hollywood

**cutthroat** · October 6th, 2006, 03:31 AM

before you kiss me you should know
papa was a rodeo
</center>

[ October 05, 2006 12:33 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · October 16th, 2006, 05:58 PM

"What color are her eyes?"

It was the first thing she'd said since they'd left the city. Truthfully, it was the first thing she'd said since last night at the bar, when Renton cowered under the thick blue smog of the dive's atmosphere and refused to defend Jeuls' honor as a red-haired tranny mocked her white leather hot pants. Her last words had been "Fuck this! Some brother you are!", before sulking off down a sidestreet in a fog of amphetamines and techno music. It was for the best, Renton was sure he felt the inklings of a grand mal at the base of his spine after a night bathed in strobes.

Instead of train, or plane, the twins ate up the sunbleached asphalt ribboned across the nation byborrowed convertible. First, Renton wondered if Norma had some kind of play in this, tipped off by the candy paint and long seductive curls of chrome, the auto's body almost hugging the concrete underneath. But with Jeuls behind the wheel, he soon had other things to worry about besides getting busted for speeding down the interstate in a stolen car with a trunkful of dope and two pounds of weed bouncing in the back-seat. Whiteknuckle on the dash, he tried to lean into her mad caddy turns, alert her of oncoming traffic (language stunted at throat-cutting yelps) and steady the wheel when she tried to steer with her knees, to employ tiny fists riddled in scars (like she broke windows for a living) with joint rolling or the perilous task of cutting up lines of coke on a compact mirror. Eventually, the road's curves stiffened into a smooth seam of blacktop and he was able to point an elbow out the window and relax.

Two hundred sixteen miles (Renton was counting mile-markers, occasionally missing a few to lean out the window and point to bovine gangs or a mangled tangle of roadkill in the ditch, trying to get Jeuls talking) west of Colby, Kansas, she started asking questions. Anything was better than her silence, thick and heavy, making Renton clutch his thighs in an anxious gesture. He would rather she be ranting and screaming, tearing at her cheeks and writhing in gut-grinding shrieks.

"Renton." She hated having to repeat herself, but most of her words were stolen by the wind whipping across their foreheads, cleansing them of their citystench. "What color. Are her eyes?"

"Blue." Wistfully and without hesitation, he read it from the heavens, unmarked by clouds and disrupted only by the occasional roar of a low-flying crop-duster. From the stretch of heaven that smeared from one edge of the highway to the other. It was so flat out here. He could get used to this. "Like 'er momma's."

"No, not Ryn, you asshole. Sheeba. Shank, whatever. That girl. Her eyes. What color are they." Her crooked phrases were short and choppy, manipulated by cocaine.

The silence was back, only this time it was Renton who encouraged it, stroked it placidly with a calloused palm. Watching the wheatfields roll by in fast-forward, edited into golden heartland smears that distracted him from the gnawing ache in his chest, the fleeting clutch of panic that fondled the corpse of his heart.

"Tha's a fucken bullshit question." Before she could cleave his slur short with a wide-eyed yelp, he twisted from the window and shoved a finger in her face. "Yew know it. Fucken eye color isnn't important. Ay'm nawt fucken in love wiff'er eyes."

"Oh, Renton. That's right! You're in love with her fucking hair!? Jesus Christ, I'm really rooting for this one!" Porcelain fists pounded the steering wheel in a stubborn tattoo, shaking her head like a spooked horse. "For you! What color are her eyes!"

"Sh' likes olives!" He squealed in his defense, scrambling for memories of his gutter-gaunt princess dressed in tatters, sprawled in his truckbed or veneered in a dopefiend haze. Most of them were bleached white and useless by alcohol, adrenaline. Just flashes of frenzied red hair and desert skin.

"Come the fuck on! She doesn't like olives! That's just all Greece has! And!" The blunt nose of the auto sliced over the gully of the road, shouldering into the opposite lane erratically. "You never even gave them to her! I used them for fucking martinis during fashion week!"

