Freak-of-Spade’s December challenge.

Theme: Character A gets kicked out because of family shit. He wanders around finding B, who wants to kill himself Character A doesn’t want this.

MUSTs
Everything that happens in the present of the story must be set outdoors.
Must use the words: archive, pancake, mandarin, butter, phantasmagoria, pounce(d) and permission.
One character must say: “It’s the floaty men, dude…they’re here to steal your soul and put it in a little star-shaped glass box…”
The story must at some point feature the re-enactment of a famous scene of a famous movie/scene from a famous movie/famous scene from a movie.

NO-WAYs
No mentions of alcohol or drugs.
Nothing can happen indoors
Not allowed to start conversations with ‘I’

I LIKE THE TWO BEGINNING SECTIONS OF THIS STORY. I HATE EVERYTHING ELSE. RATED FOR LANGUAGE. No sexy fun time, sorry.

Looking In

Friday. 10 PM. Cal’s House.

The porch groans under my feet as I press my face against the front window, scraping frost off the glass with numb fingers. Lights are off inside and I see nothing but the dim shadows of the bookshelf, the easy chair, the TV, the couch, and dad asleep upon it.

Fuck.

“Fuck.” I pace the length of my porch, running my hands through tangled brown hair, glancing toward the front door as shivers rack my body.

A note to self now, so listen up, Cal. Never – and I mean fucking never – let your father catch you stealing his money when he’s in one of his rages ever again, because there’s no way in goddamned hell that I’m going to be kicked out of my own fucking house again. If I ever get back in, that is. And if the lack of a spare key hidden under the welcome mat indicates anything, I’m not sure if that’s going to happen.

I could knock on mom’s window. Not that she’d be much help, though. Never has been. Maybe she’s the reason I’d rather not fuck a woman. It would suck to get her knocked up and be stuck with her sullen face and her drawn-out sighs like what happened with my own parents. Fuck love. Nothing keeps a man and woman together like a wailing little fag-baby. And some affairs on the side. But I’d really rather not dig into the archives of my sorry fucking life. I’d much rather get out of the stupid fucking cold instead.

In the backyard I fall to my knees in the place that once held my mom’s flowers until she let them all die away and now only weeds are somehow still growing in the fucking cold, reaching up scraggily fingers as I bend over them and try to shove open the window the basement. I push my face against the glass when it doesn’t budge, and stare at the nails protruding from the sill on the other side of the pane.

What a fucking jackass.

Apparently my secret sneak-in location wasn’t too secret after all.

Well, fuck me three times over. There’s only one place to go at this point.

--

Friday. 11 PM. Ray’s Apartment.

The sound of music greets me before I even enter the apartment building, sending vibrations through the sidewalk and up my legs, making my whole body buzz. I take a deep breath and move forward to shove the front door open, but before I can, a girl who’s flatter than a goddamned pancake steps out, her pink hair tied back in lopsided pigtails. There’s makeup smeared around her bloodshot eyes and they widen impossibly large as she stares at me for a moment and then leans over and pukes on my shoes.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

“Don’t go in there,” she croaks, leaning forward and resting her head on my shoulder.

I shove her away and move to step around her because all I want right now is to get out of the cold and borrow a pair of shoes from Ray, but she clings onto my arm, yanking on it like those kids that throw tantrums in the mall. I consider smacking her across the face but that just reminds me of being at home with dear ol’ mommy and daddy so I sigh and glare at her instead.

“It’s not like I need your fucking permission,” I growl, trying to pry her pink-painted fingernails from my pink-tinged skin. Ray and I have been best friends for years and his apartment’s always been a lot better home than my own. I guess that’s because when he hits me, I’m allowed to hit him back.

