Monstrous
Monstrous Books => The Monstrous Library => Topic started by: Devinoir on August 12, 2012, 03:32:23 PM
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Hello everyone.
I have decided to post my first novel here as a tribute and an appreciation for all the motivation and support the people of this website have given me.
The novel is called Burn Horizon Burn, and is a semi-autobiographic mystery/thriller/drama about a twisted mind and a twisted relationship.
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BURN HORIZON BURN
It all comes down to the things you'd do for love. It's always the past you want to change. The things you'd do, they're done in that wonderful make-believe world of "if". Possibilities rise and fall like sand castles, like towers made of cards, destined to be destroyed by the cold wind of reality.
All things pass. Sooner or later you die, and then things cease to matter. Till then, you wait. You'd wait till graduation, till you get a job, till the weekend, till your kids grow up, till your wife falls asleep, et cetera, et cetera. And then you die.
But before you finally kick the box, you're in that limbo between want and world. And there's always that masochistic pleasure of looking back and building these sand castles, meanwhile - wishing for death, and not really meaning it.
You can have a porn movie for a personal life, a soap opera for a living.
There is no one answer as to how you should burn your life.
You could die a naive virgin as a priest, for instance.
Or have an overdose of heroin and die in an ambulance, as some rockstar wanna-bes do.
You could die in a war as a soldier who doesn't know what he's fighting for.
You could die old and useless, or young and full of life.
It doesn't matter how you die, as long as it's not overtly humiliating or grotesque. Even then, you won't be the one to care about that.
What matters is how you live.
They all wanted to die at some point. Except for Red, or at least that's what she says.
They all dreamed big, talked big, they lived in this little world of shadows. Their own little universe.
It all comes down to what you'll do for love.
Red, she never did a thing for love. Too proud, too egotistic. All Black would do was just talk. Blue, he's the one to act, to struggle.
Poor bastard.
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CHAPTER I: BLUE
Cold wind blew over the withered city.
He just stood there, on the roof, watching the sunset, unconsciously shuddering. His thoughts were far away, hidden deep inside those dark, blank eyes.
He hadn't shaved for a week. It showed. There were dark circles under his eyes, he looked sullen and unhealthy. Even so, he was quite handsome, but little did he care about that.
He could hear the sirens far away, down in the slums. A distant assumption that someone died. Who cares? Certainly not the dead guy. Certainly not Blue.
After some point in his life it all had become irrelevant. Maybe there was no point.
Maybe it was Red. Probably it was her.
All Blue would do was drink. Not like Black, not to the point of puking sensation, or as Black put it, "to the black hole of revelation", nor would he smoke like Black did, nor would he do drugs, or be as willing to "give up" love and romance and have them replaced with sluts and casual sex, as Black was clearly (and bitterly) doing.
Either way, Blue was set on the path of self-destruction.
He felt it. He did not care.
1.
When he went in it was dark, it smelled of emptiness and desolation.
Home sweet home... or at least the sweet smell of the rotting walls was still there.
A flick of the switch and the cold white light of the lampshade illuminated the little gray room with a single army bed, a small wooden chair and a cracked wooden table. The little gray room Blue called his apartment.
Underneath the bed was a suitcase with all of Blue's belongings.
It was cold. You could clearly hear the wind gusting outside, and the chaos of traffic.
Sometimes a scream could wake you up in the middle of the night. Or gunshots. Usually both.
Blue sighed and locked the door. He just stood there, in front of the door, for a while. Head lowered and lips pursed, he was thinking.
Black said he'd made a deal with the devil. He said that as they shook hands, with his eyes never leaving Blue's. He said it was not Blue he meant, but the little hungry evil thing inside himself.
As Blue looked into Black's eyes, those devious voidlike eyes, he realized he knew this "devil" Black meant only too well.
It was this "devil" that betrayed him once and left him to suffer and die. Blue had no doubt its plans had not much changed.
This "devil" had no boundaries. No morale. It was made up of pure will, determination; its sole purpose was to reach the goal set. What was to be done to achieve this goal mattered little.
And as Blue looked into Black's eyes, he could clearly see that "devil" smirking in his best friend's pupils.
It's back. It's got a goal.
And as Blue sat behind his wooden table and put his face in his hands, he realized the only person to blame for that was himself.
2.
It was Red he was after. Always her.
And somehow, by some evil coincidence (perhaps it was no coincidence), Black's "devil" emerged mostly when it was Blue between him and the lady.
And sometimes Blue thought that what Black's "devil" was really after was his, Blue's, ultimate destruction.
Blue shuddered at the thought.
3.
He spoke to Red that night.
He said that Black wanted to meet her.
He said that Black'd decided to come clean... or at least he'd said so.
He said that he thought that Black'd gone nuts.
...he's got a one way ticket...
He said that Black wanted to say goodbye.
They laughed.
Goodbyes are one thing Black was quite generous about. Especially when it concerned Red. As the saying goes, if Red got a coin for every goodbye she got from Black... she'd end up with a lot of coins.
They were lovers once - Blue and Red. It had hurt Black, but what they had now hurt him deeper.
They were friends.
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CHAPTER II: RED
Sprawled on the soft green sofa, she stared at the wall.
It was raining.
Her beautiful, pale face with full red lips and somehow foxlike hazel eyes bore the expression of bored dismay.
It was raining, and rain always made her think of Black.
She did not like to think of Black.
Thinking of him was like thinking of cancer, or AIDS, or dying orphans... boringly tragic.
Blue, on the other hand, was a whole other story. Blue was easy.
Blue had obvious human emotions. If hurt, he would cry. If happy, he would smile.
Simple. Easy.
Not like that despicable Black.
Never honest. An obscured, vague image, he would pretend to understand her, but he would be simply manipulating.
Full of sorrow, hate, poison and bitterness, Black was just the person Red would rather not think about right now.
She was waiting for a call.
A call from Gold.
She might even love him, if the price was right. For now, well, he was just hers.
Her pale fingers ran through her dark curly hair. It smelled of sin and delight, and in these tangles was hidden a truly dark mind
The trick was to be a whore and a priestess, fire and ice, affection and indifference, all at once. To be close, yet far away.
Deadly.
The white walls of her downtown apartment were almost completely bare, except for a few paintings she brought from her travels.
She was in a place she called "The Green Room", for the furniture the color of faded emeralds and the few plants she had there. Roses, mostly. Red, red roses.
This was the place where she almost gave in to Black, where he begged on his knees as some cheap slut, this was where he came as close to being open as he'd ever come.
And this was also the place where Blue cried after being rejected by her, this was the place where she gave in to most of her boyfriends (boy that's a lot), and where she sat curled up by the window with a phone in her hand. It was Black she mostly talked with.
So much time wasted on that fark-up.
She uttered a silent short laugh, much like the mild whisper of a courtesan's dress.
A call. It was Gold. Gold, Goldie, Goldie... poor bastard, you don't know what you're in for, do you?
You're in for your farking life, Goldie. You're in for your goddam soul.
But a dinner will do for now. A dinner and something extra. A ring. And it better be good, and she better see you've spent some big bucks on that s**t.
You better not ask what you'll get in return, Goldie... but still, I'll answer.
You'll get your life farked, Goldie. farked rough and hard and with no mercy whatsoever.
Sweet deals are made of this. Red knows how to get those deals.
Red knows how to use people.
She knows how to get people to need her.
How to get them addicted to her as one might get an addiction to heroin or cocaine or those pills Black used to take.
How to get men suffocating for her, for her smile, for her touch.
How to get sister darkness to wash over their eyes as they saw her.
And oh the pleasure to know that as soon as she playfully left their lives, they were over. Then came the real addictions, and booze, and sluts, and the bottomless pit of degradation.
Joy, she smiled. Oh that evil joy.
And she laughed as it rained, but somewhere deep inside the thought of Black still lingered.
She would meet him tomorrow, that evil motherfarker.
But for now, there was Gold to take care of.
And he better be good.
Her time was too precious to waste.
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CHAPTER III: BLACK
Rain fell as he wept.
A few bottles lay beside him. Rum for today, and he was saving vodka for tomorrow.
The rain stopped. Soon after came the sunset.
No trace of tears remained on his face as he got up from behind his desk and lit a cigarette, watching the sun glide slowly to the crimson horizon.
Then the shadows fell. It was dark once more.
Just the way Black liked it.
The city changed. So did the crowd that filled its streets. Masks fell and shattered like porcelain.
With the cigarette between his teeth, Black grabbed his coat and was out, leaving a trail of smoke behind.
And as he walked down those dark alleys, he started to whistle.
There was a faint hoarseness in that whistle, and as the light fell on his face one would surely note the pallor on his tanned skin, and the dark circles under his brooding eyes.
As he entered the bar, he smiled. It smelled of cigarettes and beer and perfume, just the perfect mix for the plugged-in blues that wailed in the reddish darkness of “The Broken Heartz' Club”.
As he took his place, that old place always kept for him, in front of the barkeep; there was one word he mouthed -
"Absynthe."
- before going back to his old friend silence.
The black touch of absynthe burned his mouth, his throat, and for a blessed moment killed all the thoughts he had.
Leaving only fire.
Then it was gone. Black's experience with alcohol was far too vast for him to fall for anything.
Another gulp, another blessing.
A blessing that this time Blue wasn't here, waiting...
With no real haste Black glanced around, and an invisible trigger in his muscular body relaxed.
He sat still, ordering drink after drink.
Drinks... the only thing he spoiled himself with... literally.
Well, of course, there were fights, and whores, and sleepless nights - killed with way too many sleeping pills, there was a brief period of LSD, there were the constant cigars and cigarettes... but he was tough, he could handle it, no problem at all.
Or as Purple would've put it - "No problem-o".
Or as Noire would've put it - "Utter bulls**t".
Either way, Black enjoyed life, but life did not enjoy Black very much.
As he glided deeper into the night filled with blues and absynthe, he smelled Violet's perfume.
Persistent lady.
Sure enough, in a moment she was in the barstool next to Black, looking at him with a venomous mix of emotions better not mixed together.
Black paid no attention, but kept watching her out of the corner of his eye.
There was silence for quite a while. You could hear the whisper of the recorder underneath the low-key blues, and you could hear the heavens growling outside.
"Well?" she said at last.
"I'm fine." Black softly answered.
He wouldn't look at her. He was dog-tired of everything, and Violet was way up on that list.
"Just look at you, Black. You're farking up yourself, and you're farking up everyone around you. Please, please listen to me."
Black looked at Violet at last, and what he saw hurt him. What he saw in her eyes was something Red would see in his own eyes. Nothing farks a person up more than a blend of love, desperation, humiliation, hate, misery and endless forgiveness.
"Teal, mix something up for the lady." he said to the barkeep.
The barkeep gave a short nod.
Black looked into Violet's eyes again. This time (maybe way too much absynthe was at fault) he really saw her, not as one of his persistent girlfriends, but as a woman, as a human. He saw her olive-colored skin, her sleek black hair, the beautiful curve of her lips, her gem-like green eyes, and the perfection of her body, of her taste.
She's mine, he thought. She's mine, and I just won't give a fark about it... déjà vu.
"I'm listening" he finally said.
"I know exactly what you're doing" her tone was hurt, her voice was low, and he could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was on the verge of tears.
fark.
"Do you?"
"You're obviously killing yourself, that's what you're doing."
"Your drink, miss." It was a red, strong blend Black momentarily recognized. He gave Teal a short, grateful nod.
"Try it." Black told Violet.
"You're not listening to me, Black, I..."
"Please."
She did.
"I'm sorry, Violet. It's farked up, I know. Especially what I did to you... I shouldn't have, I regret leaving you... alone, in the dark..."
It's quite easy to get a woman who loves you to drink.
"But I realize I was wrong."
And this is how you hit the bottom.
"Drink up, Violet. And let's go home..."
Rain was starting up again. Someone threw a dime into the jukebox, and the lonely sounds of rock'n'roll filled “The Broken Heartz' Club”.
“...together.”
And this new look in her eyes, one of dim recognition, the look that said she wasn't deceived but badly wanted to be...
But it was raining again, and rain made him think of Red.
He didn't want to think of Red.
He couldn't stand the loneliness of the night and the fierceness of the rain alone.
He farked Violet that night. Or what was left of him did.
And later that night, she lay curled up in his bed as Black sat beside a window, watching the moonless winter night, and smoking, and drinking.
Early in the morning, when Black was already and still asleep, she got dressed and left, with tears streaming down her cheeks and never looking back.
He awoke to find himself alone, and there was a dawning sense of self-loathing welling up in the shadows of his mind.
He lay there, his body tense. This was the day it all had to come to an end.
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CHAPTER IV: STEP BACK, STEP FORWARD, NOW SPIN
Dangling.
Dwindling.
Blue awakened on a misty, freezing winter morning.
Or he tried.
His body simply refused to move. Instead, it would lie there, under those warm and cozy blankets till he was made to get up. Probably forced to.
For the thousandth time he thought of the willpower Black was so proud of.
One of the traits the schizo was especially proud of was going on a morning run at 4 AM, which meant he either slept no more , or simply ran back home two hours later and a nice little 12-hour nap. That would explain a lot.
Grudgingly, Blue buried his face in his pillow.
And it seemed just a few moments had passed as his phone started ringing.
Again.
"Blue here"
"Ah, Blue... It's Black."
Of course it's Black, who else would call at... 6 PM?
"Yeah."
"By the sound of it, you're still in bed. That's disturbing, Blue, but the reason I've called..."
"Yeah?"
"I in no way wish to seem persistent or anything, but... we had a deal."
A deal with that farked-up devil of yours? I remember, Blue thought grimly.
"Yeah."
"See, Blue, answers do have the ability to consist of more than one tattered motherfarking word."
"Point?"
"It's 6 PM. Get your ass dressed and your farking mouth brushed. I want you there. And get something decent to wear, Blue. Jeans and a tee won't do."
"Why?"
"'Cause my friends run the restaurant, and I don't want them to think that I waste my time with farking junkies. Alright?"
"Yeah. Whatever."
"She...", this was the first time during this conversation that Black's husky delicate voice quivered, noticeably, if even just a tiny bit. “She is coming, right, Blue?"
"She is. Black, remember what I told you?"
"I rarely grant myself the luxury of paying attention, least of all - remembering your words, Blue."
"Well, told you once, I tell you again, and let this be a warning to you: don't fark it up. Whatever happens is on me, and I don't wanna answer for your dumbass actions."
"Oh... A warning", Black chuckled. “Worry not, chum. You won't have to answer for my actions, Blue-bird. Now fly, I don't have the eternity. Even if I had, I wouldn't be wasting it on the likes of you and that slut."
"Doesn't seem like it", Blue smirked and hung up.
People have a way of dealing with stress. It'd be good to know that Black might feel anything aside from his obsession with Red, though Blue strongly doubted it.
Black always kept it cool, anyways.
It was early morning, and the dawn was still breaking, as Black got dressed and went out for his morning run.
Every breath he took was an icy, merciless blaze, but he was used to it. He even liked the way it stung.
And he ran. He ran like the wind, and with the cold wind beating down on his face.
Life is beautiful. So is the sun, struggling its way out of the murky slumber.
Miles flashed past. An abandoned parking lot which had degraded to a junkyard, the slums, nightclubs closing up for another day, and that wonderful, choking sensation of silence.
Burning trashcans with no one to warm. Empty benches in the park, and those empty dirty streets.
And the wind. It was shrilly gusting in his lungs, in his guts, his heartbeat was all that mattered, all that existed, it was existence itself, and it was God.
Red was far behind, a dusty mirage, and so was Blue, and Violet... and especially - Noire.
Two or three hours later he ran back home.
He took a cold shower, then slowly got dressed.
He looked around. His house was a couple of centuries old, and it looked like a cross between a gothic-style monastery and a museum. There was little furniture in the vast rooms of this two-story building, and most of it looked old and simple, the kind of benches, tables, cupboards and such you could picture a Spartan using.
Black looked at himself in the mirror.
There was an old flame that called him brutally handsome. His features were bold, both good-looking and masculine. Scars covered this face, but instead of ruining, they enhanced the charm.
And then, there were his eyes, those dark, crescent-like eyes. They were the shade of brown people call black. And one thing about them was that they were irresistible.
Crocodile eyes, as he thought of them.
Black suit, black tie, black shirt, black boots.
Black was ready to roll.
He emptied a glass of whiskey and stepped out.
Red met Blue at a square a few blocks away from her apartment. He embraced her gently, and was overwhelmed by glee as he saw the expression on her face.
"fark him." she said.
"What do you mean, she can't?" there was suppressed fury in Black's voice.
Also he could hear traffic in the background as Blue spoke again.
"She's with you, isn't she?" Black interrupted him, and hung up.
There was an almost audible click in his head.
Coo-coo... coo-coo...
He could hear the faint wail of the guitar coming from the nightclub nearby.
1. Noire
As Black watched her undress under the enthralling sounds of the electric guitar, he wondered who she was.
Who he was.
A stripper would understand him. She was a fitting metaphor for what he had become.
By day.
By night.
If he ever saw her in the crowd of the subway or at the railroad station, wearing a cheap coat and a colorless skirt, would he ever guess who she really was? The diva of lust and passion, a goddess in a smoke-filled room, would he ever see her in that bleak human being?
He took another shot of absinthe.
Then, there was another click.
The unmistakable click of Noire's lighter.
"It's farked up, isn't it, partner?"
The mild whisper of his voice soothed Black.
His presence was that of dark, calm comfort.
"Deep in the pits of self-pity, I imagine?" his tone was both mocking and gentle, and as Noire sat beside Black, he gave him a short, one-armed hug.
"Clearly", Black replied.
"Wow, the babe's got boobs" Noire smirked as he noted the stripper, "Whatcha drinking there, partner?"
"The usual."
"'The Black Bang'? Nah, too spiky for me. I'll have a whisky. On the rocks. And make it double. So? What's the deal, kid?"
Black looked at Noire for a long time, trying to recollect, readjust. He noted that Noire had changed during the year they've spent apart.
Noire was an albino, and his eyes had that bloody tint albinos have. His white-blonde hair was quite long, straight and brushed back. The tan, withered skin of his face stretched over a mask that combined poker face and endless glee.
