Any writers in here?

It was stupid.

She was cute, and I was bored, and as she giggled and tossed her hair I reached out and brushed the back of a knuckle against her bare shoulder. A single touch was more than enough. She hardly noticed.

I settled back in my seat, satisfied, and took a sip of lukewarm coffee. The Starbucks smelled like her perfume, vanilla and cream, and I shifted into a more comfortable position and let my eyelids fall to half-mast. Warmth hummed and shifted in my brain. She'll be easy, I thought. Probably a word search or something.

I sought her out with my mind, hunted for the vanilla-and-cream, and caught it up in a mental embrace and held it close. In front of my eyes, the coffeeshop bustled with activity and life. In the mental analogy that our merged minds constructed, there was darkness. A table. Two chairs.

She was leaning back in hers, blue eyes sparkling underneath a fringe of dark hair. Her teeth were pulled back in a smile or a snarl. Her whole body seemed, charged, electrified, and as I watched she leaned forward and slid her palms onto the table. "Hey, bitch," she said. "Breaking in, are we?"

I panicked. This was unknown; ordinarily the game appeared in my mind, the puzzle swam into my vision, and I solved it. The target was not supposed to be there. My body was not supposed to be there.

So I panicked. I pulled away, still panicking, and I felt as her mind wrapped around mine and wrestled it down. The vision of the table and the chairs and her gaunt grinning stare remained. In the vault of our merged minds, she was not beautiful. She was skeletal and cruel, and smiling, always smiling.

"You're not going anywhere until we play," she said.

"What the-?" It was all I could manage. "What's going-?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Don't you know?" she asked, as she pulled the gun from underneath the table. "You decided to fuck with the wrong person, bitch."

She slid the gun towards me and I caught it without much thought. "Did you really think you were the only person who could read minds?"

God help me, I did. I fucking did.

She could read as much on my face. "Well," she said, relaxing slightly. "Do I have a game for you.

"Ever played Russian Roulette, bitch?"

I looked from her face to the gun in my hand. "No. I mean-- no. Are you crazy? Do you know what happens to people that mess around like that?!"

"Do you?" Her eyes smoldered. "You ever killed somebody in your mind?"

"What?! Of course not!"

She seemed almost disappointed. "Not very interesting, are you? Oh well. If you're lucky you'll get to see it happen today." She yawned. "Go on, then."

Warily, I shook my head. "No."

"I'm not letting you go until you do." She gave me a half-smile. "Believe me when I say that I can do this all day."

My hand was shaking. The gun was heavier than I thought a gun would be, and there was nothing on it to pull but the trigger. "Don't worry," she said, in response to my unasked question, "my mind will make it random. We don't have to only put one bullet in there or some garbage. This is as fair as it gets."

I was beginning to hyperventilate. "I don't want to die--"

"Then get lucky." She grimaced. Around us, the darkness had begun to shift
moodily. "Seriously, hurry this along. I'm getting bored."

Up against my temple, the muzzle felt like the wet kiss of a lover.

Uncomprehendingly, numb and terrified, I pressed my index finger against the trigger. Stared, terrified, at the table. She cleared her throat and panic overtook me. My finger pressed down, hard.

Click.

She exhaled noisily. "Congrats. Now gimme." She leaned across the table and took the gun from my limp hand. She contemplated it for a moment with slightly furrowed eyebrows. Then she shrugged, pressed the muzzle against the center of her pale forehead, and fired.

Click.

There was a bead of sweat standing out against her collarbone. "Oooh," she said, pulling the gun away. Pressure left a faint bruised circle against her skin. "Looks like we both made it to round two."

I choked on air. "This is crazy. You're crazy--"

"This is my mind, big boy, you should have thought of that before trying to break in. Now..." She tossed me the gun, and I caught it with trembling hands.
"Pull the goddamned trigger."

The second time was almost easier. I pressed the gun against my chin and fired. There was a tiny click, and silence. The relief was heady and intoxicating.
Wordlessly I tossed it back at her. Despite the sweat, she was outwardly calm. I might die, I thought, and she might, too, but she doesn't care. How can she not care?!

"Boom," she said, as she pulled the trigger. Click.

"Listen," I said, when she slung the gun across the table towards me. "It doesn't have to be this way."

She actually laughed. "Damn," she said. "You're quoting poorly-written scripts now?"

My body trembled. "Please," I whispered, staring at my hands. "I don't wanna die."

She cocked her head. Something resembling pity flickered briefly in her eyes. "So you don't wanna pull the trigger?" she asked, reaching for the gun.

I shook my head.

She sighed. "... fine. It's more fun when they want to. But... I get you not wanting to play." She glanced at the gun in her hand. "I'll just play for you."

"Wha--?!" But there was nowhere to go in the space between our minds, and when she pointed the gun at my forehead and fired, I was hardly surprised that there was no click, only the muffled boom of a successful shot.

I screamed in my mouth. Pain, pain, agony. My eyes opened; I was sweating, hot, cold, disoriented, staring up at the coffeeshop ceiling. "He's having a seizure!" someone shrieked. Faces in a circle, swimming and indistinct, floating above me.

Only one of them retained any sort of clarity. She still smelled of vanilla and cream. "I'll hold his head," she volunteered, kneeling down. Her lips brushed up against my ear.

"When you recover," she whispered, "Come looking for Tanya Jaeger. I like you, bitch, and you still have a lot to learn."

There was blood on my upper lip. I stared drowsily into her burning eyes and let her mind sing me to silence.