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Nova
Her eyes were twin, corposantic quasars in the
dank room's inner night. Long had learned to
move carefully towards such energy, and through
such accretion of waste, the dangerous
befoulment of this his perfect find. But tonight
was different. No caution, no need. He was not
expecting to live through this encounter. Long
lit a match and then a smoke, exhaled into the
dim galaxy betwixt them. No, he thought, nothing
left to lose, nothing left to save. He sidled
off his bar stool, towards her.
Long was a hitman, one of the best, but
discreet, not flashy like many in his trade.
Those who flaunted their skills, their inked-up
biceps and latest gadgetry, usually busted down
one too many doors and met the ice-cold stare of
too many one-eyed greetings. Long had learned to
keep low, work carefully. He was a skinny mess
of tendons and bone, long, ragged hair cut
shoulder-length haphazardly, and dress in the
shabby cowboy style of old-time Marlboro
commercials, like the smoke that dangled
ember-first from his lips as he edged his way
past rough-looking brigadiers in scuffed boots
and jeans. He hadn't been out west in a while,
and this little military bar outside
Indianapolis, scab on the flaxen-downed leg of a
Midwestern road, was conjuring up the worst sort
of memories. He shook them aside, though, as he
came within her orbit.
"Evenin', darlin'. Buy you a drink?" Twenty-one
years of doing this, and he still couldn't break
the tyranny of the cliché. For a full five
seconds she didn't say a word, just stood there
looking at him, sizing him up. She knows, he
thought. The damn bitch knows, and now we're
right in the thick of it. But then she smiled, a
little maelstrom flash of fire that matched her
eyes, and consented: a whiskey, double, no ice.
He nodded and with an "I'll be right back,"
turned and returned to the bar.
She studied his back, shoulder blades protruding
a bit from his ragged shirt. She matched his
height, but was slightly wider at the hips and
chest. Her wrists were the most fragile part of
her, pale and hollow-looking, but the rest of
her curved elegantly in one sloping hill of
flesh, mapped by a pair of tight, black jeans
and matching blouse. Her hair was also
raven-black, and long. She wore no makeup or
jewelry. Her eyes, as Long had noticed before,
were ageless, insomniac points of light.
He returned with the whiskies, one for himself,
and watched as she sipped deeply. He was
thinking of what to say next when she asked him
how he planned on killing her. His eyes shot up
and into hers like a diver enters a pool. "I
don't plan on killing you," he said. Then added,
as an afterthought, "but I don't expect you to
survive." There was a moment of depthless
silence. Then everything began to happen.
She spun and made for the door, and he went to
follow. One well-intentioned, mountainous man
stepped between them, and the next second he was
on the floor. Long had broken his leg without
slowing down. She was through the double doors,
into the parking lot, into the night. God she
moves fast, Long said, sprinting to catch her as
she crossed the road and disappeared into a maze
of corn. Long followed, locating her easily in
her crashing mêlée through the stalks. Sheaves
whirred past his vision as he struggled to match
her cuts and feints, back and forth through the
crop. I shoulda' been a damned cereologist, I
just figured out how crop circles are made. This
thought occurred as a macabre moment in his
chase, and faded.
The field ended. She whirled to face him, hands
like claws in front of her, ready to fight. He
slowed to a walk, stepped out of the corn. She
seemed to shimmer slightly in the black night.
She waited. He took another step forward, opened
his shirt, slid it off. His frame was thin, and
laced with the rigging of a hard life, veins,
scars, and muscle fighting for space. He slid a
long bowie knife out of the sheath on his belt.
The blade caught the moonlight as he spun it
from finger to finger, contemplating her. "Now
what am I going to do with you?" he asked. She
was silent, still in her stance. "I asked you a
question, girl," he growled.
"You'll quit talking and playing with your
little phallus, and come let me hurt you," she
said, a touch of mockery in her voice. "You got
me all tuckered out running away, the least you
can do is bleed a little for me."
