Post by ch00beh on Apr 28, 2011 12:58:02 GMT -5
This was the first story I brought to class. Everyone thought I was crazy afterward. I was intending on fixing this story up but then I got lazy. So here's just the first draft that I brought to Creative Writing with all its issues and pitfalls.
“What about him, Darling?” a woman asked, her breath curling visibly from her lips. The woman was wrapped in a cheap-to-affordable looking black pea coat, and her hair was completely covered by a woven black beanie. She walked arm-in-arm with a similarly dressed, taller man, their footsteps thudding in time on the lightly populated sidewalk.
“That ruffian?” a man said in response, his words enunciated clearly despite the couple's closeness. He glanced once or twice at a poorly shaved young man as he walked by. “Gun or knife?”
“Knife.”
“You always pick knife.”
“It's more interesting.”
“But he looks like he'd put up a fight if you didn't pull a gun on him.”
“Exactly!”
“You are insane.”
The woman only responded by hugging the man's arm and pressing her cheek into his shoulder.
They walked a few steps before the man looked at another bystander across the street. “That woman over there, Love. With a gun.”
“Obviously she would soil herself and give us all her money. Guns are too easy,” the woman said. She didn't even bother looking twice at the target of their hypothetical muggings, and she loosened her grip on the man.
“Alright then. Knife.”
The woman glanced back at the bystander. “She would try to negotiate, but she looks strong enough that she would run instead of just handing us her purse.” Beat, glance, pause. “She still might soil herself.”
“Still stained trousers, just with more legwork. I don't know how I feel about that.”
“You love running.”
“I love free running, not chase running.”
“Well, maybe she also knows parkour.”
The man turned back. They were almost too far to make out the target's details. “No. Definitely not.”
They walked in silence, no longer arm-in-arm, as the woman pulled her scarf up higher around her cheeks and the man pulled his collar up higher behind his neck. Hands pocketed or busy with the straps of their bags, the two continued their now wordless stroll down the car-less side street until the woman touched the man with a gloved hand, gesturing that they should turn right.
“The bank is that one, then?” the man asked, pointing at a building with glass doors.
“Well, it does say 'bank' on the sign, and there's an ATM outside. I don't think it could be anything else.”
“I suppose I can't argue with that logic.”
The couple didn't bother to check for cars before jaywalking across the street. As they stepped onto the opposing curb, the woman stopped, patting her pockets. She opened her large purse and began looking through the contents.
“Hold on, Darling,” the woman said. She didn't search frantically, her shuffling idle enough to think aloud. “I wonder if that masked vigilante will make an appearance.”
“Do you really think that he would would show up so soon after taking so much care to disappear without a trace?”
“Here we are,” the woman said, stopping her search. “Well you never know.”
“Then let's look inside.” The man cast his gaze through the glass doors. Immediately behind the entrance stood two armed guards, the second no doubt added after the recent bank robbery. Several people within stood in line or interacted with a person behind the wooden counter, and a handful of others were seated at desks aligned with square, drywall pillars. As one of the patrons was escorted to a restroom behind the counter, she seemed to regard the couple for a moment. The look bordered on a stare, but soon the patron's green eyes disappeared behind the bathroom door. “I don't see anyone dressed in white, Love. Do you?”
“I don't appreciate your sarcasm. And no.”
“Then shall we?”
“I don't see why not.”
The couple walked through the door, and as warm air pressed against their faces, the two reached for their respective pieces of headwear. Instead of removing his hat, however, the man reached inside and pulled a tight, flesh colored fabric over his face. The woman pulled the brim of her cap down, covering her own visage with the ski mask.
Before the guard on their left could react, the woman pulled a knife from her purse and stabbed him in the gut. At the same time, the man took a pistol from within his coat and shot the other guard between the eyes. The woman jumped in surprise slightly before the rest of the bank realized the situation and began screaming and ducking.
“This is a hold up!” the man said without yelling, his words still clear despite the screams and whimpers. “Please place your hands where I can see them, et cetera et cetera and whoever is in the restroom come–”
“You didn't tell me you were starting with the gun!” the woman yelled.
“Can this wait?” The man hadn't taken his eyes or his weapon off the tellers, making sure none of them reached beneath the counter for a weapon or silent alarm. His voice was still calm. “Our audience is waiting for instructions.”
“No, this can't wait. We were supposed to be doing this heist my way this time.”
“You can still set up the explosives.” The man let his black duffelbag drop from his shoulder. “I'm not stopping you from doing that.”
“That's not the point!” Despite her protests, the woman still squatted down to unzip the bag and began searching for her C4. “Whenever I do things your way, I don't do whatever I feel like! I follow your plan. Why can't you follow mine?”
