{ Dead In the Water } // Taggerty ☩ Icarus

I pawned off the last of my bronzed ticking seconds to some shady man with politician-crooked teeth and questionable intentions in the back alley of a nightclub three nights before. Some weight in my chest winced with unease when I handed over the swinging timepieces to the stained skin and knobbed knuckles, my own reflection just about ready to spit in disgust at the depth of the transaction. I held unto it all for a bit longer than I ever intended. The pocket watches. The jewels and gold. The candlesticks. The painting. I tried to rid myself of them all as quick as possible but the tides of conscience beckoned them back into the safety of my arms with a strange sense of possession that left an acrid taste in my mouth I tried to rinse away by assuring myself the price was simply not right. Each offer rang off wrong by a half-note and I'd walk away with everything she left me with like a greedy child.

In the end I closed my eyes and gave the drunkard everything for such a dismal fraction of what it truly was worth I'm sure a Libertine somewhere in this big mess of a world bit their tongue from the conception of such an unholy deal. The watches waited until twilight was my only company to sing a ticking sonnet that sounded far too much like the thumping of feet in dance for my comfort. The jeweled pieces weighed me down and anchored me as chains do to running over thoughts I much rather have run away from. The painting was rather pleasant, but I felt it a civic duty to pass it on. I was the last person who needed a reminder of their own mortality, after all. And to keep a gorgeous beauty such as an ethereal ember confined to the limited expanse that a candlestick could provide? Downright cruel.

So I all but gave them all away for the sake of giving them away. For the sake of no longer sliding the burnished timepiece out every ten minutes in case she was near and that the metallic disk would somehow compass her toward me. For the sake of no longer making second and third and long ass fourth glances at wide eyes that showed a half shade of blue. For the sake of letting the night of heist be blurred amongst several other evenings of gain and wealth. For the sake of trying to forget a face I never knew. For the sake of remembering the name Taggerty Eames, if I truly could not forget each billowing syllable, as a benefactor stowed away in her haven from the militia of scorched skeletons in my closet. For the sake

of Ripred I don't get paid enough to deal as many drunks as I do. And the girl, shoeless and spinning, made her way across the linoleum dancing to some anthem playing solely between her own ears. I pushed up off from my stool behind the counter and flipped on a switch to an oscillating fan from behind. I stretched my arms above my head and prepped my hands to catch or shepherd or force; depending on the type of drunk this girl was. I reached into my pocket for a thin strip of cotton, the two holes cut into the soft fabric courtesy of a past friend, to dab at the dew on my brow before making my way toward the girl.

"Go home, Miss," I said rather unceremoniously, "You're drunk."

" I'm dead in the water
Still looking for you
I'm dead in the water
Can't you see, can't you see? "
x

For a second there, I was sure it was in the air. Unmistakable in scent, notorious in sight, piercing in sound. Hysteria. Thick and smoky, laced with the same hot spices of blind delirium that made thousands of sailors take that million dollar flying leap of faith into the everlasting arms of siren that sang of everything but love.

And I was breathing it in. 

Early Sunday morning, and I was breathing in hysteria like a diver a thousand leagues beneath the sea.

"Miss," I groaned.

And I was running for her. I saw her across the square, and ran. Every conceivable alcove --from the nooks littered with expendable trivia and trivial facts from my interludes at school to the crannies saturated with dust and cobwebs and neglect for any desire to remember anything other than the recipe for a molotov cocktail-- every recess of my mind told me the flash of curls and shock of wide eyes were screaming signals to evacuate. It was actually amazing, really. That I could support a death march of thoughts running over my head but still find two feet to spare to defy my mind and cross the line dividing what I wanted and what I wanted to do.

I was too damn tired for this. "I'm too damn tired for this."

As a man who spent the majority of his life kissing more flames than girls, I know more than anyone I know that instinct was a double edged sword; twice as sharp as intuition and a hundred times more lethal. It's an unfeeling blitz that severs all your ties to the mainland and forces you charge against the currents blind and deafened and hoping for a quick stab of an end; be it victory or death. But who ever said that those two were mutually exclusive?  But there's no appeasement to be made when the two glints of the blade  in your hand shine for different suns; when the opposing forces excavated a trench between what you felt and what you said. 

But I kept running, the sound of my feet against the whitewash of the stones beneath them drumming out new formations and overwhelming the sound of cannons warning me that the words she may say could very well kill me.

I grasped her by the arm, a weak vice formidable enough to guide her out of the store and possibly off the ground if she had far more gin than tonic but not strong enough to keep her if she chose to run away. 

It wasn't a smile that I knew. I read it in the instant it printed out before me it wasn't a familiar warmth; perhaps a candle but not the volatile boom! of a militia of firecrackers so distinguishable and inextinguishable. And every atom of my being tremored in protest against me bastardizing the holy waters that rained down over the spark that couldn't go out and maybe it made me an unforgivable sinner to stop a foot before her and pant out a breathy

"Taggerty."

I just wanted it to be her.

"It's okay... it's okay..." I murmured my standard issued phrase to comfort all who I wanted gone but also didn't feel like being a dick over. Criers, drunks, lost children, struggling playwrights... They were a Satan-sent nuisances but I worked off commission.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

No.

I stopped in my tracks. This girl was a minor. If something happened to her in her impaired state, and someone last saw her leaving this liquor store, I would probably never be asked to work Fridays again. And Fridays were the gold mines.

So I started ushering her towards the back exit.

Don't you dare. Don't you dare for a second fucking tell me you aren't her. Don't you dare for a second tell me I've been running across the universe to find a collapsed star. I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you all my bad scores and I'll show you all the hiding spots the sun can't touch and I'll take you places that demolish the line between what we wanted and what we got if you don't tell me you're not her. 

I stood there, in front of a total stranger, waiting for the showers of a punchline in the dead of a desert.

I'm not half as daft as the marks off my tests would convince you to believe. I saw Taggerty again, in the everything of the girl I was kicking out. In the hair, in the eyes, in the hysteria she was breathing in and shaking off with her epileptic dance moves, and maybe I was drawing out on the same breath of dementia as hers, but there was a fervor in the wild grin I had to convince myself was just a result of the swing of bourbon I stole earlier to take the edge off all the rapiers saluting my psyche. 

I laughed and smiled, a thin line dividing what I felt and what I did. "Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew."

" I'm dead in the water
Still looking for you
I'm dead in the water
Can't you see, can't you see? "
x