Rubber gnawed at the highway's shoulder as she veered off course, gnashing her teeth in a debased smile at her brother before pointing the nose of the convertible back towards the median line. Her poor brother, who probably wished more than anything that he could remember these quaint, romantic details, who dreamed of a docile life complete with wedding rings and his and her towel sets, her dreary twin who couldn't seem to remember the mistakes he'd already made, no matter how deep they cut into him. And if he did, he refused to learn from them, staggering through life as an uneducated heartbreaker with monster eyes, cloaked in an unshakable sense of failure.

"Renton." She had to consciously unlock her jaw with a click, toes studdering on the gas pedal.

Chewing on the thick, calloused skin of his thumb, he folded his shoulder closer to the car door, letting the wind thread his overgrown black hair out of the window, black greased streamers.

"Aw, Renton, c'mon, don't stress it!" Between cursory glances to the asphalt, she saw that dejected slump of his spine and the uncovered slice of skin across his lower back with "kiss my tara" tattooed crudely in block letters and her heart broke a little more. "I'm sorry! You two are just so perfect for each other, it's disgusting! Just give it a fucking chance. For once! For once in your goddamn miserable life! Grab this by the neck and shake the life out of it!" She was poised in a stumblina's tripfall grace on the edge of hysterics, the wind tearing at her fake eyelashes, foot like a brick in stiletto heels on the gas. They were flying.

"..."

"They're brown, anyway."

And as the mountains rose before them, jagged pieces of broken earth ripping through the edges of the prairie, she sang at the setting sun, eyelashes fluttering down her cheeks.

"Brown, brown, brown!"

[ October 17, 2006 01:24 AM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · October 28th, 2006, 09:33 PM

Pais' ashes had arrived early in the morning, with Renton nowhere to be found. And she'd drained half a bottle of vodka staring at the little brown package jealously. Before she had a chance to flush the burnt up remains down her astroturfed toilet, the phone rang.

"Julie, you junkie piece of shit, wh--"

"Tar'! How nice of you to call! Renton's not home right now. He hasn't been home in awhile! Not a chance you've seen 'em, right?"

"Did you tell him to go back to Scotland?"

"What?"

"You bitch, if this is one of your bullshit ideas, I swear to god, I'll find you and beat you within an inch of your life. With those tacky-ass Gucci heels you wore to Ryn's party. You've got to stop fucking with him,"

"I didn't tell him anything! I haven't seen him in days! He wants to move out, Tar!" The dainty junkie's vocals cracked in that familiar hysteria. The demon knew she'd have to hang up soon. "He wants to leave me!"

"He called and asked for more money, to take Pais back to Glasgow. This wasn't one of your fucking schemes?"

"He what?"

"Talk to him, get his fucking head straight. I don't have time for this bullshit."

And before Jeuls could spit another backhanded defense, the line went dead, and her one good eye rolled to the box of ashes on the coffee table.

[ October 28, 2006 09:57 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · October 28th, 2006, 09:36 PM

i wear my scars like the rings on a pimp.
i live life like the captain of a sinking ship.
</center>

[ November 19, 2006 05:17 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · November 21st, 2006, 01:27 AM

these were all memories that would end up on the cluttered floor of their subconcious, the intricate knots of their brains already so stuffed with this hospital room drama that there just wasn't room for anymore. neurological pulses raced through them, reminding them that they were getting too old for this, that the body was running of of places to store such sorrow.

"please don't tell tara."

without his oily curtians of black hair to hide behind, he trembled in the sick white wash of the industrial lighting. soon they would roll him out of this hospital bed and back into the gutter, blood barely done weeping from his wounds.

"don't tell tara what? about that ridiculous haircut?"

so he pulled back into his empty-eyed silence, knowing his sutured secret was safe in the vaulted heart of his ash-eyed twin.

