- Shorts -
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Mind my wicked words and tipsy-topsy slurs. Glass Animals • Gooey -
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Excerpt III March 23rd 2016, 3:49 pm
“Give me a cigarette, friend,” Sacha says, shivering on the balcony in nothing but a towel. His face is peppered with bruises. He's been playing cards again.
Winning, too. Winning too much.
“Hey. Why don't you come with me? We get the money back. I will give you half. Is fifty thousand. That's twenty-five thousand for you. You can get herpes vaccine.”
Teo is hunched over the balcony's rail and making his way through a ragged pack of cigarettes, smoke wreathing his head like a crown. It catches the murky light that drifts up from the city streets below – white and gold, like dirty muslin. He flicks the butt of an exhausted cigarette over. It spirals smoke down into the busy night below.
"And what? Run right into the cops? Fuck off." He fires back, staring down into the distant bustle of the city; the jagged zig-zagging of firefly lights and the mournful shuffle of shadowy bodies stories below. The broken glass twinkling of streetlights, headlights. The long, desultory wail of a car horn drifts up to them on cold winter air. A moment passes in silence.
"So, did you cheat?" The wind ruffles his hair. His hands never stop moving – tapping at the dark stone of the rail, knotting together. His fingers flex, curling into the hollows of his palms.
He lights another cigarette.
Text in italics written by Sacha's player.
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Excerpt II March 13th 2016, 4:57 pm
A man weaves through the bodies clotted on the floor, shouldering between the dancers, the gamblers. He moves like a storm, a cigarette burning between clenched teeth and smoke in his hair. One of the bouncers - it's in the suit; pewter and sleek and ironed into crisp pleats that could slice the skin. The tattoo that crawls up the back and sides of his neck is all cut-glass geometries that would look at home in an ancient grimoire, and perfectly pitch black. His hair is just as dark, windswept and whipped away from his face - and that face is all craggy angles; an aquiline nose and a mouth made to sneer; a sliver of bared, white teeth.
The rain is a faint mist, slicking brick and beading glass and turning the streets into strange, black rivers. Arteries, thick and thrumming through the heart of the city. The long, wet shimmer of neon signs spikes down into that darkness: hazy faerie-lights that cluster about the corners of the eyes.
The club's doors are hidden at the back of a slick-shined alley, all tarnished metal and fat rivets. The music that purls out around them is a lazy pulse, its copper strings plucking at the heart - sensual, thick as street grit and bitter as coffee. Inside, the light is a visceral red glow just barely bright enough to see the cards that smiling dealers flick through at the tables tucked up against the far wall. Bodies sway on the distant dance floor and bouncers cut their way through the crowd like knives, an animal intensity in their glittering eyes - big cats, prowling like shadows.
He reaches the bar, shooting the young man in the corner a look that could curdle milk. His eyes are the colour of hemlock and sea-glass. A brief pantomime passes between him and the bartender, and the latter shrugs a lazy shoulder. The bouncer approaches, his frown growing more thunderous with every step. That, apparently, is his spot. The boy must be new.
"The fuck are you?" Every word is a cracked knuckle.
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Excerpt I February 2nd 2015, 9:31 am
Kid's talking again.
Teo grinds his heel into the rim of the fireplace and curls his lip.
He's barely listening, sprawled out on the floor, the hot, white glint of his teeth bright and cruel. And this is the nature of his mouth: that it is crooked and curled and tastes of ash and the sharp, sweet sting of salt, and every word he speaks is just the same in shape and savor.
He shrugs: a slow roll of the shoulders against the glistening hardwood floor, his rumpled shirt pooling open around him, buttons missing or dangling by threads. Pigment powders in hot, virescent blues and brilliant, burnished yellows flake from the eaves of his cheeks. Bright gouts of the stuff have smeared in the shapes of grasping fingers down along the hard plane of his belly. Who knows why they're there. It's always better not to ask, and the brat blessedly never does. It's galling enough having to work for him.
"Surprised?" He laughs, his voice the crack of old wood. "Got here on time." With a dry scrape of heels and the rubbery pop of overtaxed joints, he comes to his feet, eyes bright and brutally cold.
"... So, how about you cut the pretty bullshit," his fingers flex; fists going tight, loose, tight, "And tell me what you want."
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