It can't rain all the time, but it does... it rains blood, blood that needs to be shed or blood needing to be avenged. My name's Milo Denton. I'm a disgraced cop turned an even more disgraced P.I. and I'm wearing someone else's face. My job is supposed to consist of investigating: cheating spouses and crooked business with made up problems. Truth of the matter is, I'm not much of a detective, for me detective work is made up of bribery and beatings to get the info you need or get someone to manufacture what needs to be done or said. Sometimes there are people who aren't totally agreement with the way things tend to get done.
That's when I talk hard, sometimes harder.
I tighten the bandages on my face, as I don't want to risk going out looking like some snitch who snitched out the wrong person and now has a hit on him. I put on the dark blue suit, my best suit I've always wanted to die in; I put it together with a linen white shirt and cheap polyester grey and black striped necktie because that's what I want to wear on this hard-boiled night to say my long hard goodbye in.
I take one gun. My police issued firearm. It has memories because it's not mine, mine got stolen from some crook who went around committing various armed robberies, this I took from another guy while on a wild FG-5 binge. I remember fighting the perp a mud-hole and as we struggled nobody dared to fire a shot because nobody could tell who was who.
Still don't remember the outcome of that night or what was done to shelter the events.
I leave my father's watch.
I think of the cracked face and the cracked mirror in the bathroom and what was reflected underneath my coverings. I don't think about the dead guys in the office. I won't be coming back.
I've got a new face. I don't know what it means or who did it but once I find out, I definitely plan on not being me anymore.
I put on my gray trench coat and before I do, I check the pockets and find a small silver egg-shaped thing. It's unblemished. This is FG-G in its most concentrated form. Inside is a blue glowing liquid that turns into a faded pink smoke as it hits the air and to place it underneath your nostrils at that the moment gives you the most paradise enhancement of reality you'll need.
I crack the seal. Do what's right. Getting high on FG-5 before going out into the night.
A man against time.
On the way to suicide.
My pores are on fire, feeling the shock of the atmosphere parting ways for razor-blade structure. I smell strawberry fields. Walking down Penny Lane toward the Blue Angel Bar.
I'm not a horror-show mummy in some dorky suit and tie. I'm a stone-age brute on a quest for fire.
The temperature drops. My chest is still heaving like a blast furnace but the drops of rain that look like liquid prisms become shards of crystal.
It's a freezing rain.
Got a volcano inside my heart pumping lava in my veins to prevent my blood from going arctic.
A neon blue angel looks down upon me and winks with golden lashes. She can't get back up to heaven caught in the wire of sculpture holding her form, so she curses us down all below in hopes we poison ourselves enough thanks to her allure, in the desperation that the lord of the damned will consider her captivity long enough and let her go where she may not be welcomed anymore.
Time's running out... for all of us.
I walk in, the doorman can't even look at me. He turns away and lights a cigarette knowing who I am even without a trace of what used to be my face.
There are bruisers, pimps, addicts, and femme fatales who suddenly separate themselves from an orgy of carnal and destructive intent. They know but pretend not to know. All of a sudden their drinks or bottom of the glass or even the game on the set is more interesting than what was going on in the nasty spiderweb they were all weaving together before I entered the room.
I don't put my exterminator bag on the table but I sit down at the center of the bar. The waitresses retreat. Sam the man of granite with the off-center nose, who forever cannot taste the flavor of his favorite candy bar asks "What's the good word, Milo?"
"Not in jail. Yourself?"
"Pouring drinks for boozers, whores and dirtbags. Speaking of..." he takes down a bottle of Irish whiskey and raises an eyebrow, a glass already in the other hand wanting a pour.
A piano plays softly. Ivory tickles copper wire. The player, besides Sam is the only one who makes eye contact with me.
He smiles at me and nods, like he knows everything. He's wearing a cream suit with a white shirt and red scarf. His skin is like the color of salmon. His hair so blonde, it's almost white. Can't tell the color of his eyes from the smoke in the room. There's an intense feeling between us.
He's no fairy. I can tell. He's good with the world but in a shameful way. I'm comfortably in a nervous manner.
I point at the glass and nod approvingly to Sam "What's with the fairy?"
Sam snorts and grimaces a broken smile "He's owns the place. Owned it for quite sometime."
"Awfully, young isn't he?" I take a swig and point at the air in my glass.
Everyone goes back to business. Taking no notice of us, like we're in a vacuum. Silence all around us and at a great distant from the rest of bar. All I can hear is Sam, myself and the piano playing something from another time and place I never heard of. It's a sad melody but sounds like there used to be a hint of joy to it thousands of years ago.
"He's a bit older than any of us realize. Someone, told me... mind you this was a superstitious individual but not of a cowardly lot..." he smirks then continues "that the owner here was the Devil himself, exiled from his own inferno by the good lord for not being wicked enough. For offering a chance at redemption."
A moment passes.
The man at the piano waves. I get a cold and unusual feeling of vertigo.
"Pour me another."
Sam hesitates and as he fills the glass to the brim "Or it could all be the talk of drink mixed with desperation of loneliness."
I can feel the owner at his piano absently shrug.
I slowly sip as Sam stands over me, looking at the others in the hopes that they beg for his attention.
I push the glass aside.
"Sam, I want my fortune told."
He looks off to the side with his head down and eyes closed. "Milo..."
"Sam, I feel time slipping away. Don't f---around."
There are two doors. The one to the right leads to the kitchen, the other is a red beaded doorway.
The lady or the tiger.
I want the lady who rides the tiger.
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