Bronwen
O’Connor
“You want in
me what you see is a testament
She threw open the door of the Challenger before it was even stopped in front of the house, slamming the door behind her and stalking towards the house. Utterly exasperatedly pissed. I’m going to fucking kill them. “Baby,” Shane called, “it’s not so bad. I’m sure it’s just a mistake…” Yeah. A mistake. A fucking fumble that was going to get someone eviscerated, if she had anything to do with it. “They’re still good opponents,” he called more half-heartedly. “An’ hey, you can bop those bitches some broken bones with that one pillow, you know, with the bricks in it …that’ll feel good, right?” She slammed the door to the house behind her so hard that it buckled on its hinges. “Yeah…lame, I know,” Shane muttered, jamming his hands in his pockets and slowly walking up the stoop. He walked into the living room to catch Bronwen in full rampage mode, pacing around furiously, smoke hanging from her lips as she looked for something to break that wasn’t a wedding gift from a relative. An oriental cat clock from Serenity whistled through the air, shattered into a million pieces on the drywall, leaving behind a satisfying dent. “Bron,” Shane said awkwardly, watching the cat’s eyes cease their once-ceaseless rocking, “you wanna go wrassle this out in the backyard or somethin’?” Two decorative mugs, one with Betty Boop and Elmer Fudd followed behind the clock, making the dent noticeably deeper. At least she was being conservative in the wall space she was destroying, Shane thought. “Fuck that Sara Pettis,” Bronwen screamed, “who the hell thinks that fucking MUGS with fucking cartoon characters on them, are GOOD goddamn gifts?!” “She said they were collector’s items,” Shane said tactfully, eyeing up the limited edition electric Gibson that Bronwen was hefting. Fire engine red, the neck of the guitar was gracefully curved to end in a sharp thorn at the tuning keys, while the body of the guitar was forked like the tongue of the devil hisself. So goddamn metal that he would fuck it if he could. The guitar splintered surprisingly easily, craftsmanship scattered to the four winds by the hardwood flooring, in little bits of slick enamel paint, wood, and the clanging of broken strings. “Goddamn girl,” he sighed, “what a fucking rock star you are sometimes.” “I HATE THIS!” She screamed. “I am not fucking cat-fight fodder! I am not a GODDAMN JOBBER, and you know it!” She grabbed his huge gracefully hand-blown water pipe. The glass swirled with different hues of green and blue glass all intermingled in a smokey hue. Shane’s eyes bugged out. “I know that sweety…everyone knows that, it’s all good. Now give my goddamn bong,” he said, reaching out gently. She shot him a crestfallen expression, and the bong teetered precariously in her hands. Shane blinked, willed her not to drop it. “I had it Shane,” she whispered, “and I lost to that stupid fucking cunt jock Serenity ONCE, and I fucking lose it? How does that make any fucking sense?” She dropped his bong at the moment he dived to catch it. It landed lightly in his outstretched hands as he tumbled to the floor at her feet. He looked up at her as she sighed and her hands dropped to her sides in deflation. “Baby,” he said, “it was a fucking bad call. Bad call or no, you just gotta do this thing. Show those bitches what a real fight is, because there’s no fuckin’ way they’ll take you down just by scratching you.” “I’m so goddamn tired of this bullshit,” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “I don’t want to fight little girls in a little girl match. They just want flying tits, claws, and scratching.” “Yeah…Hey baby, can you not drop that again? That kinda freaked me out.” “Ye weren’t even fucking listening to what I just said,” Bronwen snapped, “were ye?” Shane just sighed and put the bong high up on top of the china cabinet, “apparently not. Goddamn you’ve been moody lately baby.” Her eyes widened, and he suddenly wished he had a gun for some reason. He scrabbled around in the cabinet, and came up instead with a plate. “Goddamnit,” she yelled. “Goddamnit all Shane. Jesus Christ, you’re just as bad as the rest of those pigs.“ “Shit Bronwen,” he yelled, losing his cool finally, “you’ve been raging out since you read that fucking card. Don’t take it out on me. Just admit you’re mad about the fight, and leave it at that, ok? Bring it to the goddamn ring, don’t fucking take that shit home.” Her face screwed up for a minute and scrutinized him from a thick scowl. He weakened, and almost smiled. The scowl always got him. “Ok,” she said resignedly. More quietly he heard, “I’m sorry.” He could see that she still had a concerned line stretching itself like a dagger across her forehead as he drew closer and pulled her into his arms. Bronwen looked up at him, and pressed her forehead into his chest. “What else,” he asked gently. “I saw Dominic a few days ago,” she murmured. “She’s not dead. I fucking shot that stupid girl in the forehead, and less than two weeks later, I see her on the back of some bike in midday with some old grizzled biker twice her age.” “What?” Shane asked, pulling back and looking down at her in disbelief. She was absolutely as confounded as he now appeared, but in the time she’d been thinking about it, she’d realized a few things. “Till has made her impossible to kill,” Bron stated. “I think she’s able to regenerate by …some gross vampy process or another completely typical of his bastard ways.” They were silent for a minute, mulling over the situation before Bronwen spoke: “The worst part of it was the expression on her face. Ten times younger looking and grinning like a wicked idiot. I don’t like it.”
