Headful of ghosts.

[greedy fly]

He stood there panting, his breath erratically ragged, rocketing the plating of his naked, silver-linked chest. His plump heart was derranged with turmoil, and he swore he could see it rattle against the adobe of his skin. Lost behind ribbons of ink-laced ringlets, twining against smoldering lip-corners, he waded in his own swarthy shadow .. casted over the candlewax-spilled floor of his bedroom. Ashamed. Filmed with perspiration and fragrant of suicide.

She looked at him with wild cobalt-pixeled irises and constellation pinpoint pupil, her body on edge, as she violently confiscated the makeshift, callused noose from him and bitterly threw it on the floor only to combat-slam the sole of her boot upon it like paper weight (and she really only was .. paper weight (and she really only was .. paper weight.) Finger-ravaging platinum dreadlocks, she reflected on the situation, whilst downturning her salt-lensed vision towards the floor.

They stood together; numb, petrified. He was nineteen years old then, and she was twenty-one. Finally, a diseased, wisp of whisper droned from her cigarette-strangled tongue, as she circled him like a lioness on the prowl -- or rather some occult, plasma-glittered satellite.

"Why did you try and do that, Sol?"

For a long time, he didn't move, he was under a comatose, the blunted eclipses of his nails clenching tufts in his denim-constricted thighs, shifting self-consciously from one foot to the other (as the wafer of moonlight grave/livid white on them.)

"Because I miss her," muttered in London trash decay.

"Come here."

And this was how his world blossomed, through a troubled girl that spawned from squalid trailers and pixie dust-- his best friend. Quinn.

[greedy fly]

Seven-year-old, lanky arms flailed like a human skelecopter overhead, as he pogoed from one step in the Caprice food market, to regain his youthful beam of balance on the linoleum landscape. His adorably-plump cheeks were adorned with twisted wisps of wavy hair that his busy mother hadn't taken the scissors to since last Christmas, ripe-pink and his mouth seemed to mimic explosions. He floated in his own little world, trying to jog up behind his mother to take her bony white hand.

"Mum!" Solomon made himself known with an exuberant exclamation, wriggling his future-aesthetic fingers in a gimme-gimme flex that she didn't respond to.

Barbara Stills was a tall, pretty woman (if one could even call her that); blonde-haired and blue-eyed, haggardly-distraught and only twenty-three. She ignored the abrasive glares spared to her by the other local customers sauntering through the store, because of her nylon skirt and her knee-straining boots. She was a street-walker, and that was no secret.

Batting at his outstretched hand until he retracted it with a buzzing throat-vibrato and a pout (he opted to think about the rumble of the trains outside, once more) , she paused with her welded blue shopping basket to throw in a box of tampons, and deodorant from the shelf.

"Mum! I got seven Valentines, tah-day," boasted the schoolboy in his starch shirt and loosened tie, and sewn gray shorts. "Because it was Valentine's Day, mum!"

"Yeh, Solomon, that's good," she replied through gritted teeth, comparing and contrasting prices between strawberry-scented shampoo.
Solomon unfurled seven fingers, before he ironed them over his trousers again, pointing to the shampoo.

"That one's bigger, Mum."
For a moment, Barbara seemed flustered, mashing her brows, before glimpsing at him. "How did yew kna'?"

"It says so on the bottom! Guess wot, tae? Missus Mindy says --- Missus Mindy says-- she says I don't haveta do second next year. She says ye' have to sign a piece of paper."

"Mmmhm ..."

"So will yew!"

"Solomon, could yew do Mum a favor and please be quiet while I'm trying to shop?"

".. yes, Mum."

By the time she reached the register, heavily-lined eyes flitting down to the items she was unloading, she felt him literally twine his arms around her leg, gnawing dependently at the side of her exiguous skirt, staring with pooled, curious eyes up at the pretty teenage clerk.

"Sol, stop that."

With a moody sigh spouting, he detached from her, and reached up to place an green-and-white-packaged Aero bar atop the other toiletries.

"Solomon, I am not buying that!"

"Why?"

"Why? Don't yew ask me why!" She incised a feigned, 'kids... ' sardonic smile at the clerk, before bending down and snatching the chocolate from his hands. "Solomon, wot did I tell yew about that?" Now that she was at eye-level, he was completely paying attention to her, riddled by the lack of warmth in her pupils.

