Subject: Re: [OTL]: [Challenge] Title Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 17:58:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Tara Blue Disclaimer: Tulip, Jesse, and Cassidy are all DC/Vertigo's characters, not mine. I'm not making money, and this story was written purely for entertainment's sake. Tulip's poem is from issue #38. This is a "Preacher" fanfic, taking place just after the 'War in the Sun' mini series. Jesse Custer is believed to be dead by his girlfriend Tulip and friend Cassidy. This was written in response to WindThrush's Title Challenge. Conspicuous by His Absence by Tara Blue The bottle gleamed dully in the dim light, the clear surface smudged with fingerprints. Tulip's fingers were draped around its neck, tenderly cradling it, sporadically lifting it to her mouth for another burning swallow of whisky. Her blood shot eyes peered out from beneath a swath of lank, greasy blond hair that flopped over her forehead and onto the back of her neck. Normally fastidious about personal hygiene, she hadn't showered in days, and the rank smell of stale sweat and liquor hung around her. She was slouched low in the uncomfortable hotel room chair, her boneless sprawl partly due to the alcohol in her blood stream, partly because she didn't care to exert the effort sitting up would entail. Her bare feet were propped up on the round table in front of her, surrounded by empty bottles that had formerly contained ever type of hard liquor that the young woman had been able to get her hands on, and the smaller empty bottles that had once contained pills. Sleeping pills, mostly, their labels emblazoned with cheerfully sleeping moons wearing tasselled night caps. Before taking any, Tulip had taken the time to painfully make out the directions on each brand, her drink fogged eyes losing their focus often. "Suggested dose for adults; two capsules . . . Do not exceed that amount within a period of four hours . . . Do not mix with alcohol." Manoeuvring clumsy fingers around a child lock cap, she had twisted and twisted and twisted until she had finally lost her temper and beat the bottle to pieces with the heavy telephone sitting on top of the dresser. Gathering up the fallen pills, she had popped six into her mouth and washed them down with a gulp of straight vodka. Now she was floating in a numbing haze of booze and medication, close to forgetting the reason why she wanted to be there. Shifting a bit in her seat, Tulip's left foot slid sideways and off the table, landing on something cold and metallic instead of the thin, grey carpet that covered the floor. Reaching down, she removed the object from beneath her foot and brought it up to eye level. A large, dangerous looking gun, cold metal biting into her fingers, rough grip holding it secure against her palm. Grabbing a handful of the lank hair that hung in her face and shoving it back, Tulip considered the pistol with the gravity of the truly drunk. She slid her thumb over its shining barrel, then hefted it once or twice to test the feel of it in her hand. She knew this gun. It was hers, had been her father's before that. Her pointer finger snuggled up to the trigger, the grooves of the butt moulding themselves to her hand. Tulip's face held a bemused expression as she lifted the gun to her head and pressed it against her temple. The coolness felt good next to her head, which was beginning to throb. A single tear slid down her cheek as she recited softly: "He breathed in air, He breathed out light, Jesse Custer was my delight . . ." Allowing her voice to fade away into the emptiness of the room, she pulled the trigger. *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* The gun still pressed against her temple, Tulip dropped her head back and laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed, the sound poisoned with madness and desperation and forced, brittle gaiety. "The bastard . . ." she gasped out between cackles, " . . . He took out the bullets before he left! There aren't any bullets!" With that, she continued to laugh that terrible laughter. *Click* *Click* *Click* It was the sound of a trigger striking an empty chamber rising in counter beat to Tulip's laughing that greeted Cassidy when he opened the door of the room, a bag filled with more bottles under his arm. He stopped dead at the sight in front of him, before walking into the room and setting the bag down on the dresser top. Walking over to the chair, he gently pried the gun from the woman's fingers and set it aside. Then, hooking an arm beneath her neck and legs, he carried her to the queen size bed in the middle of the room. Curled into Cassidy's whipcord lean body, Tulip's terrible laughter collapsed into sobs, each one torn harshly from her chest, slowly crying herself into exhaustion. When she finally fell into a fitful sleep, he quietly tucked her under the dusty counterpane and blanket. Standing back from the bed and looking at her grief ravaged face, the image of another face rose in Cassidy's mind. Curly dark hair that fell boyishly over a high forehead; deep, black eyes that could see right through a man; a wide mouth that could light up a room with a smile or portray startling savagery when pulled back into a snarl. "Ah, mate," Cassidy muttered to his absent friend, "yeh were the very heart of her." He turned and went in search for the booze he had just bought, but then forgotten in the face of Tulip's actions. Pulling out a brand new bottle of whisky, he carried it to the table before which Tulip had sat. Laying the bottle down, he fished in the pockets of his jean jacket for the bullets he had removed from Tulip's gun before he had left. Lining them up on the table before him, he reached for the bottle again. Cracking the seal, he raised it to the ceiling. "To yeh, Jesse, where ever yer stubborn, self-sacrificing soul may be. Yeh were the best of all of us, and the best mate a man could have asked for, the best I ever had," Cassidy said before taking a swig. He spent the rest of the night watching over the girl in the bed and getting drunk in the memory of Jesse Custer. The End