Bogart & Sons

Illusionists are the worst. An individual has no viable defence against them.
I raise my hands to my throat, but there’s nothing to grasp at. I can’t breathe. I can’t see.
It feels like wearing a strait-jacket, or like being bound by coils of rope, only they are tough as steel and heavy as lead. I might be screaming, but can’t hear myself, because he’s controlling all my sensory perception.
Suddenly it’s gone and I fall to the floor. I can barely inhale, wavering on the edge of consciousness. Through the fog of oxygen deprivation I hear a familiar voice.

It’s echoes of me from the time before Genet that resurface. Faced with people I genuinely dislike and stuck in an irresponsible mood, I become the terror I once used to be.
“Father, who art in Heaven,” the priest mutters, vainly trying to pull further away from me.
I’m not enjoying this body-guarding shtick. The confessional's cramped.
The only consolation is that my principal's freaking out completely: sweaty palms, taut nerves, shaking voice. Reducing a man of God to a man is strangely satisfying. And easy. You just have to stand… really… really… close.
No wonder I got myself disinherited.

Dan makes his last stand inside a school.
He’s armed with an Uzi and wears a vest of dynamite.
We thought he was one of the little criminals, the bullied kids that have grown into bullied adults and found the means to take their pain out on the world, starting with making up unfortunate villainous pseudonyms.
I step out of a shadow and put a switchblade into Mr de Lyon’s eye before he can fire himself up.
There’s screaming. I guess I’ve just traumatised thirty eight-year-olds… but in the end, mission's accomplished.
"Kids," I say, "that's why bullying is wrong."

Walking into the charity event is like stepping into my past.
My face is still well-known; people recognize me despite sunglasses. They mutter, unflattering and downright offensive, releasing years’ worth of accumulated spite.
I know what they’re saying.
Disgraced. Disinherited. Shame on the family’s name.
And there’s my Father, sitting on his metaphorical Tycoon Throne, looking down on his subjects. My Mother speaks to the caterers, a demure and elegant Queen of Engineering.
Look, my little sister. The perfect, beautiful princess I never could have been.
I touch the skull motif on my glove and get ready to raise Hell.

I find Quetzal squatting in front of the open fridge and blankly staring inside. “Is Mithra pregnant?”
“Not as far as I know,” I say.
“Are you?”
“Nope.”
Distressed, he turns his head to me. “Is either of you on some kind of a weird diet?”
“Nope.” I lean down and look inside over his shoulder.
There are yesterday’s lasagna leftovers, some olives, more olives, a jar of pickles, three eggs, two beer cans, bottles of ketchup, milk, vermouth and vodka (because Mithra and I can’t ever agree on one type of alcohol).
I shrug. “Guess it’s another take-out day.”

Dr Cato is stunned speechless when I nail her to the wall. The perpetual simpering smile freezes on her face. By the time she realises that her team of costumed Sailor Moon rejects aren’t coming for her, soft canine whinges start issuing from her throat.
It’s unbelievably cathartic.
I pull one of my shuriken out of her sleeve and wave it under her upturned nose. “You didn’t expect these, did you?”
Perks of shuriken is that you can hide them well. Even in business casual.
“That’s a dirty trick,” she grumbles sourly.
I choose to take that as a compliment.

“You killed my brother!” Apollyon shrieks, raising his mace.
I should be frightened, panicking, running away.
I can’t move.
“I did not.” Of that much, at least, I’ve always been sure. It was an accident, followed by gross incompetence of medical personnel. I was in coma for two months myself. None of it was my fault, beyond the fact of my existence.
“You did!” he snarls at me, blind and deaf to all rational arguments.
I meet his eyes – the same colour as Yorick’s were – and for a moment we understand each other perfectly. Two people still mourning someone irreplaceable.

There’s a young man in an indecently tight yet fluffy overall.
Not a lot gives me creeps, but this does.
“…and who are you?” Mithra asks, undecided between outrage and mirth.
“I am the Coypuman!” the boy cries out and waves his cattle rod around. “Down with the government! Anarchy is the only way to live! Be yourself!”
I have a momentary vision of smacking him on the nose with rolled up newspaper and telling him to carefully rethink his life’s choices. Not that I think it – or anything – could help him.
“Dude, does your mother know that you’re gone?”

“Art? No,” Genet denies. “It’s only similar in that to become truly great at it, you need to have natural talent. It’s in fact lots of hard work and at least as much luck.”
“And you call it science?” I’ve always thought that psychology is a game. “Science shouldn’t depend on luck.”
“All science is but luck and guesswork. Or God, should you prefer that explanation.”
“I definitely don’t.”
Genet laces his fingers. “Stop looking for purpose in a psychopath’s actions. The actions are their own purpose. He is creating art – and art needs but be to fulfill its purpose.”

Mithra comes in while I‘m sitting Indian style in the swivel chair, cleaning the blades of my faithful Fairbairn-Sykes daggers with a rag that used to be someone’s hundred percent cotton shirt. She surveys the party of dead bodies with variously perforated necks, torsos, and abdomens.
Eventually, she dryly points out a big, muscled guy lying half under the desk. “That one is still alive.”
I glance at the breathing exception and admit: “He has a green jacket.”
Mithra looks at me like I am the weird one.
“What?” I shrug. “I like green, but that jacket wouldn’t fit me.”