[ November 20, 2006 11:48 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · November 27th, 2006, 06:48 PM

This was not the first time Renton had thrown his fates into the wind with such reckless abandon, flexing his body in a beautiful swandive off the mortal coil. Rewind to four years ago, the night that Jeuls still had nightmares about, sitting bolt upright, ripped from a nightmare and muffling a shriek into the lingering stench of chlorine and vomit. If Ryni wouldn't have been sobbing so loud, if the cold night air sneaking in through a broken window had not teased her from sleep, she never would've found him there, floating face down, blue and bloating.

It was Chicago all over again, only without the bullets and the blood, and at least she wouldn't have to scrub Renton's brain off the bathroom tile. It was like the stopping of a heart had a Pavlov's effect on the deranged hustler, she would always coming running, mouth splashed in drool to the call of a lonely man's deathrattle.

When the paramedics fished him out of the pool and rolled him onto his back, he coughed up a lung full of water and vomit, gurgled a name and slipped back into unconsciousness. The medics had to bind the wild junkie queen's withered arms to keep her from flinging her wrists around his bloodless neck in a fit of manic affections, but they couldn't do anything to silence her symphonic of screams that harmonized with the crib-rattling wailings of the little girl in the doorway.

But it wasn't suicide, Renton was just trying to win the race. Beat his blood, before it had a chance to cripple him indefinitely, before the claws of this disease dug in too deep and weakened his bones and thinned his blood to a useless slush of dope and regret.

"Who? Who? Stupid fucking junkies! Who the fuck did this to him? How could he be so stupid?!"

When the doctors mouth split and the terrible news came pouring out, it was Tara's turn to cry, while Ryni clutched her hand in confusion and Jeuls stared dead-eyed into the night as the bustling hive of the hospital worked relentlessly around her. While Jeuls had been bred for panic and long nights outside of a hospital and eased through the tension with a undeniable grace, Tara wore her sorrow like a badly tailored dress, tripping over the hem and constantly trying to keep it from falling off in a liquid swirl of red. While she couldn't feel death creeping 'round the corners of her arteries, she still worked her mind in a frenzied rewind, to remember the last time the sad junkie prince had sunk between her thighs, and Jeuls could read the panic there, marqueed across her lovely blue eyes.

"It was Jacqueline, Tara." Jeuls had long ago trained her mouth to move in the methodical motions of smoking, able to function past the smeared black tearstains around her eyes and ragged hike of each breath. "Remember Jaq?" Of course she did. When putting together the inventory of their crumbling marriage, they should've scripted her name at the top of the list. Another wisp of smoke punctuated her weary sigh, eyes cutting from Tara's hysteric-stretched features to the earth, concrete beneath her feet and continually tilting underneath her knockoff Prada stilettos. "Maybe they had some kind of death pact."

"Why wouldn't he tell me? Why would he keep something like this a secret? Julia, how long have you known?"

"I haven't," The meth-soured Soviet snapped irritably and pulled the faux mink lapels of her fur coat around her throat, bitterness born from secrets, betrayed again. "I didn't know, he didn't tell me, either."

Four years later, and their life was rerunning like a bad sitcom, set to a screaming riot soundtrack. Only this time, Tara just sighed wearily into the telephone and shook her head, comfortable enough to forget this time with the buffer of the ocean between them; and Jeuls, she just straightened her wig and disappeared into the night, leaving behind the badblood Prince and his miseries.

**cutthroat** · December 14th, 2006, 02:06 AM

<center>
she wore a nightie when she worked on the ave
in shiny black stilettos and a red leather bag
she tipped her dope up front and went south
she would pick your pocket with your dick in her mouth
after she left a trick broke, she'd hit 'em up for a smoke
then count her loot and go shoot some coke
she was cute as a button, sweeter than a muffin
but she'd slit your throat if you didn't pay her for her lovin'
me and her first met on vine and sunset
she was pourin' sweat out the corvette
she looked at me and cringed said, hey you over there
if you've a syringe follow me and i'll share
we went back to my room and used my harpoon
noddin' off on the couch, watchin' cartoons
and when the sun went down she said see you around
last i heard of her moved up town
keepin' the place tidy for some high payin' fool
one night she thought she was a fish
and drown in the pool</center>

