Shousetsu Bang*Bang

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



It had all happened so quickly.

Consciousness crept back in slowly, reluctant to be complete: like dawn breaking on a dark and cloudy day. Her head hurt, and fresh pain seemed to jostle into it with every rocking, jerking movement under her. She was, Cybele became dimly aware by degrees, slung face-first and sideways over the withers of a galloping horse, close against the knees of some rider who was holding her steady with a hand in the small of her back. Her arms were stiff, her wrists bound together behind her. She could see nothing, and perhaps it was the darkness in part that accounted for her confusion; some scarf or cloth had been bound around her eyes.

( ... )

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



( ... )

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)
illustrated by by Sakana Sara (魚 サラ)


They found Lily's body on September 8th, late in the morning. It was a Monday, and Mrs. Packard had to open the copy shop where she worked, much earlier than Lily was supposed to go to school; but she got a phone call at her job around 9:30 from the school receptionist, asking why Lily hadn't either come to her first two classes or called in sick. She went home right away, and in the end broke open the door to Lily's bedroom, and found Lily lying on her bed, watching the ceiling with a rapt, fascinated, almost peaceful expression. Her wrists had been carefully cut in two long lower-case t's, and the short, sharp vegetable knife that had done it rested just at the edge of the grip of her fingers, as though she were deep in thought and about to tap it like a pencil to focus her mind. The blood had dried around her hands in two small puddles on the pink bedspread, like punctuation; a colon, maybe, opening a list of her mother's screams. They eventually brought a neighbor running over to find her, to pull her away, to make the phone calls and arrangements when she couldn't be calmed down, couldn't be coaxed or embraced into sense. There was a special announcement at James High, and most of the senior classes were allowed to go home after second lunch.

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)
illustrated by by Sakana Sara (魚 サラ)


PART ONE

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



The first time he met Austin, River was sitting on the curb on 50th Street just past Radio City Music Hall, trying not to puke or have a freaking breakdown or whatever it was he was about to do. Which was embarrassing enough by itself.

He'd been there for two days. Mostly at the venue in general, but a fair amount of it on the curb, too: camping out by himself to get in, his head on his backpack and gnawing through two Robert Jordan novels and half a John Updike. And then, of course, he'd sat through the entire draft, which was probably the most boring thing ever created by the human mind even for people who cared about it, and sometime in the middle of the seventh round it had hit him, really finally hit him, full force in the brain. Not me, was what had been written on the brick that smashed in his mental window. ( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



[THE FIRST HALF]

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



May, 1996

The attic was going to be hell.

Katie stood in the middle of it, turning a slow circle with her hands on her hips. Old steamer trunks with garment bags stacked up on top of them, cobwebs sealing them to the floor like tape across the door at a crime scene. Defunct cabinets and haphazardly added shelves full of useless junk whose price value probably varied from '50 cents, maybe' to 'worth more than your life, Katherine Willard,' too tacky or too expensive for regular house display. It was an alien landscape up here, mountains made of history. The bruised-looking husk of a Commodore 64 computer perched on top of one of them, shockingly old, probably never used once since Katie's dad had moved on to better things and donated it.

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



PART ONE

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



"'Unresolved issues'?"

Nicky cackles into his drink, not so much because it's funny as because he can't remember the number on the drink, and hell, that makes everything pretty funny. "You sound like my mom's fucking therapist. 'Unresolved issues.' Christ."

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)
art by wredwrat



I.

The first thing I thought when I saw Bobby Leonard again was that I had never expected to see him old. The Bobbys of the world followed James Dean's advice, and his example, I guess; they got shot holding up all-night liquor stores by some clerk who got lucky, plowed their beat-up Camaros through the guardrail out on the point, loaded up their arms with poison medicine for the pain of being crazy in a sane world or the other way around. They had closed-casket funerals with big blowups of their high school yearbook pictures on a stand, decked with flowers. You didn't expect them back at forty-five. Hell, you didn't expect them back at twenty-five.

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)
art by wredwrat



PART ONE

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



They had been seven, in the beginning, who had come to the desert to battle Fire.

Now she was the only one. The rest were dead. Seven was a number of power, a number that looped around and swallowed its own tail, but so, she supposed, was one. The last two to fall had been the twins: tall brothers, albino and born hairless as well as pale and crystal-eyed, smooth of head and cheek and even eye. They had been like white blades, going arm-in-arm in the city, always keeping their own counsel. They had been brave and noble to the utmost, and fought like demons, and she had not been surprised that they had lasted longest of all but her. ( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



He only noticed the guy was following him after he'd passed Penn Station -- around the corner of 36th and 7th. Before that the press of people was so bad that you could've been walking in any direction and somebody could be guaranteed to be following you, but when he crossed 7th Avenue to the east and then jogged across to the shops on the other side of 36th just for the hell of it, his messenger bag bouncing on his hip, he saw as he was checking over his shoulder for traffic the guy in the sunglasses completing the same weird-ass maneuver at the same time. If he hadn't crossed the street just then he probably never would have known, but as it was he faced front again frowning. Still, could be nothing. Coincidences happened.

( ... )
 

by Shukyou (主教) and Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



[The following is a work half of satire, half of imagination, and entirely of fiction. Any resemblance to actual proper nouns is entirely intentional, though imaginative liberties have been taken with the principal characters to the point of near-unrecognisability. The easily offended, die-hard political junkies of any affiliation, and persons lacking a sense of humour are respectfully requested to both grow a thicker skin, and do it somewhere else.]



Damn, Jim swore, slamming the door to his dressing room behind him at such a volume to make it clear to his staff that he did not wish to be disturbed. He was not a man to suffer fools gladly, and suffered even less gladly being made to look like one himself. He made a mental note to fire the producer who'd suggested such a horrific spectacle, then remembered that the one who'd made the suggestion hadn't been his to fire -- and not only that, but Jim himself had consented.

( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



The clear sounds of an altercation without his office door drew David's attention at last from his proofs, and he looked up with a slight frown between his brows. Hard to say what reason there could be for a scuffle and raised voices at four o'clock in the afternoon, particularly not with Hopkins out for the week.

Protruding his head from the doorway, however, revealed a most peculiar sight. In addition to the seven or so shouting and wrangling newspapermen in shirtsleeves he might have expected, clung to by a miasma of smoke and ill temper, there was also nearly occluded in their midst an Oriental man, of indeterminate age, clearly greatly indignant at the general attempt to remove him bodily from the office. ( ... )
 

by Tsukizubon Saruko (月図凡然る子)



Christina stepped out of the deathly heat inside the bus into the deathly heat outside it, which was equal if not greater but at least not so stale. It wasn't a long ride from Fishkill, but both her undershirt and blouse were already sticking to the skin on the backs of her shoulders, and she could feel sweat trickling little warm rills down the path of her spine. It was a few days into September, but there was no sign as of yet the world had noticed, or might be considering opening its hands and letting August go. ( ... )