I'm not going to give any fancy introductions for this one. This is an idea I've been sitting on for quite some time and have only further grown to love as time has passed. Thus, it has become my test subject for my first real multi-chaptered fic. Enjoy.
Blame! Arson
Sugar, Spice, And Insulin
Chapter 1: Breadcrumbs
The white pebbles,
they glittered,
like real silver pennies.
The town's really more empty and longing than anyone would care to acknowledge. Now the smog only kisses the sky from the singular factory instead of how the many workplaces used to conduct it into practically making love to the sky. Fathers are jobless from the plants shutting down and mothers blame the repression, whatever that means. Little sisters don't play princess anymore and best friends move away, to bustling cities where things make more sense.
The houses ache constantly and moan in pain every time someone walks across a porch. Maybe that's a good thing; its well-placed knowledge that those sounds alert the inhabitants. Intruders in this town are few and far between.
Most of the homes are broken down and have some sort of trash in the front yard. A few try to spruce up with plastic decorations and fake animals. He curses Ms. Crumpet's pink flamingos as he passes every morning, hiding his middle finger in his pants pocket.
Only one school left standing now: there used to be two, before the fire of '86 on what used to be the elementary buildings. He doesn't go there when the kids his age feel like mischief, knows its a better plan to respect the grounds and the ideas they used to promote.
They said it was an unsolved arson case. He knows better.
But there's a special part in town where he likes to sit and think when the drizzle sets in, making the asphalt sheen like new volcanic rock. There's a row of seven street lights an unlucky number to be sure all synchronized in the early mornings, perfect after the night's rest. They only get muddled up in the traffic, really.
He sits at the arc of the road, just before the curve, and waits. It doesn't take long, the apathetic contraptions filtering out the few people on their way to work for a too-early shift.
He waits for it.
And all at once the green of the lights turns to yellow. Caution and warning and a sudden smell of sulfur and he loves it when there's not a vehicle on the perfect onyx boulevard.
The crimson burns into the road, vehement and angry, like the opening gates of hell. They're too damn bright to look like fresh blood, though it certainly suits the metaphor. The whole aura of downtown is alive and snarling and a writhing mass of sanguine and obsidian as he stares at and eventually rises to follow the staccato white lines in the middle of the road.
It's kind of ironic actually: a broken white line the only path down a brimstone road.
The first light turning green snaps him back to reality, takes him away from Dante's Inferno and back to Carol of the Bells because now the red and green reflections just remind him of Christmas and how much his sucked this last year. It sounds like an overdramatic teen movie, but all he got was a carton of cigarettes.
He exhales and looks up; the smog looks slate in the early morning sky, devoid of life and hanging like a listless ghost in the painted indigos. It reminds him to rub his fingers together, squeezing at the skin to pull off little rolls of acrylic.
"You were up all night painting again, weren't you?"
He stuffs as many as he can
in his little coat pockets.
He doesn't need to turn around to know his best friend's wearing that stupid leather jacket with the too-many zippers and belts and safety pins or the too-tattered pants that are only hanging on by a few threads at the knees. It's his favorite outfit, and he always sounds a touch more cocky in it.
Nor does he need to look to know that he's smoking a cigarette, and he can decipher from the smell it's the good kind. He doesn't verbally reply as he gestures to be given one over his shoulder, unobtrusively showing the man he's correct with his paint-stained fingers.
The half-smoked one is handed over and the sound of a Zippo nearly echoes on the wet cement valley as another is lit, followed by an exhale and, "Don't you ever get tired of the same old morning routine?"
"Not really." He could really think of something wittier to say, something about him not getting tired of the porno magazine that's been under his mattress for a year and a half, but he's just too lethargic and disinterested to actually say it. Matching wits with a redhead isn't his idea of Saturday Morning coffee.
The issue is dropped in a decrepit silence that crawls by until a car drives by a sort of clunking, squealing thing like all the cars in town, and one of them can tell right away what kind of repairs it needs, alarmingly unperturbed by two young men in the center of the road at such an early hour, as though they were simply imaginary. He watches the wind make the smog-clouds arc and crash like waves on a deep blue shore.
When he finally sets eyes to his companion, he can see the concern slowly eclipse over his face.
"Axel..." He's been trying to hide the fatigue and vague sadness in his eyes, but his elder can see it. He opens his mouth to say something--and then reconsiders. It's probably for the best.
Shrreeckht.
He nearly leaps out of his skin at the sound like gnarled, grinding metal and Axel's bones do a little dance-about in fright.
I am looking at my little white cat,
which is sitting up on the roof,
and wants to say good-bye to me.
There's a woman standing before Hellfire Road. She's more of a hag, really, with folds of leathery skin barely clinging to the corners of her mouth and eyebrows too shaggy for any of her gender. Her stature seems as short as her patience for posture.
His stomach shrinks as she offers a wicked grin with a mouth of decay. She must be a mistress of lies, he thinks wryly, with a mouth that dirty.
"Naughty boys ought not be out so late, 'ay?" She spits through that grin in a generous accent of her age. Her steps are uneven as she comes forth and gives an inside of one of Axel's legs a quick smack with a walking cane that seems more accessory than utility leaving the poor redhead to rub at his bruise and grumble. "Even Hansel and Gretel left themselves a trail of breadcrumbs."
He wonders absently if this woman really even knows the story of the siblings left to starve in the woods, wonders if she knows Hansel left behind bleached little pebbles to walk home on a trail of spliced moonlight the first time of their betrayal. "We don't really have to worry," he interrupts his friend before the snide reply; "we haven't a mother to treat us so cruelly."
"Ah, bastards, is it?" She smiles again, stretching from each tuft of stringy, dirty gray hair.
Neither say anything, as though all the childhood warnings of not talking to strangers sinks into them and makes them unresponsive. She seems to bat a wrinkled eyelid at this, giving him a little wink and seeming particularly fond of piercing through his oceanic eyes straight to his soul.
"I simply come fer warnin', lovelies. 'All anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness' this tale does not tell."
He is clearly shaken, and if it were not for Axel exclaiming, "Oh, enough already!" while he spits out the filter of his cigarette and pushes his friend away from the woman, he really wouldn't know what to do. "Demyx, don't listen to this fuckin' harpy. We can both tell she's bat-shit insane."
"Demyx," she slides from her lips like a pig at the trough, pointedly ignoring the insults against her. "Such a weak name. Does it have a meaning?"
"I--" He tries to stutter a response, but his friend has already ushered him down Hellfire Road, the greens bizarrely reflective in his hair but soothing on his already lush eyes. He can't help but to think this is wrong, that with all this woman's said the lights should be yellow.
But the lights have never failed him before.
Axel seems to notice his discomfort and silence when they reach the doorstep of their little ratta-tat-tat house where it always smells like that plastic of fresh-paint despite the fact their home is nearly stripped down to the wood. They both know what waits for them inside: the smaller body curled up on the floor where they left it to go on their morning adventure.
Both exchange glances, wondering if they should inform the inhabitant of the morning's incidents. It's clear in both of their eyes they'd rather keep this a secret from their easily-roused roommate.
Axel finishes off his cigarette and throws it into the wet yard, exhaling: "I need to head off to work soon."
"Want me to make you breakfast first?" It's only halfway coy.
A grin curls. "Thanks, doll, but I packed my own lunch."
"Oh, without waking him? There's a surprise."
"Shut up, you."
Oh, you dear children,
who has brought you here?
Do come in, and stay with me.
No harm shall happen to you.