Word of the Day - Root

And the root cause of the problem was to be determined at a later date.

Which of course meant that the committee never actually reconvenied to decide.

So I got off Scott-Free.

Which is to say, I left Scott behind to take the blame, in case they ever really did look for who was responsible for setting the tarmac of the Lakeside Parking Lot on fire at three twenty-six in the morning on a Wednesday.

Word of the Day - Muse

Your name is a nickname for a name that means "memory" in the old language, where my name means that I'm not supposed to fall over my own feet. Your name is a name that makes me wonder, because there was a time, not so long ago - if a year isn't long - when someone like you, some memory, like you, was my muse.

And there were two of them, then - a dark and a light side to chaos, singing words to me that only I could hear...and they're silent now, though I wonder if the light sent you to free me from the dark.

Word of the Day - Amuse

You amuse me.

The way you smile, and the stories you tell.

You make life interesting.

I just wish it would last longer, y'know?

I'm leaving on Sunday - and I still haven't gotten your reaction to that. I wish I had the guts to tell you face to face....

But while I can scale a building, run from the cops, eat spicy food and laugh while doing it... I can't seem to face not seeing you, again.

Word of the Day - Band

She had a band around her wrist. I saw it, just briefly, just long enough to know that it was her - long enough to see the red fabric, long enough to catch her smile, flittering about on her lips, the way it used to.

And then she was gone, eaten whole by the shops, and the people, and the smoke and fog of the city... I wanted to catch her, to rescue her, but sometimes...

Sometimes such rescues aren't warranted.

What is Weakness?

ACT I


SCENE ONE
(The stage is set up to resemble a bar. There is a table on stage, sideways to the audience. Under the table is a row of glasses. GWEN is a middle-aged woman with a fierce demeanor and exacting movements. She stands behind the table, holding a rag, cleaning a glass and humming to herself. The door opens. DURZO is a young-looking man with an air of casual hostility, dressed in black. He enters, slams the door shut and stalks forward to take a seat opposite GWEN. She gives him a dark look.)


DURZO
Give me a drink.

(GWEN frowns, and slowly does so.)

DURZO
(mutters)
Thanks.

(DURZO downs the drink and slams the glass down, glaring at the table.)

GWEN
What's wrong this time?

DURZO
Kylar.

(DURZO motions for another drink, seeming agitated. GWEN fills another glass and sets it down.)

GWEN
What about him?


DURZO
(drinks and slams it down again)
Doll Girl.
(pauses and regards the empty glass)
I see him looking at her. I think he's falling in love. That can't happen.
(to himself)
It'd ruin everything.

GWEN
He's a boy.

DURZO
(snarls)
He's a killer. I trained him myself.

(DURZO pauses, holding the glass before pushing it forward with a growl. GWEN picks up the emptied glass.)

GWEN
You seemed to have managed all right.
(angrily)
You managed to give my sister a child.

DURZO
(snort)
There's a difference between fucking and love.

GWEN
(refills glass and sets it on the table)
I doubt Vondra saw it that way.

DURZO
(downs the glass)
Vondra was the bitch that didn't know when she wasn't wanted.

(DURZO sighs and puts his face in his hands for a moment. Then he lurches to his feet and grabs the glass he was drinking from and flings it across the room.)

DURZO
Damn him!
(softer)
Damn him.

(GWEN fills a new glass and holds it, cradling it against herself for a moment, while watching DURZO. For a brief time he is unaware of being watched, then DURZO looks up and sees GWEN looking at him. He reaches for the glass she is holding.)

DURZO
Give it to me.

GWEN
(pulls back)
You've gone through three already.

DURZO
(snarls)
Three or three hundred –

GWEN
You're a drunkard. You understand that, right?

DURZO
A drunkard isn't sober after leaving a bar!

GWEN
But a drunkard does drink night after night in the hopes of getting drunk.

(DURZO stares at GWEN for a long time, not quite reacting to what she has just said. His hands migrate to the table and curl into fists. He looks away. GWEN sets the filled glass down.)

GWEN
(slightly bitter, slightly wistful)
What's the problem with love, anyway?

DURZO
Murderers don't worship the goddess of love. We worship the god of potent liquids.
(raises glass in a mocking toast and takes a sip with each pronouncement)
Blood. Semen. Wine.
(pauses, looking into the glass and laughs)
He's a lie, like they all are, but at least he isn't a weakness. Not like Doll Girl.

GWEN
(shakes her head)
You're obsessed.

DURZO
And if I am? Give me another.

GWEN
(fills another glass and sets it down)
You can't expect –

DURZO
I'll expect what I damn well want to!

GWEN
(placating)
Durzo –

DURZO
(frenzied anger)
He knows the price of failure!

(GWEN stares at DURZO, then turns her back on him to fill another glass. There is an extended silence between the two of them. DURZO sits completely still, his face unreadable. GWEN sighs as she turns around with the filled glass and sets it on the edge of the table, watching DURZO.)

GWEN
He's just a boy, Durzo.

DURZO
(echoes)
Just a boy?

GWEN
Kylar.

DURZO
(reaches for glass and fiddles with it)
Kylar.
(looks down)
Yes. He is just a boy.
(extended silence)
Gwen. Help me.

GWEN
(puts down another glass)
Help yourself.

(GWEN exits silently. DURZO picks up the glass as though mesmerized, and stares after GWEN for a moment. Then DURZO stands and throws the glass after her.)