“Look, Love,” the man turned to look at the woman, but his gun still pointed at the tellers. “We'll discuss this when–” The man noticed movement at the corner of his eye. His head snapped back to his targets and his finger tensed ever so slightly, firing a bullet at one of the tellers who had dropped her hands toward the counter. The shot missed, but the sound surprised the teller, freezing her in her place. The man quickly stabilized his firing hand with his off-hand and shot her in the chest.
“Can we at least make sure they can't trigger the alarm?” His voice betrayed a trace of exasperation.
“Fine.” The woman pulled out a soft white brick and turned around, fixing the explosives to the base of the door.
As the woman fixed the detonators, the man took a few long strides forward, finishing his sequence of steps by bounding atop the teller's counter. The three remaining employees jumped back from his movements, one of them even going so far as to yelp a half-scream. “All of you to the front of the counter or else I make another painting.”
For a moment, the tellers did not move. The man rectified this by shooting another one, and the two remaining regained enough motor control to scrambled through the access door to join the other patrons in their cowering. “Love, could you get the bathroom while I watch our hostages?”
“In a moment,” the woman said absentmindedly, twisting one last wire together. She threw her tools in the bag and picked it up before making her way to the counter.
The man's eyes briefly settled on the blood splatters before focusing on the crowd. “You can't deny that the results at least look nice, Love.”
“I can and I will, Darling,” the woman said. As she stepped into the employees' area, she regarded the bloody wall that the man had admired, then without so much as a batted eyelash, began patting down one of the dead tellers for a key to the registers. “I never liked the way guns make blood spray.”
“You what?”
“You heard me.”
“But you told me that you—quote,” the man raised the hand that wasn't menacingly waving a weapon and curled his fingers, “loved—end quote—my work when we first met!”
“I lied.” The woman, unable to find a key, moved to the other body only to realize it wasn't a body quite yet. She carefully held the victim's head and slit his throat, aiming the beating red fountain at the wall to cover the existing splatter.
“I can't believe it,” the man said. He turned away from the crowd and looked down at the woman as she took a key from the now properly dead body. “You know what? I never liked your knife work. It–”
Before the man could finish his sentence, the woman took a small, slender knife from her purse and threw it over the counter. The man heard a shout of pain and something hitting the floor. He looked over his shoulder to find one of the hostages had managed to get halfway to the exit. A piece of metal protruded from the victim's neck. “Alright, I take that back.”
“Of course you take it back. My knife work is excellent and we both know that,” the woman said. She turned her attention to the register underneath the man and opened it, then proceeded to empty its contents into the duffelbag. “My knife work tells a story, unlike your generic shooting.”
“Generic? I–” the man paused. He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, then opened it again. “You're just saying that to get under my skin, now.”
“No. You haven't made a piece of art for the past five months.”
“Just because my murders are done with practicality in mind doesn't mean they're not good.”
“Yes it does.” The woman took the last hundred from the register then began fixing another piece of C4 in the drawer. “It's just been so awfully boring when you do your own work.”
“Why didn't you tell me any of this?”
“I've been meaning to.” The woman opened the next register. Before rifling through at its contents, she turned to look at the man, trying to find his eyes behind his thin mask, but soon gave up and went back to emptying the drawer. “Everything else was going well, and I thought that maybe you had been having an off month, so I didn't say anything... but I've been thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“Thinking,” the woman had stopped taking money and was instead focusing on Andrew Jackson's visage, “thinking that maybe we shouldn't be together anymore.”
The man was at a loss for words. His body loosened, and his gun wielding hand dropped slightly. The woman, too, was not moving. A tear formed, but almost instantly disappeared into the her ski mask. Even the hostages had stopped murmuring, shuffling, and whimpering. Silence made its move to permeate the room, then lost its momentum when flushing water emanated from behind the blood covered bathroom door.
As the door clicked unlocked and began to swing open, the man snapped out of his melancholy. He brought his gun up to the white figure that rushed out from the restroom, but before he could pull the trigger, he felt a latex-covered hand gripping his wrist and pulling him off the counter. Before he could gather his senses, the man found himself being held with his arm painfully locked behind his back, somebody breathing evenly into his ear.
“What a serendipitous occasion that I find both of you here while running errands,” said an androgynous, monotonous voice behind the man.
The woman had another of her throwing knives in hand, but the attacker was completely shielded by the man.
“As elated as I am with finding you two,” the voice said, still in even monotone, “I must have come at a bad time? Ha. Ha.”
