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CHAPTERONE
he is sitting in the shade of a maple tree and performing close-range reading, close-range reading that would make a myopic nervous. the book has a red jacket and a worn spine and it is face down, pressed so close to his nose he can smell the aged glue holding the pages together.
she takes a few steps closer and realizes that he's not really reading. he's asleep. who can read when they're asleep? they say that you can tell that you're in a dream if you've suddenly forgotten how to look at the words on pages of books.
"hey." he says, and she jumps three feet into the air, the air that is more parts oxygen than normal air is because of all the plants everywhere, the grass the trees the bushes vines clovers and little fuzzy headed flowers springing up between his calves.
she lands. "you're not reading or asleep," she remarks.
"you," he says. "i thought i'd never meet a faker bitch than me." she observes the suggestion of his lower lip, underneath the brim of the red jacket. he's smiling, she thinks.
he is small and pale like he is nothing but his bones. the grasses have eaten him up and they continue to eat him up, soaking green and pointy into his legs which are nothing but femur patella fibula tibia.
"well? are you here to drag me to hell? are you here to dump me into a pit of boiling sinners so that i can crawl out of it again and again and be dropped back into it again for the rest of eternity?"
the pinkish grayish edge of his lower lip is still smiling.
"no. i'm not here for any reason, especially not one that has to do with you."
"aha." he raises his hands, cradles the back of his skull. "i knew it. chaperoning damned souls to the shadow realm is lowly work for the dark lord satan himself, right?"
"you sound exactly like that boy from the second installment," she says. "t—"
"shut up." his hands are discarded dribbles of white candle wax crisscrossed together, a hammock for his occipital lobe. "god, i hate your voice."
BITCH
the back cover of the red leather jacket has fallen victim to an angry psoriasis. she scratches it off with a fingernail. the scales flake. she shudders. "are you going to take that thing off of your face? it's bothering me."
"didn't i tell you to shut up?"
SATAN
"i'm going to take it off, okay?"
"knock yourself out."
she topples the book off of his face—it comes off like wadded tissue paper from a nosebleed. warm pixels gush outward from his hairline down to his upper lip. his bottom lip leers at her as he swings his head her way, bleeding snakes of blue yellow green red pepto-bismol pink. bleed bleed bleed bleed is what he does.
"don't i look pretty today?" he asks, pressing the palms of his skeleton hands to the edges of his gushing facehole.
"you look like shit."
"that's what i like to hear."
"here, let me—"
"uh-uh, no touchie. you don't get to put your grabby hands on me. i don't ask for help from filthy murderers."
squares rectangles smears of crusted artifacts pour out of his face and she can see the trees and grasses through the back of his skull. she makes another grab at him, but he dodges, leaving a trail of warped blue sky in his wake.
"murderer! murderer! tsumugi is a murderer!" he sings. his face is a hole full of oversaturated foliage. between the edges of two maple leaves she can see the mocking squint of one eye, purple and wicked.
"as if you're any better!"
"murderer! burn in hell!"
"you're a hypocrite!"
"burn, burn, burn!"
anger is her most attractive expression, but that's not something he has decided, much less given actual thought to, because he doesn't think about her. not at all. because he hates her.
he really does.
he really does.
she leaves him in the shade of a maple tree with a weak feeling in his chest. his head is empty.