“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, And I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.”
Inevitably, like most folks do, Bronwen realized a few days later that the household was experiencing some serious problems. The cupboards were bare and she caught Shane shoveling Cheerios into his face at 7 o’clock at night. “We need groceries eh?” she’d said, watching a dribble of milk run down his chin into his blond goatee. “Nah,” he said agreeably, lying. “Well…maybe some more Cheerios, at the very least.” She’d sighed, and grabbed the keys off the kitchen counter, “Be back in an hour.” “I lub you hon’,” he’d said, over another mouthful of cereal. The supermarket was dead quiet. The huge barren nature of the place struck her as she quietly squeaked her cart down the aisles foraging for food. The muzak tinkled tinnily in the background like the soundtrack out of a Romero movie. She snorted at a day dream about zombies, reaching their ghoulish hands through the aisles to grab unsuspecting patrons. About 20 minutes passed of her aimlessly wandering around the huge store, picking up things, reading ingredients, putting them back down on the shelf. The cart very slowly filled with groceries—she was much cheaper and less impetuous than Shane when it came to the grocery shopping, but he refused to come with her anymore. The time and mundanity dragged on him and his somewhat ADD nature, while oppositely, she secretly relished the chance to daydream and not tax her brain with too much heavy thought. She bizarrely enjoyed the surreal sense of normalcy it brought her, though she stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the soccer moms and wee bairns that often filled the place. Bronwen was turning the cart towards the dairy aisle when she got the first inkling that something was not right. Alarm bells triggered in her mind as she saw a figure clothed in black step out from behind the dairy shelves from the back door. The two litre of milk the figure held clenched in one hand exploded in a spray of froth and white liquid as the assailant fired a silenced gun. She ducked for cover in the dry goods aisle and pulled out the Colt from her waistband. “Goddamnit,” Bronwen swore, “there is truly nothing trashier than –“ her musing was shattered by another shot that blew several cans of beans off the shelf into a derelict heap of cold slime at her feet. She growled and pushed herself up to peek around the corner. A craggy half cocked smile greeted her, along with younger shaggier black hair, whiter smoother features but still insanely blue-white eyes. “Hi love,” Jagger whistled cheerfully, “did ye fuckin’ miss me now?” She pulled back around the corner. “Ahhh Christ.” A low evil laugh rumbled through the base of her neck, “they warned you. It was only a matter of time.” She punched out a few rows of cans in one swift motion and jammed the Colt into the shadows of the shelf, pulled the trigger. A spurt of blood erupted from Jagger’s right shoulder. “Fuck!” he screamed, “you stupid bitch, don’t go filling me with fucking holes—do ye know how long it took to even have skin again?” She squeezed the trigger again, but he darted swiftly in the opposite direction. A commotion was rising at the front of the store. What little people were in the place at 8 at night were clearing out, whatever the cost, or no—one man veered straight out of the bakery section and straight out of the door, his cart piled high with groceries, sans gratis. Her eyes flew back to Jagger. She watched him bump a pile of Kraft dinner, a few boxes landing with rattling thwacks on the linoleum behind him, as he sprinted away from her pursuit. Slowly she pressed in on him in the produce section. He cockily smiled as he backed up against the broccoli and cauliflower, spinning the black gun lazily in his hands as he watched her carefully. “Till brought you back?” She asked tersely. “Yep,” he said, grinning broadly. “Call it my fun deal with the ass-rape artist, that fucking devil Till.” “I don’t get it,” Bronwen replied, “what’s in it for ye? Do you know what Till is? What he’s capable of?” Jagger pushed himself off the produce rail and smiled darkly, a flash of annoyance flickering across his face as he answered, “well, it’s certainly not you anymore, ye dirty slut.” She scowled at him in confusion. “What do you think?” he said louder, throwing a cantaloupe at her. She dodged it and moved a little closer. “I don’t know what to think,” she growled, “so just tell me the fucking reason.” Jagger frowned, “it’s so easy, come on…just guess.” She sighed. “What? You’re his gay lover forever now? You both dress up in women’s clothing together? Seriously, I don’t know.” “Immortality,” he whispered. “The ability to do everything I’ve ever wanted to do.” “You’re such a child!” Bronwen shouted, appalled, “you actually believe that shit?” “Bronwen,” Jagger murmured, a weird light entering his eyes, “Till—you don’t understand—Till is a GOD.” The sprinklers for the vegetables came on, and Jagger flinched, jumping a mile into the air. She aimed, put a bullet soundly between his eyes. The gunshot reverberated through the store, confused for a second amongst the faint muzak. Jagger slumped back into