"I don't knae."

"Yes, yew do."

"Nao."

"Yes."

"No."

"Sol---put it back."

"I DON'T WANT TAE!"

"SOLOMON!"

"Hey, Barb-- whose the lil' guy?"

She suddenly halted the argument to stare through pale-wisps of hair at the balding bloke, with his dress shirt half-unbuttoned who had just strolled inside the market.

"My sister's kid. 'Staying with me awhile."
Solomon wanted to shriek that he was her son, but instead he said nothing, and buried himself in her thigh again -- this time she didn't shake him off.

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ April 06, 2004 08:46 AM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

[greedy fly]

Two years ago.

"Wot's wrong?" His fret-bruised fingers skated on a snowcapped shoulder, bare of fabric, his dark eyes swollen and intangibly exuberant with concern.
Quinn ruggedly shook her shoulder and his hand immediately waltzed off the cliff, and he held both up in defensive protest. "Knock it off."

Solomon seemed shocked, but just retreated back into six month linen again-- her coldness wasn't as contagious as she would have liked it to be. "..alright..."

Then silence---an art they had never quite mastered.

"Quinn?"

"What?"

"Do yew feel bad?"

"No."

"I want yew to know that when we--"

"Solomon, I know."

"I would never use yew."

"I know."

"Then why are yew so upset?"

"I'm not upset."

"I love yew."

"Yeah, ever since Jude left, right?"

He sharply swerved his body to the side, tension wrung with a spell of dazed anger, facing back-to-back (even though she was formally sketched in sitting.)

"That's such shit, Quinn. Yew know ..yew fucking know that before Jude even came in the picture all I wanted was for yew to pay attention to me."

"But as soon as he came in the picture?"

The Brit ripped himself to half-mast, supported on the heels of his butterspread palms.

"I can't believe you're even talking about this! He's gone now!"

"But you were so fucking quick to leave me behind."

"Quinn--" he was pleading with her now, trying to coax her moodswings--he honestly preferred her tepid and luke warm to ice-cold. "Quinn, yew never even gave me a fucking chance before. Yew didn't want anything to do with me. We all knew wot yew wanted me for." When he was nineteen.

Solomon pushed himself off of her mattress, and fought into the legs of his worn jeans, fleeing like a fugitive from her lemonade-shaded apartment (rich with a strange blur of sunlight.)

He left her alone to atone by herself. And whenever she was alone, she cried.

[greedy fly]

"softly, he said ..'i will mangle your mind.'"

"This shit's strong, Solomon .. " the weatherbeaten chimes of his voice warned me, always bass-toned, but it could never ascend to the pitches and grunge-roasted growls that mine could.

Nineteen, and swimming stubborn, I blatantly ignored him to prove myself; an indignant buzz of testosterone reigning over my blood supply. Headfirst into a cocaine avalanche, I snorted through my neon 7-11 straw, and it burnt like lit kerosene and volcano gurgle. In euphoria, I felt my nose running, and teeth chattering something ill. Cocaine always made me very loquacious, so I was pacing with my tongue, reclining against the asylum white wall, that belonged to a stranger, (I never liked Trish, she called me "little boy" condescendingly, and at nineteen, all I wanted was acceptance and a solid layer of respect in their group) whimpering. "I just .. I just---I just miss her.."

My nose was running and there was a desolate tear iceskating down my cheek. I can't even remember what I was saying, all I knew was that Judas Eden, with his whiskey eyes and cheap L'Oreal-dyed aurburn hair was listening, whilst blotting the trickle vine of blood from my nose, repeatedly (in a heavy cycle of sloth-paced, tattered words) trying to coax me. "Christ, you're bleeding---I told you, your nose ..."

"I don't care." I tried to bat his hand away-- it was the Brit in me, but in reality, I wanted to be hugged.

My elder climbed in closer, condensed against the plating of my chest, which began to shudder with tempest sobs. He was in my lap, but I was hardly paying attention, until his mouth pressed against mine, he silenced me, and we kissed.

