The fact was that everyone was acting on an intention to kill. The knuckles in Cottage Apple’s right palm were flinty pistons rotating beneath his sailing overcoat. When Sapling Delicious was within charging distance of Brick Picnic, something heroic and primordial swam through his bloodstream. Electric Gazelle stared as the twins summoned carnage and life-suppressed spleen down onto the scorning thrill of Brick Picnic atop his motorcycle.

Sapling’s knee collided with his target’s chest as if the sky had tossed him with the pluck of prizefighter ropes. Brick Picnic surrendered to the mercenary grace of his oppugnant. Soon Cottage Apple had joined the fray and was driving his shoulder, with the pride of an unfamiliar stag, into Brick Picnic’s neck. He was claimed by the vanity of the night, by the violence of the street and the sewer-blood pumping beneath its lazy loam. Electric Gazelle sat weeping in the presence of the sweetest, bergamot-soft moonlight, blinking back a tide of gratitude, alone behind the whirring mechanism of the car motor, a spectator to some ancient act of kingmaking. The twins went Rodney King on Brick Picnic. There was blood scored over the pavements and the sweat of the skirmish smelt too fine.

When Edamame Mint’s favourite henchman was genuflecting before the twins and gargling for armistice, Electric Gazelle choked the ignition until it squealed into power and venom once more, and when the brothers deferred to a safe distance with a whip of their hands, our valiant behind the wheel lowered his heel onto the accelerator and palmed the gearstick into second right before Brick Picnic’s droll little frown. The car rolled over their freak antagonist at a handsome cruising speed. By the cold toil of Christ, the bastard looked nought short of a goddamn jackdaw right to the quarrelling end! It’s curtains now, Bubba. Electric Gazelle lashed himself fast to the steering-wheel.