Unwritten

Billy Driscoll's Receipts

Wanna know how General Driscoll shot two people dead at an island resort? Here's how he did it:

Billy was a man of character until a woman first told him he wasn't. That's not suggestive reasoning or anything, just collateral. A defense mechanism. Billy was never a man of character, but he used to try to be one. Now, his heart beats easy being called a tool, because he makes sure everyone knows it, and he can tell himself it's all an act. Just as it is physically, with neurons and vessels, it's the disjuncts that kill it; when he thinks as hard as he can, and can only think of himself as kind or funny or talented, and others disagree.

It's something he's thought of before, even something he's disclosed to people he thought he had something with. The knowledge of his intentions is indeed one of the only reasons he's able to live with himself, but now, it's the farthest thing from his mind. At the moment, Billy's in it. He thinks of the cherry wood detailing on the rifle in his arms, and how it gives under the force of his fingernails. How the blood on the barrel is still fresh, and that he's touching it without qualms. How his neck is flushed with a mix of both nervous and overheated sweat, and how the high sun shimmers off it like Vaseline.

As she has been since he picked up that infernal gun, Pam is staring him down - he can feel it as tangible as two stakes being driven into his back - and as her eyelids flutter, so do the lips of the demon roosting in his ear. It tells him to write. To put his finger on the trigger and type up something the world will hear about.

He shakes.

The party he started the search with walks ahead of him, and Pam and Chucky are of course staying a distance behind. How can they offer their vulnerable backs to him, he thinks of Ida and Brendan. They're both wearing low collars, weighed down by the dampness, so he can see the napes of their necks, and brings forth such a predatory desire, that his finger almost slips over the trigger.

That instinct; it swells in his mind. His mind swells, pulsating, pushing at his skull like a raptor in an egg. 'Rapture,' it mewls. Without permission, his cracked lips go to repeat it, but Billy bites down and it comes out only as a breath. He shakes, and his grimace jars loose, sending a canine on a tear across his tongue. It draws blood - oh, how he tastes it - and piques an appetite.

He shakes.

The stabbing at his back keeps getting worse. He spins around to see if Pam is approaching him, and instead learns that she isn't there at all. Chucky is gone too. All that's left of them is pain and the feeling he's being watched, toyed with. Heat washes over him - a heat that clings to the skin and fills it with itches. Ferns bite at his heels, just above the cuff of his ankle socks, and those itch. His finger, God, it itches. His finger, on the trigger, God, it almost itches. Worst of all, he points it at them. His vision flickers between the barrel and their backs, trying to see anything other than the real trajectory, but then he gets distracted - he sees their weakness, and their flesh, and he imagines turning it inside out. Right now, he knows what will happen, what he will do, and he pulls up on the gun. It only shakes between the two potential victims - and they're just walking ahead. They won't even know what happened to them. Billy keeps pulling the danger of towards sky, or the trees, or anywhere but there, but his subconscious is just as strong, and his trigger is itching. He can hardly keep his eyes open just to fight with himself, but he does, and that makes all the difference. It's happening, he wants to shout, he wants to tell the world to stay away from him, and he just can't.

As the powder ignites and screeches to life, something electric blue and bright red lands just at the edge of his vision. It's a parrot, and a slug flies so fast towards it, it can only 'squa-' before feathers, only feathers, fall down over Ida and Goose.