A million things spun through my mind: I'm not gay, he's not gay -- he's Jude, he can't like a man, especially a man that's not even a man, but a little boy. Is it because he's high? Is he lonely? Christ, this feels good, his tongue is moving so slow against mine -- will he want to do this again? Will this make us fags?

That was how it began, and we thought it ended with the poetry of our saliva line that formed when our lips broke away. But, no, that was just the beginning---the beginning of a wild, fucking chariot ride.

<font color="#cccccc" size="1">[ October 05, 2003 06:04 PM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

[greedy fly]

Solomon, you have to get your priorities in order, baby. Do you want to get married or now?

Kate, I'm---I'm twenty three, we're so young--let's wait a couple more years.

That's all I needed to know.

He sat at Alice and Jude's dinner table completely miserable, with his brows creasing out his forehead, dark-crackling irises darkened upon him. He was a fucking lawyer, he was older than Kate, he was handsome, he dressed nicely, he was surely no street punk that relied on his art and sold his soul.

Alice and Judas seemed to enjoy his company, and Kate proudly flaunted him like a silver medal (because Solomon was gold) scraping around their salad, and giggling at the good-natured banter shuffling about the table. Every now and again, the maternal platinum blonde would nudge the Brit with a jaunty elbow to ressurrect his manners.

Michael, completely oblivious to Solomon's engraved placement in Kate's past, grinned at him.

"So, Kate tells me you paint, Solomon?"

Mr. Stills exchanged an etched glare with Jude, who viciously, and discreetly growled at the antisocial monster from across the table.

"..yes."

"What kind of paintings? Baroque? Uh.. Cubism? Fauvism..."

"Revolutionaryism."

"Oh, I never heard of that---"

Jude interrupted. "It's because it's not a real art style."

"Shut the fuck up, Jude."

"Hey, Solomon, watch your godamn mouth at my table."

"Yew want to fight, cunt?"

The family was slightly dysfunctional now.

[greedy fly]

His stubble-leathery jaw's molar-screws divided in skepticism, bewildered ink-welled pupils pooled in hypnosis on the blur of girl that vexed his train of thought. She was a vision: ?this oil painting of Greek myths and tragic underworld tales; a vinyl feline with coal-smeared crescent eyes, thick hips, boyishly-disheveled hair and lips redder than a cocaine razor to wrist. ? This girl was fiction, and Solomon in all of his year had never seen anything like it. Swimming in shallow as she minced past him, he seemed to still hear the diner's bell chiming in his ears, along with the throb of pulse amps slampitting in his temple. It was after hours, dusk was ripping the sky with the disease of rush hour and last minute pastel shades. His broom's marigold bristles were kissing the grime-screened floor, his knuckles lynched the handle's girth until they were gravestone-gray and white as she disappeared into the cramped closet of an office for an interview. Salmon, wire lips spliced exacto-knife style to gust a swollen mound of oxygen. Only one thing leapt from his studded, European-spiked tongue. "Love or lust at first sight?"

<font color="#cccccc" size="1">[ October 16, 2003 02:54 PM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

[greedy fly]

City girl perfume mists swirled Arabian dances around his nostrils but didn't stimulate his senses on the street because his mind was set on masculinity; sweaty pore colognes. He strutted with a fervor, his apron tucked away in origami fold inside his bag, eyes darting down to his watch-braceleted watch, lost on the minute hand as he rounded his final corner.

It was twelve-twenty-seven PM; the lunchbreak he usually combined with his dinner break when he worked overtime on Thursdays. Stalling in the lavish elevator after offering a familiar wave to the doorman (he saw him every Thursday at this exact time) he indented a flourescent button, and strolled to the apartment door.

His head bowed in God-fearing sin, but the passion was ignited and rioting kerosene fires in his ribboned veins. Glancing over his shoulder, he only seemed to loosen when Judas answered the door to let him in. It was dark, it was mutual, it was their one time a week to love one another. Alice was at work, the kids were at her mother's.

There seemed to be a nod of mutual understanding, a heart-scrawl of a pact.

Flattening his spinal splint to the door, he pulled his Oxford up to his hair-embroidered abdomen, lolling chin to clavicle.

"Kiss me right there."

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills

Journal 11/1. Two days post-birthday.

The magic of autumn.

