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The dusky smoke had wafted up through the trees. It strained out the air in the deathly mist and left the toxins for the Earth to pick up.
The grass was slightly wet from rain two days ago and still smelled like it was fresh. Funny, considering how everyone here had long since died.
Smoking in a cemetery at night was practical. It was empty. Dead. Quiet. Here was the only place he knew he could remain unbothered. People were decomposing under him. It was a reminder, to Andrew’s platform boots, that no matter what he did, no matter what others did to him, he’d end up surrounded by Earth or ash in someone’s lungs.
Andrew inhaled, the light at the end of the cigarette was a soft orange that betrayed the moon blue. It had been left on the windowsill and now tasted different. Seeped in something indescribable.
He leaned back against a tree and listened to the sounds of the night.
Crickets strummed, ameuteur violinists. The grass underfoot and leaves overhead rustled with a voice that strained and never sang and there was the rustling sound of creatures moving about in the dark. Nocturnal, like Andrew. He guessed at what each could be. The sound grew closer.
Scuffling. Scraping. Dragging. A predator which had caught a rabbit. Maybe a dog or a coyote dragging its prey away. Or not… it was louder than that.
Andrew bent his straightened legs and listened. Clouds overcame the moon. In this total black, it was hard to see much of anything. Hearing elevated. Andrew listened.
The scraping stopped momentarily. There was an exhale—stifled—and a grunt as the scraping started again.
That wasn’t an animal.
Andrew leaned out from behind the tree and saw a shadow in the darkness dragging a mass. The figure was illuminated as the clouds were undone.
There was someone, blue-lit by a backdrop of trees feasting on the dead. With red curled hair, slightly overgrown, framing his face, this shady stranger looked like the garnish of the banquet. He was too beautiful to be dragging a body-shaped bag along a trail between the grass blades. The shovel strapped to his back was antique. The rust on it was so distinctly ruddy and orange that it was nearly red. The moon shone harder. It appeared to glow. Red. Red, because it wasn’t rust, it was blood.
This would be the cause of Andrew’s undoing.
He waited, golden wolf’s eyes watching, as the pretty psychopath dumped the body bag.
Or maybe Andrew was being judgemental. Maybe there was weed in there or soup or something. Yeah fucking right there’s going to be soup in there.
A shovel struck the Earth. Dirt was upended and used to cover the crime.
Andrew stubbed his cigarette out in the dirt and flicked it aside. He stood up, adjusting his sleeves over his armbands, making sure that a knife was in reach. He walked over quietly, the sounds of trees and animals rustling covering the sound of his steps.
When he was right behind the stranger, he said, “Hey.”
“Fuck!” The guy jumped and nearly fell into the hole. He whipped around and looked at Andrew.
“How’s it going,” Andrew said. “This is sort of my brooding area, so if you wouldn’t mind.”
The guy didn’t look as guilty of manslaughter as he should have. “The cemetery? Who are you, Edgar Allen Poe?”
“Andrew,” Andrew said. “Don’t compare me to emo poets. You?”
“If I could choose, I’d choose Charles Bukowski.”
“No, your name.”
“Oh. Neil.”
Andrew flicked his lighter. “What are you doing in my cemetery?”
“I, uh, I’m just,” he took a step back and leaned against an unmarked gravestone. “Chilling.”
“Chilling,” Andrew repeated, looking at the shovel.
The stranger held up the shovel. “I was thinking about going grave robbing,” he said smoothly. As if Andrew hadn’t just watched him bury a body.
“I see,” Andrew said slowly. “How about we try this one?” He looked at the dirt messily piled back onto where Neil had shoveled it. “Looks recent, I’m sure it can’t be too gross. For all we know, they left Death a ferry toll.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Neil said. “An unmarked grave means no identification or relatives. They’re probably short on anything valuable.”
“No, see now I’m curious,” Andrew said. He took the shovel. “Maybe it’s someone unidentified from a murder investigation. We could close the case.”
Neil laughed. The sound betrayed that he was a little nervous. Who did he think he was fooling?
When Neil laughed, his teeth slipped in. They were sharp little things, like fox fangs. He had dimples that probably would have looked much less ominous in sunlight. Everything about Neil was sharp, punctured. Looking over his body, Andrew read him as a quick fighter, he’d use every last resource available to him to kill. A gun. Maybe a knife. He was too stringy to be that good at hand-to-hand combat.
Andrew dug the shovel into the loose dirt. “Oh, it’s pretty soft.”
“Stop,” Neil said.
Andrew hummed. “How else will I ever know?”
“If you're that bored I could tell you something more interesting?” Neil tried. He was cute when he was desperate.
“Hmm?” Andrew looked up. “Like whose blood is on this shovel?”
