brother R

[cutthroat]

"'ey ju',..wot.."

with last night's whiskey (buckets and buckets of it still draining out the black hole of his heart) creeping through his veins and seeping into the slow pulse of his blood, stocking'd feet kicked up a fluttering pile of polaroids as he stepped into his pseudo-sister's room, torso bruised and bare, a fleecy pair of hello kitty sleep pants wrapped in a hangman's noose around the lowest bulge of his hipbones. he had to rub his eyes, icy knuckles grinding at sleep-crusted eyes before dropping back to his thighs, swampswirl greens trying to herd the leaking blowwhite edges of juels' figure into focus. they were matching skeletons of malnutrition, bruises forming easily under the crumbling veneer of skin, like words on a page in the diary of a lunatic.

"th'fuck're yew dewing.."

"getting ready."

"ah..wh.."

"i'm divvying up my material possessions. here." she turned and delivered a stack of of polariods into renton's limp hand. the top one was a flat shot of the benz, pre-frenzied car chase, with shiv's name scribbled on the white frame. the rest were easily ignorable snapshots of her mirrors, taxidermied animal collection, custom embroidered pillows and various pieces of antique furniture that she'd been pulling from desecrated hotels and abandoned buildings for years. but the benz is what focused renton's attentions, cramming the polaroid back in his sister's face.

"shiv gits.. !!"

"you have the truck!" jeuls frowned, thumbing through a pile of polaroids near her foot. "and besides, she gave me dorothy. like, you can't beat that." snapshots fanned across the sunbleached hardwood floor, fingertip skimming over the fresh-turned chemicals inside the starched white frames. "here, i haven't given away the bear suit yet, you want the bear suit? or the moose head. you can have the moose head!" juels grabbed up the polariod sun and pointed it at the guillotined head of a bull moose mounted on her wall, centered between two points of her four poster bed. the flash exploded and residual light bounced around inside the black pools of their eyes for a moment, distracting, but not enough to spin renton far enough from his original argument.

"ay dunnay want t'muuse 'ead."

"fine." juels snorted, flapping the polaroid in the hollowed ditch of her cheek.

his battered body swayed towards her bed, his feet kissing the warped hardwood farewell as he collapsed belly-up on her mattress, skull lulling over the lip of the edge, watching his sister turn back to her crowded closet, pulling out long-forgotten treasures and stringing them from the bed's footboard and all the way back. his exaggerated limbs broke at tragic angles, cloaking his eyes with a filthy palm. jay's leather jacket, a vase from rex's apartment, a shoebox full of photos of a pair of brothers--one who gave her life in bloody palms and one who tore at her heart with a six inch blade. these things, lost in drifts of knockoff gowns and amputated carousel horse parts and splintering wood statues of meth-born demons, made renton's skin crawl, reminders of men that had drove juels to the edge in luxurious vehicles of destruction.

"well, how many shoes do you think i can get away with taking?" she turned from the closet, two pairs of strappy heels hung from a curl of knuckles that mocked a claw, swinging them quizzically. "or do you think i can just buy new shoes? it is paris, after all. it's not like i'm going to need these cheap american shoes.."

renton had peered through splinters of space that appeared between his knuckles, the upside-down apparition of his sister swimming on the back of his eyelids, captured in mid-shoe-toss, frothy white curls obscuring her face and smoke spinning itself in a tornado around her body.

"ar' y'rilly eavin..?"

"of course. what do you mean? why? did you talk to devon?" the battle-scarred valkyrie's eyes flattened dangerously, matted under a roll of doomsday clouds as she turned to renton, searching his face for anything that she did not know. renton knew his half blind sister only trusted that mysterious street thug as much as he did her. not much.

"nah, ay jis..ah." his palm clenched, pressing his eyes back into his skull before his fist fell away, knuckles scraping the floor, teasing the dust bunnies at the edge of the bed. "ay'll miss yew."