He was wearing all white as usual, except for a shiny black tie.
"Well, Noire, you know the drill. It's Red and Blue."
"Red don't need you no more, eh? She got someone else for the spot. Better. That's what's getting ya, eh, partner?"
"I guess. Yes."
"Get a life already, Black. You don't just fark it up for nothing, least of all for Red."
He tipped the stripper with a Ben.
A few moments of silence, the kind of annoying silence you get while in conversation with a lady you'd wanted to fark and who wants to socialize instead.
"Stop drinking, Black. For now, start thinking."
Noire was merciless. Noire had no remorse, no regret, no conscience, and Noire was evil.
Noire: A Brief Introduction
People who owed Noire money and had the misfortune of not managing to pay in time ended up in the gutters with their asses raped and their last penny taken.
People who crossed him first had their lives destroyed, then their brains on the floor.
If anyone wanted to pick a fight with Noire, Noire gladly used the opportunity of the hysterical joy of aggression, violence, pain.
Destruction was his happiness.
He would stand against five, ten, a hundred.
His face was broken and mended together for as many times as he could not even remember.
And, of course, there was the spoil of his fire, there were women who begged to be his, there was money, there were minions and infamy that he faintly enjoyed.
There was rock'n'roll all night, there was fear and madness in his embrace as he seduced another victim of his charms.
Noire was born like that. He was born for that, in a way. He never cared about love, or hope, he never needed to have a point or a goal.
There was fire. There was chaos. There was the bitter aftermath of destruction, the trailing smoke he left behind.
2. Back at the Nightclub
"White."
White was the answer.
Blue's sweetheart.
Somehow, they still found a way to get a kick into each others' balls.
"I had a dream, partner."
Blue looked up at Noire again.
"You were in it.
"Blue was in it.
"Red was in it
"The thing is, Black, you died. An old friend killed you, but you'd have died anyways, it was a matter of weeks."
"Quit it, Noire. Just tell me how to get to White?"
"Call Purple, our shaggy old friend."
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CHAPTER V: TEAL
He had the hangman's noose of the black tie around his neck, and he was well-shaved when he looked in the mirror again.
His face was sharp, thin and smooth, with the pointed lines of his cheekbones and his chin and his thin eyebrows, he looked almost handsome - almost, but not quite.
The most probable reason for that 'almost' were his cold, sharp, calculating grey eyes.
He brushed his short black hair again, just in case, retied his tie, put on his coat and hurried to "The Broken Heartz' Club".
It was early afternoon, and the city was waking up from its foggy slumber.
The streets were filled and flowed like a river made of vans, taxis and middle-class cars.
Teal looked up, and through the small maze of heavens that remained between the skyscrapers, he was promised that another storm was on its way.
Well, he'll be working all night anyways, and in this city a storm meant snatch for nightclubs and accidents.
Teal caught a cab.
He named the address and never spoke to the driver again, distractedly watching the traffic flash by as they reached their destination.
"I like this place." the driver said as Teal tipped him and opened the door.
Teal nodded and thought, you would.
The sky grumbled. The door snapped shut behind Teal.
So, "The Broken Heartz' Club"... He'd worked here ever since it had its small drug- and vodka-filled opening. Many winters had passed since then.
There was a withered old sign next to the entrance, forbidding minors the simple pleasure of going through that door.
When the bouncer stood next to it, it meant:
NO ID?
Tip me 20 and you're in
This was a dark, smelly place, where condoms floating in toilet water were something just a tiny bit short of a must.
These weren't the finest days of this murky place, if it ever had any.
But Teal was still paid, and it was good. But for one to assume that the pay itself was good would be utterly naive.
The "Club" was almost empty, save for a couple of tables in the lower level, right next to the stage.
Teal took a brief detour to the office where Turquoise, his boss, usually sat behind his huge desk with that round glasses of his hanging askew from the midsection of his nose and his hands folded behind his head, either listening to music or watching a movie on the small black-and-white TV resting on a shelf in the corner of the room. Turquoise nodded to Teal, and the bartender was out to his usual position on the other side of the bar stand, where he sat, mixed himself a bitter coffee, and drank with the sour taste of waiting filling his guts.
Teal was a loner by nature. In many ways he was what one would call antisocial. Personal life consisted of tattered farkbooks and desperate imagination, and was as empty and barren as a drunkard's throat.
Teal led a lonely life that consisted of everlasting déjà vu. There was work, there were seven hours of sleep at the apartment he couldn't really bring himself to call home, there was the routine of getting yourself back into shape every afternoon, and then all over again.
Endless.
Work itself consisted of getting drunken people even more drunk, of listening to their whining, and to goad them into believing that alcohol was the sole solution.
Teal didn't believe in love, God, friendship, freedom, feelings. His personality was more that of mechanical nature, of melancholic apathy that followed the given routine, never quite getting out of line.
The coffee left his mouth tasting of sour piss. He stood up in time to greet the first patron of the day, a young woman.
She had the broken sad eyes of a renegade pet, and lipstick smeared over her hapless pale lips.
She asked for vodka.
And as Teal's automatic response to that request appeared in front of her a second later, he had a moment of that crystal-clear "seeing" sensation only bartenders of his level of experience have.
She's a whore, of course, she never knew her mother, but her father was just too kind to her.
And suddenly he saw her childhood, her sodden, pale, almost boyish face, he saw her sobbing over some teenage lover, he saw her getting s**tfaced drunk at parties and letting some faceless jerks grapple her for pennies.
She gulped down the vodka and hoarsely asked for a refill.
You get used to taking orders from the scum of the earth. Especially in this city. Especially in this bar.
And there were the rare exceptions of acquaintances he'd never ever dare to call friends, but regarded them as such nonetheless.
There was Black, and boy, that kid knew how to make his day. There was the gloomy slab of Grey, and the mischievous optimism of Purple.
But he knew that even for those people he was just "The Barkeep", a kind of a smart pet trained to distribute beverages, socialize and commiserate.
Teal smirked.
Then he heard the door click open again, somewhere in the foggy distance of the "Club", and in came the one species of a customer he actually loathed.
The Spoiled Kid of a Rich Daddy Gangster Type.
To be quaint, these were a rarity at "The Broken Heartz' Club". They happened, and when they did, Teal though - s**t happens.
They'd order the most overpriced cocktail, they'd monger over it, sip it down like a kid drinking Cola, and they'd say it tasted like s**t and wouldn't pay. If Teal had a problem with that, they'd address Turquoise, and Turquoise'd tell him his drinks deserved to be called s**t, cause, frankly, he'd say, they were.
These were the times Teal felt like crying and mixed those sons of ladyes a free banana milkshake instead.
Perhaps this was the reason he was not overjoyed to see Gold enter his bar.
Gold was finely dressed, was of middle-close-to-short height and had a cheerful face with fat red slabs of cheeks and little, sparkling eyes.
He had that faint sense of snobbish nobility in him, his shoulders were thin and ill-developed, but he had a pouching belly under his fine silk shirt instead, giving his body the shape of a church bell.
A bureaucrat, a diplomat, a s**thead, for Teal.
But after the initial impression of his wealth and well-being, you could note dismay on his face.
He looked as though he was lost, and in a way he was, Teal thought, if he'd wondered in here.
So he came up to Teal's stand, with that expression on his face, with Teal impatiently and hatefully watching him.
After a minute of silent contemplation, during which the whore got another refill, Teal voiced his irritation in a well-mannered tone:
"Anything you'd like, sir?"
As though awakened from a distant nightmare, Gold dazedly looked at him.
Teal repeated his question.
He asked for a whisky and sat down.
Whisky was an unusual request for this type of people in Teal's book, as he regarded them as ones that didn't have the guts to take it.
But he smirked and obeyed.
Another vodka for the flashback lady.
But Gold was full of surprises tonight. As the bar was gradually filling up with the notorious scum it deems as its patrons, Gold never left his stool, gulping down whisky after whisky.
"So, kid", Teal said as he watched Gold drink, and it was obvious he was not very experienced with alcohol, "What's your story?"
"She... She don't love me - no! She's gonna leave me!" There was an audible sob in that last exclamation, and Teal had to hold back the sudden giggles, probably hysterical, welling up in his chest, "She says she does, but I know she don't. And I can't stop loving her. And she's using me!"
"Yeah, well... that's sad."
"It's not fair!"
"Well, now that's a matter of an opinion, don't you think?"
"Huh?"
"Yeah, she's a lady, sure. Look, that chick over there's, like, ready to go, you know? Want me to hook you up with her? She won't cost much."
"No, no, no... I can't... I can't... I have to call Red... have to..."
"Well, go ahead then."
"I can't!.."
"Why's that, I wonder? I bet it's not the lack of a cell phone."
"She'll laugh at me."
And when Teal looked up to see Gold's expression, the expression of a retarded puppy that'd just s**tted itself, that's when he burst out laughing.
He hadn't laughed like that in what seemed like a millennia. He laughed till his stomach hurt, till his face muscles grew numb, till his lungs gurgled for air. He laughed, hitting his hand on the polished surface of the shelves, he laughed harder as he saw Gold's red slabs of cheeks trembling, and it would have taken quite a while for Teal to get a hold of himself when someone slapped him across the face.
Teal was back to normal.
Well, this was unusual, he thought.
He had the same serious expression he always had, the expression dated back to High School, the expression with which he listened to the most moronic stories told... and never betrayed so much as a grin.
Night by night he listened to lost souls claiming they were wolves, therians, lycanthropes, vampires, necromancers, demons and demon hunters, assassins and the Jesus reborn.
And he poured them beer, or vodka, and listened to them and got paid for it - not well, but it was quite enough for the kind of life he led. And this was his job, the sole purpose of his mindless, silent existence.
Things change.
As she entered the bar, Teal realized that.
White looked at him and smiled.
-
CHAPTER VI: VIOLET FINDS A FRIEND
Red was fixedly looking at Gold, trying to figure what was the change about him she noticed this morning.
His face was tanned as usual, mostly unlined, it was still pretty bulky,, and he seemed cheerful enough, but still... there was an undertone, something alien, something gloomy and grudging. A kind of a Black-ish quality.
"What's wrong, love?", she questioned in that honey poison tone of hers.
They sat in "The Green Room", drinking coffee. Faint sounds of a piano could be heard from downstairs.
A few seconds passed before Gold finally replied:
"Nothing is wrong. I was just thinking of something."
She didn't like his tone, and she liked the way his hand shook as he sat his empty cup on the table even less.
"What were you thinking about?"
"Just some... stuff."
Red sighed. If not for the money, Gold was just a little bit too dull for her taste.
"Dad's got another job for me. I'll have to go now. Uh... bye. I... I love you. You sure you're not coming... tonight?"
"Yeah... well, if I'm not home, I'll be at that tango place."
"Right. Okay. Well, off I go."
"That tango place" was an exclusive tango studio, one of the most elegant and expensive in the city. It also had a bar that served the most exquisite wine, and a handsome instructor with strong dark arms and long thin legs.
This is where Red was planning to find a substitute for Gold.
"Now take a short step forward with your left foot..."
Violet's body moved gracefully, it emphasized the passion of the dance, her cheeks were blushed, her dark eyes blazed.
"Now repeat."
Outside the huge windows of ornamental glass loomed a dark, cold, yet clear winter night. Moonlight embraced the roaring city outside.
But from here, the city was beautiful.
Majestic.
Subtle bodies in tuxedos and marvelous dresses rhythmically obeyed the music, and all that existed was passion, beat and the undeniable lust of inspiration.
Later that evening, Red sat alone in the bar, in a neat black-leather armchair next to the enormous window. City lights played on her beautiful, brooding face.
She had a glass of red wine in her hand. Every once in a while she took a short gulp, and her hazel eyes lit up for a moment.
She was aware of the bartender staring greedily at her. She did not care.
Every once in a while, Red felt sad. And lonely. She felt alien in this world of swirling colors and love that is brief and useless.
"You know, everyone else has already gone."
She looked up, and saw a young woman in a dark green dress. Venice, Black would say. If it wasn't Violet.
It was.
"Have we met somewhere? Your face looks familiar", she said.
"Does it? I can't recall if we have."
"Ah, well... it must've been some sort of a snob event anyways."
Red gave a short nod.
"You come here often?"
"Often enough. It's pretty late, isn't it?" there was a sad indifference in Red's voice.
"Close to midnight."
"I don't want to go home.", in contrast to the sentence, her tone was emotionless, bleak.
"Neither do I."
Violet sat in the armchair in front of Red, and looking out the window, with the city lights dancing on her olive skin, she said:
"It's the night. It's the city. That what makes us feel this way. Small. Unimportant. Dispensable."
Red nodded again, not looking at Violet. Her glass was empty, but she failed to notice it.
"It's the Chancellor's charity event tonight, isn't it?" Red asked.
Chancellor... she never thought of the short gray man in the long gray coat with the round bleak face, the only notable part of which was the huge pale mouth with its sour, snobbish grimace, as the Chancellor. It was Gold's Dad. His farking Daddy. The one that saw her as his naughty son's little slut, and regarded her as such.
He'll pay one day, she thought.
"Yeah... They say it's gonna be big."
"I've heard the same."
Red raised the glass to take a gulp of wine only to find it gone. What have I become, she thought.
"So, your name was?.."
"Red."
"I'm Violet. I really hope I'm not being a pest, at times it just gets so lonely I just have to talk to somebody."
"I don't mind. Sorry if I'm not that talkative right now..."
"It's fine. Even better."
"Yeah, I knew a guy that hated my... silent times. He'd be desperate to make me talk. He'd say all matter of things. Most of it'd be lies, but it didn't matter at the time. Night's the time when dreams and nightmares are worth far more than drunken deeds." Red uttered a silent laugh, a bitter sound, "Gods, now I sound like that bastard."
"Who?"
"Noire. But I don't really want to talk about him just now, Violet. He is deep in the past, both for me and for himself. And when people choose to bury themselves in their memories and echoes of their falls and achievements, they better be forgotten. It's kind of contagious, that life... in the past, in the memories, where all that matters is long gone and utterly worthless."
Violet smirked. She'd never met Noire, but she could imagine him alright.
"Words, words, words... how I hate them, Violet. And people whose lives are made of words. So wrong. So deceitful."
"People lie." Violet said simply, "At the entrance of the second person, hypocrisy begins."
"He's not like that. He doesn't need that other person. He's like some rabid dog. If alone, he'll bite himself. He just needs something to destroy, to poison, to foul."
Like my dear Black, Violet thought bitterly.
"But enough of him, really. What's your story, Violet? A beauty like you doesn't want to go home... there has to be a reason."
"No reason. Just a man. Just another heartbreak story."
"The whole world's built on heartbreaks and fark-ups. We break hearts, and someone breaks ours. We mend the thing, now worthless, and at what cost? A numb, throbbing existence."
"Exactly."
"Love hurts. I chose not to love. But from your face and from your words I can see that this choice may be hard for you."
"It is. I know it's not impossible, but my heart keeps clinging to this shadow. He's destroying me, he's destroying himself, only for some sophisticated whore..."
History likes repetition, Red thought.
Violet sighed and said:
"It's a cruel world, don't you think?"
It was only now that Red noticed a jazz band playing in the depth of the smoke-filled bar, empty now, save for her and Violet.
"For some it is", Red said, "for some it's not. It always depends. It could've been better, it could've been worse. It's not the chances we took that we remember, but the opportunities we've lost. The other road."
"If only..."
"Don't. A sentence that starts with an 'if" usually lapses into endless helplessness, a sense of loss. You don't need that."
"Wishes make us both strong and weak."
"They do. Well, Violet, I guess I'll be going now. It was nice to meet you, and I hope to see you again."
"So do I."
Red actually meant it.
And as Red came to the tango place, night after night, she would always find Violet there.
And just because for Red Violet existed only in the four walls of the studio and the silky mist of the bar, it was easy to be honest with her, to confide in her. Violet was a beautiful creature of some other world, a world where true love, passion and charming demons with eyes like the Abyss still existed.
Red faintly remembered a world like that. Black's world. Her world, as it once was. When she belonged to him. Funny that she admitted that to herself only when it was no longer so.
Every night she came home late to find Gold waiting in the hall, silent, with all the lights off.
Every night his face grew more sullen, his cheekbones more prominent.
At times, looking at the tango instructor's sleek, slender body, his handsome tanned face, she wondered if he was the substitute she was looking for. And if it was time to say goodbye to Gold.
-
CHAPTER VII: STRIPPED
Black woke up and wondered who was breathing next to him.
Never actually managing to recall her name, he got dressed.
Giving her a brief kiss, he left her.
Her apartment was a few blocks away from Red's. He could see the irony,
Noire had an off-night that night. The lady was kinda rotten, the core was one of daily use and so had the look of a bloody lettuce. Not that he wasn't used to it, but the artist in him despised the disgusting revelations of human nature.
Not that he wasn't one himself.
"Shine away into the dust and desolation, they say", said Teal, pouring Black another whisky.
There were days when he loved absynthe and despised whisky, and there were days when the roles switched yet again, Teal noticed.
And there were days when he talked and acted like a whole other man.
"So you say you know her?" asked Black, looking at Purple intently.
"Of course he knows her, dammit," Noire muttered.
"Of course I don't, dammit," Purple said," The thing is, Black, if there's a man in this city that should know each and every woman here, that'd be you, not me."
Black struck the wall with his fist and growled.
Purple was looking at the best friend he'd ever had, and wondered what it was that united such opposable characters in a friendship that has lasted more than a decade.
Purple himself was a pleasant young man, quite tall, tan and blonde. He had an honest face with honest brown eyes, no worries ever truly bothered them.
He had the lite step of an athlete, and a balmy, calm character with the sudden outbursts of beer- banging, vulgarity and aggression.
"Why'd you ever need to find White?" he asked.
"He has no idea", said Noire.
"I have no idea", said Black, “It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"Paying the bastard back with the same coin?" Purple smirked, "You have to let go, bro. This thing between Red and Blue and you is going nowhere and you know it."
"What makes you think he does?" asked Noire, with irony spiking his mellow voice.
"Yeah, what makes you think I do?"
