sanhi.

the clack of her strict black boots delighting her with every step,

Enna circles her charge & puts on her game face.

she’s not being paid to look pretty... er, menacing, after all.

she pats her patient on the rump & lets her hand slide up the girl’s spine & close around her throat. lowering her gaze to match her charge’s, she squeezes.

‘alright, my darling. game time is now over. playtime, however, is just beginning.’

making sure he’s watching,

Enna brings the whip over her head & down on the girl’s back in one swift, clean motion.

the customer’s eyes burn with desire.

the charge utters not a sound,

& faints.

occupational hazard.

kesan.

Enna french inhales & gives the whip a crack for effect -

some fetishes tend to overlap.

the charge looks up at her,

eyes sunken & will-less;

complete control -

it’s a nice job perk.

letting the black leather slither & snake across the backs of the girl’s bare thighs,

Enna moves to check the bindings.

they’re holding perfectly. this one barely struggles at all.

she-bari’s still got it, she thinks, then laughs aloud abruptly at herself.

gotta love a little mental domme-humor to break up the night.

she flicks her cigarette & steadies her hand for a second blow.

[shrug]

it’s a living.

leuto.

Sorella misses the hot water.

pulsing beads on back,

fire slipping down throat.

scorching beat playing on fingers spread wide, wide, wide for the receiving,

the clean burn dancing dark like demons on all hallow’s eve.

Sorella misses the cold water.

cubes of paralyzed molecules clinking about,

making a tasty ruckus & giving off steam a-plenty

turning skin pink like its literal polar opposite -

the same, but different.

Sorella misses the water.

those Above don’t realize that their damn search for delicious ended years ago -

the answer resides within the last chapter.

it’s temperature, temperature!

liquid & temperature.

Sorella sighs.

Sorella longs.

agulla.

Ezra’s chugging,

but the lactose level just won’t decrease.

(what’s our meaning? you decide.)

fourth wall broken,

let’s watch, dear reader

as the gallon challenge becomes the old man & the sea.

(‘s all in the references.)

this milky moby dick will not be caught

& our hero oughtn’t be doomed to fail;

might happen regardless.

so the sorrowed sisyphus rolls on,

not realizing he possesses the power to

invert

convert

subvert

tip the boat & total the car, Icarus!

release the safety belt & try your wings for once, man!

take your way out!

he won’t. can’t. something.

we just sigh & call him Ishmael.

kurek.

destruction breeds destruction

& setting her one-eyed gaze on the physician’s assitant,

Minerva made a mess.

you may have seen the body count in the papers?

but these are desperate, gorgeous times

& zombies walk the earth when the spirit moves.

out of ammo,

she stoppered up her burning lungs, shouldered her shotty,

& embraced the good Mr. Tandy come alive again,

knowing it might well be the last she’d ever bestow upon another form

(read this with romanticism rolling on your mental reel-to-reel, dear reader)

& so they skipped (gore-lumbered) into the sunset,

Minerva clutching her bandolier,

Tandy’s fingers twitching ‘round his guns -

necromancers & abhorsens both,

staring down their humanity.

facing facts never looked so good.

sentim.

Yvaine is collapsing beneath the weight of imploding galaxies.

celestial bodies don’t always dance; sometimes they stumble,

& in the space of those faltered steps, there is a kind of painful silence -

the sort that descends when someone voices a question

& no one knows the answer.

the wrench is gone, or at least, she can’t feel its weight in her palms any longer

& the stars have ceased to consult her before moving on or off their orbital patterns.

a layman’s hands are his welfare,

& so, it seems this month she starves.

(& at the word, Enna cracks a smile)

heavenly bodies may well be the answer to one of these ‘unanswerables’,

but system overload is the main malfunction of this engine;

the diagnostic readout has been screaming it in little red digital rat pellets for days now.

sigh, sigh, sigh.

it never rains but it pours.

aonair.

our words will be simple, our passages to the point.

The Neighborhood believes itself drifted into decay;

in the ‘burbs it goes about its business, quiet & neglected.

but today, we’ll be magnanimous for a moment

& mow the frost-tipped lawns,

giving brief attention the sagging rooftops above our red noses.

The Often Orphan & Sosh are at odds

& poor Charybdis just cowers in the corner,

willing the weedwhackers to a volume greater than the voices.

she’s a little liftoff-challenged these days.

Chimaera gets it

& picks her up in his shiny new somethingorother when the dulcet tones of discord dominate the sound waves at home.

many a night she hops in beside him

& speeds off to recreate that from which she’s fleeing.

& through this problem of nature vs nuture

the mowers drone on.