Rabbit Done Run:

[Courtney]

A black-windowed liquor store, a dimly-lit Indian restaraunt, a 24-hour tobacco shop, and a tattoo parlor crouch, like ratty homeless men in fingerless gloves, around a blazing, orange street light. A green-haired, buck-toothed skeleton man stands beside the tattoo parlor's neon 'Open' sign. The sign flashes on and off, on and off, but nobody comes or goes. The skeleton man-- smoking a Marlboro Light--squints and blows smoke clouds toward a distant, running shadow.

It's a Pacer--the only car in the parking lot. It squats under the street light's industrial buzz.

A]dull scrape clacks as the tattoo shop's door opens and closes. The skeleton man disappears. Over the thrum of a tattoo machine starting up, the running shadow's footfalls reach a crescendo, stabbing through the humid night.

The shadow slams into the Pacer's side, then dents and scrapes the tendon-white metal and mottled, red paint as it tries to shove a trembling key into the driver's side lock.

The shadow fumbles, strangling the door's handle, wrenches the door open. Slams into the car, then slams the door, behind it.

A pause. Silence, then the Pacer rocks, honks.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When I get in, I slam the door, lock it. I lock every door. I lock the front doors, then twist over the seat to lock the back. I pump my manual windows for all they're worth, then shove the key in the ignition and twist.

The whole car complains, whinnies, like a horse, then sputters.

I slam my fists and my feet into the steering column, the accelerator, the brake.

This is like finding out your mother cheated on your father, or that god is a fluke. This is an ultimate betrayal, and this is the emotional response stage.

I don't know why I'm fighting the radio, or banging my fists into the horn. The Pacer bleets like a weak sheep, and my body rocks and slams in the cream and the beige. The car's quiet insides are broken by rustling, banging, cracking, and heaving breath.

I rip my sweater off, shove it in the passenger's side floorboard, then smear my hand over my face. I crank the engine, again. She protests, roars, then purrs.

I turn off the windshield wipers and turn the brights off as the radio blares AM Talk about extraterrestials and nosferatu.

Are the living dead a myth?

Anxious rage washes over me; I crash around the front seat, again, before settling with my shoulder against the humming steering wheel, my fingers interlaced at the back of my neck, and my elbows to my knees. I can hear my weighty breath hovering around me, like a ghost, in the dark. It's creeping down my spine, making my skin hurt, my face itch. It's making me feel closed in, from all sides.

The claustrophobia gallops in my throat.

It's not every night you discover monsters.

[Alexander Dysis (DELETED 5855)]

Alexander's legs take even strides the full length of his legs, only pausing long enough to grab the sexy glass neck of a bottle with amber liquid in side. If it were a woman, someone would complain, but no one would object to the harsh treatment of one man's panacea. His steps resumed, carrying him to the counter of the ill-lighted liquor store. The transaction was wordless and carried about with equal disrespect, disregard, and complete lack of interest by both Alexander and the cashier.

He hurried out of the dingy place with his prize, noting the black windows only on his way out, now that he had a few more braincells to spared from fierce concentration on his accomplished mission. He didn't pause as he noticed a homeless man and began to stride towards him. Only then did he notice the car with the blaring stereo that surely held copulating teenagers convinced they were deeply in love and no heaven or hell would separate them.

"More like two days.", he muttered to himself on that thought, changing his direction nonchalantly. He approached the car, and stood a polite distance away, thought his stance more demanding than sociable. With his knuckles on one hand, he rapped on the driver's window. With the other hand, he held up the brandy he'd just purchased, thoroughly relieved that the occupants were not teenagers eager to stench up the interior but rather a single occupant. For what he needed, this person was perfect enough. And his needs were all he cared about.

Alexander never noticed the skeleton man who had come and gone.

[Courtney]

Nobody says, 'There is something wrong with this city,' when they transfer him. But he's starting to catch on. There's something wrong, here.

What they do say? 'The murder rates are high,' which is like saying, 'The gas prices are high,' to a gas station owner. As if that's all a person needs to know -- how business is going to hold up.

"It'll be a steady job, Court, steady distraction. You need a good distraction, you know? How's your thing? Your plant? Bloomed, yet?"

"It's an orchid, and no. She's still..."

"Not putting out," he scoffs, "Well, that's a woman for you."

Courtney doesn't laugh. He watches the Hudson Bay through his boss' window and thinks about a town called Harper Rock, Ontario.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The car stalls, again, when he tries to shift gears. When it stalls, somebody raps on his window, and the heat cuts off. He can feel cold wash over his knuckles, over his collarbones, face. He can see his breath fogging up the glass.