"Did I ever tell you about Gold?"
"No, Purple, you haven't. Another..."
"Gold's in fark-up mode because of a lady just like yours, Black. He was a great kid, a real party fellow, the one that'd, like, fire up the whole thing. The kid looks like a farking zombie now, Black. No kidding. Should've seen him yesterday."
"You went to the charity thing? Didn't you have work that night?"
"Everyone left. No reason for me to stay" Purple said, " You coming tonight?"
"I have some work to do for Silver."
"Well, say hello to your brother then."
In a week Violet'll be lying in a puddle of blood on the cracked concrete of the merciless city.
For now, she handed Red her exquisite coat.
Every day the strange new feeling towards Red seemed to be getting only stronger.
Something darker than love, simpler than passion, stronger than friendship.
Each was the other's safe haven, for not even Blue'd ever be what Violet was for Red, and nor would ever Black console Violet the way Red did.
The fact that Black had a brother was somehow obscured through the years of his ascension in the world of crimes and intrigues.
The truth is, very few knew anything about Black, except for the occasional rumors and gossip, and he was incognito.
He traveled a lot. The sense of constant move made it easier for him to run away from himself.
But the city kept calling him back, and he kept coming back.
It wasn't ambition that got him that far in the underworld. It was his faintly suicidal indifference regarding his life.
With each and every passing second he could die - a bullet was all that it took, and, frankly speaking, there was a lot of people who this bullet might belong to.
The detonation, the pressure, the burst, the spiral and the bang and a heap of meat right where a man stood a blink ago...
Black took comfort in that.
Teal's mind was blank.
Empty.
White.
She devastated him.
Destroyed him.
Left him bleeding, gaping like a wound.
He poured another vodka.
He wondered why there were so many prostitutes in "The Club".
Outside, it was still raining.
He wondered if White's gonna come tonight.
He shut off that thought.
His trained fingers whispered through the cash. Smeared lipstick on Jefferson's face.
Life or death.
Teal sighed.
Yesterday Turquoise officially forbid him to drink at work.
Talk about Tantalus.
Last night he never actually managed to fall asleep.
A kind of a white insomnia, and the sudden emptiness that has taken residence where all his average thoughts once lived.
Has it really been two weeks?
Teal felt older.
For the first time in his life he felt old.
"Do I really love him?"
"Yep."
"Oh, Teal, don't be so cruel, talk to me."
"I am... talking to you."
Who'm I talking to? he wondered.
A whore. Just another whore.
"So you're White?"
Black no longer believed in coincidences, life's a script, and the sooner you learn it, the better it goes.
"And you're the infamous Black?"
"I knew we'd meet. Sooner or later."
"Did you?"
Black smirked.
"People lost in the dark eventually stumble upon each other, White."
"What makes you think I'm lost?"
Black smirked again.
It was the bar of "Western Sunrise". Black'd come here to drink himself dead after he failed on the job.
Ironically, he'd found White here instead.
"It's Blue, right? That explains your sarcasm."
"Faintly."
"He said you were friends."
"I never said it wasn't so."
"You make it sound like that."
"Indeed I do. Do you, by any chance, know Red also?"
"Red? Blue's friend?"
Blue's friend. Black realized he actually missed her. A simple feeling like longing surprised him.
"Yeah. Her."
"So what of her? What's she to you?"
"No one. Just a brief acquaintance.
Now he felt a distant echo of anguish.
"Again, it doesn't sound like it."
There was something feline in White's features, her lite complexion, her mellow dark eyes, her soft black hair. And the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she seemed to see right through him... It felt so familiar, and oh how it reminded him of Red.
"Well, I can see why he loves you."
"Flirting, are you?"
"I don't flirt, White."
"Yeah, right."
"I don't. If I want a woman to like me, she does. That is not exactly my purpose now."
"You seem very confident in yourself... to say the least."
"I take comfort in that."
"He won't be very happy to see me with you."
"I should think not."
"But you are different from what Blue'd told me about you. He said you were a vile, desolate man... a species of a monster." White smiled and shrugged, "You don't seem an angel to me either, Black. I can see what he meant, but I can also see what Red liked about you. You're a cool guy, Black. There aren't many left like you."
"I'd say very few."
"So how long have you known Blue?"
"Most of my life. We grew up together."
"And I... I don't know a thing about him, Black. I mean, I am his woman, and I love him, but I have no idea who he is..."
"Blue?" Black laughed. "Oh, Blue, my dear little friend... A chameleon, White, if I've ever known one. He's so afraid of who he really is that he'll wear any mark just to conceal it."
"Oh."
"I in no way wish to dissuade you, my dear White, from liking this fellow, but... you might be disappointed."
"You know, Black, I'll take my chances."
"So wise of you."
"I must go now."
"So soon?"
"Yeah... Well, I can see you, Black, clearly dislike me, and there are people waiting for me out there. They wish to see me, and I..."
"No need. Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, White. I am looking forward to seeing you again."
White smiled and left.
Well, this was the night to get drunk.
To get as drunk as a thing like Black can get.
To the point of puking sensation.
To the black hole of revelation.
The "Western Sunrise" was just the place to sit and cry the blues, the hollow dusty den for the lost souls dwelling in the night.
And then he came in.
Blue came in.
Out of his booze-dazed mind Black watched him approach the sad old barkeep. He noticed a slight smugness about him.
"How much did he drink?"
"A lot, sir."
Blue smirked.
"Pay up, Black. There's someone waiting for you outside."
Black stomped a few papers on the table and slowly got to his feet.
He felt shabby.
"Up you go, Blackie. I'll be there with you in a sec."
It was like moving through a thick nightmare.
A stairway.
Up, up...
A stairway to heaven.
A highway to hell.
-on the way to the promised land-
Who's it wailing behind me, Black wondered. Is it Willie Dixon or The Bad Seeds or the devil himself weeping the blues?
Red was a ghostly silhouette by the lantern.
Black knew it was her even before he saw her.
He was waiting for one of that heart-pits, an earthquake, an avalanche, thunder rolling down his soul...
There was only silence.
Emptiness.
No words came as the city hummed, blurred by.
They just looked at each other, caught each other's gaze, black eyes met in the black, black night.
Silence.
Words are gone.
Past is a crimson silhouette by the lantern, yesterday's got a heart-shaped face and full red lips, forever's curly hair smells of lust and pain and whispers fill the night with prostitutes and poets and the truth.
What have I become, he thought through the drunken haze of his beshadowed mind.
What have I become, and where is the storm? It’s gone.
"You're so still", she said.
A statue. Speechless. Numb.
"I'm not going to, like, paint your portrait, Noire."
"I know", the statue muttered.
The door banged behind them.
Blue took her hand and asked her if she was ready to go.
She said she was.
She said there was nothing to be done here.
Click. Or it felt like a click.
Darkness.
The lantern blinking.
A blink, and Blue's on the ground with Black over him.
A blink, and Black is beating his face into the cracked, rainstreaken concrete.
A blink, and Blue's skull cracks under his fists, and his jaw cuts trough Black's knuckle.
A blink, and it never happened.
A blink, and there is darkness.
Darkness once more.
-
CHAPTER VIII: CRIMSON
Get up.
Why?
Get up. You can't stay here.
Why? What's the point?
So you're givin up, partner?
Why not? Why wouldn't I?
Just get up.
Black did.
How he'd gotten here he did not know, nor was he sure who he'd been talking to.
"Noire?"
Silence.
An empty street, much like any other empty street, ghostly translucent with the greenish light of the lanterns.
It was cold. The wind bit into his chest, ate through his lungs, made his eyes tear up.
"NOIRE!", he screamed.
Echo, and silence, and the wind whistling a tune that made no sense.
The bruises on his body ached, the self-inflicted wound were still bleeding, and there was the lukewarm feeling of worms beneath the skin.
"Noire, I'm lost."
Red. Red. Red.
"I'm so lost, Noire."
He emerged from the shadows, in his white suit, a cigar in his hand and a hapless grin on his grotesque, monstrous face.
"You are, partner."
A shadow played on Noire's face as he let a maze of smoke run through his lips.
"But before you start going chickens**t, partner, do me a favor and let one single thought run through that small-time genius brain o'yours. Thinks if it's worth farking up now."
"What do you suggest?"
"I have nothing to suggest. But let's just take a break here and recall what actually happened.", said Noire, offering Black his cigar.
"I don't know, Noire. It's empty. I'm empty. I'm done."
"So here's where our little s**t gets a trifle sentimental, eh?" Noire started laughing, but to Black his laughter felt like the cold wind, the claws of silence, its empty terror sucking into his ears, his guts.
"She's all I ever had. All I ever wanted. And she's so far away now. The only thing I ever wanted, to be with her, I shall never have", Black smirked cynically, “What a shame."
He was amazed at the sound of his own voice. Was that dead, toneless whisper coming out of his mouth?
"So what was the thing you wanted, partner? You wanted to fark her, eh? Ain't that the only thing you wanted, huh? Her cunt? Her lovely little pussy?"
"No."
"You lie, Black. As always, you lie. The thing is, partner, I'm the only living thing on the planet that won't buy your s**t."
"I'll kill him. Blue's gonna die." As Black felt anger rising inside, his voice kept getting stronger as his thoughts were gaining the deadly certainty of hatred.
"I'll kill him, Noire, that farking lady is gonna die, Noire, you'll see..."
"What a little baby-babe you are, Blackie."
"He'll die, Noire, and I..."
"You're just some farking baby cryin for a toy your momma can't get."
"He has to die. I shouldn't've felt like that..."
"fark the feelings, kiddo."
"I've never been humiliated like that... She shouldn't have seen... what I've become, what I've become without her. And I... wanted to keep that memory of her, I wanted to THINK I meant more than nothing to her, Noire..."
"Why dontcha just shut the fark up, partner? You don't mean s**t to her. Deal with it. Deal with the ladyes that come and go, deal with your fall... or don't. I'm leaving."
And Noire walked away, his coat whipping against wind.
Black watched him merge with the shadows of the city.
What now?
What now?
It wasn't about finding the way back home - there was no home now, and there was no way.
Burn, horizon, burn... but you're dead, you're as black as the wind, as cold as the night, you bear no hope.
Burn, you motherfarker.
There shall be no dawn, no sun shall vanquish the shadow that has fallen once again.
"The Red Cabaret" was filled with smoke, and purple light, and topless waitresses, fat swinelike men and roulettes that span through the night.
Black walked in with a cigar held in his teeth, a loaded gun under his trench coat and a very bad feeling.
"So good you could come, Black."
Purple walked up to him in his dealer's suit, a certain worry slightly creasing his round face.
"Where?"
"Follow me", Purple said.
Black could feel Purple was disturbed by the way he looked, but both of them knew he'd shoot the kid if he asked a thing.
"Just tell him he's wrong, Black. He'll listen to you", Purple almost begged.
"I don't even know him, Purple."
"Well... People listen to you."
Black smirked.
They walked first through the crowd of the main hall, then through the smoky maroon corridors with doors on both sides that seemed endless, and beneath the smooth jazz coming from the main hall you could hear the screams and moans and thuds from behind them.
The corridor found its abrupt end by an elevator entrance with a door beside it that led to the stairs.
As if there was a choice.
"All the way to the top", Purple muttered, pushing the button marked "31".
This was one of the three places where Purple worked - aside from the tango place, there were a couple of casinos, and then there was this place, "The Red Cabaret", a place so exquisitely illegal that the Chancellor himself gambled here.
The elevator flew up through the mist of "The Red Cabaret", the ghosts of their reflections lurking in the mirror-like metal walls.
"Explain", Black simply said.
"Crimson's gone mad."
"How so?"
"You'll see... Can't this thing go faster?! Dammit..."
The doors ringed open and Purple almost flew out.
Then, he took the door to the stairs.
"We're going to the roof?" Black asked.
"Yeah... C'mon."
As Black stepped out into the clear winter night and looked around, it all suddenly became ghastly clear.
"I'll handle it", he said and gently pushed Purple aside.
As he walked through the small crowd gathered by the figure standing on the edge between life and death, he could hear the fain sounds of blues playing downstairs. Or he thought he did.
Who the hell is Albert Collins? Black wondered as the sudden thought rushed into his head.
"Let me through", he simply said.
A young man of average height and average built stood on the edge of the roof with a gun in his hand and tears in his dark eyes.
The crowd consisted mostly of "The Red Cabaret" staff - waitresses, dealers, accountants, demons.
"Step back or I'll shoot", the young man said, his voice clearly showing hysteria, «I swear by my mother's grave, I'll shoot!"
"And this is Crimson, I take it?" Black muttered.
Ignoring his threats, Black took a few steps forward, and now, standing between Crimson and the small crowd, he could actually feel the weight of the revolver pushing down his coat.
"Step back, man, I'll shoot, step the fark back, I swear I'll..."
"Are you indeed going to jump, Crimson?" Black calmly inquired.
"I swear I'll jump, man... And I'll shoot whoever tries to stop me! You hear me motherfarkers?"
"They heard you alright, Crimson" Black answered for the crowd, looking into the blank dark eyes of this lost man, “No one's here to stop you, kid. We're here for the show. Why don't you take that step and entertain us with your gruesome death?"
Crimson cocked the trigger of his gun.
"Shut the fark up, man... I'll farking kill you."
"I sincerely doubt it, but go ahead and try, kid... if you dare. I also doubt if a death of a wretched, miserable little s**t like me or you will change a damn thing... do you?"
"I swear I'll jump... don't you dare to come closer, man!"
Black grabbed the revolver out of his coat and cocked it right into Crimson's face.
"Jump", Black softly said.
"What the fark is he doing?!” gasped one of the waitresses.
"I think he knows what he's doing", Purple said, “Or I hope he does."
It was easy to tell that Crimson was at a loss of words.
"Jump you motherfarker!" Black shouted "Either you jump or I blow your farking brains out!"
Now Crimson was holding his gun against Black's chest, and Black could clearly see his hand tremble, his forehead crease and let go a few beads of sweat, his lips turn into a thin pale line.
"Jump", Black said.
For a few moments that felt like a few eternities they just stood like that, each the other one's doom, each on the thin line between life and death.
Crimson dropped his gun and stepped away from the edge.
Black put his revolver back on safety and reholstered it.
Without a word, he made his way through the crowd and ran down the stairs.
He called for the elevator, the button glowed Red.
Red. Red. Red...
"Black, wait."
Purple, slightly out of breath, appeared beside him.
"What?"
"You... You knew what you were doing, right? You weren't actually going to shoot Crimson, were you?"
"What makes you think I wasn't? The kid went chickens**t at the last second. He wasn't ready for that jump anyways."
"It sounds like you actually wanted him to jump."
"I did."
"Why?"
"I'm bored. I'm full of hate, misery and pain. That solved your puzzle?"
Bing!
The doors slid open, and before Purple could say a thing, Black stepped in.
Bing!
And down, down, down...
What's the point of running away, Black? a mellow voice in his head, much like Noire's, asked.
There is no point, he thought. Someday, it's gonna be me up there instead of Crimson.
Something's gonna be different though.
There's gonna be no one up there to stop him.
There's gonna be some rocking at the show that night.
He dropped his cigar.
The doors binged open and he came out, feeling dazed and confused.
Women flashed by, breasts and lipstick and skirts of black suede and black leather boots. Blondes, mostly.
Then, the men playing cards and placing bets and sweaty armpits, their stench from underneath their expensive suits.
Swines...swines...swines...
Passing by a roulette Black thought - number 8.
"And the winning number is... 6!"
Bingo. Chips and laughter and a kind of a scream.
fark...
When life seems hard you wanna die... At the brink of destruction you fear death once more and want to live, to exist.
Deep in the reddish mist Black spotted the burlesque dancer, Green. She had a burning whip in her hand, and she was naked.
Whatever makes them come these days, he thought.
Black approached the bar and took a seat.
"Absynthe", he muttered.
It seemed just a gulp later that someone grabbed his shoulder.
Reaching to his gun he looked back and found it was Gray, one of the administrators of "The Red Cabaret", with some people gathered up behind him, Purple among them.
"I don't know what to say, Black", Gray said in his husky, low voice, "Thank you, I guess. A case like that could've messed up the whole business here... But..."
"No morale, Gray", Black said, “Just get to the point.
A young man came out of the crowd.
Crimson.
"What does he want?" Black asked Gray, gulping down another shot.
"To stick with you."
"fark off."
"The guy's lost, Black. He's got nowhere to go, he's got no one... show some mercy..."
"You know what? He can join the club. You drink, kid?" Black asked Crimson.
"Yeah", Crimson uttered.
"You know, Gray, you oughta go buy yourself a toolbox, cause I believe your kid here has some screws loose..."
"Morris Holt?"
"fark that. So what do you suggest that I do with him?"
"Stick around with him, Black. He's like a son to me, dammit, but I ain't got no time for getting him straight."
"Oh how you owe me, you fat little maggot" Black said.
Gray was old, big, with a well-shaved huge pale face with bushy gray brows and deep-set gray eyes. He smacked his lips as he spoke and he smoked a small wooden pipe.
"Well, why the hell not?" Black said and added, “Now get the hell out of my face, all of you… Crimson, stay, for fark's sake."
Black's glass was half-empty. He slid it to Crimson.
"What is this?” he asked.
"Absynthe. Welcome to my life."
-
CHAPTER IX: BURN HORIZON BURN
If there were gods above us, they'd all be wearing Roman togas and farking each other all day and night.
Almighty, omnipotent... If there's nothing you can't have, is there anything you can actually wish?
And immortality, doesn't it make you think of suicide?
And love makes you think of loss, and faith makes you think of ignorance.
If you're so dark and lonely and despair's your only friend, there is another thing that you might dare to feel. There's anger. Sadness always comes with anger.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't have a point. There are letters that make words and there are words that make sentences and there are sentences that make no sense.
Gold wasn't sure why he bought the gun he bought, and, frankly, after splitting up with Red, there was not a thing that he could be sure about.
Red was the link that kept Gold from falling apart.
The gun was cold, heavy, and unwelcoming somehow.
Gold sat in his room - motionless, sleepless, dead - looking at the huge .45.
It became the center of his universe. It was the crucifix of all the new beginnings and all the endings he craved for, if Gold were to crave at all.
