Last Hit: Reloaded

January 20, 2015  | Blog  | (0)

I have some fun teasers to share with you for Last Hit: Reloaded.

My art history class is housed in a decrepit old building that smells like stale cigarette smoke and mildewed paper. It is the smell of learning and discernment—light years away from the stink of gunpowder, blood, and fear. We are studying Picasso and his ambivalence toward women and his hate toward rigid societal structure. He never found his Daisy, I have concluded, and spent too much time seeking the answers to his happiness in the bottom of a brown bottle. But who can deny the genius? Perhaps there are those who are not meant to be happy so that the expression of their torment can inspire generations that follow.

I sit in the back, near the door. Not because I am avoiding attention, although that is part of it, but primarily because I cannot rid myself of instinct. Instinct will always have me sit near an exit, facing the door, or away from those that I perceive as threats.

There are no threats in art history, only students and a rather pudgy professor who dresses in turtlenecks and tweed. Like the stale smells, I find the clichéd attire of the professor comforting. Everything is as it should be.

Around me there are a sea of open seats. The students’ hindbrains tell them I am a dangerous creature and that I should be avoided. Only a few have gone against instinct and spoken to me—curiosity winning out over fear. But my blank expression and terse responses have driven them away as I intended. Only now the isolation reminds me of Daisy’s fears. In many ways, I am failing her.

After class I attempt to correct this. There are two young ladies who smiled at me when the semester began. They are fresh things, rosy cheeked and with multihued hair. Art girls enjoy hair colors not found in nature. That is weird. I shall tell this to Daisy tonight.”

As I approach I can hear them discussing a weekend party at a house known by Greek letters, and a plan quickly formulates. Daisy wants friends and wants to fit in. One of them, the shorter one who wears clunky boots and torn leg coverings, says she plans to hit it like the right hand of an angry god.

I wonder what that means and resolve to ask Daisy. Although she may not know. Perhaps Daniel? Daniel is a former assassin who has retired at the age of twenty-seven to his family ranch in Texas. He is very knowledgeable about idiosyncratic behavior of American girls.

“He does remind me of Chris Hemsworth,” the taller girl replies. She wears a long, puffy jacket that covers her from head to foot. I wonder where she purchased it. Daisy does not like wearing the fur I bought her. She says other students would disapprove because it is not appropriate to kill animals and then wear their skins. I say nothing about the yards of leather that adorn the students that walk by us daily, and accept this as a truth I will not ever fully comprehend.

“Let’s hope his package is godlike or all my efforts will be wasted,” responds the short one.

Ah, it is a sexual reference. She wishes to have vigorous sex with a man who looks like a Norse god. “Hopefully she will not strike any part of his package with the force of a god, let alone an angry one.”