"aww, i know." flattered, the thunderstorm cleared from her eyes, chased by a rickety smile that broke the flat red line of her mouth. "but we can be pen pals. and you know what they say."

renton grunted, shaking his head and turning his face towards the mirrored headboard of her bed. he stared into the empty gashes of his eyes, a blurred hurricane of skin and bone rising onto the bed beside him in an awkward ballet of affection, a rail-thin thigh tossed over his hips. obese snow-blown curls skated across the pronounced ridges of his ribcage, so that she could have one last listen to the pipe-dream gurgle of a faulty organ.

"distance makes the heart grow fonder."

[cutthroat]

three leaden knocks on the bathroom door was the first she'd heard from her brother since the feeble attempts had getting employed had started, and she escorted him inside with a singsong chirp from the depths of a green fuzzed tub.

"juels," a gang obese steam clouds managed to slip through the renton-sized crack in the door before it shut behind him, clearing the air and giving him a sharper view of the bathroom so electric green that it seemed to throb. he flipped the lid down on the toilet and cracked at his pin-thin middle, shoulders furrowed in familiar dejection with his mouth working out another misery that his pseudo-sister chopped short gracelessly.

"hi rinrin!" one leg, long and glimmering like a unicorn's horn splashed out of the murky bathwater and she wiggled her toes at him in greeting with her eyes still glued to the small television she'd strapped to the wall with a sloppy duct tape rig, a severe black bob wig skewered over the level plane of her eyebrow. "wanna hop in? the news is about to start." she extended her arm in a limited stretch, fruitlessly fanning her fingers towards a pack of pall malls just out of reach on the sink's edge. "wanna hand me those? wanna light it, too? my hands.." she offered soaked, well-pruned palms almost apologetically.

"lookit this, juels, wot th' fuck's this?!" in his hands was a pristine white envelope and a card scribbled in calligraphy, rattling between his knuckles, eyes wet and wounded.

"i don't know, honey. what the fuck is it?" juels gestured for the front of the card with dripping hands, squinting halfblind over the lip of the tub as renton crammed it in her face. "wow.. she's really got some balls! she said she was coming back to the states, but i didn't know why.. shit, wow!"

renton's eyes bloated at the understatement of the century, angrily slapping a silver-gilded invite down on the edge of the astro-turfed tub.

"fuck yah', i'd sey gittin' fucken remarried takes a fuckin pai--"

"no, no," the bewigged banshee frowned, picking up the invite and turning the heavy cardstock over in her soggy palms. "i mean inviting me to the wedding." juels paused, her own eyes clouding over in nostalgia as she tried to level with renton's swampswirl glare. "god, do you remember last time?"

how could he forget? between curt loosing consciousness a record number of times, ana's saran wrap bride's maid gown, juels' daughter insulting the clergy (when juels hadn't been trying to fuck him) and the gallons and gallons of alcohol that flowed, he had enough matrimonial nightmares to plague him for a lifetime. disappointed at juels' lack of indignation, he rushed to pick up the slack, slapping a crude sneer on his lips and letting the tender halfmoon of his spine curve even further, belly shrinking back into a cavern.

"whir doessit sey anythin' 'bout yew?"

"you can't go to a wedding without a date. especially not this one!" the slippery junkie's eyes flattened in menace, sopping fingertips slipping over the invite. "who the fuck else would you take?"

the staggering junkie prince didn't answer, the ridges of his backbone cramped against the tank of the toilet as he just shrugged and averted his eyes, because they were babbling at a million words a moment, speaking for a brokedown soul that couldn't move his mouth, but it was too late. the slightly sightless valkyrie was already gripping the edge of the tub, rising up in a tiny tidal wave of gritty gray water that splashed at her ribs and ran in rivers down her shoulders.

"oh, renton, no..."

[cutthroat]

"All of your friends wanted to have sex with me, Renton." Leave it to his sickle-souled half of a sister to warm a chilly expression, the rehearsal dinner's atmosphere a cheery, excitement laced haze broken only by a black cloud of discontent above the gemini junkie. He wore a somber black suit, and she wore her typical silver, white curls pumped full of Aquanet.