“No, I think the timing is fine,” the woman said. She immediately ducked behind a copying machine, reached into her pocket, and pressed the detonator to the bomb she had set up in the register.
Nothing happened. The woman pressed the button again, and nothing continued to happen.
“Darling, what did you do with my bombs?” the woman called out after trying the detonator for a third time.
“We couldn't afford to use explosives until after we robbed this bank, remember?” The man let the question sink in. “Did you just try to kill me?”
“Maybe...”
“I can't believe it! I should have shot you after our second date!”
“I should be the one that's angry. You hid my real bombs!”
“What? That's not even comparable to–” The man was cut off as his arm was pulled back further. There was an audible pop, and any thought the man had of biting back the resulting scream was shoved away by his pained cry.
“Please. Let's not argue,” the monotonous voice said. “I rather hate when a couple fights. Surely we can resolve this. Come along, Miss.”
The woman didn't dare move from behind her cover until she had a knife in both hands. Once armed, she peeked around the machine, glimpsing the attacker behind the man. From what she could tell, the person wore a white overcoat and a white mask with no holes cut into it. After a moment of deliberation, the woman stood up. As soon as she was on her feet, the man began moving backwards.
The woman followed slowly as the white-clad vigilante led the man from behind the counter and to one of the desks. He, or she, or maybe even it, then unceremoniously dropped the man onto one of the chairs. Before the other masked person could turn around, the woman dashed forward to attack.
The vigilante spun around and batted the woman's knife hand aside. “Come now–”
The woman slashed at the vigilante's head, but her knife caught nothing as the vigilante ducked .
“Please–”
The woman attempted to stab the vigilante in the gut. She was smiling, even as the white-masked person sidestepped away from the thrust.
“Fine.”
The woman's next attack stopped dead as the vigilante caught her wrist and pulled her off-balance. Suddenly the vigilante was behind her, and she could feel a pinprick as a syringe slid into her neck. Her muscles began to relax, and her reflexes felt sluggish, but she did not feel any more tired. Despite her struggles, the woman soon found herself slumped in a chair next to the man with a pair of handcuffs joining the two.
The vigilante took a seat on the other side of the table. It leaned forward and folded its latex-covered hands. “You know she's right.”
The man looked up from his dislocated arm. “What do you mean?”
“It wouldn't be terrible for you to have a little more fun with her, don't you think. Perhaps leave things up to chance more often to keep things exciting.”
“I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here.”
“As I said: I hate seeing a couple fight.”
“I think it's fairly apparent,” the woman said, “that we're not a couple anymore.”
“I beg to differ,” the monotonous voice said. “You just tried to protect him, even after trying to kill him.”
“No, I tried to kill you. I think that was clear when I tried to detonate the bombs.”
“That was just a hasty decision. I can't blame you, really.”
The man spoke up again. “I can blame her.”
“You are just hurt because she told you the truth, although her delivery was rather brash.” The vigilante shook its featureless head at the woman. “Not very tactful at all. You should have waited to have the conversation later.”
The woman looked down. “I suppose.”
“Tell me–” the monotonous voice paused so that its owner could pull a tranquilizer gun from its coat. The vigilante then shot one of the hostages who had taken out a cell phone. “Please. We're trying to have a conversation here. No police until we're done.
“Now as I was asking: how long have you two been together.”
“11 months,” came from the woman's mouth at the same time that “A year” came from the man's. They looked at each other, paused to let the other speak, then simultaneously opened their mouths to answer the question again.
“I understand. And how did you meet.”
“We were trying to kill the same person,” they said again, in unison. The woman seemed to smile for a moment, then gestured to let the man speak.
“She was a contract killer at the time, and I was tired of working as a body guard.”
“Was that the senator?” the vigilante asked.
“Yes. Dreadful man. He wouldn't even let me shoot to kill. Always wanted people for 'questioning.'”
“That's horrible, Darling,” the woman said. “You never told me about that.”
“It kind of slipped my mind after we met that night, Love.”
“How sweet of you.”
“Because that was the first time you tried to kill me.”
“It was an honest mistake that time. You see someone with a gun outside your target's room and, you know, one thing leads to another and suddenly someone's entire mansion is on fire.”
“I know, Love.”
“That was your idea to blow up the gas lines, right?”
“I think so.”
“Darling, that was wonderful. If only we could do it again.” The woman leaned toward the man, who reciprocated the movement. There was a moment of hesitation, then the man's fabric covered lips brushed and pressed against the woman's.
“I still love you.”
“I still love you, too.”
“Good.” As the couple parted lips, their mediator grabbed them both by the heads and slammed them into the table.