Brigit's Flame -- "Demons"
Prompt: "demons"
Word Count: 726
Warnings: brief language; general... bizarreness...
Author's Note: So... I started at two in the morning after having randomly rewritten the story of how eltea and I met noir-style, and then I figured I should take that and run while I had it. Sort of. Ish. And I started at two in the morning, which says it all. Please hit me. Or enjoy; whatever strike your fancy. XD (...strikes your fancy? Now you should definitely hit me.) Thanks as always to eltea for glancing over it despite the truly ungodly hour.
"DEMONS"
It’s always overcast, but it never rains. It’s like somebody up there’s trying to suffocate the lot of us.
I’m Dan Curie, and this is the town I’ve got.
What can I say? What can anybody say? It’s an up-and-coming disaster full of down-and-outs. It’s a shitty town full of shitty people with shitty little lives, and you can pick ’em out, one from the other, as they jostle you in the crowd, and their elbows say Hello-Goodbye to your unprotected ribs.
The bruises are like fingerprints, the way they’re none alike.
Some of them look it, the people do, with chains and metal and raccoon rings around their eyes, like something an oil drill coughed back up, moving like specters, black-dark against the gray world-but some of them look like a daydream through bright eyes, pure pale and shining, summoned by a whole lot of prayer and a fond imagination.
But whatever they look like, they’re all the same.
I’ve seen my share of demons in this hellhole town.
The sidewalk’s a halfhearted beige, and I’m bound between what’s at my feet and what’s above: gray and lots of it, gray like influenza skin and lost feathers that the breeze won’t take. It’s crushing, but it’s the town I’ve got, so I guess I’ll take it.
Jim’s a tough customer, but they’re all tough customers. If you look at ’em, look ’em straight in the eyes, you can see the devils inside, something like a pinpoint of red light, stranded in the well of the pupil, but glowing steady and unstoppable. You couldn’t kill that thing if you wanted to.
Jim’s feet float over the ridges where the sidewalk bucks like a dragon’s spine, all shards and angles.
“Implausible,” he says, “but not impossible, and that’s where I come in.”
Trust Jim to get roughed up and wrought out over a dame. Every trial and tight spot we’d squeezed through, holding our breaths like heirlooms and sucking in our stomachs, couldn’t ruffle his smooth constitution for a second, but a woman-well.
What’s this world coming to, and how the hell am I supposed to hold off the Apocalypse when I can’t even own a gun, for Christ’s sake?
And maybe that’s the problem, I’m thinking, as I take the steps up and grind my keys rightward ’til the door gives way; maybe the problem is that the demons and the hells and the gray and the white are all mixed up together, and sliding one of them out makes the whole thing fall to pieces. Maybe this whole house of cards is made up of things you can’t see the face of until you get in real close, because the logos on the backs all look the same.
The secretary has never got much to say, so I throw her a “Not much” and a “Nothing” and a “Yeah, sure,” since she’s earned it putting up with me so far. Not sure why she sticks with me; there’s either something she sees that I don’t, or she thinks I’ll grow out of it any day now and shed it like a snakeskin, white and crackling on the stained carpet of the stairs that I’m counting as my feet take me heavenward.
Havenward, really, though there’s not a lot of privacy, and comfort’s hard to find.
I put my feet up on my desk and tilt my chair back until I’m tempting fate and karma, and I can almost see them smirking. They’re two girls, and Fate’s got her hair in pigtails, and Karma’s grin is crooked like the sidewalks.
Lady Luck just shakes her head and walks on by.
I blow out a breath and watch the impregnable sky through the broken blinds, but nothing changes.
Quiet but audible enough, Lady Luck whispers Maybe you’ve got to change it yourself.
I get to wondering how you put the red lights out, because there’s got to be a way.
I fold my hands behind my head and close my eyes, and I think maybe I’m the one who’ll make it rain a deluge on this town, make it rain ’til Noah’s jealous and the lights go out.
The door opens.
“Danny, hon,” my mom says, “dinner’s getting cold.”
Looks like the demons will have to wait.
