'Clip Clop! Clip Clop! Clip Clop!'
'Interesting… There seems to be a horse show in town today.'
They clippity clopped their way on by. Smooth coats and sheens finely oiled by groomers which pronounced their luscious manes as well as extensive treatment. Riders sat on top in highly expensive outfits woven by material rare and exotic. One even had peacock feathers sewn into his breast pocket while alligator hide composed the saddle.
Best of all were their light 'neighs' sought by appreciative gestures demonstrating how well-mannered to finely managed the beasts were by their owners. Snorts painted the picture of a wide open meadow far in the remnants of the countryside away from the smog and pollution occupied by the cities. In this meadow they are free to gallop, to explore in their heart's content.
Fine animals they are. Animals that can last on the necessities of life, suffering no cause for concern. Animals that bask in the careful nurture of relationships.
Just one last quick glance before moving on should do it…
'Oh… They're gone…'
Where the blistering multicolored lights announcing a marketable holiday had strung from rooftop to rooftop and storefront to storefront, now gone, replaced by hearts on top of roses. A scorching stare illuminated the petals fostering growth in them.
Daniel stood in front of the store, his gaze stuck to a bouquet of pink roses. Absent of gift in either hand and without a mark of affection.
'Flowers…'
A flower in her mouth lightly chewed on. A pink rose dangling from another mouth swapping it with hers. Squeals of delight echoing out far far down his way. Displaying an agasp expression he knew nothing of.
It wasn't a first, nor a second, nor a third. Many, many times had it occurred beneath his nose. Clouded judgment, clouded vision, clouded rationality brought this conclusion. Found by this icy grasp he did the only thing he could, run.
He ran and ran while his feet bled from their lack of direction. Flopping at awkward angles, no sense of cohesion to their movement. All to bring him to a separate hole unaware of the scene.
Perhaps it was a lie to play his brain a mess?
'No. The reflection on the window was too vivid. Too real to escape from.'
A misunderstanding?
'No. It's best to let go.'
Then, who was it?
Daniel approached a small item cart. A man of dark complexion slept on a creaking stool that cast his height feet below a comfortable posture. Beside his strewn form, a fan blew cool air subsisting the steady stream of sweat on his graying mutton chops. Similar stalls lined the entertainment area where theaters for film and plays constantly were in motion, outside advertisers, dressed in scantily clad outfits showing the hems to dresses or straps of bras, waved for customers. The women were old or disguised to a youthful self.
'She had done her hair up. Makeup and all. Sunkist lipstick.'
His tongue sliding over them. Venomously leaking his own vileness into the ridges of her lips seeping it into her gums next and filling her mind.
On the cart, an array of sunglasses, cheaply designed, put together by child-labor, came in several sizes and colors. Yet, of the two dozen or more hanging high on their rack was a pure black pair of aviators. Daniel lifted his hand grabbing the pair, taking them from their rack.
'It was him. HIM!'
His back had been burned into Daniel's mind by the night he arrived as their supposed savior. He had saved them, placing Daniel where he belonged. He came just to save Sam, the only explanation. Never would he have saved him.
A cog for desire that's all.
All that time spent training, fighting, coating fists with experience. Yet, the one laziest of them all plucked what which was not his to take.
Each frame played itself again.
'Where had she been converted?
That night? Before? The Hospital? Christmas?'
Dead in his tracks, he recounted when the two of them went off by their lonesome. It was before then, they were already in the midst of it by that point.
Train cars sped by overhead as the rails shook raining dust upon his head. Flimsy construction even in the upper district caused shoddy accidents. Daniel had accepted his position but grew with his own greed for something more. Maybe then, he wouldn't have made her cry when their eyes met. That split second when they crossed paths did he see guilt's ghost at her soul. A splatter of the boxes rained down on the floor along with the various chocolates inside. She still cared for him. She was still on his side even in that period.
'Stop deluding yourself.'
She would have sprinted for him never to see that creep again. But, here he was… alone…
Alone.
'It's not her fault. She has her own situations, her own circumstances, own problems.' It was delusions conjured by Daniel resulting in this conclusion. So, the blame lay on his shoulders. He had failed. Failed to stay near enough to take what was so easily given.
"You have to be literally the only person to think of her in this way." Kage's words bounced around. Daniel had wasted a good thing yet again. How many more times will he let go of something just within reach?
If he had the same courage he gave now would his Dad have stuck around?
Could Mama still be cooking some bread for lunch?
Selling scraps may never have occurred sticking them together leaving all to be a loving family side by side. Possibly not with much but enough to call themselves a collective.
Tidal waves of sins crashed about loosening the screws holding the frame up. The sins that were fizzled to a straight line telling himself to move forward was a wave skittering up and down, diagonally and intersecting points outside their region.
'Johnny, Tom, Lennard, Clarence, Hernult, Reggie, could have survived. If I just died then they would be alive. My food would have gone to save at least one of them for an extra day. More orphans could be well off if they lasted another day. That extra day someone could have come and brought salvation to their existences. Yet, I stole that from them all.'
Clawing at his wrist, the watch was gone.
The needle to cut was gone.
No relief toy present to sate the hunger within. He needed to scratch this itch for pain. Punishment was not dealt on him yet, and he desperately needed it.
Through his manic dashing, he recognized the alleyway he marched into. The opposite end, covered in brick, the perfect place for some privacy.
Daniel slammed his back against the bricks, then he withdrew his belt hurling his shirt on top of a box to a television set. Rats beneath the garbage piled up in the stretch of land, some green chemical oozed out from the cracks to a neighboring backdoor of a candy shop; however, none of it was even noticed by him.
His right hand stretched out, every contour under some form of scrutiny, Daniel spotted the sharp length to his nails. Subconsciously he had let them extend bit by bit then sharpened. Without his needle his mind knew he would need the relief at some point. Luckily, it predicted correctly.
Time couldn't be counted in this space. For anyone knew it may have been hours overlapping onceover to the point of nonexistence. Whether it was perceived by Daniel that length he went at to ruin the sacred grounds of his pale complexion along his frame was unbeknownst.
But, surfing into the yellow vibrant puddle reflecting back at him was a work of art. Mangled and ripped, picked in the process by the dried clay patted point to a brush. Bristles melded together decorated by a rapidly spreading ornament lighting the whole thing up in red. The web-like pattern seeped from crevices of uneven proportions.
The mess was his masterpiece. A work of pure spectacle unable to be plagiarized by another. His personal gift to the world.
Settling on his haunches, Daniel checked the notifications to his phone. In the corner he saw a flash of hundreds of messages and missed phone calls from Kage, then HER, and finally HIM. Browsing his own calls, he discovered he had made one to Kage thirty minutes ago. No memory came to this action.
Daniel shrugged his shoulders, snapped the phone in two, dropping it into a gutter as he pulled the shirt back over his stained body. A puffiness overtook his vision, tears had poured out like a leaky faucet at one point.
'They could still be falling, and I wouldn't even know.'