A Western Dawn

[Luci]

“Too long,” murmurs the psychopath. “I feel like...like I saw you in a dream…”

Luci gazes at the feared orc killer through his Girlfriend's eyes, watching a tear roll down his cheek and hang from his perfect chin.

“I just...” he mutters, his eyes wavering. “I can’t take any more tricks. Are you really her?”

Luci smiles warmly, her white teeth glinting in the sun, but inside she is screaming. She is invading his mind, drawing on every detail of every memory that he has ever had of his Girlfriend, a blonde bombshell named Hooker. As Luci has already learned though, this particular mind is filled with violence and trauma that lashes out at her when she tries to pry. Still, she digs deeper and deeper into his most private thoughts and memories.

Luci lies, and a little part of her is gone forever.

“Yeah babe,” she says with a wolf’s smile. “It’s me.”

When he kisses her, Luci kisses back exactly as Hooker does, with love and lust and loss, and when they break away, a little piece of Hooker stays with Luci forever.

“Promise me you’ll never die again,” he whispers in her ear.

“I promise,” Luci lies as she tilts her head back for him to nuzzle her neck.

“And no more lies, no more tricks, ok?” he says as he clutches her tightly.

“I promise,” Luci lies as she melts into his arms.

He pushes her away just slightly to catch her gaze. “Run away with me. Run away from all of this. I can’t lose you again.”

Luci smiles sadly, and does not break his gaze.

“I can’t, babe,” Luci says, and for the first time saying something honest to the man. “They need me here. And they need you too. We can handle the Russians-”

“The Russians...” interrupts Jacket, his eyes unfocusing. Luci jabs a telepathic needle into Jacket’s memories. “Sometimes...I look at them...their faces are all twisted up…”

“You are seeing them as they truly are,” Luci insists. “Monsters. Orcs.”

“Orcs,” Jacket repeats slowly.

“They are so strong here, baby,” Luci continues. “They’re killing people, women and children.”

“I’ve seen,” Jacket says dully. Luci flinches as a cavalcade of violent images swarms through Jacket’s head.

“I can’t leave them,” Luci insists. They stare at each other for a moment, Luci’s soft eyes matching his stony gaze. Eventually, the man sighs.

“Then I guess I can’t leave either,” he says finally. Luci smiles wide.

“Then it’s official,” she says, drawing a razor sharp arrowhead across his palm.

“Ahh!” he cries, watching the bright red blood pool into his hand.

Luci dips two fingers into the blood, and wipes them under each of his eyes, giving him two stripes of warpaint on his cheeks.

“Hey,” she says suddenly. “What’s my name?”

The orc killer stares at her, bewildered. “What? Uh, I dunno I guess I always called you my Girlfreind.”

Luci shakes her head. “Well that’s not my name. Around here, my name is Luci.”

“Oh,” he says, taken aback. “Ok.”

“It’s important,” she insists. “I changed since I came to the Omniverse, we all change. What’s your name, anyhow?”

Her boyfriend simply blinks. Luci grins with Hookers shiny white teeth.

“They’re callin you Jacket,” she says slyly. “Do you like it?”

Jacket shrugs.

“Well then, I proclaim you Sir Jacket, First Knight of the Westside,” says Luci, adding a bloody cross to Jacket’s forehead. “Till death do us part.”

***

Jacket is leaning back in Luci’s escalade passenger seat, his arm out the window, his eyes on Luci.

“What’s the Westside?” he asks eventually.

“It’s our gang,” Luci replies as she guides the vehicle through the dense Tier-5 traffic. “We’re the only ones who will stand up to the monsters.”

“The orcs?” says Jacket. Luci says nothing. “The Russians?”

Luci stops the Escalade in the middle of the street. She turns to Jacket, holding his face in her hands, ignoring the honking cars around her.

“Baby,” she says with an exasperated grin. “Orcs, monsters, Russians, I don’t give a fuck. They wanna fight like gangsters, so we gonna fight like gangsters. You’re overthinking this.”

She starts the car as Jacket lights a cigarette, and hands it to Luci. She accepts it delicately so as not to break Hookers long fingernails, and exhales a cloud of rainbow smoke.

“That’s new,” Jacket says, his eyes on the rainbow cloud. Luci is silent for a moment.

“I spend a lot of time in Dreamland,” she says after a while.

They are both silent for a moment.

“Is something wrong?” Jacket asks finally.

Luci rubs her forehead. “Baby, I’ve changed. Everythings changed, but that don’t mean nothin’s changed. You get me?”

Jacket nods, and catches sight of a seedy motel on the corner.

“Hey,” he says. “Don’t suppose we have time too-”

“Nope,” Luci snaps.

***

Luci and Jacket are walking under a bridge in a riverbed in pitch darkness. Jacket holds Luci’s hand tightly as they navigate through a blind concrete maze, before Luci stops suddenly, causing Jacket to run into her.

Jacket hears the shaking of an aerosal can, and then a bright green light appears in the darkness. His watches Luci spraypaint a glowing green door on a solid grey concrete wall. She paints a doorknob and opens the door, and dull light comes through the tunnel. She walks through, pulling Jacket after her.

“You’ve changed,” Jacket says finally. Luci nods as she walks up a steep slope out of the riverbed.

“Where are we going?” he asks for the first time. Luci stops at the top of the riverbed, outside Chirpa’s garage.

“We’re gonna go meet a bad man,” she says carefully. “A very strong, very bad man. We need him. We gotta get in somewhere, and he’s the only one who can do that. No matter what he says or does, keep your cool, ok babe?”

Jacket nods. “Yeah, ok,” he lies.