CRAWLING KINGSNAKE.

*

fuck - he shouldn’t laugh. he really shouldn’t fucking laugh. but leave it to mackenzie to laugh himself up his own funeral. “did you just…” he stops himself, but it’s useless. he can’t shake this off. he can’t. “you offered me an apple,” it was giving twilight, it was giving garden of eden, “I wasn’t expecting you to be so… by the book.”

he opts out of calling the devil cliché.

          “That’s okay,” said Kennedy, to Jimmy. He shifted, ditched the lightbulb pipe and a lighter on the nightstand. The crack hit cleaner than a line, and with his balls empty, his mind felt good and clear like a shaken Etch-A-Sketch. He smiled like he was a little stoned or something, a lot mellower than tense, gnawing Jimmy sat beside him.

           VFK closed his eyes and thought peacefully for a while. It was quiet, but not silent. A dog barked. A cop car siren wailed a long way away, and after a while, the TV shut up. From the bathroom, he heard the toilet flush. Barefoot pacing. Then muffled, one-sided phone talk. When VFK opened one eye, the ceiling fan was still spinning, and the cool air felt good on his balls. He laid there, content like a chimp in a tree. Gave Jimmy a glance.

          “DMT? Yeah, I’ll do anything three times, man, except for DMT.“

           Then he scratched his belly idly, Rolex clinking on his wrist, and asked, “Whatchu think happens after you die, Jimmy? What uh, what do you want to happen after you die?”

           A sniff.

          “I’m still kinda horny. More porn?”

     While Kennedy’s mind was cleared, Jimmy had been hit with a wave of post-nut depression -- he was a very depressive person, in general, the jittery freak perched himself on the edge of his bed thinking about what he’d just done, how pathetic he was, all that jazz, the crack did help though -- was beginning to feel like the man again. 

     Head spun when the toilet flushed -- he’d forgot she was there. Thought it was the feds. This place was tapped. He’d have to get the cleaners in -- maybe they could get the spunk stain off the headboard. 

     “Worm-food,” huffed through thoughtless laugh, “I dunno. I try not to think about it. Knew this mobster, got three in the gut,” he stood up, scratched his ass as he stretched out. His leg had cramped, he stretched it out, murmuring “fuck --” like an old man. “When he woke up, told me hell was the same Mariachi song over an’ over an’ over again. Don’t really know what that meant,” he figured the dude just really hated Mariachi music. 

     “Yeah man,” Jimmy said, “but I’m choosing it. Fuckin’ --” he ejected the VHS, “this the fuckin’ 70s?” He sniffed, “the internet’s fried my brain man, I can only get off to shit that’s been recorded on some fuckin’ guys phone, that professional shit just don’t do it for me.” He bounced back onto the bed, grabbed his phone, began typing away. “The girls, fuckin’, huuuuuyeah, gimme a fuckin’ break,” he coughed and spluttered for a minute, “you good, bitch? Christ, sounds like the fuckin’ exorcist in this fuckin’ --” he trailed off, face alight with ass and titties. 

you look so big when you’re drunk. you came crashing into the living room, with a lampshade on your head, and your dick in Jacks kettle, shouting about morning coffee with cream. 

i shouldn’t have laughed, but i did. 

you look so small when you’re hungover. curled up, cross-legged by the cracked window. despite the whiteness in your cheeks, and the bareness of your skinny legs, you looked so peaceful. in pain, but peaceful. 

i don’t know what i did to earn that scornful glower, as my hand idly toyed with your silly little leg-hairs. my injured little soldier. you only have yourself to blame. i chanced a smile, but i knew it was too early for you. so i direct the smile at my chest, you look away too. 

you love me so much at night. but in the morning, still, after so much time, we’re strangers. 

is this all there is? 

wad of crumpled hundreds left on the table. you had places to be. I miss you when you’re gone. And i hate that the only time I really see you, you have your dick in a kettle, and a lampshade covering your stupid grin. 

strength.

"Yeah," Jimmy agreed, with a sniff. This all just washed over him. The devil, those creatures, maybe it had broken him -- or maybe it had made him what he was always meant to be. This crusade of bullshit, this winding path with no clear end, "but what happens to me when he's gone?"

He wasn't a soldier, he was never a soldier, but in his dream, in that place, he was a warrior.

