Prologue
Spite spread in the darkness. A pernicious desire, that finally is rewarded with bittersweet satisfaction. The air were stuffy and imbued with the salty scent of dry tears and sweat- and first time in his life he could breath free, he sucked the beautiful fragrance of revenge in his lungs . The dark blood smeared into the eclipse and the sfumato border between them disappeared. His eyes glittered as his look glanced fleetingly at the ruby-red tincture, that flew trough the night; he could feel the metallic-sweet taste on his tongue.
One can't describe what joy a killer feels while torturing his victim. One can't describe the mortal agony a victim feels while it's threatened.
The ones dream is the others nightmare.
"Let the air with joy be laden, Rend with songs the air above." The softly singing voice echoed between the gray, cold walls of the little prison-cell. The melody were arrested in this small, barred concrete-room, just as its owner- but it sounded nevertheless boisterously.
He knelt on the floor, concentrated and stooped forwards. His red hair hopped as he moved his head softly to the rhythms of Gilbert and Sullivan. His foot tapped on the ground.
"For the union of a maiden with the man, who owns her love!"
Carefully he cut off the corners of the polaroids lying on the ground in front of him. It hadn't been too difficult to get them into the prison under the eyes of Springfields incompetent police. Nor it had been with the carpet-knife, with which he bought every photo into the shape he wanted it to be.
One could form the world according to ones wishes just with the use of a sharp blade; one only needed to know how to proceed.
Every picture fitted into one great work, like the little parts of a puzzle. Every picture, complete in itself, made up a whole with the others, to a bigger, absolute one. Gently the prisoner leaded the tip of the knife to his finger and stabbed it into the skin. A blood-drop sprang out of the cut. Pride and almost tender he looked down to his creation. It was a piece of art.
The impression of the collage was overwhelming, even for those people, who had no homicidal mind. Snapshots of a ten-year-old boy living his life jauntily, laughing, skating, playing, put together to the scenario of his death.
The red shirts set very good- and much- blood. On his slashed belly, his forehead, his hands; everywhere on his yellow skin. It was a horrific sight. But for one special person it was a ardent dream : Just to taste the adequate flavor of revenge. With his bleeding finger he wrote his initial on the edge of the most outwardly photo:
SSB
"Never mind the why and wherefore, love can level ranks and therefore.."
"Yeah, and desire punishes me"
"He's evil! Diabolic! Villainous!" Mrs. Krabappel shouted indignant, while she shook Bart at the collar. The boy looked bored. What he had to fear?
"this time you went too far, Simpson!" (like always) Principal Skinner bawled out- the point when he lost he lost his contenance were strained long ago. "You can count yourself lucky, that Superintendant Cha-" He stumbled as the telephone rung. Barely as he lifted the reciever , a loud vice roared out of the earpiece and Seymour winced hefty: "SKINNER!"
Chalmers shouted a while at him; rarely the principal tried to interrupt him and explain, but he ended up stuttering and abashed. He seemed totally harassed when he finally hung up. He leaned his hands onto the tabletop and looked down on it weak and stressed.
"Not your lucky day, isn't it, Seymour?"
The principals eyes glowed angrily as he looked up to the cheeky boy. "You can't allow yourself everything." Mr. Skinner snarled threatening. Bart teared hisself away from the hold of his teacher.
"You confuse me with you." the boy answered rebellious, but without much eloquence. His opposite jumped up the chair and leaned over the desk. Bart got closer to the head teacher and stood firm his devastating look. Worse:
He replied to.
Seymour shuddered. Than he stood erected. "You're totally right, Edna. This boy is the devils right hand." While he spoke calm again and obviously got his composure he went up and down through the office. "And there's nothing you can do." Bart made unmoved the point, that no punishment could ever change him. "You don't do yourself a favor in never learning it, boy." The principal tried to appeal to Barts reason- but there where no. The boy shrugged. "However. But most important to me is that I don't do you a favor." he grinned and seemed very clever to hisself . "Believe me, someday you'll pay for your rash lifestyle." Skinner predicted . "Okay. That's all? So than I'll go and wait 'til desire punishes me." Bart said and turned to go. "No! Not so fast!" The principal called him back. "You'll stay, even if it's pointless! School never stopped at meaningless and futile punishments!"
