After a moment of static, the old chestnut brown radio on the left side of the radio counter began singing as plain as day before changing to the voice of a serious-sounding newsman. A black-haired teenager in a deep purple tee sitting in a plastic chair while sipping a coffee from the equally plastic table below him turned his head to the reporter's voice. A man in a rusty brown bowler hat who had just snapped open a newspaper tilted his head to the radio.
The mass of people rushing by seemed to look to the radio as the words left it, catching everyone's attention in one way or another. As if the cities own baseball team had made a world record or a nearby hospital everyone had been to was having a grand reopening, it touched everyone in one way or another whether you were attached to the place you were or not. That was what it was to be American, no matter how different the subcultures were. "Today, November eleventh, is the one hundred and first anniversary of the death of Johnny Joestar, the transcontinental horseback racer."
A woman with long blonde hair and deep purple lipstick was sitting at a table next to the teen, a baby sitting on the seat to her right and a small fluffy dog sitting to her left. As she bit into a soft powder-covered pastry she reached to the small porcelain plate which held her coffee cup with her thumb and forefinger, slightly pushing the plate forward in surprise. The woman looked blankly at the plate for a moment, then began looking on both sides of the table and underneath. "How can I lose a spoon in three fucking seconds I sw-."
The clang of a cup and plate slamming into a counter almost disappeared in the sea of noise and chatter around them. The black-haired teenager now stood behind the girl, lightly tapping her right shoulder with the back of a spoon. "It landed more towards me, it happens sometimes." He said before sliding his hands in his pockets and walking past the gated fence, passing directly underneath the 'Cafe du monde' sign and the pale green and white striped canopy.
She eyed the spoon for a moment, seeing a purple lip stain on the bowl and sighing "five-second rule I s'pose." The woman almost said thank you as the boy walked away, mumbling lightly about how rude he was under her voice. After taking a spoonful of sugar and stirring it into her coffee for a moment she began to sip, taking a moment to play with the toddler sitting beside her. A small tugging sensation came from the leash tied to the chair, the woman giving a squinty-eyed confusion to the sight of her small dog laying directly below the table, chewing on a piece of thin shiny metal. She quickly moved her arm down to the dog, gently pulling its jaws apart and pulling up a slobber covered spoon, smeared with purple lipstick. "But...What?"
The boy let out a sigh to himself as he walked down the streets of New Orleans, having a mental map of the streets and buildings it took more than one or two coincidences to get lost for more than half an hour. The purple tee he worse shifted as he scratched a spot on his arm through his sleeve showing half of a dark birthmark on the back left of his neck with three sharp points. He let out a sharp gust of wind from his mouth, feeling the hair on his arms line up like shoulders while glancing at the window of a clothing shop. He mumbled to himself "Super breezy huh?"
The boy passed by the next corner, pulling the dark red sleeves of his jacket over his wrists, the same navy blue and blood-colored hoodie resting on a mannequin in the store window. A slight whistle escaped his lips, his thumb digging into the metal crosswalk button before the light above showed a green thumbs up. He didn't notice as he jabbed his arm out in an awkward manner, digging the black leather-bound elbow into the arm of a man walking adjacent to him, spilling a cup of coffee out of his hands. The man, known by his friends as Earl, stood tall and broad with a thin red plaid shirt barely hiding his brazen tattoos, white powdered sugar staining his collar as well as the mouth of his large and bushy grey beard. The man clenched his teeth tightly, almost growling to himself, before plunging his fist toward him through the air "Basta-."
A small jolt ran its way up Earl's neck and at that moment he was facing a gap in the moving group of people. Earl's fist that was barreling forward connected with nothing, looking almost as confused as the man attached. For a second he thought he was interacting with someone; the thought of anger towards whomever it was already vanished, before tossing his head from side to side and walking along with the pathway mumbling to himself below his breath. Following in suit before the confused man was the boy, sliding a hand through his black hair as he sipped from his coffee. "Who drinks hazelnut, fucking sod."
The boy in the jacket walked behind Earl for a moment longer before walking down another sidewalk, reaching into his back pocket and slinging a lanyard around his neck, positioning it with the blank plastic facing outward. A smooth red brick gate soon came up to him, the metal black gates being constantly held back by the constant onslaught of rambunctious youths entering the school. He sighed to himself, stepping to the side as a boy his height with bright red hair ran past him with his arms outstretched. He ran forward an extra two or three steps before turning on his heel "Why do you always have to be such a downer, Jojo?"
The boy referred to as 'Jojo' rubbed his right eye with the palm of his right hand, stifling a yawn "Rays hiding behind the wall to the right, to scare you I would assume."
