untitled for now - untitled by Shannin

His patience was dwindling rapidly. Her frail frame shivered, from quavering fingertips to clacking heels pulsating against his cluttered oak floor. A fist smashes atop the delicate, spasming tendons in her hand and slowly flattens the pressure outwards, projecting the objects she held out of her grip. Her focus falters to the dirt-filled fractures and recent rips decorating the hand that now swallowed hers. He is holding her dead still. Her eyes find and affix on the only objects near her encompassed hand, now forced against his booze-encrusted table—her rocks. Symmetrically married in perfect form, two triangular pieces of hematite stood magnetized against each other, resting easily on their shared base in a perfect two-dimensional metallic pyramid. Her oral fixation sat inches out of her reach.

And she finally stopped talking.

The contact appeased her. Rather than retreat in fear, she twists her shoulders inward, gently guiding her stare to meet his. She’s close enough for him to feel her breath puffing against his jaw and neck. Lanky chunks of her unkempt blonde hair—dark at the roots, white and broken at the tips—fall against his forehead as her breath manipulates him in calming waves; the calamity that was Sofia and the rage that consumed him just moments ago are suddenly arrested. She stifles him.

He hawks his laconic response. “Thursday only. Both of them.”

He releases her hand, which instinctively retrieves the hematite. She moves closer still, rotating her gaze to obstruct his. Tears puddle in the corners of almond eyes and a momentary glimpse of empathy challenges his next demand. A crooked left index finger extends to her temple and a willing countenance descends to mirror her face. Moving grungy fingernails around the base of her petite skull, he presses her head into his.

While her osculation is strong and willful, her body’s conviction is feeble. Sobbing just moments ago, he now finds her offering herself to him in apology. Fucking pathetic. Incredulous bitch... With great effort she scoots her weight forward and to the left, resting her lower half precariously on one edge of the chair. Her moist palm, resumed in its unsteady state, attempts to descend seductively from his chest to groin. He deliberately takes a heavy sip of oxygen into his lungs. She’s gliding midway between his concave stomach and her destination when he abruptly stands, the wooden chair struggling to balance behind him. In one movement, he swiftly attaches a clawed thumb and middle finger to her throat glands, threatening to press into the center. Her hands immediately clasp at the wrist behind square hips, the hematite engulfed at their core. Her head tilts to the side in submission, despair, while a light-headed sense of euphoria, totally grounded in another day’s survival, materializes into a pompous smirk below closed, comfortably sunken eyes.

He contemplates tossing her.

Instead, close-fisted with the right, he pummels her just under hard enough to collapse a cheekbone. Her skull jets backwards with equal force as her body stays plastered to the chair, slightly rocking on its square legs. Like an intoxicated puppet she reacts in a flailing stumble towards the apartment door. She pauses movement less than momentarily as she scans the room for her weathered satchel--her things, her safety net, her entire being amassed in a disorganized bag of products, the fundamental among the unnecessary, with literature, crumpled letters, coupons, hard candy, and menthol cigarettes. It was crucial mostly due to the fact that it contained her deceptively still-full personal kit. Finding it resting in the corner of a puffy green lounger guarding the entry, now equipped with her rocks in one hand and her bag in the other, she carefully mutters receipt of his command.

“On Thursday. Yeah.”

Lifting the strap of the bag around her head and one shoulder, he studies her lack of grace as she moves. In a decade’s time, her body had suffered caustic transformations. The round waist of her shiny, black slacks looked ridiculous against a deflated frame, weak and ungrounded like a wet cardboard box. Always with the black. Spaghetti straps and a frilly hem desperately attach to orthogonal shoulders and limbs. The design fails to flatter. She looked better clothed than not, but few pieces of attire were successful in bringing life to Fia’s flesh. Her eyes appear as flat shadows as she swivels her back to him, frowning shoulders sunken towards the door’s handle. She moves quickly, quietly, ghostlike, disappearing behind the softly latching entry.

In the nine a.m. explosion of lustrous summer color, Fia’s system suffers an unnatural shock. The ninety-five degree warmth and the breezy fresh air that now surrounded her was a greater-than night and day difference from the stained, rusted façade she’d just emerged from, where her last performance had struck a dark chord. She pledges to resolve it but her mind is in disarray. Her body chills and curls farther inward. Taking a moment to breathe energy in, she stares to her black Reeboks gently pressing into the dehumidified lawn. If not for quasi job, she’d have more fitting shoes. Her mind is elsewhere and nowhere at once. The sun is to blame for a pain shooting deep into her temples. Her gaze detours on the way to face the vehicle, searching through the magic bag. She withdrawals a pair of frameless teacup-shaped Revo knock-offs. The rubber earpieces tear through brittle strands of hair as she slides them on to cover her sleepless face. The cobalt lenses instantly buffer the insistence of the California sun. A gift from her baby sister, the fashion-inspired specs were irreplaceable. They were the last tactile tool (in the tote or anywhere else) used to evidence the existence of her long-estranged bloodline. And never was she without them. Inspired by day, they protected her from the elements—rain, wind, darkening clouds, and dust storms; haze; her deceit, guilt, and sorrow.

Mapping around the elements was the task at hand. Fia hastily scrambled to her most recent acquisition. It was a nice one—and still new to her. Sloppily repainted an unfitting shade of canary yellow and marked with a few minor bumps and scratches, it pleased her. Driving the five-speed helped her stay alert at times like these. Getting in and hammering the door shut, she chucks her belongings behind her. As soon as she releases the bag from her grip she cringes, waiting for her delicate things to shatter against the car’s bare frame. After the crash, she gathers her things and digs to assess any damages. Maybe she could talk to Pops about obtaining the back seat.

Happening upon the vehicle was no easy task. She needed it for quasi job—“there just isn’t any other way.” Technically, it didn’t officially belong to her. She owed Pops $950 for it, not including the ‘few’ grand he had ‘donated.’ The car’s previous owner was a teenaged deviant who lost his vehicle-ownership privileges after an all-night east LA extravaganza, when a few too many paper doses of LSD bought street-side ended in a frantic phone call to Mommy at 3:30 am. The last thing the kid needed was a easily modifiable hatchback Civic to tear around in, anyways—after three months of ownership, the near-pristine Honda turned feigned rice-racer had no front license plate, grip-bare tires, and an extremely compromised interior. Of course, exhaust and intake and sway bars and sixteen-inch alloy rims and the Integra GSR motor with the eventual Apexi turbo kit were all in the works for the teen, but he would have to save his illegal import racing dreams for another ride. This one was now Sofia’s to abuse. And not pay for.

Pops was a retired economic analyst, floating several people along on the hefty retirement to him after decades of loyalty to Forbes. Paranoid about Alzheimer’s, he was beginning to question himself more and more often—what was said, who did what, where his money was. In a palatial modern Craftsman nestled four miles east of the Pacific coast in San Juan Capistrano, Pops sheltered himself and three others: his spoiled, delightfully young and beautiful Italian spouse, Adrina; his hopelessly kind and artistic son, John Junior; and John’s troubled and extremely needy female counterpart. Sofia.