I have realised that the main problem is that I have merrily deceived myself into believing this story has a plot. Perhaps from the next bit onwards there will be a plot. At any rate there is only much dialogue and drama in this bit. 'My Descent Into Madness' is by the Eels. It is really good. Really.


Boy Alone :: 4 My Descent Into Madness

Shin wanders for a long time, ending up in the graveyard where joggers saunter merrily along the paths, the dead perhaps turning and tossing in their slumber at the sound of so many sneakered feet. In the distance the sounds of traffic seem far away, as though from another world; overhead the sky rumbles, clouds belly-heavy with rain, tongues of lightning flickering tentative along the horizon. There is Spike's grave, fresh flowers on the stone. There is Lin. Shin feels himself crumbling.

"Lin," he calls, walking towards the grave.

Lin turns his head, features familiar slanted towards Shin, but the face has gone cold. Shin stops in his tracks.

"Lin..."

"Are you going to tell me something?"

It takes a long time for Shin to react, to bring his head up and down in a single jerky nod. He has come to stop perhaps three yards away from his brother, a respectful enough distance, but Lin seems to speak to him through acres of space and time, voice and emotion freeze-dried by the distance.

"Is it something I can repeat without fear, if the Van ask me to repeat what you are going to say?"

"Lin..."

Lin walks away. His feet make no sound on the grass, and there is only the faint rustle of the longer weeds as the ends of his trousers push past them; his coat is draped over his arm, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and tie undone. But even in a state of untidy dress, there is no sign of casualness in him.

"Lin!"

Shin runs after him. The path, thick with stones, hurts his feet through his thin-soled street shoes; he catches his toe in a rut, stumbles, trips, crashes down, rises again, runs with a blood-rash on his palms until he catches Lin by the shoulder and spins him around.

"Can't we just play a game? Just a game?" Shin does not realise how close to crying he is until he feels a great difficulty in breathing; he swallows it, forces air through his mouth down into his lungs. The graveyard smells sweet, white petals of jasmine blooming in between the bushes, magnolia trees spilling faint scent from their boughs; Shin smells his own cologne, mixed with sweat, the heat rising from the ground, an unfamiliar scent of fabric softener, faint and clean-feeling, that must come from Lin's suit. Shin manages to grin, wryly.

We share the same house, he thought, and I don't even know what my brother puts in his laundry.

"What game?" Lin asks.

"It's called 'What If'," Shin says. "Here. I'll give you an example. What If... it started to rain fish? Lots and lots of fish? Smelly and scaly and really hard? And you didn't have an umbrella?"

Lin looks at him.

"It's just a game. It's supposed to be silly."

"If it began to rain fish," Lin says, slowly, the muscles of his body relaxing so that Shin releases his shoulder, "I would run to the nearest place where there was shelter."

"Yeah, well, what if I decided to run away from shelter?"

"Why?"

"What If, remember?"

"I would go after you and drag you to shelter."

"Cool. You're getting it. You want to play some more? Let's play, huh? We haven't played a game in ages."

"All right."

"Okay. Here goes. What If..."

say it say it say it say it

"What if Spike was alive..."

go on go on go on go on

"... and Julia and I could find him..."

don't go don't go don't turn away not yet not yet

"... and I could run away from the Red Dragon and you could run away too and we could both go find Julia together and the three of us could go find Spike and we could all just go find somewhere really nice to live Lin please it's just a game Lin!"

He runs, again, puts himself in front of Lin so that they both come to a halt, face to identical face.

"I don't want to play. We're not kids any more."

"You're still my brother."

"I know," Lin says. "I know. But don't let that stop you."

"What?"

"I said, don't let that stop you. If you're going to play What If, for real... don't stop just because I don't want to play."

"I won't play if you won't play. You are my brother."

"Shin... Think about it like this."

Lin pauses, licks his lips that have gone dry. The wind is growing bolder and stronger, licking moisture off skin, lifting locks of hair off foreheads.

"I am your brother. And I want you to be happy. Doing things that make you happy. You, in turn, want the same for me. If what you plan to do is going to make you happy, you should go ahead with it. And you should not worry for me. Being a Red Dragon is what I want. And I am already a Red Dragon. So you see - you never have to worry about me, at all."

"What if--"

"I'm not playing. I can't. I don't think I can afford to be a child any more." Lin steps around Shin, the argument ended, but even he is unsatisfied with his reply; he stops a few paces away, and now they stand back to back, the emotional distance in between them as small as it will ever be. "Make sure you get a decent roommate to share the apartment. Don't make too much trouble. Take care of yourself."

"You too," Shin says.

Footsteps, now, on the brittle concrete of the walkway. Lin is moving away. Shin does not want to turn around, but in the end, he does. At the end of the path, where the gate is propped open, he sees her, thin in a grey coat over today's black dress, leaning against the fence; Lin walks past her as though she is not there, and she leaves the fence, follows him as close and silent as a shadow. Shin wants to shout to her, to tell her to take good care of Lin, but the sky splits open with a roar of rain.

He walks further into the open, but no one comes to drag him towards shelter.