lucian.

[killjoyed]

outside, the crickets were singing in the swallow of the moon, asking for a mate before they were eaten by some mournful predator. inside of the building, it was much darker, the waning light slitted by the blinds over the window.

"shh, sleep..." was what he crooned to her, fingertips barely gracing over her eyelids, watching the skin underneath twitch slightly. "you're asleep, don't wake up, i have things to tell you."

her breathing remained even, silk brown hair floating across her shoulders, spilling over ink and bone. smiling, he found his voice in the pockets of his heart, the pounding of the blood in his ears.

"...i love you."

[killjoyed]

<center></center>

with his dog shoving a cold, wet nose in the side of his washboard ribs, lucian registered the needle in the inside crook of his elbow, pausing to sigh as he watched the influx of blood rush into the plunger. he thought of his mother, with her thinning hair and glassy eyes right before she died, the blistering around her foul lips and the words that came from them. there was stephanie, that beautiful black-haired succubus who sucked his life from his heart, ripping it up into puzzle pieces to be fit back incorrectly, curdling emotion and refueling distraught. what he didn't think of was constance, because he couldn't see through the fuzz between his skull, the dull din of light in a pair of dead hazel eyes.

"stop it, ash, cut it..." he whispered through the droves of hair falling over his eyes, the dog snorting in response and slinking away with tail flagged at half-mast. the ex-artist rolled his eyes ceilingward as he injected himself, tossing the rig aside on the floor amongst piles of papers, chickenscratch handwriting scrawled all over in deviant rhetoric, loveletters to himself of all the negative qualities he couldn't fix within himself.

he swallowed deep and rocked on his ass for a few beats, falling backwards into a void of darkness and warmth, his hands brushing over bare skin that no longer felt his own; it was someone else's, and he was simply the meat robot that walked within it, bound of flesh and bone, snapping tendon and cavity-teeth.

but how he was smiling, oh, how he was smiling...

[killjoyed]

drugs and alcohol made a perfect tonic to keep her in a deep sleep, but it took years for her to get to it.

"hey there, baby," he crooned out in whispers, the pad of his finger running down the bridge of her nose. "remember that guy i told yah i met..? i was screaming how i didn't know why you were with me -- why because all i do is drink, drugs, and get the shit kicked out of me. i told him that you liked me, that it was baffling."

constance's soul didn't even ruffle, caught deep in dreamland, the parting of her lips beautifully curved with a soft breath going out, coming in, over and over again with a clockwork's timing of perfection.

"and then," he twisted his head down on the pillow, a pale slice of moonlight cutting through to his hazel eyes. "and then, he went stark raving mad about it, saying how all of you women are the same, how they all want to take us home and stitch up all of the cracks, fill the holes in our hearts to shackle us to them, to own us... make us what you all want us to be."

the bones underneath his skin ached with a feverish splendor, nausea choking the haunt of his stomach as the muscles in his torso clenched uncontrollably, his body screaming at him for another wave of poison. "i don't know what i'm going to do, constance," he was suddenly eleven years old and pleading, eyebrows mashed in a painful furrow in the middle of his eyes. "what am i going to do, baby?" he pushed himself away from the pillow and brushed a piece of her hair away, leaning down to press his lips to the side of her cheek, and both closed eyelids. he wanted to say something else, but panic raked at his insides, bile rising in the base of his throat with beads of sweat breaking out onto his forehead.

the bedsheets parted for him as he swung both feet to the floor, naked as the baby jesus on the day he was born. he fumbled for his clothes and steadied on focusing his vision, wavering as he went through the hallway and out the front door.

it was time to search for his salvation.

[killjoyed]

<center>

days ago, i had a band
days ago, i had a girl
...no, girls.
now i have my drugs
now i have my alcohol
now i have my apathy.

but today i have constance
she is not a band
or drugs, or alcohol
or even a cure.

she is a girl
but at least i can love her
(i think)
without destroying myself
(i hope)
oh how i hope.</center>

[killjoyed]

<center>

old man, look at my life
i'm a lot like you were.</center>

[killjoyed]

at work he was different, all smiles and winks and flirtation, dragging his fingers through his hair so it wouldn't slice across his eyes.

"hey there," he would say to hip-switching scenesters and eurotrash as they walked into the teahouse's basement to sit and be served, or just get a drink to go, giggling to each other under masked hands over their mouths.

he was the tender of a massive wall of boxes, each bearing a different number and different tea. green, black, herbal, chai, variety to mix and swallow to your stomach, toxin-purgers, nausea settlers, lucian playing apothecary to the rich who could afford to waste their money on such exotic extravagance.

"you need to try this one, it's our iced black tea of the day -- it's called creme brulee, the best you'll ever have." he spoke from fluttering lips, metal flashing underneath the waning lights and the coppertop tables.

