Blood-sodden fingers grasped the notebook, liquid life bleeding into the ink-scrolled paper as a hand weakly tore from its contents a page, on which was written the final word.
Rain trickled down through a canopy of rooftops, bedazzling the abyss of colorless pavement below with liquid beads; sequins reflecting the night's white wisps of light from behind clouds which ambled to and fro like the coy moon's suitors. The brilliant lacquer of cold light spilled over the winding labyrinth of buildings and alleyways, seemingly petrified against the intimidating stone jungle where buildings rose in union like defenders of the nature-inept.
In the farthest crevice of the city there stood a silhouette; the normal silhouette of a man of everyday width and stature; an ordinary silhouette born not of an ordinary man. The man stepped from the shadows, revealing a young face embroidered with the lines of an old soul, hunched shoulders weighed down by the weight of the world, and a whimsical smile which seemed curiously disturbed. The man carried not but the clothes on his back and a ragged old notebook with a damp cardboard cover, clutched like an ornament to his chest by his right arm.
He made his way towards a lonely streetlamp, his gait steady but his progress slow. Turning his head to the left as he bent to sit beneath the angry golden light, his unctuous black hair fell in tendrils to either side of his face, parting to reveal empty sockets where twin eyeballs should have been perched. His lack of eyes could glare without sight; they were as in-pardonably shocking to most as staring into a dead man's skull, and as such he had come to be called "Scream", not so much by those around him, but rather a self-adorned nickname which reflected the reaction that he typically invoked.
Scream removed a pen from his jeans pocket; a pen as ordinary and in-extraordinary at first glance as was he; blue and filled with likewise colored ink: entirely without phenomenon. He dabbed it a few times on a barren page of the notebook, drawing the ink to the tip of the pen, and began to write. /A ma/- the letters began to fade, the ink dull and vaguely visible. Scream's sockets widened in alarm, and he dabbed the pen on the page once again. It was of no avail, and the ink remained opaque. His whimsical smile shifted, his lips tightening in a morose grimace. Scream was a man of few spoken words and many written, and so it was that he said nothing, but voiced his displeasure by tossing the weathered notebook suddenly to the ground with a flop.
How he knew of the ink's belligerent betrayal was not apparent. Perhaps the pen itself was an extension of him, as a limb was to most. Perhaps it was a matter of thought: an extension of his mind. Perhaps it was a sixth sense unbeknownst and incomprehensible to those without it. Or perhaps Scream was merely an extension of himself: a surreal entity of its own design and beyond boundaries of such mortality. Whatever the case may have been, he sat staring at it for a few moments, the rain dribbling down onto the already soggy cardboard, limpid droplets quivering in the wind and glaring back at the powdery red brick wall standing erect before them, as if to usurp the shattered glass lying beside them and reign sovereign over the opposite reality reflected back in the defective mirror shards.
Reluctantly retrieving and re-opening the notebook, he got stiffly to his feet, his thinly clad back caressing the metallic streetlamp as he slowly stood before beginning to meander down the dimly lit streets with cars whirring by, hushing the already sleeping city. Then he took the pen, stopped abruptly, and held it in his hand for a long, silent moment. The city seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of his next action...
Scream craned his arm back, the pen still pointed downwards in hand, and brought it down forcefully onto his upturned wrist. Blood began to pulse in a projectile fountain from his arm to the street below, covering the bullet-silver tip of the obtruding pen like foreign candy coating. He removed the pen from the wound, the notebook still in hand, and began to write in gore as he continued silently along the side of the road, the faint patter of trickling liquid echoing in his skull until a car hissed by again, boldly whisking away the unnatural silence. A once quiet blue vein now stood roguishly loud in a violent arch, frayed at the wound like the overused string of a marionette. Still he continued on.
It was the staccato bang of a gunshot which first caused Scream to sense the two men ambling towards him. He turned on his heels, walking in the direction from which he came.
