A bright pink pellet of light impacted the brick wall, sending another chunk of mortar crashing to the asphalt. Patty Thompson, ten, wide-eyed, and nervous, swore under her breath. The six coke cans her mother placed on a wooden post remained undamaged. Three shots into her first lesson, and Patty failed to even graze the metal.
Luckily for her, Patty's gun had unlimited ammunition.
"Quit shaking me so much," Liz said, her metallic voice echoing through the nose of the gun. Patty braced her wrist with her left hand to steady her grip, to no avail.
"Again," said a husky, feminine voice. To her right, Patty could see her mother slouching in her periphery. Virginia "Gin" Thompson, known to most as the best bang on the block, flicked away the butt of her spent cigarette and ground it beneath the toe of her boot. "Repeat the whole thing again. It'll help you focus."
Breathing in, Patty raised her pistol again and trained her baby blue eyes on the coke cans.
"I don't aim with my hand, I aim with my eyes," she recited. Patty squeezed the trigger—miss.
"I don't shoot with my hand," Patty started. She searched for the correct phrasing. "I shoot with my mind." She imagined the cross hairs of her mind and soul honing on her target and fired. Miss.
Patty tried to concentrate harder. Shooting wasn't a hobby, not in her fucked up family. If she couldn't manage to hit even one can, she would never live it down.
"I don't kill with my gun," she said. Patty pulled the trigger early, and as she watched a flash of pink hurtle towards the cans, she knew it would be a hit. "I kill with my heart."
The bullets struck one of the cans with a satisfying plink, causing it to fall off its post. Patty broke into a wide grin and pumped both fists in the air. "Yay! I did it! I hit one!" Her energy and delight got the better of her, and Patty began to chant and dance in place. The gun in her right hand dissolved into pink light, and Liz shifted back into human form. The thirteen year-old was dressed in a tight V-neck and baggy jeans. Her left leg, from her foot to slightly below her knee, was encased in a bright pink cast.
The tallest of the three Thompson women, Liz silenced her younger sister by using her head as an armrest.
"Calm the hell down, you only hit one out of six," Liz said, causing Patty to puff out her cheeks. "Anyways, I don't get why you're teaching her so soon. She's way younger than I was when you taught me to shoot."
Their mother, dressed in a light jacket with her blonde hair secured in a half-hearted bun, crossed her arms and released a raspy, jeering laugh. "Well maybe I would have waited longer if you didn't break your leg crashing cars that don't belong to you." Patty did not often see her mother laugh, but when she did the beauty buried beneath last night's makeup and a lifetime of hustling shined.
Liz squawked and stomped right over to her mother, the boot of her cast scraping against asphalt. "I told you that wasn't—"
Gin's gunmetal eyes gave Liz a look that immediately silenced her daughter. Though Liz had several inches over her mother, Gin was not a woman to be trifled with. "You can't be your own meister, and with that leg you know damn well you can't be Patty's," she said in a hard voice. "I can't trust you girls to be alone if you can't protect each other. Patty, let's try it again."
With a groan, Liz transformed back into a pistol, which Patty caught in midair. The younger Thompson's enthusiasm evaporated during the exchange between her sister and mother. It reminded her that learning to shoot was serious business. In some situations, knowing how to shoot would be the difference between life and death.
"If you get three more cans," Gin said, "I'll get you both a Happy Meal."
Delight flashed across Patty's face. "YESYESYES!" She fired Liz three times in rapid succession, successfully hitting one can.
Gin whistled. "Nice one. Do it again, this time while repeating what I taught you. The more you say it, the deeper it sinks in. Soon you won't even have to think it."
It took eight more shots to hit those three cans, and even though Liz repeated that it was nothing impressive, Patty felt superbly proud as she marched down the street with her family to Micky D's. She hummed a tune from a recent commercial and pumped her arms up and down with unbridled exuberance. The urban wasteland disappeared as Patty imagined torn up concrete transforming into clean asphalt and the graffitied buildings shifting into adoring crowds.
Liz walked alongside Patty, hands in her cargo pants pockets, completely disinterested in her sister's imaginary parade. Their mother was walking briskly ahead of them, flicking her lighter to ignite another cigarette.
"Liz, hold your sister's hand," Gin barked over her shoulder with a cigarette between her teeth.
