UJI NO HASHI HIME

Outside of his sanctuary, the world burns! His house is a casket, big bedrooms with plenty space for a boy growing out of his own skin. Sure is, she’s seen it before! The light that slinks between blinds is sullen gold, casting washed-out tiger stripes on the dusty carpet. When you’d sneak your hand between the slats and press the pads of your fingers to the glass, you feel the heat radiate through it. Summer has decayed, bloated by heat; bearable days slip through in places like exposed ribs. Stepping outside is like walking into a furnace; where skin prickles and contracts in the heat, and the cicadas drone in chorus as you close the door behind you. She’s reminded just now that the sky’s even a greasy, mottled shade of yellow, like an old bruise. Yeah, Light’s right, that house won’t last long – NOT WHEN KAGERU’S A BLISTER! That city of teeth gives off just enough wrongness to settle in between your shoulders later on, fermenting, like a mushroom. Growing.

  Changing. 

  Grieving. She turns to look at the other, notes that Light’s expression is dropping into no-no territory on the mood meter: ultra, MEGA sad. At this, Nooni’s eyes gleam for a terrible instant. It repels the stifling darkness that threatens to blanket them both; and like a fairy in a forest, the strikingly bright glow emanating from her body shines to both guide and comfort. 

 “ I hear ya, ” She mutters, brushing off sugary residue. Candy wrappers scatter as they dance wildly through the trees, trusting that the wind navigates them elsewhere. Give us privacy for now. “ How’s about I raise you this, then: we go out tonight, we have fun. Lots of it. Get your mind off of the bad stuff, okay? Nooni’s got you !! ” 

     𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐃 𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐍 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄, it teems, boiling, bubbling, claiming everything and everyone. the world outside rots in violent shades of orange and decaying, dingy browns, but inside he’s all black and blue, frozen in time, cold as he slowly dissipates in his soft rigor mortis. it comes, unrelenting as it bursts at the seams and claims the corners of his world. it’s only a matter of time until he burns. only a matter of time until he sets himself aflame, until he’s one with the funeral pyre, the cicadas the only ones left to cry.

     her candy wrappers dance through the sky like lights, fluttering and drifting away. the smell of sugar remains underneath the rust, the rotted wood, and the strong stench of gasoline. a bulb from the nearby shed dangles and flickers, illuminating sides of their faces as the wind blows it by. the heat festers and circles around them, clinging to their skin. light, looking to nooni again as she booms with her characteristically jolly voice, grins slightly and folds her arms, an interested expression replacing her once gloomy mood.

     “𝐍𝐎, 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄,” light says as she picks herself up from her moment of weakness, not even a sniffle left behind or a shake in her voice, “there’s nothing to say.” no well wishes, no questions, no small talk between the walls. there’s nothing left. not of them, not of him. his world is far different than hers, far more intricate and horrendous than anyone else’s, and yet it comforts him, cradles him like the child he dearly wishes to return to, like the young boy of thirteen, unaware and unafraid. she couldn’t pry him away even if she tried, and she’s tried enough. done enough. his fate was in his hands all along.

     “he just...something happened to him out there.” something unlike any other. a caged animal in his own home, a rabid beast in the mirror. a husk of whom she once called brother. she fears it’s a tale no one knows---not even him. “i think it’s best he and i stay like this. you know him.” she looks to nooni and her empire of sugar, watching as she devours it curiously and without a care in the world, their eyes meeting briefly from time to time. she betrays herself again, her deep set emotions showing along her face in a troubled expression. 

     𝐈𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐒, 𝐈 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐆𝐎𝐃. in the soft, sweet shadow of unreality, it’s me, my hands on the steering wheel, denying him the control and rolling headfirst into the lake. she is filled to the brim with a sorrow so deep it permeates from her very being, seeps from each crack in her skin and fills the room like a deadly gas, red like envy, thick as blood. it betrays her, allows her no respite. from the beginning unto the end, this gaping wound, pulsating like a heart. 

     'you’re right,’ she thinks, but she keeps it safe, tucked tight into her bosom. the weight of the world on one girls shoulders. a boulder on her back in the shape of love. to willingly play a losing game, to dare, to try. how she wished it’d done something more. how she wished god didn’t wear her brothers face, how she wished he didn’t hold the keys to the car. how she wished she knew. how she wished it meant anything at all. in my dreams, i take you with me. in my dreams, there is nothing to regret.

