She cuts the tip of the straw the way her sister showed her. Well, had her sister been equipped with a hunting knife, Jinx is pretty sure she would have done it like this.
The tip of the blade halves the thin plastic easy as breaking skin. Her tongue peeks out a bit at the corner of her mouth, the Loose Cannon focused for once on a surgical strike. She gives the straw a turn and repeats the procedure. Her eyes narrow. Another turn, another cut.
Is this right? She remembers her sister showing her how to do it . . . sort of. The image swims bright in her memory like a tropical fish under rippled water. Vibrant. Elusive. She leaves the knife embedded in the smooth wood of the desk, sliding the straw out for inspection.
Red eyes scan the ten inches of slender tube, tracking the swirl of cheery blue stripes as they chase each other lazily down the length of it, never to meet. Now how's it supposed to look? Ah—
Jinx mashes the split end of the straw against the top of the desk. The newly formed tabs splay out like the half-inch blades of a propeller, and she can't resist clapping her palms together and rolling it, rolling it, watching the blur of white and blue spin on the stained mahogany.
That gets old quick. Jinx freezes, pouts, gets back to business. With a jerky, unnatural motion, a cut-string puppet, she swivels on the ball of her foot and raises the straw above her head, some kind of trophy. "Ta-da!"
Fishbones doesn't look impressed. Honestly, you could expect the ol' fuddy-duddy to say one or two nice words right about now. But he hasn't said a word since they arrived, and it's his tacit approval more than anything that's really starting to grind her nerves.
She sticks her tongue out at him, one black-nailed and skeletal finger pulling down a bottom eyelid for added insult. Beh. Spoil-sport.
It's not like he's the only audience Jinx has got. No, sirree.
Piltover Customs is fine enough as far as chop shops go, she supposes. It's a little too clean, a little too polished for her tastes. They've got locks on the doors and, like, safety equipment, and running water in the sinks. They've even got soap, the nerds. Jinx skips over to the stainless steel basin and throws the tap open.
Corki doesn't protest when she rips the oil spotted bandana from his mouth, but with the way his eyes are rolling loosely in his skull she doesn't really expect him to have much to say. She frowns. Maybe next time she'll remember to cut the dosage for Yordles. No amount of stamping her foot or backhanding him across the face makes a difference.
She retrieves the knife from his desk. He wheezes a bit when she pokes him, like the old fart he is. But other than that, nada.
Well. So much for audience participation. Spoil-sports one and all. Jinx sticks her tongue out at him too and prances back to the industrial sink.
The bandana shoved into the drain serves her needs, the water slowly backing up. She watches it for a second, until she sees her reflection grinning back at her. She doesn't care for it much, so she plants a flat palm into the shallow pool, splashing droplets against the sink's gleaming basin. She feels much more at ease under the rippling surface.
Jinx sucks in her bottom lip, tapping the straw against the side of her nose. Had her sister mentioned how much soap-to-water she used? Jinx struggles to remember, riding the waves of her fractured past towards the bright smiling face she can't quite piece together.
Uhhhhhh nope, she has no idea about this part. Maybe she just . . . Jinx casually reaches out and gouges the tub of liquid soap squatting behind the faucet. The soap shimmers slowly from the wound as she gives the knife a familiar twist. It's pink and think, running like unicorn blood into the rising water. It also smells like candy but nope nope nope it does NOT taste the same.
Jinx hastily drags her tongue across the back of her damp glove, just barely missing stabbing her own eye out with the knife. When will she learn not to fall for that trick? Soap can go fuck itself.
Her face scrunched up and her tongue banished from her mouth for bad behavior, she swirls the soapy knife through the water, the tip of the blade scoring the basin. But as the bubbles begin to froth up, she forgets her unfortunate misunderstanding of a moment ago. Soon she is stirring the mess with an over-eager passion, the water lapping over the edge and sloshing to the concrete floor.
Did it look like this when her sister made it? Was it quite so messy? She tries to think back that far and comes up with nothing. So she swaps the knife for the prepared straw, sizing up the pinkish foam. Uh, does she do this now? Jinx shrugs, dunking the straw's propeller end into the soap water.
Water's beginning to flow over the rim and bubbles are sailing to their deaths on the back of the carefree waterfall. Jinx pulls the straw up to her lips. Moment of truth.
Gently – she feels the word like a concussive blast going off behind her eyes, some hard cold memory thrashing free from the deep. The voice of a child. Her sister's voice. She shudders from top to toe and obeys.
The bubbles pour from the split end of the straw like a row of baby ducks bumbling over each other. Jinx's eyes nearly bug clear out of her face as she watches them flutter and float, until her lungs whine and her draft peters out.
They're small, and most of them fall immediately to the soapy floor and pop, but they're bubbles. Jinx has made bubbles, just how her sister showed her. And boy, wouldn't she be proud if she weren't twice-round-the-bend-bat-shit-insane.
Jinx shrieks in glee and claps her hands, stomping her oversized boots in the growing puddle. She turns to see if Corki appreciates her accomplishment– but no, of course that party-poop missed the whole thing. She knows Fishbones is smiling without even looking at him. She flips him off.
The bubble straw gets another bath, and another rainbow band of bubbles falls from the makeshift instrument into the air. Jinx is just as amazed the second time. And the third time. And the fourth. And the fifth.
Because, BUBBLES?!
On the sixth, she manages to blow one whole entire bubble. It wobbles on the end of her straw, caught in the plastic's hold until just the right moment. It's huge, and it floats upwards the second it breaks free. She waves at it, waves goodbye, an on-demand tear comically scrolling down her cheek.
It's not her own reflection she sees in its bloated, shining surface.
The growl is not a surprise. Close as it is, loud as it is, she stands her ground against it, watching her masterpiece soar. Both hands drop to her sides just as a different set of hands slides in hot and heavy around her thin neck.
"Just what do you think you're playing at?" the growl demands. The grip tightens. Jinx's lips part. She can't breathe. Her attention remains locked on the dancing bubble and the blue-eyed demon it projects back.
Fragmented memories bubble to the surface in quick succession, playing like a flip book that's missing every third page. She sees the demon as just a girl, a grinning girl who leaps off the boat just in the nick of time. Or does she slip? Is she pushed? Anyway, she's gone, laughing and waving from the dock as the boat slinks into darkness. Jinx whirls frantically to her sister, who is a smiling angel holding out a broken straw . . . . only the straw is a knife, and her sister is drowning as the water rushes in cold around them.
And Jinx is drowning, sinking, giving in to chaos because that's the only thing that's left to hold onto. She never surfaces.
"We thought you'd come back to us," she squeaks, eyes crossed. "We waited."
The chokehold eases a hair. A strong arm slips past her, reaching for the knife. Jinx doesn't look at it, can't tell with her doubled vision whether it's clouds or gears or bullets that are painted up and down that arm. She can see the bubble, the enormous thing, as it dips, falls, comes to rest on the upturned tip of the blade.
The growl laughs, cruel in her ear. "Sorry to – well. You get the idea."
The bubble bursts.
Jinx is alone with only an unconscious Yordle for company, panting like an idiot clutching a knife and a crumpled plastic straw, cold water squelching into her battered boots. The memories that once seemed so bright and frustratingly close are gone, locked up tight in lead-lined boxes and buried deep. There's only fury, white-hot, burning through grief at its center.
Grief for lost things, things taken. Fury at the one her broken mind holds responsible. The one who laughed. The one who left.
Somewhere out there in this stupid clean city there's a blue-eyed demon running wild. As Fishbones bites through one of the cinderblock walls of the garage, Jinx wonders if maybe dropping a building on her fat head will finally make the laughter stop.