"Shut up." Renton flinched, watching a trio of bridesmaids hurricane by in a wash of frenetic giggling and aloof glances down the slopes of their noses. Juels watched them as well, with a predator's slouch, planning ahead for the battle of the bouquet. The blonde looked breakable. Meanwhile, switchblade winged butterflies swarmed in sickly circles around the hollows of Renton's belly, shreddin' hearts lungs and miles of intestine, keeping his eyes cut along the lip of the table while Juels reached over him for a fresh glass of wine sitting at an unoccupied chair.

"Curt wanted it."

"Julia." He desperately tried to shut her up with a little formality, hand dropping under the plane of the table to clutch at her bare, tattooed thigh. Like a lost babe clutching to the shreds of his security blanket.

"Curt could've got it, too. If he wasn't getting stabbed all the time. The question though," Pinkie flexed to the ceiling, she let the rim of the glass rest against the flat yellowing line of her teeth, tongue flopping out to splash in the shallow pool of merlot before continuing. Thigh flexing subtly under the callous of his palm. "The question is why.. I mean, I didn't even have the tits back then.. Mm."

Mismatched eyes caked in ebon silver shimmering powder lifted to catch the scarlett-haired bride laugh and clutch at the arm of a best man across the dance floor. "She must've wanted these pictures to match the old ones," She noted the shift in the Demon's hair color like Renton did not already notice, like he was not already agonizing over the image of those firefresh curls splashed across his empty chest. "Have you seen Milo, yet?"

A dented spine stiffened with a crunch, his eyes slitting granite as he slumped further in his seat, knuckles trying to catch a loose loop of the necktie noosed around his neck, skin crawling under the stolen suit. He'd spent most of the dinner avoiding the groom with his sparkling smile and suit that fit like a second skin; sweat prickling the junk king's upper lip as he resisted the urge to knock the black cowboy hat off his head everytime he saw him put a hand around the Demon's waist, or made her smile..

Juels, indifferent and getting drunker by the minute, she just laughed, watching the groom's parents lead Ryni to a table of punch and cookies. "Don't be bitter, honey. Enjoy yourself!" She hiked up a half drained piece of crystal with a limpwristed hand, giving Rents a snort of disbelief before she emptied the rest. "Open fucking bar!"

[cutthroat]

"sh' r'minds me o' ryni. 'er eyes."

renton's grimy finger traced the mercedes benz emblem embossed into the dashboard infront of him, elbows hanging between the knobby points of two jackknived knees, a cigarette bobbing from his lips and two glasshot eyes the only points of light on his face. the lovesick siblings had flown 'cross a ribbon of crumbling asphalt under a smear of starstudded sky, searching for a dead end where they could pull the car off the road and into a field where they could watch the city's pollution bleed out of the sky in strains of bloated purple clouds. a universe clawing through to peer back at them, just as curious.

"juels."

across the car, renton could hear plastic whisper between scar-crossed knuckles, and she managed to trap the occasional moonbeam in shock-white curls. providing her own halo where god failed so miserably. skin shifting in an uncomfortable itch that she scratched with fire, hot glass and slippery chemical drips. soon, they would be spitting cyphers of unbreakable speech on a radical plane with a savage tilt, reeling in and out of cohesive thought when a couple of words could've satisfied a conversation. juels was eager to get there.

"mmm."

"ar' y'listenen? ay sai--"

"yeah, you wanna fuck your daughter. i heard." the meth gave her voice an icepick edge, cracking behind a veil of smoke, spinner's fingers rolling a burnt glass dick against her lips. "it's disgusting." and she dropped her hand to the gearshift, pipe tucked between her knuckles. renton crossed his wrist over her's and plucked it from the cup of her palm, simultaneously pausing and fueling a slow-boil of frustration that roared behind his eyes, words billowing out with smoke that turned pink bubblegum lungs to glass.

"tha's nawt wot ay fucken sed, juels. th' fuck? did that asshole call yew a hoar 'er somethin' again? yer bein' a re'l bitch an' ay'm jis' tryin' t'fucken talk t'yew.."

