They're waiting when the boy comes, he's like a little star and he does not dance to the song. He does not acknowledge the flames nor the fear. He walks the city's tense streets unafraid, curious even. The light that flutters around his ears draws them close, makes them curious and predatory and…
He smiles at them, whistles and caresses their flanks, touching where their wrists no longer connect to their hands, where their heads no longer meet their necks. He touches them and his ears perk, listening to their blood beat James's song. The boy's whistling tune changes and he says something gibbering and twinkling to the light flitting beside him. It replies like a set of cracked silver sleigh bells.
"I'm actually here for the little girl," he says to them in their own clicking language. They shake for him, like poisoned spiders, so excited to have someone other than James whispering to them. James and The Morningstar would be so angry if they knew, but it has been so long and it is not fair. Name after name flitting through them like torture. Now they hear their own at last.
"How about this?" His eyes twinkle like stars, they are intrigued like insects, they shudder closer on their stiff plastic ball-joint limbs. "You guys tell me where Laura is, and I'll teach you how to fly."
Fly?Fly? Teach us how to… Teach how to Howtoteach us How to Fly? We flyflyfly could. Teachus. Teach us howTo. Fly. Flyingwecould. Like flies. Flying? Teach ushow to. Teach us. How fly to teach Us fly fly teach He coulDus how to Teach us how weCould fly. He could fly fly? Teachushowtofly.
He grins and nods at them, crossing his hands at the wrists, flapping them like the birds that don't fly over this city anymore. Their plasticine hides glimmer, they chitter in a circle around him and he leans towards them conspiratorially, one by one."First," he tells them. "First, we're going to sprinkle you with pixie dust." They waver, nodding to him, for him, desperate and hungry and excited in the way they can't be unless James comes running up this street. The boy's little ball of light trembles over them, shaking like a fearful child, expelling clouds of shimmer across their broken shoulders and gaping collarbones.
"Now," the boy continues gleefully, the clacking of his tongue shifting in pitch. "Now, you have to think… happy thoughts."
They still; confused and concerned by this thing he calls happy.
"Whatever it is you guys stand around here waiting to do, just think about it!"
And it comes, thoughts of battering James down with their limbs, hurting him, destroying him, keeping him from ever reaching the skyline where his sins await, ready to let him atone. They don't want him to atone, because if he does someone new will come, their name skittering through their hivemind, the sinner's song reconstructing the city with its pain, sharing and inflicting its pain to them.They think about the demon-woman, the succubus, who should have found James by now. They think about pleasing her, bringing her James' torn body... And if they pleased her, they could please Morningstar. They think about when the last time they felt Morningstar take pleasure in their work. It was long, long ago.
They think, the visualize, tasting James's on their broken plastic bodies and their limbs reach a weightless euphoria and the boy makes a sound like a crow and joins them in the air."You see?" he wonders smugly, his little lightning bug chiming insults into his ear. "Now, where is Laura?"
They spasm out the coordinates; their pieces cracking against one another.
"She's down at the apartments, hmm?" the boy nods. His grin is Cheshire in the back-lighting from the billboard beside the road. "Well, I need to hurry so we can make some mischief."
Then he his gone in the night and they lower slowly back to the grass. They will wait for James now.
Standard Disclaimers.