n.otes: I'm going to hell. You're coming with me. And we're going to sing to the tune of 'Tao'.
a.dditional notes: It's um, not right that Taoism makes me think of firecrackers, and I added references to almost every Chinese and Japanese religion or philosophy I could think of, is it?

Story VI: In a Failed Pipe Bomb, Smoke Escapes Through the Cracks

There was a scent in the air. Faintly sulphurous, it made her think of black powder that felt warm in her hands, of a night full of fire and colour and a day where you did not wear white under any circumstances. That black powder, she knew, was used in the rockets that scared away the evil spirits. It was a thing to celebrate. Black powder meant it was time to make lanterns and hang them outside your house or put them on tiny rafts and let them float out to sea, where Leviathan would see that they shone like the Materia in his crown and he would swallow them like shining candy, so that all the souls would see the wishes of their loved ones, would see that they were not forgotten.

She watched him fill bits of the tubes with that black powder that made her want to sit down and make lanterns and regulate her breathing so she wouldn't run out of breath before she wanted to...

He was making bullets. "Cartridges" he called them. But they were, essentially, bullets.

She once asked him, if he'd had to make a statue to Chaos, what would it be? What would he use for it? What would it look like?

And he'd told her that the statue would be made out of used condoms and murder weapons and the diaries of the girls who fell through the cracks and pipe bombs

(pipe bombs, she remembers, are like rockets you hide underneath the ground, smoke building up inside them like this love that is inside her, until the thin metal frame like her frail body cannot hold it inside any more, and it all comes out, like a teakettle and steam when it whistles, except it is painful and it is loud and there is always always always a spark)

and cell phones and romance novels and bullets and the salt that people so regularly shove in each other's wounds. He would make it out of shattered mirrors and bloody bird feathers and garbage and everything he could find that littered the side of the road.

But the thing that really stuck with her was he said that Chaos wouldn't have a face, just thousands of mouths, and in those mouths, thousands of teeth... And those teeth would be shining bullets, cartridges, clips, magazines, and his thousand tongues would be made out of spent ammunition and machine gun ammo slings and old, worn out hammers.

And he asked her right back. If she had to make a statue of Leviathan, what would it look like? What would she use?

And she said snake skins and hair and her mother's oldest kimono for his whiskers. She would give him Materia for eyes and Materia in the crown. Firecrackers and lantern frames and rice paper would prop up his body like the paper pretend dragons in the New Year festival. He would have scales made out of geta and tabi and rice and sashimi and shiny glass and he would be as long as she could make him and he would have firecrackers for a tongue. Bright, blowing-up firecrackers that spewed beautiful fire straight up to heaven.

And she had said, "And he would have bells, beautiful bells with the Ofuda hanging from them, and the little tie-ons that sanctify trees and he would walk in straight lines and zig-zaggy lines and curves and he would have no feet, no feet at all, and he would move against the wind."

--and what kind of teeth would he have?

says the murderer to the thief.

--he wouldn't have any teeth at all

says the thief to the murderer.

And the murderer scoffs, because you can't have a sea dragon without teeth, and the thief scoffs, because that was all the murderer had wanted to know.

What would his teeth be made out of.

"Well how does he eat?" The murderer asked.

"But he's a statue. It doesn't need to eat."

"Then why does it have a tongue?"

"Why do YOU have a tongue? You never eat."

"To kiss you with. Would you kiss a firecracker?"

"I kiss firecrackers all the time."

"My tongue doesn't explode."

"But your eyes do."

"You've never kissed my eyes."

"You never close your eyes when we kiss. I feel like I'm kissing them, even if I'm touching your mouth."

"My eyes don't explode."

"Yes they do, the capillaries burst and flood your eyeball with blood. That's exploding."

And he didn't say anything, because silence is how you say no where she comes from.