DURZO
You stupid bitch!
(long silence)
Whore!
(pauses uncertainly, then plaintively calls)
Gwen?



THE END

(Here's my disclaimer: Durzo, Gwen, Kylar and the Night Angel series does not belong to me... That's the property of one Brent Weeks. (And if you haven't read it, you damn well should.))

Word of the Day - Ill

Love sick, darling.
It's that sickness that keeps you tied down in hospital beds, long after all the other patients have mended.
The kind of sick that gets you rolling over yourself in the morning, dry-heaving because nothing else can come out of you.
The kind of sick that feels like purple, trying to take out blue.

Word of the Day - Skeleton

The bones were white, painted white by a shaky fifth grader's hand while a mother looked on. A science project, once upon a time.
But now, something different.
Skeleton -
"Honey, are we keeping this?" Mr. Marret called to his wife.
She stopped by the door and looked in, smiled.
"Yes," she said.
"Why?"
"Skeletons," she said, "in the closet."

Word of the Day - Ticket

If you want to get away, you set your feet loose, and follow where they take you. To the train station, down the subway tunnel, on the left side of the tracks, pressed against the wall. Out in a rainstorm with the world crashing around you. Underwater, when you can't feel anything because the water is so damn cold. Into the atmosphere, where anything is possible.

Word of the Day - Violet

Purple.
Goddammit.
You don't bleed purple, and your blood isn't bluer than mine, once it hits the air.
But you keep saying you're royalty of a sort.
Spotted inside, or something.
Violet.
Just makes me want to rip out your insides, to inspect them.
Blue-blooded bastard.
Brother.

Word of the Day - Violent

You are the horror to garner sympathy for my plight and the secondary action sequence to back up my daredevil plot.

Word of the Day - Megaphone

Amplified voices, carried across the stadium, announcing the problems, the solutions…
Hidden under the stands, Melanie only heard the problems.
Someone had died.
Someone always died.
She pulled her boyfriend closer and started kissing him again.
“That was your twin, wasn’t it?”
He muttered something, and unclipped her bra.

Word of the Day - Trophy

On the top of the trophy case sat a small book with words inside. Or...words that had been inside. Blank, now, because a fiendish seven year old had taken scissors to the words and cut all of them out over the course of the past year. A word, cut out in a box, and discarded, until there was only a small book with words inside that had been taken out. Gutted.

Word of the Day - Sticks

Sticks and stones, love.
They mend bones.
Words - it's words, now that you've got to know do the breaking.
Breaking hearts, that is.
Not bones.
Sticks and stones, and stones and sticks - splints and axes so we can mend the men we kill.
But words...
Oh, love.
There's no cure for words, besides the cause of pain -
more words.

Word of the Day - Plague

The black and blue marks on my legs make me look like a victim. Like I've been sick, like no one could cure me. They make me look like I'm dying, bleeding out from the inside. They make me look ill.
Plague victim, people say.
I look at them and laugh.
Victim? Maybe.
But plague?
No.
It's love, got me looking this way.

Word of the Day - Cigarette

Do you know what a flavored cigarette looks like when it's burning into the palm of your hand? No?
Well, do you know what the face of a girl whose palm is being burned looks like?
I'll tell you.
It looks serene, and calm, as she stares down at the flesh melting off her hand.
It looks at ease, and relaxed, almost like this is the movies, and she watching it happen to someone else.
And then her eyes flutter closed and she collapses, and murmurs something soft, that you barely catch, only you think it sounds like, "That was beautiful."

Word of the Day - Mean

My average is taken from the truth of what I am and divided by the falsehoods of those I meet.
In the end, all the data agrees that I am better than you are.
Than any of you can ever be.

Word of the Day - Maroon

The same color stained the paper as Marilyn wore for her blouse. And the poster paint didn't really even show up. It was kind of... Reddish. Rusty, except darker, and less brown. She didn't have a word for it. Just dark red, but not red like blood. Red like some stars could be, on days when the atmosphere was a little thicker, a little closer to earth.
Red, Marilyn thought, and smudged two more fingerfuls of the paint on herself; no one even noticed.

Word of the Day - Cast

They signed the plaster moulding of the cast for the bronze horse, the same way you might sign a cast for a broken wrist, but they made a whole to-do about it, and cast one another in roles, announced a casting call, cast about for lofty words and finally cast off shore where the boat promptly sank and the cast of the bronze horse sank.

Word of the Day - Stem

Stem cells grow slowly; they're moving, fighting one another, rolling dice to decide what they want to become. It's funny, to watch, y'know. All the cells gathered around the table, throwing down numbers and muttering curses as they move to another side of the table and start to mutate - make room for new cells to gather. The researchers are just watching the game, hoping they can use some loaded dice somewhere; it rarely works.

Word of the Day - Given

It’s been given to me to make a change in someone else’s life. Someone I didn’t know but who felt like I should have. He was sitting on a bench, today, and contact juggling, with a glass ball and a hat between his paint splattered boots, singing to himself. I walked by, and then stopped, and went back to sit by him, to look at him, to wonder at him.
And then when he had given over the stories he holds, the stories of his life, how he had been raised by a Nazi, gone homeless by choice, followed bands and avoided drugs, helped people when he could and called the gypsies his own people – a wanderer – then I gave over what I could, and heard the words shouted behind me as I left him.
“Love!”
But I’m not sure what they meant.