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X-Men: The Movie

Stories by Cordelia LaMorte

"October Rust"
The truth hurts and memory sucks, but knowing you're to blame is the worst. A hybrid of the movie and the comic universes.

E-mail: SwampFoetus@aol.com

October Rust

Dic bant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicoe visitarem,
curas meas auquantulum for levatas
{My compains told me I might lighten my misery
by visiting my dear ones grave}
-Ebn Zaiat

The air is cold outside, agaigo breezes filter through my unkept hair like fingers. I cast a glance up at the sky and frown. Beautiful. Pure azure no clouds at all. Smooth as that sapphire ring she wore on her midle finger, it was always hidden under gloves. Some leather, some the same nylon material that they make stockings out of. But you could always see the slight rise under the fabrics that encased her third left finger. At times when I meant to comfort her, I held her hand. It seemed to help, that sembalance of contact. Of knowing another person was there looking out for you. I know it helped me.

I remeber really stupid moments. Like how we'd sit in the den and drink a beer. She would tongue the final drop from her bottle, slick pink flesh darting out to lick the ale ... one of the most erotic things I've ever seen. When we were alone, I didn't care if she didn't wear her gloves, and I could see that ring. It was hammered of thin silver and the deep blue, deep as her accent, of the oval sapphire surrounded by two intricate flowers. I never really was sure where she got that ring. I don't remember her wearing any rings when she took off her gloves to put them by the heater back in the ice waste outside of Laughlin City. I do recall however that when she flexed her fingers thin tendons scratched the underside of her skin.

I also retain this memory of a time when she coaxed me into going with her to the fair in Salem Center. They had this game with water riffles, where if you get some much water in your target you get a prize. We bet each other who would win and played. I was beating her and letting her know it, next thing I know the little vixen's spraying me with the water gun. Laughing at me and my wet self, as I gave her the teddy bear I'd won from the game and walked off trying to look angry even though I was really smirking at her prank.

The ugly brown thing's still sitting on her bed.

That was the last time she went with me to the fair. After that she went with the guy Storm brought home. I gave a silent cheer everytime he got to close and she pushed him away. Because she never pushed me away. I never thought he was very good for her, good in a fight, yes, but for her. Until the day I noticed she didn't push him away and I realized her made her happy, and she like wise.

I could've impaled that red-eyed ass the day I found him cat napping on her bed, the teddy bear I'd given her next to him, dirty shoes messing up the dark blue sheets of her bed. I completly ignored the fact that I'd done the same thing countless times. I noticed Rogue wasn't in there with him, though her faint sleepy scent still lingered.

I laughed at her flirting/insults geared towards him. I sneered at his cockiness. It was sometime ago that I understood I was a bit jealous of their relationship, not because I wanted Rogue, though now I know I did, but because I was unwilling to share. She was my little paradise, my drinking buddy, my Kung Fu movie partner.

One night when she was 18 and I had just come back for the second time I found her walking out the door, dressed for something that came out of a really bad S&M flick ... or a really good one. Long streaked hair curled and but up in a messily artistic manner, shiny vinyl panties and bra and the rest of her covered in a shiny black film I would later learn to be liquid latex. Her legs long and slim, lightly muscled from long hours in the Danger Room, ampale cleavage incased in sex shop fantasy clothing.

The X women are notoriously beautiful, each in their own way, Jean was that sophisticated type, Ororo's the exotic one, Betsy's that agressive beauty I used to find extremly attractive, but Rogue's the one with the innocent beauty. Though standing before me dressed like that she didn't look very innocent. She blushed and instantly the purity was back and I briefly entertained the mental image of her with a whip and some stilletos.

"It ain't polite ta stare, shugah" she said fetching her keys of the black '67 BTX we rebuilt together last year.

"Ain't ain't a word, and you ain't goin out dressed like that."

"An' why not?" She looked slightly offended.

"You look like a hooker" she flinched, I didn't regreat it.

"It's Halloween, I'm going to a party with Gwen" Gwen was a mutant she'd meet outside the school, worked in a tattoo parler and had given her, her first tattoo, a black lotus on the small of her back. I'd accidently seen it when she'd bent over to pick something up and the hip huggers she had been wearing allowed for a peek. I'd mentioned it and she proudly displayed it to me.

"You couldn't dress up as a witch?"

She sighed, "Halloween is about dressing up as you aren't"

"I thought it was a pagan holiday celebrating the dead."

She giggled and said "You've been hangin 'round Hank to much" With that she left.Two weeks later Remy showed up.

I remember so many things. Most about her. She became a regualr firecracker once she'd come out of her withdrawl. Full of life, but briming with that purple logic that would have made Lovecraft proud. She cared for me, she cared for others. I don't think she cared for herself though, not for a long time. That's one of the few things I'm willing to credit Remy with. He made her care about herself because he cared about her.