For Black, Red was a dark blessing, but for Gold, she was a curse.
For days he stared at the gun.
He pictured the bliss of a gargantuan bullet to his head, and that made him think of Red's lips, how soft and red they were, how red her blood would be, if a chunk of her delicious body were to be torn away by a vicious shot.
Gold was half his weight now. The sudden gauntness gave his once-cheerful face the look of utter terror and desperation. His swollen bloodshot eyes rarely blinked, and for days they saw nothing but the nightmarish maze that revolved around Red's lips, her cunt, her smell and the gun.
Sometimes he thought he had the answer, sometimes he knew that he was doomed.
I do want you to notice -
He Took Comfort In That.
There was another, a more pleasant, if I dare to call it so, dream.
In it, she was the one who had the gun, and she was the one who pulled the trigger, and it was his blood spilled, his guts on the street, her smile as he died, with his agony reflected in her eyes (the way a mirror reflects our deepest wishes, remaining cold and distant and ironic) and her smile - so vile, so white, so free, so pagan somehow...
Love is death, and death is life, and algebra or Math, I think it's the same when you talk about equations, and of how A equals B, and B equals C, but in our case A did not equal C. It did not want to.
And doesn't life revolve around the things you want and those you don't, and what you hate and what you'll tolerate.
And all the while, people flashed around Gold. Someone dropped a package of cocaine and took some cash, someone took the cocaine and dropped a package of heroin, someone took some more cash and brought some pills and said that they were God come to life although what life is there in a pill Gold wondered.
And there was the question of who he loved, if anyone at all - himself? or Red?
Shapes flashed by. His father, some doctors, people whose names he used to know, and did not care to remember now, for they were colors, that's all they really were.
He was the center of a small, dying universe, the whole little world revolved around him, with all its secret wishes and thousands of hidden lives and hapless deaths, babies born and sold and love and hate and joy and grief... but the dying sun hardly noticed all that.
The last time he saw Red, she was even more beautiful, even more thrilling, tempting, than she'd been before.
She looked in his eyes and smiled.
The fur coat that he'd bought her was sprawled on the armchair.
It looked so vulgar, so obscene to Gold at that moment.
She smiled her heart-breaker smile, a pagan smile - full of passion, sorrow, beauty and duende.
This was a smile even Black had fallen in love with.
And she said it was over. There was no "us" anymore, the love (that'd never been there in the first place) was gone.
She shattered him with her smile, she destroyed him with the last kiss she ever gave him.
And after that - the streets, the wind, and the story known all too well.
Just another heartbreak story, as Violet would've said.
She used me up, she farked me up, she killed me, were all the thoughts he had.
So, the God is the pill that is sliding down the bloody tunnel of his throat, but in his head, there was another God, and she was not just, and she was cruel.
Gold had no idea if the dope worked. It was just a necessary procedure for what he was going through right now.
At some point a whore came up and said his father'd paid her to fark him, but if he wasn't, like, in the mood, she could just sit around for a while and leave, and that was what she did.
There were cockroaches in the corners, there were shadows and imps and demons and the like, with the devil himself looming behind.
Forgive me there is something wrong with me, I have a soul and it hurts, hurts, hurts like hell, he thought, he muttered, and he stared at the gun, the God he now obeyed, and if you think about it, this was Gold's own little Olympus, with Mars and Hades and the nameless, faceless Goddess of passion, heartache and defeat.
And after an eternity of longing and agony Gold got up and grabbed the gun and was out into the misty haze of the merciless city.
Blue sat by the window, distractedly playing with a lighter.
Fire twinkled for a moment, disappeared, reappeared again. There was music playing downstairs, and Blue was listening intently to it.
You may have the impression that he was thinking of something, and this something may even be of great importance... if so, you are wrong.
Blue's mind was blessedly blank.
The bluish fire blinked, the haze was softly hitting the window by Blue's face, for no reason at all he smiled to himself.
A trashcan down by the street was on fire. Hobos were gathered up around it, warming their rag-cladded bodies with newspapers saying that Apocalypse is coming. In the gray mist the fire both beckoned and warned.
Of how a man may fall Blue did not know, neither did he care, to say the truth. His fall was over for now, the decadence was far behind... and may still be far ahead.
A knock on the door.
Blue knew it was not locked, so he did not move.
White came in.
"Hey hun", she said.
He briefly looked at her, nodded and looked away.
She took off her coat and put it on the bed.
He did not look back. She approached him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"What's wrong?"
For no reason, Blue sighed.
He looked back, he looked at White, her beautiful little face, her small pursed lips.
"Nah... Nothing", he said and got up.
He embraced her gently, his fingers ran through her hair, their lips met, and all that ancient magic that is just a kiss that lasts for a moment, and for an eternity.
No secrets were left between Blue and White.
So, when he learnt about the little conversation that had happened between his babe and Black, Blue made sure he told White every little dirty thing he knew about his former friend - just in case.
Blue'd been searching for a girl like White ever since he'd lost Red. He knew exactly what Black had in mind, but Blue had no intention of losing White.
Blue was a blessed fool. He had no idea what his deed at the "Western Sunrise" had done to Black. He just remembered that Black pushed him aside and walked away, as drunk as ever. Nothing special.
"I love you, White", he muttered.
And it was true.
And again - the heaven of her soft lips, of her tiny fingers.
"I love you."
White insisted that Blue should cease his relationship with Red, and Blue obeyed without a single word.
In "The Broken Hearts Club" White sat in Blue's lap.
In "The Broken Hearts Club", Teal was on the verge of tears.
Heavens fall, and sand castles are blown away by the cold wind of reality, and towers made of cards are the ones that hold the power over us, the frail hope that is meant to be broken.
This was an hour of utter torment for Teal. As he watched them, his face turned more and more pale, his heartbeat grew louder and louder in his ears, there was no rock'n'roll playing for Teal, there were only the bumps his heart made, the blood it pumped into his head, his eyes...
Teal left without a word.
On his way out his eyes met with White's for a moment.
Shabby steps led him out to the empty boulevards, the desolate alleys, and all was White, and all was white.
Red gave Violet a special gift this night.
An exquisite coat of silver fur.
It was Gold's last gift to Red.
It was her last gift to Violet.
-
CHAPTER X: OF CRIMSON, BLACK AND THE RAILROAD STATION
A car exploded, sending another politician to the heavens.
A crowd gathered up around the churned metallic remains of what once was a car, decorated with the blood and gore of the poor thing.
The police arrived. They pushed the crowd back, opening up the place for the firemen that did their job in a few minutes and left.
This was Crimson's father.
The case was never solved. The only suspect committed suicide while awaiting his trial.
This happened when Crimson was but an adolescent, and it did not much change his life on the outside - that is, till the real hardships came and his mother died of a sudden heart-attack. But on the inside, the very fact of his father's assassination shook the very foundation on which reality stood for Crimson.
For many nights he lay awake, and each and every night he relived the moment he was told that his father is no more. This cancelled all that would be, all that should be. For now there was no future. Nothing was certain. Things were changing fast, he heard his mother talk about debts on the telephone, they moved to a new apartment, and soon they moved to his aunt's house, he literally saw his mother growing old and sick in just a few weeks, he watched his world collapse. The sand castle was blown to bits, to the point of no return.
The first feeling was that this was unfair, this was unexpected (at least for Crimson), unpredictable, thus - unfair and untrue. He didn't much care about his father when he was alive - this was just the man who made decisions for him and who was pretty much in charge of the way his life went, but otherwise he was not a person Crimson could honestly say that he loved.
But now there was no certainty. There were no decisions being made for him, all the ones made in the past were forgotten.
People flashed by, some offering help and support, some offering friendship, some even more. But they were just faces, faces that had no faces, moments in life that went straight into the past, and for Crimson past was better left forgotten.
He met Yellow on a rock concert. Yellow was a long, sallow boy with long, dirty, brown hair, and bloodshot brown eyes that were set deep in his long pale face. This was a boy that believed he worshipped the devil and consoled Crimson with speeches that made no sense and so were far more acceptable than all the reasonable nonsense he dealt with nowadays. With Yellow was a girl.
Yellow soon became Crimson's friend. His best friend. His only friend.
And the girl was Shade.
Crimson and Yellow spent whole days together - hiding from reality, from the cruel world and the cold wind, and Shade was always with them. She was with Yellow, and Crimson was the third, and the fact that she loved his friend irritated him.
The cause of this irritation was unclear to Crimson. He tried to fight it, but to no avail. It persisted, only growing stronger with the time he spent with the couple.
None of them had any money, so they spent hours in a suburban park, filled with hobo nests and dirt and building rubble. They rarely talked, and if they did, it was usually Yellow addressing either Crimson or Shade.
Shade was just another teenage girl - she was pretty, she was tall, she smoked, she had brown eyes, blonde hair, when she laughed she either giggled or she smirked. Just a girl, but for Crimson, she soon became all that was lost since his father died. She was certainty, she was perfection, and she was the one.
So, a new stage began for Crimson when he realized what exactly he was going through, a stage of self-loathing, intense masturbation and hypocrisy.
He relished every second spent by Shade's side, and was on the verge of suicide every moment without her.
A few months later Yellow said that he was leaving. He said he'd be back soon, but it was clear to Crimson that another change was on its way.
It hurt Crimson to see how Shade reacted to this news, it hurt him to see her shedding tears for someone else, even Yellow, and believe me, Yellow was all he had at that time, but it hurt him deep, and for that, he hated his best friend, and loved Shade even more.
Yellow left, and a week later Crimson called Shade.
He said he missed his friend, and regretted that the good old times were over. He said he'd miss her too, especially how the three of them would spend whole days together. When he actually got to the point, when he said that they could still go out as friends, she agreed.
Without Yellow Crimson started discovering the only person he actually thought he loved - Shade. And days spent with her, nights spent in longing - this was the next stage, the unspoken friendship.
And then she said she didn't love Yellow any more, and wanted to break up with him as soon as he returned.
You can imagine Crimson's glee upon hearing that, but he had to hide that, for his feelings endangered his relationship with Shade, and this was one thing he just couldn't risk losing.
When Yellow came back, Shade broke up with him. Crimson was still Yellow's friend, and as Yellow's friend he asked her to give Yellow a chance - just a week, and this week was Crimson's week spent in hell.
The week passed, and still she said no.
So, Yellow and Shade broke up, and it was a clear winter morning and Crimson was wearing his heavy brown winter coat that was huge and ugly when he told Shade he loved her.
And still, Yellow was his friend, but the distance between them kept growing, until one day Crimson just lost track of Yellow. There were rumors that Yellow was found dead, with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand.
Shade left Crimson two months later. He tried to get her back, but she said that everything she ever felt for him was an illusion.
Soon after that Crimson's mother died, and from the small gray town he moved to the big black city.
"So what happened after that?" asked Black, just for the sake of asking.
"Same thing that always happens to kids coming to this city."
Black nodded, broodingly looking at Crimson.
He just heard a version of his own story, told by a man he'd saved from suicide. Black was looking at himself a few years back. At what he'd be without Noire.
It was strange, finding a man so much like himself, and yet so different. And after so many years of utter solitude, he had found a true reflection of himself in this big black city.
What was, if any, the meaning of this? Was stumbling upon Crimson supposed to tell him something? Was this a kind of a sign? I'm becoming paranoid, Black thought.
And still, seeing that Crimson was so much like himself did not make him like Crimson any better. He pitied him, he understood him, but deep inside he disdained Crimson - in spite of their likeness, perhaps because of it.
For Crimson was just stepping on the path Black has long trodden on, the path Black loathed, the path that made him who he was, and now he knew, that even when he is no more, his show will still go on - with the likes of Crimson, with the likes of Red, with the likes of Noire, with the likes of himself. For Crimson was just a kid, hoping one day to become what Black hated most of all - him. And this was clear, and pitiful.
Crimson was always trying to prove something to Black. Perhaps that he was worthy of having by his side. Perhaps that he was worthy to be wasted time on. Black did not care to know, for the last thing he wanted to think about were the fools that wanted to be like him.
Days were rushing past, wasted with absynthe, whores and Crimson, with the company of Purple at times. These days were gray and bleak and lonesome, but pleasing in a way.
Black knew that the storm had passed. The old insomnia was back, so he lay awake at night, waiting for the sun to rise to live again, as he thought at times. For the night was losing its charm.
He lay awake at night, he tried to think of Red. Of what she had become. He could not. Funny how we find that we care no more about things we had once worshipped. And Black found he did not care to think of her.
Deep inside he still pictured himself tearing Blue to bits, but this was just an insomniac's lullaby.
Crimson admired Black. Not only did he admire Black and look up to him, he also thought of Black as of a higher being. This amused Black, especially the way Crimson paid attention to every word he said and every thought he expressed. Words... Crimson still thought they mattered. And so, Crimson started copying his idol. He dressed like Black, talked like Black, behaved like Black, drank like Black, he even started trying to think like Black.
One thing he wasn't ready for was actually being Black.
But Black knew that Crimson was on his way of becoming him. He was sorry for that, but there was nothing he could do about it.
So Black decided to leave the city for a while. Alone.
His train was scheduled on an early morning. It was headed to a neighboring country, that was beautiful once, and that was now torn by war, famine and disease. He was leaving without saying a word to Crimson... and who else did he actually have to say goodbye to?
Black was tired of the city. Again. He was tired of the black suit routine, he was tired of the black nights, black absynthe, whores and expensive cigarettes that felt like baby powder. He was tired of "The Red Cabaret", the Chancellor, "The Broken Heartz' Club", the "Western Sunrise", he was tired of the big black avenues and the small gray people filling the city with smoke, crowds, murder and noise. But most of all, he was tired of Crimson.
He arrived early. The railroad station was mostly filled with soldiers and their families. A young woman wearing a cheap coat and a colorless skirt was standing all alone in the middle of the crowd. A thin old woman with gray hair was weeping, holding a young man in uniform in the desperate embrace of her thin pale arms. The young man was feeling uneasy. He had the round bleak face of a murderer, but in his mother's arms it was easy to see the child he once was. Groups of soldiers were playing cards, swearing loudly, all of them had their heads shaved and so were almost identical. Black found himself a seat farthest from the crowd and took out a book from his only bag. Turning the last pages, he looked up and smiled. Just another heartbreak story. Aw god, just another heartbreak story.
Black grabbed his small sturdy bag and made his way through the crowd towards the train.
The cabin was small and dirty, but Black liked it. Every inch of it spoke of the thousands of lives that have met right here, within these brown metallic walls that had hundreds of names written, scratched and sprayed on them.
Over a brief course of time before the train took off a couple of soldiers joined him in the cabin, but soon left - perhaps to join their friends in another cabin. A few minutes later the young woman in the cheap coat entered the cabin and sat in front of Black. She had no baggage. And somehow, Black recognized her. She was the stripper, the metaphor.
Suddenly, Black found himself laughing. He just sat there on the brown metallic bench by the window, waiting for the train to take off, with a book in his hand, and laughed. He remembered the clear mornings he spent running, the look on the soldier's face in his mother's arms, the vulgar heartbreak story he just read. Black laughed.
"Excuse me?" the stripper who was not a stripper in the daytime and especially right now but a bleak human being, said, raising her thin eyebrows.
Black shook his head and looked at her with a warm smile on his face that, under the influence of these sudden, careless thoughts was beginning to look young again, and far more handsome.
She was tall, she was blonde, she had brown eyes, she smoked a lot, she spoke in a quiet, almost husky voice. A bit later she said her friends'd given her a special name that'd fully replaced the real one since her adolescence. She said she was Shade.
The barren urban landscape soon gave way to the countryside. And the train rushed by fields of rye, marked with farms and small towns, it rushed by rivers and lakes, all ghostly translucent in the gloomy sunlight.
But soon the sun broke free of the clouds. Of all that held it bleak and gray, and it seemed like it shone like it'd never shone before.
The conversation Black had with Shade was filled with all of this, it was filled with the senseless love of life, of freedom, of spring and the sun, of all that he was afraid of in the city.
But the city's far behind for now, he thought. There is no city now. There's just me, just who I really am.
It didn't matter who Shade was in the past, who she was now. She was here, to witness the change in Black, to see this other person hidden inside of him, one that finds his way out only outside his ordinary life, where there is no place for him.
Both of them were now unlike from what they usually seem to be. Black forgot about his past, and Shade forgot about hers. In the sun as bright as this there are no shadows. Time rushed by, but none of them noticed as the sunset came.
Burn horizon burn, the dying sun pledged as the world crawled off to sleep.
And as the world crawled off to sleep, Shade sat by Black, with her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed, and her pale face glowing with that secret smile of hers.
Black was looking out the window, all worries and fears forgotten, glancing down at Shade at times.
Black closed his eyes and slept.
-
CHAPTER XI: THE AUSPICES OF A RIOT
The room was dark, it smelled of vodka, cigarettes and cheap cologne. The windows hid behind heavy brown drapes, and a dim light broke through them to distinguish some hints of a bed, a table and a few chairs.
Black got up, took a cigarette out of the pack lying on the floor, and approached the window.
It was quiet, and even the steps of his bare feet sounded strident. He held the drape to a side and took a look out the window.
The streets were almost empty, most of the cars that drove by were military.
A warm breeze brushed his hair from his forehead, and threw it back in his eyes.
Black looked back at Shade who was still asleep. Her steady breath was all he was thinking about at this moment. It sounded like... life.
He went back to bed and lay beside her - carefully, so as not to bother her sleep, that was all that mattered right now. This was life. He was living. He was living again, and it felt strange. Now, when she was sleeping, he felt almost homesick for the city, for the night, for the cold wind and the echoes of Red. But he shut off that thoughts soon enough. For she was sleeping, Shade was sleeping, and all that mattered in this cruel, changing world was her steady breath and the dreams that she was having.
For what is reality but an endless dream, a dream where everything is logical just due to the fact that the voice of those who have awakened - or gone to an eternal sleep inside of this eternal sleep - is not heard. And what is a dream but a reality with its own logic, its own truths and rhythm and even its own God - you...
