Secret Santa 2010: My One-Night Stand with Baccano!

Baccano! is that dangerously attractive woman (since I like women) in the club that circumstance brought her in such close proximity that I had to make a pass at her. Everybody’s looking at us, then mostly me… the lucky dog. Those who are well-meaning anticipate the goodness that will come from this opportunity fortune has given me. Those who are not, I won’t even imagine.

So, we flirt. She isn’t easy to figure out and I don’t pretend I do. All I know is that I am very attracted. I have a few drinks, and she seems to be so many things at once, all of them cool. So I ask her, “What’s your story?”

And this is where I get lost. I get lost in this supernatural period narrative with lots of guns, fisticuffs, knives, explosions, monsters, and a train. Try as I might I can’t remember all the names thrown at me, of robbers that involuntary make people around them happy, a fetching homunculus, immortals, and murderers on a train.

Am I complaining? Not really. I just keep nodding my head. She doesn’t seem to notice that my nodding just matches the beat of the brass band blaring awesomely in the club. Or maybe she doesn’t care. She’s found her entertainment for the night and she doesn’t need me to understand her. Knowing I want her is enough.

“So let’s get out of here, I said.” She says nothing, but grabs hold of my arm just above the elbow, and says, I need to go to the ladies room. “No problem, I said.” But she doesn’t let me go, and heads upstairs. “They let me use a different room here.”

“Nice.”

We head upstairs and the bouncers’ faces don’t move, expressions also half-hidden by dark glasses. Whatever. We pass through some curtains and I’m lead to this powder room… where I get slammed against the wall.

This is where it gets really awesome, or goes horribly wrong.

I feel a hard strike up my gut. I have enough alcohol in me to dull the pain but also enough to rob me of all my balance. I feel myself falling forward, but I don’t. Instead I get shoved back into the wall.

I feel thrown elbows thrown at the side of my arms, upward knee strikes at the side of my legs. More shoving. I’m too surprised to scream, but I don’t know if I really wanted to if I could.

I’m bleeding.

There’s a knife between my ribs.

And she’s crying. She doesn’t mean to hurt me she says. This is all a big mistake she says. She embraces me, presses up to me. Kisses the side of my neck. I let out a moan. She moans louder.

I use my chance.

I remove the knife from my left side. I can still moan. My lungs are intact.

I plunge the knife into her bowels and up, as far up as I can.

I see her fall backwards, the knife handle protruding from her throat.

I step on her neck and make my way out.

“I accept this tremendous love of yours.” She says.

I figure out that she shouldn’t be able to talk at this point, and banish the voice I hear into my drunken voices in my head file.

“Now, for you to accept my love.” She says.

I turn around, and see her rising from her knees, blood flowing back from the floor and back into her body.

…

…

…Oh what the hell.

—

I’m whistling on my way home, a happy thing while the tune is a cloud of smoke billowing from my lips.

I don’t really understand what was that all about in the club, but I know I won’t bringing that one home.

Maybe a better question is: “Who’s next on Baccano?”

This post is part of the Secret Santa project. Thanks to Reverse Thieves blog for letting me participate this year, and thanks to whoever suggested this show to me. I don’t think it’ll be a lifelong love, but it’s a pretty wild fling.