 SHE’S A TRAGEDY CLOAKED IN ILL-FITTED SKIN, A SURMISE OF PREMONITION.not someone, but something– her, a mangled cultivation of human horrors and wreckage. chaos dons the shape of a woman and ev learns quickly that it is as consistent in her as it is for the other living counterpart: emotional dissonance. … or, maybe a lack thereof.

“ Sorry I didn’t bring any flowers,” he says, not bothering with a ‘hello, nice to meet you’. it seemed they were past that. the need for discovery was rough on his skin. common sense telling ev that, yeah, he should of expected what little show of force he’s made to not do much other than raise her suspicions further. the deadly plague of her gaze is as much of a warning as it is.. abstractly docile, a not-so-silent indication of overt hostility. reasonably so.

 not everyone’s welcome in a house of bones, after all. he’s cracked open a mausoleum to find the banshee within, therefore he’s fully aware that the time limit before she considers haunting him next is nearing an edge.

 so he’s keeping it cute. tells himself to keep his mouth shut and look stupid. ignorance is now in counterfeit bliss as he’s eyeing, none too closely, through the smoke. ev stares –– his are pupils sharp, eyes gray like knives yet somehow, at the same time, blurred and boringly unimpressed. “ .. I’m a friend of Adam–– kind of. He thinks so, and follows me around like a kicked puppy. So if he comes back, then I guess it’s my head next. ”shifting himself with a slow roll of his heel, ev faces the right until he can reach a hand outwards, lazily gesturing towards the rest of her room.

  “ He didn’t like when I snooped around too much and got weirdly angry when I did. It pissed me off, so ––  looks like I.. now see why? ”

     “ha! you’re funny, too.” she laughs, genuinely, a most pleased smile returning to her. the proof is in his quip: he knows. for years she’s loomed inside this prison, the inner workings of a mad mans heart, his dearest love and desire molding the walls and infecting the air. he holds her from the ceiling like a marionette, an untarnished doll to play house with ‘til the end of days. a dance for him and him alone. for years he’s lurked inside his sweet home, content with the filth, eager to see it grow. she would exist so long as he wills it. so long as his poison heart continues to beat. so long as she haunts him. so long as he’s allowed to lie.

     “i wondered why somebody would come to this dump,” she says, pivoting on her feet to behold the room once more. beyond lies only more decay and wreckage. their home became naught else but a tomb. for mother, father, sister, and even sweet little brother, settling comfortably into his early grave, wanting for nothing more. she watches him in the dark corners, mourning. but for whom? “sounds about right though, kicked puppy and all. but relax---if you’re lucky, he won’t be too mad.” she speaks not his name. not for the love it once and always holds, or the curse of pain it brings too. they are not who they were. never would they be again.

   she treks him, knowingly. like stars to their prerogative she is light ceded to misery, to inherent darkness, death—her, a propitiation for devastation. there is a likeness about her that he can familiarize and it’s as nacreous and clear as a mirror, or a body of dark - night water: the scent of demon. it clings tightly to her skin and serves as a mirage to her brother if not something much more devastating - irony.

  from something he’s visited countless times prior with its four walls, cracked paint, and ingrown floors. a broken lock didn’t stop him, and neither did the maggots with what was initially leaking between mossy bed sheets. something about laying the dead to rest.

 ev shifts from one foot to another, squinting. and in the event of no response— he sucks on a cigarette until his lungs are bloated of smog then shoots the poison like a bullet from his throat, lips puckered into a tiny o, tongue flicking behind his teeth. the stream of smoke parts in haphazard billows of red as it branches out to lean in for a closer look. 

 “ Do you.”  ev says, flatly. he’s snipping his sentences in half out of the intent to watch her mannerisms without opening leeway for his own. “ ..I’m hoping it’s a good thing on your end, then. ” 

     like dogs with a keen sense of smell. oh, she likes it. it’s a sensation she’s long since felt, an unspoken knowing; to be in good company. her smile calms and she looks to him with a soft expression, like she has never been anything else but kind. he carries a likeness like none other, an uncanny dagger in her side she would soon carve out. how funny. how painful. even now.

     “there’s just something about you,” she speaks, trailing off like there’s something on the tip of her tongue, stepping closer to examine him further with a hand at her chin, watching as he shuffles in the moment, “-----besides,” and then she pauses, stops in her tracks, and turns to face the room. her eyes glide over each and every piece of rotten wood, of chipped paint and growing fungus, of the tattered old clothing and the lumps underneath each mass. the air around them is thick with a pungency of decay, his red smoke setting the mood nicely.