Hey remember how I write things sometimes

I'm not too hot on this story. I wrote the first half of it a few months ago, and just came back to it tonight and wrote some more. Part of me likes it but part of me really hates it. I think the ideas are solid, but the language isn't working, the structure is messy.

One of the reasons I'm posting it is because everything up until the phone call is truth. I don't like to write about real things, more specifically my own experiences, in stories. I don't think it translates particularly well for me. But the point of the story is supposed to be the funeral, which wouldn't make sense without the set up at the beginning.

I dunno. Thoughts are appreciated. I kind of don't know what to do with this, I like the actual funeral scene but the lead-up to it and how to close it are escaping me. But hopefully you will enjoy something in it, be it the whole thing or just a word or phrase.

I used to have these dreams.

They weren't like everyone else's. I didn't know they were different for the longest time, until I actually talked about them.

My dreams were mundane. They weren't abstract, incoherent flashes. They were simple, they were normal. But that wasn't what made them different. My dreams were not random events, snippets of errant ideas clad together with no constant.

I used to dream about a school. It wasn't school, the concept of school, it was a school. I returned to this school again and again, learned the layout, learned the students, the teachers. It never occurred to me that dreams should be happening in any other way; I didn't go there every night, but the dreams I remembered, the ones that would stick with me, all took place there.

It actually wasn't always the same school. It changed, without fail, whenever I changed schools in real life. My parents had to move around a lot for work, so I was a classic new kid case. It didn't bother me as much as it did some kids I've talked to. I always found it pretty easy to make friends, there's not so much pressure when you know you'll be gone soon.

So when I would change schools, the one I dreamed in would change too. The first was pretty basic, though it had a massive attic that was the main passageway between classes for the upperclassmen. My very first of these dreams involved my finding my way up there by mistake, and facing their wrath.

One of them was a cruise ship, another a hotel. Both were absolutely massive. If I try to think about it, I can still see the delicate tapestries, the elegant dining rooms, the escalators that seemed to go up or down forever in facilities that defied any conventional architecture.

The last one, perhaps in a cold parallel to the end of high school, was a simple affair. It was almost art deco in its design, a group of small square buildings arranged like a tiny ivory city. There were large courtyards arrayed with tall, simple sculptures. I stopped going there suddenly and unceremoniously when I graduated from high school.

There were themes I seemed to return to. I was almost always late, and it was almost always for some sort of science class. I got lost frequently; though I knew my way around the dream-schools, I seemed to have a penchant for getting myself lost, wandering through the impossibly large and complex hallways and floors. I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for a bathroom. The classrooms were actually pretty utilitarian for being in a dream despite the exotic layouts, but the bathrooms were bizarre, unintelligible rooms where nothing particularly good ever happened.

Dreams, to me, never felt like something I was creating. They were a place I visited, another life I led, and when I woke up my real life would feel insubstantial and flimsy.

The truth is, life isn't full of rich tapestries, you don't go to school in a grand hotel. You walk into a cold, gray building every day and learn things you're never going to care about once you're not directly responsible for them anymore. Then you go to college, where you're told at once to decide the entire course of your life and waste it away in a sprawling flood of drugs and darkness.

The worst part is that the system works. I trudged through my college years, assuming they were the best of my life, an assumption that was only reinforced by the abysmal office job I ended up in. It's a necessary sacrifice, the hive needs worker bees; if everyone who wanted to be a rockstar became a rockstar the world would fall apart. So, with a complete lack of self-awareness I proceeded down the path to mediocrity that envelops so much of our youth today.

It's pathetic, isn't it? We spend our whole lives preparing for something that we don't even realize we don't want until it's too late. You begin to look over the grand design of your history and see all the things you could have done with yourself, and then you feel horrible for complaining because you have a job and money and so many people would kill for what you've got.

That was the conclusion I came to, after a phone call brought me out of my daze, out of the cloud of denial that kept me from thinking about things too deeply. I didn't recognize the voice on the other end. Turned out I didn't know her at all, but I did know her daughter. Her name was Maggie, and she was dead.

When you've been to three different high schools, you lose track of people easily. However, I was immediately able to recall Maggie. The details of her face were a little blurry but the concept of her was intact in my head. I wasn't sure, however, just where I'd known her. I called Danny from my first school, because he was that guy who somehow got along with everyone when they couldn't get along with each other. He didn't remember her.

The next few calls went the same. No one remembered Maggie. But I did, so distinctly. The truth was, I always had a thing for her. The kind of intense, world-ending crush you could only have on someone you didn't actually talk to. We'd hung out a couple of times, always in groups. We would exchange words, and smile at each other, and then I'd turn away and start talking to someone else. It's ridiculous, isn't it? I suppose it's funny now, but at the time it seemed so huge.

I sat in my cubicle, rubbing my eyes. Some shit you try not to think about. Like I said, we build up these blocks. I remembered my dreams, sure, but I held onto the memories the way I did everything from that time, with a sense of distant wonder. I kept making calls, but I knew that nothing was going to come of it.