Prisoner 24601 licked his finger- it left a slight taste of his own blood on his tongue-and turned over a page of the "New Yorker book-mirror".
"Them cold prison bars keep us apart, but they ain't no colder than your cheatin' heart." The singing voice- if one could call it so generally- where deep and rough and totally out of rhythm. If one could call it rhythm. Such "songs" confirmed just the cliché of stupid and violent prisoners without any knowledge of the elevated things of life. Bob closed his eyes briefly and shuddered before he consulted his fellow prisoner.
"I don't want to bother you, Snake, but-"
he started politely , but got interrupted. "You sung ya Gilbert O' Sullivan thing. Now it's my turn!" snake said harshly. He lay on the bed below. The upper bed belonged to bob, because he'd been there before; he were the only one, who didn't change the cell, when the prison-administration had the glorious idea that it wasn't healthy that the whole Terwilliger-family shared one cell. "On the one hand ," Bob filed vehemently his objection. This needed to be said, such a remark couldn't left unreplied."it was Gilbert and Sullivan, not Gilbert O' Sullivan. They stand in no relation to each other and are worlds apart in every respect of niveau and claim. And on the other hand," he continued with a smooth, friendly vice, "I didn't want to critic your "musical performance", but ask you for a little... favor, when you get released."
"One can't create "Holiday on ICE" in the assembly hall with water and air conditioner"
"One can't create "Holiday on ICE" in the assembly hall with water and air conditioner"
"One can't create "Holiday on ICE" in the assembly hall with water and air conditioner"
"One can't create "Holiday on ICE" in the assembly hall with water and air conditioner"
Barts fingers hurt when he wrote the sentence already thirty times. Chalk stuck at his hand and his lungs stung from dust. It were so... stupid. The boys shoulder got stiff in a more than unpleasant way. He got angry. The rage clenched boiling hot inside him, piled up. Every punishment would take revenge. Bart didn't want to put up with it- if he stopped doing the things they don't wanted him to do, they would win; would brake him and make an adjusted, soulless zombie out of him. So every try to reform him, spurred him on more to handle against their will.
The school-bell rang shrill and releasing. "Juhuuuu!" Bart cheered out loudly, dropped the piece of chalk, turned around and rushed out of the class. No sooner he reached the floor he jumped on his skateboard and raced through the corridor, between the lines of classrooms and lockers. He felt the rush of the air caused by his high speed. Bart knew this route like the back of his hand; to him it seemed like a daily dejavu, like he'd done this route in 20 years, but he were just for one year in the 4th grade (next year he would sure spend a second there...)
Though the school-door, downstairs the entrance-steps. The rollers of his board jerked across the steps, the vibration went through his whole body.
Than up the street, swinging around the street lamp, past the bookstore, paying attention, that he drove near enough to Mrs. Lovejoy, making her get out of the way, past Moes bar, rounding Apu, Moe and Barney, down the street, Disco Stu the right, crazy cat women left, old Texan shooting in the air, than Chief Wiggum at the corner of the crossroad and crossing the stree-
Then he felt the sudden pain. It reached his brain even before the synopsis could connect it with what happened. The hurt exploded in his hip, spread through every vessel and fiber of his body like a cold, white flash burned in his nerves like a incessantly seeming blue fire. It bought the agony deviously , deadening and at the same time permanent and deep hurting. Spendidly pints danced in front of his eyes taking his sight away.
Just the pedestrians were able to see what happened to the boy, while his senses were capt in the overwhelming pain. A red, tuned Ferarri didn't stop when Bart crossed the street. On the contrary it accelerated as it caught the skateboarder. The bumper crashed the boy in full speed. As he got hurled up into the air, the car drove ahead. Bart felt down behind the rushing racer. He landed muffled on the hard asphalt. Like in a bad mainstream-comedy-series one wheel of his board rolled lonely down the sidewalk.
Bart lay on his back, his shirt were dusty and teared apart, because the cloth hadn't been able to stand up the burden of the crash- also his bones couldn't. The right leg and arm were sprained in a strange way the muscles weren't obviously not made for. The boys eyes were open and stared to the sky. There was a weak and paindull expression in the widened look. Blood ran as a little, thick thread from the corner of his mouth. His foot and one of his fingers flinched slight.