“No, like…” She shoves her hair from her eyes with her free hand, twisting the lose strands around her pigtails. “There’s this guy in there, right? Luke, okay? And he’s like going fucking nuts up there, saying how he’s going to kill himself for sure and so there were like a bunch of people trying to calm him down and then he just goes and punches Ray in the face. So Ray’s all pissed and is all ‘I’m going to fucking kill you!’ and Luke’s just like, ‘Fine. Do it!’ Like, he’s seriously going to kill himself up there, I bet. And then someone will call the cops and I just want to get the fuck out of here because I just don’t like cops, you know?”

All I really got out of that rambling bullshit was that Ray’s livid about some guy threatening to kill himself, and even if I don’t much like cops either, it seems like something I’d like to see. So I manage to get her fucking claws out of my arm and step up to the door again, but it bursts open once more, Ray appearing with some scrawny little shit with blue and bleached hair held out at arm’s length.

“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t kick your ass all the fucking way to Cancun, you son of a bitch!” he’s screaming and cussing, spitting at the blue-and-white guy, who I’m guessing is Luke because he does look like a sullen little suicidal fuck, really. There’s blood covering the two of them, splattering into the sidewalk to mingle with Pigtail’s puke and I can’t tell who it’s coming from till Ray snorts and red liquid explodes from his nostrils and Luke holds up his arms, revealing red lines oozing blood. Ding ding ding we have two winners, folks.

“Do it! Come on, you ugly piece of fucking shit! Come on. Hit me, you candy ass. Fucking hit—”

And Ray fucking hits him.

It might be kind of wrong of me, but I can’t stop laughing and Pigtails seems to be unable to stop bawling and mumbling about cops while her eyes look ready to burst from her head and Luke hits the ground and stays there, groaning as he writhes in the blood and vomit. Ray suddenly becomes aware of me standing there cackling and wraps his arms around me in a hug.

“How you been, man?”

I shrug against him and pull away. “You know. The usual. My dad caught me stealing his money and kicked me out and all that.”

And then it’s his turn to laugh as he hits me in the arm a few times and I hit him back a few more times than he hit me. “Man, that’s fucking great. What were you stealing his cash for? I could’ve spotted you.”

“It was for a hooker. Or maybe it’s just none of your goddamned business.” And it really isn’t, so I hit him a few more times just for good measure.

Fucking nosy jackass.

“Hey, you’re welcome to stay here. I’m going to go upstairs and clean myself up a bit and see if anyone’s killed each other up there. Wanna come up?”

“What about him?” I point to Luke as he whimpers and tries to sit up, but gives up and lies back down, rubbing at his head with shaking, bloody hands.

“Who the fuck cares about him? I don’t even know who he is. Some bitch brought him in and he just started to go crazy. Leave him out here and come inside.” He grabs my hand and Pigtails’ claw, but I pull away because even if it was pretty fucking hilarious watching him get hit, I feel kind of bad for Luke. Plus if he’s going to kill himself, I kind of want to be there to see it because I’ve never seen anyone kill themselves before, except for in movies and TV shows and this one guy on this website who shot his brains out at a cop station.

“Just go on in and I’ll be inside later,” I dismiss my best friend and the weird bitch with him and he shrugs and nods and leaves me alone in the cold and blood and the puke as Luke finally manages to turn over onto his stomach and shove himself up on hands and knees that shake and shiver from cold and exertion.

He glares at me from between his arms, his head hanging low. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

I just give this lazy shrug and try not to smirk. “Just your arms. That’s really nice, man. I hear it’s all the rage among preteen girls who were just dumped and listen to My Chemical Romance to drown their pain. Really nice.”

And he’s suddenly up on his feet, screaming as he lunges at me, little bony hands around my throat. I knee him in the balls and watch him go down again. This is fucking stupid.

“Knock it the fuck off, you crazy piece of shit,” I coolly order, trying to pretend that some psychopathic motherfucker just tried to kill me. “You got a death wish or something?” Oh, wait.

“Yeah! You got a problem with that?”

“Nah,” I shake my head and my feet at the same time, trying to get the puke off the latter. “Just a little annoyed at the melodramatics. Everyone upstairs is too. Nothing says party pooper like someone trying to off themselves during one…”

He sneers at me from behind his hair, raking some blue bangs over his narrowed eyes. “What the fuck do you know? Huh?”

