Dames are Trouble

"I never wanted to do this, Leary, but you just don’t quit.” Cool as anything, she slips the little snubnose back into her bag and turns toward the full-length mirror on the opposite wall, adjusting her hair. “I liked you, Leary, I really did. But I didn’t come this far- I didn’t come this goddamned far to have some two-bit dick ruin it for me. You’re cute, but you’re no Sam Spade.”

Gutshot. I’ve got no iron, and I’m in no position to put up a fight, even if I wanted to. Christ, but this hurts. I slump against the doorway, hand on my stomach, I can feel the blood pulse through my fingers with every beat of my heart. “Why- Why’d you do it- The murder, the cover-up, getting Lazlo in on it, Lazlo of all people, to- ice that bellhop? You know he didn’t see a damned thing and-"

“I don’t take chances, Leary.” She’s applying lipstick, fire-engine red, and she runs a hand down the front of her skirt. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Leary, but you had to be the big tough guy, you had to get involved like this. Why couldn’t you have just let it go?”

I manage a weak grin, I can feel the blood oozing between my fingers, “you- you hired me to find your husband’s killer.”

She crosses the room, smooth and graceful, leans down, and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Cute.” The door makes no noise as she closes it behind her. I pull a battered pack of smokes from my breast pocket and, with shaking hands, light one and take a deep drag. It hurts.

My father always told me dames were nothing but trouble.

I exhale.

He was right.

It’s getting dark, and I’m getting cold.

Lights out.

Radiance

She is luminescent, divine, and lovely.
She comes to me, Diaphanous and pure, shrouded in a nimbus of the most dazzling light.
She comes to me, arms open. She comes to me, to embrace me.
I want nothing more than to be with her, to join in her eternal dance.
We clutch, she is colder than anything.
In circles we spin, faster, faster, ever faster.
Her hand slides down to the small of my back, I feel the folds in her dress, her breasts against my chest. Her breath at my neck. Cold. So cold.
I can feel her light on me, engulfing me, I cling to her as the room begins to blur.
So cold. So cold it burns.
Burns away my sins, my faults. This groaning, creaking machine I called the flesh.
It is inside me now, I burn in the frozen purity of her light.
We are one, I am with her now, always.
Caught forever in her sublime dance.
She is mine, and I am hers, and we will always be this way.

Forever.

what a trip

Just passed a trio of freshly squeezed teen babes, followed by a trio of leathery old women wearing the exact same outfits. I think I am falling out of sync with time.

Flowers bloom and wilt as I pass them, green shoots bursting from fertile ground, falling limply to dry, cracked earth.

A baby bird falls from its nest, but grows and spreads its vast wings, only to fall before me, crumbling to naught but bone and feather.

Greedy, malevolent creatures, woven of hatred and chaos in the deep, cold space, they gaze upon our world. they pick at minds and they pull at emotions, playing the Earth as a strange instrument.

As I drive I cross endless wastes, burning cities on the horizon, lush greenery and animals untamed. I see all as it was and all as it will be.

I stop, and watch the spanning of a great city of chrome and light, see the streaks of light as they cross the sky, the muffled thunder and crash. The lights dim, and the city crumbles.

I see it all, The End. The sun grows dim and the winds begin to howl, there are none left to hear the dying shrieks of Earth, so long our home.

They merge before me. Beauty and desolation, death and life begun anew and death again, always death. But in my visions, in the strange new worlds, where is Man?

It ends as suddenly as it began, as fleeting as a dream, or passing fancy, but what were these magnificent, terrible things. From what deep recess of my mind did they spring, and are they as I hope, merely fantasy, or am I to be a prophet, a modern day Cassandra, crying out my warnings, unheeded until the end of my days?