You remembered how things used to be. Take this chalice of green wine and go to sleep. Everything will disappear tomorrow until you begin to care.
Shadow's fingers were much like his namesake: dirtied by the accumulating tar from his cigarettes. Watching the last remaining breathing days of summer as the children around his street groaned and cried about coming back to their respective educational prison cells was relaxing. The tree leaves were rusting and bleeding, a razorblade slit in their green eyes.
In his head, he counted how many hours he thought about him. Too many, he swore. Sundays were worst, as he believed he was his only God and his only church and his only religion. There was hardly any point in being awake on Sundays. He could be lying in a temporary coma in his bed and he wouldn't miss anything at all. Nothing happened on Sundays and he knew it. People were too busy being lazy and lethargic to care to do anything.
Locusts danced in the last remaining gold sunlight. Dandelion petals he faintly tasted on his tongue, the smell of gasoline overtaking his senses; dizzy and dipping in the sunny sea with the many soon to be murdered insects.
Remembering was all he had left. His grimy hands stroked each silhouetted bloody leaf and he felt it was best to hide anything that looked remotely like pain and misery. He had seen too much of it. So did Sonic. He saw too much that his soul curdled up inside him.
Tinkling bells of milk rang along the church bells, when they were still Two they heard them every blue suede morning and he would get up and greet the drowsy, recumbent milkman and be drunk again in beauty and sun and digest all the luxury they absorbed through their skins. Summer was hot, their kisses and passions were hot, they sweat underneath the shabby home with no A/C but they liked it that way as after every paroxysm of love they would drain every mug of raspberry lemonade they made. Shadow wasn't allowed to handle any of the fruit; his fingers were scorched black. Something was on the horizon that made him smoke cigarettes obsessively.
He wondered if you could drink sunlight. Capture all the rays in a wineskin and let it all glow and slake down your throat. There was yet so much time, and none. After the trees bled and cut their fingers on the sky, the sun would inch away and hibernate and only a milky silver would remain. It reminded him of concrete. It reminded him of the violence he saw. Dashed blood and dashed brains on the sidewalks. He was involved. Shadow himself wasn't sure if he was alive when both Sonic and the criminal died. His soul was there, maybe. Everything appeared to be so faint, his eyes only gazing at a still frame, and he did nothing and said nothing because there was nothing he truly could've done. The coroner and paramedics carried their bodies and knew they could only save their memories by transforming into vultures and eating out their hearts. Loud screeching lights glared at him and he knew he wasn't here but it was a delusional derelict daydream that was dreamed; concocted; have people hear his sad autobiography years later and he can make his millions in pity and sympathy.
His gloved fingers stank with the darkness of the nicotine. Sonic's breath smelled worse, yet better. Especially when they lied together under the fetid mosquito-dusted air of their bed. They would count the stars out of their window and fall back to their comforting coma. Drinking the Milky Way back then was sweet and purely indulgent.
His eyes said farewell to the summer, the scalded fingers of the trees. He said farewell to the translucent orange bottles in his cupboard, glittering in the last breaths of the sun. It was time to take out the trash, every white Glad bag full of blue cotton scrubs, bottles of Nyquil and Corona's, and Vick's nose drops. Gripping his suitcase as he was absorbed by the foreboding city lights in the distance, he heard it jingle like the milkman's innocuous van. His church bells in the morning and his religion were inside, full of razorblades and a dust-ingrained rifle.