From down the block, I could already see Axel sitting high upon a roof, silhouetted against the dark sky, hallucinating and suicidal. Three crows circled him, dangerously close to his head, as if they sensed the dead brain in my friend's skull.

On ground level, I parked my van by the curb, behind a patrol car emblemized with the name of a private-security company; the kind used in those weird fenced-in residential communities.

The guard stood, hands fisted on his hips, staring skyward at my friend angrily. I could feel the head-cracking-ness mood he was in from inside my car.

I shut off the engine and stepped out, deciding to chance my life by standing nest to the burly man in uniform.

Which I quickly regretted.

He looked at me- or rather, looked down at me -and scowled. His face was so wrinkled I couldn't really tell if he was scowling, squinting, or just plain old. He looked about thirty.

"Can I… help you, sir?" he asked in a deep-throated voice. I swallowed the spit in my mouth and smiled uneasily.

"Uh… I'm the painting contactor…" I choked out, jabbing a thumb at the rather large house in front of us. "That's my crew."

Squall Leonhart sat on the front porch steps, a pair of over-sized headphones perched on his head and a portable radio hanging from his belt (he looked up and waved at me); Axel Caulfield was still on the roof looking at the circling birds; Saix Hund was sitting on the ground not too far from Squall, scratching German words into the dirt.

From where I was standing, it looked like "Tod kommt auf schnelle Flügel zum thee mit dem roten Haar."

Maybe I should learn German, just for the Hell of it. It'd be nice to know what that freak's saying when he gets angry.

Scratch that. I don't think I wanna know.

I could now clearly tell that the guard was scowling at me. "Painting contractor? Crew?" He looked me over once.

I think he was looking through me.

It was pretty obvious that I was a painting contactor from the blue stitching on the pocket of my white button-down shirt that read Roxas Vita's Painting. The same thing was on the others' shirts. "Yeah, I call it a crew. We used to call it a strike force, but that scared customers off. Sounded too aggressive."

Heh, strike force. I'm sure that would make me laugh if that last sentence wasn't true.

The guard sighed, probably annoyed with me, and looked back at the suicidal red-head. "Whatever, Mr. Vita. Just make sure he doesn't jump. I don't need any state police officers over here."

I don't think state police officers come to murders; especially suicides.

I nodded at him. "Yeah, we'll get Axel down."

"Who?" His squint tightened. Maybe he was deciding whether or not to punch me in the mouth…?

"The jumper," I elucidated, heading along the driveway toward Hund.

After a moment, I realized the guard was following me. "Do you think I should call the fire department?" he asked.

"Nah, I'm sure he won't torch himself before he jumps."

"This is a nice neighborhood- wait, torch himself?"

"Hell, it's perfect. And he's a bit of a pyromaniac."

"A suicide is going to upset our residents."

"We'll scoop up the guts, bag the remains, hose away the blood, and nobody will ever know it happened."

Wow… I think I'm on my father's side of the family. Bad jokes and all.

I was surprised that none of the neighbors had gathered to watch the drama like an episode of Beverly Hills 90210. At this hour, they were all probably still eating caviar muffins and drinking champagne and orange juice out of gold goblets. Fortunately, my clients- the Sorensons -were vacationing in London.

I said, "Morning, Sai."

"Bastard," Saix replied.

"Me?"

"Him," Hund spat, pointing at Axel on the roof.

At six foot-five, Saix Hund was a good half-foot taller than me. He was skinny but strong- very strong -and could easily toss a small car across a football field. He was wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt but no jacket, in spite of the freezing weather; the temperature seemed to bother him as much as it would a granite statue of Paul Bunyan.

Tapping the phone on his belt, Hund said, "Damn, boss, I called you, like, yesterday. Where've you been?"

"You called ten minuets ago, and where I've been is running traffic lights and mowing down schoolkids in crosswalks."

"There's a twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit in this community," the security guard advised solemnly.

Glowering up at Axel Caulfield, Saix shook his head. "Man, I'd like to ermorden Sie diesen Punk."

"...What?"

Saix rolled his eyes. "It means... what is it in English? Murder that punk?"

"He's a confused kid," I said.

"He's a drug-sucking Köter," Hund disagreed.

"He's been clean lately."

"He's a sewer."

"You've got such a big heart, Sai."

"What's important is that I've got a brain, and that I'm not going to bumsen Sie es oben with drugs; and I especially don't want to hang around people who self-destruct like him."