"I went somewhere," he said, "was the first time in a long time I felt like I was out'ta my depth. Don't know if it was a dream, don't know if it was him -- messing with my mind or..." It had all felt so right, in the wild, too good to be hell, too free. Bare feet kicking through sand and dust, fire and lightning crashing through the moonlit night, the goals were simple, his needs were met, the others, the tribe that had lived there and taken him under his wing watched in horror and fear as Jimmy had dropped his spear, used his hands, used his teeth.

"The people there, they made me drink Ayahuasca, told me to head on down and slay some beast for them -- but before I could get there, something --" he rubbed the back of his head, he could still feel it, a tongue rammed into his frontal cortex, "-- something spoke to me -- or -- or tried to."

Head tipped back, it had been so long since he had a drink, since he had slowed down. All reason was lost, all truth had become lies, all those years, all those things he'd done -- all the bad, all the good. He finished the drink, poured himself another one, and poured her one too.

digging holes.

He hadn’t even bothered washing his hands this time, dusting of cigarette ash around him in the light of a lamp that no longer needed to be on, as the morning filled the room he remained in shadow. 

Why do you force yourself to go it alone, he had thought, as the shovel pierced the grass, you’re a king, you’re the alpha, you don’t need to be out here -- digging holes. 

Black finger traced the rim of his glass, “I wasn’t strong enough,” she wasn’t a Don, she wasn’t brandishing a machete, but still he mumbled, “I’ll be better next time. I -- I can still look after you,” he finished his drink, in one swift movement, if only he could bring himself to look at her. He so badly wanted to tell her what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her for the millionth time. 

“I don’t want this to be all there is, but I --... I ain’t the man I was, May,” for better, for worse, “I was a king. Now I’m not. I had a plan -- now I don’t. It’s all turning to dust and I can’t tell you jack shit, I can’t, ‘cos I can’t stand the way people look at me when they know what I did,” slowly he became more animated, and at the end, he wrapped his hand off the wall, shook his head in disparity, "I thought I knew what I was doing. Thought -- thought I’d go out on a blaze of glory. Least -- that’s what I was tryn’a do, I think,” he was quiet now, barely audible, “but I just wouldn’t die. I keep -- keep fucking winning,” he smiled, into his chest, laughed through his words. 

“Maybe -- when we’re all done, and we get to ride into the sunset, I’ll give you specifics. But I -- I can taste it, May,” he wondered if he sounded crazy, drunken ramblings of a madman who’d stayed up too long and drank too much, he sniffed, “last night I buried someone I’ve been meaning to for a long time.” He sat up, straighter, “I got some problems. Some stuff I don’t know if I can handle. But I need you to trust me when I tell you I -- I have it under control.” 

jimmy can play the harmonica. i think jimmy has a lot of stupid little skills and my justification for this is back in the day, when he was on the street, he couldn’t get a lot of drugs. with homelessness, i’m not saying this is a hard and fast rule but usually when people are homeless drugs are used more as a way to kill time and boredom rather than the cause of their homelessness. what im trying to say is what does a 14 year old homeless kid do if he can’t find fifteen bucks for acid?? he teaches himself how to juggle, or a basketball trickshot or some dumb shit. this is kind of why i write jimmy just dicking about more, i feel like this is his sort of comfort zone, just being out back fuckin messin around, except now he’s doing it in the remnants of his suit with a warm beer 

i think molly’s a lot more sensible than i used to give her credit for. she is a party animal, but without jimmy around she grew a little. 

rasputin makes stew out of anything and everything. he has eaten raccoon before, recently too, this wasn’t like when he was a kid or in any sort of survival situation. i mean this mans be out there eaten raccoon stew like last wednesday. 

he’ll also make his own vodka out of potatoes. this is a longer process though. 

while i keep most of it canon for just now, i think all the kills i had were too cool. i want to try on my next draft to sort of calm it down a bit, at least while i’m writing mob shit. 

jimmy can look a little bloated sometimes. he used to be pretty prone to spots too. 

another jimmyism: blowing into a tissue, showing you the bloody contents and saying “that’s a hundred bucks right there” 

there are some really compromising videos of jimmy and his gang at parties and stuff. image was never as important to them like it is with the mob. 

