The Moonstruck

Bowie

The white pixels rained down into my cup as I emptied a second pink sugar packet into my coffee, whisking it quickly with a little black stirrer. I flicked the trash and the loose sweetener onto the floor and smiled at the bus boy when I caught him eyeing the mess I’d made with mild bother.

I glanced at Rex, hoping for a grin of amusement. Nothing. He was staring blankly out the window of the café, blinking every time a raindrop jumped from the sky and onto the smudgy pane. I wanted to smack him for being so sullen. And for looking so stupid in that baseball cap.

Instead, I glanced around the coffee bar; the place was nearly empty, gray, unexciting. The bus boy was milling about; I toyed with the thought of murdering him. Would the end of a broom impale a skull?...

The high of my last kill was still running free in my veins; I couldn’t even remember the face of my last victim. They were all blurring together into one fantastic monster. I wondered if they felt it too. Wondered if they could hear their prey chattering away in their heads. It didn’t faze me much – I had larger issues.

One week and all the carnage I could savor. And they still hadn’t shown...not a whiff of the Joker or the Catwoman in all this time and the cops were pinning my crimes on them. And actually had the gall to assure the public that the slaughter would come to an abrupt halt.

But I wasn’t through. Not yet.

I needed something more. Something bigger than petty murders and torture that only brought minimal, fleeting thrill. I needed something that would rouse them from their nest, from wherever they were hiding. They were out; where else could they be? Vacationing at a country cottage?

I took a sullen sip of my coffee, tapping out a manic little tune with my toe. Smacking my lips, I crossed my arms over my chest, eyeing Rex coldly; I asked the only thing I knew would give me peace, however momentary.

“How do I look?”

He glanced my way, the green of his eyes clouded with apathy. “Fine,” he spat and looked away.

Glaring at him, I took another slug of my coffee and fiddled with the tiny clasp of my pillbox ring; flipping back the jet bezel, I dabbed my pinky lightly in the cavity. Throwing a short glance around the cafe, I brought the cocaine to my nose and inhaled deeply.

My throat numbed immediately and I smiled, my woes forgotten with the rush of euphoria. I felt my face flush, the thrum of my blood picking up its pace in my veins as my fingers kept time with the pattering rain. Suddenly teeming with chatter, I leaned across the table, leering at Rex.

But he seemed suddenly distracted, his ink-rimmed eyes narrowed in interest. He raised one slender finger to the window and pointed to someone out on the street. He didn’t have to say who; I knew instantly.

The man was young, in his mid-twenties at most. Average height, dark hair, dark eyes I presumed. But that was of minimal notice. It was his face that drew me instantly.

I all but mistook him for the Clown Prince of Crime himself, free of his greasepaint and his mangy green hair in the blear of the overcast morning. He looked…nearly identical. Without the scars of course…but I could just see them twisting up from the corners of his mouth like barbed wire.

The stranger ambled easily down the sidewalk across the street from the café. He was in no hurry; he seemed to be biding his time under the tent of his black umbrella…simply waiting…

And it hit me. He was it. What I needed. The missing glint in this my recipe for malice, mayhem, and upstage.

I felt my face bend with a smile. I looked at Rex and he looked at me, reading the thoughts gleaming in my eyes. We slid from the booth like the slime we were, abandoning our coffee.

My eyes never left the man on the street, following his bobbing umbrella through the meager
crowd on the street.

And with one last dip into my ring and with Rex close behind, I swept out into the rain, feeling electric and terribly fiendish.

Lionus

Maude picked up on the third ring.

“Hell-oh?”

Her voice was jittery and silly, even for the static; her escalation was ringing clear as a bell. I stifled my worry.

“It’s me,” I murmured, rounding the corner and side-stepping to avoid the surge of rain streaming from a gutter overhead. It splattered loudly over my umbrella and I strained to her Maude on the other end of the line as she chattered about the weather.

“Listen Maudie,” I interrupted, “The folks at the pharmacist told me the prescription would be ready in about an hour. Why it takes a whole hour to fill a little bottle with twenty or so pills is beyond me but-"

“It’s fine darling,” she drawled, “No hurry. I feel just fine without those silly things.” There was a loud crash in the background and a muted giggle.

