Where are we going?” you bicker, following Ø in tow.

“The town, the waterline,” she huffs in response. Short of breath, patience.

“That’s where Dutchie said she’ll meet us?”

“What? No,” Ø’s wide-set shoulders scratch the menhir, her gait off-balance, crimson breaking through her digits no matter how hard they squeeze, left arm leaking a trail of blood as you exit the silver colonnades, drip-dripping. “Dutchie just said she’d find us. But I’m not sticking around here, I don’t know about you.”

Nobody’s sticking around, by the looks of it. The Casino’s cleared out. Ville fantôme.

Poker hands lay forgotten, roulette stations scraped of winnings, the House’s banks looted. A sign of hand-drawn calligraphy before the Revue’s extravagant double doors announces a delay in the evening’s events, to be resolved momentarily, no mention of refunds. Auto-bartenders placidly vibrate up and down their trackways, cleaning spilled drinks, brandy and bitter concoctions staining evergreen tables and red threaded carpeting. They perform the heavy lifting as usual, porting the unconscious, administering life-saving bene-gel cocktails for the wounded. The saved, with their faces slathered in oily medicines, hair pulled back, eyes watering and frowning, looking like they escaped an hair-gel hurricane, wonder through early hangovers whether the life-saving service is complimentary.

Even the high roller hideaway is empty, the godfathers beating tracks from their secretive alcoves, splitting, running back to their ships in vain attempts at outpacing the authorities or bluffing their way past orbital defenses.

In fact, for all the Punta del Muso’s visitors, from bankers to bagmen, colonels to consigliere, the criminal fight-or-flight instinct has finally kicked in. Vessels laden with their chastising wives, treasure stores sorely drained, the chorus of, “who, me?” presented to authorities will be answered with the usual fines. No disrespect to Fontvieille, of course, as their mass exodus is a simple force of habit normally induced by the yowling police sirens.

Can’t do nothing about that, can you?

“We don’t have a ship,” you plead.

“So what? You saw how things were down there—there’s ships everywhere. We’ll just steal one. I bet there’s a couple clowns down there splitting, too. People who screwed up, royally, because of a few dumb decisions. Ring a bell?”

Irate clicking of her mouth slows. Her flehmen-licked insult, lips turning inside out, showing off her plastic teeth, is lethargic. Purposefully, she deals with her cut-up arm without the help of the nearby auto-bartenders. Understanding the awkwardness, the mare labeled in their sensors as a troublemaker, they, too, careen away, their vibrating red eyes zipping elsewhere, manning poker tables with no players, standing at bobonic attention and waiting for input.

But, Ø’s pointed critique comes true.

As you stand in the Casino’s doorway, sun setting at the water’s edge, sparkling atop the flotillas of yachts on the waterline, the courtyard is alive. Vessels flee the manicured gardens, spooked high-heels trampling hedges, getaway engines knocking into gazebos, nearly burning them to kindling. Scorch marks of hasty takeoffs pockmark otherwise perfectly polished walkways where frescoes of fedora-topped saints intermingle, their sport coats draped over torsos like toga, displaying orators’ gestures of curled fingers and shrugging shoulders. Now, many are covered in soot and nuclear discharge, smeared in an accidental damnatio memoriae.

However, only one vessel lingers, dead-last It’s small, her singular Honnecourt engine sputtering. Sleek, a sparkling red coat of paint in the warm air, only thirty meters in length, sloped sides rotund and waxed, wings retracted and engines at idle. Manicured claws scratch at the exterior, their chorus shrill, grabbing the attention of lingering passerby. The metallic noise makes nearby onlookers grimace with disgust, from the attendants at rest, to the visitors arriving to the Casino at the late hour, unaware of this cycle’s tumultuous events.

Just as abrasive as the claws is the yowling, reverberating off the Casino’s façade.

“Open up, you jagoffs!” Dutchie shrieks. “I paid you finooks ten large!”

“Hey! Dutchie!” you shout for attention, scraped hands cupping your liquor-stinking maw. From the Casino’s entranceway, you wave. It’s only a good ninety meters to the escape vessel’s gull-wing doors. And such luck, you’ve found them, your partners waiting as they planned.

You’re nearly home free.

“Oh gawd,” she mewls before your sprint to safety can begin. “Chahlie! Chahlie, do something, already!”