"no, you're trying to get me to justify your sick pedo fantasies and christ, you know i'd usually be the first to encourage you to expand your goddamn horizons, but i'm not ju--"

"OH, c'mawn! pedo fucken fantasie--"

"YEAH! fucking sixteen, renton!"

renton recoiled, shoulder smudging the glass window behind him.

"wot kinda fucken monster do yew think ay am?!"

the question caught them both like fishhooks, eyes meeting through a swirl of meth-swirls before juels crumbled first.

"listen," she tried to sound tender, but her throat was raw and crude, and did not play dulcet tricks . "get this virgin outta your blood, baby. you'll kill that little girl."

"yah. 'er yew will."

"mm. . well spotted. but i'm serious. shiv's your kinda' girl, renton." juels tilted her head back against her headrest, casually wrenching the rearview mirror to reflect the illusion of her faux eyelashes and broad red lips, crushing them into a kissy pout. now that juels had the young virgin to villianize, she willing to seduce the idea that shiva was the piece with the shark-tooth edges that fit into the holes of his heart all the other woman had gouged before. and she would undoubtedly be an ally against this peach-skinned baby. "she'll stick around."

renton sat silent, pointing two hollow eyes out to the empty field that sprawled out around them, interrupted only by the seam of concrete they'd rolled in on.

"i said she'll sti--"

"ay 'eard wot y'sed. shiv deserves bett'r. someone who'll .."

"oh renton, someone who what?" with his tired, limping excuses grating on nerves exposed by a slice of an amphetiamine scalpel, juels scrutinized him in a slice of moonline, his trembling palm reaching for a chest that held prisoner a heart that ached when the gutter gaunt filth goddess that flashed in his mind's eye. their flaws flowed in similar veins, and he was terrified of the desert-skinned halfbreed becoming just another scrawl of forgotten ink on whiskeywhipped skin that was slowly scrubbed rawred by the grit of the city and ladylike claws. "someone who won't try an' fuck little girls?"

"jis.. ay know if ay rilly love 'er.. an' touch 'er.. " renton could already feel the sand slipping between his fingers, and that panic on switchblade wings fluttered through his guts, shredding tender swells of adoration that licked at his heart in the sand-sculpted princess, etching a grimace full of fine lines and regret onto hollow ivory cheeks. "we'd end up killin' each other."

and juels knew he wasn't talking about domestic murder. she could already see the love/dopesick duo driving a big black doomsday cadillac to a scummy honeymoon suite where they would coax each other to the slick edge of excess. with no one around to protect either of them, with their eternally gaping veins and empty bellies, they would be found blue and rigid with needle-stuck arms intertwined..

and they filled the silence with stars and foul-smelling smoke that clung to their hair and leaked from quivering nostrils, the occasional back country breeze cooling the slick filth sheen of sweat that served as a second, imperfectly fitting skin for the both of them.

"me and dev' almost fucked in that seat today."

"aaaaawwh!" shoestring limbs flailed in a burst of razor-winged disgust, knuckles clawing for the door's handle as his sickle-tongued sister tumbled backwards into a peel of near-hysteric laughter that flayed the stars from the sky hangin' above.

[cutthroat]

<center>

i used to be
so carefree and jolly
but now it seems
always melancholy
something's wrong
'cos i'm always wasted
something's gone
an' i just gotta face it
i got to change
the the way that i'm livin'
give up the fags
fast food an' the women
cut down on the dope and the drinkin'
think even might up the thinkin'
'cos, well, i don't need much
to make me feel good
no, i don't
need anythin'
but love</center>

<font color="#ffffff" size="1">[ August 02, 2007 08:06 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

"you must be getting sloppy in your old age, renton. this is some typical acting the fuck out cry for attention bullshit. we all know you're worried about shiv, but c'mon..."

somewhere between a federal building bombing and a botched late-night liquor run, with a million miles of scorched earth and the fading trail of a desert-skinned insurgent in between, maybe the half dead boy had abandoned hope. maybe his half-hearted robbery was an attempt to recapture something he was sure he lost in a flashbang of fire and charred human remains.

the gruesome twosome's search across the country in a candy-apple red chariot of american steel had been fruitless, countless hotel-room nights burned away at the end of a glass dick while he shuddered and chased flimsy leads and anonymous tips down crackling telephone wires and filth-blistered backalleys. new mexico, ohio, the rolling hills of arkansas, they honed in on the places no one would ever look. juels struggled to keep the funds pouring in, hair tied up in knots and a kalishnakov mouth that sputtered discouraging words in his ear. she was sure that his crackhouse castle princess was further away than that vintage caddy could ever take them, and eventually they were rolling back into the city, renton defeated. mourning. jonsing for a danger fix, something to bleach out the memory of that fire-born madonna.