Plus I haven’t even started my geometry homework.
Word Count: 726
Warnings: brief language; general... bizarreness...
Author's Note: So... I started at two in the morning after having randomly rewritten the story of how eltea and I met noir-style, and then I figured I should take that and run while I had it. Sort of. Ish. And I started at two in the morning, which says it all. Please hit me. Or enjoy; whatever strike your fancy. XD (...strikes your fancy? Now you should definitely hit me.) Thanks as always to eltea for glancing over it despite the truly ungodly hour.
"DEMONS"
It’s always overcast, but it never rains. It’s like somebody up there’s trying to suffocate the lot of us.
I’m Dan Curie, and this is the town I’ve got.
What can I say? What can anybody say? It’s an up-and-coming disaster full of down-and-outs. It’s a shitty town full of shitty people with shitty little lives, and you can pick ’em out, one from the other, as they jostle you in the crowd, and their elbows say Hello-Goodbye to your unprotected ribs.
The bruises are like fingerprints, the way they’re none alike.
Some of them look it, the people do, with chains and metal and raccoon rings around their eyes, like something an oil drill coughed back up, moving like specters, black-dark against the gray world-but some of them look like a daydream through bright eyes, pure pale and shining, summoned by a whole lot of prayer and a fond imagination.
But whatever they look like, they’re all the same.
I’ve seen my share of demons in this hellhole town.
The sidewalk’s a halfhearted beige, and I’m bound between what’s at my feet and what’s above: gray and lots of it, gray like influenza skin and lost feathers that the breeze won’t take. It’s crushing, but it’s the town I’ve got, so I guess I’ll take it.
Jim’s a tough customer, but they’re all tough customers. If you look at ’em, look ’em straight in the eyes, you can see the devils inside, something like a pinpoint of red light, stranded in the well of the pupil, but glowing steady and unstoppable. You couldn’t kill that thing if you wanted to.
Jim’s feet float over the ridges where the sidewalk bucks like a dragon’s spine, all shards and angles.
“Implausible,” he says, “but not impossible, and that’s where I come in.”
Trust Jim to get roughed up and wrought out over a dame. Every trial and tight spot we’d squeezed through, holding our breaths like heirlooms and sucking in our stomachs, couldn’t ruffle his smooth constitution for a second, but a woman-well.
What’s this world coming to, and how the hell am I supposed to hold off the Apocalypse when I can’t even own a gun, for Christ’s sake?
And maybe that’s the problem, I’m thinking, as I take the steps up and grind my keys rightward ’til the door gives way; maybe the problem is that the demons and the hells and the gray and the white are all mixed up together, and sliding one of them out makes the whole thing fall to pieces. Maybe this whole house of cards is made up of things you can’t see the face of until you get in real close, because the logos on the backs all look the same.
The secretary has never got much to say, so I throw her a “Not much” and a “Nothing” and a “Yeah, sure,” since she’s earned it putting up with me so far. Not sure why she sticks with me; there’s either something she sees that I don’t, or she thinks I’ll grow out of it any day now and shed it like a snakeskin, white and crackling on the stained carpet of the stairs that I’m counting as my feet take me heavenward.
Havenward, really, though there’s not a lot of privacy, and comfort’s hard to find.
I put my feet up on my desk and tilt my chair back until I’m tempting fate and karma, and I can almost see them smirking. They’re two girls, and Fate’s got her hair in pigtails, and Karma’s grin is crooked like the sidewalks.
Lady Luck just shakes her head and walks on by.
I blow out a breath and watch the impregnable sky through the broken blinds, but nothing changes.
Quiet but audible enough, Lady Luck whispers Maybe you’ve got to change it yourself.
I get to wondering how you put the red lights out, because there’s got to be a way.
I fold my hands behind my head and close my eyes, and I think maybe I’m the one who’ll make it rain a deluge on this town, make it rain ’til Noah’s jealous and the lights go out.
The door opens.
“Danny, hon,” my mom says, “dinner’s getting cold.”
Looks like the demons will have to wait.
Plus I haven’t even started my geometry homework.