"Mom, we're too old to hold hands in public!"
"If you don't hold her hand right now, I'll see to it that you don't got any hands," was Gin's harsh reply. Liz rolled her eyes and snatched Patty's hand, making a gruff sound when the youngest Thompson continued her march undeterred, wildly swinging their joined hands.
McDonald's was truly an oasis in a desert of brick and mortar. The drive-thru entertained a couple cars, and the tables were populated by a few sparse families and children. Patty wanted to pick up speed and power walk to the golden arches, but Liz couldn't keep up with her broken leg.
She was dimly aware of a pale, skinny man in a torn jacket and a buzz cut loitering on the outskirts of the parking lot, but paid him no heed until he began to call out to them with a nasal voice.
"Hey Ginny! Is that you?" Patty could almost hear her mother's eyes roll into the back of her head. Patty turned her head to view the man, but Liz suddenly found the strength and speed to overtake her sister and drag her the rest of the way. "I almost didn't recognize you out of your, eh, uniform," the man continued. He had caught up to them now, and he laid a hand on Gin's shoulder. "Hey, hey, Ginny, hey—"
"Don't call me that when I'm not working," was her terse reply. She shrugged his hand away and trudged ahead without looking in his direction once.
The man didn't follow them any further, but his voice grew angry and loud. He yelled hurtful things about Patty and Liz's mother, told her what she was, described the dirtiness of her existence, but all Gin could do was chuckle.
"Some scrub puts a five in your thong one time and suddenly he thinks you're friends," she muttered with droll amusement.
When they reached the restaurant door, Gin eyed her still-burning cigarette. "Shit." The McDonald's in their neighborhood didn't really prohibit many items or behaviors, but smoking inside was still a definite no-no. Liz tugged on her mother's jacket sleeve.
"I can hold it for you while you get our food," Liz said.
Their mother narrowed her eyes. "You're awful eager." Though Gin clearly had her reservations, the fact of the matter was that cigarettes were expensive and she couldn't afford to waste one. "Two drags max," she told her eldest daughter. She placed the cigarette between Liz's fingers, who stifled a silent cheer. "If it goes anywhere near Patty's mouth—"
"Oh it won't!" Liz said with a nod. Gin did not need to ask what type of meal her daughters wanted, so she walked inside without another word.
To keep from being seen by any employees or nosey passersby, Liz led her sister to the side of the building and leaned against the concrete wall. Patty watched her older sister take a puff of the cigarette with blatant jealousy, because while it was definitely bad for you, smoking was the coolest, most badass thing in the world.
Right after Gin, the second most badass person Patty knew was her sister, who exhaled warm smoke like a natural. Liz did not look very much like their mother, but she definitely inherited Gin's cool attitude. She was like a younger, unspoiled model of their hard-as-nails mother. Maybe that was why they butted heads so often. Gin recognized her past in Liz and Liz saw her future in Gin.
Patty busied herself by shooting at phantom enemies with her hand, practicing her shooting stance and whispering "pew pew pew!" under her breath as she fired her imaginary weapon. She closed one eye and mimed shooting at phantom enemies, tracing the horizon until her finger landed on a tangible, shadowy figure.
"Hey." It was him, that man. Up close, Patty could see how rail thin and feral he looked. Truth be told, he looked too poor to know their mom from work. She wondered if he was important in some other way, because Virginia Thompson didn't mess around with just anybody. "You like Gin's friends or something?"
It was a mistake people often made. The three Thompson women did not look similar enough to be immediately recognized as family, and Liz always looked mature for her age. Patty's physical maturity was a recent phenomenon, one that she was still getting used to since she had always been the baby of the family, so it surprised her that she wasn't immediately recognized as a child.
"I'm a regular at the club," he explained. "She's one of my favorites, but uh, I'm open to trying out new girls like you too."
"We're her fucking kids," Liz said.
His eyebrows shot up, impressed. "Didn't know she had any kids." The man's eyes drifted from Liz to the younger Thompson. "But you know," he said, staring at Patty, "The more I look at you, the more I see the resemblance."