Blocks. The only way to keep going in a shit job like this is to not let yourself feel how utterly soul-draining it is. You joke about it, you complain to your coworkers, but you don't explore it, you don't actually dig down and look at your life. Maggie never existed. Not really. She was a dream. One of the people in the schools I used to attend at night when I was asleep. The phone call from her mother was a dream, too. A random subconscious callback to something I hardly thought about anymore.

I guess what really bothered me about the whole thing was how shaken I was by it. Once I was sure she wasn't real, that the phone call wasn't real, I let it go. But something was wrong. Everything seemed insubstantial and meaningless. Here I was, years out of college and no real passion for anything, and I get one dream phone call about a person I didn't really know and all of a sudden I felt like my world is dimmer.

People started to notice it. I was told, on several occasions, that I seemed like I was in a “funk.” I thought about explaining what had happened to someone, but any way I phrased it in my head seemed ridiculous and unbelievable.

I remembered the first time I saw Maggie. It was right before a class, one of the few I actually managed to be on time for. There was a small pavilion outside the lecture hall, and she was sitting with a kid I'd gone to elementary school with and a couple of people that I was actually classmates with at the time. They were talking, and I said hi as I passed. Her hair came to me again first; she had this short brown bob, but it was edgy and uneven, as if she'd cut it herself. She used too much makeup, I remembered thinking, but somehow it worked for her. Eyeliner applied a little too liberally outlined blue orbs that seemed impossibly big. Her features should have been too exaggerated, like caricatures, but somehow they combined perfectly. She was beautiful.

Her image was so clear, now. The more I thought about her, the more real she seemed to become. And she was dead.

I'm not sure when it was that I decided I was going to go to her funeral. It was an insane idea; you don't choose what you dream about. But I had gotten the phone call. She was a friend. And I felt a sense of duty that was stronger than anything I had experienced in years.

I started to try and draw maps. I figured if I was going to dream about the things I used to dream about, I had to try and make sense of them. I couldn't get much down; there were some rooms and hallways I remembered, but in general it was a dead end. It was too utilitarian, I think. This was about feeling, about emotion.

So I drew her instead. It started as an idle exercise while I was at my desk, just something I did to kill some time. When I got home I did another, though, and within a week I had an entire notebook filled with them. I saw her so perfectly in my head, but she wouldn't translate at all to paper. I've never been an incredible artist but I had some talent, so it was frustrating not to be able to capture her.

All that time, I kept trying to have the dream. I would think about her as I lay in bed at night, try to imagine her funeral. The sound of her mom's voice, the way she looked back in high school. Nothing worked. I had drearily boring dreams about nothing, but never about Maggie.

FAST FORWARD BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO PUT HERE

My eyes closed slowly, and I remember thinking that I was hearing rain, but it had been crystal clear outside. As I adjusted to the dark greens and grays, the cold rain soaked into my jacket. I took a deep breath. Asleep. I didn't have to think about it, I knew it. I looked around, saw the gravestones.

Well, then. Time to say goodbye.

It was a little distracting, at first. I had forgotten the feeling of seeing so many people from different parts of my life. Someone I bumped into once and had never seen again was standing next to me. His head was down, so we didn't make eye contact. They all looked so grown up. All this time I hadn't been dreaming about them, but I still managed to construct them. Or maybe I wasn't constructing anything. I had given up on the notion that this was my world. Maybe I created it to begin with but this place, these people were their own entities. I was only visiting.

I noticed a couple of sidelong glances. It wasn't surprising; I'd been gone for years. As the preacher started to speak, I found it hard to follow what he was saying. I'd forgotten how people speak in dreams, the non-sequiturs and fragments that everyone seemed to be gleaning meaning from. I closed my eyes and let the sound of the rain fill my ears, felt it weighing down my suit.

It was all so terribly poetic. A funeral in the rain, old friends coming together, saying goodbye to a girl I never got to know well enough. I hated it. Life isn't like this. Life isn't cinematic, it's not pretty. None of this was real, I knew that, and yet I had never felt this way about a real person. I bit my lip and closed my eyes tighter, attempting to staunch tears. I couldn't do it. I was crying, and I was ashamed of myself. I was crying for Maggie, that stupid girl I could never quite talk to, the person who made all my real-life crushes seem less important without me ever realizing what was going on.

But I was crying for myself, too. For all the time I'd wasted in my life, for all the decisions I'd made and all the things I did that suddenly seemed so insufficient in her presence. I knew that I'd wake up soon, that I'd probably never see any of these people again, that I would go back to my life and have to go on knowing that Maggie was dead.

I bit my lip harder, and I could taste a hint of metal as I broke the skin. I was angry. Angry at this stupid world, for feeling so much more real to me than my reality. I was angry at Maggie, for bringing me back here, reminding me of everything I used to have, the world inside me that I gave up. And for making me feel this strongly. For a moment, I hated her.