What the fuck do I know?

“For one, I know that you should stop begging for attention and get to your house to take care of matters there. I’ll even walk with you. Come on. Let’s go. And I can help you tie the rope to the rafters or pour you a glass of bleach, because I’m just that fucking nice. Now let’s get going.”

I take him by the hand, looping my fingers with his that are sticky and clammy and feel fucking disgusting like he’s never washed the damned things. But whatever. I guess he’s cute except for the whole I’m-going-to-kill-myself thing. And except for choking me. I can be into that on some days, but not the day that I got kicked out of my house.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he growls after we take a few steps, but he doesn’t try to argue with me about helping him kill himself. Not that I’d actually do it. I’d rather not be put in jail even if it was a roof over my head and a promised hard fucking.

But neither sounds too bad right now.

--

Friday. 11:45 PM. Streets and sidewalks.

We walk silently for awhile, him wading through the gutter where old snow, cigarette butts, and the shed skin of a mandarin orange lie dormant, while I balance on the curb, wobbling precariously from time to time when the wind picks up.

“My name’s Cal,” I announce after a long moment and he glares up at me. I can’t help thinking that he doesn’t give a shit. Well, that’s fine. I don’t give a shit if he doesn’t give a shit so I just roll my eyes and look away.

“Luke,” he announces after a moment and I nod before falling into silence.

Once we’ve been walking for awhile, I realize we’ve only been going in goddamned circles. I didn’t’ decide to follow him around, freezing my fucking ass off when I could be hanging out with Ray just to have Luke take me for a goddamned walk.

“Are you going to do it or aren’t you?” I finally demand and he shrugs, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

“It’s not any of your business, asshole,” he growls. “And if you…” He trails off as the sound of a car approaches, its body rattling as it shudders down the road, headlights illuminating us so it looks like he’s glowing like some fucking Christmas tree angel. He crouches down suddenly, looking like a cat ready to pounce and it’s not till he’s already moving that I realize what’s going on.

That little fucker’s jumping in front of the oncoming car.

Holy shit.

I jump at him, knocking him into the asphalt as the car rolls by, bass music booming and the window rolling down so the passenger can scream, “Watch it the fuck out, you crazy-ass motherfuckers!” and then continues on into the night, leaving us in silence once more.

“Seriously, they’ve got it all wrong. You’re the crazy motherfucker and not me,” I mumble after a moment, standing up and brushing gravel off my clothes. “Not me.”

“You stupid piece of shit,” he hisses, getting up with me, picking tiny stones from the drying blood on his arms as he glares at me from beneath lowered eyebrows. “Why the fuck did you stop me?”

Good question.

Why the fuck did I stop him?

“Dunno. Guess I just forgot that you’re trying to off yourself.” I shrug my shoulders and trudge back the sidewalk, my hands shaking. I hide them in the front pocket of my sweatshirt and clear my throat a few times, waiting for him to come back to his track in the gutter and continue leading me along the streets. “So why are you doing it?”

“It’s not something that you’d understand.” He glances over at me, shaking his hair from his eyes and reaching up to scratch at one of his eyebrows. “Are you going to keep following me?” I nod my head. “Can I trust you?”

Who knows?

“Yeah, probably.”

Without another word, he nods and quickens his steps and it’s too late now to stop following him, I guess.

--

Saturday. 1 AM. House.

Luke stops walking in front of this beat up house made of red brick and a shattered bay-window. He turns to me, running his tongue over his lips.

“Stay out here, okay? I’ll be back in a couple of seconds.”

I stand and pace on the sidewalk, watching him disappear around the back of the house while the front door opens and a boy wearing dinosaur pajamas and who looks and sounds prepubescent slips out, singing. His eyes land on me and he smiles a Cheshire grin.

“Do you want to play?” he asks me, lifting a paddle ball with no ball attached to the unraveling string.

