AFTERBIRTH OF A NATION

fourteen.

-Soundtrack: "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin.

Axl is in the bathtub, which has seen better days. Someone must have tried to cook meth in here and everything went horribly wrong. It might explain the smell and the bathtub barely holds water. The enamel is burnt to a heavy grain sandpaper grit.

I sit on the toilet and start to clean the blood off my knuckles. I got tapped after Axl left and I did alright, but I was put in a chokehold at the end.

"If you could fight anyone in the world, who would you fight?" I ask him. I don't want to talk about what happened anyway. I have no idea where Dave is, but I'm pretty sure he's somewhere close.

"Plant." he says.

"Robert?"

"Who else? His daughter, Carmen, she wanted to fuck me backstage at a concert once. He was not happy about it." Axl isn't cleaning anything, just sitting in the warm water with his skin steaming. There's still a bunch of dried blood caked around his mouth.

"When was this?"

"Mid-eighties, I think. She got married a couple of years later. Damn, that woman was pretty. . ." He sounds nearly indulgent before he looks at me. "Who would you fight?"

"I'd fight Tori." I reach into the back of my mouth and touch a tooth which promptly falls into my lap, gooey with blood and the still-writhing tentacles of tendons.

"That's fucked up, man. I think she'd beat the shit out of you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." I pick the tooth up and contemplate shoving it back into place, but set it on the sink instead. "That girl is bat shit crazy."

"She's bat shit and crazy... about you."

"She doesn't like me." I shake my head, still prodding at my jaw.

I couldn't kiss anyone right now, even if I wanted to.

💢

I go to work with a fresh black eye. I write epic diatribes instead of punching numbers and make copies of them while I prod the bruised skin on my face. No one talks to me anymore as I wear a mask of small raccoon eyes to keep them away.

Axl does nothing but fuck Tori and show up to fight club.

💢

Axl makes a beautiful tall brunette girl piss herself in an alleyway.

Pulls her from behind the counter of a convenience store with a gun to her temple.

"The fuck are you doing?" I ask, staring at the crack of her cleavage that's heaving with every gulp of air. She's crying and he's holding her still with a fist through her hair, her neck craned awkwardly. He eyes her pumping jugular for a moment before throwing her to her knees and she sprawls into the gravel, whimpering.

"This is Stephanie." Axl strolls around her, still pointing the gun at her head but he's talking to me. "Stephanie here has the kind of body even I get weak over. Perfect tits, nice ass . . . sexy face." He tucks the barrel of the gun underneath her chin and forces her face to the sky. Her makeup is running clear down her neck but he's right. She looks fresh and clean and brand fucking new. Not like Tori. Not like me or Axl.

"Why are you working in this shit hole, baby?" Axl sounds sweet, even though I know he isn't. She blubbers, but nothing understandable, clutching her hands together in a delicate lace-up of fragile bones and gooey tendons. I can't even appreciate a girl anymore without thinking about how the human body can be broken.

"What did you want to be, when you were a little girl?" Axl tries again.

More frantic stuttering.

"The question, Stephanie, is WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE?" Axl snaps, voice echoing over and over and over as he stands back and pops the safety, gun pressed firm to the spot between her eyebrows. She's shaking but he's stone still and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd actually do it. Tori must've rubbed him raw tonight and he's unstable at even the best of times. I don't trust him worth a damn and he looks too trigger happy for my taste.

"Answer him!" I shout at her. She doesn't struggle, doesn't even try to run, just glances around wildly like someone might be able to save her.

There's no saving anything from Axl.

"A model." she finally whimpers. Axl clicks the safety back and tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants.

"Stephanie, you have exactly five weeks to resume that dead goal of yours. I know where you live. I know where you work. I will check on you, and if you fail . . ." He leans down right into her face and bares his teeth at her, flashing his pearly whites. "Well you and I both know what'll happen next."

He hauls her to her feet, gives her a pat on the shoulder and she goes off like a shot into the night. The farewell wave of her hair and a trailing fog of sobs.

"Fuck, Axl." I watch her go and wonder if it could be that easy to just outrun him. Probably not. "What the fuck was all that about?"

"Imagine how she feels right now. The adrenaline and the joy and the fear. The relief that she's alive." Axl stares after her, nearly salivating. "That was the most important moment in her whole trivial life."

"Her near life experience?"

Axl winks at me. "You're catching on."

Axl throws me the gun and walks back over to the car. I flick open the cylinder.

There were no bullets loaded.

He had a plan. To what purpose? To what greater good? In Axl we trusted.