Max stands, his forehead resting against the glass of the big fore windows of the airship, looking down. The rain-splattered glass raises silvered trails on his cheeks and traces strange patterns across his flat green eyes. He doesn't see the cloud underneath him, or even feel the cool glass beneath his skin. Something wildly important to him grazes his mind in a quick fleeting pass and he frowns, then flinches and closes his eyes. His memory flutters and beats the back of his skull like a small trapped bird. Max turns from the window as the first bright and unheard flash of lightning crosses the suspended sky, raising his fingers lightly to the soft skin at his temples.
He moves from his position at the windows, and walks deliberately to what is fast becoming his regular seat at the bar. Everything that surrounds him has the look feel and smell of ancient luxury. His stool at the bar is the least opulent of all the furnishings in the wide, flat room - and even that is tooled to the point of discomfort. His environment makes him slightly uneasy, though he doesn't know why and suspects he never will.
The Woman lounges in one of the magnificent divans, made up and almost - pretty face tilted in some sort of acknowledgment that Max doesn't understand. Her charge sits with his knees together and his elbows pressed against his sides, his beautiful profile bent in concentration on the smoke curling from the Woman's long cigarette. One of the metal fingers of the young teenager's strange prosthetic arm taps out a syncopated rhythm, putting slight dents in the wood of the chair's finely carved leg.
The Woman salutes him with her platinum drink.
The bar staff arrives. This meaning that one of the white-suited and nearly identical stands patiently before him. Max always thinks of them as plural, though there is only ever one. He Knows this is the truth, though, in the only way that it exists in his world, and busies his brain with wondering why it took so long for them (or him) to get there.
"Sir? A drink sir ?"
"Something long, warm, and giddyingly romantic. With an umbrella. And some fruit stuck on it."
The bar man(men) works, glowing and glowering at the same time.
Max grunts. The rain beats steadily and absolutely silently against the windows, in perfect time to Moniker's indestructible finger.
The drink appears magically in front of him and Max eats the fruit. He looks up and the bar staff is gone, moving as silently and as surely as the ship underneath and all around him.
Max stares into his drink.
A slight man with uncontrollable spiralling blonde hair makes his way unsteadily down one of the circular bronze staircases in one corner of the room. He ambles across to Max, turning his head in slight bird - like movements and grins aggressively at the Woman, who flinches in distaste.
Max stares into his drink some more.
"Hello, Max," Daemon pushes a bar stool over with a loud clang and drags one of the gorgeous armchairs closer to the bar.
"Hello, Daemon."
A bar staff appears and Daemon orders his drink of the day from the side of his thin mouth as he appropriates a coffee table for himself and steals the Woman's ashtray from beneath her twitching nose.
"Story for the day?" Daemon exhales a long plume of smoke, mostly into Max's face.
"Stories, stories, stories. Mmm. Yeah. Yours or mine?" Max takes a long deep swallow of whatever - the - hell - it - is that's in his drink and closes his eyes in expectation of whatever - the - hell rush he's going to get.
Top of the brain buzz today.
Okay.
"Mine this time, and mine next time, and maybe mine forever after. Yours bore the shit out of me and damn it if I don't like the sound of my own voice." Daemon kicks his short legs energetically on the edge of the chair like a child.
"'K." Max grimaces at some after taste or other from some drug he'll never know the name of, and the bar staff reappears, making him jump.
"Sir?"
"You nervous or something Max? On the horns of a dilemma. Horns on dilemmas the of our delicious young companion?" He gestures towards the Woman, and the boy, Moniker, though which he means is unclear.
Deliberately so, Max thinks. He orders another drink and swallows quickly, preparing himself for the lilting cadences of Daemon's voice.
Daemon crosses his short legs, uncrosses them, puffs aggressively on his cigarette and glances around conspiratorially.
Max looks at him pointedly.
"Building tension," he says.
"Early Twenty first century. Winding streetscapes and almost slums, in one of those bigger continents with the cities massing up and messing up in close to direct proportion. Our hero is a tragically stereotypical young fool who deals immensely dangerous drugs to whom so ever has the knowledge and the desire to acquire them from him. And the means. Let's not forget the means. He wears monochrome sunglasses when he doesn't need to and has reached the stage in his life where his disillusionment with himself and what's around him has reached a point of no return. He can feel himself sinking into the heat of his own evil.
"His means of acquiring a living has put him through some tests, and he has seen all his friends fail one by one and either die or be imprisoned in a hellhole that bears no resemblance to our own," Daemon does not gesture around him, instead lighting a new cigarette and gleefully continuing.
"He has become ridiculously well skilled in what he does. He has a new trade, and one that requires almost as much dedication as any other, though, I must say," Daemon swirls the last mouthful of his drink and swallows it with a loud gulp," the hours are better.
