H0NEYB0Y

❝ Here. Throw it in the fire. ❞ 

The girl hands an old scrapbook to Honeyboy. For once, her general state of apathy and ❛ fuck this bullshit ❜ is disrupted. Innocent childish delight shines through her eyes. Normally they’re clouded with vice-indued mild madness. Kev’s been keeping her clean for the most part, but hey– some gutter glitter or bit of X doesn’t hurt every now and then. Music is a good substitute. But fire is even better. Today by the oceanside, it’s only Kris, Honeyboy, and a box Kris hauled out here. This cathartic practice can be done in a group or alone. Kris’ love for fire began with burning her mother’s box of her passed husband’s old things. Instead of being enraged, her mother was happy. So happy that she began crying. Together they burned so many things that night. For the first time, they could breathe in that little house again. 

And when her mother passed too, Kris burned all of her things. She already has everything she needs to remember her mother by in her mind, heart, and reflection. Materials objects only bring sadness. Kris doesn’t do sadness. Fuck sadness. So, here she is with another box accumulated over the past year. She thought this time she’d bring Honeyboy with her. There’s always something special about treating someone to their first burning.

Kris reaches into the box and pulls out a handful of whatever her fingers touch. This time, it’s a clump of various Polaroids. One by one, she throws them into the fire. She pauses when coming upon a self-shot photograph of herself and another girl. Not just any girl but her.  It’s a candid shot of them smiling into a kiss. Something dangerously, sickeningly akin to heartbreak threatens to swell up in her chest. For good measure, Kris rips that photograph before throwing the rest into the fire. She continues on with pulling more things out of the box.

❝ Whenever you’ve gained a collection of shit you want to burn, just let me know. ❞ She glances over at him. ❝ Unless you have something with you right now? ❞

      Human emotions were not the aliens strong point. He found them awfully complex and understood very little. He could just about read facial expressions but apart from that, he was utterly baffled but that wasn’t to say that he didn’t find it interesting. He found the entire emotional rollercoaster somewhat spellbinding.  The fact someone can change their demeanour within a blink of an eye and think nothing of it was spectacular and the alien couldn’t get enough of it. For those reasons, Honeyboy tended to befriend those with high emotional changes. Those who shared their feelings. Why would he friend those with as little emotions as him? That’d be boring! 

         As the fire crackled before them, Honeyboy watched the flakes of whatever the fuck Kris had dumped onto the blaze float off into the night sky. A beautiful sight. Honeyboy didn’t really understand why or what Kris was throwing into the fire but he wasn’t going to pass up on chucking whatever she passed him into the pile. 

       Although, he thought he’d take up the opportunity to ask her why she was doing what she was doing and ignore the questions she brought to him.

        It wasn’t every day you’d find a man, naked, bathing in a stream of gemstones and from what Honeyboy knew, which truthfully, wasn’t very much, about the human race, this wasn’t very human-like. So, he’d be damned if he didn’t take up the opportunity to find out what and who this ‘man’ was.