Like white phosphorous.
Before they were all murdered, what’s in his gut could kill a clutch of demonstrating Palestinians.
Out on the street, the McDeal don’t help him with figuring out what he’s gonna do, and worse, he’s gonna do damage to that toilet back at the crib.
That shit like literally, except not literally, a motherfucking war crime.
But now here’s the very same homeless motherfucker in his face, right here on the sidewalk outside McD’s.
Don’t hurt me, he says. I need to talk to you.
Shane lifts his shirt and flashes his gat.
Don’t hurt me.
What do you want?
You’re in danger, dude says.
Fuck you, says Shane.
He moves to step by him but the little fucker blocks his path.
Shane, listen to me, you and the girls are in trouble.
This is some lame-ass B-movie shit. Like here comes Roger Moore or whatever.
How do you know my name?
Crackhead just laughs.
Shane’s about to bitch-slap this clown, but then he sees like Agent Man, like for sure the same guy who’s been watching the apartment since forever, pull up in that black sedan, Mister Ninja Super Agent.
They run.
Down the alleyway past the McD’s.
Dead end.
They crouch together behind a dumpster.
Shane remembers suddenly, when he was a kid, uncovering a rats’ nest beneath a dumpster just like this one behind a butcher shop one blistering hot summer.
That’s just what Crackhead smells like.
Blood, offal.
Bitch smells like a million miles of ass.
A writhing ball of rats, their jaws working blindly.
Shane breathes through his mouth.
They wait.
Shane’s heart, bass drum pounding.
But Agent Man don’t show.
They’re sitting there for like ten minutes, and nothing.
Okay, Shane says. Spill.
So then Crackhead begins in with the whole story: How Shane and the girls have the CIA on their asses because of Shane’s old man. How it isn’t just coke his dad smuggles, but the hardware components for a dirty bomb, and how the Feds think Shane may have some of those components. Crackhead says Shane had better be like ultra-careful, because it’s common knowledge in some circles that the government has been cloning people for years—and not that pleasure-clone plastic-surgery shit that Brit went through, but like espionage, sabotage, whatever age you like.
Crackhead says some more things that are too risky even for me to repeat. The last thing your narrator needs right now is trouble with the law.
What about the cult, the New Swamp, Shane says.
But then BAM! BAM! BAM!
Shots fired.
Shane pictures some kid’s science-fair volcano times like a billion.
Like the fucking Yellowstone Supervolcano.
Just one more way the world’s gonna end.
Shane makes some fucked up sound in his throat.
It’s like: GAH—GAH—GAH.
He runs for it, hearing the ricochet of bullets in the alleyway.
Crackhead is gone like he was never there. Total vanishing act.
Amongst others, one lesson stands out for Shane:
If that’s what it’s like in a gunfight, he won’t be popping caps anytime soon.
Inside each beautiful thing is a secret and the secret is even more beautiful than what’s carrying that sucker.
See here, a fucking jaguar, G.
Right here a toucan like a cluster of jewels.
This is what Shane’s dad does.
Bitch is a millionaire.
A team of poachers out there all over the world sending Shane’s dad this Serengeti-jackpot-winning-golden-ticket-four-legged motherfucker, this deep-dark-jungle-triple-seven-straight-up-pimped-out-prize-winning-point-blank-period-winged-creature miracle of evolution.
Anacondas? Shane’s dad’s done like 50 of them.
Shane’s dad with a lab over in the 7-0-9 and a tanker full of formaldehyde and enough rubber tubing to stretch a line from here to the moon or your ass or wherever the fuck he wants.
But inside, see, that’s where the beauty is.
Shane wants to know how many keys of coke his old man has shipped this way and the old man don’t know—a fuck of a lot, he says.
So that’s money right there and ain’t no way no how no one knows nothing about it.
Except maybe they do.
Anyway, shit’s always like that.
There’s this beautiful thing like totally totally beautiful, and inside there’s this other thing that makes your face go numb from the glory, yo, like know what I mean?
Leo’s like, Shee-it, I ain’t had a beer in two years.
Nina’s sitting on the couch.
Better take it easy though, he says. I get drunk enough I might rape you with this.
He holds up the glock and smiles at her.
Where is that faggot boyfriend of yours?
Leo’s got lots more tattoos. Prolly an asshole wide as the North Atlantic. Jail time and all.
He ain’t answering me, Nina says. She’s wondering, Where is he, where’s Brit? As if in answer, a text from her:
Imma get stoned bbg Wanna join? Smiley Smiley Heart.
You guys are in a heap of shit, Leo says. Know that?
Why?
Shane say anything to you?
Bout what?
Anything.
No.
Maybe the bitch don’t even know.
Leo, what do you want?
I want a decent future for Carter, he says.
And then Shane comes in, looking like death.
Fuck my life, Leo says. They find you?
Ordinarily, coming home to this, Shane’d be like, Blam blam blam, here’s a fucking hat-trick of bullets for you, bitch, but he’s just standing there.
Nina says, Baby, you hurt?
Leo’s like, We need to get the fuck out of here. Like. Now.
