The Bargain part 4

“WHOOOOAAAAA! Get on in here and dance suckers. Last week of party, last week of joys, last week we party, last week girls and BOYYYYYYYYYYS!” The floor rumbled again. It was coming from the speakers. The sound engineer was doing something to mimic the death of earth.

Rabbit was laughing pure. She had seen the joke coming but the payoff was that Puppy didn’t and the childish chagrin on his face only fuelled her enjoyment of the played joke. Before Puppy could come to understand the whole theatrics taking place, Rabbit took control and dragged him gently on to the dance floor. Rabbit’s movement was quick on to the floor and she found a hole amongst the throngs for the two to move together. Puppy’s quick eyes and jittery movements gave him the appearance of a man who felt uncomfortable and lost in his surroundings. His face had become an ugly pale and dour and if he wanted to speak his lower-lip tucked under his front teeth had made it more difficult to do so. Rabbit was moving as a snake after its prey, her sensuous moves had Puppy digging his heels in to match her moves but his awkward steps were no match and soon he made his move, his face now the colour of tomato, to the bar.

“Where are you going Puppy?” she asked still laughing and enjoying the rhythm of the song. Puppy didn’t hear her or didn’t want to since he made no gesture of having heard her words and didn’t stop to look back at her. He moved very directly off the dance floor and even more directly to the bar where he found by luck Thor waiting to serve.

“I guess we didn’t need to wait till next week, huh bub?” said Thor laughing.

“No one wants to drink anymore, Thor?” Max asked meekly. He gave the bartender a weak smile and leaned over the bar waiting for Thor to finish pouring the Oban Puppy never asked for. “You know me so well.

“When do we finish?” Max asked.

“When Earth lies down for its final rest,” Thor answered. “Until then it’s a party.”

“Puppy! Why did you run off like that?” Rabbit asked pushing her way to the bar.

“The name is Max Jefferies,” Max said sternly asserting his real identity by shaking his full rocks glass at Rabbit. “You thought it was real funny the way I reacted to everybody running back inside. But MY NAME IS MAX JEFFERIES. Let me tell you I, MAX JEFFERIES, didn’t find it all that funny. The world is coming to an end and people like you are making jokes and in the next breath complaining about the chaos on the streets. It’s time you got real with all this.” Max turned his back on Rabbit and took a sip of scotch.

“Real with all this? What about you, Max,” Rabbit said emphasising Max’s name like a 10-year-old girl does when making fun of another kid for having ugly shoes. “You act like nothing else matters but getting your ding-a-ling hard and having some poor girl do something about it. Am I off base?”

Max said nothing feeling lost yet again in the presence of Rabbit’s voice.

“I didn’t think so. You know what? I can take you somewhere where all this angst of yours will disappear but you have to trust me and you have to be understanding. It isn’t for the weak. That is if you want to get real with all this?”

Max threw back his scotch and hoggishly wiped his mouth. His eyes were glazier than morning dew and his chest trembled. Max offered his hand to Rabbit, which was quickly accepted. He was back to being Puppy and he knew it.
“See you soon, Thor.”:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;
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The car ride had been uncanny. Music poured out of the radio but it sounded like white noise to Puppy’s throbbing ears. Rabbit drove her sedan demonically through the city streets burning past brawls and debauchery. The mixture of quick turns and old alcohol turned Puppy’s stomach in to a cement mixer, heavy and dirty. In order to pace himself he would periodically look out his window and what he saw made his stomach even heavier. What the kids were doing, Puppy thought, was unspeakable and silenced him throughout the whole ride. Rabbit did all the talking pointing out all the horridness humanity had become and it was an ugly sight to behold. As Max, Puppy always thought that if the apocalypse came it would be bad. He never prepped his mind for this. It seemed too awful for human thought. It was sick. He was sick.

“Pull over,” he demanded.

But Rabbit didn’t pull over instead she sped up and the torturous ride continued for what seemed like hours. It had in fact only been 20 minutes.

Puppy began to believe that he was forced to follow a trail but he did not know to what end. When the car finally pulled up to a derelict house, Puppy assumed it was another of Rabbit’s examples of human degradation. He was about to tell Rabbit that he got the point and to take him back to The Pavilion where he could finish his evening – and maybe his life – in the throws of a full depression. Rabbit never gave him the opportunity. She opened his door.