“Alright, alright, take it easy!” he shouts in return. At his hand, beneath his eggshell sport coat, poking from under white-dyed linen is a Peashooter LW-II. A shotgun. Seven-shot magazine, automatic side-ejection, a pistol’s grip with a polished futurewood finish, ergonomic recoil pad planted against Charlie’s shoulder, barrel staring down at you and your mare. More importantly, there’s a textile atop the jacket, old looking, tattered, a familiar heck-of-a-shawl, the master-thief’s purloin of great price. “Stay,” he barks at you. “I’ll miss the first shot, probably the second too, but at the third, fourth, you know what’ll happen.”

“Chahlie!” the cat mewls at the brandished firearm, “I said no heaters!”

“Charlie, it’s us!” you retort.

“I know it’s you, Joe Blow, what’re you, stupid? All due respect.”

“Forget them! Just get flyboy to open up,” Dutchie screeches. Her partner, from beneath reflective tortoiseshell Maggadino sunglasses, suspenders stretched thin, thwacks the door with a swing of the Peashooter. The paint starts to chip at his second hit of a rifle-butt, brittle exterior threatening to dent. “And you two, scram, already,” the cat throws her hands like knives, “we’ve got our ride, find your own.”

“What? We’re working together!”

“Well obviously not anymore! Pack it up, kid, get your own getaway. I mean, geez-Louize, Ø, you oughta be ashamed of this man of yours! Don’t he know what a double-cross look like? He’s dumber than all’a Chahlie’s boys put together!”

“I am, have been for months,” the mare clicks, blood draining from her arm. She holds it above her head to slow the bleed, the cascading crimson dripping onto her mane, then the tiling while fresh marks, Casino visitors, brush past the commotion, dressed well-to-do and wanting no part of the protracted argument, hoping for a stiff drink from an auto-bartender. “At least you’re stuck here with us, huh?”

“Charlie,” you shout across the courtyard, “what about the job?”

“Job? Kid, you’re outta your depth, there’s no job!” Charlie pants between swings. The shotgun’s frame has started to bend, futurewood beginning to split. He wipes sweat from his brow, gritting teeth. “Well there’s a job, but no cut for either of you pigeons. You got outplayed, fair and square. We get the artifact to fence, you get the blame. And look at this thing, it’s a rag,” he laughs, almost nervously, shouting each syllable while his thwacks finally dent the vessel’s exterior, but get no further. “All due respect, you should probably find a new line of work. Go back to being a delivery boy. Find yourself a new broad, too,” he huffs, spitting tobacco-glistening wads, “no offense to you, Ø, of course. That, and I assume you knew the score, since you’re plugged in and all.”

“None taken,” she crassly bats away the insult. “But, you know, he actually trusted you. Thought you were a friend. Understand?”

“Yeah, and I lied. That’s life. Your guy’s gotta learn that sometime, right. Not everyone’s a friendly face.”

“Sure,” she nickers, a droplet of blood landing atop her eyebrow, making her squint, facial scar contorting. “It’s just not right.”

“What, you all bent outta shape about it? It’s business!”

“I don’t want that from you, Dutchie,” Ø hisses. “We can pay our ways out of this. You can’t.”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“With all the dough we’ll get? You’re outta your gourd,” she mewls. “And, you know, if I hear another word outta you, I’m gonna hurl. I’d rather get whacked than listen to any more of your bangtail droning, always Negative Nellie. You oughta shape up. Every day, you’re complaining, know that? About the weather, that little Fervidora. And what’d she do to you? Smile? You’re not it enough for an attitude like that. You’re lousy,” rips from gin-coated fangs, “go and get yourself a real man, fix that scratched-up mug of yours,” Dutchie hisses. Her nervous tap-tapping paw glares at Charlie’s impotent thwacks, no closer to breaking through, escape tantalizingly locked away. “And, now that we’re airing all these grievances, I think you’s got a drinking problem. It be-fruddles the mind, makes you less sharp, ruins your looks.”

“Me? I’ve got a problem?” Ø shouts, “you didn’t even give us the right targets. You don’t know what clan you’re stealing from, and you think I’m slow?”

“Who cares? They all look—”

“Shut up, already!” Charlie’s snaps. “Both of you oughta see a shrink sometime, giving me a headache like this.”

“Poor you,” Dutchie whines.

“Yea, poor me,” your former partner backs away from the getaway shuttle. Peashooter barrel warped, sweat dripping from his tussled hair, pits damp, he trains his sights on the shuttle’s gull-wing door. If they won’t open up, he’ll shoot his way in, as usual.

“Chahlie, I said no—”

“Pipe down!”

He pulls the trigger. Instead of the normal armor-piercing shrapnel from the Peashooter, only silence. Impotence, as he racks his shotgun once, twice. Nothing ejects from the polished frame. Must be unloaded.