 zoe has a very florence & the machine vibe 2 me. im not going to expand on that. if u kno u kno 

they should make a moby dick vs jaws film. like jaws goes through a time worm hole and has to battle moby dick and maybe like jaws takes the ship captains OTHER leg so then that’s also personal and like at the end moby dick and jaws fight for a bit but then Mecha Captain From Moby Dick shows up but its like an old timey ship robot and this fuckin whale like body slams it and jaws is scranning it and it’s just chaos and right at the end a portal opens and it’s Free Willy but he has a robot arm and he’s like come with me if u want to live 

man this hollywood shit easy 

frankie drinks tennants in the house. he has crates shipped to his house from scotland 

buck uses a straight razor to shave his head, he will regularly nick himself 

also on the topic of buck he isn’t a master of self control but he knows how to manage his anger. to an extent. 

buck and jimmy used to mostly work with this slimey rat boy. they were on loan from marco when they met, mostly because marco didn’t like travelling and didn’t want to deal with international affairs. Buck and jimmy and this mobster whose name i’ve forgot traveled the world together, and while they all occasionally had moments of kinship individually, the relationships there was mostly contentious at best. the mobster they were with made bad calls, made messes buck and jimmy had to clean up, and when you’re abroad -- on different turf, making moves you don’t understand, it never ends well. i think there was a lot of shit happening back then, but jimmy wasn’t paid to think, and for buck, his debts were always almost repayed. 

speaking of idk if i’ve ever mentioned this but buck was a boxer who the mob are threatening basically bc he’s like, a tank and they wanted the muscle. he doesn’t want to be doing any of this shit, and he’s in fucking peru with a machete and an assault rifle when he’d rather be at home, with his kid. 

also there’s a reason i forgot that mobsters name. he’s LONG dead. i like to imagine jimmy and buck getting swept up in a max payne 3 style adventure but i’ve never fleshed any of that shit out because honestly it’s past craziness, adventures i know they had and they know they had but it ain’t relevant to anything really 

dmitri used to run a sandwich shop in russia. he was dragged into the russian mob cos he spoke english, and the wrong people knew that. simple as that. they needed a guy, they got a guy, it ruined his life, he just kept going. 

It’s all starting to wobble back to reality now, left in the sad wake of a trip I didn’t want to take, a connection I didn’t want to make. 

Memory is malleable, it’s all a photograph of a photograph. 

In that haze you thought you saw the answer, but your vision was too blurry. Man, you thought the world was ending, wind howling from the balcony, you thought, for a moment, as you cowered behind the curtain, that you’d heard those screams before. 

It’s all still bubbling, but your hearts not in it anymore, slowly, you return to numbness -- cigarette hisses into the toilet bowl. 

I enjoy the stillness there, in the wake of something that had promised to change my life. That’s all it really was -- a falsified realization, a lie I enjoyed for a couple hours. Nothing better to do. My eyes may have stung, my shoulders may have ached, but now my mind was quiet. Tired, worn out, but quiet. I enjoy the stillness here. 

“is that… is that how you normally hold conversations with people? cause I imagine if you’re possessing someone, like actually, actively possessing them, there’s a whole lotta one-sided talking going on.”

     It had been a good ten minutes since he’d left the stranger with his briefcase, he came barreling around the corner, “run!” Jimmy barked, as he caught sight of the person, “I said fuckin’ run!” This scheme had gone sideways pretty quickly, shit he should’ve stayed out of, shit he couldn’t resist. Behind him came three mall Santa’s in numerous states of undress, one was just in his red trousers and dirty wife-beater. 

     The last place you want to be in the wee hours of Christmas morning was a strangers kitchen. The apartment had been commandeered, there was a couple spooning on the couch in the smoke-filled living room, light-covered tree sparkling in the darkness. Jimmy was still high, making the unfortunate move to smoke MDMA a few hours back. He was stood in his boxers, and his timbs, with both the fridge and freezer open -- still sweating profusely, lips dryly smacking together, jaw twitching to it’s own beat.  

“I can see that.” Of course she could— she hadn’t even looked at him yet, her copper eyes locked in on the geese above. This wasn’t ethical and she’s sure that finding this funny would be a purely human condition…but there is food falling from the sky, and that was rather novel.

Although his aim is good, the first goose ended up falling outside the perimeters of his penthouse roof and down to the city below. What a waste.

The second, however, was a bit closer— much like a hunting dog, she races after it, catching it by the neck before it has a chance to fall off the edge. 

Iona is pleased with her catch.

He scowled at her, at first, as she bolted off to get the goose. She was a scavenger, but unlike his peers she wasn’t a benign pilot fish, she wasn’t swimming in his wake -- merely lurking behind him wherever he went. She knew there would be a meal in it for her, but that scowl turned to thought. He wondered if he could use this.