Tag Archives: shukyou

23
Apr

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 36, Text | Tagged ,

Les was late because, God damn them, they’d switched the room again without proper notice, and he’d arrived seven minutes ahead of the scheduled conversation to find an empty table. Finding a secretary who knew anything took him another five minutes, and when she told him they were the next wing over and three flights up, he clenched his fist to keep from shouting in disappointment and anger. Any other attorney, client, or whole man in the whole building could have gotten there in five minutes with three to spare, and probably some of the women too. Nobody else would have had a problem.

His pace was a careful balance between moving fast and staying slow enough that he didn’t turn his walk into a comic hobble, as he knew from years of interactions with unkind passers-by that it was apparently funny to see a cripple hustle, and God damn it, he wasn’t giving anyone here more of a reason to think he was a joke than they already had. Balancing his satchel of papers under his right arm, he gripped the head of his cane so tight he could feel where the cracks in the old wood left impressions in his left palm. Down the hall he went, ignoring everyone he passed, trying not to think about the faces they might make behind his back, mockery or pity, they were two sides of the same coin, he had no time for it, he had to keep moving, damn it all, damn everything. The ancient elevator was at the far end of the hall and would deposit him another hall’s length from where he needed to be, but he was damned if he was going to give them all comedy show as he lurched his way up seventy-two steps, not counting landings, damn the architects, damn his superiors, damn gravity.

19
Mar

War Bonds

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 7, Text | Tagged ,

It was the war’s fault that she was there, in dungarees and with all her wavy red hair tied back in a kerchief, her hands grubby in the crevices of her knuckles and palms, holding pneumatic tools she hadn’t known had existed two weeks before, wearing a gold locket with Tom’s picture in it the way his letters promised he kept what few pictures he had of her wedged in the crevices of the metal that held his bunk to the wall. The war was responsible for how the nails she’d always kept so nice were ragged at the tips and cuticles, and rimmed around and beneath with heavy black-brown grease; the war was why she came home to an empty house and cooked supper for one and jumped in the middle of the night at every unexplained noise and sometimes stayed awake until dawn, hugging Tom’s pillow to her chest and telling herself it was going to be all right.

She wouldn’t complain; she was a good girl who never complained. She just wanted God and the rest of the universe to be clear on the point of the matter of her suffering. She had done nothing wrong; it was the war.

20
Feb

The Sad Blanket

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 35, Text | Tagged ,

Alone in the command center Richard sat, his elbows braced against the shiny black roundtable, leaning forward into his clasped hands, resting his lips against his steepled index fingers. The machines around him buzzed and hummed, but he paid them no mind; he stared straight ahead at nothing, though even his expressionless face told its own story. He’d changed back into his civilian clothes, a shirt and slacks so expensive they looked cheap. His graphite-grey helmet lay on the table next to him, cracked up the left side, and a half-patched wound up his left cheek toward his ear told of where the helmet had been when it had suffered that damage. Alone, he waited, and he’d wait as long as he had to, impeccable and patient.

The heavy metal doors swooshed open (or at least they would, after foley got through with them), but Richard didn’t flinch, not even as Brandon stormed in, his own blond hair matted with blood. “What the hell was that?” shouted Brandon, bringing down his gloved fist on the metal railing. He was still in costume, though the star-spangled pattern up the sleeves was burned and torn in artful places, exposing his golden-tanned, muscled body beneath.

“Oh, good, you survived long enough to complain.” Richard moved nothing more than the muscles necessary for speech. This wasn’t amateur hour, not by any means, but even amongst professionals, Richard was a professional.

Brandon’s entire body was tense with fury and betrayal, his jaw set firm enough that it might have put his teeth in danger of shattering. “You knew the thrusters would fail. You set us up.”

“No,” said Richard, and now a cloud of real anger bubbled up through his ice-cool voice, “you were so intent on being a hero that you couldn’t wait for–”

“You set us up!” Taking powerful, echoing strides, Brandon walked around the empty comm station to the short set of steps that would take him from the center’s upper level of control stations to the sunken center where Richard sat. “You couldn’t stand knowing that your idea wouldn’t work, so you sabotaged the only way we AAAUGH!”

