The streets were unnaturally quiet; the only sound that resonated was the distant noise of the house party three blocks away. Its music was pulsing, like a siren, attracting all partiers looking for fun. If the front door opened, a wall of smell would hit you, filling your nostrils with a diversity of scents; cigarette smoke, vomit, and a strange scent of cinnamon. It intrigued Cason Pierce, reeling him in like a fish on a hook. As soon as he stepped in, he was caught in a blizzard of sound, smells, food, bright colours and drinks, people brushing past your shoulders, fingers combing through your hair.
Inside, everyone danced in frenzy. People were strung along the stairs, and they poured out of the windows onto the second floor balcony, onto the lawn, and the street. Laughter and shouts, voices of different pitch, blended together to make a unique rhythm Cason called house party jazz.
Outside was a different story. Everything was still and silent. Cason looked up at the sky, in search of his stars. But all he saw were clouds, and an eerily glowing orange light, which he figured was light pollution. Tonight, you could see no stars. Just city lights, city stars. City stars, flashing blue, green, orange and red in this concrete forest. You could see none of his Pennsylvania green, grassy rolling hills, but a concrete forest spread out around him for miles and miles. No soft, green grass, only uneven, gravel sidewalk, where litter rested. The trees were rough-looking apartment buildings, on which graffiti profanity stood out on their brick walls, in neon colours, telling the stories of the streets, visually explicit.
All of the concrete was a brutal, harsh backdrop to Cason and Elodie’s smooth skin, and their quite quiet quaint colours. Cason was wearing a brown leather jacket, which looking particularly worn. His jeans were of a pale blue shade, and ripped around his knees, and unlike most people at the party, they were torn because they actually were designer. His t-shirt was white, oddly clean compared to all of this rubble and urban decay.  He wore the gold necklace his aunt Maribelle gave him on his birthday, two months before she was killed most suspiciously in a raging fire. It reminded him of her, her scent of baked goods and smiles.
But his parents were never there for him. They were always at business meetings or in their offices upstairs while he sat silently downstairs. Any mess he made in their house, a mansion that looked as if it were never lived in, would immediately equal punishment. During piano lessons and tutoring, his parents never checked in on him, never appeared at recitals or soccer games. At recitals, and reward ceremonies, there would always be two empty chairs, the ones reserved for his parents.  Cason’s aunt would try hard to arrive at his important events, or greet him afterwards with cupcakes or brownies and grins.
Cason learned coldness and distance from his neglecting parents, but warmth and gentleness was developed through the influence of his wild, eccentric aunt.
  He was also wearing Converse sneakers, functional and attractive. He had his white socks pulled up exactly right over his ankle, his precision scary. Cason had always figured that if he had siblings, he would have been less calculating and precise, more relaxed. But he had no siblings. His parents had believed that one child was enough work to groom and spoil.
His aunt would’ve, without hesitation, nurtured them as well, which made him somewhat jealous. Suddenly, Cason was thankful for his parents’ calculating mind set. He didn’t ike to share, particularly, people and affection. He believed that a person’s attention should be always devoted to him, as if everyone he meets should try to make up for the love and care that his parent’s never gave him. It was his demanding tone that made everyone fall in love with him, or at least admire him.
As a result, he’s dated many girls. All of them falling head over heels for him.
But not Elodie, who he’d, met two weeks before the party. She was reluctant at first, suspicious even, when they first met, of his boyish charm. The way she would look at him screamed dislike, which greatly increased Cason’s interest in her. Her looks did also— they reminded him of a doe. She was tall and skinny. Her skin was the same caramel colour as a deer’s fur. Her body seemed fragile and delicate, but her brown eyes usually smoldered with intense ferocity. Tonight, they were excited, curious, and framed by heavy eyeliner.  Her lips were colored with dark red lipstick, bringing out her eyes. She wore a just-above-the-knees black skater skirt, and a white sleeveless to. Her hair, a strawberry red colour, shaved in a pixie cut style, was what intrigued him the most. She was like him—keeping her hair short in defiance and rebellion against the uniformity of the world.  When she had explained that to him about her hair, he’d become completely infatuated with her. He had offered to do anything she wanted—jump off a cliff, go skydiving—and all she asked for that night was to escape the party with him, and go to a gas station nearby for a slushy.