Neil gulped and then licked his lips. They were violently red. Everything he was contrasted the mood of the sky. Like fire at night. Too hot for his own good. So easy to burn yourself on, although you’ll see what was coming from forever away, considering how easily brightness penetrates.
“If you don’t tell the cops,” Neil said, throat dry. He sounded nervous.
That was the strangest thing about all of this, that Neil was just a teenager, probably younger than Andrew. A kid with a conscience. Right now, he looked like a scolded dog. Big blue, effervescent eyes wide and guilty.
“That depends, what did they do to you?” Andrew asked.
“Well, he did try to kill me,” Neil said. “And he was responsible for the death of my mom.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Funny, my mom died last week.”
Neil’s eyes widened. “Oh. Sorry.”
“For what? You weren’t the one driving.”
“Who was?”
“Me.”
Silence for a moment. “That was probably…traumatic?”
Andrew came the closest he had gotten to laughing in nine years. “Very much so. The life insurance cash weighs heavy on my heart. Everyday, I think to myself, what will I do with all this money?”
Neil, against all odds that said a rational human being would be booking it by now, smiled . “She wasn’t a very good mom, was she?”
“No,” Andrew answered. Maybe it was the moon, shining on them like a truthseeker, that made words come easier.
“Mine wasn’t either,” Neil muttered with his soft and scratched voice. His voice was probably a lot like his body, or at least it was like what Andrew could see of his body. His collarbones poked out from under the oversize and stretched-out hoodie. No wonder it was stretched with the way Neil kept pulling at the material.
Andrew swung the shovel over his shoulder. ”Why don’t we hold a funeral celebration?”
“For mourning or celebrating?”
“Both. Unexclusively.”
“What would that entail?”
“Lightening my pockets by buying snacks and flammable things.”
“I can’t stay long.”
“You’re lucky that snacks are only a block away.”
Andrew led the way out of the gray grass and onto the sidewalk. They walked, and Andrew quickly noticed that Neil stopped talking when it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t fill the empty space between them with silences like so many people made the mistake of doing. Nothingness really was satisfying at times. Silence was peace.
The door chimed as they entered the bright gas station. The cashier eyed them with more tiredness than suspicion. What a sight they must have been with Neil still holding his shovel and Andrew all goth-ed up in ripped black jeans, boots, and a ragged thrifted sweater with a graphic T depicting one of Junji Ito’s cats.
Andrew aggressively grabbed takis and beef jerky and handed it all to Neil. He stacked a few other things in Neil’s hands. Chocolate bars. Sparklers.
When they got to the register the cashier looked at the two of them and the ‘fireworks’ and seemed to turn down asking for an ID. Neil carried everything in a plastic bag.
They headed out of glaring light and back, past some dying streetlights, into the grass. Neil’s bag crinkled softly while his foot swept aside long blades.
Andrew found he wasn’t unnerved by the sounds accompanying him. It wasn’t like Aaron, yelling so hard he could tear his throat. Neil’s body noise was soft; a fire crackling.
Once they were back near the unmarked grave, under the trees, hidden by shrubbery that tried desperately to make a real secret—a grove, Andrew handed Neil a sparkler. Neil blinked at it like he had never seen a sparkler in his life.
Idiot.
“Forward,” Andrew said. Neil put out the sparkler and Andrew lit it with his lighter.
Neil watched, fire eyes wide and reflective, as it sparked to life. Yellow-orange flickers rained out from a single point.
He smiled, slow, genuine, and bright. “Wow,” Neil said, chuckling slightly.
Wow, Andrew thought. Neil’s eyes flickered up to him and he pretended he hadn’t been looking.
Andrew pulled his own sparkler out of the box and pressed the tip of his sparkler to Neil’s to light it. The traveling fire descended down each sparkler, two directions diverting.
Andrew stepped back and swirled his sparkler around in intricate patterns. Neil watched the sparkler. Andrew watched Neil’s eyes. He traced pattern after pattern in the air, undecipherable. Backward, the patterns read, P-R-E-T-T-Y. They were too twirly for him to know that’s what the letters were.
“Pretty,” Neil said.
Andrew’s heart almost stopped.
“They are, aren’t they?” Neil asked.
“Yeah,” Andrew said.
He cleared his throat and stepped up behind the unmarked gravestone where the mercenary was buried. For their purposes, that mercenary would be two mothers. Both too toxic to decompose rightfully, all above the world of consuming creatures. The type of bugs and maggots and flatworms which take you apart in peace, an effortlessly effective system. The parliament of Platyhelminthes.
Andrew lilted his sparkler over the dirt. “To the bugs who will eat you. To the flatworms and every heart of theirs and every digestive tract in their bodies. To the maggots. To the carrion birds. To the mushrooms, who cycle back the remnant of their pollution. Might you make these two suffocators into something breathable. Might you recycle them into life.”