The red-haired boy named Eddie scrunched his eyes lightly, crossing his arms over his chest "I wouldn't expect you to snitch on him after seein', not to kind of you."
Eddie Robin was tall and lean with most of his figure hidden behind a blue and green striped buttoned-up coat with an extending collar, his pants were long and black with criss-cross stitches cupping over deep blue tennis shoes. He wore sleek metal glasses that melded with the grey fabric of his cap.
Eddie scrunched his face together in that all familiar way before striding to the red-bricked wall, sliding his hand across the metal of the gate before jolting past the metal bars yelling "BOO!" A boy who they both knew as Ray slipped from his crouching position, slamming his corduroys into a large puddle of soggy mud and loose crabgrass. He cried out for a moment before lifting himself by his feet, holding his hands out and limp while groaning Eddie laughed a bit at first then breathed heavily through his nose before stopping, waiting. He thought for a moment about the words Ray seemed to be mumbling, and how they didn't seem to line up. "Ohh you ass! I waited ten minutes and you just wrecked my whole plan, fuck I have to clean these!"
The other students of Cooper community college collectively walked past the stoogery of the three friends, even as Eddie reached his arm forward and pulled Jojo's pant leg down as he himself rose. As Jojo sat on his knee before quickly rising Ray finished wiping the last of the mud from his purple corduroys and blue and white striped vest. The three then walked the path of the school entering the main hall, a football-sized building of dried blood-colored bricks and smokey teeth yellow windows.
Ray placed his foot on the push handle of the door, pushing it forward with the heel of his boot before stepping through, the other two following suit. Jojo slid his small shoulder bag on the ground and sat down on a peeling paint covered metal chair and table near the front door, his jacket now slung over his extended knee. He was now sliding a needle and thread through the front left breast of the jacket, a patch the shape and detail of a human heart being sewn in with red thread. Eddie slung a seat below him and sat with his arms over the backrest, his shaggy red hair curling slightly in a cowlick down the center of his face.
"I haven't seen you with that jacket but today and you're already patching it up?" Eddie asked with his signature eyebrow scrunch.
Jojo sighed and slid the needle through the rough cloth as smoothly as a spider weaving silk to the point Ray thought he might run his fingernail through and get it caught in. "I like to make my things my own, cause I know someone else is wearing this same jacket," He responded calmly.
Eddie looked to Ray, last name McVreis, and found their common friend slouching with both of his legs resting on the table, his right pointer finger digging for gold as they spoke. He let out a deep breath of air and sat back in his own seat, pondering. How did he manage to become friends with such strange people: A rebel who seems to follow strangeness (and not the other way around, as it usually is) like a coyote chases a wandering human child and the oddest germaphobe who seemed to care too little of others opinions of himself. He supposed he was no better, though. He was by all means just as weird as his friends, but maybe he just didn't know it yet.
Jojo soon finished sewing the heart onto the breast of the jacket, shining a bright and slightly misaligned smile of pride as he slung it over his back. He did this with most jackets he owned and all since he was thirteen, despite him personalizing everything he owned in one way or another since he was a baby; marking on toys, stickers and paint on containers and bottles. He slid his brown leather bag over his shoulder as the main bell tower rang, a low reverberative sound that made his spine Do the salsa. He said affectionately before blowing a kiss and walking to a thick and wide set of marble stairs "Class starts soon, mines basically just one floor up right here so I'll see you cunts later."
Ray and Eddie looked to each other with minor grins, chuckling almost in sync before they themselves got their bags. Eddie asked Ray if his pants were ok and Ray shook it off, apparently making a bigger deal of it at the moment out of anxiety or fear. "I don't have class now anyway I just like walking with you guys, I can just walk home and toss em' in the wash," He ended with a grin, almost proud of the advancements in human appliances.
Eddie waved Ray a goodbye before walking his own direction to the left of the main hall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jojo walking next to the guardrails of the second floor, an odd dark figure; it was shaped in such a way that it seemed to be swaying, stood behind him. As Eddie, understandably, wiped his eyes away he could already tell the figure was gone, the light fixture Jojo had just been walking under flickered before sparking lightly. Eddie shrugged to himself before holding his head with the palms of his hands, one question on his mind "What to do today?"
Jojo, his real name is Joshua Giovanna, thought of something odd and new as he turned the classroom doorknob. When he was around his friends or the people who called him Jojo, be they acquaintance or passer-by, he thought of himself with that name. Then the thought that it's not often one thinks of their own name that often, but it still happened. He thought the name was odd at first, as it should be pronounced 'Jogio' if they wanted to be accurate. "A testament to the laziness of everyday people."