“What? Dutchie!”

“I said no heaters! Don’t you ever listen to me?”

“So you sabotaged the damn thing?”

Ø gives your heel a kick. Arm above her head, draped over messed hair, she’s odalisque like the nearby fountain statues. Like them, eroded with time, chipped but re-plastered to look whole. You both slink across the courtyard, confident that your former partners won’t be getting far.

“You dumb broad! With your black magic, hoodoo nonsense, do you have any idea—”

Charlie’s tirade ceases. His foot taps, composure finally broken, scared loose. Nearby onlookers shrug their shoulders with confusion at the shouting’s pause, returning to their business once more and whispering apologies, tipping hats as they jostle through the Casino’s doorway, blocked now by a trio of fearsome figures. One without an arm, another with a bashed in Fez and frameless lenses like reading glasses, and a third lackey in dire need of a new shirt, his current one bloodied, beaten through, in ribbons. The three of them huff spezie-stuffed breaths, faces oily and stained, slathered in auto-bartenders’ bene-gel. Liquor in their veins acts as fuel, ignited, Prophet-be-damned.

Your mare’s tired sigh collides with the first firework of the evening. It’s a dazzling streak of light that arcs from the village below, igniting in a stupendous display of airborne crimson tentacles. Gunpowder flaps along the sea breeze, stinking up the sunset.

Before the mare can square up once more, pouting, her bloodletting frame infirm against the floor, you blurt from your mangled throat.

“They took it,” you huff. Another firework is jettisoned, its high-pitched squealing like a wailing child. Once more, popping above, a violet starburst against the golden sunset. “That guy over there stole that artifact of yours.”

“Yeah, your shawl,” the mare adds, blood still dripping to marble. “The rag, the whatever.”

“Oh, you stupid finks,” Charlie sneers, “what happened to honor among thieves? Such disrespect!”

The three clansmen pause. They’re bushed. Beat-up but gingered, reluctantly arriving to finish what they’ve started. Their feet shuffle, along with yours, the five of you beaten bare and ready for a peaceful conclusion. But their recognition of that shawl, draped over the Peashooter’s mangled barrel, it ignites something within them.

The dull piece of cloth, barely held together by strained, ancient fabric threads, a relic, unpolished when compared Fontvieille’s bountiful embroidery, is an insult to all that is bespoke. Unlike the easily-discarded garbs of haute couture pure-silk and ruffling, your ripped suit and Ø’s mangled corset combination, it’s authentic. It’s real, once worn for purpose beyond idle conversation. Construction and design non-algorithmically-based. Stained with authenticity, eroded with time, valued culturally above something as simple as price.

Revenge for Salaam is lightyears away, mangled with gravitational pull, when compared to such an insult.

“Chahlie!” his kitten squeals, flinching, over-acting, “you stole that rag there? Why, you said you were on the level!”

“What? What’re you trying to pull—”

“Hey fellas! This guy’s got that thing a’ yours! Yeah, that shirt them two’s talking about!”

The cat builds distance. Atop stilettos she trots away, gesticulating motions of blame, incensing the tribesmen to attack. It’s a gaudy display of back-stabbing, a buck-passing maneuver old and tired as time. Yet, she’s successful, the three men bolting, hobbling with speed, trotting down steps towards the master-thief, gun unloaded, his luck finally coming up short.

“Sonuva,” Charlie spits. Without an avenue of recourse, he bolts. First his feet, then six more pound afterwards, swearing their Cushitic cusswords, a One-Armed Man leering at your mare before howling, bayonet in air, his vengeful hunt beginning once more, his grateful spark of life reignited once more with vengeance.

Except this kill will be easier.

As Charlie disappears down the Grand Staircase, dodging cheery-eyed attendants, stupefied visitors, footsteps lost in overhead fireworks displays, you can’t help but feel empathy. A twisted one. Pounded, mangled and cut through like an orange blossom gibassié. It wafts nearby like freshly-baked pastries, hinting at something greater within your psyche, a sensation of true empathy just out of your reach.

Ø bats tired eyelashes, garish hand prints across her dress growing with every drop of her own blood, dismissing any guilt for the both of you.

At her partner’s exeunt, Dutchie panics. More than before, her manicured claws chipping, pressing out from her weak digits. Sparkling red nail polish on sparkling red vessel exterior, the heinous sound of scratching metal bores into your eardrums, higher pitched than the sizzling fireworks display, exploding blue against a darkening sky. Streaks of discolor appear on the vessel’s frame, paint peeling, dull gray revealing itself like sideswipe ribbons, evidence of a pitiful struggle and a failed getaway.

