Double update! You guys can thank Heytearomg for this (:
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
"What are we doing for Halloween?" Clyde asked. And just because he'd said that, I put a ghost next to my doodle of Tweek and gave him a terrified expression. I would've given him a bulky pillowcase except I didn't see the blonde trusting house owners enough to believe they wouldn't poison their candy.
"Oh, yeah." Token realized what holiday was approaching, pausing to sip from his glass of orange juice. "Halloween's next week, right?"
Clyde nodded his head, sliding a piece of pop-tart between his lips before speaking around the crumbs. "I've heard a lot of people talking about costumes but no parties. Thoroughly disappointing if you ask me. Halloween parties are the best."
My best friends contrasted so greatly. I honestly had no clue how I'd ended up with the two of them.
"That's called a costume party," I reminded him. "Anybody can throw one any time of the year."
He huffed at me, upset that I'd ruined his point. "But a Halloween costume party only comes once a year, asshole. Where's your holiday spirit?"
My eyes parted with my sketchbook for what felt like the first time today. I looked around quite literally. "Somewhere around here." Returning to my sketch of—here comes a shocker—Tweek, I continued with: "What if I painted all of our faces this year?"
"Only if my woman gets to be a squirrel."
Clyde's condition was relatively accurate, causing me to smirk. "I'm thinking something more like chipmunk. You two can match."
"What am I going to be?" Token asked, and I actually had to contemplate before answering.
"Gorilla." He gave me a humorless stare from across the room. "I'm just fucking with you," I snickered. "You can be an elephant and I'll make your arm the trunk."
"I know what else can be a trunk," Clyde sniggered with a coy wink.
"Hell yeah," I agreed. "Token, you should totally let me paint your penis."
This suggestion of mine brought a torrent of laughter from my brunette best friend. It was kind of ridiculous because it hadn't been that funny, but whatever he was imagining in his head must've been doing something for him. "Yeah, dude! Think you could suck some peanuts up with that thing?" He was too busy laughing at his own joke to realize Token and I exchanging disturbed glances.
We tried to ignore him after that. Even went as far as to ditch him while he was in the bathroom, effectively forcing him to walk to our college by himself.
One of my classes in particular was being a troublesome thing lately. My teacher had assigned us a project that was supposed to be inspired by fear and I couldn't help but figure that this man had stolen my Halloween spirit because he usually wasn't into seasonal projects. Every once in a while he liked to test our creativity, so we were allowed free rein with the concept and creation of our individual fears that made us unique as individuals. A few of my classmates had really taken to the idea and were constructing sculptures or carving pumpkins that they would then enter in jack-o-lantern contests that gave away cash prizes.
Their progress over the past couple of days has been intriguing to me and I wished I could receive a grade for overseeing their work since this project just wasn't working out for me like it was them. I've been unable to do much of anything for too many reasons: I was tired, my dream was still being a nuisance—the color scheme blue, green, yellow, black, and a hint of pink was always ticking off in my head—all I could focus on was Tweek, and I just didn't fear things.
After viewing some of the fears bustling around the classroom, I've come to the conclusion that if I died, I died. I didn't fear death. I've bungee jumped before, so I'd be overwhelmed, but I didn't fear heights. If I was dropped into a tank of roaches, I'd probably just lay there because what were they going to do? Survive a nuclear bomb, that's what. Roller coasters were awesome. I welcomed the dark. If I had the chance to be a ghost hunter, I would. Natural disasters happened because that was the way the earth worked. The whole mirror in the dark thing had become nothing to me after I'd reached the age of eleven.
I was just sitting there while everyone else was working diligently. They were excited about this project while on my paper labeled ideas I had absolutely nothing. There was a scribble in the corner, but I had just been testing out my new pen to see if it worked. I mean, I was terrified of losing my best friends or my dogs and before that the fear at the top of my one-bulleted list had been Stripe's death. Once that had presented itself, fear had just honestly ceased to matter. Every goddamn day I wished that I existed in Steven King's Pet Cemetery. I'd bring back that fear and be tormented by the idea every day if I could just have my guinea pig back. But that never happened and the universe didn't stop for anyone.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I found the number of the person who seemed to be my only source of inspiration and held the phone to my ear. Now that he knew it was me when I called, Tweek had begun to answer on the third ring religiously. I wondered if it was just me he did this with, or if it was everyone, or if he even noticed at all, and if he did, was it a compulsion or coincidence? I meant to ask him every time I called, but every time I'd forgot whenever he picked up.
"Hi," Tweek greeted. He was always unusually chipper whenever I called.
"Hey." We paused unanimously for a second, a second of which I always gave him so he'd have the option of starting a conversation although he never did. That was my job, I'd noticed. "So I'm in class—"
"Then you shouldn't be on the phone with me."
Ignoring him, I continued saying, "And this project really fucking sucks, dude. I need your help."
"Oh," he chirped, suddenly okay with me calling. "W-What do you need help with?"
One elbow on the table, I twisted my torso and stretched my other toward the ceiling, clicking the butt of my pen while saying, "I need to do something with my fears and I'm kind of short on those, so you should tell me some of yours to give me ideas."
