a boy who ate a flower.

Neon lights blurred across his vision like paint streaks across glass, smearing vibrant orbs of color over his retinas as he darted from alleyway to alleyway. Joshua loved this city as he loved all cities, and the city loved him back, and it was eager to unwind itself to grant him another spot to hide in, another dark puddle to step in. The streets all hummed with the distant echoes of voices, criss-crossing over one another and leading back up into the breathing belly of the urban landscape. 

Joshua wore his black sweatshirt. He wore it over his black jeans, which fit like a second layer of rough canvas skin. Silhouetted in the soft angelic glow of the flickering streetlights, he was shadow-sharp, with bones sticking out at angles beneath his clothing. His compact chest expanded, contracted with the cadence of his breath. None of the washed-up wannabe-stars slumped against walls of crumbling buildings noticed him flit by, or, if they did, none of them were lucid enough to give a damn. Joshua was ever grateful that the city turned its blindest eyes to these back streets; it permitted him to move about with all the grace of a stray cat waltzing with his prey.

The boy with the spiky orange hair didn’t have a name. Or, at least, not a name that Joshua knew. As of that moment, Joshua knew only two things about the boy: that he had something vicious, something terrible rippling beneath his calm demeanor, and that, because of this, his death sentence had signed itself the moment Joshua laid eyes on him.

The few shots Joshua had consumed earlier still buzzed inside of him, or perhaps it was more like an ache, begging for him to stop, go home, let this one slip away. But the other, bigger ache far overpowered the nagging voice that prompted him to give up. This ache was the insatiable desire to seek out and play with a new target, something he hadn’t had the chance to do since classes had started up again a few months ago. Akin to an addiction, it was a craving that Joshua had managed to stave off for awhile. But now it had returned full hurricane force, clawing at the door to his thoughts and begging him to satisfy the hunger before he went mad with it. 

Like a sort of secret codename, Joshua had lovingly dubbed his target “Blue” in reference to the sleek metal baseball bat the boy’s knuckles had gone white with carrying. Half an hour later and he was still no closer to pinning him—Blue had only led him deeper into the labyrinthine depths of Los Angeles. He was a tough one to track, kept glancing over his shoulder at the slightest sigh of the wind. Even with a curtain of fog to obscure his presence, Joshua had had to take great care in concealing himself from the boy’s keen eyes. 

Blue finally paused in front of an inconspicuous door nestled in a row of others just like it. Devoid of even the quiet phantoms who drift from place to place, sleeping wherever their heads could find rest, the street had the deserted smell of a ghost town. Something in Joshua’s blood whispered that he was closing in on the end. He leaned against a mossy brick wall and peered around the corner. His fingers curled around his phone, itching to acquire some evidence. 

There always had to be evidence. 

Blue held up a fist as if to knock, then let it fall to his side. He took a moment to breathe and then, with his jaw held fast, he pounded on the door. Before anyone had the chance to answer, the boy ducked into the dark comfort of a nearby shadow. He waited. 

A gruff, unshaven man with hair that stuck up in wild directions opened the door. He was wearing only a bathrobe, and when he blinked, his eyelids were out of sync. He moved with all the elegance of someone completely intoxicated.

“Who’s there,” he spat. His bloodshot eyes swept the area. The only answer came from a dead leaf scratching its way across the asphalt. “You stupid kids an’ your pranks ain’t gettin’ the best of me tonight!” the man shouted. Joshua watched the shadows yawn and stretch their long alien arms as Blue took slow steps out from his hiding place. He had the bat raised liked he was expecting a pitch. 

“Fucking pricks,” the man muttered to himself.

And that was when Blue pounced, with all of his teeth and rage bared. He swung the bat with an inhuman ferocity before the man had time to react. The loud thud it made frightened away a pair of crows that had been scavenging in a dumpster a few feet away, and Joshua himself almost jumped at the sound. When the boy had fully revealed himself, the man’s face went pale with recognition. Joshua tilted his phone so that the camera could capture the action, but he kept it tucked inside his sweatshirt pocket to ensure the glare of the LED screen would attract no attention. He observed the scene with all the detached amusement one might usually reserve for watching daytime television: as though viewing this violence through layers of static and glass.

His thumb hit the RECORD button in time for the second swing. 

“You!” the man yelled hoarsely. He charged at Blue, but the boy was a bullet. Blue leapt out of the way and stepped behind, bringing the bat back down for another hit. Mentally, Joshua applauded the boy’s dedication. His inexperience betrayed itself in the subtle shake of his hands, but even from this distance Joshua saw no hesitation cross the boy’s face. Blue had come here with violence burning in his arteries, and violence was what he was going to get.  

“You… hurt Shiki,” he panted, wiping a thread of saliva from his lips.

Blood trickled into the man’s eyes. He fell to his knees and held up his hands in surrender. 

“Hey, buddy, lay off!” he protested. “I dunno what you think I did, but it don’t matter anyway ‘cause I didn’t do nothin’!” 

Blue gritted his teeth. He readjusted his grip on the handle of the bat. “Oh, yeah?” he asked. He sounded calm then, but it was the uneasy sort of calm that sizzled with the electricity of a coming thunderstorm. 

“Man—I swear, if I ever hurt her, it was an accident!”

“Whatever. You can keep your excuses.” 

The boy shouldered his bat like a cross. He looked far from satisfied, but it seemed as though he was going to walk away.  

