The continued tale of Horace the Wolf-hearted Narc:

He was building model houses in the back of a drugstore, shooting H in two grain increments. He had looked into the baby’s eyes and said, “Doctor, I suspect foul play.”
“Same trick as always,” the doctor replies. “Three card monte with a marked deck.”
Now he beat horses on the street, beat down and out hipsters of angry climates, beat angel-headed lovers on avarice avenues of strange night equinox. They say you can stand an egg on end during equinox but there’s the feel that vision is compromised when you believe such superstition. He was a believer in these superstitions and fashioned wooden stakes to ward off vampires, carried a gun with titanium bullets, a proper substitute for silver. Ghosts followed him down sideways staircases into pointless underground tunnels. His transport was known to not stop on time so people had a habit of waiting for him outside select venues, Saigon Bar and the Long Island Last Stop, all the worst places.

The police had put the screws to him in a time so distant that it seemed another life, a life that pre-dated his normal routine and where he had once been free. He described that period as the time it was always spring. He said a bear could bite through a four inch tree trunk and this kind of pressure was mounted on his back. The police had bagged him outside a cafeteria and they had held him captive throughout withdrawal until there was nothing left of him. They didn’t even make overtures, they retreated a safe distance and let him come to them, to face him on their terms.

Violet was a holdover from pre-war days, when spineless fish crawled onto land and ended it all before a gang of onlookers. Kicked sand in someone’s face, stepped on washed up hypodermic, built castles that were washed away by the sea. He made contacts with underworld figures that presumed he was a right guy but were eventually taken down. Violet went took the cure down in Mexico with the Day of the Dead transpiring outside her door. She was awoken a new woman and blamed everything on Horace.

“It’s not fair,” she would tell him. “They’ve got you trapped like a wolf.
“It’s not the years,” he would respond when he said anything. “It’s the mileage.”

Outside department store: “We never had a run like this before the war. Twenty-five long and four deep on each side. I stood up to them and said something about America’s responsibility as a free nation. Well the island went and turned topside on me, like an ocean liner misplacing water.”

In outback saloon near desert: “When a chicken has a spot, one little imperfection in their dress, the other chickens will gang up on it and peck at that spot until the chicken is dead. I became obsessed with my own spots, all I could do really. They all ganged up on me and pecked away until it was covered with blood. And like Macbeth I would be standing there screaming, “Out, damn spot!”

The able-bodied students gather outside the window, shouting up because the intercom is broken. “We want closure!” they’re all shouting out of sync. The fancy wind blows dragonfly guts through pinhole leaks in windows. Broken guttural sighs of anguish drift from the students and Horace approaches the balcony for what will surely be a memorable speech. Horace stands before the assembled patrons and says loudly, “As Caeser once said to soldiers in rebellion, ‘I pardon you.’ Cast out now and find the strongest of the group, the alpha male. If you can defeat him, all the rest will crumble behind. Now make two inverted wedges and drive up the sidewalk, herding those in your way down the chute of bodies until nothing remains in your wake.”

The students sniff back snot, blood clotting at the elbow, and throw back heads for laughter. This is the direction they’ve been waiting for ever since choosing plan b. They escape like crabs and put aside childhood dreams of love affairs, intent on orgy in substance. They scatter rice so pigeons will eat it and explode. The birds are supposed to all be dead but the pigeons are resilient to a degree that baffles science. Horace, meanwhile, is busy fixing his own sleeve so that he may crush down pockets of resistance within his brain. Violet complains of labor pains and he pushes her off the balcony, sure that he will be absolved on his judgement day. Wouldn’t you?