And, despite everything in him screaming not to roll down his window, he does. He cracks it, collects himself, tries to look like he wasn't just throwing the fit to end all fits in the front seat of his beat up, little car.

He nearly says, 'If you want the car, you can take it. You don't have to point a gun at me, or anything.' He figures this is the district for hold-ups.

He just saw some girl wilt, like a flower, and crumple to the street, in some back alley, some guy's mouth wrapped around her throat. He dropped her like trash.

And what did Courtney do? He got a look at the guy's face, then he ran.

What kind of a person is he?

He tries to steady his breathing, wishes he had a cigarette. Clears his throat. "Yeah?" Maybe the guy wants money.

The habit of a quitter -- he opens up the ashtray and sifts his finger through the empty, like he's looking for the *** end of an old smoke. Nothing. Not even spare change.

[Alexander Dysis (DELETED 5855)]

In the unspoken codex of masculinity, a bottle of alcohol could only mean one thing: drinking it. Unless, of course, this were two hundred years ago where any crappy bottle of alcohol meant a broken bottleneck to the skull now and an infection later. But this was not that time, so as Alexander held up the bottle, his non-gesture of body language going coldly unanswered, he could either sigh in exasperation or grunt in frustration.

He chose both. Keeping the alcohol hand in plain sight as if it would change anything, Alexander tried the handle of the car door with his free hand, and if it opened, he would try to firmly grab the man's clothes, drag him out of the car, and continue to drag him that way towards the Indian restaurant. He gave a wordless grunt of mild annoyance, as if the television had just been turned off while he was watching it.

Alexander's attitude was unyielding, as if taking a woman without hesitation when she shakily agreed to sex. There was no smell of violence on him, but only the pretense of raw need and the slightest air of frustration. Alexander had no thoughts committed to hoping that this man would understand, only the knowledge that he would and that he wouldn't mind.

[Courtney]

Courtney doesn't know about the unspoken codex of masculinity. His brain isn't full of things like gender roles, and he has to socially dissect everything, one movement -- one word -- at a time.

He's in a haze. He realizes that the guy's offering him a drink, and he doesn't really understand. Not really.

Court's just some guy, in a car, who's having a tough night, and he doesn't get why somebody cares.

Dissection: Of course, you know that they always want something, in return, no matter what it is, there's a silent agreement of payment. This guy is going to give you alcohol to staunch the storm inside your chest, and you're expected to return some type of favor, for his company. Maybe it's just company, all on its own. The trade for companionship, comradery. Maybe the guy has a problem, like you, and can't stand to see people distraught. Whatever it is, he's there, and you realize he wants you to get out and go with him, so you unlock the door. That must be some sign that you've agreed to do whatever it is this guy's thinking about, because...

When the door unlocks, the man reaches in and drags at Courtney's shirt. It's cold, but Courtney doesn't mind the unrelenting sting of winter coming in and blasting away the fall, suppressing his body heat with the sheer force of onslaught. He breathes clouds of steam.

He's dragged, the first few steps, the way a mother might drag a baby she's trying to lead up the stairs, to go to bed. He doesn't fight to disconnect, because his brain is in a strange place. He doesn't grab the guy's wrist and say, 'Hey, don't touch me.' He lets himself be handled.

They're walking toward the restaurant, and Courtney half-trips over one of his own feet, then rights himself, shoves his hands deep into his own pockets, fists them up until the tendons in his wrists pop.

He doesn't say anything, just moves along like he believes he's expected to.

[Alexander Dysis (DELETED 5855)]

In the embrace of fleeting warmth, the air stirs, the leaves fall, and two men silently make their way to a restaurant, one holding a bottle by its neck, the other holding his fists sheathed in his pockets. And the man who'd seen it all and perhaps given up caring watched uninterested and uninvited, homeless and forgotten.

When they neared the Indian restraunt, Alexander struggled to open the door with the hand that was taken with Courtney's clenched wrist, and instead opted for a solution that involved juggling the door with one hand, Courtney, the door, and then Courtney again as he led the two to a windowed table with two chairs and finally let go of the man's arm for good. Alexander sat himself immediately, and used his a foot to kick out the chair opposite him, the best indication of "Won't you please sit with me?" that he could nonverbally muster, and with the best politeness his own brain could afford.

He sat the bottle he'd just bought on the table. A young girl waitress scurried to their table, not so much weak as intimidated, and by her demeanor, perhaps new to the position. She had bright blue eyes, but little else worth Alexander's eyes noting.

"Two glasses with ice.", Alexander finally said his first words of the day. The waitress returned and tried her best to offer them a menu or at least order something. Alexander's answer was an icy glare.