Saix, the crew foreman, is a German for those of you who hadn't realized it yet. He isn't a Nazi, but has the judgemental attitude and anger issues to be one. He also had a large letter X scarred onto his face from a gang fight he got into with some drunk guys.

It's a nasty mark, but it works on him.

I like both Saix and Axel, but for different reasons. Hund was funny when he wanted to be, smart, and reliable- if not judgmental. Axel was gentle and sweet- although probably doomed to a life of selfless indulgence, days without purpse, and nights full of loneliness.

Saix is by far the better employee of the two. If I was a strict, do-it-by-the-book kind of boss with some common sense, I would've fired Axel a long time ago.

Life would be easy if common sense ruled; but sometimes the easy way doesn't feel like the right way.

"We're probably going to get snowed out," I said. "Why'd you send Axe up on the roof anyway?"

"I didn't. I told him to sand the window casings and trim on the ground floor. Next thing I know, he's on the roof saying he's gonna nehmen Sie eine Überschrift into the driveway."

"I'll get him."

"I tried. The closer I got, the more hysterical he became."

"He's probably afraid of you."

"He damn well better be! If I kill him, it'll be a lot more painful then splitting his head on the pavement."

The gaurd flipped open his cell phone. "Maybe I should call the police?"

I forgot he was standing behind me.

"No!" Realizing that my voice had been too sharp, I took a deep breath and calmly said, "Neighborhood like this, people don't want a fuss like this when it can be avoided."

If the cops came, they might get Axel down safely, but then they'd commit him to a psychiatric ward for three days. Maybe even longer. The last thing he needs is to fall into the hands of one of those head doctors whose ideas on the mind were so unreal and unreservedly enthusiastic, he'd repeatedly dip into the psychoactive pharmacopoeia to ladle up a fruit punch of behavior-modification drugs that, while imposing a short-term "cure", would ultimately give him even more mental short-circuiting synapses then he had now.

"Neighboorhoods like this," I said, "don't want any problems."

The guard surveyed the immense houses along the street, the dead flowerbeds and well-tended lawns, sent to Hell with the snow. "You've got ten minutes."

Saix raised his right fist and shook it at Axel.

Under the circling halo of crows, the red-head waved.

The security guard said, "Anyway, he doesn't look suicidal."

"The little geek says he's happy because an Angel of Death is sitting beside him," Hund explained, "and the angel has shown him what it's like on the other side, and what it's like, he says, is really awesomely cool."

Wow, I've never heard Saix use a sentence that long and not use the confusing German language in it. This is the perfect moment to celebrate.

"I'll go talk to him," I said.

Saix scowled. "Talk, hell. Give him a push."


The author would now like to say something.

This story is based off a certain book, a very good book, and they would like to know what book it's based on. The first person to review this story with the correct answer will decide what will happen in the next part of the plot, despite what the author has planned for it.

Just, don't kill anybody. All of the characters are important in this story, and I'll be lost if Zexy jumps off a cliff.

Please- please-don't use chatspeak. I'm sure everyone on the site is mature enough to type in English (or Spanish, French, etc. depending on where you live) without using abbreviations like 'BRB' and 'ROFLMAO'.


I walked under the soft rustling of a bare sugar maple and along the side of the house. Here I found Squall "Leon" Leonhart, the third member of the crew.

Hooked to Leon's bet was a radio- his ever-present electronic IV bottle. A pair of headphones dripped talk radio into his ears.

He doesn't listen to programs concernead with any political issues or with the problems of modern life. Any hour, any day or night, Leon knew where on the dial to tune in a show dealing with UFOs, alien abductions, telephone messages from the dead, fourth-demensionsla beings, and Big Foot.

"Hey, Leon."

"Hey."

Leon was diligantly anding a window casing. His callused fingers were coated with white powdered paint.

"You know about Axel?" I asked, following the slate pathway past the brunette.

Nodding, Leon said, "Roof."

"Pretending he's gonna jump."

"Probably will."

I stopped and turned, surprised. "You really think so?"

Leonhart was usually so taciturn that I wasn't expecting any more than a shrug of the shoulders as a reply. Instead, Leon said, "Axel doesn't believe in anything."

"Anything what?" I asked.

"Anything period."

"He isn't a bad guy, really."

Leon's reply, for me, was the equivallent of casual after-dinner speech. No one should talk about another's life like that! "Problem is, he isn't much of anything."