Claire looked out at the desolate body of water. She liked the sunrise and varied colors of sky hanging out the water in the vast distance. A shroud of mist covered the other side of the world. She liked it out here, away from the city that swallowed people whole. She was alone now, where anything could happen but never did. Petrina City would soon become the far off world that may never have existed.
"Claire Mulligan?" came a grated voice.
She whipped around, feeling her privacy violated. The old man was shriveled like a paper bag, puffing on a corncob pipe. He seemed harmless enough, looking like a water damaged woold carving of a child in an over-sized pea-coat.
Course you are, I been watchin' you a long time."
She balked, stepping into the chilled water. Shots of invisible switchblade ice stabbed at her legs and ran up her spine.
"Don't be afraid sweetheart... it was only inevitable. Consider this one of those full circle types of things, where karma don't exactly take any holidays."
"Have I.... have, I wronged you mister? I'm only out to make amends"
The old man sighed. He took a long puff off his pipe, exhaling smoke akin to a roasted battlefield dancing over a spastic display of corpses.
"Being alone is hell enough."
The old man sighed again "No, it really isn't. 'Specially, when you got a whole slew of people involved."
Almost as an assurance, the old man pocketed his pipe and reached a trembling hand into his moth eaten coat.
Claire emulated the hand with her ragged figure, shuddering and barely able to stand, clutching a chunk of rotted tree on an abandoned work bench.
"What do I, need to do?" It was a plead for her world torn asunder.
"How many people have to die? I left everything behind. Everyone believed Claire Mulligan was lost in the fire and they were happy... but someone just wouldn't let go, would they?"
The sunrise was supposed to be a time of rejuvenation for Claire. Today, she experienced the vertigo felt at sunset. The end of day signified curses of shadows and pain. Her mind unwinding a horrific tapestry of misery until darkness lightly flew toward her and stroked her cheek bones in delicate grace.
The touch aroused her senses back to the present. She was now miles away from the calm she felt in nature.
The grim old man had thrown a velvet black glove down at her feet.
There was the eerie quietness in the moment. Any sensations that could have been felt, went numb. This was the ultimate reckoning.
Claire gulped, wide eyed yet still standing tall. She awaited her judgement
The old man gritted his teeth and spat. There was a tired desperation about him. He stared at both of his gnarled hands. They had been mangled in sickening ways over the decades walked.
"I've done a lot and had a lot done to me. Don't want to waste time anymore, doing what I do and pitying ,what I could've done" The old man raised his head.
He looked tenderly upon Claire "You shouldn't either, but... ques es lavida. It means, 'what is life?' The only lick of Mexican, I know. That's right, Mexican, not Spanish. You understand? This is the way of the world. The will of forces, we can't suppress."
Claire nodded. She knelt down to pick up the black glove. She caressed and softly smiled.
The old man gnashed his teeth and barked "Now, where is it?"
Claire reached inside her and revealed a pearl bracelet.
"Put them on." He growled.
Claire removed her coat. She slowly slipped the glove on her right hand and clasped the bracelet on her wrist. She stood artificially seductive,displaying the hand without expression or movement.
The old man nodded approvingly. His eyes ran up and down her form. A malicious smile further creased his weather beaten features, as he shamelessly licked his lips.
"I'd order you to strip, and you would... wouldn't you, whore? Instincts never die." He crept closer to Claire.
Claire saw that she and I the old man had the same shade of blue of eyes. Her expression softened.
The old man knew what meant and nervously fiddled in his pocket.
"I have two choices." He lamented, holding a pistol in one hand and his pipe in the other.
"I can shoot first, and then take a smoke, or I can smoke... while you shoot yourself."
Claire slyly smile "No, old man... there is another option without letting me go."
The old man return gesture with a grin and respectfully nodded.
"Sometimes a Hell is of your own choosing and not where people want you to be." He chomped down on his tooth marked pipe.
"Hell is being unable to choose. Maybe, both of us should have realized this long ago." Claire said.
"Young lady, after I leave these woods... it's only me and me. You, however can take as many chances as you need."
The old man mechanically opened the gun's chamber: emptying it out except for one bullet, spinning, snapping and shutting it, in a blur. He ran the gun down Claire's neckline and fondled her breasts with the barrel; he noticed scars and put the gun in her hand.
"Who were you?" She asked.
"A man like any other, only more so... I fell, but never hid my didn't how to or what to do. Who are you, girl?"
She brushed the unloved man's face "Black glove and pearl bracelet."
The old man snickered to stifle a sob. He looked more the child than ever, kicking a pebble in which a ladybug clung upon.
"Be seeing you, on the other side of eternity." He lit his pipe and casually strolled off.
"Isn't that the way, everyone's history ends?" Claire whispered to herself.
The gun felt like a feather. The glove and bracelet weighed as heavy as armored car in a not so distant past: filled with conjured promises and a toxic mirror romance in an imaginary shack in the Garden of Eden and that ended on a dirty patch of street, where her father once laid twitching and bleeding.
She remembered, how his eyes darted "why?'
That was the first time her world, would tilt and spin.
Claire opened the chamber. She spun and closed the chamber , several times but not as fast as the old man.
The day had begun to wane.
Soon would be the sunset and then the vertigo.
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