"He has no friends left, and never had any family. He feels with a certainty that his bastard intelligence feeds him that he has become ultimately jaded. The jewels that weigh down his body never had any meaning to him, and the women that have loved him have never seemed as important to him as the simpler and purer infatuations he had when he was a child.
"He feels himself a creation of his own age, its personification and its defilement. He knows these things without the beginnings of the ability to communicate them or anyone - anyone - to communicate them to. He is lonely. He feels old.
"He is nineteen years of age.
"He decides, wholeheartedly, and perhaps for the first time without malice, that it is time for him to save himself."
Daemon suddenly looks around him, mildly panicked. He holds his drink up to the muted lights and when he glances up again, the bar staff has appeared.
"I love the way they do that," he orders another drink and then continues, grinning.
"Our young and foolishly passionate fool takes the shiniest of his weapons, and for reasons of embellishment, I shall embellish; an ancient and lovely folding razor rests in each of his pockets, and under his snow white and muscular arm nestles a beautifully crafted gun, of production level, yes, but such loving production -" Daemon rolls his eyes and kicks his legs again. "Ah, the chaste elegance of a killing weapon is only surpassed by its technological superior. And why is that?"
Max grunts, again pointedly.
"Our hero makes his way down the stairs of his uplifted hovel to the ugly street, and through his protecting sunglasses pauses to survey the teeming environment where he feels safer than a lizard in a hole. Oh, yes, his own comparison, not mine. Heat again swamps him, though whether it comes from himself or the barely visible sun our Hero isn't sure, and quickly decides that he does not care.
"It is early evening. Our Hero has a date. He is unnecessarily happy."
Moniker has moved silently to join them, and rights the fallen stool with faint mechanical murmurings. Max orders another drink.
Daemon orders two. "Insurance," he says.
"He walks calmly to his destination, plainly but expensively dressed, skirting the refuse of the streets, human and otherwise. He has not so much made peace with himself as accepted that his life up until this point has been that of one already dead, or at most only alive enough to hurt and kill others. We know that feeling, don't we, kids?
Max shifts on his uncomfortable chair, and Daemon sprawls a little more, sucking out the very last of the smoke from his cigarette in an effort to appear serious about something. Moniker's exquisite face is impassive.
"He has envisioned his fear as a bright blade in the dark that he knows is his own, and he soaks up his body's adrenaline and feeds from it like the true criminal that he is. He places each footstep deliberately, imagining that they trace his path. He walks for a long time. Darkness falls over the city like a whore to her knees.
"Our Hero arrives outside a building almost identical to his own, that he has crossed so much of the city to get to. The blade of his fear glows hot in his mind. He can feel sweat trickling down the small of his back. Three of his compatriots, his brothers, come out of the building in absolute surety of their power, and of their lives.
"They see our Hero and recognise him and his purpose. They are young and they move quickly but our Hero has been bathing in the heat of his fear. He cuts them down with loving and graceful strokes of his two blades, the third in the back of his brain burning and throbbing in time to each precise deadly cut. Mmm,"
Daemon eyes his drinks and quickly snatches one and downs it.
He leans back and closes his eyes, speaking softly and tenderly.
"Our hero moves like a dancer. His body feels that there is too much blood in it. Heat embraces him. In this world there are no such thing as guards, there are only the dealers themselves and their guns and nightmares.
"A boy -child that our Hero shared his first drug with dies in the dirt on the hallway floor. "The blade in our Hero's mind does not make that connection.
"One of the razors falls to the floor and our Hero produces his gun without stopping the immense momentum hurling him to the back of the building. The gingerbread house.
"The door is as a breath before him. His mind works like an empty hand. There are only four, and a girl. There is always a girl. Suddenly, they are children, what they see is the lizard man monster of their dreams. The gun jerks four times perfectly in his burning hand, but jams on the fifth shell.
"Our Hero looks over the gun into the eyes of the young girl while his hand works the trigger again and again. The blade of his fear turns over in his mind, hurting him, and then is gone.

"He lowers the gun, slowly, and smells gunsmoke and death. He closes his eyes and deeply breathes in and out. When he opens his eyes again, the girl has the money spike from the gun polluted table in the centre of the room, and is holding it towards him and trembling like a new born.
"Her eyes are huge.
"They stand like this for a moment that stretches and stretches."

Daemon flexes the muscles in his little hands and curls his legs underneath him; a gnome in a garden. Or a gargoyle, Max thinks. Maybe a gargoyle.
He slides down in his beautiful chair until his hair is pressed up at least a foot above his head. He pours his last drink carefully into his mouth, all at once, all without opening his eyes.
Max can feel his eyes burning, the sides of his corneas heating up as the flow of words and drugs in his ears and bloodstream crucify his senses. He feels like he is moving through honey; that he is soaked with lack of sensation from the top of his head, dripping all over him.
