What a piece of work is man
It's eleven o'clock exact, and a boy named Joshua wakes up under thick, unwashed blankets smeared with the rank smell of mildew. He smells the scent of nightmares and daydreams, and knows of the milk that will come; the smears of a white liquid ooze that only good boys can produce.
It's a dream in a dream of a dream, and suddenly Joshua's hands are under his briefs, cradling and touching the soft skins and folds of a teenaged body.
He pulls softly, moans harshly, and whispers the name of a boy he's never met.
"Neku. Neku, Neku?" and a soft white milk oozes out over his fingers, is incased and held by the thin fibers of a pair of cheap 'Fruit of the Loom' underwear. His hand moves slowly, rhythmically, out of his briefs, and through the synthetic moonlight spilling out from a lone window, Joshua sees chiseled fingers dripping with milk.
He whispers the words of Beat and Rhyme before he licks his fingers greedily.
There's a shadow by the window, and suddenly the name Neku is erased from his mind.
"Neku? Neku who?"
Hanekoma visits him the next morning, bringing bags full of coffee and doughnuts and pancakes. He walks slowly, with his head held down as he climbs the rusted stair case to Joshua's suite.
They great each other at the door, avoiding eye contact like always, and Hanekoma enters a small bedroom that reeks of an ungainly life. He places the bags on an empty nightstand; the drawer where he normally puts Joshua's food is currently occupied with other bags full of rotting food.
Hanekoma knows Joshua never eats, doesn't need to eat, but be brings bags full of food everyday just in case Joshua ever does get hungry.
Joshua is sitting crossed legged on the edge of an unkempt bed. He's clothed in nothing except a pair of stained underwear. Skin of marble protruding from odd joints of a petite and gangly body. Blue eyes staring intently at the peeling yellow wall paper.
"I drew a new portrait," He's shifting the position of the bag in a fickle haste; something about the disgruntled boy sitting prettily on the edge of the bed has always managed to make him feel uncomfortable. Joshua raises a golden eyebrow, but doesn't look at him.
"Purples and blacks, cause I know-"
"I've always hated purple, and black reminds of a death that will never arrive," dull blue eyes are still studying the wall, and the words roll of his tounge melodramtically, "no matter how hard you look for it."
"-you like it," Hanekoma's hands are digging through the bag, although to be truthful, he doesn't know what it is he's looking for.
"I head a dream," eyes that were once pretty seem to feign tears, but both men, young and old, know that such sentiments are false, "about a brother and sister burning in motor oil."
"I also drew a cat, Gatitio, cause. Cause I know you liked cats," And suddenly the room smells like motor oil and burning flesh, Hanekoma straightens out his back, trying desperatly to pull something out of a brown bag,"he's drawn in the iconic pose that you picked."
Suddenly, Joshua is laughing sardonically, green eyes shining with a cold concoction of malice and glee. Hanekoma's hairs on the back of his head stand on edge, hands frozen solid in the middle of digging through a lukewarm bag.
"I called the fucking idiot in a dream, and he answered in the middle of the street," He lets himself fall backwards into the entangled mass of blankets, laughing in an uneven pattern, "The car just came, and BOOM! Dead bodies and curious people looking to see their faces."
Hanekoma stares aimlessly at the logo printed on the paper bag, hazel eyes bleak and reeling in sadness. His hand manages to pry open a styrofoam container; sickly sticky liquid of pancake ooze gingerly kissing his fingers.
"Remember how I told you about the girl yesterday? Remember how I had to come up with some elaborate plan to blow her fucking brains out?" Joshua digs himself into blankets the color of purple and black and stained with the residue of white.
"Her own friend pushed her out of Pork City, and BOOM! Her crippled body lands in front of a car," Joshua's voice is muffled under the sea of blankets, "I didn't even have to lift a finger!"
Hanekoma slips his hand out of the paper bag.
"Joshua, what about the wager," The wager is a risqué subject to Joshua, and the moment Hanekoma utters the syllables, the room is saturated with silence, "will it work? Will we win?"
Hanekoma is drowning in despair over their crimes, over the deaths that have happened. Joshua tries not to care as he dives deeper into the ocean of blankets. Something inside him, some type of frail human apathy, is begging him to stop his endeavors.
A bigger part of him is curious about the duality of human ambition; curious of the sacrifices and martyrdoms man is willing to take.
"Joshua? Joshua?" and Joshua will not answer, even as Hanekoma comes to the side of the bed and shakes the ocean blue.