People began to shuffle out, talking amongst themselves. A couple of people came up to me, shook my hand. One of them had died in real life, a few years back – I couldn't look him in the eye. Soon it was just me and the grave, and I sat down on the spongy turf and stared at the fresh-dug mound of earth, turned to mud by the downpour.

“Hey, Maggie. I have to admit, I don't really know what to say here. I mean, we never really talked much. I don't know why you wanted me here. Why I had to be here. I don't know what I am to this world, whether it's something I made for myself because my real world wasn't good enough or --”

I paused for a minute, then sighed and continuee.

“Okay, listen. Ever since I heard about you death, all I could think about has been how much my life sucks. How different this place was. I don't know. Maybe none of it really matters. Maybe it's all just a bunch of synapses firing off in my head while my brain rests. But goddamn it, I miss you. Two weeks ago I didn't even remember that you existed, and now all I want is to see you again. If I could have just dreamed that...

“It's not fair to you, I know. You don't make the rules. Neither do I, I guess. I just wanted to tell you that I wish we'd gotten to know each other better. That I don't get what all this shit means. And that I hope that you're at peace.”

When I woke up, my pillow was still damp. After being in that black suit, heavy with rain, I felt so much lighter. I sat on the edge of my bed, with my eyes closed. There was supposed to be closure. There was supposed to be meaning. I was supposed to make peace with my dreams and wake up with a new sense of self-worth. But all I felt was that I couldn't really be sure of anything.

I showered and got ready for work, and tried to put it all into perspective. It wasn't like I could just quit my job and suddenly lead a life as rich as the one I had in dreams. The world doesn't work like that. You take what you can get, and hopefully you come out of it happy and healthy.

I used to have two worlds. I had lost the one, until recently. But then Maggie died. And she reminded me what I had lost. I can't say for sure I've lived my life any differently since. Every dream ends, no matter how much we wish it would linger. Maybe it's for the best. This is the real world, or at least the one where I spend the most time. I have to continue to try and make things work. But maybe it's just enough that I remember.

Envy's Story

Untitled, another Sin story. This takes place somewhere completely different from the game, I thought it'd be interesting to try and write a short story based on an alien planet where you get next to no info on them.


Envy's Story

His eyes are the maroon of a sun cresting over the horizon, and they have a warmth and depth that defies conventional description. She leans in close, feeling his heartbeat and listening to her own; they are beating as one, and as they move deftly around the dancefloor she finds herself practically on her own plane; she closes her eyes and pretends that they are alone, that it is only her and him and the slow, deep music. She didn't think it could be like this.

She is not, by any means, used to this sort of thing. Her kind are not meant for love, and while her sister is by far less suited to the prospect it is she that laments it the most. Until this point, she did not think it possible. She feels his talons in hers, rubs the crested feathers of her headdress against his beak, and wonders if this is what it feels like for them, too. She has only ever seen the world through the eyes of others, taking in their fears and hopes and dreams. She is the Other. Always fated to be someone else.

The vaulted ballroom in which the two dance overlooks the seemingly endless rust-colored desert. The matte blue metal from which the tower is constructed reflects the two ambient orbs of light in the massive circular roof, casting the entire room in a gentle glow, illuminating only what needs to be seen. Over a hundred of the Inui flutter in and out of the room, going about their business. Some feast on roasted sandskimmers, some sip warm, heady wines, others saunter to the dance floor with those they love, or those they might. A thick, slow bass reverberates throughout the spherical room, a quiet accentuation to the reverie.

Near the stage, two Inui sit together, sharing the same cup of a green liquid. They have just been wed, successfully merging two of the most influential and powerful families in the entire western sands. It has been a long, complicated courtship. The two are hardly in love, though they share no ill feelings. Their union is looked at with unmixed pleasure, heading off the mounting tensions between their families. This is their event; the whole of the nobility is here to celebrate. But few eyes rest upon them, as the gravity of the room seems to shift into its center, where two winged lovers dance.

They move slowly, deliberately, in a way that betrays little skill. It is the raw passion between them, however, the unmitigated desire and love, that makes their dance so powerful. He is Nnina, a prince of the warrior-clan Jokko. He is notorious for being chaste; among these people, it is nearly unheard of for a young warrior to be anything less than promiscuous. He has, however, brushed off all those who wished for his company, and there were many, all for the love of her. She is Loppi, youngest daughter of a merchant family that, while noble, is not the type one would expect one of the warrior families to ever associate with, for more than a night or two. But from the moment he saw her, he knew there was no other woman for him.

Loppi, for her part, loved him. She denied him at first, believing he would tire of her once a fortnight had passed and she would bear his eggs alone, to the knowing smirks of all the other ladies of the court. He had been relentless in his courtship, however, undertaking several self-imposed quests to prove his love to her. At last, she had accepted his bid for her affections.