“What’re the rules?” I ask skeptically, raising an eyebrow and crossing my arms over my chest. I hate kids. So do my parents. Knowing me, I’ll be as lucky as they were in that department.

“It’s easy. I hit you and you have to hold back your screams so the cops don’t come over again. I play it all the time with my sister’s boyfriend, and I mostly always win except for this one time…” He grins again and does something between a laugh and a sob and I clench my teeth, swallow hard, and hope he goes the hell away.

A car rolls by, the windows down and blaring techno bullshit. The kid is suddenly at my side when I turn back toward him. He’s got one of my hands in both of his, the paddle at our feet.

“It’s the floaty men, dude… T-they’re here to steal your soul and…put it in a…little star-shaped glass box…” He speaks frantically, spindly fingers scrabbling farther up my arm as tears come to his blank eyes as if he’s stuck in some secret, whacked-the-fuck-out phantasmagoria.

Oh, God. If Luke doesn’t appear any time now, I’ll kill myself.

“You need to help me,” he hisses. “They’ll take my soul too. I don’t want them to take it away.”

“Uh… Well. You’ll be okay. Good luck with that,” I offer, just wanting to get the fucking thing off me and he does smile – a good sign – just as Luke reappears at my side, materializing out of nowhere and now wearing a long sleeve shirt.

“Let’s go,” he quickly says, grabbing me by the arm and giving me a yank. I wave to the kid as his little hands leave me and join my new suicidal best friend forever…or best friend until he bites the big one, at least.

“Who was that kid?” I ask and he shrugs. I can’t help comparing the weird little shit to myself when I was his age.

Only he’s a lot more fucking crazy.

--

Saturday. 1:20 AM. Streets and sidewalks.

“So what’d we stop there for?” I ask when he veers down a side road and quickens his step.

“A necessary item,” he replies, being all fucking cryptic and whatever. I wonder what it means. Maybe he was picking up some cyanide pills…and a can of soda to wash them all down.

I sigh and tag along like a good little boy, almost glad in a twisted sort of way that my dad kicked me out. When else would I be able to follow around a suicidal maniac?

Probably never.

So we keep walking for awhile, hitting downtown where cars are still parked and the Christmas lights make our skin gleam.

“Where the fuck are we going?” I demand finally, my feet and legs aching and my mouth dry like I’ve just eaten a whole tub of buttered popcorn all by myself.

He glares back at me, not answering for the longest time until we get to a road between the downtown lights and the lights along the river. “Why were stealing money from your dad?”

What a fucker.

“Why are you planning on killing yourself?”

“Didn’t I already tell you that it’s none of your fucking business? And you wouldn’t even understand anyway, stupid fucker.” He stops walking to turn around to shove me and I give him a halfhearted push back because it feels like pushing someone with terminal cancer or AIDS. Well. I bet it feels a lot better, actually. I sigh.

“How about if you tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing, I’ll tell you why I was stealing the money?”

For a moment we just stand there in the dimness in the middle of the street where porch lights can’t quite reach us. He sucks in air through his teeth, blows it all out, and then spits next to my puke-covered feet. “Fine. I guess. Come here. This is where I want to do it.”

He takes me by the hand, his scabbed and crusted with blood and I sigh once more as I curl my fingers around his.

--

Saturday. 2 AM. River Walk Pier.

Luke takes a seat at one of the benches at the end of the pier, pulling his sleeves down around his hands and hunching over his lap. He looks so glum and fucking forlorn that all I can think of is that stupid song from that old Willy Wonka movie I used to watch with mom and dad before we realized that we didn’t really like each other all that much.

I lean against the railing of the pier, tilt backwards, and open my mouth to sing, “You get blue like everyone, but me and Grandpa Joe can make your troubles go away! Blow away! There they go... Cheer up, Charlie. Give me a smile. What happened to that smile I used to know? Don’t you know your grin has always been my sunshine? Let that sunshine show… Come on, Charlie. No need to frown. Deep down you know the world is still your toy. When the world gets heavy, never –”

“Jesus Christ! Shut the fuck up, will you?” he growls, lifting his head to glare at me.

