June Bridals blue wedding guest dress

Today's Color
- Luciano S. Pellegrini -
Historia Corta en Inglés

I woke up in a giant fucking frying pan. Or so I thought, then I opened my eyes. Makes sense, the color was right, everything around me graphite and the color of old worn out tar. Lift up your chin, open up the eyes, bad idea. My eyes get dazed by a giant fireball in the sky, makes sense. So I didn’t have a bed last night, good to know. As I fumble around to get up feel my skin scrape up against the floor like it’s the damn woodworks. I’m naked, not just as god handed me down, some white boxers, foreign to me but otherwise fitting me perfectly. Some white running shoes and a pair of perfectly fitted hot pink leg warmers.
Another night of debauchery, another tale for sure. But just how much time can you go before thinking of her again? See? And here it all comes again. Her jet-black hair, her dark brown eyes. The smile that stole your heart right from right under your nose. Didn’t even notice did you? Well, after a while of chasing out danger and getting away from the law together, we kinda just grew inseparable, you know? Kinda hard to put your life on the line for someone every day without…
A loud noise, followed by a louder, higher pitched noise. My eyes jolt open, but sure take their sweet time to adjust to the light. I’m in the middle of the highway. A highway that goes from yellow to green and from green to yellow. A truck speeds my way and giant lights blind me momentarily. I jump like a motherfucker, off to the side, my naked body falls hard against concrete floor, the emergency lane, relatively safe. As I’m standing upright for the first time of the day, I feel it, a cold material, pushing against my right leg, my hand investigates. Seems they were kind enough to lend me an out-of-here phone, I call the cab company.
After twenty-so minutes the cabbie arrives, no questions are asked about the state of me or my nudeness and no explanations are given. The ride ends up being ninety-eight dollars, but I’m finally home, I’m greeted with the familiar scene. The ceiling is poorly light but pristine, the chairs are dusty and wood, the faucet is sparkling new, can’s hear any cars from inside, the cat hunts a spider. My bed lies empty, but her pillow is still there, hopeless romantic that I am. It doesn’t do me or her any good. I grab it and put it outside, in the living room. I see the keys to my Porsche and it suddenly hits me. “I was starting to get lonely out here, boy…” he said. That’s what he said.
What I thought had been too much to drink or too much to smoke turns out to possibly be something else entirely. I had been driving down to the pier in the city yesterday, yes, that much I recall. Down the road I went, going to the beach, again; to sit in the parking lot and waste my day for her memory, again. Before I know it I’m dressed. Black gloves, leather. Last thing I put on, always, hair is too finicky for shaping with leather gloves.
Walk to the garage, straighten your tie, turn on the lights, grab a pair of keys. Open up the tool box, pull out a Glock 22., it goes in my ankle holster. Pull out the Nano, which goes into the shoulder holster and above that, Hugo Boss. In the kitchen I pour myself breakfast, a glass of a nice semi wine, a droplet strays onto my shirt. It hits me again, she’s lying on the floor and I’m putting pressure on her wound, my entire body weight onto her, I think I heard something crack. Arms firmly hoist my waist up, I’m getting arrested, so there’s no one to put pressure on the wound, and the wound bleeds violently, it gets on my shirt. I wipe the wine off but the stain isn’t coming off. The shirt is replaced, looks today’s color is gonna be black.
The Aston roars off to the street and there I am again, the jungle, but I’m not looking for a fight, I’m looking for a coffee before I have a breakdown, a coffee store; if I can find one. I drive around for twenty minutes; I can’t find a coffee store, so my phone finds one for me. As soon as I try to get into the lot some redheaded bitch puts her car out in front of me and parks, I breathe, I drive around her.
I’m off the car and the keys twirls around my finger; they make a sound, the sound of metal against metal, chains. Before I realize it I’m at the Police Station, back again? This keeps happening. Somebody wrote some paperwork, somebody made a sentence for me, and someone dished out bail for me. That’s just the way it always was back then. And then it’s back to another city, another county, another state. Always on the move. Living fast and dying young seemed like a great purpose in life when I was 18, but it was much easier before she died.
I go inside the shop, the sweet smell of roasted coffee hits me in the face just harder than the arm of someone in front of me. It’s redheaded bitch. She says something or other to me as she places herself on the line in front of me, I have no reaction. Too tired today to fight. Tired enough to wait. But the wait goes on for another six minutes and I start to go back, back to the memory. So I don’t, I snap out of it, and I pay attention, to my surroundings, to detail, I watch everybody at the shop. There’s a kid with his mom, she looks white collar enough. The kid looks like the mom had him too young, maybe hit on the head a couple times too much. There’s an old woman, she reads, mumbles to herself. There’s a trucker, he eats his breakfast too loudly for such a small coffee shop. June Bridals blue wedding guest dress
I assure you, I hate everyone, every single human being on the planet, but the people in this store are the fucking worst. The person I hate the most stands before me, with her flaming red head and her loud, overacted phone talking. So I’m glad when she steps out to her car, seems to have left something inside. The line shifts forward and it’s my turn, she cuts in front, she argues that she had been waiting in line and the she only stepped out for a minute. I fight, later I comply. She buys her shit, I do as well, and I leave.
