I drone of ice. Crystal. Pale luminescence.
I show him how I shuttercock the gun to skate the lake in tin flechette under a neon sky, dancing somewhere between Nijinsky and ictus rigor, near both wolf and dog on the Betweens.
In a word, I say: They cannot see me.
In yet more: They cannot hear me, save for the hollow of my entrance.
And: They cannot taste me, for their screams.
Explaining: They all have sharp ends, just as I will have a sharp end. It is the only way we can be. When you waltz with knives and cold eyes blue, everything becomes razor cuts through the gloom.
“And you never tire of this?” he asks, knowing the answer.
Of course I do.
I shrug. But I know nothing else. I only know the northern cold.
An exchange. As agreed, fifteen in advance. To hold me, to unspring my aching need. There was crimson spilled the last time, the time they thought to give me mere seed instead of what we had agreed.
Word travels, as they say.
“Fifty more when it is complete?”
I stare. He knows. I have no desire to bleed him for more. Yet anyway. Perhaps later. In his mistress’s boudoir, as I smoke his expensive cigars.
He does not know it, but he is lucky.
Ahh. Now he sees, coughs. Chair screech, standing back from my obsidian eyes empty.
“Em. Hum. Contact me when you have done the deed.”
I knappedflint smile. Only a smile.
It is already done, this job. Before we met. For joy. But he can wait for that news. Make him wonder.
He stumbleleaves, does not even finish his drink, does not count the jack he leaves on the table for the tab for all his hurrying. Out the door, letting in winter.
I am tired. Yet, I have pride.
I am drone of ice.