Shade woke to the sounds of gunshots down the block. She gasped and Black gently held her, and answered her worried look with a kiss. When she started coughing he held her till it passed. He told her to smoke less and she nodded, and her face was pale, but her eyes blazed like the sunset the day before.
"We'll see people killed today, Shade. And we will feel alive, because we will see them die."
"But why are they killed?"
"It's the price of the freedom. And we will see those who have chosen freedom over their own lives."
"Can't you help them?"
"Even if I could, why should I? Their lives mean much less than their deaths. They want revolution, and their deaths will be due to their cause. On the other hand, if they live, they'll be living just to die another day."
"Don't you care at all about the people who actually die?"
"I envy them. There's so much they know. "Black laughed for some reason, "I'll order us a breakfast, and we'll go out to explore - today we'll side up with the dictator, and tomorrow, well, we'll side up against him."
Black called the room service and ordered a breakfast. And this mundane action actually entertained him, the whole idea of a life, a real life - and no more sorrow, no more pity, no regrets and no remorse. A life in the broad daylight, with the background of the burning barricades, of the murdered rioters, a real life with pain and struggle, where he would care, actually care, about anything aside from Red...
Black laughed again, and took Shade's hand and kissed it. She looked at him with her big brown eyes and laughed, and Black laughed with her. The sound of his own laughter was alien and somewhat amusing to Black, and this made him laugh even harder. The fact that he'd forgotten how to laugh truly made his laughter sound peculiar, it sounded like a mix between barking and sobbing and hissing, and it got Shade laughing so hard that she was soon gasping for air.
Then the breakfast arrived. They ate in silence, interrupted by short outbursts of laughter. The food was tasteless, the coffee was sour, the bread was stale, but both of them hardly noticed that.
"Well, I don't exactly feel full, but I'm not sure if you should either, cause the chances of a puking sensation today are quite high", Black said.
"Like what?"
"You're going to see real people killed just for their struggle for freedom, happiness, et cetera, et cetera. You may think you're tough now, but wait till the real show starts."
"But why do we have to see this?"
"To know that we're the ones that'll keep on living when they are dead."
Then Black started laughing again, and oh my beauty, my little blonde, my naughty cat, come here and let me hold you and thrill you, enthrall you in the sounds of gunshots that have awaken you, yes, life is fear, and life is the heartbeat, and the faster it is, the fuller is life, and love is fear, so let me hold you, console you, for we'll see the barricades today, and we'll see men in uniforms smile at us and greet us and then load their guns and shoot some other men with faces just like them but without uniforms, and smile at us again, and wave to us as I'm taking you away from this center of hell, the only place where heaven can be seen, yes, take me away, you say, and he will, I will, I promise, I swear, but hell isn't a bad place to be, is it, Noire, but can you hear me now, in the city where you forever dwell, the city that you haunt, can you hear me, Noire?..
They got dressed. Black spent some time in front of the mirror, trying to recognize the man who looked back at him with smiling eyes. Those smiling, black eyes, and that young, handsome face, with no trace of Noire, if only hidden deep, very deep, buried within the traces of his scars.
And then, a knock on the door, and a man in a dark uniform entered their room. He checked their papers, and said:
"So you did not come alone as you said, my dear mister... It is nice to see you again, but I thought you traveled alone."
"That is usually so. But I don't think I remember you. Have we met before?"
"Oh yes, we have, we have. It's the uniform, mister. That is why you don't remember."
Black nodded. The man in uniform had a thin pale face with lively black eyes and bushy black eyebrows. Now a distant memory came of a man who'd bought him a drink in a local tavern.
"So, what's the situation like now?" Black asked him.
"Best to stay inside, mister. The streets are very dangerous now, not the best time to visit this country, to say the truth. The countryside is mostly quiet, but here, mister, the riot has grown to a civil war. You have probably heard the shots, and we are afraid that soon peacemakers from other countries will come, and use the opportunity to feast upon our misery", the man in uniform sighed, "So let me buy you and your lady a drink as a friend, and advise you to leave as soon as you are able. This is no time for tourism."
"That is why we are here." Black simply said, "We want to see what's going on. The barricades. The soldiers. The rioters. The fights. We're no tourists."
The man looked at Black, and suddenly a smile spread on his pale face:
"You know, mister, if you are not some kind of a reporter, just now I felt a huge respect for you."
"I sincerely hope we can put it to use." Black said, smiling himself, "Me and my lady want a tour around the hot spots. Can you organize that? The compensation will be worth the job."
The man smiled and nodded:
"I will take care of that, my dear mister Noire, of this you can be sure. I am still in debt for what you have done for me and my family during your previous visit."
Black ignored Shade's questioning look.
Black and The Officer discussed some details in private, they shook hands, and The Officer left, promising that some of his men would arrive for them shortly.
"Why did he call you Noire?"
Black was smoking beside the window, waiting for The Officer's men to arrive. In answer to Shade's question he just shook his head.
"Pass me a cigarette", she said a few minutes later.
Lung cancer. Heart attacks. Even impotency. They don't stop us from smoking, do they? Fear of death doesn't make us stop living, and the same thing goes for alcohol, drugs, all those wonderful things that make the bittersweet symphony of life even more lively, colorful, full of mystery and magic and riddles that have no clues, that have no meanings. Life is worthless, death is hard, and vice versa.
Black passed Shade a cigarette, and at that moment he noticed a couple of black military cars stop by their hotel.
"They're here", he said.
When they got into the backseat of the car the driver briefly greeted them. The man who sat beside him stayed silent, a cigarette was held unlit in his hand.
The car took off. The old town soon gave way to some new ruins, most of them were smoking and some of them were burning still. In the translucent light of the early afternoon the war zone looked surreal, it reminded Black of Violet for some reason. Perhaps these ashes would represent what he'd left behind in the shape of Violet.
Some children were playing football in the street. They ran away as soon as they saw the car. One of them had blood on his white T-shirt, another had bandages all over his head.
The man beside the driver finally lit his cigarette. He said something to the driver in his low husky voice, and by the sound of it, he was speaking a foreign language. He never looked back, for now this was a man who had no face but who had a very short haircut and broad shoulders.
They stopped by a huge gray building that stood untouched amidst the ruins and the ashes.
Suddenly it all blurred out.
Black stood in a small empty room. In the corner of it sat a naked man with a huge, pale, muscular body. The man was shaking badly and had his face hidden in his palms. From the messy long white hair Black recognized this man as Noire.
Noire was sobbing, occasionally breaking into senseless mutters.
Black called him, and Noire looked up, and looked right through him, obviously seeing no one.
A door shut behind Black. It sounded like a heavy metallic door, one that would be in place in an old-fashioned asylum or a prison.
Black looked back and saw Red.
She was pale and bleak, an echo of herself. Still, seeing her made Black's heart race madly, made his legs tremble and his breath stop.
He wondered how drunk he should've been back at the "Western Sunrise", how drunk he should've been for not reacting to her presence the way he usually did.
And he recalled the days when she used to be as usual and ordinary as Violet or Purple was now. These days seemed unreal at that moment.
"Why'd you leave me like that, Red?"
Black wasn't sure who said that - Noire or himself.
"I didn't want to cause you pain. You've suffered enough because of me. You'll get over me sooner or later."
Noire let out a howl - there was no other word for it.
"You think that neglecting me like that would stop my suffering? Do you really think that a life without you is worth living for me?"
She didn't answer. She smiled her smile, and offered her hand.
When Black tried to take it, the vision disappeared.
He was lying beside Shade in their hotel room.
"What happened today?", he asked.
Shade let out a laugh.
"Is that a joke?", she asked.
"No, I really want to know. It's all a kind of a blur for me now."
"Get back to sleep, Black. It was a long day."
Sure it was.
It started returning as suddenly as that vision of Red and Noire occurred. Parts of it were obscured with scenes with Red and Noire farking, but Black disregarded them as products of his sick and tired imagination, and recalled the office of the secret police, where The Officer showed them some of the oppositional leaders they held and explained the daily procedure for every one of them.
He recalled the dark-skinned thin man inside a cell who saw his son tortured every day. The Officer was optimistic about him, he was sure he'd break in a maximum of two days.
There was a man in a cage that held Black close to him for a few seconds and showed that he had no fingernails left. Only now Black realized he had his eyelids cut.
There was a skinny naked woman in her fifties that lay on the floor of her cell, looking forsaken and desecrated. The Officer said that she was unbreakable, so he'd let the soldiers rape her as a reward for their deeds.
Then they watched a public execution of a dozen of political prisoners. One of them tried to run away, so they had to shoot him twice - once in the leg and once in the head. When he got shot in the leg, the crowd roared, and the man let out the most desperate and enraged howl that Black'd ever heard.
The Officer shrugged and said that this is his job, and he's paid to do it. He said he'd quit, and that he'd tried to quit, but there was no line forming to do his dirty job.
And after that they went to a local tavern with a fat blonde girl as a waitress that had her ass grabbed every time she approached a customer. Black wondered what she felt when that happened. They drank wine and when The Officer got drunk he told them about a time when he'd caught a kid with anti-government posters and had just let him go, giving him a quarter to catch a bus home. And then there was the time when he'd shot his own soldier when he was about to rape a girl they'd arrested during yet another protest.
The Officer hoped his regime would lose. With tears on his face he laughed and said he'd be relieved to be executed on a bright sunny day, when all the atrocities he'd committed would be far behind, and the people would be preparing to meet a bright new day.
"In this country, mister Noire, you can actually see good and evil, you can actually see them fighting against each other. And I hope that the good guys win. God knows they're trying, God knows they've suffered a lot, but I hope that all their sacrifices will not be in vain."
-
..."Why did you come here in the first place, Shade?"
Four in the morning. Too late to fall asleep now, too early to get up, and far too cold.
"My brother's getting married; he invited me to his wedding. I didn't want to go, but I was tired of the clubs, I was tired of my job, so I decided I'd go anyway. And then I met you. You changed everything, did you know that?"
Black smirked.
"Something funny?", Shade asked with a bit of embarrassment.
"You make it sound so simple, Shade. You make it all plain and understandable. You're unlike anyone I know."
"I take that as a compliment", she said with a smile that lit her face in the sunrise fighting its way through the drapes.
"You should."
"I'll still try to get some sleep."
"You do that. You sound really tired. Sorry for tonight... Lust took over me", Black said with a smile, “I’ll try to get some sleep as well."
When he was sure she was asleep he carefully got up. There was a bottle of wine on the table by the window. Black took a gulp right from the bottle and laid it down. He blindly searched for a cigarette pack and found it on the same table. He took one and silently smoked, taking an occasional gulp of sour wine from the bottle. It felt somehow dead, and it felt surreal - like the touch of a ghost its taste lingered on his tongue and in his throat, making his heart beat slower and slower. On the verge of his thoughts was Red, but that was a line he was not yet ready to cross.
He gave the watch a brief glance. The deepest night spread outside, unperturbed by city lights. He could clearly see the stars from the window. It was a relief to know they’re still there.
Black quickly got dressed and went out. A walk, he thought. Just a walk. Perhaps I’ll have something better to drink on my way back. Perhaps not. Either way, it’s just a walk. And I have a home I can go back to. Well, okay, it’s a hotel, but still - it’s a home, and one where my woman is waiting for me - however ever-changing she is, she’s my woman now.
There were small lanterns on either side of the street. They beckoned, they twinkled, one of them went dark in front of Black. The street was empty, and as Black walked, he saw no one - it was just him and the night now.
He thought of Noire. He thought of the deal they had, and how pointless it all was - bringing Noire forth in the first place. And now Noire left him to deal with a broken life. A broken life he’d chosen to mend with his newly found woman, a broken life he’d chosen to mend in a city torn by civil war.
As if a proof to his words, the night was torn by gunshots like the night before. Another execution, Black thought. He thought of Shade who must’ve been awakened by this sound…
…Shade was awakened by the sudden gunshots. Even before she opened her eyes and her heart had calmed down, she realized Black no longer lay beside her. She got off the bed with a sigh. It felt right. She knew Black’d keep the distance that she now felt between them for as long as they were in for it. The distance was who he truly was, she knew. She remembered a guy who was almost like him - and this was a dusty record of a memory, a guy from her teens. And she could do nothing to reduce the distance, for she was just Shade, a girl who never got smarter, and has most of her income from her hips and her tits.
She went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Crimson, that’s who that guy was. Crimson. She smiled to herself for some reason.
She loved Black, like most of those before her did. And she knew for a fact that he would never love her. Like most of those before her did.
But she was prepared for it. Her brother’s marriage was a lie she’d planned to tell him the day before. She’d come here to die anyways. She’d planned to rent a room and have her veins slit to keep the bastards searching for her for a long while.
She stood by the window. She was all patience now. She was waiting for her last remaining light to return…
…He’d crossed a few parks, one covered with building rubble and the others devastated and burnt and pillaged, as most of the city was.
It took him two hours to cross most of the remaining districts of the city.
A pub he passed by seemed strangely familiar. After giving it a second thought, he went in.
It was empty save for a bartender who just stood by his stand and watched one of the upper lights flicker. It was pretty dark, and the musky smell of alcohol filled the place.
Black greeted him, the bartender just nodded. And now Black was sure he’d been here before.
He sat at a stool and the bartender looked at him for the first time. He was thin, he was bald, and his eyes were sharp and blue. He could be thirty or sixty, for all Black knew. Grim patience was etched on his stature.
He addressed him in his language. Black shook his head. Without changing his expression, he repeated:
“What would you like to drink… sir?”
“I’m not sure. What’s your favorite drink?”
“There are many. See, I spend my whole days in this bar, and most of the time I am alone. When I get tired of jerking off to the same old Playboy that’d been here for about two decades, I drink. So I’ve tried it all. And I can’t say I give that much of a crap what I drink, sir. People come here to get drunk, and most of the drinks do that simple trick. Some of them don’t. So tell me if you want to get drunk or not, and I will make a choice accordingly.”
“I guess I wanna get drunk, then.”
“Well, I’ll make it as simple as it gets.”, he said and slapped a glass of vodka in front of Black.
“What about absynthe?”, Black asked.
“Absynthe?” the bartender smirked, “I don’t like absynthe. It makes you a whole other man. No, I definitely don’t like absynthe. It’s not about getting drunk, it’s about getting yourself changed… that’s what I think. I can sell you my last bottle if you want - if you’re interested.”
He got the dusty bottle from the bar. It bore a red sticker that had NOIRE written upon it.
Black bought the bottle. He knew exactly what it meant. He smiled to himself. Such a wonderful feeling - having a secret from yourself. Makes you feel so secure.
He suddenly missed Noire. He knew there would be a choice to make, and he suddenly realized that his days with Shade are numbered.
He got back home and put the bottle on the table. Shade lay sleeping, and he carefully lay beside her, taking in deep breaths, managing not to think at all. Thoughts actually hurt now. The hoax of Noire. The loss of Red. And what of Blue? What of him? Where’s his only friend? He’d lost him too. But Black managed not to think. There was a bottle of absynthe on the table that had NOIRE written on it, but Black managed not to think about it too.
He got up early to find Shade awake. She was having a smoke by the window, staring at him, occasionally glancing out the window.
“We’ve got the rioters enclave to see today, Shade”, Black said in a husky voice and broke into a coughing fit.
“Do you want to go there? After yesterday?”, she asked. She was calm. She was cold. She was distant. As though an echo of Black’s plan to leave her had slipped into her mind as well.
“Especially after yesterday. It’s gonna be pretty easy - getting there.”
“Why?”
“They want outsiders to see how pretty and innocent they are. That goes for both sides. You’ve seen the upper levels of the Inner Forces Enclave. All white and clean, a few cells with prisoners looking as if they were on vacation and jailors as cheerful as fark. It’s all a charade. If I hadn’t known The Officer, we’d never see the real thing. And still, it took some persuasion.”
He got up and got dressed. He waited for Shade to get ready. He called The Officer and had a talk with him that made The Officer slightly richer and one of the prisoners freed as a guide for them for the mutinous underground.
A couple of black cars drove by their hotel and left a short gray man behind.
They quickly got down to meet him. He never said his name, he preferred silence. He was dressed in gray, he had scars all over him, his eyes were light brown and animal in a way. He showed them the way to a tunnel that led to an old railroad station that was out of use now. They had a long walk in the long, long tunnel - surrounded only by darkness and the booming echoes of their footsteps. Coughing sounded like thunder.
The tunnel got them to the station that also had a few nearby buildings - meant for temporary keeping and as supply stations for trains. It was all in the past now, and all of those buildings were filled by people - all somehow bruised, determined, hard and depraved.
“They put a bug in your coat, chief”, Black told the guy in gray, “Better get it out before late.”
“They’ll make me pay when I get back.”
“You’re not going back.”
Black went around the camp for a while, trying to find someone in charge. It was depressing - the picture of that camp, and especially the looks they gave each other - the suspicious looks, as if one was sure that the other was the traitor.
“Did you ever have a kind of a leader, someone to make plans for you or something?” he asked the guy in gray.
He shrugged and said that their leader was imprisoned for a few years now, and no one seems ready to take his place. There were some who tried, they too were arrested, most were shot.
“You know where the leader’s held?” Black asked the guy in gray.
“The Tower, it’s where they keep most of the really dangerous people, whose deaths may be even more dangerous than their lives. Right where I’m kept… Or was kept. What’s the plan?”
The Tower… So that’s what they call that building. He just noticed Shade beside him.
“You must stay here. You, take her to a safe place, give her something to drink.”
Black could feel blood pulsing in his temples. He knew he was about to do something huge, and he knew he’d need Noire with him for it… but Noire was back in the city. He still had his gun in his coat. Money talks at the customs office. Especially if you’re armed and scarred and Black.
“If you want something done right, you’d better do it yourself”, he said quietly.
Now he had his cool back. He walked back, through the tunnel and all. There was brisk determination in his stride, and in the breaking sun it all seemed red, but he did not think of Red, he felt blood, and he knew he’d see blood soon.
(Black. 1.)
I had quite the walk. It was starting to rain. It didn’t matter to me. I felt the old wind whipping at my back as I stood facing The Tower. It was nice to have the old buddy back, and the cold steel of my gun kept me at bay. I felt charged. I felt alive. I craved for murder, I craved for revenge - for now I was wide awake, after all I’ve seen, I’d finally had enough. fark it all, I thought. I’m going to war.
