Blink sat in his bunk, alone and yet not lonely. He chanced a glance out the window and noted absently that it looked like rain. If that was, indeed, what a purple sky the color of a deep sickening bruise meant. His own simile struck him and he began, again, writing furiously in his thick, leatherbound notebook, with yellowed pages and endless lines. He recalled the incredulous, and even openly disgusted, looks he had received when showing off the treasure he had been given with heartfelt deliverance. With a chuckle, he brought to mind his best friend Racetrack's reaction 'Are you outta yer fuckin mind? Where's da good stuff at? Like, I dunno, somethin to live off of!' His friends had never understood his passion for writing, the joy it brought to him in those hours when everything seemed so bleak, so desolate, that there was no reason to go on living. He hadn't understood those hours either, where he'd lived but hadn't lived, moving in a depressed haze of greyness and fatigue; where life seemed not to have a point, and even the tempting Medda couldn't rise him from stupor.

It was, as he remembered, fate that had brought him this passion. A few months ago, less rather than more, he had run into some trouble. Literally. Walking along the streets, with less than 14 papers to sell and a crowd of gullibles just around the corner, he'd been feeling pretty damn good. That was, of course, when he had heard the piercing scream; a scream, he swore to this day, had echoed off each and every nook and cranny in New York City, catching in all the desolate streets and bloodthirsty alleys, an urgency not even an experienced man like himself could deny.

'Course, when he'd tried to say something of that sort to his friends, they'd accused him of waxing poetic and told him to have a beer and try and think "fuckin' clearly, goddamn".

But back to the scream, Blink swerved back onto the appropriate topic again, scolding himself harshly for his wandering tendencies. Although it was just such tendencies that had saved a young woman's life… and jeopardized his own. After hearing that scream, Blink had stood there in shock, at the aftermath of its effect, before a similar but less earth shattering cry brought him back to reality. He had shaken his head, dropped his papers, and took off at a dead run. Snow had begun to fall, and it suited the scene which had then greeted him; two young girls lying half dead on the frosted floor of an alleyway, a dark man with a large knife clenched in one just as large blue-veined fist, and then, blood on the purest snow that had ever touched New York cities streets. Blink took in the two girls quickly; torn clothing, frightened eyes, babysoft hair, tear streaked cheeks, and scrapes and bruises. One girl, though, was holding on to a knife wound near her chest, and trying not to cry. Blink, looking into the gorls crystal blue eyes, had been taken back to a familiar day, with a familiar friend… one he had not been able to save. The thought had altered Blink's perception of his own strength, his warped vision condemned to this one evil man before him, a matching gleam in his dark eyes.

No words had been exchanged, save for the two girls mewing screams as they struggled to keep hold of their conciousness in the freezing chill and the cold seeping into their thin, frail bones. 'PLEASE DON'T HURT HIM, UNCLE JACK! He's just a boy!' The one tried to shout, but weapons had been drawn, and it had been too late.

He remembered lunging at the twisted face, and that same instant his cheek pressed to the ground, the man getting away, and the girl's screaming in horror. Sometimes he was still haunted by the thought of lying there in the street, ignored as most urchins are, and pressing his hand to his side for warmth. It was awfully warm right on his side, he remembered thinking, then when he looked down… blood had come gushing out from where the man's knife had penetrated, and he had pissed his pants in the sheer horror of it all. He had been frozen, his fingers red and sticky, and the two girls had run off, leaving him to die. Lying his head on the concrete he shut his eyes and sucked his nostrils in, so as not to smell the stench of his own urine, or worse, of others he might very well be lying in…

From then, Blink couldn't remember much, nor had anyone coughed up much information the few times he had asked. Kloppman had later explained, with the boys help, what had happened. Apparently, the two girls had not run off to leave him to die, but to find the boarding house he must live at, for they had seen him seeling papers often and remembered his 'name'. Eventually, they had passed out right upon entering the Manhattan boarding house, and the doctor had been called. When the girls had regained conciousness they began babbling incoherently about a cyclops saving their lives. Then they had produced some identification they had found earlier of his, and from then on it had been a simple matter of finding him.

Once they had brought him home, Medda had apparently stripped him of his clothes with, thank goodness, neither of the ladies present and, if Blink recalled correctly, drawing a steaming bath for him and wrapping him in blankets, not once leaving his side, much to the delight of the doctor, who was, as he kept saying, her biggest fan. Blink doubted that very much, because after that, he had loved Medda even more, and had owed her a great deal more than just an admission fee to Irving Hall. She had nursed him to health, with her cooing phrases and soft voice, and when he had regained conciousness she had kept him bedridden. He had been unable to leave that bed, on doctor's orders, for a few weeks after he was fully capable of conciousness. Hence the notebook.

