Writing Practice: Neon

Twenty-eight degrees was nothing to the locals but for Eisen Garvel who’d just spent six months in the frozen reaches of an ice world, it was enough to soak clean through his shirt, vest and the vest he’s put on to replace it. He refused to wear shorts out of a passionate dissatisfaction with the way they looked on him.

So he stood in the dark of a room little more than a cupboard, wearing slacks with suspenders falling down his thighs, his chest bare, his hair forming a rough cross diagonally across it. Where the light of the neon strip crept in, red then blue, it caught the edge of his skin and echoed the colours in a pleasing way.

The other inhabitants of his cupboard were a single cot, a small expanse of floorboards, his sweat stained clothes- one pile of, a Fabaricci thirty-eight carbine- with bipod stand sans scope, and six and a half feet of Isolus Creed.

Creed was at the window. He was playing spotter, but also minder. His keen eyes swept up and down the strip, from the refuelling station to the west up to the casino at the east. Opposite was the St. Cayetano Hotel. A fading pile, mottled with age, its windows dirty and most of its curtains closed.

The big man was gangly and lean, but powerful. His hands were knots of bone and muscle, his limbs tight and sinewy, his short cropped hair swept back over his head that gave him a look that was lean and fierce. Not like a brooding heavy for some street thug, but like a man who knew how to survive the worst that could be thrown at him. He wore a vest and trousers, but bore the heat better. His only jewellery was the strap about his throat that bit into his skin, a disc at the jugular to ensure his obedience.

Garvel looked away from the thing, caught between repulsion and morbid curiosity. He removed the Fabaricci from the bipod, feeling the wood stock as he gripped the arm of the bolt and pulled it back, feeling it grind slightly. He repeated the action, then with a sigh took it apart and rubbed each piece with the edge of the cot’s blanket until it shone dully and slipped back together with minimal protest.

No sight. It would give away their position. He’d have to wait for sixty yards, the width of the strip and the car loading bay opposite. Ten yards from there to the door. He’d have maybe six seconds to end the life of a man he didn’t know for a crime they refused to tell him.

Garvel worked one shivering hand through the other until the shaking ran up his arms and sat in the red and blue darkness, waiting for the word.