Patty was old enough to know that she was too young to be looked at with those ravenous eyes. She shrank backwards, vulnerable and afraid. Liz kept a protective arm around her sister, poised to transform, but Patty wasn't sure what her sister expected her to do with a demon pistol. Shoot him? Whether she would hit him wasn't an issue; that man was so close she could see the sweat glistening on his forehead, smell the corn chips on his breath.
No, the problem was that Patty didn't know if she really had the courage to pull the trigger, even at point blank range.
To the sisters' surprise, they didn't have to do anything. In a flash of dark magenta, the barrel of a shotgun was pressed against the back of the man's head. Behind him, Gin Thompson stood tall, mouth pressed into a grim line, her right arm clutching fast food, and her left arm transformed into a deadly, merciless weapon.
Liz and Patty sure as hell didn't inherit their weapon abilities from their deadbeat fathers.
"Back the fuck away from my girls if you know what's good for you," Gin said.
The man slowly raised his hands in the air and turned to face Gin. His eyes trailed down the barrel of the shotgun, causing him to chuckle nervously. "Come on Ginny, I was just playing. I bet that thing ain't even loaded."
Dropping the McDonald's bag, Gin's right hand pumped the barrel of the gun and loaded it with a satisfying click. "Well I ain't playing around," Gin said. Her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks, and the color of her irises faded to a dull grey. The inhuman, ruthless look in her eyes and the severe twist of her mouth caused the man at the end of her gun to tremble.
"I know people," he sputtered. "You know that. Don't—don't try something you'll regret."
Gin grinned and languidly brushed the nose of her gun across his neck as if she were slitting his throat. "You have five seconds to get the fuck out of my face, you perverted piece of shit," she said. "Don't think I won't blow you away just because the girls are watching."
Liz's arm tightened around her sister. The scrawny man's adam's apple bobbed up and down, and he slowly backed away from the nozzle of Gin's gun before making a break for it. Gin's forearm transformed back to normal, but the predatory look in her eyes remained. "What a pussy," she said.
"Who was that guy?" Liz asked. "Why was he so creepy? How come—"
Gin held out her hand. "Cigarette, please." Liz rolled her eyes and handed it back to her mother, who immediately drew it to her lips and began to walk away. The sisters followed after, peeved that the discussion was over before it had even begun. "So what toy did you get?" Gin asked her daughters before continuing her smoke.
Patty's hand rifled through her happy meal, sifting through warm french fries and napkins until she found an object wrapped in plastic. She withdrew it from the paper bag and grinned. "I got a racecar!"
"I got a pony," Liz said, inspecting a small plastic pony she found in her own meal. She dropped the toy into Patty's bag, who squealed with delight.
A standoff one minute, happy meals the next. Theirs was not a normal family, but Patty was glad it was her family none the less.
They trudged up the stairs of their decrepit apartment building, where they lived in a two-bedroom without air-conditioning or a dish washer. Liz and Patty shared a small room with a single bed that overflowed with dirty clothes, toys, and old magazines. Their single bathroom was filled to the brim with cosmetics and hair-styling equipment—vital items for Gin's profession.
Later that evening, Gin exited the bathroom done up and dressed for work. It was immediately before going to work, when her makeup was fresh and unsmudged and her sequined bodice shined underneath the fluorescent light of their home, that Gin looked least like their mother. Her blonde hair, almost always up, flowed down her shoulders in tight curls, and fake eyelashes caused her eyes to look unnaturally bright. The only familiar thing about her was her shoes, which were sensible clogs she wore until she changed into stilettos at the club.
Patty was drawing absentmindedly in her little room as Gin went through the usual routine with Liz.
"Now you stay here with your sister the entire night," Gin said to Liz. "Don't open the door to anyone but me. Touch my liquor and I will know."
"Wait, aren't you forgetting to—" Liz stopped short when her mother looked at her with a quizzical expression.
Understanding dawned on Gin's face. "You're right, I did forget something." Her left arm was engulfed in dark pink light, and from her shoulder joint appeared a shotgun. Dropping her purse, Gin sauntered over to the open closet in their bedroom. She poked around inside with her gun, prodding clothes suspended on their hangers and tapping the walls. Next, she dropped to her knees and swiped her gun underneath Liz and Patty's shared bed. Pleased that she had found nothing, Gin got back up to her feet.