I went in, someone came up to me and asked about the scum in gray I’d left back at the s**tty camp. I got my gun and shot the farker dead. There was dead silence for a while. I looked around and found that I was in the foyer, surrounded by guards and some farkers in suits - clerks, as I thought of them.
“Good night, motherfarkers”, I said, and I shot the first two ladyes to reach towards their guns,
This triggered a mechanism of mass destruction. Alarms went roaring all through the universe, and gunshots - tearing through everything, eating through metal, through stone, through wood. The same bullets they’d used to shoot down the poor ladyes the day before.
One of those bullets got me in the arm. I dropped the gun, only to pick it up with my left. I shot my way to the stairway, and there the massacre started. I caught a clerk and broke his neck and held him as a shield with my bleeding arm, the pain was ice-hot, but I didn’t give a damn. Bullets were literally tearing his body apart, and I went forward - holding him in front of me the whole time. When the remainder of that scum became useless, I turned a table down in this wide gray corridor that was now a peculiar shade of crimson, and shot about half a dozen of those farkers that were running towards me. I needed a reload. Instead, I dropped my gun and picked one of those lying on the floor in the huge puddle of blood.
I could smell gore, blood, metal and the rain. I got up and got another bullet in my shoulder. I wasn’t sure at that time, though. I just knew that I was full of anger and hatred, and that I had a gun that could shoot, so I shot one of them bastards right between the eyes, and dropped as I saw one with a machinegun. When he started shooting at my table, it felt like thousands of fists beating at my door. One. Two. Three. I got up and put a bullet in his balls, I shot two or three of them, now there were only about six or seven, but I knew they’d keep on coming, and that I’d be having a fight with the whole national army if I didn’t get down to the cellblocks fast. So I checked my clip, and it was almost full. I got up fast and shot them down in calm determination. That’s the way it’s done - cold and precise, no emotions, if only hatred. And hell, hatred was one thing I’d been quite generous about.
I ran. It was painful and I had fire gusting in my lungs, but in spite of it I ran fast. And down the stairs, past corridors and corridors, and down, shooting down occasional guards - I was obsessed with murder, I felt my old love for death creep back into me.
I had one of the guards unlock the door to the detainee area. I shot him down as soon as he was done. My mind kept racing in colors and schemes and it did not quite manage to acknowledge my sudden lapse into primitive massacre, so my good old instincts kicked in. And that’s exactly what you need when you have no ammo left and find yourself trapped on enemy territory.
The next door I opened led me to a cellblocks corridor. I knew he wouldn’t be here. He’d be way down there, way down the tunnel to hell.
A couple of guards came up to me. They said something. One of them was holding up a gun at me, the other one had a knife.
They were shouting at me, and it amused me in a way, because I had no idea what they were saying. Kill me. Kill me. You should. I dodged the shot, grabbed the guard’s knife and thrust it in his buddy’s face. I broke the knifeman’s arm and wrought his neck. I took the gun, and hid the knife in my coat.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I had no recollection of a stairway to go that deep down the cellar blocks. But I had one of a cargo elevator, one of the old ones, that made all that rusty noise.
I was in this maze of broken doorways and glimpses of Noire and flashes of blood that was as red as it gets, until I finally found the elevator. It all was blurring again, but I just couldn’t fade off now, I had to keep going, no matter how blood-soaked my clothes may be, and no matter how feeble I feel.
I pushed the button that marked the 6th basement level. The doors grudgingly slid shut.
This marked my slow descent towards hell.
The elevator made a loud bang to warn me it had reached its destination. Or I have, at least.
I went forward, and there a whole squad stood waiting for me.
They were lined up for an execution - the whole farking bunch of them. They had their aim on me, and an execution is all it actually summed up to.
They started shooting. I felt bullets riddle my body, break through my ribs, my guts, my chest, bite into my skin and find their way out, excruciating me, bringing me the exquisite taste of my own death and pain and s**t on my lips.
I fell to the ground, the innumerable holes in my body still smoking with lead.
-
...(Black. 2.)
Get up.
Why? I’m dead. This time I really am.
You can’t die until I let you.
I opened my eyes to the familiar chamber of my old friend. The ceiling was unnaturally low, although the chamber itself stretched almost endless, its corners were lost in the traces of the horizon the color of forsaken gold.
He had his hands on my shoulders. They hurt. My whole blood-soaked riddled body hurt. I felt blood pouring through me.
“Who are you to decide, anyways?” I asked. I knew this fight was lost even before I started it.
“I own you, kid. I own you, your life, and I will choose the way you die. All your thoughts, your reasons - they’re mine, kid, and you’re mine to the bone, to the last drop of blood, to the last half-crazed dream, to the last haze you see, to the last lady you fark - you’re mine…”
“I thought I’d never see you again. I hoped. You have no right…”
“Who is there to judge me, kid? Who is there to decide what I can and what I cannot do? I know no such creature, do you? For I am puzzled, Black. Not only you disregard my gifts, you seek death, don’t you?”
He knew the answer. He was acting as a cat would, knowing the mouse is in his total, merciless control.
“You will die when I want. Perhaps you did not know this when you tried to reach to me, when you were just a little desperate fool trying to follow some long-untrodden and forgotten path. I found you. I gave you exactly what you wanted. I know you asked for something else, but I know the way you humans are - lips speak one thing, the heart speaks another, and a soul is sold for yet another petty reason.”
“I regret…”
“Then you’re a fool!” he yelled. The devil has a funny way yelling - it makes you want to simultaneously want to shoot and s**t yourself.
He was slowly pacing next to his throne of nude bodies sewn together to make a comfortable seat for the evil lord. He was naked himself, and when I looked at his face, I felt my heart go racing somewhere uptown. How it was still beating I’ll never know. It was a familiar face. And he was, actually, quite huge, to say the least. His shoulder blades bore the puny remains of his wings, and he had jewelry all over his body – necklaces, medallions, bracelets, amulets, rings, and even crowns – they twinkled in the dusky light of hell, but one black stone stood out especially – it seemed to take up forms of different masks and symbols, shifting constantly.
He spoke in a quiet, menacing voice:
“Regret. Should I regret also, Black? I was there to witness the greatness of the mighty lord of hypocrisy. I could have been his slave. I could have still had my wings, Black. But I chose to rebel. I wanted freedom, Black. But I was born as a slave. I was created to serve - first the mighty lord, and then - the likes of you, the corrupted, petty creatures - the humans. I couldn’t take it, Black. I’d rather be exiled, be the scapegoat, the bad guy, but to be free, and not be a slave. Now I’m the master, and the likes of you are my slaves. And that big boss up there can eat s**t and moan, cause he can’t do a damn thing about it. And you can eat s**t and moan too, because the good guys up there don’t give, huh, literally, a flying fark about you.”
It all comes down to the things you’d do for love. I loved Red enough to offer my soul to this gloating creature in front of me. For her. And that was how Noire was born. Bound to the city. Bound to my trail. Bound to find me wherever I am. I never quite figured who or what he actually was. For me he was just Noire, the devil in me.
“What now, fallen angel? Are you really going to send me back to this rumbling body of mine? It has more bullets than blood now.”
“What if I do, Black? Nothing you can do about it. Just watch, act and enjoy.”
I felt some kind of a whirlwind sucking into my guts.
“Yeah, and by the way, kid. I’ll see you soon. We’ll talk then.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?”
“I usually have ‘em together. Bang. The show must go on.”
The light started to flicker. I heard metallic clinks of bullets that rumbled inside of me.
The show must go on.
He’s not done yet.
(Black. 3.)
Pain bit deep and ravaged me. A whisper in my subconscious told me I’m alive again.
I got up. I was shaking bad. I felt heavier - it must’ve been the bullets. The pain was growing stronger but it was somehow growing more bearable as well, as though my body no longer gave a fark of what hit it.
The soldiers stared in disbelief. With some effort, I lifted the gun clutched in my hand and put a bullet in one of their faces.
This triggered another massive block of firepower aimed at my poor body that seemed to hold on only due to dark magic.
I felt invincible. Hell, I was invincible. Having a VIP pass in hell actually pays off at times.
I was making the slow, dead man’s steps towards them. At last they started running. I was making some kind of a gurgling sound. I guess I was laughing.
And now I knew exactly who I was looking for. I remembered him, though I knew who helped me to it. I remembered the man in the cage. No eyelids. No fingernails. I live in a world of beasts. I am one, too.
And so I walked. Every step I took made the bullets rumble inside of me, and at times when I looked back I could see the broad bloody track I was leaving behind me.
So much for a covert operation.
I picked up a machinegun from the floor. It felt welcome in my grip. I took off my coat that was no more than a blood-soaked rag by then. It dropped to the floor with a quiet thud. A few bullets fell out of it.
“Stop! Stop now!”
I looked back and saw The Officer with a heavily armed squad. He stared at me with disbelief. I was the last person he was expecting to see.
I didn’t stop for negotiations, or for one of those gloating speeches. I pushed the trigger of the machinegun and let it riddle all the living things in front of it. The heavy thunderous sound of the shots couldn’t hide the ripping sound of the bodies that were soldiers once.
When I was out of bullets, I dropped the machinegun. The silence was excruciating, it was fundamental. The corridor was covered in smoke, and through it I could see the crimson clouds of blood that still lingered in the air.
That’s why he wanted me to go back. I was his hound. I was the one to raise hell on earth.
Then it all just blurred out. I found the guy. He was alive, but if that sort of existence is called life, I’d prefer death.
At first he was gibberish. When I was dragging him to the elevator, and then carrying through the endless corridors, he was trying to resist, he was shouting. When I put a gun to his head and asked him to stay silent, he started crying.
I came out, holding him like a child. He was tattered, small, but I could feel some sort of a spirit, a destination about him, a cause, as though he no longer belonged to himself, but to the ideas he served, and his body that was ravaged and tortured did not seem to matter to him.
They were waiting for me. A kind of an army. They had their aim on the doors, but when I came out with the rebel no one saw me. I was shielded from their eyes, a demonic illusion allured them as I walked away, and took an unguarded car from the street, and drove off. They started shooting at last. At thin air.
-
CHAPTER XII: THE OFFER AT THE BROCKEN HEARTZ’ CLUB
He watched himself in the mirror as he was slowly and shakily shaving. His face was paler than ever, his eyes hiding deep inside of black circles. Teal looked far worse than he’d ever imagined he’d look. Even the sharpness of his eyes was gone, replaced by a dull, gray look.
He had to use all the scarce remainders of his willpower to make himself get dressed for yet another gloomy workday.
She was there, he knew it. Alone, with friends - or far worse, which happened most often of all - with Blue. The latter had the habit of humping her every time he got the slightest chance.
With grim humor Teal thought he could rightfully demand a raise.
Then a coughing fit clutched at his insides and tried to stretch them inside out. This was getting usual, as the sleepless nights had become. He put up with that, hoping that these disturbing symptoms promised upcoming death, or illness strong enough to make him forget.
If it were his last day, he thought, the one thing he’d really wish to do was to write White a letter filled with sad humor and tenderness. This was all he was capable of imagining. It’s amazing at times how little we need to be happy.
Teal made his way to “The Broken Heartz’ Club”, to find it unnaturally crowded up. The waitress was barely coping with the customers.
Teal made his way to the bar stand, where Turquoise was discussing something with a man Teal had known ever since he got his job as a bartender - with Gray.
“Oh, Teal, there you are!”, Turquoise’s voice sounded as phony as usual, “So, Gray, would you mind taking up our conversation to my office?”
“As you wish”, muttered Gray.
It was no secret that Gray was planning to buy “The Broken Heartz’ Club” ever since it opened up some years ago. Turquoise’s offers, however, weren’t the ones he’d fondly accept. The negotiations almost became a tradition, a part of the club’s culture. Teal was surprised that Gray hadn’t sent some of his men to get Turquoise more negotiable.
Gray’s plans for the place were quite interesting. The place was going to be named “The Black Bang”, it was going to be a strip joint combined with a shooting range and a casino. How he was going to combine those three he never actually explained. There was a happier time when Teal could laugh, imagining strippers with rifles placing bets at the roulette. All Gray could say about his plans was this was all Black’s idea.
Teal took his place with an almost audible click. He looked around to find neither Blue nor White anywhere to be seen. The barstools in front of him were occupied by low-lives and a few prostitutes. Teal put his mask back on and went about serving the scum of the earth.
And suddenly, he heard a voice - both a familiar one, and one he knew he’d never heard before.
“Hey there, Teal…”
He looked back to see who addressed him, but, although he was sure the person talking to him stood behind him, there was no one. Only the neon lights glowing, and the soft light from under Turquoise’s door at the end of the hallway.
“Don’t turn around, handsome. Act as if you never heard me. But listen, and listen well.”
Teal frowned, completed some old guy’s order - a glass of whiskey, and stared fixedly into emptiness spiked with dust that caught the occasional neon flicker.
“Who I am does not matter at this point. What matters is that I have an offer to make you. A generous offer. One that you will surely accept.”
“Another beer for my little girl here, pal.”
Teal blinked himself into reality and reached to the cooler under the bar stand. The middle-aged bearded man with the young woman stood waiting, occasionally kissing each other.
“What would you do”, the mellow voice inside Teal’s head continued, “if I told you that I can give you White?”
The voice let out a soft laugh.
“No!”, Teal gasped.
“No beer? That’s impossible, dude, I just…” the man at the bar stand started.
“No, no, I wasn’t talking to you…”. Teal got up with a bottle of beer and took the money from the man. His hands were shaking bad.
“So, could we possibly make a deal regarding this lovely little creature? I could arrange everything just now.”
The voice let out another laugh.
Through all the noise and chaos of the crowded bar Teal clearly saw the door open and let White in.
“This is so unfair. You know it, whoever you are…”, Teal uttered breathlessly.
“What I do know is that this creature is the crucifix of all your wishes, the one wish that I may grant… if you dare to ask, that is.”
Teal tried to shut his mind. To no avail. So he helplessly watched White approach the bar stand and take a seat that was abandoned about a moment ago, with the ominous stranger chuckling in the background of his mind.
“Hey, Teal”, she said.
Teal looked at her, petrified. She knows my name, he thought. Of course she does, you’re the bartender of the damned old place, he thought back.
“What can I get you?” he asked in a shaky, loud voice.
“You can get her all for yourself, if you’d like, kid. Totally yours. All day. ALL NIGHT. Just say the word. For a mere compensation, she’ll be yours. Forever, kid, no kidding.”
Something choked him from the inside.
“No.”, he barely mouthed.
“How about one of those small bottles of beer?” she said.
Teal ducked to get one of those.
In the glass door of the cooler he saw his face - broken, pale, and uncharismatic. Darkness surrounded it, and bottles twinkled in it like devilish eyes.
“I’m inevitable, kid. Either that, either me, I mean, or – you know – pills, booze, whores, and a bridge full of fans waiting for your jump. You’re to decide, kid. Live out your dream right now.”
“No. Not this way.”
He quickly got the beer and stood up.
“You need a glass?”, he asked her.
She shook her head. He opened the bottle and passed it to her. Their hands slightly touched. Teal’s heart went racing.
“You can touch her all you want, kid…”
She started drinking, gulp after gulp, she put the beer down, her eyes gave a quick flash of neon as she looked up.
“…hell, you can fark her day and night for all I care, see, she won’t mind…”
She looked down, Teal followed her look and his eyes tangled between her small breasts for a few moments.
“…in fact, she’ll be dying of lust, she’ll want you like that whore down the stand wants a Ben without a blowjob. Just say the word, chief.”
Teal shook his head, he tried not looking at White and failed miserably.
And suddenly, White started crying.
“Why don’t you console her now, you miserable bastard?” the voice gloated in the background.
Teal found himself shaking bad. He stretched his trembling hand to her shoulder, and she looked up - her stare, despite the tears, was clear and questioning. Still, he made himself make a half-assed attempt at caressing her shoulder, and her eyes narrowed up, but instead of waving Teal off she took his hand, looked at it for a few long moments, and started crying even harder.
It felt like the world had stopped. It felt like it, but in fact no one took notice of the muted scene that was taking place between Teal and White. The music was loud and bad as always, old and useless like an aged lover, most patrons were already drunk, the rest were on their way.
Sounding like a TV announcer, the voice said to Teal:
“If you want your beloved lady to kiss you now and be yours forevermore, please say yes. If you want to carry on with the miserable and lonely life you have now, please show no sign at all. Thank you.”
Teal waved off the voice, and leaned over to White. She raised her eyes to meet Teal’s a few inches away from her face. She made an attempt of a guilty smile and it looked miserable. Teal tried to smile as well, but it was a sad attempt.
Then White stomped a few dollars on the bar stand and ran out, weeping like a rain cloud.
“Well, lost your chance, bartender. You lost it, kid. Carry on, carry on with loneliness and misery, you’re sticking with them for life as I get it. Say goodbye to any hopes of happiness and love. You’re done.”
Teal collapsed in the chair behind the stand. Seeing his state, the waitress quickly replaced him. Teal closed his eyes and mouthed:
“You wanted my soul, didn’t you? My farking, useless soul. I felt it.”
“Smart kid. But tell me, Teal, why’d you decided to keep it? You don’t need it. No one does, and least of all – you.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll give you a chance to give it up for love. For the last time. Well?”
“Who are you?”
“For you I can be a benefactor… For others, well, for some, I am the villain.”
Teal opened his eyes to the neon lights playing on the ceiling. He looked towards the corridor, the door behind which Gray and Turquoise were arranging yet another bargain.
“My soul’s not for bargain”, he said quietly, and yet with sudden force, “Get lost, lady. Get lost before I start praying.”
“Your choice, kid. You leave me no choice. I tried doing it the good way. Now we’ll do it the hard way. Either way, my dear friend, your soul shall be mine.”
“fark off.”
“Well, if you think life is hard now, just wait and see what I have in store for you. You’ll be dazzled. Bye-bye!”
“Go and fark yourself.”
Teal stood up and asked the waitress to get back to her work. She nodded and ran off. Teal shook his head. He slid a bottle of beer to someone, then he went around to the jukebox, slid a coin and let the blues play.
