#curseat

the page turned with a soft crinkle. the only sound in the room besides the quiet hum of the mini-fridge. gojo was lying on his stomach on the floor, head pillowed on his arms. his own comic had been discarded ages ago. watching suguru read was way more interesting. he took this stuff so seriously. it was the best. ( look at him. he's so invested. he actually thinks cyclops is making good life choices. )

"you know he's wrong, right? and he has the strategic thinking of a startled brick." gojo rolled onto his side so he could see him better. "he's all 'the plan! we must stick to the plan!' and then wolverine just shows up, stabs the giant robot, and the day is saved. every time."

he waited for a reaction. nothing. gojo sighed, a long, theatrical sound of profound boredom. he sat up. "it's us." he announced to the room. gojo's grin was a slow, dawning thing of pure, idiotic revelation. "this is us. right here. on the page."

he pointed a dramatic finger at geto. "you're cyclops. always so serious. so burdened by leadership. 'satoru, we have to consider the ethical implications of using your powers to get free vending machine drinks!'" he mimicked, his voice a terrible, nasally impression.

then he pointed back at himself, a thumb jabbed into his own chest. "and i," he declared with the gravity of a man announcing the fate of the world, "am iceman." a beat of silence.

under shadow and mist, where the ghosts wander beside mice and dust, there are the lonely clicks of lonely droplets, an open alley like a throat, ungainly lengthened, swallowing sound and light. there is no metaphor — a city is a haunting, a haunting is anthesis. the self learns a sort of desensitized disinterest, paralyzed by the banality of its own violence. through the space between two walls, through the black blur of darkness, light cuts sharply enough to frame a man. @curseat stands, lonely, and stares at the emptiness of stretched fingers, a hand left hanging.

( i am no disembodied narrator. if i enter the scene, then know this: death comes when it is called. )

the moon, immaculately round, docile and pale, sits apart from the space where shadow lingers. it washes its hands of the scene, it lacks the stomach for such businesses. the alley is an artery now, it leads into the heart of a dark thing: the chthonic monster of a man's anger. & anger, as if alive, shudders, & begs to be known by its name: despair. a question — is a boy made man because of anger or is he angry because he is a man still wandering through the lonely rooms of lost boyhood ? the incessant labour of eating and being eaten demands a stomach that lacks the daintiness of figures of speech. the man steps over the allegoric dead body of the self and stares through the eyes of a newborn beast. sometimes, perhaps, anger is a chrysalis.

Here he is, standing at the doorway looking the very definition of disgruntled and pitiful. Every inch of him is soaked through. Dark hair matted to his scalp, clothes completely plastered to skin, ears flattened backwards, and tail all but drooping and thinned. Even his shoes sound waterlogged as he enters further.