"No ghosts in here," she announced with a crooked grin. "Let's check behind the shower curtain." Liz nodded furiously and followed her mother into the bathroom. This was a ritual Gin performed almost every time she left the girls alone at home. The family had even been evicted from one of their former apartments after a terrified Liz insisted their mother fire a warning shot into their bedroom closet. Patty never understood her sister's profound fear of ghosts, nor did she know why any ghouls liked to hide in Liz's closet, but it was nice all the same to know the little cupboard they called home was safe and sound.
The other two Thompson women emerged from the bathroom, Liz looking much more comfortable and happy than when she went inside.
"By the way Liz," Gin said, picking up her purse from where she left it on the floor. "You're grounded."
"What? Why?"
"For letting a stranger corner you like that. You know better."
Liz stormed away into her shared room with Patty and flopped on the bed. Neither said goodbye as their mother shuffled out the door and locked it behind her. Meanwhile, Patty returned to her art.
Patty loved to draw—mostly animals, sometimes boats and cars, and on even rarer occasions, people. Still reeling from the excitement of her shooting lesson, she chose Gin as her next artistic subject. Clothes were easy, and so was hair, but Patty had a hard time getting the face right. That cold smile, those eyes that could destroy without conscious— neither were easily rendered with crayon or washable marker. Patty did not own a drawing instrument thin enough to detail those bloodthirsty pupils.
"Mom gets kinda scary when she's pointing her gun at somebody," Patty thought aloud.
Liz was sprawled on their shared bed, flipping through the glossy pages of a magazine. "Scary's not the word I'd use," she said. "I guess she just enjoys it. The power, I mean. Being a weapon is pretty damn sweet."
"I guess it's good Mom can shoot herself," Patty mused. Gin was, after all, a weapon and meister rolled into one. "That's why she knows so much."
On her bed, Liz threw her head back and laughed. "Oh please. Mom doesn't know jack shit about anything. That stuff she makes you repeat, you think she made up that swami shit? She just steals from the books she reads in the john. It's all one big lie so she can pretend she's smarter than us."
Patty looked down at her drawing and frowned. "She wouldn't teach it to us if it didn't work."
"Yeah she would. Fuck, that stupid thing was twice as long when she made me do it." Liz sat up on the bed and gathered her hair into one hand and created an imaginary gun with the other. With her hair pulled out of her face, she scrunched her nose to impersonate their mother.
"'I don't aim with my hand,'" Liz said, emulating the dry huskiness of a chain smoker. "'I aim with my eyes. She who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her mother.' HA! What a load of bullshit." Liz retched with disgust and let her hair fell back into place. "Like I'm going to think of her ugly face every time I shoot somebody. Actually, maybe I should. It'll motivate me to hit my target. Bang, bang, have a nice dream, Mom! See ya in hell, bitch!"
It was mean for Liz to say all those things, especially about their mom, but Patty could not help giggle as she watched her sister's tirade.
Encouraged by her sister's laughter, Liz adopted Gin's husky tone again and held her left arm like a shotgun. "'You touch my liquor, I'll give you a Thompson handshake. Pow pow!'" She paused to swallow her laughter. "'Patty! Come give mommy a nice slobbery, kiss—'"
"No, no, no!" Patty squealed, scrambling to escape Liz's arms. For someone struggling with a broken leg, Liz showed remarkable agility as she scooped up her squirming sister and blew a raspberry into her neck. By the time Patty had finally pinned her older sister to the ground, the two were too spent to wrestle anymore. They fell asleep, nestled right next to each other, as soon as their heads hit their pillows.
Patty was jerked back into consciousness by firm hands shaking her shoulders. Her sight slowly regained focus, and she saw her mother looming above her with terrified eyes. She was still dressed for work in her sequined bodice and tight skirt, but her springy curls had long deflated into limp straw-like tendrils.
"Get up," Gin ordered. "Put some clothes and socks on."
"Why aren't you at work?" Patty asked, rubbing her eyes.
"Why aren't you getting dressed like I just told you?"
The clock on her nightstand said it was nearly 2 in the morning, way too early for Gin to be home. She dressed like a zombie, absently wondering what on earth was going on to make Gin come home so early, or to make Patty stay up so late.
