Topic: ...that David played, and it pleased The Lord.

Clyde

Date: 2012-07-22 03:48 EST
A sick little pinky played the wheel of his lighter, birthing flame to nip his cigarettes rump. A moderated halo of orange rioted the night, his own haven of yellow righting the wrongs of his jagged features, sitting pretty against one ambiguous concrete wall in sodding universe of them. Licks curved the whites of his eyes, refracting the just miracle of pocket-flame with climbing tiers, rolling up the illicit, tired spheres.

A sigh cleaved his guts, a smoky belch, holstering the lighter to the seams of his leather and raising his chin to check notes on weather. Rain.

Spent butts littered the corpse's shadow, a baker's-dozen, curdled and spat, eyeing the now-lit with a beyond-the-grave-envy, circling the singular canvased foot that propped his shoddy frame. Each their own tale of time wasted. We're waiting, the numbers signaled—-an increment-each: future-clues.

An often of ever-so he'd shove a glance out of his occupied alleyway to check streetside. He had left early, but all in hopes of the worm. Tires creased the virgin puddles collected on the bowled edges of the road, splashing the damp-thick, lowhung oxygen of the city, along with the mares of his awareness; eyes cut in retaliation.

The bird-of-prey exhausted his blank reception as intake installed a grin most-fowl; something built of bones and matters of the night.

The brakes of the tired, old automobile hissed their claim to halt; their sigils and howling discs a double-meaning: his starting mark. Rushing the cigarette from his lips, he tore into the breach of his jacked to relieve the heavy pistol buckled to his shoulder from unloaded slumber; this fact remedied with an injection of a magazine and a yank on the bulky .45's longslide, feeding the awful barker. The tick of the ajar safety and tock of readied hammer next; a killer crescendo.

Denim broke as he knelt, spare hand levying bodyweight against the sodding dumpster he'd been cuddled up against for the last three hours, eyes on the prowl to count-up the undertaker's livelihood. From the shadows he witnessed the doors of the vehicle crawl open; a snipped wince employed to reach his vision through the nooks of storming precipitation to get a good assessment. One...two...three, four. Okay. He hadn't thought four would show, but it was of no consequence. He spared an almost sarcastic, brotherly glance to his pistol, as if There's seven of you, so....

His vision broke, lids calm. It was a stake at serenity; a pearly little notion that men of his breed often usurped before these footnote definitions of their lives; to sensibly prepare for the end of that life, were the die to pass on a lucky number this day. Rain cried across his head, ribbons of water donating the ends of his matted strands like sprinklers, dampening his form. Lightning cracked and he figured that a cue if any. Just waiting on the thunder.

He pounced; a sprint streetside to ripen the night. One bulging eye written upon the spine of the pistol, arm straight and aboard, pupil divided through the foresight as his foot ejected from the black bowels of the alley to resume him in filthy streetlight. One faceless grunt had left the rear door of the vehicle, oblivious, eyes occupied on the powered light of his cellular, fingers snapping away at the screen; this a good a place as any to start, Clyde cooled.

The first shot was always his favorite. To remove the dandy sanctuaries of life and security from the eggshell minds of the recipients; watching them sulk in their muddled, fleshy forms; arms across their heads and faces, as if it would shield them! The .45's slide called back the shot, relinquishing the shell from the barrel, repeating the gluttony as it snapped back into place. The lead bore into the right temple of the unaware target, his body tense all at once upon the singular vacuum of clenched synapse as death filled him, and just as quickly fled through the gruesome puff of pink strings and brain-pastry that exited his skull, following the round that had come a'knocking. The body folded as a boneless collection of twisted arm and tendon; jaw ajar and flooding blood at an almost amazing rate.

He fired three rounds into the passenger window, shattering it wholesomely with eruptions of pretty shingles. He saw limbs flail as the poor figure sitting there spilled into the drivers lap; a quickened fleet of motion thereafter. A buzzing, halved eye crept into the backseat to witness a terrified man clutching a suitcase as if his soul and ticket-on-earth resided within. No threat. The driver fell onto the pavement, keeping low; but a mistake most dire. It hit him all at once that, if that idiot had the sense to simply cut-out and burn away, Clyde would have been left on the sidewalk empty handed and down four pricey bullets. Lucky for him, he smirked: the fool hadn't these requirements.

