A house stands upon a shady hill,

the drive is lined with elms.

This sleepy town driven by the mill,

feels like another realm.

Screams ring out until they fill

the seaside village with fear.

Slaughter after slaughter kill

everyone they hold dear.

Knives and fires, screams most shrill

reverberate in mothers' ears.

In this old house lives Merchant Bill,

who lost his humanity in the war.

He gulps with wine a fistful of pills,

when he cannot kill any more.

The phone rests on the pillow beside my head,

body angled for the best reception, her tinny giggles

stretching my cheeks into a listening smile. To know

she, too, is resting, lying down next to me

sharing airspace across miles and miles

and smiling through her words, is a comfort.

...and sit down, beeping angrily. 

"What bullshit, Angus. I can't fucking believe they did that to ya, buddy."

The barkeep throws them a glance over his glasses as he wipes down the counters. Sunlight streams through the bay windows at the entrance and hits the burnished metal arm of one of the bots.

"Hey, Schmo! Service?"

Cautiously, the barkeep makes his way to the bar, swinging past the knee-high saloon door and clacking down two glasses on the wood. "...What'll it be?" His eyes tell the two bots he can't tell if they can even drink liquor.

The robots exchange a look of shared contempt and amusement. One of them, a mechanical likeness of Elvis Presley, snickers. "Just beer." 

The other, a silver-faced and copper-bodied fellow, nods his agreement. The barkeep fills and foams their glasses as the two bots turn slightly in their seats.

(Word limit prevented plot...)

Robots and anxious immigrants 

looking for their purpose or their papers:

I have neither. Eyerolls and mouthed

"okay"s while I look for what I know

is not there. It will be okay.

I know how to hand you three pennies

while smiling at you, which robots

seem to have trouble with.

Clear glass, blown and 

collected from sand she found between

the wedges in her bikini,

Mister Charming and the champagne fountain.

So many moth-eaten holes in that night,

so many little rips and tears in that thrift shop dress.

Oceanside property, he had told her, with his parents gone

on a week-long trip to Oslo, and his bitch sister

finishing her sentence for possession, the place was all his.

Halloween, the ripest time, the plumpest evening.

The air is cold and pregnant with winter weather,

shivering in her princess costume.

She told him her name was Cynthia,

and he told her to call him 'daddy'.

Wasn't dancing in the moonlight enough?

To be fanciful and fancied--fancy that. 

"Um, I gotta be gone by midnight, I think, 

I got a term paper due soon." Bitten lip.

"Sure, baby." He presses a hot hand into

the small of her back and she feels a wormy excitement.

Quiet little sips from the cup he offers.

Those grinning Jack-O-Lanterns, drunk girls 

dressed as slutty mice, raising toasts to the host,

Mister Charming. Hand on her leg, fog in her mind.

She woke up with one shoe and bogged with beach.

Dizzied and frenzied, she sweats over the torch,

molten diamond and fiery bubbles forming

beneath her hand. Clear shoes, clear shoes,

no dark and enveloping ocean to meander

down to, no wealthy frat-boy pushing her into the sand.

Thorns and tangled thong, a blurry panting and

a vague panic, hearing laughter in the distance but 

unable to reach or cry out--spinning, spinning,

retching as something reaches down her throat and

pulls out her essence--she's dying that night.

"Holy fuck! Prince! Cops!" a fraternity brother cries,

and blue lights and white lights and black ocean

tumble into broken darkness.

Cynthia steps into her clear, hot slipper, shattering it.