Lust Demented

{XL}

SKYLINE AT OUR BACKS, THE platform was shaking. All the trains were coming in at the same time. The sun cut through our eyelids. I didn’t realize until I bent over…

Missy fainted here. Smashed her skull on the concrete with a hollow thud. She had a slight seizure. Blood ran from her head like a kicked over bucket of red paint. I begged for someone to get an ambulance. In the back I knew every answer to the paramedics questions. At the emergency room I got the third degree. They assumed I knocked her out. I waited in the lobby for six hours. They finally let me see her, minutes before she was released. She was talking on the phone to somebody. I didn’t know she had her phone with her. I tried calling it several times from the waiting room, but just got the voicemail.

“I’ll try Percy. I’ll try.” She whispered in a soft voice that I pretended not to hear.

“Money Farrow. Money.” I followed the pasty legs up to the short shorts until I was damn sure it was Hawaii.

“This is my little girl we’re talking about.” I was screaming at Hawaii. Studying her neck to know just where I would place my thumbs, if it came to that.

“Chill Farrow chill.” Kuroneko patted down her face with a handkerchief, trying not to let the sweat mix with the thin layer of powder. Everyone else around us tried not to act shocked, but it was bothering them. Like it or not, we were packed together. The exhausted workers in their dirty clothes scrunched up at the sound of a man lashing a woman in broad daylight. The words “money” and “little girl” hung in the air. A spray that everyone could understand. A mist that transforms a situation into a disaster. A grumbling that elevates a disaster into a tragedy. A hoard of rats started rising from the tracks. They seemed bothered. Like they knew something we didn’t. Just as the family dog can smell the storm before the first drop hits.

“Farrow I’m sorry. Farrow I know.”

“What do you know?”

Kuroneko took off running. Of course she did. Hawaii went next. And I was standing there staring at the faces of strangers as the possibilities faded. Fuck that, like hell I was.