"we haven't been home for one day.." her little tattooed fist made a beat to shout to out on the steering wheel. "one fucking day! do you know what i had to do to make bail?!"

once the fire of youth started smoldering out in the pit of their bellies, most vandals realized that you could not survive on knocking over liquor stores and dope alone. and if you did, there'd better be an unbreakable method to your madness. because eventually, that long, crooked arm of the law would come shooting out of the shadows to snap you up by the collar, breaking your rebel yell spirit with one good shake. throwing you to the gaping maw of some snake-pit correctional facility that would inevitably sharpen criminal skills, or even worse, drug rehabilitation counseling to brainwash the filthy dopefiend masses.

he'd done it a million times before, with a million pretty young things at his side, but with his heart breaking up into static in his chest, with dope-glossed eyes, something went wrong. instead of grabbing the bottles and bolting for the door, actions all built into his bones bent to offend, confusion had pinched him up by the windpipe and made him wonder what the hell he was doing there, with that naive young stranger at his side and a hawk-eyed clerk breathing down his neck. he'd only made it halfway down the block, with a wave of broken-bottle tequila flooding behind him, before the cop's sirens were screaming, their searchlights stretching his shadow up and down the dark streets.

"you should've let the girl take the blame. she's was pretty enough to bat her lashes through it.."

red blue light splatter still caked the backsides of renton's eyelids, and the smell of a piss-stained jail cell hung in his nose even as juels turned the rumbling cadillac down an endless black-out road that curved gently towards the muck-pumping heart of the swamps. he had a bright yellow folder full of court papers in his lap, and a broken record reel spinning in his head. the court hereby orders you to a mandatory six months drug counseling and rehabilitation..

"this will be good for you, brother. just think how good at lying you'll get.."

[cutthroat]

sometime after juels fled the apartment in a hurricane of gasoline cans and rubber tubing with those baying shar peis in tow, the sun eventually climbed high enough to reach into his windows. impatient fingers jabbing a mellow wakeup call into the bruised smear of his face against the pillow. pawing a cordless phone away from his mouth with lips ripped up in a disgusted snarl, he bent his spine backwards and dug his palms inbetween the lumps of his mattress, sleep-swollen eyes blinking back the last smokey dregs of a dream crumbling at the corners of his eyes. a hangover melody throbbed to a four beat count at his temples, keeping time with the staggered way he rolled his hips against the smear of dirty bedsheets, pulling a desperate breath in through the raw-ragged pipes of his throat as his eyes searched the water-stained ceiling.

he kept his movements slow, through the ritual of a morning cigarette fished off the junkyard of the bedside table, through the whiskey-bleached recall of last night.

over the edge of his dirty mattress, he reached for a fresh spiral notebook, shucking off a tangled plastic bag, letting it fall open to a sterile white page over the his knee.

with his knuckles rigored in an unfamiliar clutch, his script was a juvenille scrawl bleeding from the tip of a pencil. licking an arctic glacierbaby aftertaste off his lip and bathed in a jaundiced mourning light, renton took the unsteady fourth step of his court-ordered recovery.

"i don't know what i ever did to deserve this."

[cutthroat]

<center>

"sane's a relative term, baby..
you stick with renton, you'll be a goddamn
shining beacon of sucess and

rationality." </center>

[cutthroat]

the chipped formica table was almost completely obscured by envelopes, but none of them were addressed to hollywood. the mongrel prince flung opposite the table, working the deep creases out of a single letter floating atop the sea of stolen mail. his hands were still filth-fouled, but the hollows under his eyes, usually gray and defeated, were slowly being filled in. sobriety was packing the pounds on the ex-junkie, and the dark clouds that would occasionally roll over his eyes seemed to be moving out of habit alone. broke-down flesh machinery adjusting to a new type of fuel, still spitting and sputtering, trying to grind old habits between it's gears.