"okay," the girls would always say, whispering that he was cute as they swished away, sometimes dropping numbers on square white sugar packets (pink if they were concerned for their health).

and at the end of the night, he would count them and try to match the face, using a sweet-smelling hand to swipe them from the counter and into the trashcan, where it would be tied and thrown in the back with the rats and piss-foul homeless.

as much as he hated to realize it, the boy was growing up.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 02, 2006 06:47 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

he was wild with sets of fingers and dogfur in his face, ash yelping more than moshe because he was by far the wimpier of the two, lucian scowling artist's eyes down at him. "shush, man, it's not so bad.. really."

he sat back on the floor with his back against the couch, smiling broadly to the two mutts dressed in doggie devil costume, ash hanging his nose and giving the blackhaired boy the sad eyes.

"you guys look great! just don't tell constance it was me that did it.." he warned with a waggle of a finger.

moshe snorted.

[edit]

"luuuuuuuuucian, baby!" it was sin's catcall into the cell phone's reciever. "i'm soooo fuckin' drunk. guess what? i turned twenty-seven today. maaan." her speech was slurred and her lips stained with vodka. "i'm in some park, kinda lost, hangin' with some ducks. i just wanted to say i love you. really, i do. lots. oh shit, i spilled my drink," she groaned, fumbling the phone into her lap while she tried to recover from the party foul. "oh, right. i love you. i think i might sleep here tonight or somethin'...'kay bye!" click.

[killjoyed]

"oh god, it's her birthday!" he wailed to the dogs, their ears cocked towards the pitch of his lamenting voice. "i'm the worst fuckin' boyfriend in the world!"

"c'mon kids, we're going on a search." leashes aside, he threw his black twill dickies jacket over his shoulders, still struggling with an arm as he noosed moshe and ash out the door, their tails helicopter propellors of furflying excitement.

<center>- - - - - - -</center>

in the early morning the park was draped in eerie silence, birds churring beneath a blanket of fall chill, blades of grass shuddering awake. the large-sized coffee lucian clutched was nearly finished, his eyes bleeding anxiety while his feet ate up the ground, kicking dirt along the path as he headed for the duck pond. the ducks. he couldn't help but think of norma jean and her halfway lunatic leer, fingers at constance's neck as she screamed muderously "NO! these are MY DUCKS!"

"c'mon, pick it up, boys," he glanced to the mutts flanking him, cutting his walk to a pounding heart jog, exhausted eyes sweeping underneath benches and bushes, finding nothing but the urine-soaked drape of blankets over lumpy greasehaired hobos. he passed the honk of the mallards as he took the curve around the pond, feet slipping as mottlemutt ash took the sly opportunity to chase the ducks straight into the water, yelping in sharpteethed gnashes as he broke the elastic film of scum.

"noooo noooooo!" lucian wailed loudly at his dog, waving a furious windmill arm. "you fuckin' asshole i can't deliver a wet dog on constance's birthday!" he winced and bent at the crook of his knees, pushing a nervous hand through stocks of faded black hair, natural blonde looking sooty at the roots. "alright fine then fuck you." he waved an arm at the chaos in the pond, big wings flapping up and forward to smack the dumb dog in the face, ash whimpering while he pawed his way through the water.

"moshe..?" he turned his head and called, fear stinking in the back of his throat. he swallowed hard around the tennis ball down there and set his creaking bones into motion, whipping around a cluster of trees dropping yellows and oranges to make a leafed patchwork on the ground. "oh christ, oh fuckin' christ, i've lost it, i've lost her fuckin' dog, that's it, i'm done, i'm.." he thought of the absence of her long limbs, the way she strummed her fingers over her stomach as she layed in the grass, staring at the sky -- oh god and those eyes, large and cutting but never through him, just fierce defensiveness and beauty in vein and bone, even in the cancerous cells that fought to stay alive.

and there she was sprawled sideways on a bench, green paint peeling over, wearing his hoodie. next to her was moshe, his chin on the end of the bench, woeful eyes watching her sleep.

somehow it didn't feel odd to be coming onto such a scene, empty vodka bottles with unattractive bursts of hangover breath coming from constance's half-open mouth... but he was suddenly guilty that it was her, his girl, his star in the sky, she shouldn't be waking up to the dull pain of bench rivets in your back and hips, the ache on bones from sleeping on something hard.

"hey, baby," he twitched a sad smile as he crouched down next to her, his hand moving up to slip brown hair from the front of her face and nose. "hey you, wake up, happy birthday.. let's go get some breakfast, hm?"

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 14, 2006 03:33 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

it was around noon that he woke up, peeling his arms up into the air and yawning fiercely, brought awake as soon as the words of a letter struck through to his cognitive mind.

"oh," he spoke to himself as he dropped in front of the television, bare back stretching with tattoos of color and black, ash jumping next to him to dig a cold wet nose underneath his leg.

when he was done reading he sat there in the tick of the kit kat klock's tail (something he had rummaged from an antique store downtown), cursing the silence for such a specific time to drop off to nap. lucian smiled sadly down at the letter, fingers at the edges before folding it into a simple square of a perfect size to hide into one of his many boxes.

"c'mon ash, let's go give constance a surprise at school." he pushed from the couch and patted his side, the mongrel flipping paw and tail in loyalty to his friend.

as the ex-artist shoved out of the door, he realized he'd been off the shit for more than a month now.. conciously, he shoved away the gnawing edge of doubt telling him to run to the gutterpaths, to find a stoop to sprawl onto in the depths of the city's hold.

there were some things always to be fought.