19
Dec

Sid Stills’ Blues (Three-Quarters in the Bag in Alphabet City)

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 34, Text | Tagged ,

The headache wasn’t what woke him, but it was what kept him from going back to sleep once he was up. It rolled through his head like a drum line, pounding its high school marching band arrangements of some once-golden oldie across his brain with all the embarrassing force of the time he’d been sixteen and nearly killed himself with his father’s Jack. He hadn’t been hung over like this in years, decades. Just one more shit side effect, he supposed, of getting old.

What woke him was the phone. The Damn Agent had bought him the fucking thing, showed up on his doorstep to show him how to use it, and threatened to show up again every time Sid didn’t pick up, which was by Sid’s estimation a fate worse than answering a phone call every other week or so. Thus he wasn’t surprised when he picked it up to see the words Damn Agent on the screen. He’d learned how to program that little feature himself. “Sid,” he half-mumbled, half-grunted into the receiver end of the weird little rectangle, falling back against the couch cushions and draping an arm across his eyes. He hadn’t made it the bed; he hadn’t remembered that.

“Sid!” chirped the Damn Agent, who sounded too chipper for … well, Sid hadn’t looked at the clock yet, but he decided the exact time didn’t matter as far as too chipper went. “Got something I think you should take a look at, really make your day.”

24
Oct

Bright Mouths

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 33, Text | Tagged ,

There was a demon at the end of the table, sitting upright like a man, hands folded atop the polished wood, wearing a storm-grey uniform with shoulder patches and bars that no doubt indicated rank to those that could read the language of insignia, skin sickly pale, easily half a head taller than anyone else around it; and its strange yellow eyes fixed on Tenzjin the moment he walked into the room.

24
Oct

The Stone Fox and the Bloody Hands

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 33, Text | Tagged ,

Saburou lifted his lantern higher, squinting at the small swath it cut into the darkness. He swallowed. Maybe, he thought not for the first time, he should just turn back.

Cleaning the monastery at the start of spring was a tradition almost as old as the monastery itself – or so the abbot liked to tell them all, when the time came around each year. Whether it was the truth or just meant to inspire the acolytes with a false sense of importance was anyone’s guess. Either way, what it meant for Saburou was that the other acolytes – and many of the fully-grown monks, come to that – conspired to stick him with the worst job they could find, out of all the tasks that needed to be done. Last spring it had been cleaning the toilets, which frankly he was surprised it’d taken them so long to get around to; the spring before that, it had been scrubbing out the rat-infested storeroom where a wet, leaky winter had rotted away almost a whole harvest’s worth of rice and gourds. No matter what they ended up foisting off on him, though, he just squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and did it, without arguing or whining or – worse yet – tattling to the abbot. When things were at their worst, he recited mantra in his head, in spite of the decidedly fleshly circumstances, or overcame the smell of old dried shit by forcing his mind into contemplation of how the physical world was truly an illusion. Which was fairly comforting, at the time.

19
Sep

Rain Dogs

Posted by | Categories Artists' Special no. 1, Stand-Alone Art | Tagged ,

by detonate and shukyou (主教) (mirrors http://s2b2.livejournal.com/187665.html) Love2

22
Aug

One False Move

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 32, Text | Tagged ,

“I want everyone to understand before we start that this is a friendly conversation,” said Clint, settling a yellow legal pad on his lap and pulling a pen from his shirt pocket. “Not an investigation, not an inquest, and definitely not on the record. Just a chance to get some things straight before any real shit-fan connection. We good with that?”

“Of course.” Dom nodded and folded his hands on his desk, just as he would any other day. “Mr. Rey?”

Eliot pushed his glasses up his nose and raised his chin just enough that Dom could see most of his face now; he hadn’t met Dom’s eyes this whole time, not even when they’d shook hands at the door and Dom had informed Clint that, yes, they were acquainted. “Friday, I found evidence that four young men in my sixth period English class had plagiarized a major paper. I gave the relevant information to Principal Harris, who supported my decision to give them failing grades on the assignment, which would have kept three of them from passing the class for the semester. Saturday evening, Cale Pitts — one of the young men — came to my home, requesting that I reconsider; I told him I’d speak with on school property, on school time. Monday, yesterday, I was called into her office before first bell and informed that I was being suspended pending an investigation. And now I’m here.”

