Chapter Text
==> Be the asshole.
You shuffle the tip of your shoe under Slick's face, gently, and peel it off the floor. Very gently. It does peel off a little, his face that is. Poor Slick looks like he just got into the worst bar fight of his life, lost, and then was tied up and thrown at the mercy of a psychopath. Well, the last part is true, only you aren't a psychopath. Madmen know nothing. You're very methodical and deliberate in your job, and quite the literate too since you can pull such sophisticated quotes. But you digress. Back to Slick.
"Take it on the bright side," you cheerfully tell the poor mass of black-clad (barely, really) bruised flesh drenched with blood. "The day is almost over."
His teeth snap at your shoestrings, but quite unsurprisingly miss the leather of a mile. You don't even bother pulling back the foot before his bloodied face impacts again with the shreds of skin it just gave as a present to the concrete. "Still have some fight, don't we. Good." You step over his body and set a leg on either side of him, arms crossed, your crowbar hanging lazily from your hand. Your baby is redder than usual and shines at each sway under the dull light. Slick doesn't move – of course he doesn't, with all the deal of broken bones and internal bleeding even breathing must be a trip, even through the mattress of drugs you pumped him with. That doesn't stop from trying to glare knives at you through his good eye, that now looks more like a ripe plum, and you take an immense pleasure from it as you simply make him wait, counting seconds as they pass by with the swinging of your crowbar, like a pendulum. Pretty ironical picture, really. Meanwhile, you take in the master knotwork around his arms, both the real and the fake one. It was kind of a disappointment that a resourceful gangster like Slick Spades didn't think of equipping that prosthesis with something more effective than…just metal fingers. You don't know, you would've expected a hidden retractile blade or something. Oh well. Maybe he thought he didn't need it. Too bad for him, it would've been useful in a situation like this.
He knows what's coming when the crowbar impacts for the millionth time on his ribcage. 'Crack' it goes, the ribcage that is. That delightful sound. Slick whimpers and coughs blood. A symphony to your ears. Ah, but he's going numb now, you can see it in that eye fogging up through the tears. Well, you're tired anyway, you need a shower, and with this great number you did on him it would be a pity to let it all go waste and finish the job when he can't feel it anymore. Fine, you'll smack his head a couple times and be done.
"Now the day is over," you announce, raising the crowbar sideways like a golf club, your body curving gracefully with the movement. "Time for sleep. Count some sheep, bi--"
Your hat is blown away by a strangely sudden air movement. It flips and rolls off somewhere out of your visual field, and you register there is a bit more blood to your right than you remembered. Then your brain shuts down. The rest of you falls heavily to the side and splatters red stuff everywhere around your head.
==> Blow smoke off your gun's barrel.
You'd do that if you were a tad more dramatic, but you aren't, and aside that you enjoy the tingling aroma of freshly used gunpowder, you have more important matters to take care of at hand right now.
Your grip tightens around the simple stuffed effigy with a head full of pins in your hand at the sight of the darker body on the floor.
Fuck.