Usually, when people think of love, they automatically digest the thought with the bloom and warm goosebumps that freckle seeds on your skin in spring. But, me, I think of autumn. The air is gold, the leaves are browning, and the city is brilliantly alive during the day. Night comes, spills the sky with shades of navy, but everyone is still looming, in some strange spirit, wading through the miniature tornados of spinning leaves.

Autumn reminds me of love.

Last year, I was driving to rescue Kate from the icy clutches of New York, so I could bring her home, win her over with clever kisses and make love to her like she needed me to. Last year I was suffering from my first--and hopefully, my last-- emotional/nervous (?) breakdown, and clung to co-dependency. But, as soon as autumn came, I was inspired to get her back, and I found her, and I savored her against my warm chest for almost a whole year before summer broke in and erased my every fantasy.

She left, I sulked.

Then, autumn ripped the sky later in the three months where it reigns again. In the middle of October, I felt it beginning to fill me, and I found a girl, whom I chased and didn't really inspire me the way I needed to be inspired (because her attitude was all winter, I suppose) but just a few days before my twenty-forth I found someone smiling at me in a party, and then later in an elevator, in a coral dress and long, long, winding hair. I want her so bad, and I'll get her. But, sometimes, even autumn fucks you over so bad.

She's married.

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills.

Journal.

11/25.

I had never seen the moon so fucking bright, like some sort of gothic sun, pouring corpse-blue rays down upon the abandoned room and its' creaking floorboards. Whoever lived there must've laid in their bed, with their arms behind their head just staring up at the city stars that scrolled by, a glass roof like that was a beautiful thing.

My walk was a prowling waltz, straying with my hands in my woolen pockets around the perimeter of the room as I watched her, the strange girl--the strange girl I had never seen before in my life. She seemed almost naive to my presence, balancing on one foot, her long legs undone of any lace or nylon, just boots and skin.

I met her at a bar. Quinn had to spill a drink on her for me to even build up the guts to talk to her. I know what you're thinking--Solomon Stills is courageous, he loves women, he chases them. But, Solomon Stills' ego has been in the gutter lately.

When she spoke to me, her little mouth just barely moved, I tucked my teeth around her martini's olive, pulled it free, and watched her eyes spark with something familiar.

Then finally, she purred 'take me home.' But she didn't say it that way, she just basically asked if I'd ever make a move.

So I took her hand, and took her for a walk, cocooned her hands in my thick ones and blew hot air into the butterfly cup so she could feel warm, because winter was taking its toll. When I found the building---all boarded up in the slums, just a mere townhouse square that hadn't been peered into in years, I quirked open the boarded up door, and let her inside.

The walls were lead and flaked like bits and pieces of a starving artist's mind, I circled her, thinking, my body aching. Finally, she gave in, our hands, her hair, our mouths. I unraveled my coat and threw it on the floor so she'd have a safety cushion. I couldn't tell you what happened next, because we were naked and panting.

And then, nothing.
I spoke to her once more, and never again.

I need a fucking warm body next to me.

<font color="#1A08CC" size="1">[ November 29, 2003 01:15 AM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

[greedy fly]

Alice's voice was scratchy like a widow's, bundling herself in a robe, and venturing out into the living room which was haunted with the eerie glow of a Christmas tree's dim lights.

"Jude--" she hissed, her eyelids just barely twitching from their awning. "What are you doing? It's two AM---"

Solomon lynched his human crutch's neck nape; a vivacious smile plaguing his mouth in a curling Lucifer-smirk. "Hi..."

Jude didn't have to explain, Solomon was stumbling, his speech was slurred, his knees knobby through black-blurred jeans. "We're just gonna let him crash on the couch-bed, tonight." The ever-paternal figure scurried around to draw out the bed for the intoxicated, vodka n' tonic-caned London trash, as Alice ambled to the hallway closet to fill her hands with an overabundance of blankets and pillows.

About fifteen minutes later, he was situated. The tree automatically went out with a flick of a lightswitch, and he was left to ponder in his shadows. When he was drunk at first he was so fucking elated, before it yielded.. and eventually dissipated, leaving him in a tooth-grinding state of self-pity. Whispers flickered like candlewicks from his studded tongue.

"...I want a warm body."