The cat cries, mewling at first, then yowling. Her caterwaul oscillates. It’s a pathetic public display of self-debasement not fitting for a woman of her stature. Passerby nudge their companions, wives in hushed tones gossip. Looks like someone’s out of luck. Like you, their empathy is gone, shrouded in firework displays and freshly-baked breads, deafened beneath layers of designer fabrics and flooded with alcohol—c’est la chance.

Even through her pain, the mare huffs. Her slow stride is menacing, careening towards her target. She takes her time, savoring the look of Dutchie’s thin skin, pelt impeccably groomed, but most importantly her panic. Her pupils dilate as she jitters, sobbing for help. Ø remembers hours aboard the Duchesse, sweltering in the sun, listening to complaints about her fellow aristocrats, the cat’s lofty proclamations of self-aggrandizement and not-so-subtle insults. Two weeks have felt like years, ones without firearms, without the chance for violence.

One of Dutchie’s nails breaks, ring finger on left paw, bending backwards and splitting from bone, blood cascading, red-on-red-on-red, night finally falling, oil lamps in the village below sparking to life, Fontvieille and her panopticon ignoring the plight of certain down-on-her-luck Duchesse.

Before Ø can arrive within killing range, the gull-wing doors shudder. They unlock, rising, air pressure equalizing with a hiss. Cigarette smoke leaks, stuffy, while the fireworks above reach crescendo. Popping reds and golds and blues are comforting gunshots, the Punta del Muso’s population momentarily still, looking towards the sky, entranced.

All but you and your mare, panicking Duchesse, and a fourth visage—the one appearing from behind the gull-wing door. It’s familiar. An old cat’s face. Dutchie’s mirror image, to her horror, the ghostly entity she’s seen lurking on the Casino floor, hiding within reflections of water, haunting from beyond gravity’s horizon.

The Duchesse yowls, beating it.

Dutchie’s fearful escape attempt is similar to Charlie’s. Slipping down the Grand Staircase, stubbing paw toes, ripping dress, she loses balance, knocking knees against marble, spraining weak bones. Her chest heaves, hyperventilating. Heels snap in two as she caterwauls, screeching non-sequiturs—insults and garbled exclamations—thin frame bouncing against flâneurs on their nightly strolls. They scratch their heads, concerned as the cat breaks for the waterline, a narrow beach at high tide, where visitors relax beneath moonlight, dipping feet in rolling waves as sand fleas disperse away from strikes of matchsticks lighting.

“Ugh,” the old woman sneers, “stugatz, that one. Look at her.”

The criminal’s fight-or-flight has instinct kicked in. Up to her ankles, then knees, sobbing heard clearly from your promontory, you observe as attendants wade into the ocean after the cat. They shout polite warnings to her, suggestions, attempting to bring her in as the surf crashes against the fleeing Duchesse, breaking against her neck, sopping her fur, tossing her backwards, providing momentary breaks in the constant caterwauling. It’s another one of Fontvieille’s events, some muse, a follow-up to a fireworks display. You, too, watch with interest from the Casino’s mountaintop, arms resting atop carved cliff-side masonry and crawling vines.

It’s a performance, Ø appreciates, your own personal Revue.

The mare’s slashed arm, now wrapped in the discarded linen jacket of a certain double-crosser, reaches into her sweat-coated ruffles. She pats around the sullied outfit, poked by exposed underwiring, thin fabric splitting. Out comes a bloodstained pack of Keowees. She places one at her groaning lips, tossing the carton atop the railing, where you take one as well, finally offering a third to the old cat.

Graciously, the aged cat accepts, the three of you enveloped in a tired evening haze. A piano plucks in the distance, trickling from a taverna, visitors belting hymns from wide-open doors, cross-breeze tickling their smiles.

Your new companion huffs with disgust, indignant, corners of her mouth curling with venom.

“Scared the bajeezus outta her, didn’t I?”

“Sure,” Ø agrees. “I could’ve just spaced her, though.”

“I don’t think it’s right to whack someone on the Casino’s grounds. Bad for business,” the cat bemoans. “And look at her. She’s whacking herself, anyways. Know she can’t even swim?”

“How do you know?” Ø questions with her usual indignation.

“It’s probably in her file,” you retort.

“What? No. You two been payin’ attention, or what?” the cat hisses from behind a cigarette’s huff, “I know ‘cause she’s me.”