Whatever grogginess Patty felt upon waking dissipated as she saw the frenzy of activity in the other room. Gin was a woman possessed, stuffing clothing and supplies into a bag, rifling through drawers, and stacking furniture against their front door. Liz was wide awake, and stood positioned at the open window, uneasily peering down the fire escape.
"Are we…moving?" Patty asked. The urgency in the air frightened her.
Neither her mother or older sister answered. Gin produced a wad of cash from her purse and thrust it towards her eldest daughter. "Put this in your pocket, it's all I got right now. You can't run or climb with that leg, so you gotta transform and let Patty carry you down the fire escape."
Liz shook her head furiously. "I'm not gonna run away, I want to stay here and fight with you!" She attempted to resist and pound her fists into her mother's torso, but Gin seized both of her wrists. Liz gasped and tried to twist her arms away, but Gin's grip remained firm.
"Liz," their mother said raggedly. "Please, for once in your goddamned life, don't argue with me! People can say what they like about our family, but they can never say I didn't protect you girls, never!"
Gin released her daughter's wrists, causing Liz to stumble backwards. Liz seemed to finally notice that her sister was there. "Mom poked her gun in the wrong fucker's face," Liz spat. "And now we gotta skip town before some goons shoot up this place."
"If it were just goons I wouldn't be sending you away," Gin said hoarsely. She looked so haggard and drained, nothing like the fearless woman Patty knew, and reached out to gingerly hold both of Patty's hands. "You're gonna carry Liz the fire escape and hide." she said. "Don't be afraid to use your sister. You girls have to protect each other until I find you. Think you can do that for me?"
"What about you? You're coming too, right?"
A familiar look of steel and gunpowder flickered in Gin's eyes. "I'm staying here to give them an ol' fashioned Thompson handshake." One by one, she cupped her daughters faces and brushed their hair behind their ears. The gesture was so intimate and motherly that Patty could do nothing but stare. "You girls get out now," she said. "Don't come back here—I'll find you. Clear?"
Liz's face was unforgiving and cold, but she nodded and dissolved into bright pink light and materialized as a demonpistol in Gin's hand, who in turn handed Liz over to Patty. The ten year-old stuck Liz in the waistband of her pants.
Patty climbed through the window, and hopped onto the platform. The fire escape zigzagged down the side of the building, darkness enveloping each ladder as they reached closer to the ground below. Before starting down the stairs, she gave her mother a small wave.
Gin's jaw was set, her arm already transformed, and with a twitch of a smile she closed and locked the window.
Their apartment was only four floors up, but the short amount of time it takes to climb up four flights of indoors stairs triples when inching down four flights slippery metal. The railing was slick and icy underneath Patty's tiny palms, and a shiver jolted up her arms as she raced down the ladder steps.
Patty had made it down three floors when the discharge of shotgun shook her bones. She groped the cold railing and looked back up at their apartment window, but saw no shadows or movements. A second later, a second gunshot.
There was no going back, not without breaking the window, and she didn't want to make Gin angry by defying her last order. Patty continued her descent, jumping out of her skin every time she heard the shriek of her mother's gun. The last ladder down needed to be pushed into place, and Patty leaned with all of her weight as she slid the ladder down into the darkness. She skipped every other rung on the way down, and sprinted behind the nearest dumpster she could find. The demonpistol was catching her breath and contemplating which direction to run when the gunfire ceased.
"Patty, come on, let's go!" Liz urged.
"There's no more shooting," Patty whispered. "Maybe—" The sound of shattering glass cut Patty off from her thought. Her heart leapt into her throat, and without thought or words she jumped out from behind the dumpster and looked at the brick building they had just fled.
Their apartment light was still on, and their window reduced to a broken pane and shards of glass. For a moment, Patty thought she saw the silhouette of their mother, drunk on triumph, emerge from within.
A figure did emerge from their apartment, but it was not their mother.
She heard her sister gasp from within the chamber of her gun form. "Is that a—"
Just because Liz and Patty had never seen one before didn't mean they didn't know what it was. A pre-kishin dressed in a billowing trenchcoat leapt onto their fire escape and hitched a leg over the rail. It sniffed the air, and its faintly glowing eyes immediately honed in on Patty's slight form, which was stock still with shock. She turned on her heel and ran, ran so far and so fast that the ten year-old could not truly register where it was she was going.