The leathered butcher strolled around the rearbumper and crouched; kept ready and shielded, logic suggesting the driver had opted for a pistol the minute he burst from the car. "Hey now princess," Clyde mocked, ducking-still at the rear of the car.

"Let's do nothing hasty, 'eh' Ughh..." He motioned; nearly a bored, tired offering. He clasped the sharp end of his chin and laughed. His coy concoction met with several quick shots that burst through the tail light among a haste of shaky profanity from the driver. It was enough to rattle; sheer numbers and tallied experience can never really alleviate the anxiety of being shot at; but composure withheld, he jogged to the passenger side and hopped to his feet, striking his arm across the hood; a lethal extension, hoping he'd have the driver right in his sights. And so he did.

Clyde fired, the bullet puncturing the driver's belly with pretty burst of shirt fabric and organ shards; orange, black and purple. He cried, his face caving in upon itself in such a sheer examination of pain it...well, almost hurt to watch. Round number six entered and thusly exited below the wrist of the driver's pistol-hand; promptly disarmed. Seven found itself sinking into the poor gentleman's crown to relieve him of life; a mercy call, surely.

He was a statue of his deeds; arm still extended, sustaining the smoldering barrel of the now pleasured pistol, this relayed upon in its drawn-back slide. Carefree, though somber, pupils carried a long pause into the form of the lifeless husk staining the street; blood and now-unneeded fluids wound with rusty rainwater, fleeing for city stormdrain. Dead quiet.

Tendons finally disassembled, arm heavily falling to his side; broken arm of the bandit. Something casual to his steps as she leaned into the back seat, feeding his weapon. A crude snap as the slide fixed-forward. Ugly yellow eyes illuminated the interior as he grinned to the shaken chap in the boothed seat of the rear of the vehicle. He motioned the case the man clutched with a rouse of his pistol; magic wand.

"I believe that's mine."

Clyde

Date: 2012-07-29 04:44 EST
The morning spurned him. Twilight left upon purple, cotton sails; relinquishing cool sheets of blue to hard arms of orange. Clyde felt as if he'd done a weeks-worth of walking that night. Every facet of physical make-up had something to utter in verbalized roars of stinging synapse. His palm met his forehead, it was complaining about the noise; a toe jutted into a sidewalk crack—-the upstairs-neighbors were just awful, they cried.

A breathy exclusion signaled a halt to his march; he needed a break. Alley lurking had become something less than an art, but more than a passtime, in the recent months. So, sticking to what he knew, he drove a rubbered toe into the meeting of darkness and morning, following the concrete sheds of buildings-opposites to flee from the quickly-filling streets. Releasing the suitcase he'd been toting, he unzipped a chained lip upon his leather jacket and revealed a crumpled softpack of cigarettes. Denim creased as he sat, smoked, and marveled in the heroics of his deeds.

Accomplishment carved a devils-advocate sneer to his mouth, roiling those boney cheeks to construct a smile built of bones and widowed wives. You could almost hear the shingles of sour harp-strums as he slipped into a requiem.

The rain had still been kicking then. The snare of drops on the hood couldn't have batted a better beat to the climax of the chore. Three bodies were leaking vessels by his hand; his expression was naught; there for the simple convenience of its existance. The ironblue barker indicated the case in the clutches of the damned.

"I believe that's mine."

They say extraordinary conditions can bestow strengths and wills that defy all medical claims and contraries; and it was true, cause boy, that poor souls clutch on that case nearly popped the screws from its hinges as he held it in a cross-armed hug. Clyde played with the hammer, likening it with a familiar snap. He pointed the empty, awful eye of the weapon into the man's face and restated.

"You're a runner, boy-o," Clyde said. "Let the goddamn thing go. Take your life, and live it somewhere else, eh?" He proposed this atop a smile. It was a complicated gesture in all houses, as in the most crowned of truthes, Clyde really didn't want to kill this man. He was scared and proposed no threat. It wasn't a 'lack of challange' thing, instead it was a petition to his own humanity—to avoid being a butcher. But it wasn't recieved in any shade, and Clyde was growing tired. "Hey!" he snapped, pushing the barrel into the cowering mans forehead. Windowlights and the squeals of prying-eyes doors had begun to crash the party; the streets were keen to his deeds, and Clyde knew he didn't have much time. But as his anger twisted and flushed to an edge, from which he wouldn't easily be able to return, the young contractor took a step out of the cabin of the car; his face ajar in shock. The man with the case had begun muttering a prayer; hurried, scant, breathy—-but accurate. His horrified and sputtered hiccups issued holy rhetoric to The Father, The Son and all other parties involved in this creation fiasco.