Neil reached for Andrew’s sparkler. “May I?”
Andrew nodded.
Neil deftly took Andrew’s sparkler. Now he had two. “May the bugs who eat you feel content with their feast. To them, to the birds, to the strawberries you didn't have to buy me. To the fruit stands and the farmers' markets. To your bloody resolve and your overpowering will. You will always be stronger than him.
“To every bit of non-cruelty you ever showed me. Thank you. I’m—”
Andrew maneuvered himself carefully so he didn’t get burned. He took Neil’s hand with the sparkler, halting his walk around the grave. “Don’t apologize to her,” Andrew said. “She won’t be able to do much with that now.”
Neil stared on, relaxed mouth looking a little uncertain, and absurdly kissable. “To everything except for the harm you caused me. Thank you for the strawberries, Mary.”
Andrew took both sparklers from Neil’s willing hands and stood at the bottom of the grave. “Dear Tilda, fuck you, you bitch.”
Neil coughed. “Jesus christ.”
“You’ll want popcorn for this,” Andrew said.
Neil opened up a bag of beef jerky.
“Tilda, I hope that the mysteries of death are uncovered to you and you alone, and your consciousness is alive after you die, allowing you to feel pain and loneliness. I hope you feel it as insects burrow into you. I hope whatever God you believe in stops you at the gates and makes you live through every bruise and unhealthy coping mechanism and every bit of love crushed by pain, until you comprehensively understand what you’ve done to others.
“How dare you make someone who deserves better love you.
“I’m glad you're dead.”
When Andrew was done, he looked over at Neil, who was chomping on beef jerky with both hands like a feral squirrel.
“Your’s might have been worse than mine,” Neil said.
Andrew shrugged about it. “Or yours, it sounds like Mary fooled you into thinking hurt was love.”
“No.” Neil shook his head. “No, I know mine was terrible. I just can’t lie to myself and say there weren’t times I forgot how bad she could be. Her worst and her best felt like two different people.”
“Both are dead now,” Andrew said, kicking at the dirt. “She’s resting as Mary, not nice Mary and abuser Mary. Just Mary.”
“Mm,” Neil said. He watched as the sparkler died out. “So, you aren’t going to ask?”
“Ask what?”
“‘What are you doing alone when your mothers dead?’ ‘Why don’t you go to the police?’ ‘Why were mercenaries after you?’”
“You aren’t asking why I killed Tilda.”
“Fair.”
“She fucking deserved it,” Andrew said. He lit two more sparklers with the dying light of his and pulled out a chocolate bar, tearing it open with his teeth. He said his next words around a mouthful of chocolate. “She hit kids. She screamed at kids. Life spent with a parent like that is permanently damaging.”
The chocolate bar was crushed into several tiny pieces in its wrapper.
“Oh,” Neil said. “Mine raised her voice sometimes, but only when it was necessary. She uhm… she only hit me when she really needed to.”
Andrew dropped the chocolate in his pocket and grabbed Neil by the collar of his shirt. “Say that again, I dare you.”
Neil was so close Andrew could taste his breath; beef jerky. Sugary and red. Behind that was… watermelon?
The sparkles sputtered and both died out at once.
It was dark. The only thing was Neil and his breathing. “That’s just how I see it.”
“You’re wrong,” Andrew said. “Your mind is trying to come up with rationals, reasons that she would hurt you, with words or pain or anything else. Let me tell you something; No reason will explain that, because there is never a reason to hit a child.”
“But—”
“She could have drilled whatever she needed into that thick skull of yours a thousand ways. None of which needed to involve bruises or killing your eardrums or harmful stress. Do you understand?”
Neil looked down at Andrew. He chewed on his lip, irritating the already irritated crimson. Chapstick, Andrew thought. They could buy it later.
“Yes,” Neil said. “I understand.”
“Good.” Andrew let go of him.
Neil stumbled back and laid down in the grass. It was a little dramatic considering Andrew hadn’t pushed him. Neil opened up his arms and straightened his legs as he was surrendering to the sky.
The clouds were clear just when their self-made stars—the sparklers—ran out.
Andrew sat down at Neil’s side.
“I guess,” Neil said. “She did pull a lot of my hair out once.”
“Tilda’s hair always clogged the shower. We always flipped a coin on who had to fish it out with a fork.”
Neil laughed. “That’s disgusting. My mom tossed me into a lake once. She thought it would teach me how to swim.”
“Did it?”
“No!”
“Ah well, I suppose you aren’t a natural.”
“I’m good at running though, that’s the most I know how to do with my legs. It’s because she pushed me to run harder. You know, keeping up with her when I was twelve was awful. I threw up a few times.”