Tommy was this guy she met when she first came to town?
He does tattoos out of his basement apartment.
Sketchy as fuck, but discount prices.
Piercings too, and dermal shit, which Brit is totally into, but scared.
See their tools, man? Like he could rip out your uterus if he wanted.
Scarier even than the clinic she went to because at least like they put you under?
Brit can’t remember if they fucked, but she’s pretty sure she blew him once.
Anyway, he texted her, and she met him at the park.
He’s like, for sure, a real artist?
He’s one of those quiet types. Sort of just smokes a lot of weed.
And Brit is saying how what she is, is like, a poet?
But not a poet like Shane’s a poet, but she’s like an artist too?
And her life is her art and her art is her life, but also like she just, like, really loves words—like all of them? Every word in the world.
They’re sitting under one of those giant lilac trees they have in the park when up pulls this crazy-ass brand-new white Cadillac, and inside the Caddy are Nina, Shane, and some hard-looking dude with those awful white-boy dreads.
Nina yells to her, Get in the fucking car!
Brit sees that Shane is like all fucked up and shit.
Like totally a ghost, you know? Aghast.
Like what the fuck?
And she’s up and running over the grass to them.
Meanwhile, Tommy is still sitting under the tree, just kinda weirded out by it.
Poof! Brit gone in a puff of smoke, like Abracadabra style.
And the Caddy peels off, tires screeching into the rush of traffic parkside.
Here they are—one big happy family driving in the car.
Nina in the passenger seat, Shane driving, Leo with his pistol out on the backseat behind Shane,
Brit next to him.
Fuck, Shane, you been livin alright, huh, Leo says, watching Brit’s legs fidget.
Traffic’s fucked.
The 401, man, like a dead snake of light—Leo rolling a blunt with one hand, gun in the other.
I can, like, see what new tattoos motherfucker’s got on his hands—spiderwebs yo—like a little one on each of the knuckles.
And a new scar on his face running right through his eyebrow, but maybe that’s just like a thing he done with a razor because Leo’s like that.
That was always the way with that one—always trying to look harder than he was—which must be something I like—because Shane’s like that too—he’d kill me if he knew I told Brit about the yacht and the big house and the money and his dad and shit—but this ride is sweet, and I figure what Leo wants—like I can just tell, man, legit like ESP—he wants the kid, Carter, the little boy what we called the Squish back in the day when I had him—the future, man, just what every dumb-ass dude in the world wants—they want to own it all—shit that ain’t even happened yet—the land and the sea and the air you breathe and final curtain and all of it—Leo and Shane maybe too are just like the rest of them—they want to own it all and nothing else, yo, for real.
And I’m scared for Granny and Carter and everyone else.
Sometimes she could be such a bitch.
Nina fucking hated her.
She’d put a bolt on the outside of Nina’s bedroom door, and Nina was like, Fuck you, and used the window.
A two-storey drop and a twisted ankle.
She’d worn those bike shorts with the pink neon stripes down the legs because they were easy to take off.
The guy—what was his name again? Hobbies included slashing ambulance tires, bricks through windows.
He waited for her round the corner at the park, and she limped the whole way.
Her first orgasm, she thought she’d pissed on him.
He was—what else?—an MC. Or that’s what he called himself.
And her poppy had died in that workplace accident.
Nina’s grandma, like, pushing that shrink on her and shit.
Pill bottles rattling.
Enough for ten years.
Mood stabilizers and anti-depressants when all Nina wanted was to get fucked.
For real, Nina hated her.
But Nina loved her, too.
That’s what’s, like, fucked about life.
There’s something you hate and you love it too.
She’d like the world to explode, or just fucking burned black, like whatever.
Don’t know why.
But it’s also the dopest shit ever.
And that’s how the Painting Game works too, like legit—you love the person and you hate them too—and you want the world to see that shit and for the person you love to feel your hatred for them.
And now Nina’s clutching Carter, listening to what’s happening to her grandmother in the next room, and what’s happening is that Leo is raping her.
Except he’s not really raping her, he’s only threatening to do so, which, as far as Nina’s grandmother’s concerned, is just about the same thing.
First there were screams but now it’s just these weird animal whimpering sounds like the time Shane’s pit bull got hit by that taxi.
And Leo acting all hardcore.
She took the boy out of the room just as Leo put the gun in her grandma’s mouth, and he’d said, This bitch ain’t the bitch, this bitch is a copy.
Shane and Brit right here with Nina.
And nobody lifting a finger to help.
Carter looking up into her face, and Nina looking at Shane.
And then that ESP shit happens again—Nina, Brit, Shane—the three of them in matching electric chairs.
Like, buzz, buzz, buzz—blood and brains out every hole.
Wires connecting their temples so they’re fried at the same instant.
Like fucking orgasm, yo, except, you know—death.
How could the world be so beautiful, and so fucking cruel?
Shane’s like, Yo, Nina, shit’s fucked.
And Nina’s up, dragging Carter—Shane and Brit behind her—not into the living room where it sounds like Leo’s just about done—but outside to the Caddy where she takes Leo’s keys from the sun-blind and then, like—VROOM—the whole crew are gone, baby.