I continue to walk the massaive acreage of Xavier's estate. I can smell the oreintal tang of blooming flowers in the Japanese Gardens. I ca also hear a car or two traveling the somewhat far off Graymalkin Lane. I'm geeting close.

I remember her final night clearest though. We were on mission, Rogue, Gambit and I. Storm had revoked her original order that I stay at the mansion as a "modicum of contact" her words not mine. Remy flat out ignored Rogue's plea that he remain behind as well. Dangerous mission. But we are dangerous people.

So we made it to this house that was rumored to hold the third volume of Irene Adler's Diaries. So we go in, everything's pretty quiet didn't like it. The house was in the middle of the sticks in Northern Florida, kinda swamp kinda forest. I didn't smell anybody as we entered, there hadn't been for some time, so we proceeded.

The house was dirty, and I realized while scoping out the living room that the lamp shades were made of skin. I sniffed and frowned. Human skin. I remembered a story Rogue had told me once a long time ago, when she went through her detective phase, about a man in Wisconson named Ed Gein. He'd skin women and dry their flesh into leather use it at furniture. Same thing here. We split up because the house was monsterous. Rogue headed for the back, Gambit down the hallway I assume lead to bed rooms. I scoped out the front and middle section.

I found a several razor blades from a package stained with rancid sepia blood, dried and cracked, in a small file tin that had been spray painted black. Gambit latter mentioned he'd found Kiddy Porn in the closet. We never found out what Rogue found in the back.

I heard a screen door slam against its jamb, and looked up and caught the malodrous air, underlined with a mascoline odur. I shouted for the others to get out, Remy appeared first out of the hallway he'd begun to search. I heard Rogue's heels click on the teraza flooring as she made the long dash to the front. She finally appeared, pony tail barely holding on to the razed auburn and white curls she hadn't had time to straighten.

She was almost to us when he stepped out of the kitchen next to her. Declan Wilona. An androgynous man with feathered black hair, I knew was dyed from the chemical smell, and white irises. Mutant. Never figured out his power don't care anymore. Blood dripped down his face from where he'd peeled his eyebrows of with a razor. Dressed in a leather tunic that buckled across the chest and sleaved his spider thin arms. Declan shoved Rogue against the wall. She kicked back with her boots, I dimly recognized as the ones she bought last year in the summer. He moved fast and I don't know why I didn't move then, I could have helped her. Saved her. He moved behind her and Rogue stopped fighting back. Her eyes dulled and focased on the two of us, but with out concentration. He pressed a bare hand to her face, his skin almost as pale as hers.

"Pretty, pretty" he muttered in to her neck, before he wrentched it to the side violently. Her body tried to follow, but failed, and she hit the floor. Her skull making a loud pop sound against the hard floor leaking blood from the temple, but she was already gone. Her eyes never closed though. Chartruse and scared. They had to use a glue like substance to keep them closed I could smell it at the funneral, faintly acrylic. She'd been laid to rest holding scarlet chrysanthemums, that Storm and I'd known she liked.I don't know why she didn't get one of those instead of a black lotus for a tattoo. I also don't like the fact that they'll rot down there ontop of her chest, I don't think I can picture her rotting. I wonder if I dig her up in a year if she'll still be as fresh as the day I kicked her out then invited her back into the truck.

I lunged at Declan my middle claw extended only. It slide into his cranium with a slick slide and retracted pulling with it gummy hard gray brain matter. I was shuddering at killing him so fast, should have drawn it out. Remy was pulling her up. And I winced at the twisted condition her neck was in and then I saw a familair dull metal chain. The dog tags. I reached down, pushing Remy out of the way, he was dumb founded and probably in shock. I grabbed her by jaw and yanked, straightning out the contorted column and hearing the unnerving sound of grating vertebra.

I'm here. There a small deadend path adjacent to the Japanese Gardens that is secluded and surrounded by large trees that stnad as sentinals. At the bottom of the dead end is where we buried her. After several people began occuping her hidding place on the roof, she started coming here instead. Remy thought it fit. He was right. Thats where I found him. standing on the freshly turned soil, a richer brown than the rest. Fingering her sapphire ring. He'd kept it. I couldn't fault him. I might have done the same thing if I'd thought about it. Instead I had my tag returned. Ororo had brought it to me last night, she'd traded that for a pretty antique garnet and silver necklace.

I wonder for a moment if he'd given her the ring but then disreguarded it as the memory returned of her complaining as she got the ring snagged while trying to take off her glove. That'd been before Gambit showed up.

He was perched on his haunches twirling the ring around in goved palms. Duster spread out around him. He looked up at me, already red eyes surrounded by tear scortched skin. He rose to his full hieght, a little taller than me. It was then I realized how tiny Rogue had been -- she only reached to my shoulders and I'm 6'1. He frowned.

"You should've known he was in dere, homme."

I stared, saying nothing because I knew it was true.

 

fini

 


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