Basil watched
Death's face shrivel and burn. He'd mistaken it for Eric Draven's at
first. The warmth
was pleasant, but his stomach was turning as he
watched his library go up in smoke. Well, they
weren't
entertaining. He'd loved them
once, but that morning he realized that he hadn't picked up any
book
off that shelf in three years.
He could smell the linoleum in the kitchen melting, but he didn't
care. At least, not at that moment.
"Maybe now it'll finally warm up," Ezra murmured, squatting
at the edge of the flaming pile of books
and leaning in closer than
Basil dared.
"What is this, some sort of reverse rain dance?"
"Something like that," Ezra said.
"My landlady's gonna be so pissed."
"So leave before she finds out."
"And go where, exactly?"
Ezra shrugged. "Up to you, really."
Basil
tossed a crumpled piece of waxed paper from a sandwich onto the pile.
He wondered when it
would spread enough to burn the rest of the
apartment. Or would it burn through the floor first? "You
say
that so casually. Like there's even anywhere for me to
go."
Ezra
rolled his eyes and looked up at Basil. "You have worlds
at the soles of your pretty pink Docs.
Pick one."
Basil snorted. "There you go again."
Ezra smirked and looked back at the fire. "Well, you do."
"Like where?"
"Like... anywhere. You just have to stop dismissing everything
as nonviable."
"Excuse me for not wanting to be a gutter punk."
"Do I look like a gutter punk to you?" Ezra was smiling up
at him again.
"You--I don't even know what you look like."
Ezra looked back at the fire again. "Sure you do."
"Not like it matters. I can't go tagging along with you."
"Damn straight you can't. We maybe oughta put this out if we
don't want it to do even more damage."
Basil dumped the bucket of water sitting on the counter onto the pile
without bothering to aim
around Ezra, who flopped backward and managed to only get his shoes wet.
"I don't really have to leave here, do I? I mean, I can live
with a blackened kitchen floor and a ticked
off landlady."
"No you can't," Ezra said automatically as he lit a
cigarette.
"Same difference, I guess."
*
"BASIL!"
Basil wondered how long it would take her to notice the bathroom.
He'd hoped maybe she would like
it, but deep down he knew she'd take
it the wrong way.
He'd
been awake for the past four hours since he finished painting it.
He'd meant to sleep, but he was
too amped up anticipating her
reaction. Up you get.
He forced himself to sit up on the couch and roll into a standing
position in one fluid motion--no one
was there to see, but it amused
him anyway.
"Basil, what the hell is this?"
"A painting."
His friend's mouth flattened and eyes narrowed. "No shit,
Sherlock. Why is it on my bathroom wall?"
Basil shrugged. He had no excuse and did not feel like he needed one
even though he knew people
usually pretended like they wanted one
when he did things like this.
"What is this even supposed to be?"
At first Basil had been thinking of the splatter his body would make
on the sidewalk if he were to
jump off Sarah's balcony, but once he'd
started painting he couldn't stop thinking of his comics that
time he
set them all on fire. It had turned out a bit too orange and
misshapen to look like a bloody
corpse in the end. Basil figured that
was probably a good thing.
"Art?"
"Fuck your art. Are you going to clean this up?"
"Nope."
Sarah's lips were trembling. So was the rest of her. Basil couldn't
help but be drawn to the bags
around her bloodshot eyes. He wanted to
paint them. He wasn't sure if painting the image of them on
something
else or putting paint on them would be more satisfying.
"Basil, get out."
"Okay." There were worlds at the soles of his pretty pink
Docs, but he didn't like any of them. Or at
least, he didn't like
them from the inside. They always seemed so appealing from the
outside.
*
"HEY!"
Basil looked over his shoulder. He didn't know the person who was
shouting at him, so he just turned
around and continued contemplating
the Mississippi.
"Look, man, I don't know what your life is life, but don't just
throw it all away--"
Basil giggled when he realized what it looked like he was doing. Just
a few inches made so much
difference. Well, it wasn't the inches, he
supposed. The difference was there were two sides of the
guard rails
on this bridge, and he was standing on the wrong side of them even if
his hands were
hanging onto the right side.
"Dude,
what is wrong with
you? Are you high?"
Basil had just begun to quit giggling when the man said something
even funnier, so he had to start
laughing. He saw the man's hand
cautiously moving toward his arm and thought of a self-defense
move
his older brother had taught him when they were kids. There wasn't
really a lot of momentum
for Basil to take advantage of in this case,
but he figured he was strong enough to make up for that so
he
single-handedly yanked the man over the rail by his wrist and sent
him plunging.
Never
made an impact like that before.
He was replaying the death scream of his victim in his head
even
though he hadn't really listened very hard the first time. Then he
realized this is shit. All of this
is garbage. I don't even know if I
feel better or worse after writing this. It does seem to reflect my
mood at the moment pretty well, though.
