The Great Gatsby

She had on a grin that told of a long-burning smoking habit, bruised up and collagen puffy with deeply bit-in pockets. Or maybe more like chewed crevices that could be used to identify a jawbone jigsaw scattered across a pavement-clad crime scene, incisors and canines clamped down along the ridge of a postbox, molars ground into dust under a sodden newspaper tarp; some hard-boiled detective spits coffee-stained musings and throws to commercial. Her mouth was cut like a razor blade, teeth like stilettos; but, around it, her face was impish, with pale Irish heritage in broad strokes, benign freckles peppered across the whole mess.

Pointed, but small and far from sharp, her nose stabbed out between weather-flushed cheeks, still bitten red by a mid-morning shower. A grooved, tilted dent skipping along its ridge gave her a story to retell over coffee and cigarettes…

…or on a good night, big swigs of something imported.
…or on a bad night, polluted city air and strangers’ frowns.

She had some kind of subtle bruise highlighting her left eye, hardly seeming out-of-place when taken in-context. Almost yellow, and an olive pit filled either eye, their centers kind of unfocused on a bus stop across the street, aimed just under eye-level of the important downtowners ignoring past. She wore a fiery orange helmet of filthy curls, shorter than a finger, but longer than a thumb. It sat unhappily even with her eyes, doing its best to obscure them from anyone happening to drop change.

Collapsed in an extended-stay sit, holding up a light post, she held one leg bent at the knee, the other along the ground, kicked straight out into the sidewalk, secretly hoping to trip anyone too heavily invested in their telephone. Her sneakers, a once-orange lace-up duo, looked like exhumed alligator carcasses, toothy rips opened lazily to unassuming prey. They were half-hidden in dark wash jeans, frays and rips at the heel keeping them from holding any delusions that dark washes aspire to. At the top, an assumed belt was lost to grass-green hoodie, zipped a matchbook past halfway up. The axis line continued as a thin black tie that ended in a small exclamation point tip inside a formerly white collar of a formerly white blouse. The sleeves were pulled and rolled to her elbows, shirt bent and folded over. Every piece was slightly darker, drying in the reappearing daylight.

Big orange sunglasses sat with one arm folded on top of a plastic grocery bag that now held nothing. Unpainted fingernails moved from the pages of a thinnish book, its library tags torn off long ago. Nobody flinched as she moved a hand to a Styrofoam cup with some dripping change inside, making it burp small jingle-jangle noises as it shook.

It was the nearest place to heaven for the last of the big-time losers.

(I was looking over places to RP and this seems like the best place for my character, seeing as everyone else is having fun 'sticking it to the man' and whatnot. I don't think my character would go rob a bank in the sorry shape he's in, so I hope you don't mind. I've added some more to my origin story from the classifieds but I don't know how to link that to this so you know what I'm continuing from. Sorry.)

When he snapped out of it, he was back in the alley propped up against the wall trying to catch his breath. He wished the imagery that had raped his mind was just some fucked up drug induced hallucination.

If only he had been so lucky.

He hated all forms of mind altering substances because drug money was used to buy the guns that killed Marines, and was against smoking and drinking because it slowed him down. He could care less about other people's addictions, but he would never touch the stuff. No, what he saw in jellied mush that was his brain actually happened. He slaughtered those kids. He remembered how some of them exploded when his gunfire struck the explosive strapped onto them.

He was promoted for it.

That ordeal numbed his sense of right and wrong. From that day on he was a monster, destroying anything and everything without hesitation.

With a shudder that eventually converted into a heave, he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the alley, the rain gently patting him on his back. Honestly, he didn't remember having anything in his gut to throw up.

He rested his head upon his arm which was itself resting upon the alley wall, his free arm still tucked protectively against his bruised ribs. He didn't know how he managed to survive those eight years of service. Everyone else from his graduating class of Marines from basic died in that conflict, while Tony kept getting promoted and awarded for the havoc he wrought.

He killed men, woman, children; He burned down homes and livelihoods. He destroyed bridges, and in one instance leveled an entire small town after killing all the men, leaving the remaining homeless to die form starvation. He had a reputation, and whenever they absolutely had to have the mission accomplished successfully or a target eliminated with extreme prejudice you sent in Tony Hernandez's squad.

Shambling out of the alley, he paused a moment to look around to get his bearings and to find refuge against the rain. He decided to hide under the shaded bus stop on the corner across the street, after staring at it for who knows how long, trying to figure out what the hell it was past swollen eyes.

Passing other refugees, he hardly noticed the ginger sitting on the floor as he tripped clumsily over her outstretched leg. He broke his fall on his arm, which transferred the impact to his bruised ribs.

Some war hero he was.

(Happy Belated Berfday, by the way.)