This woman is not her. She shares her body, her memories, but Loppi's face is nailed to a room deep within the recesses of the Fourth House, where last vestiges of blood still manage to drip, from time to time, out of eye sockets from which the tears have long dried. She came to Loppi's chambers late in the night, and what transpired there none were privy to; her silent screams fell to one set of ears, from which no sympathy was returned. The process was slow, brutal, for without raw emotion the ritual loses all meaning. The Inui who did this to her was not one she had ever seen, but in time it did not matter, as the murderer placed the freshly cut skin onto her own, absorbing every moment of Loppi's life, every thought, every dream. And her love for Nnina. A love that the culprit herself shared, but one she could never indulge. Not as herself. But as Loppi, she had a soulmate.

She purrs, ever so slightly, as Nnina whispers to her of his love, of the lengths to which he would go to prove himself even now. She is wrapped in ecstasy. She has existed nearly since the dawn of time, her lot in life one of murder, judgment, and the ceaseless grip of the vice she was born to at once exploit and punish. She is Envy, and she knows that this world will one day have to end, and that it will be by her hand, that she will help to build this civilization to its peak before tearing it to shreds, but in this moment, for the first time since her inception, she is happy, content.

“Oh dear sister, don't be ridiculous. You can't be happy. You can't be satisfied. It is not in your nature.”

The voice is not Nnina's. She knows it, however, and her eyes go wide as she pushes him back. The edges of his beak tilt up, a wicked smile. His appearance begins to change, the familiar green feathers turning to a pure, unadulterated gold. He is called Pride.

“You...you miserable, despicable little-”

“Come now, sister. You didn't really think it would last, did you? This pathetic shade of a superficial love some low-level merchant's daughter felt for a man she could never deserve...that you even pretended to it is pathetic enough, but to let it affect you so deeply is truly pathetic.”

She shakes with rage, her talons clenched so tightly she draws blood from them.

“What did you do with him?”

“Nothing so horrible. It turned out he was truly in love with that little Inui girl, much more than himself. Naturally I found this entirely reprehensible, but I gave him the honor of slaying him in an official duel.”

“...Why? Why him?”

“I don't even know what that question means. This is what we do, sister. We corrupt. We build. We destroy. It has been our lot since the beginning, and it's going to remain that way until the end. Until we are finally finished. No mortal, not a solitary one of them, is worth anything more than a useless plaything to us. I am simply saving you from becoming any more invested in this baseless fantasy.”

Envy cannot speak. For so long she has suffered, without a moment of reprisal. And here, at the smallest glimpse of anything beyond the tortured existence she has been forced into, she is broken.

She extends her consciousness out into the desert, searching for something. When she finds it, she simply nods, not answering her brother. Her body begins to contort sickly, expanding and elongating, taking on a muted yellow that sends all the Inui fleeing. Their one natural predator, the reason they have built their vaulted blue towers, the Aarathi, the sand worm. More begin to sprout from the ground, and the tears gathering at Envy's eyes fall as spiked feelers take the place of her face and beak. She stands at full height, a massive creature whose every inch is designed to make her a more efficient killer. Five more now stand around her, extensions of her will.

The massacre is unmitigated. The night becomes legendary, though it is not remembered long. The Inui had at least another half-century left to them, but Envy goes on a rampage that leaves nothing of their civilization. For all their advancement, the Inui cannot defeat their enemy from within, especially not with Envy's fury behind it. In days, they are gone.

And Pride simply watches, and smiles.

And in the Garden, Snake Was Charming

This is a story I wrote based on a character who is the physical embodiment of Lust for the Graal server I've shown some graphics for here.

It's the spiritual sequel to a short story I wrote for a class last year, and was an attempt to make an erotic story that wasn't erotic. If that makes any sense.

If you've delicate sensibilities, this story may offend. I'd specify how but it'd ruin it.


And in the Garden, Snake Was Charming

In the garden, the sweet smell of exotic fauna hangs in the air. No breeze blows here; it is always humid, warm, almost like a film hanging on the world. I wipe the sweat from my brow, and breathe in the thick air. I have been standing in this spot for twelve days now, observing a single blossom on a tree, purple with specks of blue. My Lady has put me here to observe it, and to make sure its beauty does not wane. I focus my eyes on it, desperately attempting not to blink, that I may miss a moment of the pristine beauty that my Lady wishes to document. Twelve days have I stood here, and twelve more I would gladly give without a second thought. For my Lady Lust is a beautiful and just mistress, and if she is to reward me with even a second of her presence, it will have been worth it and more.

I may have had a family once. I no longer remember. None of that matters. One day I caught her scent, and it led me to her garden. I have seen her but once, when I first arrived, and that moment plays over and over in my head. The leaves parted slowly, and through the thick mists that move through the garden like a serpent, slow and thick, I saw her, and my heart filled until it overflowed, and from that moment I knew only her, only my Lady, and nothing and no one else could ever matter more.