“Hey!” One of the voices, owned by a tall man obscured by a black hoodie and the dark of night, called into the silence. Scream began to hurry, his footfalls landing ever faster.
“Hey!” it bellowed again, louder this time, carried by the streets like the tires of a car and ricocheting off of the buildings. Scream ran quickly down a back road, bordered by a wall on either side, coming to an abrupt halt as he found a wall at the end of the alleyway dissipating his plan for escape.
The two men laughed as they turned the corner and strolled towards him. He could see the source of the gunshot dangling carelessly in the left hand of the shorter man, the one who hadn’t spoken.
Back hunched, Scream took the pen and dabbed it again in the blood dribbling from his arm, and then scribbled something quickly in his notebook. The two men watched wide-eyed; the ink became its own entity as he wrote, levitating up and off of the page, it became a tangible mass of color and solidity forming letters, then words in foreign tongues and odd languages. The pen continued to scribble, and the ink continued to flow in a surreal fountain of no reality from the notebook. It formed radiant, beautiful colors, floating from the paper, traveling the air to wander towards them in a lingual gob, treading within an arm’s length of the two men, and enveloping Scream entirely. It was indescribable and, more than that, unbelievable. It was a sight not appreciable by such men; it was a sight which Scream knew would be the cause of confusion and fright. Perhaps it was this fright which caused the following events, but they were not the events which Scream had anticipated.
The shorter man broke from his trance long enough to hold the gun steady, and point it straight. A bullet erupted from the barrel, and suddenly the words evaporated, dissipating as if they were never there and leaving the crumpled ball which was a heavily wounded Scream in their wake to bleed out onto the tar. The two men uttered not a word, but ran stealthily in the opposite direction, the sounds of their fright echoing in the night long after they had fled. Scream reached a shaking arm towards the notebook, intent on but one task even as his life ebbed into the cold city’s floor.
Blood-sodden fingers grasped the notebook, liquid life bleeding into the ink-scrolled paper as a hand weakly tore from its contents a page, on which was written the final word.
Rain trickled down through a canopy of rooftops, bedazzling the abyss of colorless pavement below with liquid beads; sequins reflecting the night's white wisps of light from behind clouds which ambled to and fro like the coy moon's suitors. The brilliant lacquer of cold light spilled over the winding labyrinth of buildings and alleyways, seemingly petrified against the intimidating stone jungle where buildings rose in union like defenders of the nature-inept.
In the farthest crevice of the city there stood a silhouette; the normal silhouette of a man of everyday width and stature; an ordinary silhouette born not of an ordinary man. The man stepped from the shadows, revealing a young face embroidered with the lines of an old soul, hunched shoulders weighed down by the weight of the world, and a whimsical smile which seemed curiously disturbed. The man carried not but the clothes on his back and a ragged old notebook with a damp cardboard cover, clutched like an ornament to his chest by his right arm.
He made his way towards a lonely streetlamp, his gait steady but his progress slow. Turning his head to the left as he bent to sit beneath the angry golden light, his unctuous black hair fell in tendrils to either side of his face, parting to reveal empty sockets where twin eyeballs should have been perched. His lack of eyes could glare without sight; they were as in-pardonably shocking to most as staring into a dead man's skull, and as such he had come to be called "Scream", not so much by those around him, but rather a self-adorned nickname which reflected the reaction that he typically invoked.
Scream removed a pen from his jeans pocket; a pen as ordinary and in-extraordinary at first glance as was he; blue and filled with likewise colored ink: entirely without phenomenon. He dabbed it a few times on a barren page of the notebook, drawing the ink to the tip of the pen, and began to write. /A ma/- the letters began to fade, the ink dull and vaguely visible. Scream's sockets widened in alarm, and he dabbed the pen on the page once again. It was of no avail, and the ink remained opaque. His whimsical smile shifted, his lips tightening in a morose grimace. Scream was a man of few spoken words and many written, and so it was that he said nothing, but voiced his displeasure by tossing the weathered notebook suddenly to the ground with a flop.