He leaves, because Joshua is stone like, wrapped in a cocoon made out of blankets.
Words are washed away, and, slowly drowned.
It's twelve o'clock exact, and a boy named Joshua wakes up under thick, unwashed blankets smeared with the rank smell of mildew.
Nightmares and daydreams, and Joshua sees all the souls of the people he's erased in the past.
He sees three fresh souls, scared and lonely and not sure of each other's presence, waiting in void for the next Game to start.
Sometimes Joshua wants to kill himself. He uses the chord of a convenient guest phone, ties it into a noose hanging on a wooden beam in his little hotel, and hangs himself limp.
Sometimes, when he sees his true self in the reflection of the medicine cabinet mirror, his fist collides with a face. There are suddenly hundreds of laughing Joshuas, the insanity of it all is enough to make him grab a shard and slit his own throat.
Sometimes, Joshua grabs a pair of rusted scissors, and cuts the tendons of his wrists; if the cuts don't kill him, then surely the poison of the rust will.
But a heavenly power always intervenes, always stops him from transcending downwards.
Hanekoma always finds him after he hangs himself, always resuscitates and revives him even though Joshua has been hanging limp for hours.
Joshua always finds himself on the cold tiled floor of a small bathroom, the slit of his throat and wrists being mended with the secret stitches that maggots only produce.
He always finds himself immune to the corrosive nature of rust.
And Joshua always finds himself crying: on cold tile, on the hardened stains of the carpet, or in the coffee scented embrace of Hanekoma's arms.
Hanekoma once visted Joshua in the middle of the night. He travels through the slums; queit, dangerous shadows that flood the pale visions of the moonlight. Lifeless blue eyes stare at the shadow in the window, and suddenly the name Neku is erased from his mind.
"Neku? Neku who?" Joshua whispers to the blankets.
Hanekoma enters the room, and Joshua purrs for some sort of intamncy.
He leaves, crotch erect and nerves shot, feeling nothing but regret.
Hanekoma visits him the next morning, bringing bags full of coffee and doughnuts and pancakes. He walks slowly, with his head held down as he climbs the rusted stair case to Joshua's suite.
They great each other at the door, avoiding eye contact like always, and Hanekoma enters a small bedroom that reeks of flesh that hasn't bathed in over months. He places the bags on the nightstand; already he can see insects buzzing around a day old meal.
"What's today, Cat?" he cross his wiry arms over his small chest (beautiful, marble, reeked with the scent of musk), and Hanekoma sees scars slowly healing on the bottom of his arms.
Hanekoma's hazel eyes float upwards, mind reeling in images both old and new.
"Sunday," he can actually hear the gears in Hanekoma's mind turning on Joshua's position in the sea of blankets, "I've heard prayers and hymns from churches on my walk here."
"Perfect," and Joshua swims out of the drowning waves, feels the liberating air and immediately feels ashamed of the reek and rot of the room, "the Game starts tomorrow."
Hanekoma sits on the edge of the bed, staring into the screen of a television that has seen better days, as running water reverberates across the small motel. It's not on, but Hanekoma sees scenes from the Game acting out dramatically on a gray screen.
A turning knob, and Hanekoma watches as soaked haired, towel robbed Joshua steps out of a doorway flooded with mist. Their eyes meet for a minute, each sees something that isn't there, before they break apart.
Joshua grabs the handle of a cabinet, pulls out a white collard shirt, and slowly slides it over his petite frame. Hanekoma sees the silhouette of indecisive Minamimoto, plotting and rebelling, on an empty television screen.
The scene changes, and suddenly the new Composer slips on a pair of red shades and commands the twin atrocities of the Iron Maiden and the Masterful Cook. Hanekoma shrugs as Joshua fits his long pretty legs into a pair of levis.
On the television, the shadows of two reapers embrace through their differences.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Hanekoma whispers as Joshua slips his feet into balmorals made of white suede. Joshua smiles archaically, and Hanekoma can see some sort of zeal behind his blue eyes.
"Hopefully, this time it will end," and that's all he'll say as he walks slowly to the door leading to the outside world. He grabs a handle of brass, and suddenly his eyes look skyward to a cracking ceiling.
"Stay here. Don't follow me. And... And pay attention to the TV." The handle turns, and suddenly Joshua's gone behind a curtain of sunlight as three wayward souls hide behind the shadows of void on the television.
Cat watches as a duel commences, and a boy ends up dead.
Right in front of a mural painted with his own hands.
disclaimer
and
concrit greatly appreciated