She is perfection. Wild, crimson locks frame a face whose form could not be sculpted by the very gods themselves, were they to try a thousand thousand times. There is no word that yet exists for the color of her eyes; cities have risen and fallen in the time it would take to properly describe the hue, to say nothing of the depth. Her body, framed in blood-red silk, is like the desert, gentle rolling dunes forming perfect curves, with ice-pale skin that betrays none of the heat she radiates. Her scent is of rose wine, late nights, and of sex, uninhibited and primal; once you have tasted of it, you are hers. And of course, her lips, fresh-plucked cherries draped in morning dew, lips that have sent countless men to their deaths. Lips which release a voice for which I would crawl to the ends of the Earth to hear but one word. Her word is golden. Her word is law. Her word is my beginning and end, and I will do anything to hear it.

When I finally hear it, a dull echo in the back of my head, my eyes begin to shiver as tears fall down them. Already my heart has begun to beat faster, my breath shallow. I feel a stirring below my stomach, and I know it is time. Time to see my Lady. To taste of her fruit, and to fulfill a desire so strong I abandoned everything I knew for the hope of obtaining it.

My Mistress's sanctuary is bathed in flowers, myriad colors adorning the vines and the trees. Before I enter I catch her scent, that marvelous, transcendent, life-changing scent. She is without adornment, her naked form stretched out on a bed of grass. It is like seeing the sun for the first time, as if Saurvold were descending from the heavens and casting his divine light over me. But she is no god. No, she is much more than that. Her eyes pierce my soul, and with but one glance I know that I am to lay with her.

A single finger grazes my chest as I kneel before her. Her nail grazes my skin, and as the tip of her finger makes contact with my bare skin my vision blurs and my head swims. It is as I imagined; no, it is more than that. My Lady wastes no time, grabbing my head and pulling me to her. She kisses me so deeply, so powerfully, that I cannot help but imagine time stopping, that nothing in this realm can exist to surpass this moment, and perhaps that is what happens. Men were not meant to hold congress with my Lady Lust; her every touch is ecstasy, her every movement a miracle, and as I am consumed in her glory and her warmth, a distant voice in my mind weeps, for no joy could ever equal this, no worldly experience could ever stir my heart, that I have known Lust's sex.

My Lady is, as one could only expect, a master of lovemaking. With the ease of one who has only the slightest interest in her work she moves, building up the pressure until I believe I will surely explode, only to send it back to the beginning once more, controlling me to suit her needs. I am her willing servant, and as we lay together I see worlds, the myriad galaxies of the universe laid bare before my eyes, our intercourse unlike anything mortal man has known. Even as the smell of burning skin rises to my nostrils I am bathed in a pleasure so all-consuming I feel almost separated from my body.

As I feel the burning on my chest I begin to look down, but her hand grabs my jaw and thrusts it upwards, so that I can only glare at the canopy through teary eyes as she sears her crest into my chest. The scent of her poison mixed with my rotting flesh threatens to end my consciousness, but still she continues our act, flooding my body with please as she places her entire hand on my chest, excreting a poison that I can feel tearing into my skin, and tears flood from my eyes as waves of pain and pleasure wash over me, coming over and over until I can no longer tell the difference.

She keeps me awake as she moves her hand downwards, and now I can feel my insides boiling, my skin melting. She stops just short of the area where our bodies join before reaching tenderly into the left side of my torso, tearing and burning through muscle and sinew and bone. She wraps her fingers around my heart, and even now she continues our congress, keeps me alive and awake and aware, and I feel every move she makes as she begins to rip my heart from her chest, slowly, methodically. It is ecstasy beyond measure, torture beyond reckoning. As my eyes close I still think only of her, my perfect Mistress, and I hope I have been good for her.

As the sun begins to set, dull pink light filtering through the trees, Lust licks the blood from her fingers, covered in bits of the organ she has just consumed. She gazes at her own body, perfect but for the bits of her former servant that still lie on her. She gets up gingerly, sauntering to a dark, clear, pool of water, the only part of her garden that offers any solace from the oppressive, tropical heat. As she bathes the blood, skin, and bone from her body, she revels in her own beauty, spending hours making herself clean. She smiles to herself, and takes stock of the men in her garden, examining them and judging them and ordering them.

Ah yes. He will do nicely.

DZM and Drawing

The response to DZM has been really overwhelming, seriously. I have gotten such great comments, a lot of which should probably not be attributed to me but to the guys who helped me film it. Everything really came together and I think everyone involved did an amazing job especially given how quickly and crazily we had to pull this together. I have been wanting to make this movie for four years, and I could not be happier with it.

I keep getting asked this: Yes, I have a sequel planned out. Everyone's shown interest in continuing this, so it may very well materialize in the future.

Also, I will probably next to never post drawings here. Writing is something I consider myself to be good at, something I hope to be paid for some day, I don't mind posting it. Drawings, however, I do for fun and have no intention of ever trying to do anything with them. I do have a site where I post all my art, sufficient coaxing or baked goods will get you the address but it's nothing to write home about.

Anway, this is to say I am hesitant to post a drawing but I decided to draw the characters from the story a couple posts down, Dissolution. I will spare you the expository paragraph I usually accompany my art with, and just say that I worked on this pretty much continually from 11PM to about 3AM, it was a lot of fun, and the characters look pretty much nothing like what I thought they would but I am quite happy with it.

