Nefarious Muse

Freddie walked and talked with Harris, stumbling drunk out of the pub into the star brightened night, equipped with a fake Irish accent and a mistaken joke about leprechauns when out of the ether a man came up whistling Galitsky’s Song from Borodin’s Prince Igor, thin-faced and pockmarked and crooked teeth smiling sharp and jagged as he spoke, a simple “Hello there.” The two drunkards looked from each to the man, who went back to the song, rocking on his heels, hands deep in his dirty leather coat’s pockets, before Sampson responded with his own form of simplicity, “The fuck are you?” Crooked teeth responded, “Oh, forgive my manners,” and with bemused grace he pulled from the worn pocket a heaven-heavy pistol and pulled the trigger twice in such quick succession it may have well been once, Sampson and Harris not even aware, frankly, that they were dead upright, but when they hit the ground they were sure of it. Switching to Yaroslavna’s Lament, crooked teeth crouched over the two former best friends and extracted each man’s keys, then their wallets. Little cash, but that wasn’t what he was looking for, no, the smile on his face at learning their names, the quick switch to Freddie’s Dead by Curtis Mayfield. He took a credit card and the driver’s license, before walking back into the ether, and the two men lay in the night, staring up with bloodshot, empty eyes at the stars and the earth moving beneath them, the heavens bearing their witness. Blood began to pool in the sockets and the stars that guided them did not judge.