This is a snippet of what is a very large project that spans my writing and my art. It deals with the city of Nothing, and Vida and Marx are only two of the characters. I have a whole history for this place and the characters. From time to time I'll update with other little word vomity things dealing with Nothing. (And possibly the other four characters.)

--------

"Give or take" is what she said.

"Give or take five years, yes." Was all of what he said.

Questions, questions. She had no way of knowing if what he said was true. She stirred the coffee in front of her, thinking about how she probably looked like a raccoon with her botched, tired makeup. She fit in so well. Non-descript, tried, worn down. She matched the whole city. Except for the boy sitting across from her. He held a youth, a power. Everyone else seemed see-through and transparent to a fault.

"Five years?" She asked, still stirring the coffee with a forced indifference.

"Yep. Give or take, like I said." He held up five fingers, wiggling them a bit. She was vaguely reminded of the spirit finger stunt her high school had done at basketball games. One of their team would get on the free-throw line, and the whole mass of supporters for the home team would go silent as the grave, just waggling their fingers. They called it spirit fingers for school spirit; it remaindered her of death, with everyone so silent.

Their basketball team had won quite a fair bit, though.

"That's quite a while." She said.

"Not really, not when you're like this. It gives me plenty of time for doing anything I want to, you know." He replied happily, like a kid in a candy store. He acted like he had the children of the ages stored in his head. He was always willing to brighten someone's day. Usually just his bright, rosy skin and mischievously sparking eyes did that. Or the electric blue hair.

She wondered what she must look like right next to him. Graying skin, baggy eyes with aforementioned botched makeup. When she looked in the mirror everyday, a young woman with the haggard eyes and mouth of a dying woman looked back at her. She wondered if one day she would float away on the wind, just a husk of a person.

In the city, it was impossible to tell who was old or young or dying or normal anymore. Everyone was skin and bones. Maybe everyone was dying right now, in the streets. Maybe they'd fall where they stood, rushing to work or rushing from work or wherever else they went.

She hadn't had a real job in ages. Not one of the cubicle deals.

The boy though, he didn't belong. He was too radiant. Too alive. Too colorful in a city made of greys and blacks.

"Where are you from?" She asked suddenly, abandoning her compulsive coffee stirring. He just shrugged.

"Does it matter where we come from? Or where we are going?" He laughed, reaching across the table to touch her ring. She knew what he was suggesting. She was not going anywhere. She was stuck in this city with the man who owned her now by way of a ring and a ceremony and a silly little "I do" two years ago. Dead end to die by. She took a sip of her coffee and felt it slither down her throat.

"Where will you go then?" She said quietly, drawing her hand up to her chest and clutching it there, hiding her ring behind her other hand.

"Everywhere." He replied just as quietly, throwing his arms wide. His palms faced past her, through the glass behind her and out onto the dying street.

Power. He had so much power. He was the only living thing in this city that was almost dead.

"Five years. Give or take." She repeated almost too softly for him to hear.

"Dead for five years give or take." He said with a smile. "Dead as a doornail. Ghost, spirit, whatever you want to call it."

"Why stay here?" She asked.

"Because. This place makes me feel so alive."

His eyes sparkled with the dying light of the sunset, just a red smear on the horizon, and she turned around in her chair to face it. The buildings hid the sun now, it was too low. She wanted to give chase and find the sun, grab it. Wrestle it into her soul. She wanted that light, that youth. She wanted to feel it burn her insides.

But instead what she felt was the coffee burning her insides. The sweet pain she had wanted to feel for ages. She felt her chair tip into the window, her feet leave the ground. As she went falling through the waterfall of glass, she saw him, trying to reach out to stop her. The chair hit the window, and glass shattered. People outside yelled and screamed and moved. She came flying out onto the grey pavement, tangled in the remnants of the chair, and her new coat.

She saw the dying bloody light of the sun right before her head connected with the ground and she saw no more.

Her body laid there, a tangled mess prickled with glass and leaking a river of blood into the gutter. It matched the death of the sun. Someone yelled for an ambulance, to call 911. People panicked, a young girl started sobbing and ran to her mother, who ushered her away. People stared.

And in the middle of it all, a ghost of a blue haired boy bent over the body of a friend as he lifted up one of her lifeless hands. He pulled the ring off her finger, and let it drop into his palm. The metal was scared and red tinted now, and the diamond was missing. He bent down and kissed her forehead.

"You lived more than I did, Vida." He whispered before the wind came and carried him away.

The city died as the sun did that night.