Like, G-O-N-E.
Like a bullet baby, into a night black as gun powder.
Dear C.,
Why do you care? Why do you care? Why can’t you just let it all go, that’s what I wanna know?
No one who knows you has not been affected by you. Doesn’t this mean anything? People want you to succeed and people want you to tell the truth and people would do anything for you and wonder why you haven’t succeeded and why you haven’t told the truth because you are in a position to do so and you have the skill and the wits to do so and what’s really at the heart of it is that you have the heart to do so. So, why haven’t you?
Look, maybe it’s different for me. I’m outside of you and your world and even from way over here I can see it, and I can see you. I can see the green light of your father’s car dash just like I can see the green light from our dash. I can see the light. And I can see how the light, whatever way it shines, whatever it decides to reveal and hide, whatever it is, C, I can see that it changes and remains the same. Just like you and me, baby. Just like how we are.
We. You and me and everyone. It’s not the big why, it’s the big we.
I love you, C. I love you and miss you and wish somehow you’d come back to me. Because even though we could never meet, and never have, even though that’s impossible, the feeling I have is that you’ve left, and not that I’m waiting for you, but rather that I’m searching for you, and that you’re searching for me.
Love
Brit
Shane remembers when Tariq(e) appeared.
After the riots started, Shane’s dad had written him at the time: The future just got darker for us.
He meant it literally and otherwise.
Tariq(e) in their white gown with the sawed-off and their necklace of pearls—shooting that thing off into the sky from the top of a burned-out cop car.
The way they spoke was straight-up Fred Hampton, and what happened to him?
Commies, queers, feminazis, darkies, artists, writers, the scum of the universe.
They’d come out of their shantytowns right across the country to vote—but it didn’t mean shit.
The CEO’s campaign had won campaign of the century as voted by the PR Industry/ Department of Information.
That alone should have reassured his old man, but it didn’t.
Shane’s dad moved to the Rock, like pronto.
As far away from things as possible.
Then there was outrage when Tariq(e) and his gang protested the flattening of the Strip.
Shit’s like, a motherfucking parking lot over there.
Here’s Shane watching the airstrikes in an HD livestream—smoke and debris and limbs flying.
The streets at first, wild with celebration—then the pinko-commie-NWO counter-attack: sit down strikes in solidarity that shut down the eastern seaboard.
As far as Shane’s concerned, they’re just flipside of the same coin—all theatre for the real conspiracy that’s going on right in front of everyone’s faces.
But know what?
That’s the way every fucking pimp and bitch in the world is.
Nobody sees shit. Or at least, don’t let themselves.
Shane remembers last year when his dad had sent him a fucked-up skin job.
The pelt of a Pine Marten or some shit, Shane don’t know. There’s like, twelve of them in the world, but the bitches won’t hump.
The old man had ruined it somehow—its face was caved in and an eye was missing.
Shane tacked it to the wall of the living room for a laugh. Forgot about it until they’d grabbed everything they could from the a
partment just three days ago, and Shane saw it again still hanging in the same spot.
It gave him the motherfucking creeps.
It also gave him the creeps that the old man had said to Shane once it arrived:
NEVER LET THIS SKIN JOB OUT OF YOUR SIGHT.
So now it’s in a suitcase with the rest of his shit.
As a dealer, a gangster, one hard-ass thug, they’d have like twenty visits at that apartment from Shane’s clients every damn day.
And not one of them ever said a thing about that skin job on the wall.
I mean, fuck sakes—shit’s GRISLY, G.
But that’s the way people are, know what I mean?
They’ll see something like that and just shut the fuck up, right?
Even though they know something’s gone wrong cause your dealer’s got some dead fucked-up rodent tacked to his wall.
That’s why Leo is bullshit.
All that political shit.
Tariq(e) or whatever, like—know what I mean?
Like people are so used to pretending they don’t see shit, that even when they do they don’t, you know? Feds don’t need, like, mind-control drugs and shit, cause bitches do it to themselves like for real.
And now they’re driving to who the fuck knows.
Shane with his eyes on every security drone that whizzes by Leo’s Caddy.
Leo must have de-bugged the car or else they’d already be dead.
Fucking nano shit, you know, prolly everywhere around them.
Like an invisible cloud that’s programmed for one thing, and that one thing is to keep you in your motherfucking place.
Surveillance, yo.
The fucking Panopticon, like legit.
That invisible cloud, like, the fucking soul, the spectre, of power.
He’s sounding like Leo right now, and Leo be trippin, but whatever.
Diff is Shane wants to sign up, yo, and Leo wants to check out.
And anyway, bitch showed his true colours with what he’s doing to Nina’s grandma right now.
Like, does a clone have rights?
Does anyone?
Yo, like fucking trippy, dawg.
Like maybe we’re all clones anyway so who cares?
Fucking Dick, know what I mean?
He had shit figured out like a hundred years ago.
Shane checks the safety on his pistol.
Skeet Love Page 3