"But-t l-lead me not-t-t into te-..." He couldn't quite chew out the last part. Several more rehearsals was enough to throw the leathered roughian over the edge.

"You've got to be fuc...." Clyde's voice rolled into a muffled bass of steamy growls and boating lip as he leaned all the way into the backseat and attempted to yank the case free. But the vice of the young runner wasn't breaking.

"Temptation!" the man finally shrieked, his youthful eyes flooding and exploding and living and begging and doing Everything. In. Their. Power, to convey something into Clyde that—-unfortunately, he just could not decipher. The window, rear of the man's head, frayed to pieces several seconds after this final verse. A wholesome crater of glass left to presume inside webbed-halos of cracks. As the hole was formed, through the course of a bullet, braids of blood and physical matter followed the fleeting shards and triumphant bit of lead.

Sirens divided the humming blurrs of screaming nerves. It almost brought a smile: the strength the man still had on that case, even after the burglary of his life.

Clyde unlidded his eyes, caustic discs of yellow, and sneered at the cigarette that had selfishly burned-away in his mental-absence. The rain had long-since gone. The night was filed. The morning walked down the angled tiers of fire-escapes above his head; innocious and bashful. What have you done, Clyde" the leaping, lighted fingers asked as they broke a cloud and coloured his nose. He brushed nothings from his knees as he rose, leaning to reclaim the case that seemed heavier than before.

Clyde

Date: 2012-08-03 01:39 EST
The battered door of the reliced barbershop hissed in its follow-through and fastening. The few remaining neon bulbs flickered, died, clapped and finally hummed alive through Clyde's hastey chop at the switch. He approaced a five-tier shelf once-employed to display miraculous gels and styling varieties, swiped at caked atmospheres of dust on the surface and tossed the case upon it without regard. Its displacement a coy hypnosis: so much work, so much racket and requium. Deadened eyes sustained its image. It was laughable, surely: the mental-weight-gain of the nights corrupt tryst for a ten-pound suitcase made in some dust-supper country. Laughable. Surely. You could almost hear the nothing.

Sweat surfed the gun-jumping lines of his falsely-young face. Pupils divided the obese air of the humid shop, pulling apart the broken chairs and filthy counters. He began repression. Began removing the skin of the deed; stained-tile crossed to spin the sink to life, jacket removed, leaving the brownleather holster tightly creased into the damp cotton of a white t-shirt. He shampooed his black threads with skincell, rubbing the knobs of his fingers into his scalp with hearty flights. He shook dry like a dog, spotting the cracked mirror mesmerizing his vision with bits of water. Clyde grasped the waist of the porcelain sink as pupils interrogated themselves in their own image. Speak up, oh guilty one!

He'd had enough of remnants. Enough of what was left of him in the glass. The end of the shop sported an untidy counter, it probably had times of prosperity; a fat, generous barber beaming from behind with oily cheeks, punching away at cash regsiter that was antiqued for the simple sake of it. Big-buttons and flashsales. Now it collected aged-grey papers, soot, cans, and dead, crispy bugs; a million little legs pointing up to that big neon bar in the sky. The Roach's Sacrament.

The counter mended to a throated-way, the hinges hanging from strings of caulk and flakes of acrylic indicate a door probably once fastened the cavity. In this hall leaned a young woman. She was timidly-dainty; pinned up in streetwise vanities of leathers, flannel and piercings. Sparse, but prominant, sparks of metallic pins—-she wasn't smiling, and she was no stranger. Pink highlights candied dirty blonde—ends of these melonhued threads wound on nervous spins of digit as she peered through Clyde as a mother in-time to chastise her son on a late-night-out.