"Our Hero takes his prizes. The girl is pliable, white. She dips her fingers in the blood of her lovers and tastes it. Her tongue flicks over her lips, a snake in the narcotic grass.
"They do not speak. Our hero is suddenly immensely tired, his body feels an insupportable mass, and the gun clatters to the floor, at home amongst its friends. The girl takes his weight against her tiny frame and retrieves the gun, which feels warm and alive in her smooth pale little hand.
"He leans on her and like this they enter the unlit street. She helps him into one of the ridiculous vehicles from her dead young lovers' strangely immaculate collection.
"His face is wet and he knows he is crying, though the sensation is purely physical, and he can feel nothing inside him, nothing. He looks around him, and through his water-struck eyes watches his city slide past him, his dreamless mind ticking like a hot engine cooling in the evening. The girl drives and smokes, smokes and drives."

Daemon lights a cigarette. Max hesitates, then sighs and does the same. Moniker stares at Daemon's prefect smoke rings and his metallic finger starts slowly tapping.
"She takes him to a hotel. Pure opulence rising out of the slums like a headstone. Our Hero jacks the money spike into the hotel's credit crack and suddenly they are surrounded by extravagance. Our Hero feels lost in the immediacy of luxury, - kind of like you, Max, but is surprised by nothing, also kind of like you, Max."
Max tries to stare into his drink and realises with a start that it is empty. The Bar Staff do their telepathic trick and Max decides it is time to get several drinks in a vigorous bubbling row.
Daemon is watching him carefully, his eyes sparking in approval.
"Something a little more serious this time. Um, yeah, six - no, seven serious things lined up in front of me. Oh, and make them pretty colours.
"Please."
"Fine. Interrupt. No, no. Really. I like it." Daemon looks hurt and Max smells sulphur as a fine crack appears down his first glass, leaking something pink and metallic.
Daemon sniffs.
"Our Hero is led by a surprisingly strong little hand to the top of the building. He will not meet her eyes though she loves him and hates him and wants to show him both.
"They walk into divinity like it is theirs and their feet sink into the deep carpet. The girl squeals and jumps onto the bed, rubbing her war paint into the sheets. Our Hero walks deliberately over to the huge and immaculate windows and opens them, smelling his city in deep almost shuddering breaths.
"The door slams behind them, caught by the wind, and the silence between them is suddenly a palpable thing.
"The girl sniffs." Daemon sniffs.
"The girl-child moves underneath him, her skin is a sheath and his is a furnace.
He slides his hands across the top of her neck, then inside her shirt. Her skin prickles under his touch, her nipples hardening , and her breath is faster and more shallow. He looks at her, and her clear young eyes are locked onto his. She kisses him, wrapping her little hands into the thick smooth brown hair falling over his collar. She does not close her eyes.
Our hero is surprised by the wetness, the warmth, the aliveness of her mouth. He can feel only that sensation, only that touch and the wash of music . She pulls open her shirt and his, and he lets his weight fall onto her, realising that he is trembling . He sinks into her, and this is it, man, this is nothing like those whores down on fifty-six and second, this is the real thing, like all those bullshit stories on the net weren't full of shit, all he can see, all he can hear, taste smell and touch Jesus Christ what is she doing to him.?"
Daemon pauses, smiling slightly, and then covering it by lighting a cigarette, then he stares at it intently, and he speaks quickly, but with clearer and more crisp enunciation of each word, "Hmm...
"His heart speeds up, seeming to double then triple then keep right on going, and this is like the worst candy flip in history, the best, he can feel every centimetre of her, buried deep in her, she still hasn't closed her eyes not for a second her eyes her eyes he sees something weird about her eyes - and then Our Hero, like the true fucking animal he knows himself to be, comes, and it's just whiteness, exploding around him, inside him, and he doesn't feel the deep scratches she raises across his back as she drags her nails deep down him.
"Every man in the building suddenly arches backwards, scratches appearing and blood welling on a thousand men, all at once. It's not whiteness but blackness, darkness, our hero can't just feel one sensation any more, he can't feel any. He feels like he is falling, though he knows there's nowhere else to fall, and it's time, this is the time, and the yawning darkness opens up for his ruthless soul, he knows a fear deeper and stronger than any other, and he reaches for the bright blade that waits in the back of his mind, and takes it with him into his deaf and blind fall, knowing that it is, in the end, no comfort. None at all.
"Our heroine pushes him off her, finally allowing herself to close her eyes.
"She checks out of the hotel with his money, his child and his life, ancient.
"She smiles," Daemon looks up, straight at Max, and narrows his eyes in conspiracy, "often."

PAUL D ROBERTSON©