EDIT: So I can't post it here, the size doesn't fit with the layout, here's a link! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v438/suppai_no_iruka/dissolutioncopy.jpg

Dissolution

Written for my creative writing class, newly revised, needs another polish to examine all the splicing and tense changing but I think it's overall tighter (and for those of you who read it before I removed like half the semi-colons, then wrote new sections where I used some more). I recommend Bloc Party.

Dissolution

I'm taking a sip of coffee as the first bullet shrieks into in the wall next to me. One leg kicks over the table, the other kicks back my chair as I drop, all instinct, onto the ground. A snap, a slide, and there's a gun in my hand. Another round glances off the metal table, denting it. Not the same kind of gun; it's a lighter gauge warning shot, to let me know I'm the target. That suits me just fine.

I only have a couple of seconds to get my bearings. I'm in a cafe at the northwestern peak of what is, looking at it from the top, a large octagon that makes up an outdoor mall. It's actually quite nice and quiet this time of day, except I suppose for when someone's shooting at you. I'm on the far side - the shots came from across the way, but they weren't straight-on. No, the first one was a sniper shot, the second came from the same direction. Whoever is shooting at me is doing so from the roof in the center of the complex, and there's about 20 yards in every direction in which I'd be completely open.

There's no choice but to run as more shots ring out, and I dart down the wall, weaving in and out of kiosks and tables as people run screaming. People are running in the chaos, and the shots are coming slower as they push each other over trying to move in the opposite direction I am. No one but me is meant to get hurt here, and the mall is being cleared out so we can do this one-on-one. I know it's her, I knew it from the first shot. It didn't hit me only because she didn't want it to, not yet. I'll have to pick that bone with her later.

I find good cover inside a scented soap store and take the time to catch my breath and try to pin down where she is. From where I am I can't see her, I'll have to get closer, exposing myself. For now all I can do is stick to the wall until I get a better angle. As the store window fills with holes, I know I have to move; if I stay in here she'll toss in a grenade, and no amount of dodging is going to save me then. I roll out and immediately take off. I hear the click of an automatic weapon. Damn, she's serious about this.

The first time I saw her, she was shooting a man in the arm. He was in a business suit, exquisitely tailored, the kind of suit most men would not even be able to identify as being more expensive than their own lives. I faced her from his back, and cocked my head.

“Mind if I ask what the hell you're doing?”

“Well you see, when a boy really likes a girl she fucking shoots him in the arm because he wont tell her what he needs to know. Now if you'll excuse me...”

“Excuse you? You must be kidding me. This is my mark. And we both know he's not some two-bit CFO, which means your company should know that I claimed him.”

“Did they hire you for your big strong brain, or was that just a bonus? Look at my uniform.”

I cocked my head. “You...work for us.”

“Congratulations! You're vaguely insightful. Now-”
“Now nothing, you can't just come in here and steal my mark! You know how much money I was gonna make off this job?”
“Yeah. I do. And frankly, I wanted a new car.”

“You...you bitch.”

Bullets cascade around me as I run, though I get off a shot or two when the angle is right, more to shake her off me than to actually do any damage. As I pass the divides between awnings I catch glimpses of her. She's wearing the same old uniform, standard issue. She always liked the classics. She's got enough ammo strapped to her body to take out a small battalion, but every last one of those bullets has my name etched onto it. She hasn't patched up the holes I put in it the last time we met, and her hair has been chopped off. Her hair used to go down to her waist, she really loved it. I can't see her eyes from here, but I don't have to, I know them well enough already. There's no life in them now, no sign of anything but function; those eyes exist only to identify the target.

Last time I saw her was five years ago, in Stockholm. She was lying on the ground, her hot blood melting the snow where it was oozing out of her body. I looked down at her, a thin film of snow forming on a body that was growing increasingly cold. She mouthed something to me, then used what little energy she had left to keep her eyes open, to keep them on mine, and we shared a long moment of silence. That silence was huge, it was all-encompassing, countries exploded and populations rose and fell and not a bit of it penetrated that silence. It was a real thing, more real than the snow falling, than the cold seeping into our wounds, than all our history and the fact that it was going to end at that moment. We had nothing else to say to each other. It was done. And so I pulled the trigger.

We're alone now, just her and me. She picked the location well. We should have at least a few more minutes before any authorities show up, and longer before they do anything that will effect this. There's no way I can match the firepower she's packing, I'll have to get up to the roof where she is before I can even have a chance, and that is assuming she doesn't blow me away before then. But I know her, I can feel how much she hates me right now, and I know how this is going to end.

She is, as of the last time I checked, the fifth best sniper on the planet. She can shoot the wings off a fly from a mile away without even thinking twice about it. I'm, on the other hand, a knife specialist. You give me something any sharper than a billiard ball and I can take out a whole room of people before any of them even realize I'm there.

Maybe, in the end, that was always our problem.

