Still behaving like Pocoloco was the least of his worries, the thief took another step back, close enough to lean against the rocks behind him arms looped loosely together, legs jauntily crossed. Not that the dark-skinned farm boy wanted the attention, the trigger under his finger repelled and attracted at the same time. They were… power of a sort, weren’t they, guns? A magic wand that let you decide who lived and who died if you just pressed down on cold metal. Bang. With a rifle like this, you didn’t even have to be accurate — you couldn’t be, the buckshot would spray out in a wide fan. If it didn’t kill, it’d incapacitate, and the second shot could be a leisurely one.
Yet while it had a primal attraction, it revulsed him at the same time. Life and death, there was the responsibility to end all responsibilities. He didn’t want it. To be fair, he didn’t want most, to him it was fine to leave the authority to those with a taste for it. So maybe he didn’t have any money. No prestige either. What he did have was a peaceful life, one made up of a long string of stolen moments of drifting clouds and warm grass tickling at his back. Without pretension, that was all he wanted. Fame and huge amounts of cash he only wanted because they’d facilitate more of the same.
Right now however, what he wished for the most was to put the gun down. It was heavy, weighing much more than could be justified by its components dragging him along or down or wherever, oddly beguiling. There wasn’t any reason for him to be holding onto it anymore, the thief turned out not to be a master criminal but rather a man he could only call whiny, the way he went on. He appeared to be thinking about something — eyes up and to the right, even brows crinkled, lips pursed — but it didn’t look like he was planning an attack.
Straya? Where in the hell was he taking about? A place where only wayward souls collected, and happily too. Perfectly dandy moving about and going this way and then to the next. But not him. No, he dreamed of bigger and better things. Things such as squandering around in the desert with no money for his dear frocks. Oh those frocks, so illusive! Picked the absolute perfect spot to spout them out too. How many women in fine dressed traversed the wastelands? None that were sane! But here he was making his way and hoping to find a dress resting on a rock.
Nothing about this man made any sense. The more he spoke the more Jorah desired to tear her hair out and up. Giant red rock? Giant red rock called Straya? What he trying to say? That accent of his potent enough to shatter glass. Slurred his words into something not even a drop dead drunk would gargle. Something from Wales if Wales removed all education from their curriculum. Jorah found the Welsh accent to be jarring but this one? This had to be the worst ever heard. Even more horrid than the slur of the south in America. And by God did that accent drive Jorah into a manic haze.
Traveled from this Straya and for what? To live in a hole in the ground in a desert? Yes every performers dream! Jorah could see it now. This little rat looking up to his mummy and proclaiming he wanting to be an artist for the sand in wastelands. Damned fool. Caught wind of this infuriating and irksome race and came sniffing about. Look where that had gotten him. Look where that had gotten her. Stood here in nothing but a nightgown, glaring down at some petty thief and trying not to strangle herself out of frustration and stupidity. This damned dangerous and moronic race and both the thief and she were following it. Him for some chance at fame but poorly calculated that had been. It the same racers at each stop and the townsfolk growing bored of the shows, he’d have to keep moving. Left him with no time to stitch up even a mere handkerchief.
Heading up to Monument something or another but that did not matter. What mattered him sitting down for his much needed ‘brekkie’. Jorah could only assume he meant to say ‘breakfast’ but that drawl on his tongue prevented him. Or perhaps he’d been dropped on his head when he a babe. As if Jorah had not minutes ago beaten and scratched him up, he relaxed into the background. Offered her a bite to eat. Might as well, he said. They all here anyway. Egregious, preposterous, complete insanity!
Jorah looked at him as if he bore six arms, fifteen legs, ten sets of eyes and that his name not Bernie but Monobubba Who Lives on the Moon! Breakfast? Breakfast?! Did he not realize what happening here? Did he not listen to a single breath she uttered? Polite? Polite?! Jorah did not request for polite! She wanted her things and to get the hell out of this rat infested hell. If a jaw could drop to the ground, hers surely would have. Hands rose up and out, as if she about to proclaim this injustice, but instead fell atop her head and gripped her already mangled and tangled hair.
The only factor stopping her hair from being ripped out of her skull was a peep made by Pocoloco who had been mostly a fly on the wall. Jorah went in and out of forgetting he here with her. That was until he asked about a woman, a lady. One that looked like someone, like Jorah. Her--
-“Hey!”- An exclamation, a clamor, shouted from a banshee’s mouth. Turned right around on her heel and tore up the ground to stand before Pocoloco. -“Do not--Don’t touch that!”- Jorah demanded with a swipe of her hand. Snatched that photograph, the one this all for, right from his fingers fast enough to leave a trail. Doted on its condition, the first good look she got at it since last night. Turned the frame this way and that, every corner scanned over for a chip in the wood or a fracture in the glass. -“You have a clue how vital this is, Pocoloco!? Take care, that is my family!”-
A smudge, a fingerprint, obscuring her mother’s darling face. A face Jorah hadn’t seen in months. A face Jorah feared forgetting each day he spent in this country. Pinched the fabric of her dress, it served as a way to clean away the sweat stained print over the matron’s face. Circled it around with her thumb and dragged it around it do away with any lingering blemish. -“Saleté laide, sortez! Sortez, sortez!”- Insulted the sand now dusted off with her hand and dirtied dress. The frantic scrubbing came to a sluggish stop. Her mother’s face now clear and Jorah could see only disappointment. It far worse in those eyes of her father’s. She need not wonder what they’d say if they saw her now. It evident through the moment captured in time. Her mother’s smile, it’d be gone. Her father? A smile he may not have but those eyes of his would only sink further into his face. Through them Jorah saw her own expression. The glass a mirror in desperation and exhaustion. The photograph now exposed. A true defeat.
-“Mère père. Je vous en prie, je suis désolé. Je ne fais plus ce que je fais.”- Compressed the skin between her brow and, following a moment of quiet, turned to Pocoloco. -“Hold the gun firmly in your hands for Christ’s sake. You know not if he is--”- Jorah reached for the gun and grabbed it she did. Grabbed it with weight she expected it to match. However, the weapon far lighter than expected, hollow. Eyes blinked once, twice and then three times before the previously irate woman tilted the shotgun from side to side.
Left, right...left, right...left...Not a rattle, not a cling. There nothing. Nothing at all. -“Oh...Oh my damned God.”- Exhaustion doubled with that whisper and Jorah shoved the gun against Pocoloco’s chest. -“Puis-je me réveiller maintenant Dans seulement des rêves, il peut y avoir tellement de folie.”-
annaxmalina
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
areudirty
stormborns