Disappointing… Joshua thought to himself. Over before we even got to the good stuff. It was one of his cardinal rules: never take the life of someone who had never taken the life of someone else, but the boy’s lust for bloodshed had clearly waned, and the night was waning with it. 

Blue turned around and began to walk back the way he came, back toward where Joshua had concealed himself. As the footsteps grew closer, Joshua plastered himself against the wall and pulled his hood over his eyes, blending into the scenery. He bit his lip to choke down his irritation. 

Behind Blue, the man was pushing himself to his feet and dusting himself off. He laughed. It sounded like sandpaper rubbing against itself. 

“Bitch had it coming,” he slurred. 

Then Blue stopped. He was a handful of feet away from Joshua, close enough that Joshua could see the erratic muscle twitches of a decision making itself. Without warning, Blue turned and sprinted back down the street, and he slammed the bat into the man’s kneecaps, and then into his head, and the man cried out over and over again but there was no one aside from Joshua awake or sober enough to hear it. 

Joshua Kiryu had killed many people in his lifetime. That much was true. But the immediate transformation from living into not always made his bones prickle with the sudden desperate realization of his own mortality. 

Lives ended so quickly, and with none of the fluttering eyelashes or stuttered last declarations of love like in the movies. 

When it was over, the boy stood still for a moment before kneeling down at the man’s side. He frantically tried to shake him back to consciousness. He kept trying, kept shoving the man’s lifeless body as though that might usher the soul back in. It did not. He kept doing it anyway. 

Joshua stopped the video on his phone. He took the opportunity to move into the warm orange light pouring out of the only streetlight on the block. It was obvious this kid had no clue what to do with a body, and Joshua wasn’t about to let the police get to him first. No, he liked to get to know his work up close and personal. Even if it meant taking a few risks.

“Howdy there,” he called out. Blue recoiled and instinctively groped in the dark for his bat, which had rolled out of reach.

“Who the fuck are you?!” he said. His voice wobbled and shook, but even so it was surprisingly smooth for someone who had just killed a man. 

“Uh, your guardian angel?” Joshua tried. He took a step forward. Despite the concerned lines that formed across his forehead, Blue made no move to run. 

“My, my,” Joshua continued. “Looks like you’ve made quite the mess here. This could cause some mighty big complications with the Big Guy upstairs.” 

“Is that… a joke?” the boy asked.  

“Bravo! You’re sharper than you look.” 

Now close enough to survey the damage, Joshua circled around the boy and the body. “Hee hee, this guy sure lost his mind in the end.” Joshua pointed to the brain matter smeared across the road. The boy’s stomach caved in, and he heaved. 

“You saw it, then,” he said when he had recovered. “The whole thing.” His skin was coated in a film of cold sweat; Joshua feared he might pass out, which would be…unfortunate. 

“That I did!” Joshua responded. 

The boy eyed him warily. “Well…should I call the police or something?” 

“Call the police? But your guilt is so painfully obvious.” Joshua gestured to the blood drying brown between the creases of the boy’s palms, the now-twisted baseball bat discarded in the shape of a broken femur on the ground.

“Wh-what? You’re only saying that ‘cause you saw it happen!” But he looked away, his shame evident in every movement. 

“Listen, I’ll level with you: I’m not just here to give you a hard time,” Joshua told him. His tone was conversational, as though the subject at hand was frivolous coffee-shop talk. “Although I will admit…watching you squirm is a welcome side effect. However, I do know a thing or two about the human body.” He paused. “Most importantly, lucky for you, I know how to make it disappear. If I were you, I’d be thanking me.”

“Riiiight. Like I should trust the cryptic weirdo who just watched me ki—caught me beating someone up in a dark alleyway in the middle of the night.” 

Joshua raised an eyebrow. “Would it be less cryptic if I introduced myself?” 

Blue grimaced. “Not really…”

“Fantastic. I’m Yoshiya, Yoshiya Kiryu, but most people call me Joshua. Do you have a name?”

The boy hesitated for the beat of one breath before telling him “It’s Neku” in the same sort of tone one might use in a class when one is unsure whether an answer is correct or not, and one fears the judgement of one’s peers in the event of the latter. This greatly entertained Joshua. 

“Neku,” he repeated, getting used to how the syllables fell together across his tongue. “It’s a pleasure.” 

Neku regarded him with a silence that dripped with unspoken impatience. “Tell me again why I should trust you,” he said. 

“Because, Nekuuu,” Joshua replied in that skin-crawling voice of his, “I assumed you had no other option. But if you’ve got this under control, I can just get going.” 

He turned his back the split second before an angler-fish smile lit up his face, all full of teeth and hunger. Perhaps the one feeling more exhilarating than chasing and ambushing his prey was luring it in slowly, with sweet, sticky words, promises, advice. 

On cue, Neku let out a muffled, “Wait.” 

“Something wrong, new friend?” Joshua asked with all the innocence he could spare. He glanced over his shoulder to see a plea written across Neku’s features. Neku had his lips folded shut like he didn’t want to say it. 

“Fuck,” he said, more to himself than to Joshua. “Alright, fine, I’ll bite.”

“I’m not really into that, but thanks for the offer.”

Neku ignored the suggestive comment. “What—what am I supposed to do about…this?” He crossed his arms, set his jaw, and furrowed his brow, staring Joshua down like he was the barrel of a gun and Neku wasn’t afraid to die.

The silence that descended was foreign: a cold hand pressed against bare skin. Joshua’s fingers danced with anticipation. He felt the fresh air of just-before-dawn rush through him.