Tweek started snorting on the other line like a little piglet. "You have a fear of morning wood, remember? Just draw a giant boner."
My smirk was sly. "Are you insinuating that my penis is giant?"
"What—no!" His cry was mortified. "No—I—What? I wasn't—that isn't—"
"What are you doing?" I asked, interrupting his incoherent babble.
I listened as his breath hitched. "Huh?"
"Tell me what you're doing. It's the afternoon. You're doing something, aren't you?" It was a tactic I'd begun using to get him to calm down whenever I happened to frazzle him. He liked to tell me things he knew, and the things he knew were the things he did. They were things he was sure about and didn't have to second guess.
"I'm working," he said before going into an explanation. "O-Or I'm on my break, I mean." Sometimes it took him a while to shake off his nerves. "My dad made a really good pumpkin spice latte. I h-haven't been able to stop drinking them."
"Yeah?" He gave a pleased mhmm and I could see him sitting in a booth at his coffeehouse with some orange drink topped with cream and sprinkled with cinnamon or nutmeg. I began to doodle what I saw in my head onto my idea paper. "That sounds gross."
"You don't like coffee?"
"Fuck no. Clyde chugs it to wake himself up and that's about as involved as it gets in my life."
He made a short sound before saying, "I can change that." For the first time, he'd sounded confident in himself, but that was just something I couldn't have. Before I could say anything to counter his certainty, because I was not going to get into coffee, he resumed our previous topic of conversation. "So what kind of fears are you looking for? Because I have a lot."
Frowning, I looked down at my nearly blank paper. "All of them."
Tweek was most likely rolling his eyes. "Okay. Well" —he considered what was probably all of his fears in the next moment— "I'm scared of porcelain dolls and bomb sirens and pictures of space and the idea of space and pictures of the ocean and the idea of the ocean and electrocution so that's why I turn off all the electricity during lightning storms and spare change especially pennies because of the whole heads and tails thing and pi scares the shit out of me because the number never ends and supposedly there's some machine that keeps printing numbers and how does that machine even know? How did Einstein know? How did Greek philosophers know? What is language? How do we understand each other? I heard that one out of every ten people you pass is a ghost and that just blows my mind. The subconscious scares me and fears scare me and the body's ability to withstand pain scares me and adrenaline!"
All I could do was laugh. It was boisterous and loud and repetitive and I honestly felt like Token had taken over my body for about five minutes because I just couldn't stop. Tweek was catching his breath and that just made it even better because he'd gotten so involved with what he was telling me that he hadn't even paused to breathe. He'd winded himself. Obviously asphyxiation wasn't a fear of his and then I started laughing even harder at my own stupid joke. There were tears in my eyes and my class was staring at me, some laughing at me because my laugh was so ridiculous, and it just kept coming.
"You—" I tried to say, but my voice caught on my laughter and I had to burry my face in the crook my elbow to get it all out before trying again. "You are so adorable, dude." And I was dead scared of ever laughing like that again so maybe I'd be able to incorporate that into my project somehow. God, I'd sounded like my dad when he watched his favorite movie: White Chicks. I don't know what it was about black cops turning into white bitches but that was the only way to make him laugh.
"C-Craig? Are you okay?" Tweek asked, but he sounded more amused than he was worried.
"Yeah, I'm good." My professor checked the time and dismissed the class, pointing at me with his pencil from across the room to let me know that he knew I'd done nothing the entire class period. As I gathered my sparse belongings, I told the blonde, "Just got a little carried away there. Hey, when is your break over?"
"Umm—it can be over whenever I want it to be." In my head he was grinning because of course he decided his own breaks and shifts and hours. He worked for his parents after all.
Exiting the classroom, I started down a set selection of spacious hallways that would take me to the front of the building where I'd meet with Clyde and Token. "Then you should stay on the phone with me a little longer."
"Okay." I could tell that he was flattered by the shy quality of his voice. "What are y-you doing?"
"I'm on my way home right now, but since Token and I ditched Clyde this morning, I'd rather not have to listen to him whine the entire way back."
The blonde ahhed as though he understood. "So I'm just your distraction? That's all I'm good for anymore?"
Oh, we could definitely play this game. "Yeah, pretty much. Just when you're not here."
"Wow. I should hang up and make you listen to Clyde whine for fifteen minutes." Obviously he could play too. Touché.
"Or you could ignore my asshole tendencies and not do that." When I stepped outside, Token and Clyde were already waiting for me. I was surprised Clyde hadn't talked Token into ditching me as payback.
The brunette—confused that I was actually talking on the phone for once in my life—asked, "Who's that?" He leaned in close as we started home to hear the answer to his own question.
"Well maybe I want to be an asshole for once," even though you were an asshole when you decided to pass out while I had a boner "and make you suffer all by yourself." I did suffer all by myself because you made me lay with you while I had a boner.
"Is that Tweek?" I nodded my head and pushed his face away. Grumbling, he relented and took up a spot at Token's side.
"Was t-that Clyde?"
"Yes. Now show me mercy and—"
"Nope," he chirped. Just before hanging up on me.
I took my phone from my ear, looked down at it, and nodded my head, clucking my tongue. "Okay. Alright. We'll see about that, you little shit."