[ January 03, 2007 09:29 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]

**cutthroat** · January 4th, 2007, 01:31 AM

</center>

**cutthroat** · January 9th, 2007, 03:59 AM

unlike the desert skinned hellbaby, jeuls had years of experience in tracking down the young, cripple-soul junkie king when he would disappear down his blackout rabbit hole of self sabotage and fear. so instead of knocking fruitlessly on windows and fighting the silence with gashthroated whispers, jeuls used the misery they shared to find him collapsed in a sleazy hotel's bedroom or getting blown in a dirty shadow of his favorite dopeden. all she had to do was press her ear to the concrete and wait for the slow throb of his heart to whisper from the cracks in the asphalt, so she could follow it's broken down melody through the familiar maze of filth-fouled alleys and whorehouses, track it to it's source that had tricked the traumatized organ to pump poison instead of blood.

this time, the stunted whispers led her to the muddy banks of the river where he was bent and blue underneath the cheshire moon, letting the thick black water lap at his fingertips, but too afraid of washing away the terrible things he needed to remember to slip too far into the tide. so she grabbed him by muck-crusted belt loops and drug him back to the streets, to the shadows that bowed and opened up filthy and wide to the sickly trash gemini.

the sky was a midnight marbled blue, greasy purple clouds of pollution bearing down on the jagged curve of the earth and blending with the billows of smoke that left their mouth as jeuls led her brother up the rickety rungs of a wrought iron fire escape that squealed and spit rustflakes in objection when she started pulling on it with dirty little hands. she moved quick and catlike in tight blue jeans and a stealthy pair of sneakers, kicking dirt down on renton's white face that he turned skyward as clumsy feet tried to mimic jeuls' easy ascent.

clawing onto the tarred roof, even closer to god now but not as close as she'd learned she could be, jeuls dropped a bag off her shoulder and turned on renton, gesturing for an empty hand.

"here, i need you to time me."

"time wot?"

"me. here." she dropped a stopwatch in his crumbling palm, cracking at the joint where long leg bones met to rifle through an oversized gucci knock off purse. she wouldn't be caught dead with one of those gaudy black duffle numbers devon kept stuffed in his trunk. turning the bag upside down, the twisted gemini sister let it's guts clatter across the black rooftop that occasionally caught a flash of the moon and splintered it into a million impersonators captured in tarslick gravel. "i want to surprise devon."

"deh..wot?" renton's mind was still a swampmash of blurry dope-fucked nights, struggling to make the flickering images of his sister affectionately palming the dismembered limbs of a rifle connect, trying to lay it all still against the sprawling cityscape that glittered and burned to the back of his eyelids. she wanted to grab her bony shoulders and steady her himself, but he could feel his own hands quaking, matching the sudden panicked lurch of his heart. "wot?"

"devon. i want to surprise him, so i need you to time me!"

"ay.. iss'at a gun?"

"yeah. after i get under two minutes, we can start working with the blindfold."

she looked so happy when she turned her face to him, a gaping smile and eager eyes, so renton didn't protest, just beeped the stopwatch to life once metal clicked against metal as she started bringing the rifle back to life, piece by piece, letting her fingertips dig into every little crevice. measuring the stock and stroking the barrel, imprinting the ways the parts mated on the grimy slick of her subconscious. it brought a smile to her face and made adrenaline stew at the base of her spine, washing up memories of that first night on a rooftop, the satisfaction of a distant bloodsplash. ever since that first shot, her dreams had played out in the skillfully ground swell of a rifle's scope, twenty stories above civilazation with devon's smokeclotted voice humming a little ditty of tragedies turned into millions down the back of her neck. with all the dirty tricks she kept strapped like bombs to a hollow stomach, it was not surprising that she was so good at dressing up and playing god.