"what's that?" the re-blonde bombed whore bent herself over the paper and jabbed a crooked finger at the letter's signature. "that, what the hell is that supposed to be?"

"s'..s'liek--" he was tattooing that ugly little scribble on the back of his eyelids with a series of hard blinks. mostly to obscure the mental image of his gutter-gaunt meth-banger all skeeter-bit and sweltering alone in some dirty south squallor.

"it's like goddamn terrorist code, renton!"

"juels!"

"i'm just doing my part renton." gutting a pre-approved credit application addressed to a louis guerrero with the tattooed scythe of her finger, juels let her lips pucker into a self-important smooch. "as an american." and she shot him a look with her trust all spiked splinters under her eyelashes.

"fucken drop it, juels.." her paranoia, once a fantastic and heavy-handed inspiration, was becoming another creeping annoyance for the 30 days sober swamp eyed boy, and he was bending the letter in on itself before she had a chance to check it for scrawls of subliminal sleeper cell jabber. tucking it inside of a pale brown blazer that hung off him like it was stolen, into the pocket that pressed on his heart. he'd keep her there, until she got back. "y'gawt her own mail t'read.."

"mm." the witchbaby made a non-committal sound in her throat, disappearing behind a sheaf of terms and restrictions for visa's new platinum plus program. "hand me that bank statement, baby."

<font color="#ffffff" size="1">[ August 13, 2007 10:37 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<u>RESENTMENTS.</u>


worksheets littered the floor, and renton was crouched over them like a deranged crab. notebook balanced on the slant of his thigh, flipped open to a crisp new page while emeraldrot eyes skimmed the paper-scattered horizon, trying to avoid an unsteady pen hovering over the page.

Step Four is a fact-finding and fact-facing process. We are searching for causes and conditions.

he sighed, blowing out mostly smoke and bent his eyebrows in frustration.

"i am resentful at.."

"this thing says your sponsor's supposed to be here." she was hung in his doorframe suddenly out of nowhere, probably conjured out of a curl of cracksmoke and clatter of dice. kindergarten scrawl faltered. "who's your sponsor, renton?"

he was penning her name before he even looked up at her, before he could even think why.

"can it be me?" she threw her hair over her shoulder, dropped the silly blue book and oozed into the room, bare toes knuckled up on scratched hardwood. "you know what a great actress i am." in a fashion similar to her appearing act, a heavy ornamental cross had hung itself around her tattooed neck, sometime between his arrest and her new/old dyejob..she fondled it and jackyl-grinned at him suggestively.

"no, can't be yew."

"right." she sloshed a lime-spiked gin drink in his face, jagged rocks of ice banging on the side of a dirty tumbler, dropping next to him. "guess not. so who is it? did they assign you one, or did you get to pick? or did they put all you drunks in cages and let them pick?"

"why don'tcha come t'a meetin' an' git one y'self?" his hand had apparently amputated itself from his body that was tensed up and unflinching except for his weary breathing, scratching a gouge around juels' name.

"oh, fuck you, renton. don't try and brainwash me!" in a splash of gin and greasy blond curls, she was spitting down at him from a lock-kneed leer. "i don't want to join your silly little club!"

"y'think ay'm 'avin' th'time o'm'fucken life, juels?!" he smacked his notebook off his knee, in an obvious fucking gesture of just how wonderful it all was. lurching up at her, in a sudden move of violence that wiped out most of his vision in a tunnel of black. she was a milk-white light, unafraid.

"obviously!" he came out of that tunnel to her raw red mouth blaring in his face. in under five minutes, she'd turned twelve different shades, a rainbow of slurred emotion that seemed to swing in huge unstable arcs to compensate for the lack of shit in renton's veins. she had to make up for his new failure somehow.

"EAT SHIT, RENTON."