Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-Amber with an U~PuT iT oUt WiTh FlAmE
Author: Naisumi
Rating: R
Parts: 3/4
Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~
Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least?
Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda
Notes: Okay, we can probably all figure out who this is if we've all read the other three parts like good little readers.
Pietro: Why are you talking in 1st person plural?
Uh. No reason. *coughs* I felt bad for this one, too >.<
Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad.
Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box.
"blah." People speak
-- uh...scene switch
--
The streets were rivers acerbically acid blood-grime hissing down its cemented veins as it ate away at vestiges of light that clung to cobblestone and too-sticky tar. The buildings glowed orange, casting the passion red of setting sun at the huddled inhabitants of the downtown suburb. A few of the motionless figures shivered and moved sluggishly, shrinking into the shade as if their gaunt, vampiric frames threatened to telescope into themselves at even the faintest rays of sunlight. Gnarled fingers clutched at tattered scarves, elbows were bent tightly to hide the multiple dots that belied the specters of syringes. The world was hued with blackness and everything that came with that artificial night, heralded by dripping pipestems and overhauling ledges that had emblazoned footprints on them. It was all the same for them.
Unlike the others, he relished the feel of the hazy burnt raspberry red of the sun's descent, relating it to a haloing hellish glow of a fallen satanic angel. The thought made him laugh. The guy beside him told him that laughing sounded strange coming from him and the girl trailing beside them both said that whatever amused him had to be pretty damn funny. He smiled hollowly and replied that he had been thinking about angels. The three of them found it hilarious.
That night, they slept in the park under an awning of trees, under a crooked sign on the side of a shed that looked like it said 'halo.' In the morning, his friend asked if they were going to trick(1). He shrugged and said that had to check up on his mom first. The girl eyed him strangely.
'I'm home,' He called, peeking out absently through the cracks in the boarded up windows. There was no answer, as was routine, and he moved over to the rusting faucet of the kitchen sink, splashing some of metallic-tasting water on his face. He talked for a while before walking over to the armchair where his mother was. Her face was turned towards the window. Sitting down, he spoke some more before getting up, dejected at the lack of response.
His friend told him that they had tricked some and had gotten at least $45. She smiled at him and reached under her skirt to pull out a wad of bills. Smiling weakly, he took the money and counted the slightly moist dollars. $55. He told them they could get some breakfast and the other two grinned at that. Money was scarce, as was food. Sex was not.
Later, in the night, as she lay in his arms, she told him with a hushed voice that she loved him so much. He smiled into her hair, ignoring the stench of crime around her, them, the whole place. It was the truth, she insisted, 'You make me feel special.' Shaking his head, he opened his mouth to speak, but she continued in a flood of sudden openness, saying that when she was with him, she didn't feel like a two-dollar whore who hiked up her skirt for anyone. He replied that he was glad and she smiled with her scarlet lips.
Three weeks later, the boy called him, telling him that his sister hadn't come home last night. He asked where she had gone, and her brother wringed his hands, saying that she had gone to a party to trick some. He got the address and went to look for her. Returning to the siblings' two-room run-down lodging five hours of searching later, he found her sitting on the rickety porch, her bloody hands lighting a trembling cigarette. He demanded where she had been, but she didn't answer, just stared up at him and whispered brokenly, 'I did it for you.'
Startled, he gaped at her, baffled. Rushing into the shack on a spur of desperate instinct, he saw uncomprehendingly a pool of crimson slowly spreading on the grimy tile floor. His friend was dead.
Turning around, he saw the girl leaning on the doorjamb, quivering with the intake of nicotine. She smiled again, and tossed a match into the scattered newspapers that littered the floor.
Then he was running, the dilapidated shed-like home behind him, flames licking up the brittle creaking frame. Bursting in the door of his own quarters, he yelled, 'Mom!' and lurched violently towards her in her chair, shaking her with clenched fingers. He screamed for her over and over, ignoring the glazed look over her unseeing eyes, the icy coldness of her skin that had crusted over her for almost three months now, the foul reeking odor of long-acquainted death and rotting flesh permeating the room.
Backing away, hysterical, he ran again, trembling with emotional and physical exertion. A crackling above in the dry apartment and the obnoxious beeping of a smoke alarm alerted him of their neighbor's convenient accident, a blaze of red flame flashing across his view. Then, as everything combusted, he stood outside, staring at the window with the slowly blackening figure in it, and as the wailing scream of sirens whined in the distance, Lance walked away, burnt amber eyes wide with shock and lit with blazing flames--just like his life--their lives.
~fin~
(1) "To trick" is basically the slang term referring to when a prostitute goes looking for clients, or...well, you get the idea.
A/N: Now, is 'their lives' referring to the siblings or some other people? ^.~ Food for thought.
Oh yes, I will now explain my titling system to y'all.
Jade with a D = Jaded
Blue with an E = Bleu (I translated this one for you guys)
Black with an O = Block
Amber with an U = Umber
The first words Jade, Blue, Black, and Amber are the respective character's eye colors, and the words Jaded, Bleu, Block, and Umber have significant meanings. I just thought I might as well share that secret ^.~ Don't tell anyone who hasn't read this fic...spoiling the secret won't make it as fun XD