Buildings passed by in a blur. The only sensations that mattered was the taste of copper in Patty's mouth, the ache in her rib cage, and the footfalls of a figure lolloping behind her. Rounding a corner, Patty pushed open the first doors she saw.
It was one of the condemned buildings the city never had chance to actually demolish. There were a lot of empty, hollow lots in their neighborhood, which explained how Gin was able to live in the city in the first place. Once inside, Patty sped down a long, wide hallway and dived into the smallest crawlspace she could find.
"Don't shake me so much." Liz's voice was nothing but a whisper swirling through the grooves of the gun. Patty shakily exhaled and steadied her trembling hands. Back against cold concrete, Patty shifted slowly so she could see around the corner, but shrank back when she saw a hulking shadow blocking the doorway. She could feel Liz's wavelength vibrating with terror, begging her to run, but there was no way out. The only thing they could do was kill the monster before it killed them.
The distance between her and the pre-kishin seemed to expand in length. She couldn't shoot it from this far away—it needed to get closer.
Patty bolted from where she was hidden and stood in the middle of the hallway.
Liz reacted with a flurry of words. "What the hell are you thinking do you want us to get killed? Patty, no!"
The pre-kishin hadn't seen them yet. It seemed to rely on its sense of smell more than sight, and was nosing through rubble and trash like an animal. Patty spread her feet apart and raised Liz with both hands. Her hands weren't trembling now.
"I don't aim with my hand," she said in a low voice. At the end of the hall, the kishin-egg paused. "I aim with my eyes."
It had noticed them, and with wavering, uneven steps it began its slow advance. The urge to pull the trigger now was strong, but the creature was still too far away. If she was going to put this animal down, she had to get it right between the eyes.
Swallowing, Patty continued. "I don't shoot with my hand, I—I shoot with my mind." With every lurching step the pre-kishin took, it walked closer and closer to the middle of the crosshairs in Patty's mind. She noted that it was favoring its right leg because it's left knee was gushing blood. Their mother must have tried to shatter its kneecaps when she fought it, for all the good that did.
The vision of Gin's firm expression of steel and her eyes, cunning and hungry like a raptor, flashed in Patty's mind, and she knew that no matter where she went and who she met, the weapon-turned-meister would remember it forever.
"I don't kill with my gun—" The pre-kishin had picked up its pace, and was beginning to break into a run. It stepped right into her range, and her heart was pounding so hard she thought its thumping would wake the entire city.
The pre-kishin was almost upon her, and with wide, manic eyes, Patty smiled with her teeth.
"I kill with my heart, motherfucker!"
She squeezed the trigger three times, not waiting to see whether each shot hit its target. She didn't need to—her aim was true. All three pellets of Liz's soul wavelength struck the kishin-egg's skull, causing the monster's head to jerk backwards. It's body shuddered as it collapsed to the ground, releasing one final death wail before becoming still.
There was something surreal about staring at a corpse. If she hadn't shot it herself, Patty wouldn't have believed it was real. More shocking was absence of emotion after having done something so violent. It felt natural. It felt good. Dizzyingly good.
"You alright?" Liz said in gun form, concerned.
Like a light switch, Patty's grim face vanished and a cheery smile took its place. "Yep, yep, yep!"
She felt the weight of the gun disappear as Liz shifted back into her human shape. "Oh my god, we just killed that thing." Liz looked at the gnarled body and laughed nervously. She, too, was struggling to articulate the same mixture of guilt and delirious joy.
Patty wanted to respond that she couldn't wait to tell Gin about this, but it sounded naive even to her.
Adrenaline was still buzzing in Patty's mind when Liz turned and walked away from the body. "You know," she said to her younger sister. She held Patty's hand and threaded their fingers together. "Brooklyn's supposed to be on the up and up. Maybe I can get a job there or something, find us some shelter. Mom left us some money, we can make do."
The sisters were robbed of home, their guardian, and any vestige of safety all in one night, but their loss was tempered by a discovery of hidden power. Patty wanted to return to the apartment, to grieve and cry over the scene she would surely find, but that would not be what Gin wanted.
Holding hands, they set out, adrift into a city that made no angels, with only the clothes on their backs and the gun in their souls.