Puppy was fully pissed and not able to walk properly. He stumbled on to Rabbit, bulling her over and knocking both to the ground.

“What’s love?” he asked again “Is what love you to?” His punch drunk words were poor in grammar but obvious in their intention.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight,” Rabbit said shoving Puppy off her rising to her feet.

Puppy looked up to see her walk off in to an orange-glowing twisting home……………………………………………………………………………………………… He vomited and then the next thing he saw was total blackness… someone had turned off the lights.

The Bargain part 3

Puppy whose face was now flush red with diamonds in his eyes, told Rabbit that he needed a seat and moved over to the far end of the deck, away from the doors. Each seat was taken by either a person or a body, rigor mortis really had a hold on these chairs, and so Puppy balanced himself. He looked over to Rabbit, smiled and said.

“Guess no one loves a puppy nowadays.”

“Puppy, people just forgot that love still matters. Yeah it’s all out the window, sure, but it matters. We have a week left. A WEEK! That’s an eternity… well until eternity. Whatever.” Max knew exactly what she meant. Still he said nothing and kept on balancing. “We could be doing good things for one another in the final days, meeting our end like a bunch of wilting roses rather than the bunch of drying ugly weeds like we are.”

Rabbit kept talking about something or another and Puppy had lost track of where she was going with the conversation so he just nodded his head to encourage her to stay where she was. He had become fixated on the topic of love, though not whether or not he was in love with her for he had already decided that he barely knew her. Yet, something in him made him desire to reach over and hold her for the entire last week; it was as if all the scotch he had sent into himself had not made his disposition to life more bearable but instead it was the conversation and the presence of this woman, Rabbit, that made it seem worthwhile.

Oh but was the point. Puppy was a goner sunken in to some miserable bizarre booze moment that he mistook for love. The evening would soon end as would this conversation and Puppy – Max – would wake up from this dream and then march home where he would waste another morning sleeping alone.

“What is love?” Puppy asked. “Is it not overrated – just some concoction of pheromones and hormones?” yes that must have been it Puppy, “giving us a euphoric feeling, but keeps us from concentrating on what truly matters?”

“You are so depressing,” said Rabbit who again tried to move away but was stymied by Puppy’s slender body.

“Well what is love to you?” asked Puppy.

Rabbit smiled and thought about it a minute. This was no silent moment as the bedlam continued on the deck.

“I’ve always wanted to see Paris. Not possible now. Bah, we are finally living in a free world and we can’t do anything but the same shit we did before. Am I being selfish?” Rabbit waited for Puppy to say something but Puppy just nodded his head in tacit agreement again and waited for her to continue. “I would love to say that I am surprised by all the chaos but that’s not true.”

“Is it any different now then before? What is there to whine about, Rabbit?”

“Who said I was whining? It’s an observation. We could be doing a lot more…”

“There is no point,” Puppy cut Rabbit off. “We have no right to build a damn thing. It’s all gonna be gone soon Rabbit; might as well hump our way in to hell.”

Rabbit’s eyes shrunk in disbelief.

“You don’t have a clue Puppy. The everything is ending, sure enough. But the ideals of humanity – of community and love – we built are crumbling to the ground and we have decided to be the ones to give those ideals a final push. For what did we build those ideals? I hope not only for convenience.”

“So?” Puppy said, his tone becoming confrontational again. “Was that what you were saying to the men on the dance floor when they were laughing their asses off? Or do you reserve that mumbo-jumbo for those who speak honestly to you?”

Rabbit began to walk off but Puppy grabbed her arm and pulled her in close. For one moment he had a feverous thought of doing something – anything – but the world rumbled a little under his feet and Rabbit bounced out of his arms and moved back, smiling, staring at the his chest and then pushing him back with a firm shove.

“I’m sorry,” Puppy said shocked that he moved so boldly.

There seemed to be something to the rumble under Puppy’s feet because screams began filling the deck and the revellers began running inside. Puppy took Rabbit’s hand and dragged her gently with the crowd who were moving in to the Pavilion like bees to a bee-hive.