I was about to ask after the interruption but stopped short when I was struck suddenly by a passing pedestrian. Nearly dropping my umbrella, I stared daggers at the back of the stranger’s baseball cap and saw that he wasn’t alone. The couple hurried on, paying no mind to the rain, and the woman even had the nerve to smirk at me from behind a curtain of damp white blonde hair.

“Are you there, Lionus?”

Blinking, I refocused. “Of course. I’ll be home in a little while; I’m going to hang about downtown and wait for the pharmacy to call. Just….” I searched for the right words, “Don’t tear the apartment down while I’m gone.”

She giggled, laughing at her own private joke. “Don’t you worry about me, Lionus dear. I’m a big girl.”

I shook my head and sloshed through another puddle. “See you soon.”

The end of her line clicked dead without a farewell and sighing, I pocketed my phone after checking that the ringer was on high; the sooner I got those pills the better. Her mania was not something I could handle well. She was jittery, nervous, giddy, and irritable. When she wasn’t gazing out the window at the city, a virtual zombie feeding on her own vague thoughts, she’d follow me from room to room; playful and teasing and pulling me into bed.

At first, it was fun, amusing. But there was always a twinge of madness in every smile; a lunacy that reminded me so much of the drugs and the highs, peering from behind her eyes like a ghost. And it scared me. I worried that I might want to feel that way again. And in this city, it was so easy to get what I thought I needed.

When Maude was mellow, that fear couldn’t touch me. Not when she was normal, whatever that could mean for her. It was then that I caught glimpses of the woman she might’ve been, untouched by her own madness.

But I loved her even for it. How couldn’t I? She took care of me. The only one in my life who’d ever given a damn. She didn’t mind the scars and the scratches or the dead look in my eyes; didn’t care that I was so serious or that I worried too much. She took it upon herself to make me smile, to make me forget, to make me laugh.

It was a wonder that she was the way she was. Knowing where she’d come from…even for Maude’s insistence, I couldn’t believe her that they had “raised her”. Those criminals that she so mistakenly cared for had made her crazy. I was sure of it. Just as my own run-around lout of a father had molded me into an addict, had taught me to run. From responsibility, from the law, from myself, from the past, clutching a needle like some sick baton.

But with Maude, I didn’t have to run. And with me, she didn’t have to embrace the chaos forced upon her.

My thoughts and my steps stopped short, when I suddenly realized where I was. Or rather, that I realized I had no idea where I was. And it was so quiet. The rain had softened to a low patter. Glancing around, I found I was absolutely alone. The sidewalk, save for myself and a few over-stuffed trashcans, was completely deserted. There were a few shops, a lone café, and a mash-up of brick apartments, buckling with age; all of them boarded and empty.

I stared up at a couple of oily crows, sneering down at me from a telephone wire, and felt somewhat stupid for getting so lost in my own thoughts and wandering into what looked like the back-lot for an apocalypse movie.

I adjusted the grip on my umbrella and had just turned to make my way back to civilization, when an arm shot out and caught me around the neck. I didn’t even have time to struggle as they dragged me into an alley; they struck me once, twice, hard across the face and I felt the air stitch in my lungs as I was hit squarely in the chest. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see for the shadows. Another punch and the world turned on its side.

My vision sparking with stars and little dots, I slid to the wet ground. I felt another pair of hands, softer and quicker, patting me gently. They found what they were searching for and slipped my phone from its pocket. I vaguely heard the crack as it was snapped clean in half.

Peering up blearily, I could just make out two fuzzy figures standing over me. I realized then that one of them was wearing a baseball cap and I remembered the careless passer-by. I could hardly catch a face in the gloom; they must’ve been wearing a mask…a skeleton mask…

“Spitting image,” came a voice that was unmistakably female. And distinctly sinister. My hopes for a simple, brutish mugger were instantly lost. Her willowy silhouette loomed closer and her hands were on my face, turning it this way and that. I winced at a bruise already forming around my eye.

“He’ll be perfect,” she hissed and stood once more. I saw her tilt her head, staring thoughtfully down at me. “Hit him again, Rex,” she murmured to her partner, “He’s still too pretty.”

Rex did as he was told. I felt my head snap to the right and hit the brick of the alley wall.

And everything quickly melted into black.