sight, as though burned.
Yesterday
The word was never truly uttered, never once useful, because the questions had never been asked.
Zero
All it takes is her name and his name and then all the doors to his past spring open; their hands snatch out at him, their fists are clenched tight, and he turns to meet their eyes, finishing his countdown with the bang of a gunshot and then silence.