I close my mouth and turn around, staring out at the lights across the river. “Fine. I was done anyway.” I clear my throat and spit down into the water. “So, why’re you going to do it?”

“Because.” The clank of metal makes me turn around and I jump, seeing a gun beside him, resting on the bench. Holy fucking shit. He’s seriously going to do it? What if he tries to kill me too? Wouldn’t surprise me. He fucked up enough to do it… “Because there’s just no point in this. In any of this.” He picks up the gun to gesture around us, swinging the damned thing through the air. “Like, why should I care? School. Work. Death. That’s all it is. There’s just no point.”

One of my eyebrows creeps up into my forehead as I stare at him. “Yeah, well that’s life, man. I’m not too thrilled about it either.”

“At least you have friends. Or a boyfriend. Whatever the fuck that Ray guy is to you. At least that makes it better.” He looks down to his feet, rolling back one of his sleeves to dig his teeth into the marred inner skin. I turn away.

“What the fuck is this? If you’re trying to say my life’s way better, I hope you recall that I was kicked out of my house by my own dad, stupid asshole. Maybe you’d make more friends if you weren’t such an annoying, whiny little fucker.”

A cry of surprise and fear leaves my mouth when his bony little body is suddenly shoving against mine, pushing me into the railing. I grip onto it for dear life, sure as hell not wanting to die in the river. If he’s going to kill me, I’d rather he’d just shoot me…and he’s turning me around and staring at me with wild, lost eyes before smashing his lips into mine in a desperately painful – or painfully desperate? – kiss.

Jesus fucking Christ, man. This night couldn’t get any more bizarre if it tried.

He pulls away real quick before it can even start to feel good and starts pacing back and forth, his arms around his head as he mumbles beneath his breath.

“Why?” he demands suddenly while I’m frozen, scared shitless, clutching onto the rail behind me. “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” If he’s about to accuse me of kissing him or giving him the gun or raping him when he was four years old which is what fucked him the hell up, I’m just going to take the gun and get rid of him myself. Following him around was a bad idea. I should’ve just stayed at Ray’s.

He stops walking and lowers his arms. “The money. Why’d you steal the money?”

Oh, right. The old man’s hard-earned cash because he’s a goddamned hardworking American dad, damn it, and it’s not my fucking money since I’m a useless piece of shit.

Dad’s words. Not mine.

“It's just... I was going to run away,” I confess. “Get the fuck out of here. School. Work. Death. That’s all that’s here for me.” I can’t help smirking at him a little and a smile twitches on his own lips too before he walks toward me and kisses me again, gentle this time, the gun at my back making me shiver against him as he delicately tastes the inside of my mouth.

There’s a splash behind us and I pull away to look at his hands, empty and at my waist, the gun being swept up by the undercurrents and being taken down to the bay.

--

Saturday. 3:30 AM. Bus Station.

Luke rubs at his nose with the back of his free hand as his other passes money to the stupid looking bitch behind the counter. She eyes the blood smeared on his face, caked on his fingers, and slowly slides two tickets toward him as if she’s waiting for him to attack.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “He only hurts himself.”

I snicker as Luke grabs me by the hand and gives it a yank. “You need to learn when to shut the fuck up, you piece of shit,” he growls and I smirk.

Together we find a spot to sit, our eyes fixed on the clock across the room.

“Did you hear about that guy in Canada awhile ago? Got his head chopped off by this crazy fuck on a bus?” I ask and he shakes his head, grimacing, suddenly turned off at the thought of death. Good. He’s the one with the money. Him jumping out of a moving bus would be shit at this point.

“Hey, our bus is here,” he announces, standing up and waiting for me to pull myself up beside him before walking over to the rumbling vehicle with my hand in his once more.

On the short set of steps we both pause. I meet his eyes, take a deep breath, and take a step inside.

--

Saturday. 4 AM. End.