He took his glass and poured the few water droplets that had dared melt into the unlit candle vase in the center of the table. Repeated the process with Courtney's glass. Cracked open the alcohol top with his hands. Poured them both to the very edge.

"Drink.", he said to Courtney as he swept the candle holder to the side of the table with napkins and other tableside affairs as deftly as a cat happily pushing something off a height.

He threw back the drink spilling only a few drops on the table. Yes, he did this often. Finally, he gave Courtney a good, long look. There were no judgements there. And there were no words.

[Courtney]

The more he's lead and man-handled, the more a vomitous, putrification of something-like-anger swells in the pits of his belly. The more he's touched, the more he picks up, and he doesn't understand, fully, the implications of barging into an Indian food restaurant and using a table to have a drink with a man he's never seen, or met, before.

When the waitress comes, Courtney doesn't look at her. He can't tell you an identifier for the girl. He doesn't try to delve into her head, but he does shake his own. He's not hungry. He's not thirsty, either. The idea of taking something into his stomach makes him sick. He should probably eat something. The idea that he should makes him more sick.

When he's told to drink, he doesn't want to do it, but he does it, anyway.

It's funny how the universe works.

He knocks back the drink like he hasn't had a drink in days. And he's not as practiced and steady as the man sitting with him. He dribbles on his chin, uses his shaking fingers to wipe away the alcohol, winces against the burn, then coughs into his fist.

Drops the empty glass on the table, in front of him.

The glass half-careens, before physics catches its heavy bottom, lets it settle upright, the residual alcohol slowly draining down the sides to gather, in more a dampness than a puddle, at the glass' bottom.

His body, as bodies naturally do, wants to reject the assault. He swallows dry and forces the alcohol to settle into his stomach like it's settled to the bottom of his glass.

A pertinent lack of control -- Courtney had been throwing a fit in his car.

A pertinent taking of control -- a man came and filled up the lack with shoves and orders.

It's funny how the universe works, sometimes, Courtney Apple.

"You all right?" He asks the guy, like the guy's the one who might be nuts. Maybe he is. It's not every day some guy picks up a confused stray in a big city. It's more common for the mass of humanity to ignore parts of itself that seem out of order than it is for the mass to try and re-establish those parts.

Courtney knows about re-establishing people. That's part of his job.

[Alexander Dysis (DELETED 5855)]

The stranger he'd dragged seems to Alexander to drink like a man in desperation. A man who was drinking his last in a hurry. He raises an eyebrow at the spillage and clumbsy glass placement, but as soon as the glass has settled, he refills it to the brim, and repeats the process for his own empty glass.

There is silence at last. Sweet, sexy silence as the first minutiae of warmth begins to enter his brain, slowing the gears within and threatening to grind them to a halt. The stranger talks. A word of concern, a question. ******* girl! ******! All this and the ******* dude's a ******* girl! ****! Of course nothing's the **** all right, what was wrong with this whiny little mother ******! All of Alexander wants to scream obscenities, and he glares death at the door. But there's no one out there. Nothing out there. Just the cold. And nothing. He couldn't go back to that.

Alexander gives a glance at his drink, not answering, then swings it to his mouth, gulping it down as fast as gravity could speed it into his throat. He re-assembles the shards of his pride and dignity through the sledge hammer of desperation.

"No talking.", he scowled, keeping the snarling in his voice to a minimum. At least, no talking until the third drink, he tells himself.

He refills his own drink, and gulps it down slower. Third drink down, he refills for his fourth and considerately pushes the bottle a few inches across the table towards Courtney, the stranger. His belly is warmed and at last, all the noise and thinking have settled themselves into the nothingness.

His hands made a "go on" gesture and he took a look at Courtney. A long look, studying the man's face, eyes, expression. "Talk.", there was no snarling now, just an invitation, the command as pleasant as Alexander could bear.

[Courtney]

Sure. Courtney's a girl.

He's a walking, talking girl, and he's doing something like blabbering, as far as this other guy is concerned. This other guy who says, 'No talking,' then drinks, some more. What's the other guy working up courage to ask, or courage to do? Who does he think he is? What does he think he's doing, dragging some random stranger out of his car and into some place to shove alcohol down his throat -- well, Courtney really wasn't forced, and just like that cigarette, it sure did taste and feel good, at the time.

Don't talk. Talk.

When he was told to talk, he found himself, with sudden ferocity, wordless. He didn't know what to say, then, and he fumbled with the words in his mind, and in his mouth, before he finally got a harness on them, then jutted his jaw, some, "What do you want from me?" There. That was pretty blunt, if not a little paranoid.

He didn't understand. Not really.