As I step out I see her toying with her keys to get into her big red car, my feet shuffle, I feel the thrill. I open up the driver door, reach down, set the coffee on the holder, inside into the glove box. My white hockey mask awaits inside so I strap it on. Stomp my way over to where she is, when I’m about a foot away from her, she realizes what I’m doing so she drops the phone and starts screaming, the scream is cut short by a chop to the throat. I hit her in the back of the head with the full weight of my body. Once, twice, three, four times until I feel her spine give. She drops to the floor. A bystander has seen me from the parking lot. Shit. I pull out the Nano and I shoot the dead woman in the head, then fire three rounds into the sky, I toss the gun to the side.
I run to the Aston as I hear screams and engines firing up all around, like noise at the amusement park. I hear sirens but I’m off already. A memory flashes: I’m running from the cops, but not now, yesterday. I’ve stuck up a gas station, and I’m hiding in the desert, but I find a road, a road that nobody seems to notice as they pass by. Cops and their cars zip right through, I go unnoticed. As I abandon my car I walk deeper into the desert and I see a van. If I steal it, I thought, no one would look at me twice going back into town, being a family vehicle and all. Two sharp objects stab my right thigh and I twitch uncontrollably in pain, falling to the ground face first. “I was starting to get lonely out here, boy…” I heard the voice said.
The Aston fast outruns any patrol cars, and soon I’m off their radar, hiding in the lot of a local museum. I get off and walk around the building. Seems to be a museum of history, wonder if it could mean a score. I’ve lost my gun, but not my car, or my coffee. I sneak around the back, making sure the security cameras don’t get my hockey face. I find a door and a man, a guard man, for the door, a doorman? A Security Man. He guards the door, he chats with someone over the radio. I can’t take him out, so I wait.
They converse. Security Man describes to Radio Man how to make pasta Bolognese with his grandmother’s recipe. Onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, basil, and of course tomatoes. “The trick, you see, is to add a little bit of that Hellman’s ketchup, to give it a little tang.” Would be the last words Security Man would ever speak before I slashed his carotid and stabbed him in the back of the neck. Radio Man spoke: “Should I just let that all simmer then?”
“I’ll be right back, I’ve got to take a shit” I said into the radio. To which I got an “Alrighty friend, have a good one.” As I picked the lock my white cotton socks engorged taking in the blood of the Security Man. I’m not sure grandma would approve of the sauce’s color. As I get in, there’s a corridor, a hallway, and a poster. The poster reads “See the secret crown jewels of King Ferdinand the VII of Spain”
The Crown Jewels, what I’m here for after all, just like all those years ago. When she and I coasted off to Seattle to make some bank and we decided to hit the town’s jewelry shop… Ambitious young ones we were, stupid as well. The Crown Jewels was my first and only botched job. I told her she couldn’t come to this one, I did. But she wanted the goddamned diamonds for herself, she was dead-set. And fuck me if I was gonna try and stop her.
The camera points in the opposite direction, I cut the wire. Only so much time before they notice something is wrong so I move on to the next door and open it. Security man II and White Collar lady from the coffee shop are there. Security Man II, god rest his soul, got his windpipe crushed. I picked up his piece and White Collar lady complied to get on the floor and not to speak, this was good.
So I look at the computers in the room. I could see outside the store and one of the screens was pitch black, this was the security room, I’d hit jackpot. I also got hit in the back with a metal chair, I didn’t zip-tie her. Shit.
I was struggling, she was on top, she had a pair of scissors, but I had a gun, I point at her chest point-blank and say “If you don’t drop it, I’ll shoot”. She stabs through the eyehole of my mask. All I see is red and the pain is the most unbearable thing I have ever experienced. I screamed the loudest scream, wouldn’t be long now before we had company. Just like last time.
All I could remember for three years was nothing but the Security Room, as we secured the place back then she laughed as she pointed the gun at the guard, she wasn’t paying attention. I jumped. I really did. I had no idea I would ever wish a bullet would hit me instead of somebody else. But I jumped, not fast enough.
He was dead, she was dying and I had to get out of there but I couldn’t. I held her head in my hands, I closed her eyes and I kissed her and said “You lucky bitch”, I started pressure on the bullet hole. Again she laughed and blood gushed out of the wound, I think the last thing she told me was “Being alone will be easier than living with me”. What a lie, what a waste. What love I had for her, what love she had for me that we decided to never betray each other, in a world where betrayal is the only thing that gets you up the walls.
The lady pulls the scissors out of my eye, I sit. I launch myself at her chest and beat her until she stops breathing, her face is covered in the blood that my eye won’t stop spouting. Three Security Men have come to avenge the fallen, they point their guns at me and yell at me to freeze, to drop, to stop, whatever. I can finally remember, that’s not what she said last. She just said “Don’t leave me hanging for long okay, honey?” “Okay honey, I said”.
I charge at the men and a barrage of lead pellets dance my way. Blood flies, everywhere it can, I feel like I was punched into the next day, maybe tomorrow you’ll be there. I had to write this now to tell you before I fall to the floor and die. I’m sorry I kept you waiting this long.