the English cucumbers he’d been standing in front of, the slick mist blurring with the blood and bits of his head as it drained over the dark green of the dull waxy looking vegetable. She sighed and strode to the back of the store to the stock area. She grappled around on the benches until she finally found what she was looking for. Gagging a small amount, she thumped Jagger’s limp torso over her knee and started cutting with the box-cutter she’d found. Her jeans soaked with fluid shortly as she severed the blood vessels past the suspiciously fresh looking flesh. When she’d cut his trachea through and hit his neck, she reached for a hack saw and finished the job with a sound that made her stomach churn just a twitch more. It sounded like sawing through wet cardboard, but it didn’t take long. She heard a cough and looked up. A police officer stood there, hands clearly shaking as he stared at her in disbelief. She wiped her hand on her face, felt moisture, and realized there was blood there. “There is no good explanation for this,” she said miserably looking up at him as Jagger’s head freed itself of its last ragged clutch of skin and fell with a thump to the white linoleum. The police officer turned around and ran. She picked up the head by grabbing a handful of his thick black hair and looked at Jagger’s limp eyes. “I’m tired of killing you, you fucker,” she grimaced, walking towards the pet food aisle. Grabbing a bucket of cat litter, she ripped it open and dumped the ash grey grit across the floor back in the vegetable aisle. Might as well make the clean up easier, she thought. Heh. “Clean up in Aisle 9,” she shouted in a falsely sweet voice as she shoved Jagger’s head into the bucket and clamped the lid down on it. Bronwen strode whistling out of the store. Her cell phone rang. “Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom. Then the father hen will call his chickens home. The wise men will bow down before the throne. And at his feet they'll cast their golden crown. When the man comes around...”
Bronwen Says It shouldn’t be a secret by now that I’m really not thrilled about the concept of this fight. Let me emphasize that for you that are hard of hearing. Concept—an idea, or notion, pushed forward or utilized. Case in point, Nathan Gust decides he needs something to masturbate to, and comes up with the grand idea that chicks in a pillow fight would be a lovely daydream-cum-reality, pun intended. I guess getting off on himself as some imagined demi-god all these years is finally starting to get boring. As for you, Becky Thompson (gag), and Rachel Pitt… I realize you’re not necessarily intelligent enough to realize what an insult it is to be touted as the next greatest cat-fight, a fucking princess novelty pillowcase match, but I’m prepared to, at the very least, help you realize that insult in the ring with a super gay fucking pillowcase full of bricks, right in the no-doubt tartly made-up gash of your face. I assure you, as soon as you are leaving bloodstains on Gust’s mother’s linens, you will start to question why the fuck you are there, taking this arrangement for one thing, and taking the beating I will promise you for another. Rachel, I would think you, out of the two of you, would see my point on this farce. After working as hard as you have on your career (much like me), his is no doubt a bit of a large pill to have shoved up your rectum. This said, I’m not oblivious to the fact that a fight is a fight (is a fight). A win or a loss, and yeah bitches, I’ll take that win again, whut! If bringing your sad duplicitously confused self to the ring goes as well as last time, it will be a lovely moment for me at the very least to see that horrified expression of defeat you wore so beautifully last time, even for a second, before I lay down some more brick on it. Becky though…you’re a fucking lost cause, very possibly the core of my discontent—you “mentored” Nathan Gust eh? Look where that fucking got you—how’s it feel to be the raped dead slut, ran over and tossed to the ditch like a soulless prostitute? I can see he really valued your influence in his life. Hell, seeing as I just learned of your existence with your ridiculous soccer mom name this week—that must mean you have “tremendous” influence and stature around here. Give me a fucking break, you’re another fucking Real-Girl doll, just like that jobber Sara Pettis, your issue-ridden druggie of a daughter. Kudos for laying off the pills and green food coloring though—Bad choices and bad parenting! The prodigal fuck-up doesn’t fall far from the barren shit-bearing tree apparently. In parting, please leave your Barbies and your Polly Pocket sleeping bags at home before you come out to this event. Regardless of theme, regardless of setting, lame-assed weapon or novelty sentiment, I’ll still come into that goddamn ring swinging full throttle on brutality, no less bloody than usual (maybe even more, because this is so goddamned annoying—Gust better watch himself). I know you two cunts were counting on trading make-up tips, Vicodin, and yeast infections, but try to keep your feminine seepage and weepage to a minimum—that shit makes me gag.
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