The peruvian flake.

[greedy fly]

<center>

my violence is a dream
a 'real dream'
a skinny arm
a crush on living sin
my violence
is a sleeping head
nodding out to rising bliss
i left home for experience
carved 'suck for honesty' on my chest
my violence is the number
coming out of prayer

-- sonic youth</center>

[greedy fly]

The limosuine stretched along winding mountain roads, and the trees blurred by like gothic Monet splotches. He lolled his head back on the seat. The fresh tan leather fragrance always triggered an immediate headache. He viced the bridge of his nose, momentarily before churning in place to emotionlessly scale the window view again. He had shaven the beard that peppered his face while he had been sleeping. But the ugly scar on his belly --- that wouldn't go away.

A young man in a bowler hat sat beside him, distracted by the back of the driver's head. His steel-colored hair dripped like greasy rainfall along the cunning lines of his cheeks. He nursed a cigarette, and filled the silence with smoke that twirled like ballet dancers.

Verona broke the smug silence with a raspy hum that the other had to strain to hear.

"Where was Bates buried?"

"No one knows. But he's dead, Mr. Glass."

He shifted again, but this time to pan over the other man's face.

"And Lethe?"

Under his boss' radar he broke the news with a a banal crackle of a smoker's cough and an innocent prod of his shoulders.

"No one knows where she is, Mr. Glass. We've been looking for her. And the kid."

Verona outwardly cringed, but his jawline shaped into a tense riot of white and protruding muscles. It was no secret that he was very, very angered by the news.

[greedy fly]

The murmuring cursive lines of life support was the only steady sound in the still room.

The nurse splashed a dim shadow over his starched linen, and dimpled her thumb against his chin. Her nail was glossy pink lemonade with an artificial rounded tip that teetered on his bottom lip. She was homely, if even that. Her hair was dyed a cheap drug store auburn, and her boyish bob was even cheaper. Her lids were polished with velveteen burgundy and her drawn-on brows were crunched with pity.

This poor handsome, handsome man was never going to wake up.

Her wrist feathered away, and she lost her interest in admiring his tan skin which could outrun all these months without a hint of sunlight. She pinched his feeding tube, and began the tedious chore of unwinding cords and changing bags.

As though there were jumper-cables clenched on his nerve-endings, his lashes split from their zipperhold and his tar-bled stare crashed over the bland ceiling. His hand gave a telltale flinch, but she was oblivious, until she heard the thirsty hum in the back of his throat.

Her gaze took a doe-eyed snapshot to him, and her hand dropped the bag and instead took a patriotic slam against her startled heart.

"Oh my go--you're awake---" Her foosteps stammered backwards and she clapped a hand on the pastel wallpaper for stability. She began to yell out the gaping doorway.

"Doctor! I need a doctor in here!"

The nurse lurched forward and braced her hands on the metal rails on the side of his bed. The corners of his mouth were frothy, and he was choking on words. He seemed to become even more increasingly angry when he realized his vocal cords weren't cooperating.

By the time a half-balding, gawky doctor strolled in at his own leisure, to wipe the nurse aside, three syllables were sputtered in silence.

Valentine.

And he slipped into a fractured smile fit for a loon.

If his memory served him correctly Valentine Bates was dead.

And that meant that he won. The peruvian flake never felt so happy to be alive-- not since the day his baby girl had been born.