rust and bone

Under the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, try to dry your wet body in the sun.Dino curled his fingers and shook the cigarette ash into the crystal blue pool water.

"You take that person in."

Pale chests heaved and fell beside him.

"Yes."

"……Who is he?"

"Crap." Sansas sat up, brushing his hair back, water dripping down his arms onto the plastic carpet, "or just a cripple."

"You don't know?" Dino, smoking a cigarette, traced back and forth with his fingers the tight, bow-like lines of the backs of the people around him. After being suffocated in the deep water, he felt tired.

Sansas said nothing.

Dino looked up, at the knuckles and grooves at the back of his neck.

……and who are you.

#07

An Angolan silver tail ring was wrapped around the little finger of his left hand, but he didn't care about the white shirt worth tens of thousands of yuan on his body, and just sank into the dirty velvet cloth sofa.

Squearo stood knowingly in the middle of the kitchen.He was a good tenant, though he was outspoken.

He heard Dino shuffling the cards, his fingers long and supple, good at shuffling Las Vegas poker from left to right.

Squearo felt that people like Dino should not belong to the world over there, but maybe they had the same profession, and they even tried to extort money from each other.

There was almost no conversation in the living room, only the occasional rattling of playing cards, or the loud and crisp sound of tearing non-woven fabric.

Sansas locked the door at midnight and left, returning at dawn on the sofa bed with a biological stench of sulfur and match skin.

In the early hours of the morning like that, sirens would ring through the night on Elimay Avenue and the main east-west avenues.It sounded like a Saxon horn, near and far, and could be heard even in sleep.

Squearo couldn't help thinking of the polytheistic days and nights that drove across the sky in turn.

——As soon as Dino came, he would avoid it wisely.

Half-cut bread and a knife for cutting bread were placed on the simple marble cooking table.Squearo looked out at the platform that jutted out from the sliding window, where the pigeons would come and settle, and there would be white marks left on the concrete floor to testify.

Looking at the cooing pigeons, he slowly grabbed the table knife.

The pigeons did not notice the danger and continued to compete for food. He aimed at the leading red-billed white pigeon.

Cuckoo, cluck, cluck.

His left hand slowly raised the chrome knife and grasped it tightly.

Cuckoo.

There was the sound of shoes being tapped in the entrance, the door opened, and some rusty springs clicked slightly.

Without hesitation, he grabbed the table knife and threw it away.

Almost the moment he threw it out, he regretted it.His left hand is so clumsy that even his master is ashamed of it.

The pigeons screamed and flapped their wings and flew away. The table knife he threw quietly fell to the ground, only piercing a few light gray tail feathers.

Squearo lowered his head and grasped the air, his less-trained left hand clumsily holding five fingers.

No right hand, not at all.With a feeling of almost humiliation, he went back to lie down in the small area under the TV wall, he thought.

"What are you doing, go into the kitchen." Sansas sat on the sofa with his hands on either side.

He heard the man's name from Dino.

Skearo almost turned all the whites of his eyes: "Fuck you.

Sansas lifted the tangled sofa bed to his feet and walked into the kitchen.

Five minutes later, he heard a loud click of a blade piercing a solid wall, as well as a scream of cuckoo and the sound of flapping wings that gradually became weaker.

The man poked out his naked upper body from the kitchen door. The mermaid line around his waist became more obvious when he turned his waist, and it was slowly tucked into the waistband of his khaki trousers.

Squearo turned over in shame, but the man ordered him: "You, come here, right now.

He twisted his temper in an extremely unpleasant manner, and his voice became lower, with a blatant threat: "Don't make me say it a second time, now, scumbag."

Sansas reached for the built-in kitchen door and dragged out a medium-sized suitcase.

He turned to Squearo and opened the coded lock with one hand without looking at it. There were gun parts in a mess in the suitcase.

God knows what he's going to do.On the platform outside the sliding window came the cooing of pigeons again.

"Only once, keep your eyes open and see clearly." Sansas just clicked the pigeons with his chin, and picked up another table knife from the knife rack.

"Like that one, that's all." He lifted his upper arm, the silver table knife gleaming from the wash.

"One." He raised his hand.

"Two." He aimed at the blade.

"Three." The table knife dived into the flock of pigeons and plunged into a pile of messy feathers. Squearo could almost hear the hissing sound of air leaks, and the gray rookie fluttered in vain and fell on the dipped ground. On the cement platform covered with its own white feces, the handle of the knife was completely submerged in its fat belly.

