One Eyed Jacks

She went inside. The man behind the counter was fifty going on twenty-two. Veronica had had too many tricks just like him. His hairpiece wasn't even the same color as the fringe around his ears. His polyester shirt was green, with horses on it, ten years out of fashion. It was unbuttoned to show his chest hair and gold chains.

"How much is that pistol?" Veronica asked him. "Now, what would a sweet little number such as yourself want with a big, nasty Smith and Wesson. 38?" He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall behind the counter. On the TV over his shoulder, two football teams smashed into each other.

"I'm not in the mood for bullshit, pal. How much is the gun?"

The man shook his head, smiling. " I see it all the time. Sweet little thing gets a little upset with her sugar daddy, maybe catches him with his hand in the wrong cookie jar, and suddenly she's got to blow him away. This is what television has done to modern society. Everybody wants to blow everybody else away."

"Look, pal-"

The man leaned forward. "No, you look. The law says I'm responsible for what I sell. I don't like your looks, I don't have to sell you shit." He straightened up and his voice softened. "So why don't you be a good little girl and run along home to Papa?"

In that moment Veronica saw her entire life as one humiliation after another, all at the hands of men, all of whom felt they were privileged to decide her destiny.

From the father who never acknowledged her, to Fortunato who told her how to dress and how to smile, to Jerry who expected her to love him just because he loved her, to the countless men who'd used her and walked away. She was sick of it. For once she wished she had Fortunato's power, could reach out with her mind and crush this pompous, ugly little man to jelly.

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. It should have distracted her, but instead she felt co

"Are you hurt?" she asked him.

" I don't know" His voice was weak, and higher than it had been.

She hadn't crippled him, apparently. Beyond that she didn't care. "Give me the gun."

"I… I don't know if I can."

"Do it!"

He got onto his hands and knees, fumbled a key into the lock, slid the back of the display case open. He had to use both hands to lift the gun onto the counter. Veronica reached for it, then realized what she'd done. Why did she need a gun?

She ran into the street, waving for a cab.

She got as far as the holding tank on nerve alone. The beefy, red-haired guard outside the lockup refused to let her any farther and Veronica tried to do to him what she'd done in the pawnshop. Nothing happened.

She felt a surge of panic. She had no idea what the power was or how it worked. What if she couldn't use it again right away? What if she needed something that had been in the pawnshop as a catalyst?

"Lady, I told you, this is a restricted area. Now, are you going to get out of here or do I got to call somebody?" Panic turned to helplessness, helplessness to anger. What good was this power if she couldn't use it to help Ha

"Where's the keys?"

"What'd you do to me, lady? I can't lift my fuckin' arms."

"The keys."

The man slumped into his chair, unsnapped the keys from his belt, and slid them across the desk. Behind Veronica a man's voice said, "Charlie?"

Veronica concentrated on the voice without turning around and heard the man slump to the floor. The third key she tried fit a control panel next to the steel lockup door. A motor wheezed and the door bucked but didn't open. She realized she was still disrupting the electricity and forced herself to relax.

The door slid back. There were four cells inside. Three of them held drunks and addicts and derelicts. In the fourth were four black prostitutes, and Ha

Ha

She refused to think. Not yet. Not while there was still something left to try. She laid Ha

One of the prostitutes had stayed behind. She looked at Veronica and said, "She a wild woman before she die. Bitch went completely crazy. Never saw anything like it. We couldn't get near to her."

Veronica nodded.

"I tried to stop her, but there weren't no way. Girl was crazy, that's all."

"Thank you," Veronica said.

Then the cell was full of police, guns drawn, and there was nothing she could do but raise her hands and go along with them.

She waited until she was alone with two detectives before she used her power again. She left the two of them barely conscious on the floor of the interrogation room and walked out into the night.

The street was headlights and horns honking, blaring jam boxes and shouting voices, all of it too bright, too loud, too overwhelming. Inside her it was the same. Her mind would not shut up. Ha

The thought was white-hot, too painful to touch. Better, she thought, to just think of herself as already dead. She watched a bus roar past her and wondered what it would feel like to go under its wheels.

Then she remembered the look on Ha

Someone had done this to Ha

Not dead, Veronica thought. Ha

It turned into a refrain, a mantra. It brought her back to Ha

Mr. Nobody Goes to Town by Walton Simons

Jerry pushed the intercom button and stared up at the closed-circuit TV A cold wind whipped at him, stinging his-face and ears. Overeating at Thanksgiving di

Jerry recognized Ichiko. "Jerry Strauss. I'd like to come up and talk to you about Veronica. Or, at least, get warm."