Monday, March 31, 2008
Heute nacht regnet es rot
Three bullets were lodged in his back, and probably more in his shoulder, but those were the least of his worries. He had to get back home before the Poilzei came. The blood ran down his arm, dripping off his fingers. It was red, like those damn Commies. Those fucking Soviets were the last ones who put bullets in him before tonight. He opened the closet and searched for some hydrogen peroxide. None. He searched for some rubbing alcohol. None. He went back outside into the rain. It was a good thing they lived with lots of air pollution. The acid rain was the next best thing to hydrogen peroxide. It cleaned his wounds before he pried the bullets out with the tip of his sword. Going inside, Holger grabbed some of the rising dough from what would be a loaf of bread and plugged the holes in his body with the yeasty wheat dough. He used dough to plug wounds before. The yeast helped coagulate the blood. When the bulletholes healed, the dough plugs would fall out. Holger didn't need to worry about that though. He had a new employee. Better yet, she was a woman. Despite the 19th amendment and all the feminists, she would still do her natural job. She would still cook and clean. Hopefully she would be there on time. Most women were always late. Making excuses for everything. Unfourtunately, the Butcher was still alive, but he listened to George Jefferson's words. Perhaps they could make an alliance.
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The clouds shifted, and I looked up from my work in one of the flower beds on the rooftop garden of the Washington-Heights apartment building. I surveyed my surroundings and decided that "garden" wasn't exactly an apt description for the grimy walkways that surrounded a few attention-deprived and depressing rectangles of dirt. Was it even dirt anymore? For some reason I was attempting to bring some life back to this place that overlooked the whole of Washington-Heights. "Remeber that this used to calm you down when you were upset, Maria, even if this isn't exactly what you are accustomed too." Right, calming down, that's what I'm doing up here in the wind and cold. In the wind and cold, above the penthouse, as far as I could be from that bakery, its crazy German owner, the mysterious bits of dough on the floor, the man who asked for two bagels with alterior motives on his mind, the fingerprints, the stale bagels, the hand sanitizer...
"Maria," I muttered. "You're being stupid, just remember what your mother said." I grimaced. "Yeah, so maybe I'm not cut out for a job with so many social aspects, but I can't let her know that she was right about it all." All those customers at the bakery made me shake, and I had to steady myself on the counter when they finally left, the little bell on the door jingling menacingly behind them.
I had wanted to calm down. I had needed to calm down. I remembered how the candles in my bedroom as a child used to lull me to sleep as their flickering flames created shadows on the walls. "Candles." So I had gone to the little occult shop that stood hunched up beside the apartment building in search of candles. The girl behind the counter was quiet and shy; she didn't seem completely comfortable in the little shop front, only seeming to tolerate it because of the silent dog presence at her feet. I walked up to the counter, and the girl eyed me warily for a moment before asking if she could help me. "Candles," I said slowly. Pause. "Do you have candles?" I clarified. "White tapers?" She looked at me intently for a moment and then reached under the counter, searching for something. She then placed a box in front of me, saying, "You want green ones, for growth." I bought the box, six candles in all, and left the store rather quickly. It wasn't that I didn't like the girl, she just seemed to know alot more than she let on. It was disconcerting.
It was only after stepping outside into the windy day that I realized what I should actually be doing to calm myself down. And that is why I am up on the roof, planting sickly and slightly wilted daisies that I uprooted from the park while no one was watching. "But hey, who cares where the flowers were before because, now, they are actually serving a purpose. They are helping me prove her wrong."
The dirt was cool and natural under my fingertips. The recent rain had left it moist, and I enjoyed the feeling of earth against my skin. Unlike everything else around me, the dirt...wasn't sticky. "This is nice." A burt of chilly air breazed past me, making me shiver.
"Nice as in a cold day without sun working on the dirty rooftop of my sticky apartment building in dirt that is probably commonly doused in acidic and poisonous rain from the huge city nearby but not close enough to allow and escape from this upper level of hell. That kind of nice." But for all my complaining, the daisies really were quite nice. They seemed to look happier the moment I put them back in the ground. Maybe soon they would be pretty enough to pick and put in a little vase in my apartment. Maybe I could even give some to Kevin. "Stop blushing, Maria," I muttered, embarassed at my own thought.
Maybe I'll take some to the bakery to lighten the mood.
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