19
Jun

Murder Ballad

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 31, Text | Tagged ,

“Just, you know, thrash about a bit. Moan some.” Jake lit one of the candles and placed it at a precarious angle on the side of the bureau. “I’ll go downstairs, see if the old woman’s got some baking powder.”

Will shot him a look so sour it could’ve curdled milk. “I know you are not going to leave me tied up here.”

“Got no other choice. And you ain’t that tied.” After that time in Amarillo (a string of bad circumstances Will referred to collectively as ‘that time I should have killed you’), Jake had learned that no matter how important authenticity was, you never tied a body up with an inescapable knot unless you were real invested in that body’s being unable to escape no matter what the circumstances. Jake reached over and patted his friend’s knee. “Back in an hour, give or take,” he grinned, and headed for the door.

“I swear to Jesus, I will wring your–” Neck, Jake supposed, was what came next, but the old farmhouse was a well-built fortress, and once its heavy wood doors closed, you couldn’t hear a peep from the other side. Putting on his best grimly resolute face, but smiling inside, he walked down to the room where the household had been told to stay put.

17
Apr

c:\rano.bergerac

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 30, Text | Tagged ,

“Oh, yes,” I said into the headset, “fuck my pussy. That’s right, fuck me right in my tight cunt. God, I love your big fat cock. Stick your big cock in me, you big man. Yes, yes, harder, yes. I want you to come all over my tits and face, baby. Yeah, baby, all over my tits. That’s so good. I want to taste that fat dick, you big stud.”

20
Mar

Heist of the Century

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 6, Text | Tagged ,

They were already falling when the room exploded.

20
Feb

Duet for Tenor and Transradial Orthosis

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 29, Text | Tagged ,

The first thing I noticed were his hands, which were stained beyond all washing by brown-black grease hiding in the creases of his knuckles and beneath what little of his fingernails hadn’t been bitten down to the quick. They were delicate, though, I could see by the way that he set his glass on the bar and ran his fingertips around the damp rim where his mouth had just been; he touched it like he’d touch a lover, I thought, long before I knew he’d never in his life touched a lover that way. The scent of new money rolled off him, not in that flashy, obnoxious way tasteless barbarians turn gilded lilies with a few extra notes in their billfolds, but like a man who’d come to enjoy all the things that wealth could get him but still didn’t feel like he fit in any of the places you had to go to get those things. He waited until the starched-collared bartender had wandered his way to the other end of the bar before inclining his head in my direction and saying to me, “I’ll buy you a drink if you let me see that arm.”

My head throbbed from a high receding too rapidly, and all I could think was, I didn’t come to London for this.

22
Dec

so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 28, Text | Tagged ,

It was a testament to his great panic and agitation that, upon having his Agency-managed alert system flare red and broadcast the words BABÁ DOWN directly into his brain, Alastair managed to wash his hands only three times before racing out the door of his apartment.

31
Oct

The Amanuensis

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 27, Text | Tagged ,

That morning, as he’d done every morning for the last fifty years of his life, Akiba ben Levi rose from his low mat, sank to his knees, and prayed for the end of the world.

9
Sep

Welcome Back, Class of 1990

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 26, Text | Tagged ,

Being back was like someone had lifted all my skin just far enough away from my body to slip a layer of black pepper beneath, then tugged it back on so tight that it was all I could do not to claw myself bloody to get out. The hotel ballroom’s doors were decorated with flashing lights and a hand-painted sign that read TIME MACHINE, but stepping inside was less like traveling twenty years back, and more like being pushed twenty years closer to my inevitable death. It was the worst paranoia of a pot high mixed with the uncomfortable disorientation of being just this side of browning-out drunk, only without the positive side effects of either condition, and I was hit with a wave of panic so fierce that I might have bolted right then and there if a pair of tiny hands hadn’t spun me around and slapped the left side of my chest.