Bring it on.
Bring it on, I’m ready.
Bring your worst.
Later that day Teal sat down behind his desk with a piece of paper and a red pen.
He had decided to write a letter.
To White.
Anyways, some time passed - and he started writing:
“Dear White,
Who I am is not important, although I’m quite sure it won’t be hard for you to figure out who I am. It doesn’t matter, and I don’t matter, it’s just that I’m one of the many in this mad, foolish world who adore you. I am yet one of the many, yet I doubt if anyone’s feelings towards you are as strong and deep as mine are.
I bear no hope, and still, my love is true. I know you shan’t be mine, not ever, this knowledge pains me, and still I’m here, adoring you, who without as little as a touch had my heart and soul, in a mere blink of an eye.
My life is sad and worthless. I believe it won’t be long till I snap. But still, you’re the best I’ve ever seen in life. All that I’d keep in my life if I had a choice to delete all the years of pointless existence.
Farewell, my Goddess. I shall write again if that does not vex you.
I hope I see you again. It makes me live, this hope.
With Love,
From a Man Who Doesn’t Matter.”
“Touching”, - Teal heard the now familiar voice, “ Especially the ‘Man Who Doesn’t Matter’ part… Corny to the end, are we? Behind a bleak mask we have a weak soul… one that you don’t need. C’mon, add something like “I offer my soul to the devil in exchange for your love”, burn the letter, and be done with it. C’mon, kid, I’m not even asking for your blood!”
The voice snarled with laughter. Teal lay down on the bed and tried to shut it off. Eventually he succeeded. He slept, and nightmares haunted him.
-
CHAPTER XIII: BLACK COMES BACK
The gunshots still echoed in his ears as he drove the man he’d saved to the camp. The man was silent. The silence felt good. Neither of them wanted to talk.
The car Black’d stolen was in poor condition, it occasionally barked with smoke, which reminded Black he’d care for a cigarette right now. He checked to see if there were any in the car, but only found some cash and some foreign documents.
He shrugged.
He left the man a hundred meters away from the camp, gave a few loud honks and drove off.
He was leaving Shade behind. It was better for her this way. He could not go on kidding himself. That kind of life was not for him.
1.
There is a secret I must tell you, my dear friends. For White is not Blue’s one and only and for the eternity, etc, etc. I mean, she thinks she is, but there is another woman in Blue’s life as well.
Blue didn’t see much of her recently. She was becoming reluctant to meet him, and it was making him desperate. She was fire, she was ice, she was all that felt just nice, and she was pretty much everything Blue ever dreamt of, it’s just that she was also real, and intoxicating like alcohol, like drugs, yet far more addictive.
Meet Green. Green eyes, olive skin, silky, long hair the color of midnight. She had the body of an eastern temptress, she was a dancer, and she spent most of her nights dancing in the Red Cabaret, and what she hated most of all were the sweaty faces of the fat men that paid her to do the schmaltzy stuff. Blue fell in love with her, and he would do every little thing he could to get closer to her than she would let him, closer than just the bodies tangling and breaths becoming one gust of a strangled angel.
She liked reading poetry, especially she liked the kind of poetry that went over the edge and dug into human nature with inappropriate brutality. She was prudent, cold, calculating, but on the other hand she was unpredictable, passionate and irrational.
And those blazing green eyes - she was a snake, with fangs drenched in the noxious poison of lust.
As Gold followed Violet on a lonely dark street, sure that it was Red that he was after, Blue knocked at Green’s door.
No one came.
Blue thought that she’d probably not heard him, and knocked again, a little louder.
Again, he waited. When he was about to knock for the third time, the door opened.
Behind it stood Gray. He had most of his shirt buttons undone, and silver hair stuck out of his chest. A medallion hang from his neck, made of plain steel, with a star etched on it.
“What do you want, pup?”, asked Gray in a husky, dark voice.
Blue mumbled something, tried to get a look inside, but Gray pushed him. Blue staggered and fell. He got up and just stood there, like a little dog left in the menacing streets. All alone. Gray smirked and shut the door.
Blue stood there for a while. He was lost. Tired. He felt beaten up, and, true, the place on his shoulder where Gray had pushed him juddered with irksome, low-key pain.
Soon he heard music from behind the door. It was tango, and it made him miss Red for some reason.
He turned away and walked down the stairs, and when he was out, he took the long walk back home, where White waited for him - naïve and willing…
2.
The car was low on fuel and too beaten up for the long journey up ahead, so he drove himself back to the railroad station. He got a ticket for a train scheduled to leave in about three hours.
It started raining. When the lightning stroke and thunder followed, all of the alarms of the cars parked nearby went off. Black sat on a bench. He had no baggage now, neither did he need to return for his suitcase. Personal belongings mattered very little to him.
Trapped in this life like a bird in a cage, tended to when hurt, caressed if depressed, lost, hollow, and bitter. But this was what he’d chosen – the fall, and that was what he’d have.
He just sat there, his eyes blank, his mind thoughtless, face expressionless – like a statue.
In the three hours that followed he didn’t move a muscle.
He did not notice the building blowing up behind him. The panicking masses screaming with terror, running away from the streets that had now turned into a battlefield.
Gunshots boomed with echo, and chaos tangled gunshots with thunder and blood with rain.
The station was filling up with people who bought tickets and looked back with haunted expressions on their faces. The lights were flickering, and in the background – the splashes of Molotov cocktails, screams and roars and shots, the police speakers booming with senseless heeds to lay down the arms and go home peacefully. No one bought them, though.
The speakers in the station declared high alert. Trains came, and momentarily got filled up with people who did not manage to buy a ticket but who were desperate to leave – anywhere, just so as not to stay here and witness the atrocity of a bloody revolution.
Black just sat on the bench and waited. It was all he could do right now, all he ought to do. The time for meddling was over, his role was played, and played well enough. His ravaged body hid under a bloody, bullet-riddled suit that was more crimson now than black. The body was in pain, it screamed in terror and begged for death. Black did not heed to its pleas.
When his train arrived, he was the first one to board it. When he took his seat, he watched the crowd from the window – with this new stare that was blank and dead. The crowd roared and pushed its way inside, to its dubious salvation. But it was the city that waited for them on the other side of the river of pain. And Noire, of course. And sins, and death, and decay, and self-loathing, and alcohol, and whores… Black realized he missed it all.
Someone knocked at the door of his cabin. Black did not bother to look back. He knew who it was, he nodded in greeting, and his old friend came in and Noire took the seat in front of him. Just where Shade once sat. A million years ago, it seemed.
Finally the train took off. Outside, it was raining, it was dark, the landscape was drowned in black ink. Black slept, and no dreams came.
3.
The night welcomed Gold in its cold, severe embrace. He made his way through the crowd filling the streets, people who stood by fancy clubs waiting in line to get in, and people crawling out of humble bars with broken faces and vomit on their clothes. Prostitutes stood on the sides of the streets and pimps directed them to cars that stopped by. All of this looked so casual, so normal, so humdrum in a way. You couldn’t call it a sin, it was life, just the dark side of it, dark and ordinary, like death, disease, wars, it was something natural and tragic. Someone laughed, but laughter sounded fake. Someone cried, someone screamed, groups of students on vacation walked around in packs of five or six and sang loudly, laughing and showing every sign of being drunk and careless. These were the rich children of rich fathers, and they were the usual victims for thugs looking for easy prey.
Gold walked, feeling alien and lonely – more than he’d ever felt before. He wondered how he’d lived for so long in a world that was so shallow, so fake, and so meaningless.
“Care for a blowjob? Only 20 bucks… You won’t forget it…” some girl asked him as he was passing by.
He looked at her, bewildered. She was about thirteen or fourteen, and yet her eyes, those sad, dark, huge eyes that looked like the dark side of the moon, they were old, broken, desecrated.
She tried to approach him but he pushed her away, he walked faster, and eventually started running. The city turned into a blur, all those faces disappeared, and all that remained were Gold and his despair.
And then, in the reddish mist of a crowded street, he saw a young woman wearing a silver coat.
The coat he’d given to Red.
He did not see her face. Neither did he need to now. Rage and strange, lethargic determination seized his mind and led him on. He made his way through the filthy river of people, and followed her.
She never looked back.
Gold got the gun and held it under his jacket. He bumped into someone, but did not lose the track. His breath slowed, and all that his eyes saw was the woman in the silver coat. He got closer. And closer.
“I’ll miss you.” he said to her ear, and put the gun against her back, and made the shot.
He never learnt that it was Violet he killed and not Red. He shot himself the next second.
The last man that saw him was an old cop that’d just retired and was making his stroll to a nearby bar. The cop said that the guy looked happy before he shot himself. Satisfied.
The street filled up with cops for a couple of hours. They left, and the corpses hurled into wagons followed them. Violet looked at peace at last.
Meanwhile, gunshots were heard, and screams, and laughter, and senseless music crawling out of nightclubs, where another heartbreak story was surely being born.
-
CHAPTER XIV: THE DAMNATION
The bullets didn’t kill him, but they surely left some scars. A year had passed, and still they bled at times.
The year of slow and painful degradation had left its mark on his face, the expression of angst and bitterness that never went away.
Repercussions of the revolution soon ceased. The Chancellor in the city resigned, and gossips filled the city about his son that’d taken a young woman’s life and killed himself. Black never learnt it was Violet that Gold’d killed. I daresay he would not care even if he did learn about his ex-lover’s death.
He passed most of his time with Gray at the “Red Cabaret”, and some of it with Crimson. He just existed, waiting for something - for a storm, for death, for dreams that’d left him. But the Reaper had forgotten all about him, the feelings were gone, replaced by numb and toothless pain deep down the spine, and his sleep was that of a dead man, heavy, dark, with the devil’s grin flashing before his eyes seconds before he woke.
“The revolution they did in that war zone was a piece of s**t, I tell you, Black!” said Gray one night, when they sat in the hall of the “Red Cabaret” and watched Green dance, “You remember the old days, Blackie? When we used to dream of this big revolution of some sorts that’d get us even with the rich kids, get us closer to the real s**t - you remember what we called that crap? Equality, democracy, freedom, for fark’s sake! Freedom… We used to dream about it, we thought it was the real s**t, no, Blackie, we knew what it was, deep down there the knowledge, it was there, I know it, we knew that freedom’s the name for yet another form of socially accepted slavery, but we didn’t give a flying fark right then. And you know what, Blackie? We were delusional, we were practically chained by our freedom, can you dig it?”
“I know what you mean, Gray. We tried to be free. We wanted freedom. What we got in return was a bunch of megalomaniacs craving for power and violence. And a bunch of hippies who’d just love a revolution that would allow them to walk around with their peniss hanging and to fark whoever they see. And you know what I remember Gray? We liked it. Deep down there, as you say it, we didn’t give a fark about freedom, equality… we wanted power, money, but mostly we just craved for anarchy. We never were heroes, Gray. We are no heroes. You think the city won when we brought that motherfarker who calls himself Chancellor now to power? In fact no one did. No one, Gray. He forgot us. He forgot what we fought for. You remember the days of rock’n’roll and beer and those misty rock clubs where we first thought of starting up all this s**t? That’s when it started. The real thing. And it died when that motherfarker joined us. The smart one. The lady. And now his kid is dead, and he’s sick and old and useless. Time changes and the rebel who became a tyrant is now just an old man in a gray cloak.
And he’s all alone.”
“I can honestly say”, Gray said in return, “that I’m frankly disillusioned. There ain’t any freedom in this city, Blackie. No freedom in a society. To be free you have to take off your clothes, cut off your tongue and exile yourself to a life in the jungle. Abandon all thoughts, mate with the monkeys… become an animal again, get back to the nature.”
Black smirked. Gray shrugged, and they drank.
And so, the year had passed, and Black sat in the “Red Cabaret” waiting for Gray and whiling away his time with Crimson and Green when Blue came in.
Black watched him curiously. His old friend had changed. Unaware that Black was watching him, Blue looked miserable and broken. Somehow dark, alienated.
He crossed the hall twice before he spotted Black. When he saw Green next to him, and Crimson, who he’d come to fear in the course of the short time they’ve known each other, he stood in hesitance. He even tried to hide, afraid that Green would mock him in front of Black and Crimson, and he was afraid. Scared like hell.
Black smiled. His face creased with lines that were innumerous now, he stood up and approached Blue.
“Can’t stand the smoke in this place, can we go out?” Blue asked.
“Why?”
“Don’t you want to talk to me?”
Black looked at him questioningly. Blue shook his head and asked him to come out again.
“If it’s Red waiting for me outside, Blue – let me warn you, I’m armed. And I’ll shoot you both.”
“No, just please, come out, I can’t stay here…”
So it’s Green, Black thought. He always trusted his insight, so he yelled across the hall for Green to come closer. Blue wanted to walk away but Black held him from his upper elbow.
“Green, I’m going out for a couple of minutes.”, said Black to the burlesque dancer when she approached them, “When Gray shows up, tell him to wait for me, okay?”
“Fine. What’s that piece of s**t in your hand?” Green asked, nodding at Blue.
“Just my old friend. He can’t stand the cigarette smoke…”
“So it’s a guy?”
“That’s my guess”, Black smirked and let go of Blue’s elbow.
Blue walked towards the door, his ears flashing red.
“Did you fark him?” Black asked Green.
“He paid well… The worst lover I’ve ever had, but he paid very well.” she said simply.
Black nodded and followed Blue.
There was a small park filled with hobo nests across the street. Blue waited for Black near the entrance.
There was something even darker in Blue’s face now. The man that was once Black’s apprentice looked like a low-life on the verge of suicide.
He was dressed well. He was shaved. But his eyes were all that mattered.
And they told Black that the city was getting to his old friend.
“So? What is it, Blue?”
They sat down on a bench that still carried the heat of the day. It was starting to rain.
“Did anyone ever call you god, Black?”
“Why?”
“And then said, that you’re more than god?”
“What’s this about?”
The rain hit hard against Black’s broad back covered in his black coat, and Blue’s skinny back, protected only by a white shirt.
“You enjoying the fresh air, kid? You sure you don’t wanna go inside?”
“Yeah… Black, I farked Red tonight. And she called me god. And then she said that I’m more than god.”
“Who?” Black’s face creased again.
“Red. She told me.”
“You… and Red?”
“Black?”
“You… of all the men… of all the miserable motherfarkers…”
“Black… Look at me…”
Blue laid his hand on Black’s shoulder.
A kind of a snarl escaped Black’s lips.
“You take off your arm, or I break it the fark off.”
“Black…”
“Now run. I’ll count to five. For the old times’ sake.”
Blue did not need to be asked twice. When Black got up, he was all alone in the rain.
It was a lie. Black knew it. A lie Blue misused. He wanted to hurt Black the way he’d managed to do a while ago, but it only made him angry.
Blue was a man with no honor. This helped him. Black’s own sense of honor kept him chained at times.
So now… He would just forget all this. The blasts from the past were getting old.
Blue’s broken. He’s craving for the old times to be back. For the old triangular universe, when all that existed was him, Black and Red.
Red. Black. Blue.
It’s over, Blue. It’s over. Only the consequences remain. The devil. Absynthe. And Noire, of course. For Black, at least.
Black was amazed by Blue’s unwillingness to deal with the facts. To admit that some things are in the past. He himself was like that a year ago. But now for Black there was only today. Especially when it came down to the present, it was Blue who had a fancy fiancée and a future to struggle for, and lungs clean of smoke and head clean of nightmares, and past unmarked by the devil, and a life that did not belong to the evil lord.
Black came back into the “Red Cabaret”.
“What’s wrong, Black? You okay?” said Crimson, running up to him.
“Why?” Black asked and did not recognize his own voice.
“You’re very pale, I better…”
“You better calm down, Crimson. I’m not dying. I just need a drink.”
“What happened?”
“I always need a drink…”
“I mean what happened when you went outside with Blue?”
“Did that faggot hit you? That’d be funny.” said Green.
“The bastard said he’d farked Red. Said she called him god.”
Black smirked.
“You know he’s lying, right?” said Green, looking up at him.
“I do. I’m not that dumb.”
“So why do you look like a broken-hearted chipmunk?” asked Green.
“He’s still reliving the past. Thanks, Crimson”, Black took the glass of whiskey from Crimson and emptied it, “And that’s bad. He’s still trying to hit me where it hurts, but it doesn’t work like that no more. Crimson… should I kill him?”
“I… I don’t think so, Black. But I’ll do it if you want me to.”
“I’m not sure. I’m tired of that rat, of this entire mindless charade…”
One of the waitresses came up to Black.
“Monsieur Black, sir…”
“Yes?”
“There is a call waiting for you. A woman, I think.”
Green leered.
“Another woman, Black? Do you count us at least?”
“I try.” answered Black and followed the waitress.
She took him to one of the administration offices. Black picked up the phone, and the waitress walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
He took a deep breath before saying “Yes?” When someone says that a woman has called him, his subconscious gives only one hopeful option on who it is.
“Black?”
But it wasn’t Red.
1.
“Black, is that you?”
“Yes, Shade. It’s me.”
“Black, thank god I’ve found you… I’ve been looking for you ever since… Black, why did you leave me?”
Black sighed. He looked around the white walls, the casual furniture, and his gaze fixed upon one of the paintings put against the wall in the far corner.
It looked like a swirl of colors at first. Green, violet, red, blue, white, gold, millions of colors laced together to create the image of sunrise. It was a tentative piece of art, this sunrise. It bore hope even for the black corners that were still waiting for the light to come…
“I had to leave the country, Shade. They started hunting me like a dog. I didn’t want to hide. I just ran.”
“But you left me, Black… You could have…”
“Shade… what’s past is past. Whether you forgive me or not doesn’t matter. I’ve done what I’ve done. I can’t change that, and I’m not going to apologize, or ponder over the wretched ‘what if-s’. This is life. Take it or leave it.”
“Black… I’ve been looking for you ever since I… found that I was pregnant.”
Black closed his eyes.
“You have a daughter now, Black. She has your eyes. And when she smiles… Black, you should see her smile…”
“Are you in the city right now?”
