"Cobras in the Square"
by Acey Dearest
She's eight years old when she first watches The Godfather. Late-night, commercial-free with two of her brothers while her other siblings sleep in the next room. Both of them are whining, Ha-chan, I want to see cartoons, Ha-chan, this is boring. But she's mesmerized. There's the wedding, all the pomp and circumstance. The men in tuxes, the flower girls in pink, lacey dresses. But it's different, somehow. The shots of the little girl dancing. The mother singing an Italian song. The sense of family, cared-for, protected family, sinks through every scene, and that's when Haruki realizes that's what she wants, no matter the cost.
And then there's Luca Brasi, a massive, hulking creature, cowering in the Don's presence. Awed by him, stammering out a rehearsed speech like he's a kid reciting in front of a teacher. He's a killer the way she'll be, when she's older, but he still has respect and fondness. He's still human.
Then Luca's garroted, his eyes bulging, almost seeming to pop out of his skull as the wire tightens around his throat.
Haruki never forgets it.
Wire comes cheap and legal. She gets it at salvage stores, warehouses, hardware stores. But piano wire is best, strongest and most durable, and Haruki counts it a worthwhile expense to traipse into music stores occasionally and buy great coils of the stuff straight from the source, ready to be cut with pliers. There's a bizarre ritual to it; sometimes right before a kill, she'll go into a music store, even when she's got plenty of wire stored away already, and run her hands along the clean white piano keys. The clerks never ask her if she's interested in lessons, or bringing her parents in for a purchase-as if even they know by the sight of her that she can't afford either.
(she thinks sometimes she'd like it better if she could get her hands on a gun)
(not so personal, a gunshot, watching a man bleed out instead of feeling him choke and spasm against you)
(messy, though)
Isuke has a pistol she's hidden in a back panel of her luggage. Haruki's surprised she's been so obvious, and wonders, almost, if it's only a decoy. Heavy as it feels in her palm, she's too inexperienced to trust herself to unload the thing and check for sure.
"The safety's on, idiot." Isuke, back from her bath early, a towel wrapped around her hair, wearing some silly something that's almost too flimsy to pass for a nightgown. It looks expensive, though everything about Isuke is. Right down to that gel nail polish.
"Yeah?" Haruki offers up an easy smile. "That your only weapon?"
Isuke sniffs, leaning over to take the gun back, snatching it in one quick gesture. Haruki could have held it away from her, if she'd wanted. She likes to think Isuke knows it, too, from the way her hand clenches around the barrel.
"Of course not."
"What else do you have?" It's a brazen request, one she doesn't count on Isuke answering at all. But then, there Haruki is, sitting on her bed, with Isuke's luggage spread all around her. It's a poor time to start begging for mercy. "Show me yours, I'll show you mine... that kind of thing, yeah?"
"I already know about yours," Isuke sneers. She puts the pistol right back in its compartment, slamming the suitcase shut so fast that Haruki's fingers are almost caught inside. "Anyway, it's not going to work. You can't strangle two people at once."
Haruki laughs. Gamely, she leans in, to close the suitcase's clasps for Isuke, the metallic click somehow satisfying.
"I'm planning on three."
finis