The engine rasped like an exhale from a man with nothing left to lose as I eased into the passenger seat. She was draped over the dashboard in a spun-silk dress the color of bruised plums, one leg kicked up beside her ear as casually as if she were lounging in a velvet boudoir. In her hand gleamed that 24 Karat Gold gun, an invitation to every sin I’d ever dreamed...
We’d collided two hours earlier in a dwindling bar on the riverfront, where the only light came from a lone filament bulb swinging overhead and the molten glow of tarnished brass sconces. The air tasted of dust and spilled merlot, the walls sweating with the ghosts of a dozen broken glassware. Her laughter slithered through the haze, sweet and venomous, and when she pressed that glass to my lips, the cognac burned a seal on my resolve.
Now we prowled down empty streets under the jaundiced glare of aged sodium lamps, their halos bouncing off puddles slick with oil and ambition. Every time her finger drummed the pistol’s grip, the car jolted, and I traced that tremor through my spine like reading braille. The cracked windshield fractured the lamplight into prisms, painting her silhouette in fractured gold.
A single ping snapped from her pocket, her phone lighting up with a message I never got to see. I smelled merlot seeping from the creases of her dress and felt the tremble in her thigh. I considered deleting her history for her, wiping the past like chalk from a blackboard, but part of me reveled in watching her own regrets flicker across the screen.
At the rusted overpass where the river below roared like a caged beast, she raised the pistol and fired once into the dark. The shot cracked like a thunderclap against concrete, sending sparks dancing across the guardrail. She tilted her head back, hair spilling like ink, and laughed an echo of madness that settled into my bones.
I reached for her hand. The pistol lay between us now, its cold weight a confession of our beautiful wreckage. The leather glove she wore smelled of cognac and gunpowder; I peeled it back to taste the copper tang on her skin.
“Tell me,” I whispered, “why this isn’t already too late.”
Her eyes glimmered with something I couldn’t name: longing, fury, or perhaps the ghost of hope. “I’ve been dying since they traded my name for a ring,” she said, voice low as spilled wine.
We crested the hill to the old quarry overlook, where the city lights looked like fallen stars winking in the water. She poured us two glasses of merlot from a battered thermos, velvet liquid that clung to the rim, and we drank in silence, the world below unaware of our little séance.
She turned the pistol on her reflection in the mirror shard I found wedged in the console earlier, the same shard that bit into her palm back at the bar. I pressed my lips to her temple, tasting ash and something like regret, and said, “One perfect shot. Then we vanish.”
The barrel kissed her skin, and in that long breath before the trigger, I imagined the bullet carving a path between love and oblivion. But instead, she pressed it to her chest, between two ribs, and pulled the trigger.
The world detonated. The car rocked, the merlot spilled, and the overhead bulb flickered into oblivion. I was thrown against vinyl, ears ringing six times over. In the darkness, I felt her fall, heard the final thud of a life surrendered.
When the ringing subsided, I fumbled for her hand. The pistol rolled across the floorboard, coming to rest against my boot. Her dress pooled beneath her like dark water, and the last of the merlot dripped from her lips.
Sirens wailed somewhere far away, but they might as well have been a lullaby. I slipped the pistol into my coat, stood on unsteady legs, and brushed a strand of hair from her cold cheek.
I walked away into the night, the asphalt steaming with the scent of gunpowder and wine, each step echoing with the ache of wanting more. Some stories don’t end; they bleed out into legend, leaving you panting for the next jagged turn. And I will chase that high until the last drop of cognac runs dry.
- m y t h o s ...
WordSmith Statement: I don't sleep...I dream.
The provided text, "Marlot from a gun Treatment," is a dark and evocative narrative following a character's intense encounter with a mysterious woman. The story unfolds throughout a single night, marked by symbolic imagery, such as a 24-karat gold gun and spilled merlot, which suggests themes of desire, danger, and self-destruction. Their journey through the city culminates in a tragic climax where the woman takes her own life. The narrator is left to be real with the aftermath of this event, hinted at by the lingering scent of gunpowder and the lasting impact of their encounter. The final lines suggest that the narrator continues to pursue such high-stakes experiences.
