Disclaimer: I don't own Gorillaz, I just write fanfictions about them... and so on and so forth.

Author's Note: This is just a short story about Murdoc. I really wanted to explore a side of him that sometimes I'd like to think maybe, possibly exists. ...Or maybe it doesn't exist. But I think it's there, but he's really too ashamed to let people know it's there. So yes, enjoy.

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Parting

K. L. Vest

Murdoc Niccals never parted his hair.

At first glance, many thought it quite fashionable, but in fact, there was a very important reason for this: it was meant to serve as an eternal emotional shield, to hide the brow, to stave others from seeing what lay beneath the brim of black. Only his mouth served as a meter for his moods, which, to a newcomer, seemed very few; when smiling, he was probably thinking something wicked, when frowning, he was probably displeased, and when simply a line, he was probably observing. Yet even then, those who knew him best sometimes were unsure of what went through the steel trap that was Murdoc's fetid and greasy mind.

However, there was one time that Murdoc Niccals had parted his hair.

It was 1994. It was a chilled month, and the air was stiff, as though Mother Nature had snuffed out the candle of life and had left the earth to dry and crack and bleed out its remains. Indeed, not even the wind was brave enough to shake the branches of the trees. It was as though the suppleness of existence itself had been expelled from the core of the threads of the universe, and nothing at all remained in time, nor space.

Murdoc Niccals was a traveler of the road; it didn't matter at all to him where that road took him. It was a surprise to him that the news from home had found him at all, but when he had heard the news, he had brushed it off quite quickly, and had, at first, thought nothing of it. Who was he to care of this news? It was nothing at all important. But the more it persisted in his mind, and the nearer the date drew, the heavier the thought grew upon him.

Then the date arrived.

Murdoc Niccals prepared beforehand, and he felt very annoyed about it all, dressing appropriately for the occasion. He combed his hair out of his face, and dressed in an outfit that he felt did not suit him, though it fit him quite perfectly. When he arrived, he felt very detached, looking about, seeing some people he knew vaguely from his younger boyhood days and some he did not know at all; some even had faces that were similar to his, though they remained mostly in the shadows, which made him sneer coldly, though not too obviously.

It was then that Murdoc Niccals was asked to say a few words by a man with a book, and it was then that Murdoc departed from examining the crowd. A few words? Only a few? He had many words to say, in fact. Too many. Years had passed and now he was only being asked to say a few? Still, a few was enough, and this very notion had him clamoring for ideas, for wicked phrases, for awful sentences to expel out into the open air.

But then he gazed back down and he felt suddenly an unexpected clutch in his emotions—and for the first time it was apparent in his face. Yes, as he gazed downward, the cogs in his mind were turning, and he surrendered his evil intentions, and it could be seen upon his features quite clearly, as his hair had been parted away and the usual concreteness of his stare was softening to something much less intense. His eyebrows rose and crinkled his brow, upturning in what appeared to be a saddened glare—still, it was not complete remorse, but perhaps something close. Perhaps it was brought about by a reflection of bygone days, or perhaps a reflection upon what might come to pass, or a reflection of some sort of futility about the whole situation. But decidedly, something aside from malevolence was smattered across Murdoc Niccals' face for one brief and very apparent moment in 1994.

No, he decided then, trying to smear that disgraceful, emotional look from his face with disdain, he would not say any words. He would walk away then, and he would not look back over his shoulder, to the others, to what he had gazed upon, to the man with the book. He would go back to traveling his road, and he would forget that he had ever shown this emotion.

And Murdoc Niccals would try never to part his hair again.