As the chatter of her weapon sends a hundred metal slugs my way, I can almost hear Gordon's voice again, think about him telling me not to date within the company, that I'm being crazy.

“Man, you're being crazy.”

“I know what I'm doing, Gordon. I'm not some rookie, I don't harbor any illusions about what that kind of girl is like.”

“Listen to yourself. If you really knew what she was like, by which I mean if you hadn't already slept with her, you would never even think about it. She is completely crazy, and you're crazy, this whole damn thing is crazy.”

“She's really not as bad as everyone thinks.”

“You mean she's not a cold, vindictive, distant, break-your-arm-in-four-places-if-you-glance-at-her-chest bitch?”

“No, she's all of that. She's just...different sometimes, that's all.”

“You know what? I'm out. No way am I getting in the middle of this. You know what dating someone from the company entails, you know the rules. She's going to tear you apart one day, you know that right? Besides, everyone knows female assassins are stingy lovers.”

That's completely true, by the way. They are stingy. I never had a chance.

I'm kneeling behind a wall now, tearing off part of my shirt to staunch the bleeding in my left arm. It's pure luck that she didn't render it useless; the bullet's in deep though, and I doubt I'll be able to get it out. While I'm here, I check the other injuries I have. A couple of grazes, another bullet in my thigh, nothing life-threatening and nothing I haven't had before. In general the saving grace of a firefight is that once you've been shot a few times you usually give up or stop moving. We don't have that luxury. We've been trained to take everything we inflict, and while being able to shrug off a few bullets in my flesh may seem advantageous, it makes fights between professionals drawn-out and brutal in a way that it even makes us queasy. And us, we're two of the best.

There is a stairway directly across from me, from which I can access the roof. Between me and that lovely little door, however, is a wide open space with nothing for cover but a couple of gaudy plants and a bench with melting ice cream on it. Letting her waste bullets until she has to reload isn't an option; with the payload she's carrying there's no way I'd be able to last that long. Looking to my left I see a car on display, a disgustingly yellow hummer that has about as much taste and function as a couch with electrified metal spikes on all the cushions (professional killers don't need a giant boxy eyesore to assert themselves). However, I can get inside with no problem, and if I can scramble, I may be able to hotwire it.

Of course she continually pumps the car door with led, and if I move at all I'll be full of holes and soon even this monster wont work so once it's running, still on the floor, I slam the gas pedal with one hand and cover my head with the other. Even with the break, the car impacts the wall next to the door, and I feel the metal contorting, and hoping my stunt doesn't kill me, I can't help but think about the first time I slept with her.

As we were lying there, I could have sworn she looked at me the same way she looked at someone through a sniper scope, as if my life was entirely in her hands and she controlled every inch of my being, and lying there under her I felt more naked than I ever had or have since. Love Will Tear Us Apart shivered from a record player sitting in the corner, but I could barely hear it as the full weight of her presence bore down on me. She was regarding me in the manner that she regarded a mark, and I found myself shaking as lowered her face to mine. No one else ever made me shake like that.

Crashing a car into a wall to simultaneously escape a hail of gunfire and open a securely locked door may seem like a stupid thing to do, and I'm not exactly prepared to argue that it's not. However, when given the immediate choice between different ways of dying, you'd be surprised how little either of them start to matter. Death, at some point, is just death. No point cloaking it in different language. Self-inflicted but accidental impalement or turned to a colander by a jilted lover; is either one really preferable? In any case, I'm wonderfully alive and safe from her for now. A couple flights of stairs separates us, and as much as I hate where this is going, I have no choice. I start to run, ignoring the shooting pains in my leg, and each time it hits a step a pain shoots through my whole body and memories come flooding back to me.

---

My eye's resting on the scope, and I'm trying to hold my hand steady.

“I don't think I'm cut out for sniping. My hand keeps shaking.”

“You can skin a man with robotic precision in twelve minutes, but using a sniper rifle makes you nervous?”

“Hey, it's not my thing. You only get one chance, it's too far away, it's so...impersonal.”

“Yeah, because I like to have conversations with people I'm killing for money. You're doing fine, just take a deep breath.”

“ The target's too small.”

“It's not too small.”

“Can you even see it from here? It's way too small!”

Her finger circles around mine on the trigger, and I feel her chest against my back.

“If you don't shoot this thing in ten seconds I'm going to break your finger.”

“Would you calm down, this isn't a job, it's freaking practice, I'm trying to do this righ-”

The yell muffled the snapping of my finger.

---

She stretches out on the bed, then shifts onto one elbow to look at me.

“So what did he say?”

“What do you think he said? He begged for his life. He gave me that look – you know the one -- and he started telling me about his family, how much they love him. Like I've come this far and I didn't think about shit like that.”

“Can you blame him?” she asks, as I pass her the cigarette. “Guy's got a knife to your throat, you're not gonna try whatever you can?”

“I guess you have a point. I dunno. It's starting to get me down.”

“Going soft on me, are you?”