Slowly but surely a crowd gathered around the bend body of the boy. Someone laughed somewhere, but the gloating "Haha!" died down with the cognition that is was serious this time.
And while the passersby argued about what to do next
(who were a first-aid attendant and the very exciting story of how he became, which doctor should be called- someone notices Dr. Nick in the mass and asks him what to do on what he responded with the question why the man is asking him that and not a doctor instead...- or if the boy were still alive generally, what got proofed with the puff of a stick in Barts side on which he reacted with a tortured groaning)
Bart got flooded away from a wave of dark pain which numbed his consciousness and he sank in a deep cold sea of loneliness with the hurt as his only company.
Lisa sat on one of the orange chairs in the kitchen. She had her legs pulled to her body and held her saxophone near to her chest. She knew neither why this calmed her down nor why she needed the calming. Inside her were a strange feeling, a dark, deep emptiness, which could have made her cry without even knowing the reason.
Lisas eyes got wet and she felt a little helpless in having no clue what was making her feel this way. And the hurting hole in her soul also spoke out of her music. Her fingers slid over the buttons; the metal were cool, but not in a unpleasant way- but the cold, which froze her crawling from inner and covered her heart with crystallic hoarfrost, had exactly this characteristic.
The melody were sad and restrained,- also silent, but this was only out of consideration for her mother, who cooked nearly. The playing cleaned Lisas soul, that had been the reason, why she had begun playing years ago. Every breath, full of sorrow, pain and sadness got taken away from the load of her heart and mainly her mind (because who thinks much occupies hiself with more heavy problems) and became something, that expressed what words weren't able to say, that made it possible for others to understand what's within you and your thoughts and could move others.
But expressing it could never fill the emptiness...
Lisa realized slight, that the telephone rung. She lifted her head and feared the moment when Marge would answer the phone.
But she did. Of course.
A shudder went trough Lisas body as the features of her mother derailed about what the caller told her.
Sometimes, when siblings have a strong emotional bound, they can feel the others danger. The death cuts this ribbon, which connects them.
But a divorce arranges that they get drawn to each other.
"Mom, you can't...!" Lisa shouted desperate and unwilling while Marge pushed her gently but firmly in the Flanders house. She was panic and Lisa didn't understand why she tried to keep it secret anyway. The 8-year old girl was intelligent enough to see that something went terribly wrong and also to be tormented by not knowing the truth.
"I want to know now!" She screamed; she was sure that the whole neighborhood could hear her and that Helen lovejoy would tear her mouth about the "depraved Simpsons-children" - but right now it didn't matter to lisa. She teared herself away from Marges hands, turned and looked her angrily in the face.
"You have to tell me! I'm not as thick as Bart!"
It slipped out somehow, because Lisa were blinded by burning rage. But it blew over immediately. Marge stared at her stunned. Lisa pressed the hands on her mouth, but she couldn't take the words back. She felt the print of five fingers on her cheek.
Not until now she realized, that her mother had smacked her on the ear. She got it lately, because Marge never hit her before. And now the cognition of what must have happened came over her, like someone spilled ice-cold water in her face. Her throat felt constricted.
"Mom..."
Lisas voice were silent and she...just couldn't believe it. Bart...nothing ever happened to him, nothing serious, because...because he was Bart. Marges eyes filled with tears and she turned her head, because she didn't want Lisa to see her that weak now, when she should give her daughter the wrong feeling, that everything would turn out good.
Ned Flanders hasn't said anything until now.
He lay his hands down on Lisas shoulders, just to make her know, that someone was there.
"Please look over my daughter." Marge begged with a tear stifled voice, while she tried to get back her shape- it didn't work nearly.
"It's the very least I can do for you." Flanders answered and there were sympathy and deep regret in his voice. Marge nod her head grateful before she went to the car.
Lisa couldn't even cry, even if it had relieved her. But yet she wasn't able to. She could just think of what Ned said again and again.,- it haunted her mind. The particular words had no deeper meaning. But he didn't use a linguistic flourish like his usual "didely"...
And for Lisa this meant a sign of indescribable terrible doom.