Clyde ripened a cheek, a side-stashed-smirk, and returned to the sink to assemble a nonchalance. He tapped a comb into the porcelain and ran it through his hair as he spoke, occupied;

"Hello, Lil," he spread upon a firm, dry, and unnecessary sarcasm. His strands straightened as he removed himself from her naught-admiration, lips tugging at his ends. If he pulled hard enough, perhaps he'd simply untie and disappear"

The long, acidic silence eroded his patience however, and he was quick to show. The comb rattled around the sink after a thrust-and-release of flicking wrist and a following of retaliating pupils. His arms crossed and torso turned.

"You have somethin' to say, Lil?" Answering himself with an annoyed spin of his head and clamoring laughter, he drove the side of his fist into the wall and walked his eyes up the hairy-steps of his arms. "I guess not, stupid question," he muttered to himself.

The dainty daisy moved from the columns-support and took a gesturing step in his direction, arms suffocating her waist. Matter of fact... she expressed, crossing the counter, eyeing him to bits.

"You're...oh boy," construction under-way on her own snide grin. Construction delayed!....as she tried her best to sully doe-soft browns and meterlong lash.

"You're a goddamn idiot, Clyde. You're an ass'ole. You're..." fists rolled at the end of extended, quivering arms as she charged..."You're all-of-the-fck'n-'bove!" Tattered-tin and balls of soot were sent flying his way as the steampunk princess began her assault.

Lilly Murdock wasn't the gaunt variety-girl she seemed. 24 years old—42 of experience it seemed. While the little girls on her block rolled in glitter, played in purple and mused of ponies and princes—she dreamed of pilfering Picasso's and picking the hearts of poor-boys. She kept the lines hidden well. Her face was pretty and image cleaner than it should. A Surfacer's Subterfuge.

Her ringed-pinky tapped the metallic head of the stud lingering on her lip as she waited. While she demanded.

Clyde had managed to bat away a ziplock of molded-something and caught a crinkled can of cola; some fluid still left sloshing in it, to his limitless pleasure. Bridged-brows-blown at the prime-meridian, leaving skewed dismay. "Whatever," he issued-blank. A retort, empty-as-any, and perhaps less necessary than silence.

"Grow the hell up, Lil."

Clyde floated the order and began an idle clammer for his belongings. Belong-ING—-the leather jacket thrown aside upon his entrance. Fingers traced the starchy collar, giving it enshrouding girth and pop. When his bearings surfaced, his returning gaze was met by a curious flight of pale-palm and multicoloured nail. Lil's swipe portioned-out a nice piece of his cheek—-the nails added insult to the aforementioned injury. Four excellent tears, across.

Clyde caught the wrist in its waining motion, pressing a hardthumb into it, mending flesh into her brittle, little, bones. A monogamy of deep-purple and shiny-red emodied the pressure and began to spread from his squeeze. She didn't rile easily to pain——or at all, from what Clyde had learned over the years. Some instances bad, some good, but—-mostly bad. Lilly Murdock wasn't coy, and she didn't suppress what she was feeling at any given moment. She smiled up to the young-gunner, her feet climbing onto his-own as she didn't recoil from his grasp.

"Oh, babe," she moaned. An embodiment of ecstasies: from the nibbled lip, to mending hip. Clyde released her wrist slowly; a hypnotism to his obedience—-and boy, Lilly took advantage: tearing her hand free, sending her sharp little knee into his shin and burying the just-released hand into his kidney with a clever little jab.

He sighed, doubled; nay, tripled-over, and winced; falling back against the sink from the attack. He couldn't help but laugh. Sentiments not identical, unfortunately.

"Shut your stupid mouth, Clyde. You must not realize what you did tonight, do you?" Her arm flapped bonelessly towards the case that had already collected a surprising amount of dust in the minutes it had been stirring on the shelf.

"You sold your fck'n life away for nothing. For nothing, Clyde!" She leaned over the emphasis. Clyde halted her monologue with a raised hand.

"Relax, Lilly. Things went down, and everyone died." He humored a chuckle that was really nothing more than an exaggerated nostril flare as he straightened himself out. Lilly Murdock was not swayed.



"You don't understand. And when you do, it's gonna'—-"

Her words halted as her eyes arrested towards the knock at the pale-green pane of the old shop's door. The glass rattled in its housing beside the thundering claps of knuckle against it.