"First load the gun for me."

Sanses clapped his hands and added, "Actually, the reason for shooting is the same."

He didn't even bother to take back the knife, and closed the kitchen door behind him. What a terrible teacher.

#08

He hasn't had a drink in days.In this room, everything belongs to Sansas.He drank wine like water, but never showed the slightest drunkenness.

Squearo carefully took out those parts and placed them on the floor. The strangely shaped modified scope and rotating wheel made the assembly of this old-fashioned gun particularly complicated.

He picked up those parts one by one, carefully drew the shapes in his mind, and then neatly put them back to their original positions one by one.Those rough-polished metal chutes have not been oiled at all, and it is particularly difficult to fit together. If you can't grasp the correct force, it is difficult to get stuck together even if you use all your strength.

In the next few days, he relied on his remaining left hand to compete with this old gun from the Peninsula War.

Countless times, it has been installed and dismantled, and disassembled.

Strength began to accumulate in his left hand, which was difficult to even hold his fingers. At first, it was only a little bit like the source of the river, and it became more and more thicker and more stable.

In this almost perverted focused disassembly, it is almost timeless.

He didn't even bother to realize that he had crossed the boundary between day and night cruises, and bumped into the homeowner returning in the early morning several times.

- His latest discovery, which is a drug addict.

At noon, when Sansas was in a deep sleep, he would maliciously count the dropped morphine syringes under the bed.

I am not an addict, I am just accepted by society.

Skearo was sweating profusely trying to snap the barrel to the gun mount. The barrel was not a standard tailor-made one, and it was a bit narrow compared to the slot.

A hand full of scars stretched out from above him, pulled the butt of the gun, and with a push, the metal slot made a perfect click.

He didn't say anything else, just put his hand on Skearo's still-healed right shoulder: "Stop playing your needle-counting game, or I need to destroy your left hand together."

Just by looking at Skearo's face, he could tell what kind of force was on his shoulder.

—He didn't dare to resist at all.

It was probably at this time that he developed an irretrievable affection for this man.

Compared with the hunger in the first few days, he can now get canned instant food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This might be seen as a sign of acceptance.Squearo tossed the can opener back to Sansas, who idly closed his eyes and folded his hands on his stomach.

He didn't bother to say anything, but it didn't mean he acquiesced.

#09

Within fifteen days, heavy rains hit Rockdale again.This time it wasn't Hazel, it was Caroline.

Sansas opened the door and walked out onto the rain-soaked street without looking back.

The rain hit the ground, making a crackling sound.

In the torrential rain, Squearo and Sanses, one in front and one behind, walked silently.

The street lights in front of the house were on, and from the dark front porch, "One Night" of the Florence Machine could be heard.

He walked quickly, following the main north-south road, through parks, through power plants, and through abandoned landfills.Abandoned, rusted classic cars with only shells left, like squatting silent monsters, their blind eyes widened in the darkness.

Squearo looked down at the desulphurized soot smeared on his flip-flops.

The other end of the landfill, connected to the Arkansas Highway ramp.Sansas thoughtfully touched the aluminum alloy fence, propped it up with one hand, jumped, and walked onto the Arkansas Highway.

He landed with a bang, splashing a large amount of water.Squearo followed behind, imitating him and climbing over the guardrail with one hand. The clumsiness of his left hand almost made him fall into the mud.

The Arkansas Highway in the rain, twists and turns deep into the boundless dark blue night.Two shadows, blown crookedly by the wind, moved unhurriedly on the road.

His clothes were soaked through and wrapped around him like paper.Skiaro rolled up his trousers and scurried through the puddles, barely staying behind.

The person in front kept walking, he had no intention of counting the time, but kept chasing after his too hasty footsteps.

They go farther and farther, farther and farther away.The rain was heavier, and the ramp on the road was almost invisible. The hiss of the tornado tearing the canopy was agitating deep in the eardrums, and it kept making noise.

Sansas stopped.

He gazed almost obsessively at the stretch of the Arkansas Highway in the night.There was a sharp horn, and the vacation bus bound for Florida roared past, the headlights blinding people.

"Hello—" the wind tore the voice into pieces.Squearo yelled at Sansas, rolling his hands over his mouth into a trumpet.

"--Let's go back!!"

He looked at the south obsessively as if he didn't hear it.

Skearo stepped on the water and ran past it against the wind.

"Let's go back