Above those were the cuffs of a pair of faded jeans that lead up these skinny legs. A wide black belt cinched over a green tunic covering perky tits that looked like they were smugglin’ raisins led to a long, graceful neck.
Before I know it, I’m lookin’ directly into her eyes—Clarice fuckin’ Hudson. For a second, I just seem to freeze. Our eyes are locked together, neither one of us moving or saying a word. I’m positive mine probably look like they’re about to pop right outta my skull, because it feels like my blood pressure decided to hold a convention somewhere back in the sockets.
But hers… hers are dull and glassy, registering no emotion what-so-ever, and they’re so bloodshot that it looks like she’s spent the last thirty-six hours on a nonstop crying jag.
Maybe it’s because she’s not wearing any makeup and doesn’t have her hair all done up, but she looks like a completely different woman than before. Her face is pallid and somehow longer, as if the dark bags under her eyes are so heavy that they’re causin’ the flesh to slide right off her skull. Her cheeks have this sunken look, like they’re caving in or some shit. She looks hollow and used up, nothing more than a withered husk of a woman. I mean, if she’d picked up some dude and he woke up next to her this morning, he probably thought he’d been drunk enough to give a mercy fuck to a terminal cancer patient.
That sweat is just rolling down her face like a reverse fountain of youth. Every drop seems to leech more and more color from her complexion, and it makes her hair stringy and unkempt.
For a fleeting second, I actually feel sorry for the bitch. Can you believe that? I mean, she never asked for this. All she wanted was to pay her bills, maybe get married someday, have a pack of little fuckin’ Hudsons running around. To enjoy life with as little stress and tears as possible. You know… the same things most of us want. But here she was, slack-jawed and as expressionless as the mannequins in the display windows of Debutante Or Bust. Nothing more than an empty shell.
I’d be doing her a favor, right? Setting her free. Just like Ocean had done with the death ritual for her mother. I mean, I wasn’t able to keep this woman from coming back in the first place, but the least I could do was see that she was able to maintain a semblance of dignity in her death, ya know?
All of this went through my mind in the amount of time it took to part those dry, cracked lips of hers, but as soon as I saw the slightest hint of the pearly whites hiding in that maw, it all disappeared like flash paper. Those were the teeth that would rip off chunks of flesh, man. The choppers that would gnaw their way through a throat like a rat chewing its way out of a garbage bag.
And I was fuckin’ pissed.
This raspy wheeze came outta her throat about the same time that I was clicking open the blade on the little knife in my pocket. I knew it wasn’t much, but if I just rammed that fucker straight into her eye and pushed with everything I had… well, maybe it would be enough. Maybe it wouldn’t. But I wasn’t gonna find out by just standing around gawking at her all damn night, now was I?
Just as I was about to slip the knife outta my pants, I saw this single bead of sweat crest her eyebrow, right? It rolled right over that little bump and trickled down into the corner of her eyeball. She raised her hand slowly and kind of rubbed at it with her knuckles as I let that knife drop back down into my pocket.
Why the hell did I do that? Because corpses don’t sweat, mother-fucker, she wasn’t a damn rotter. Not yet, at least. She was just so eaten up with infection that she musta been runnin’ off auxiliary power by this point. Or maybe the bitch was simply exhausted from fuckin’ like a nympho at a sex addict support group all flippin’ night. You’re the detectives… you tell me.
Anyhow, our dashing Ms. Hudson clears her throat, but when she talks her voice still sounds as old and tired as the cosmos anyway. It’s so soft that I have to strain to hear, even in the silence of the mall.
“Uh… we’re, um, closing. Mall opens nine lives.”
She blinked as a confused look crossed her face, then kinda held her head in her hands like they were the only things keeping it from rollin’ right off her neck. “I mean… nine. Mall. Opens. At nine. I’m not, uh… not…”
Tears shimmered in her eyes as her lips tried to form words that her mind refused to share. By this time I’d taken about twelve steps backward. My plan was to just ease my way outta there while she struggled to make sense of the train wreck of thoughts that musta been going on in her head.
“I’m not cistern.” She said this last part with this little under current of pride, ya know? Like she’d dredged the darkest recesses of her brain and came up with the answer to the Daily fuckin’ Double or some shit.
“I’m not cistern! I’m… not… cistern!” There was this weird blend of panic and relief in that hoarse voice, and her face kinda lit up.
And just like that, I was back to feelin’ sorry for the broad again. A part of me wanted to go up and just wrap my arms around her, to hold her so tightly that even she would be able to decipher the message. You’re not alone, honey, I’m here. Hell, man… at that moment, I wanted to protect our poor Clarice just as badly as I wanted to keep Ocean safe and sound. She seemed so lost, frightened, and innocent that it was easy to forget she was actually damned.
I actually even took a step toward her, if you can believe that. I knew the lady was infected. I knew all it would take would be a single tear in my sinus passages. A drop of sweat against my lips if I kissed her forehead like I wanted to. But, I… uh… I had to stop myself, man. I had to keep a safe distance away and try to send this healing, white light to her. Even though I knew, deep down, that my minuscule amounts of energy would never be enough. Not for her. For her it was too late. Ya know?
Our eyes met again, only this time, she was kinda blurry. I was tearing up like a weepy little bitch… right? I tried to say her name, but it came out as kind of a choked little sob at first. It was important for me to let her know that, even if I couldn’t save her, I could at least try to do what I had to with as much respect as possible. And I don’t know… maybe it was because I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Maybe it was because I was coming down. Or maybe it was just the moment, ya know? But I honestly got this feeling that, had we met under different circumstances, I could have really dug spending some quality time with this chick. So yeah… I wanted to say my piece while there was still a slight chance that she might be able to understand.
“Clarice, I…”
She arched an eyebrow and her forehead wrinkled as she cocked her head like a curious puppy. “Know?”
That single word caused my voice to catch on the tight little knot that had formed in the back of my throat, so I tried again. “Clarice…”
“Know?”
Her eyes were scanning my face, right? I could almost feel them taking in every hair of my beard, my heavily lidded eyes… the little scar I got on the bridge of my nose when I was nine and crashed my bike into a tree. And then something changed, like we were standing in a field instead of the entrance to Dollar Bonanza, and a cloud just passed over the sun. Like her features darkened, if that makes any sense.
At first I thought maybe they were starting to shut off the lights in the place, but the racks and aisles at her back were just as brightly lit as when I’d first come up, so it wasn’t some sort of environmental variable. No, this shit was emotional. Physical, too.