Blink gazed down at the notebook with great affection, recalling all the incidents that had led him to it. Medda had given it to him on a certain stormy day, when all he had wanted to do was sulk and complain about the unfairness life had in store for him. She had not, for even the briefest of instants, sympathized. Instead, she'd opened her large and flamboyant bag just like medda, he thought to himself and had pulled out a medium sized cardboard box, with only its mellow brown surface to keep the imagination piqued. 'Open it!' she'd said delightedly, and her contagion caught on, for soon Blink was smiling too, as he hurried to get the damn thing open…

And then. And then… it was beautiful. Its leather binding and light pages, scented with parfoom and cigarre smoke. Blink brought it up to his nose and noted, with a content sigh, the smell of old leather on the book's beautiful design. 'I think you should try to write in it every once in a while. To let some stuff out.' Before that, Blink would never have contemplated it, but the book seemed to call forth to him, asked him to touch its pages, fill their blankness with his own scratchy writing. 'Thank you…' he'd breathed in wonderment. Then, sensing the need to be alone with a new passion, she had left, and he had begun to write.

And he had scarcely stopped since.

He looked down at a poem he had just finished… or thought was finished. He wasn't sure yet.

The sun was murdered.
I watched it bleed death unto the sky.
Red; the blood we bled together, the twinkle in our eyes our unbroken promises.
Pink; the tears I spilled on our joined hearts, hoping to melt the love between them.

Graceful, wistful, sinking below my vision
Trailing behind, the aching silence of twilight
Bleeding midnight, goodbye, goodbye
An eternity of black to blue beneath the lampost light
Death is surrender

Stars bloom upon night's breast
I hear her murmured sighs at the wind's brutally gentle caress.
My heart is aching, pounding, spinning me about with its dizzy infection
My throat is raw from the words I swallow
The lies I offer.
In the broken silence, I cover my ears
A yielding sigh.
I curse the night through my tears.

The sun was murdered.
The night makes passion every night, with countless lovers to occupy.
I am alone with my swallowed offers and averted eyes.
Goodbye, goodbye...

He ruminated on the poem, wondering what had encouraged the sad yearning in the lines, the small little sigh that seemed to echo even after the lines were long read. Had he really written this? If so, he wanted proof that it was perhaps good. An unbiased opinion. Maybe… he looked around the mostly empty lodging house, filled with snores and curses, memories and fistfights, and he shook his head. Never, in a million years, could his friends understand what he was trying to put across… of course, maybe they could, maybe if he just—

"…So I says to her, dollface, I aint da one spendin' all my time on my knees."

The door burst open and in walked the noisy succession of top dogs; Race, Mush, Spot, Skittery, and where he, Blink, would have usually been walked Bumlets. But… what else was missing?

Racetrack caught sight of Blink and walked to the bed. "Blink, ole buddy ole pal, come widdus to Tibby's. I feel like I 'avent seen ya in forever and a day." Beneath the twinkle in his eye and the smirk on his lips, Blink could tell that his friend felt as if he had been abandoning him, and he felt a quick stab of pity that he dared not let show in his eyes.

"Alright ya bum, but yer buyin, ya heah?" Race chuckled and slapped him on the back. That's when it, quite literally, hit him. "Hey.. whea's Jackyboy?"

The boys looked puzzled. They didn't seem to know.

Spot stood to his full height "I ain't gonna waist what little daylight we have left talkin about a guy who's probably widda milkmaid down da street. Now move it ya lousy pieces of--"

It all happened at once, too quickly for anyone to comprehend at first. Sudden darkness, so complete and pitch black that Blink felt as if it were indeed something very real, harboring secrets, seeping into his numbing lungs to stifle his breaths of air. Then a crash, a yowl, and the sky splitting open in a miraculous inferno of white light, so bright as to be almost blinding to the naked eye, in a zigzag streak across the swirling purple. The sky emitted great roars of protest, so loud and meaningful as to shake the ground beneath them.

Then all was still.

No one moved, afraid to step on anyone's toes or risk stepping ON Spot Conlon. As if he heard their thoughts Spot growled into the darkness, as if he were its only voice. Blink shivered at the meaningful foreboding sign.

Suddenly someone was pounding up the stairs. Never before had Blink noticed all the creaks of the old place, but it gave him the creeps when he did.

"What the--"

A light of tinder and a strike of a match revealed the intruder as one of ghoulish candlelight and wide eyes.

"Kloppman?"

"Yea, its me. Now you kids listen; stay down, lock the windows, and don't try and leave. We're in for a storm tonight, a storm the likes of Manhattan hasn't seen in near a century. Everybody here? Okay, good. Now, go find the candles in the storeroom, close the shutters, lock the doors, and do a head count."

"Where are you gonna be, Kloppman?" Snitch asked speculatively.

"In da liquor cabinet. Where else?" He began to scuttle away, an old man used to the torments of nature, and who knew of the price they could all pay for her fury.

Blink looked out the window one last time. The oozing purple had faded to a menacing green, and through the fragile, shaking glass, Blink saw that the streets were being emptied, vendors were packing it away, and Pulitzer had drawn the shades.

This was gonna be sooome kind of storm.

Looking out at the empty streets, and flashing sky, Blink knew that this storm would bring something unexpected. He just hoped his closest friend would be there to see it.

"You better come back soon, Cowboy. Or else…" He didn't think of what else, merely grabbed his notebook, shook his head, and went to find if the storage room might hold a pack of cigars as well.