“It's not that. I love what I do. Hell, I don't think I could do anything else. I ever tell you what I used to do, before I joined the company?”

She takes a long drag, and stares at me. She hates existentialism, doesn't have the patience for it, but she accommodates me.

“I worked in a meat packing factory. For, God, it must have been seven years.”

“That explains how good you are with knives, I guess. It's not so strange.”

“I never touched a knife. I did office shit. Seven years in this place where they cut up animals and shipped them off for people to eat, and I did stupid office shit.”

“So? You left. You live a great life now, at a job you love, that you're great at. You've moved on.”
“That's not what I'm talking about.” I sigh as I put out the cigarette. She has never been about the big stuff; I don't think she could understand what I'm talking about even if I knew how to explain it.

“It's been a long day. You're just worn out. Turn out the light, get some sleep.”

We're lying in the dark about three minutes before she speaks again.

“I never did tell you my real name, did I?”

“Nope.”

“Don't got one.”

---

Time's running out. It's raining hard, the kind of rain that suffocates you when you stand under it, so thick that everything loses its form and blends together. She's sobbing and my arms are around her, but I can tell she can't feel them, she just beats her fist on my chest again and again, and I'm trying to find words to calm her down but I don't have any and it makes me feel weak and useless. Having nothing left to say to her then, it was like a kind of death. Maybe worse.

---

It's been a week, and we haven't spoken. She calls me from another hotel across Stockholm, and tells me where to meet her. I take a long time strapping on my weapons; I make each movement slow and deliberate, almost lovingly preparing myself. It's snowing outside, and even from inside I can tell that there's going to be a holy silence out there, the kind that can't happen unless there's snow to soak up the noise. For a while I sit on the edge of my bed, head down, not thinking of anything. Then I get up, sigh once, and go to see her for the last time.

---

In most situations like this, were I to bust through a door to the roof I would be shot dead before I could even finish kicking, but she's going to let me do it. She's being old-fashioned about this, which isn't like her; she never had the patience for anything but cold reality, whatever was needed at that moment and nothing else. She has this way of consuming everything. It's not a conscious decision, not something I think she knows she does, but everything and everyone around her is meant only to feed her, to be witness to her, to be used by her at whatever moment she chooses. There were times where I felt like a resource -- something that was feeding her, that would eventually be used up and discarded like a fleck of dead skin. I couldn't hold it against her, even now. The way things turned out was, I've decided, inevitable. I know it for sure now, and I probably knew it then too. We were always destined to come to this, even though I tried to avoid it.

I kick open the door, gun pointed, and for the first time in half a decade, I see her face. She has a rifle pointed at me, and her eyes are just as I imagined them. She doesn't even blink as we stand there, listening to the sirens approach. My sense of time and space fall off their axes, and for just a moment I feel like all this is fake, like I'm actually back in my apartment listening to her shower and staring at her green dress slumped over my chair before I come to, and the reality, the cold physical circumstance I'm engaged in comes back to me. I barely hear the words that come out of my mouth.

“There's no way you would have missed that first shot.”

“You're a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

“You cut your hair. It's different, but I like it.”

“Don't fuck with me. You know how this works. You stood there above me, you pointed your damn gun at me, and you didn't kill me. Do you have any fucking idea what it was like waking up in a chopper? Knowing that I had been denied that basic fucking right? God, you know how these things are supposed to go. You knew how I would feel when I woke up.”

“But you did wake up-”

“Don't you feed me any bullshit! If you didn't have the balls to put one between my eyes you weren't worth my time to begin with.”

“So this is really it? There's no way to do this but one of us leaving in a body bag?”

“If you don't like the rules, maybe this life isn't for you. That doesn't give you the right to insult me like that.”

“Maybe I'm not cut out for this shit. I don't know.”

“Shut up. I don't care what you think, not anymore. One of us dies here. That's the rule.”

“So it's really that simple? That's what it all boils down to? A fucking rule?”

She puts one in my shoulder. It goes straight through, and I can already feel the blood going down my arm. I try not to flinch. We trade shots, a flurry of movement. She's on top of me, but this is my area of expertise; I ditch the gun. Soon we trade places, and she's lying on the ground, staring at me with the eyes someone who's been hovering on death for years, and she's using them to tell me what she couldn't with words. Whatever feelings she may have once harbored for me, there's nothing there now, nothing but raw hatred. Did I really turn her into this? I'm holding a knife at her throat, but you'd never know it looking at her. Even drenched in blood, with her short, ragged hair, stone eyes, she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I have to wonder how many men have suffered for her. It was wrong of me. I know that. I've spent five years running from it, but she was never one to let things like that go.

---

I put in a call to the company as I leave, tell them she's dead. I'm told she quit after Stockholm, same as me. The receptionist, Amanda, tells me she's sorry to hear about it, that we were the cutest couple, most people didn't get it but she saw what made us work. Too bad, she says, that it always works out like this so often. Our kind weren't meant to find happiness with each other. I tell her she's probably right, then thank her and hang up.