SNUFF (h.s.)

Chapter 41

See You Later, Alligator

Harry was the last wanderer squandering the earth, lying with his exhausted arms above his head. The butterfly is burning, it becomes a lizard and the fat cold sand swallows it under the cactus' shade at noon. The shadow made by the dawning moon is the most secretive and most revealing.

The Caddy was parked near a commune, far enough for the tents to fit on his nail. The dense palm trees are mirrored in the holes of his pupils leading inside the a cobra's serpentine body. His eyes were azure as the hottest flames.

You don't know what you're doing. Are you? The Shaman asks each one and underestimates none of the two. In a few hours California will emerge with the grace of a newborn child. Though we have come this way and have reached this place it is not enough, Nora answers.

His blonde hair were gleaming. They were falling on his shoulders as if they were adorned by a timid golden halo. The sun had whitened them. All the colors were intertwined in them and all together absent. A heavy breath heated his nape making his hand slip on his skin. He sucked his cheeks and his face was lengthened as if he had two small pathetic puddles instead.

"Come here...", she sees a hazed reflection of his lifted in the dirt the wind blows, "Come here", she kisses him, "And so, it all changes"

He felt his eyelashes touching hers. He held her hand with his empty own. He tightened her hair with his fingers. He was trying to grope on her thinking but discovered that nothing honest remained on his palm. He had seen the flesh cut as a boat splits the water.

Nora touched his chest as a cigarette was between her fingers, the ash was gathered unfalling until it hovered like dew and sat on her sweating skin becoming a gray river. She clenched her wrist. She was stiffening the Bowie knife's handle. The blade was a womb guarding a microscopic Nora. Harry watched, his body wrinkled. His skin grafted and smeared, the hairs of his body became hard as if they were of an insect's. Her existence was weighing his crotch, she was twirling in his genitals; her birth would come at his sudden emasculation. She'd fall to sea and rise (Schiele).

The trumpets of terror are fooling him. The blade's beam blinds him as the first light hurts the infant. Harry wasn't speaking after the incident at the church. Her eyes were stinging, her feet were numb after sitting on her knees for hours. She had noticed the bruises on his ribs and back. Her fingers had dried mud still.

"I fitted with you", she might be talking to herself, "You made ambitious dreams. Here the wealth, here the amusement, here the rich dinners, here the important people. What they could hope for was to reach you"

"You were never interested in these"

"You love them. You'd be loyal for them without a pair of winkers"

Harry pretends to be indifferent for her words.

"Until they made you raise your own hand to get rid of the shovel"

"Sergio knows his job and where I was useful to it"

"He pledged you promises. He convinced you a glass of wine is more precious than a glass of water"

"He didn't promise me bullets for love hearts"

"No, he was honest. I wasn't honest"

Harry doesn't understand what she means. He tries to interpret her words, Nora does not speak in clarity. He suspects, he remains indifferent. He doesn't dare to regret for his decisions, he confesses his complaint.

"I'd save my breath and I'd have what I wanted. What of it?", his finger made a movement imitating a gunshot, "What would it mean? Then I'd sit and watch the diesel flow meter count. Why does it have to cross my mind twice? Are them better when they break their backs for a bone?"