“Once, Tilda made dinner drunk,” Andrew said. “She added vinegar instead of water. God, I still remember the smell and the taste.”
“Just how drunk was she?”
“Drunk enough to mistake vinegar for water.”
“Ah. Wouldn’t have guessed. Mary never drank. We did get sleep deprived though. Once I went like three days without sleep. Creatures started walking out of the walls.”
“I’ve been there. Sleep hallucinations sometimes are better than nightmares.”
“What did you see?”
“You first.”
“Like I said, faceless shapes, humanoid or dog-oid, walking out of the walls, just peeling off like paint. Red things turned into… more detailed red things a lot… meat, and, and gruesome stuff.”
Andrew blinked up at the stars. There were so few here near the city. Everything was smothered out of sight.
At least Neil was clear though, when Andrew looked back down.
“Cats,” Andrew said.
“Cats?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds… pleasant.”
“It was.” It had been forever ago. It was at home ten of thirteen. He was twelve, and there was someone who wanted to come into his room at night. Someone before Drake. Someone that could be fended off. They were a coward. Wouldn’t come if he was awake.
They were sick.
She was terrible because of what she caused. He would lay there, not quite sleeping and every time the door had that telltale creak he would look up at her, What are you doing in my room? Just sleepwalking, kiddo. Except she crept closer each time. It was terrifying. Odd. It only made sense to his kid brain because he connected the dots to other abusers.
So he stayed up, without sleeping. Nights in a row. Eventually, he started seeing them everywhere, 2D and 3D in different shapes. Simple. They started at the edges of his eyes and then got more detailed; Cats.
He would reach out to pet one and nothing. His hand would phase thought, a ghost cat.
Then, on the fourth night, when he felt himself slipping, when he would blackout intermittently throughout school for seconds at a time, he got home, and with panic rising like cold cement in his throat, he lit her favorite houseplant on fire.
“Cats,” Neil said.
“Cats,” Andrew said. He was grateful that at least one section of his subconscious was kind to him.
“I met a cat once,” Neil said.
Andrew’s lips tickled a little at the corners. “Do tell.”
“She was called Sock,” Neil said.
Andrew furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s a terrible name for a cat. You have to name them something grand, like King McFluffkins or Sir Fatty Catty.”
Neil laughed. “Those are god-awful names. Sock is perfectly valid. She was gray and impossibly soft. I don’t think I’ve ever touched anything that was that… soft.”
“Little fiend,” Andrew said. “At least she was real.”
“Have you met a cat recently that wasn’t?”
“I… haven’t slept well the past few days.”
“I could be a cat.”
“You seem like a hallucination,” Andrew said.
“I’m not,” Neil said. “I’m real.”
“Sure, Sock.”
Neil sat up from the ground so his eyes matched Andrew’s. “Says you, the lemon boy with matching citrus eyes and hair who doesn’t care that I just buried someone in a graveyard.”
“Lemon boy,” Andrew repeated. “Meaning?”
“You have eyes like honey and hair that looks like it was woven by the sun,” Neil said.
Andrew blinked. He was hallucinating. Definitely. Positively. Absolutely. He reached out, expecting his hand to go right through Neil, the ghost.
Andrew held his breath and tousled Neil’s hair. It was impossibly soft.
“Oi,” Neil said.
“Just checking to make sure you aren’t a Sock,” Andrew said.
Neil smiled at him. The smile was somehow even softer than his hair. “Are you Sock?”
“Why don’t you check?”
Neil reached up and Andrew leaned down so Neil could viciously mess up his hair. “Ha ha sucker.” He left Andrew off with a single pat to his head. “Sockless.”
Andrew, for once, didn’t recoil at the touch. Maybe it was because Neil was invited. Maybe it was because Neil waited, and asked, and only touched where he was specifically granted permission.
Andrew pulled out his chocolate and shared that. The beef jerky was shared too, and all of their snacks. Apparently, Neil had never eaten takis, which was a travesty. The second he tried them he was huffing and waving at his mouth like that would get rid of the spiciness. Lick grass if you're that desperate,” Andrew had said. By the time the sky had deepened to its darkest and the sun had begun to dawn, they knew enough about each other to get one another incarcerated by the FBI.
Neil watched as the sun rose over the far horizon and the sky went lighter. “I have to go.”
“Great,” Andrew said. “Go with me.”
“What?” Neil asked, eyes wide and in this light, the brightest baby blue. He was a field of flowers.
“Come with me,” Andrew said, offering his hand to pull Neil up from the ground.
Neil looked as if every voice in his head, every lesson that had been burned into him, every strawberry and every scream, was saying to stop. To pull back. His feet twitched. His legs tensed. His eyes, though, stayed fixated on Andrew’s, like a moth drawn to fire. Like a sunflower following the sun.
Neil took Andrew’s hand.