How he knew of the ink's belligerent betrayal was not apparent. Perhaps the pen itself was an extension of him, as a limb was to most. Perhaps it was a matter of thought: an extension of his mind. Perhaps it was a sixth sense unbeknownst and incomprehensible to those without it. Or perhaps Scream was merely an extension of himself: a surreal entity of its own design and beyond boundaries of such mortality. Whatever the case may have been, he sat staring at it for a few moments, the rain dribbling down onto the already soggy cardboard, limpid droplets quivering in the wind and glaring back at the powdery red brick wall standing erect before them, as if to usurp the shattered glass lying beside them and reign sovereign over the opposite reality reflected back in the defective mirror shards.
Reluctantly retrieving and re-opening the notebook, he got stiffly to his feet, his thinly clad back caressing the metallic streetlamp as he slowly stood before beginning to meander down the dimly lit streets with cars whirring by, hushing the already sleeping city. Then he took the pen, stopped abruptly, and held it in his hand for a long, silent moment. The city seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of his next action...
Scream craned his arm back, the pen still pointed downwards in hand, and brought it down forcefully onto his upturned wrist. Blood began to pulse in a projectile fountain from his arm to the street below, covering the bullet-silver tip of the obtruding pen like foreign candy coating. He removed the pen from the wound, the notebook still in hand, and began to write in gore as he continued silently along the side of the road, the faint patter of trickling liquid echoing in his skull until a car hissed by again, boldly whisking away the unnatural silence. A once quiet blue vein now stood roguishly loud in a violent arch, frayed at the wound like the overused string of a marionette. Still he continued on.
It was the staccato bang of a gunshot which first caused Scream to sense the two men ambling towards him. He turned on his heels, walking in the direction from which he came.
“Hey!” One of the voices, owned by a tall man obscured by a black hoodie and the dark of night, called into the silence. Scream began to hurry, his footfalls landing ever faster.
“Hey!” it bellowed again, louder this time, carried by the streets like the tires of a car and ricocheting off of the buildings. Scream ran quickly down a back road, bordered by a wall on either side, coming to an abrupt halt as he found a wall at the end of the alleyway dissipating his plan for escape.
The two men laughed as they turned the corner and strolled towards him. He could see the source of the gunshot dangling carelessly in the left hand of the shorter man, the one who hadn’t spoken.
Back hunched, Scream took the pen and dabbed it again in the blood dribbling from his arm, and then scribbled something quickly in his notebook. The two men watched wide-eyed; the ink became its own entity as he wrote, levitating up and off of the page, it became a tangible mass of color and solidity forming letters, then words in foreign tongues and odd languages. The pen continued to scribble, and the ink continued to flow in a surreal fountain of no reality from the notebook. It formed radiant, beautiful colors, floating from the paper, traveling the air to wander towards them in a lingual gob, treading within an arm’s length of the two men, and enveloping Scream entirely. It was indescribable and, more than that, unbelievable. It was a sight not appreciable by such men; it was a sight which Scream knew would be the cause of confusion and fright. Perhaps it was this fright which caused the following events, but they were not the events which Scream had anticipated.
The shorter man broke from his trance long enough to hold the gun steady, and point it straight. A bullet erupted from the barrel, and suddenly the words evaporated, dissipating as if they were never there and leaving the crumpled ball which was a heavily wounded Scream in their wake to bleed out onto the tar. The two men uttered not a word, but ran stealthily in the opposite direction, the sounds of their fright echoing in the night long after they had fled. Scream reached a shaking arm towards the notebook, intent on but one task even as his life ebbed into the cold city’s floor.
Blood-sodden fingers grasped the notebook, liquid life bleeding into the ink-scrolled paper as a hand weakly tore from its contents a page, on which was written the final word.
Tess B. 
Gecko
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