“We came back the night after the riot. One more day and I’d be trapped there. The rebels helped. They… seemed to respect you a lot… worship you, in fact. They say you single-handedly rescued their leader from that terrible place we went to… where the prisoners were…”
“It doesn’t matter. I just did what I had to do. Tell me your address. I’m coming.”
After putting down Shade’s address Black hung the phone and stood for a while with his face blank and his eyes closed.
Noire came in without a noise. He put his hand on Black’s shoulder and said:
“Will you let me?”
Black did not say anything for quite a long time. Then, finally, he gave the slightest nod.
Noire sneered and went out.
Black fell against the wall and closed his eyes.
He fell, and he fell rough. When he looked in the mirror he just saw an old child whose hair was more gray now than black, whose face was creased with lines, and whose dark, voidlike eyes had just become tired, dark-brown eyes with a map of lines stretching from their corners.
He was on the verge of death, he knew it. The body rattled with bullets even now, when a good bunch of them were removed, there was still about a dozen that will sit there till he dies. His hands constantly shook, and his lungs would shoot blood through his cough every time they got a chance. No, he would not last long.
And neither did he want to bring a child into this city.
Especially a girl.
Especially with his eyes.
2.
When he opened his eyes, he stood over a bloody mess with a gun in his hand. The bloody mess lay in a crib, with a few blood-splattered toys lying beside it.
The bloody mess was his daughter. Shade lay a few feet away. She had her back against the wall, and by the bloody track you could tell she slid all her way down to the floor.
The gun was still smoking.
Shells twinkled in the sunset breaking through the window.
Shade tried to move, to say something.
Black pulled the trigger, and she lay still.
Forever now.
He walked down the stairs, hiding the gun back into his coat on the way. If he had a soul now, it would hurt. He might even cry.
He just walked out, squinting as the dying sun slapped him across the face.
He lit a cigarette and watched the sun fall back into the night’s cold embrace.
He took a gulp of smoke, and he was satisfied to feel pain deep down his rotten lungs.
-
CHAPTER XV: BLUE’S PAYBACK
He got back home and knocked the door open. Blue was shaking bad.
White approached him, she wanted to say something, but Blue pushed her away and walked straight past.
You see, there was something eating Blue from the inside. A voice that told him terrible things. A voice that always used the word ‘never’. A voice that told him of the letters.
He turned over the table, the couch, the bed. He opened the closet and started rummaging through it.
“Where?” he panted, “Where?”
White ran up to him, she tried to calm him down, but he pushed her away again.
“What do you want, Blue?”
“The letters… the letters you lady!”
“Blue… What letters are you talking about? Blue, please calm down, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I know you’re hiding them here somewhere… Give them to me, lady, before it’s too late.”
“Blue…”
“Don’t you lie to me”, Blue said, turning his pain-creased face to White, “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
White started crying. Blue hit her hard, and she fell to the floor. He hit her again, and shook the blood of his fist.
White was wailing now. She lay on the floor, her dark hair sprawled behind her, her arms spread, her nose bleeding.
She fell silent in a couple of minutes. Blue sat on the floor next to her.
“You betrayed me, White… You betrayed me. You stabbed me in the back. Just like Black. You’re no better.”
“You hit me, Blue”, White said in an unusually quiet voice, “I think you broke my nose. You hit me, motherfarker…”
“White…”
“I didn’t believe your friends when they said you’re a faggot. I didn’t care what they thought. I didn’t care what Black thought. Or said. I loved you, Blue.”
“White!..”
“Your motherfarking letters are in my purse. I didn’t care about them, Blue. I didn’t want to upset you. They were just… letters. From a lonely, depressed man who never loved anyone before he met me. I don’t even know who he is. I don’t care. But he loves me, Blue. He loves me, and he would never hit me.”
Blue was silent. Then he got up and picked up White’s purse. After rummaging in it for a few moments, he found a small red envelope. It was stuffed with letters. Blue caught a faint smell of rose petals.
“How did you get them? There is no address here. Nothing.”
“The waitress at “The Brocken Heartz’ Club” passed them to me. Now go away, Blue. Go away.”
White got up and went to the window. Blue watched her small dark silhouette against the big white square of the window for a few moments, and rushed out.
He was crumbling. There was no Green for him now, no Red, no one. Just White and White was growing distant, cold, and he could do nothing about it. And now the letters…
1.
He pushed the door and entered “The Broken Heartz’ Club”.
He was filled with anguish and a good deal of beer.
He looked around – the bar was full at this time of day, but he managed to push through the crowd to get to the waitress.
He squeezed her arm and told her something, but his words could not be heard through the noise. She shook her head, and led him off to a quieter corner where he repeated his question:
“You were the one to bring White the letters, right? Who gave them to you?”
“I don’t think that’s your problem, kid”, she said, “If that’s all you wanted to say, then, well, that information’s classified. Bye...”
Blue stood silent for a few seconds, and then repeated his question.
“Don’t you understand, kid? Go talk to Teal if you’re so worried. It’s not my problem, you know. He handed me those things and told me to pass them to that girl. So lay off, will you?”
Blue looked at Teal. They looked alike now, Blue and Teal. Something bonded them. And suddenly Blue realized what it was.
He forgot about the waitress, forgot about the crowd.
There was only him and Teal in the club.
And he approached Teal with his hands clenched into fists, walking slowly and deliberately.
He looked up into the bartender’s eyes.
“You?” he simply asked.
Teal watched him, eyes squinted, face pale and sullen. And then, he nodded.
They watched each other for some time.
Then Blue slowly came up to him and let a hiss escape his lips.
“Let’s go outside and talk.”
“You don’t wanna talk. I can see that.” Teal said calmly. “You wanna fight me, kid. You wanna beat me up, to be honest. That’s fine. I deserve it. Let’s go.”
2.
They went outside, and it was already raining there. The rain whipped at their faces, but they took no notice.
They walked down the empty street, illuminated by the dim lanterns that flickered in the rain. They reached a secluded alley and stopped.
“Do you want to say something? To apologize?” Blue asked in a low, toneless voice.
Teal shook his head, still watching Blue with that cold, determined stare.
Blue hit him hard. He hit him again, in the face, and felt Teal’s nose crunch against his fist.
“You happy now?” the old voice recurred in Teal’s head.
Teal fell to the ground, but quickly got up. The same determination was there in his eyes.
“Fight, you lady!” Blue howled, and kicked him in the stomach, and when Teal doubled over, he kicked him in the face.
Teal fell to the ground again.
He watched the indigo blue sky. Fireflies twinkled in his eyes – it must be the light from the lantern, blurred by the rain.
And when he blinked, it was all white for a moment. Blessedly white.
Teal lay there on the ground of the ragged alley, and Blue kicked him again and again, calling him a coward, hysterically demanding him to get up and fight back.
Why? Teal thought. Why get up? Why fight? I have nothing, and he has all I ever wished for. Surrender’s sweet… at least the aftermath will be.
Some time passed, and Blue sat by his side, on the blood-stained stones of the alley, and sobbed for quite a while.
Teal was looking at the sky, and it seemed to be descending towards him. Now that it seemed so close, it was farther than ever.
Some more time passed, and Blue left – still shaking with silent sobs. Teal watched him go and pitied him – Blue was the man that had all that Teal ever wanted, but still – he was not a happy man.
Some people are not made for love. They waste it like cigarettes, and when they want a new pack – the best pack, the ultimate pack… They have no money left to buy it, and even begging won’t help.
Give up while you can.
Surrender.
“You have been humiliated by a whelp. Pathetic. But it’s not too late. Not really. You have one last chance. Just say yes. And all of this will be over. You’ll be a happy man… You still wanna know what it’s like? To be happy?”
Teal got up – slowly, carefully. He shook the dirt off his jacket, his pants.
“Well?”
Teal smirked.
“Is that a yes?”
“Nah… Just laughing at you. I won’t say yes. But I’ll be there shortly, and we’ll talk. I promise. Of all the happiness in the world, and not a tiny motherfarking bit of it that you can grant… But I don’t care about that. I’ll come there, where you nest, I’ll come there, and we’ll talk.”
The voice laughed. Teal stood there, a lonely dark silhouette in the rain, his fists clenched, his face bleeding, with a sudden realization that he’s got nothing to lose, and he’s free, and he’s supreme, he stands alone, but high, so very high…
-
CHAPTER XVI: THE LAST NIGHT AT THE RED CABARET
Crimson walked into the men’s room and closed the door behind him.
He shook his head and tossed away his cigarette. He walked up to the urinals and took a leak. He then approached the sink to wash his hands, and looked up into the mirror, into the eyes of the man he had become.
He’d seen Yellow the other night. He didn’t tell anyone about it, not even Black. Yellow didn’t recognize him at first. He’d aged quite a bit, but not the way the time ages you, but the way life does. Then he did recognize. He tried to be friendly, Yellow did. But still, deep in those dark eyes he could see the old hatred. They drank together. Crimson was careful not to lose control, and he was still sober enough when he saw Yellow coming at him with a knife.
It all happened in “The Western Sunrise Bar”. Crimson held Yellow back. When his old friend tried to stab him, Crimson grabbed his arm and jerked it, trying to make him drop the knife. The next thing he saw was Yellow, twitching on the dirty floor of the bar, a knife pointing accusingly out of his stomach.
The city doesn’t forgive. This is where your past walks right beside you, and even if you think you’ve escaped – you haven’t, because your ghosts will catch up with you sooner or later.
He looked up to find the bar completely empty. Even the bartender was gone; he could hear the wind outside, the fierce, cold wind.
And now he looked into the eyes of the man he had become.
Did he need that? What was the reason for all this? For him coming to the city, standing on the verge of suicide only to be rescued by Black, if that was truly a rescue?
He was beginning to doubt that.
Was it Shade that made him go through all of this? But did he really love her then, and did it matter now, matter enough to influence his life the way it did for oh so long?
Why couldn’t he get over her? Why couldn’t Yellow get over her? Why couldn’t Black get over Red?
It was the city. It was its dark, menacing presence, as if an idol to the gods of no hope, those made of paper and steel.
They smile at you, they tell you – there is no hope. There never was.
Crimson got out of the men’s room. He walked up to the table where Green sat with Gray and Purple. Gray was extremely upbeat that day – he’d managed to get a deal on “The Broken Heartz’ Club”.
“I think deep down there – in his heart, I mean – Turquoise’s gay. I mean – his bartender kills himself, and the next day he takes me up on my offer, and, I must say, not the most generous one that I have made. I mean – it’s just a bartender, you know.”
“Wouldn’t you close the Cabaret if I died?” asked Green with a chuckle.
Gray laughed and shook his head.
“What about Purple? Wouldn’t you close it if a car hit him and spread his brains all over the highway?” she persisted.
“Listen, Green, I’d be very sad and all, but closing up the place…”
“And… what if Black?”
Gray sobered up.
“If Blackie – god forbid – died, I’d follow him. Just cause he’s the last man in this city, the last of the dying race of ragged rebels. We’re extinct now.” Gray sighed and shook his head. He looked back, as if hoping to see Black there, but there was no one. Too early, perhaps?
“I haven’t seen Black in quite a while”, Purple said. “He okay?”
Green laughed.
“He’s never okay. That’s his charm.”
Purple got up to greet Red who just came in.
He approached her, took her hand and kissed it, looking expectantly into her eyes. She smiled and squeezed his hand a tiny bit.
He then led her to the table, he introduced her to everyone. Crimson watched her curiously, and when he heard her name, he sniggered.
The infamous Red was just another woman.
“Purple, can I talk to you for a second?” he said.
They got up and walked down the hall. They stopped near the dancing stage. Crimson leaned on it. Purple watched him.
“Red, eh? Any guesses who she is? If not, I’ll mock you to your grave, Purple.” he said.
“Who? Red? Who is she?”
“Black’s former lover. The one he couldn’t get over.”
“It’s Red? He never said it was Red… Holy s**t, what should I do? He can come in any second… He’ll kill me, god, he’ll kill me…”
“Calm the fark down, Purple. Did you sleep with her? How long are you two going out, if you are, that is?”
“We… we aren’t going out. Not yet… And I guess we never won’t be… Oh my god what should I do?”
“I don’t know. Just wanted to tell you.”
“I guess I’ll just go”, Purple said, “I’ll just tell her I have some stuff to do and I’ll be back, and go. I won’t be back today, that’s for sure.”
“Very knightly of you…”
Crimson watched Purple rush off.
Why were they afraid of Black? He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something that sent a chill down his spine when he thought of his mentor.
He approached the bar. He asked for a drink. They poured him whiskey. He hated whiskey. He asked for a beer instead.
He leaned on the bar and drank, watching Red. She was quite good-looking, but not the kind of beauty you’d imagine from Black’s stories.
Just another leaf, blown by the wind, and into the gutters of the city. A lost, lonely soul.
Soon he found himself mesmerized by her. He couldn’t look away from her. His gaze got tangled in her curls.
He ordered vodka. He gulped it down, exhaled, and asked for another.
Perhaps Black was right.
Red was tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of lying.
She knew who Purple was as soon as she learnt his name. She wanted to see Noire, for one last time. Even if he rejected her, she’d know she’d asked, she’d know she’d tried…
She waited for him to come.
But he never came.
She waited for some time and left.
She stood in front of the entrance, embroidered in red neon. Her curls twirled in the wind, it whipped against her coat. But still, even when it started to rain, she could feel the tears streaming down her cheeks.
They all used her. They didn’t care who she was or who she wanted to be, who she tried to be. For them, she was just a quick prelude to a fark. It came to her, just as the knowledge that she’d never see Noire again, never hear his voice, never feel his touch, never tell him that she’d loved him…
She walked down the street, and into an alley, barely illuminated by a few lanterns. It was Noire that loved her no matter what. Only him. But love was too strong a word for people like them, for people of the night and the city. Love is for those who can withstand the light it brings, the light that illuminates all the dark and gloomy corners of your soul. They couldn’t. Red mocked it. And Noire, it destroyed him.
And now it was the end of the line.
What was the point of living now? All she can ever be is a mistress of some fat and old bigwig, trapped in four walls and getting old and losing all she ever had – her charm, her looks, her raw, pagan allure… to what? To a life she’ll hate every second she lives it?
A whiff of breeze brought the smell of the river with it. She was standing on the bridge that connected the splendid downtown with the not so splendid outskirts. She’d never been here before. From here you could see the sky – so clear, so dark, so soothing… the wind roared and the bridge groaned, but it seemed to be routine for them.
She looked down at the water rushing underneath. It seemed to her it was the sky itself, the stars twinkling in the waves, drowning and clashing against each other.
She let out a short scream when she fell.
The water took her in its cold embrace. It pulled her down, asking her to stay.
She struggled for a few seconds, and then was still.
Forever now.
-
CHAPTER XVII: OF ABSYNTHE AND THE HIGHWAY
1.
Black walked down the streets that crawled off to darkness, and watched the city unveil its true face.
It was all clear to him now.
He was trapped all this time, trapped in the cage of a capricious child he actually was.
And now it was over.
He had nothing, and he was no one.
Just Black.
He saw Red rushing somewhere right past him. Was it an illusion? And thunder rolled down the alleys, and it rained like it had never rained before.
But he didn’t feel the rain, and didn’t feel the wind, and the pain that was there, waiting for him, waiting for Black to put his guard down. The bullets rumbled, and the old wounds bled. The world was fading, fading like an old movie with nothing left to say.
And then he saw The Officer, walking at him with a gun held loosely in his hand.
Black smiled.
He didn’t hear the shot. He didn’t feel the pain.
The void greeted him, and he felt truly welcome.
He was free. Free at last.
2.
Blue stood by the window as he did so many times before, and distractedly played with a lighter. White sat on the bed, her hands on her lap, her face still bruised. Still, when Blue made a joke, she smiled.
She gave in to him after he came back. The thought was that it’s better to be with the devil you know. And life’d shown her that the city’s filled with devils waiting for you to lose your guard just for a second.
He’d borrowed a lot of money to buy the bike waiting for them down on the street.
All their possessions were packed in two small bags, lying by the door and ready to go.
“Let’s go”, he said, and White stood up.
He grabbed both bags, White opened the door, and they went down the stairs.
The cold wind lashed at their faces when they came out of the building that was no longer home. It was a farewell from the city that would still haunt them wherever they went.
Blue saddled the bike, White sat behind him, holding on to his waist.
He started the bike. It wasn’t very fast, and it shot smoke every few seconds, but to them it seemed to be perfect. And what we feel is what counts in the end.
A few hours later they could see the city growing smaller and smaller behind their backs. A highway shining with the recent rain led them off to the dazzling unknown, filled with hope and sunshine.
3.
He looked back at the body sprawled at his feet. His body.
He laughed.
He walked down the alley, lighting a cigarette and casting his coat away. He loosened his tie and nodded at Noire, who watched him with a grin. The city glowed in bright golden light, it illuminated everything from within, making it all blur and seem beautifully irrelevant.
The alley got narrower at the end. The trees and lanterns bent over, forming a kind of a corridor that shone with the same warm golden light.
There was a door at the end, it was painted red.
He knew where it led.
He pushed the door open, and he was in “The Broken Heartz’ Club”.
Teal nodded at him from the bar stand, pouring a beer to a man in a gray cloak whom Black tried to recognize but did not manage to.
He saw Violet sitting with Gold, holding hands and laughing. Her eyes sparkled, but there were no tears in them.
But Black lost all interest in them when he saw Red approaching him, her heartbreaker smile on her heart-shaped face, her curls shining with that golden glow.
The door closed behind them.
4.
Noire went into “The Red Cabaret”.
He looked around and found Crimson by the bar stand, a bottle of beer in his hand and Red in his eyes. With a slight nod of the head, Noire approached him.
He leaned on the bar stand, much the same way Crimson did.
“Black is no more.” Noire said quietly.
Crimson looked up, but did not meet Noire’s eyes.
“He’s gone.” He sighed, but the sigh soon turned into a grin, “But there is always I.”
“Who are you?”
“Just call me Noire.” He looked back at the bartender, who had a black stone on a chain, “A shot of absynthe for my new friend.”
THE END
Started in December, 2009, Yerevan, RA
Finished in August, 2010, Yerevan, RA