Got the idea from listening to Paint it Black on my Twisted Metal Black game. Sweet game. Creepy, but sweet.

Ebon said one word in the whole series that made me think twice about him. And it made me come up with something a little like this. …based off my very morbid friend who refuses to get his phone fixed—though he was such a hateful little bastard that I'm pretty sure he wouldn't care if he never talked to me or not anyways—and writes some pretty disturbing things. I copied them down and I'm tempted to put them somewhere for all eyes to see. Then, he can kill me. Because that's who he is. The song Paint it Black really suits him.

XXX

Paint it Black

XXX

Shiv thought it strange sometimes, why many Bang Babies ended up with powers so suitable for them. He'd looked around at a few, and concluded that it made perfect sense for Hotstreak to have been given the ability to create and manipulate fire. It didn't surprise him at all that Talon gained feathers and the ability to fly—she always enjoyed flying. He even thought of himself, with his powers, what he was capable of doing. He thought it couldn't have been more perfect. He could make anything he wanted with his own two hands, like shivs, which was where he got his name. He always had a fancy for knives. But when it came to Ebon, at first, Shiv was confused at the mutation, and then, he started to remember just how dark the man was, even as a human.

Ebon had always been kind of…morbid. Shiv couldn't think of much more to call him. He was always dressed in dark clothes, always appearing with a sinister glare, always seemingly uncaring of anything life had to offer. He lived his life in the shadows, rarely talking to anyone. When it came to Shiv he had no choice but to respond sometimes.

Shiv always thought of himself as the "annoying best friend" though it would be considered lying if he said he was the best friend, or even just friend of Ebon, ever. The other man just had no control enough to push him away. You could say that through the years they had known each other, Ebon held more of an animosity for Shiv than anything. But Shiv always seemed to ignore his hatred towards him. He was the only one to. Shiv didn't like it, that Ebon was so hateful towards society. He never saw him talk nicely to or about anyone. He'd always stand to the sides or in a corner, like some gothic outcast. Well, Shiv guess that would be the word to use for him. The man was pretty…Goth. Not like he wore eyeliner or spikes or died his hair—well except for that one time—but he did listen to some pretty disturbing music and wrote even more disturbing words down on paper. Shiv guessed he was the only one who ever read them, but he could tell, Ebon, or Ivan back then, was one lost soul.

He didn't know the case for the other man's depression streaks in their teen years. There was really nothing for him to be so. He had a family, with two parents and his younger brother. He had a life. He would have had friends if he ever bothered to make any. Shiv was just a random person in his life, who popped up out of nowhere and continuously hung around Ebon. His vivacity was enough to drive the other crazy, but Shiv seemed to be the least of his problems, even if he would randomly show up at his house, randomly decide to stay for dinner, randomly become the only friend he really had—aside from that closet case of a wannabe gangster. Shiv was the only one that stuck around to hear what Ivan had to say, and it usually wasn't much, just how life was Hell and there was really nothing anybody could do to live in it happily, and how they would all die from the super massive black hole within the galaxy. Ivan always described his life ending in a black hole, into oblivion. He seemed to like to talk a lot about that place. Oblivion. Shiv no longer knew what it was. Just that it was a place Ebon was obsessed over.

And when his parents died first one, and then a year later the other, when they were killed, Ivan's mind got even darker. He thought of nothing but black. His whole world revolved around that one single color. Shiv would see him on the streets, dressed in his blackest, eyes cast down and hate filled. He'd read what he wrote and threw away and would worry. Would something bad come of this? Or would something far worse? Ivan became a work of unfathomable presences. And over the years, he seemed to sink into his own mind, letting the world take his body and do what it wanted. He no longer cared.

Ebon was dark. He had a dark mind and a dark way of thinking. He lived his life in shadows and secrets, black holes and oblivion. And that's when Shiv made the marvelous conclusion that the powers Ebon were given, fitted his very soul. And he'd watch, as Ebon would disappear into the shadows, disappear into the darkness and become what he had always lived in. It worried Shiv. It worried him back then, and it worried him still today. But he couldn't do anything. He could only watch. He could only stick around and make sure nothing horrid came of Ebon's behavior. Nothing bloody or poisonous, like the suicides he'd write on paper. After all, in the end, darkness always overcame light. It was what the world was going to face in the end, and Shiv, to be quite honest, was scared out of his wits.

"Shiv!" Shiv winced as he heard his name being called from Ebon.

"Yeah Boss?" He had always called him that, even when he wasn't his boss. "What'd I do now?" He slumped over to where Ebon was, the other man having his arms crossed and staring at nothing but a tabletop. "What do you want?"

"You been digging around again?" His back was heavy and his eyes an infernal.

"Digging around what?" Shiv asked, slightly annoyed, more over the fact that Ebon's emotional conflicts were butting in with his life.

"My stuff." He slammed a torn piece of paper on the table, and Shiv's eyes slightly widened.

"What?"

"I don't want you doing it anymore."

Shiv looked at him cautiously before picking up the paper he had taken from a notebook earlier that week; sure that Ebon didn't know where it had gone to, sure that he had gotten away with it. Apparently, he hadn't. He read it, like he'd read it hundreds of times before. It was so wrong. The note was so horrid, so bloody that Shiv couldn't imagine anymore how Ebon's mind worked. What was he thinking all the time, to come up with this kind of depressing thing? What did he do? "Ebon? Do you know what they do to people who, who write this kind of thing?" Shiv really had no reason to actually hate what Ebon wrote, but he'd seen first hand what happened to people who did write these things down. So horrible…

"Yeah I know. And I'm sick of people telling me I'm a fucking suicide case. Cuz I'm not. People were always thinking that I was gonna slit my wrists or something after my dad died." Slit my wrists. That was one of the lines in the note. One of many depressing lines.

"Boss I…" He was cut off by Ebon slamming a fist to the table top.

"I don't want you doing it again! Bad enough I got Talon on my back, I don't need you…or anyone else."

"Dude!" Before Shiv could say anything else, Ebon had sunk into the floor, going to some unknown place. Shiv worried. Even though Ebon said he would never think of it many times before, he still worried. Ebon may not have been his friend but, he was his. And it was his job to worry. His job to make sure his boss didn't go and do something stupid. If it was considered stupid anymore. Ebon wrote some pretty deathly sounding things, some pretty morbid things, but as far as Shiv had seen, Ebon never did anything written in those letters and notes. He lived his life. Shiv sighed. It was one of the few times, he didn't feel like smiling. If anything, he felt like crying, but he only looked regretfully at where Ebon had stood and then walked away. Ebon told him to but out, but he couldn't help himself taking another peek one more time.

XXX

Don't like Ebon being a gothic-minded Dustin Hoffmaster—my morbid friend—case? Then why did you read it?

Now, did that make sense?

Am I bitch? Yes I am.

If you did like it--highly doubt that--then please, let me know.