Long chuckled. "Well then, let's do it." He
strode towards her, knife held slightly behind
him, left hand up. As soon as he stepped within
range, her left heel came up lightning-quick and
nearly caught his jaw. But he ducked under it,
slicing up with his blade, slitting the front of
her blouse, which, as tight as it was, ripped
loudly open, revealing her full, pale breasts
and the black lace bra that held them, and below
a smooth porcelain stomach. She hissed and made
a grab for his eyes, just missing them. He
backed off a few steps, and smiled. She glared
at him, and her star-sign eyes had become
wrathful comets of icy, cosmic phosphorescence.
Baring her teeth, she shot forward, heedless of
his weapon. He side-stepped neatly, and slit the
back of her blouse as she passed, leaving a thin
line of parted skin beneath the cut that with
surgical precision had stripped the cloth from
her shoulders. She gasped. A thin ruby trickle
dropped gracefully down the nacre of her back,
and with the sudden advent of pain her anger
dispersed. The wound was not long, nor was it
deep, but she realized what it meant. Long
realized it too. She, who had never been bested,
was going to lose this fight. She turned back
towards him. Her bra had been cut away with her
blouse, and her breasts hung free, kissed with
sparkling sweat.
"You win," she said bluntly. "Kill me." He
stepped towards her, still cautious, knife still
ready. He had thought she would be better than
this. He reached her, placed the knife's edge
against her throat, saw the pulsing life beneath
it. She stared at him defiantly. Was this the
look she had given the magistrate when he had
sentenced her to ten years in the labor camps
for her role in the Magdalen Wars? Or the same
gaze she employed when she murdered her guards
with a makeshift pickaxe and fled into the
tunnels? Was it, he wondered, the same
inscrutable confidence she hid behind when, as a
courtesan, she had pleasured so many of his
government's leaders in what would be their last
dance of love? And to be so easily beaten, in a
corn field in some ignoble town, after the wars,
the product of a loose-end contract bubbled up
in the bureaucratic tar pits and passed on to
him, a mercenary taker of life. They were both
executioners, but in her was also the execution
of ideals, in him only the base desires of
logistics and employment: paychecks, food,
whores, and beer. Here he was, the Pharisee, not
even the Pharisee, the grunt centurion with
hammer and spikes. He was Alaric, the Visigoth
general, the first sacker of the city of Rome.
All this passed like a squall through his mind,
but took no time, and his blade still rested
gently upon her jugular. He began to press down,
and her eyes closed. She did not see him lean
forward, and when his lips caught hers she was
not prepared for the molten rush that swept her
body. When his knife slid blunt side down along
her stomach, and cut away the clinging denim
with a loud tearing, she was not certain the
sound was not her own sanity, tearing loose from
the supernova of her mind. Her jeans were
shredded and pulled away, Long working blind as
he continued to assault her lips and neck,
biting down hard and receiving equal treatment
from her catlike mouth and tongue. He winced as
her fangs opened his shoulder and sucked the
warm blood from him.
He placed one leg behind hers and pushed her
forward, so that she fell heavily on the grass,
and he followed, pressing his thin weight into
her, both still clawing and panting. Her back
lanced out in pain, and she rolled him over,
straddling him with her muscled thighs, digging
her knees into him. He tore her flimsy panties
off, grasping her full buttocks in his hands,
administering a stinging slap that made her yelp
and kiss him harder. She pulled away and began
to move along his torso, kissing each precious
rib, before tearing open his jeans and feasting
on him. He writhed in the dewy grass, counted
every star and started over as the full tide of
orgasm began to rise in him. He grasped her
sable mane and hauled her up, kicking off his
boots. She nuzzled his pants off, and became him
fiercely in the dark. Her eyes were
searchlights, their movements the trepidations
of the planets, and her explosions the death of
every star he had counted.
At last they were spent, and lay huddled
together in the stillborn cold, tracing the
warfare of each other's bodies, the marks they
had left and the ones left by others. At the
edge of a cornfield the two naked killers, one
still and smoking, the other shivering slightly,
unwound two strings of violence, and as the sun
emerged from over the shallow, umber forest,
they again embraced in that strange, illicit
miracle of death and regeneration, the growing
warmth.
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