The city night was already perched on the balcony railing, a solar-powered cigarette glowing in daylight. She smiled at me like she was plotting my assassination, and Lord help me, I’d follow her to the ends of the earth just to feel that dangerous curve of her lips again. We called our affair “Project Apocalypse,” a grandiose name born of broken dreams and recycled adrenaline. Raven was an ex-missile silo technician turned performance artist; her idea of romance involved live explosives and interpretive dance.
I was a disillusioned tech journalist with a knack for getting into trouble. This morning, her newest stunt awaited: a custom 3D-printed handgun laser-etched with our initials, Raven’s twisted ode to “love in the time of mass destruction.” The barrel caught the sun in a way that nearly blinded me, with a sharp, metallic promise.
She handed me the weapon as if it were a bouquet of black tulips. “Taste it,” she said, voice low and dangerous, the way you might invite a cobra to cuddle. The metal was cold against my tongue, humming with a latent threat. Sparks of ozone prickled my nostrils; the acrid tang of heated polymer danced on my palate. She laughed—an electric crackle that lit up my bones.
“Stick with me,” Raven said, strapping the piece to her thigh, “and we’ll set the world ablaze.”
We roared through the city streets on her stolen Ducati, tires cutting arcs of rubber on mile after mile of concrete. The wind ripped past me, salt and oil and the faint perfume of her shampoo, a contradiction of antiseptic and wild garden, like a rose planted in an oil slick. I clutched her waist, feeling the prickle of her jacket’s bulletproof lining, and wondered if love always felt this electric.
At midnight, we arrived at the old stadium, an abandoned relic bathed in sodium glare. Raven’s crew waited: a motley coalition of hackers, adrenaline junkies, and one kid who swore he’d once jailbreaked a nuclear submarine. They called themselves “Ashes to Ashes” because nothing good ever survived their touch. Raven stepped forward, gun in hand, eyes shimmering with lunacy and longing.
“Tonight,” she announced, voice bouncing off ghostly concrete, “we make art.” She spoke as if she addressed a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. She pressed the barrel to a crate of illegal fireworks, Chinese imports, of course, because nuances are for amateurs. I caught a whiff of gunpowder, and something sweeter, her breath whispered against my ear as she leaned close. “You ready?”
I nodded, though my heart leaped so hard I practically tasted it. Raven squeezed the trigger. The fireworks erupted in a kaleidoscope of colors: ruby stars, emerald flares, and roars that shook the empty stands like a primal scream. The ground vibrated beneath us. Sparks rained like falling stars, and in the cacophony, I caught the metallic tang of fear and the heady rush of pure, unfiltered thrill.
We danced among the blast, bodies silhouetted against the inferno. Our laughter tangled with the explosions. Raven pressed the gun to my temple, the muzzle warm now, thrum-thrum-thrum. “Say it,” she whispered, voice crooning with danger. “Say you’d die for me.”
Words caught in my throat, too many truths, too many lies, but I let my mouth form the words nevertheless: “Forever and a day.”
She kissed me then, rough and hungry, as if her lips were ready to explode. My teeth lightly touched her lower lip, a surge of pleasure sharp as broken glass. The world spun; the fireworks faded into embers in our bloodshot eyes. Raven pulled back, eyes sparkling.
“Well,” she said, threading her fingers through mine, “you just signed your death warrant.”
We slipped away into the shadows, two fugitives bonded by a chaos masterpiece. Later, when I’d sober up, I’d wonder if it was all just a hallucination: the taste of steel on my tongue, the tang of gunpowder in my lungs, the sound of fireworks inside an empty cathedral. But beneath my skin, the burn of love—and something darker—would stay. And I’d chase that rush again, as long as Raven’s silhouette haunted my mornings. Because in the end, all great love stories end in smoke and ashes. But ours? Ours was only just beginning.
- jspc ] the artist of wanton [
