a story using four phrases

prompt: to write incorporating four phrases suggested by other writer's group members (italicized)

Robin rolled luxuriously across the bed, letting her long, curly hair trail across Gus’ stomach.

“What time is it?” Gus growled through a biting hangover.

Not put off by his gruffness, Robin sang: “Not too early.”

Her chipper lilt dug fingernails into Gus’ throbbing brain. He imagined he could feel the white worms of his brain matter squirming and writing. Suddenly, white pain seared through his closed eyelids. Without opening his eyes, he grunted, “Goddamnit, Robin. Close the curtains.”

She sat perched on a window seat, knees cocked, toes curled expertly over the lip of the bench. “Just wanted to let the sunshine in,” she pouted, impatient with Gus’ relentless bad mood. The hangover was no excuse; he was always an asshole in the morning.

“I thought you could do with a little sunlight, baby, after such a dark night,” she soothed.

“Don’t believe everything you think, girl,” he retorted. “It gets you into trouble.” He reached for her pillow, ready to smother himself in it to block out the light, when he finally hear what Robin had said—such a dark night.

Had it been? He couldn’t quite remember. The effort of recalling the night before—everything after the whiskey was a blur—made his head swim and stomach roil.

But something tugged at the edge of his memory. Something unpleasant pounded there.

Robin was on top of him, taking the pillow away. “Don’t you remember, Gussy? Don’t you remember what you promised?”

Gus wanted to throw Robin across the room; her lithe body on his stank of cigarettes and somehow intensified his pain. Instead, he threw his arm across his eyes, as much to keep out memories of the night before as to clock her and the blazing sunlight from view.

“Zen lent fen fen to my tent,” Gus heard. He uncovered his eyes.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Oh, Gus!” she was excited. “No glee poor man devil.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gus moved past irritation. Somehow, her nonsense was winding behind his eyeballs, too, making the headache worse. He edge nearer to fury, balling his fists and squeezing his eyes closed. “Get off of me now.”

“Baby, baby, baby,” Robin soothed. “It’s just the schlep diddy turkle.”

Gus looked at her in time to see that the corner of her mouth ooze down over her chin like a runny egg yolk. She seemed to push it back into place before he could focus. He looked away from her, his eyes roving the room for something to anchor his vision.

“Are you ready?” She asked him. “Gore match underbelly. They’re coming for us now.”

“I’m not ready. I’m not ready!” Gus begged, trying to pull himself out from under her body, which had grown immovable and suffocating. Her hair snaked down to coil around his wrists. “That hurts, Robin. What’s happening? What are you doing?”

“Sometimes life is very, very hard, Mr. Gussy. Remember when you told me that?”

“No!” Gus yelled—but then he did remember. After the whiskey, after the ecstacy, after the grinding hard dance floor, there was the strange after party, the after party of the strangers. He’d dragged Robin there, as he always did—she knew better then to let him party alone, since he’d always held her responsible for his infidelities.

Some kind of injectible drug, some kind of flickering light, some kind of pre-dawn, after-party ritual. The hosts’ face wouldn’t swim into focus, but Gus could hear an echo of his sing-song chant. “We’re coming for you tomorrow. Hesta beth sheb novis. We will find you; you are marked now.” Gus looked, stoned and wondering, at the syringe on the floor, at the ominously shining green life that still lingered inside.