The teacher, a middle-aged woman with a swimmer figure and deep brown hair, began describing the intricacies of advanced probability as Joshua dug into his bag, listening to her words as he moved his hands. He gasped to himself suddenly and quietly, taking a yellow notebook and tape recorder that was already recording and setting them on the desk. Suddenly a shadow was over him, that comforting shadow he loved so dearly.
The figure was tall and had a lanky figure, maybe seven feet tall with a thin yet muscular torso and, well, entire body covered in thick and ragged grey bandages. The bandages were lacking in only a few certain spots: the figures left knee, midriff showing its long skeletal spine, the two elbows of its extra two arms of the same length of the first two, its neck and its smile. Long spines down its spine poked through the bandages on its back. Its smile was long and fangy, covering close to a third of its bandaged covered head. The teeth were connected to those in each row with gold chains and studs, such were placed on every skeletal hands and extremity of the figure. Its last defining feature was its long and irregularly shaped horn jutting from its right temple, gold chains made to hang at the tip and four others placed along its main body. The figure spoke with Joshua's own voice, distorted, with another oddly and indescribably toned voice behind it "Yes?"
Joshua placed a light hand over his mouth, glancing to the corner of the room near the door and furrowing his brow. He whispered as quietly as he could "Your notebook slid out of my bag when I sat down, that seat is within your range."
The figure stepped through the chair and table as well as the two thin girls who sat in front of Joshua, the two shivering in unison. The figure turned its permanently smiling face to Joshua and spoke in its odd voice "How do I bring it here?"
The question was understandable, of course, Joshua understood, but he still wondered why he needed to share information with such an entity. He then looked around himself and saw a small cracked hole in the tile next to his seat. "Expand that hole with your hand and slide it through, getting there can't be an issue."
The figure nodded and held both sets of arms behind his back like a gentleman, phasing through the classroom door before doing the same with the floor, ending up right next to the peeling table and set of chairs the six, or five so to speak, had sat just minutes prior. The tattered black notebook with white splotches laying open on the concrete. The figure took it in one of its hands, examining it. Inside the filled pages were sketches of himself, smudged writing from countless erasing, graphs and charts, etc. If he could smile more he would, knowing it had a book written about it somewhere. It mumbled to itself while sliding along the floor, moving the notebook slowly and quietly, "I'm famous."
The figure stood while it was directly above the hole, sliding the notebook up the wall. One of his right arms scooped with its boney fingers as the other cupped it all, sliding it down the collection of bandages before they fell out his feet and midsection. As it turned its head three hundred and sixty degrees; he was lucky to have that tubular neck, he saw a boy with black hair and a scar connecting his left eyebrow and hairline sitting in the opposite class looking at him. At first, the figure imagined he was looking at the book and slowly opening hole, but he was looking at it. It knew if it had eyes that showed the boy would be locked with them. Quickly the notebook slid through the hole and the figure vanished. It reappeared with only half of his body sticking out of Joshua "I have something you would like to know."
Joshua slid the notebook back into his bag after quietly flipping through its pages, making sure nobody had seen it magically come out of a previously nonexistent hole. He then thought that switching seats would make him more suspicious, then that fear of confrontation subsided as normal. "What do you have to say," he queried.
In the background the teacher began speaking something about numbers, Joshua couldn't bother to even think of what he was saying at the moment, before diverging into a life story. If it was like any other time this happened he could afford to ignore it.
The figure spoke blankly and calmly, yet Joshua could feel its growing excitement "A boy in the class across the hallway downstairs saw me, not what I was doing but ME, you and I can both assume what that means."
Joshua sighed to himself deeply before slumping in his seat, nodding. "I saw."
The figure leaned its head closer to Joshua's, whispering "He is like you, and what are the odds he wouldn't be looking for someone who fits the shoes."
Joshua pressed his thumb and forefinger to his chin, tearing at the dry skin on his bottom lip with his teeth. "we know about him before he knows about both of us, that means we have a clear advantage, right?"
The figure gently removed Joshua's lip from his teeth, using another hand to pat him on the shoulder. "Granted he saw me first, but we know what he looks like and where he is right now, that's an advantage."
The figure now slid through Joshua till it was standing behind him, its right leg extended in front of the left and to the left as the left was back and to the four arms linked with one another, the hands making the shape of a star with their boney fingers. Joshua spoke with his hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to seem uncrazy. "No matter what ability he has I have to win; my peaceful life takes priority."