Cason had agreed—he was getting tired of the party, and quite frankly bored. Tonight was an average Saturday for him.
Cason felt like Elodie was the one capturing him. And for once, he liked it; the tug of someone else’s orbit spinning him around appealed to him.
He allowed Elodie to lead him down the street. Her arms were wrapped around one of his, her fake nails scratching his biceps. In Cason’s other hand was a cigarette, which he frequently puffed on.
As they turned a corner, one with just a streetlight, in-between the backs of two brick buildings, they were shoved by fate into a group of guys. Cason and Elodie backed away, and took in the group.
One boy was flanked by three others.
His eyes were jealousy green, which just happened to be what they shined with brightly. The dull glow of the streetlight across the road illuminated the entire corner. He owned broad shoulders, belonging to a quarterback, and his eyebrows were as thick as the smoke from Cason’s last puff on his cigarette, which he blew in their direction. The leading boy wore a school’s sweatshirt in gray, black jeans, and blue and white running shoes. Cason couldn’t see the school’s logo on the sweatshirt clearly.
  There were three other boys flanking him, two with brown hair. One of the boys’ hair was cut choppily just below his mousy ears, while the other’s was shaved to the scalp. The boy with the mousy ears reminded Cason of a standing lamp; he was so skinny.
The other brown haired boy had a long, sloped nose, and glossier hair.. He wore a black cap that did not hide his brown, excited eyes. His whole entity reminded Cason of a shaken Coca Cola bottle. When someone will loosen the cap, he will explode, painting his surroundings with cola, or blood, potentially.
Lastly, behind all three of the boys was a boy with greasy red hair. Cason’s mind suggested an image of his own fingers after eating chicken wings glazed in barbeque sauce. His energy startled Cason. It was almost electrified, active. But his appearance was strangely calm and quiet, wearing dirty smeared jogging pants, a foul looking green shirt, and an agitated, twitching right hand.
“Hey, punk!” The boy with mousy ears shouted. “I remember you! You’re the one who broke my sister’s heart!”
Cason remained silent. Sometimes silence is the best way to get information.
“You don’t even remember her. Anna? Anna Graystone?”
Everything pieced together. Cason remembered all of these kids. They were his school friends once, back in elementary. He remembered hanging out with them in Pennsylvania. And he remembered dating the sister of the mousy eared boy (his name was Marcus, Cason remembered.
Anna Graystone. She’d been so clingy, especially when they’d broken up; he had to pry her hands off him while she cried.
“That relationship was almost a year ago!” Cason exclaimed, exasperated.
This made Marcus even more enraged. “No, you inconsiderate, insensitive pig, it was three months ago.”
“You broke my Anna,” claimed the boy with the sweatshirt on, who Cason recognized as Ryan, “And now, I’m going to break you!”
Cason almost laughed. “Yeah, whatever.” Cason turned his back. But he could hear them creeping up behind him.
“Cason-” Elodie whispered, trying to comment.
“Run. Away.” He demanded, completely serious. She only glanced at him, before fleeing to the left, away from the scene, like the deer she reminded him of.
         A rough hand grabbed his shoulder; twisting him around. Cason punched the face it belonged to, catching a nose before he was pushed backwards into the darkness of an alleyway. A bloodied hand gripped his hair and wrenched it , throwing him face forward into the ground. Cason landed on the floor, on his back. Two of the boys, Ryan and Carl, the one with the black cap, pinned him to the floor. Meanwhile, Marcus pulled out a pocket knife.
Everything had been going so fast. Now it moved slowly, as if every millisecond counted.
At that moment, Cason realized what they were going to do. And he almost dissolved into nothing thinking of the realistic idea of him dying. Everyone knows that death is inevitable, but we tend not to think about it until it is presented to us on a silver platter. His tie to reality unraveled, and he fell into a dream of memories, one being when four boys who despised him in grade school pinned him down after school. They cut his hair, nicking his skin and his neck badly, like boys are now.
It happened because he was defiant and different than the others. You could say it also happened because his aunt, who had found him later and cradled him in her arms, was twenty minutes late picking him up—
A sharp pain startled Cason out of his day dream; the cruel edge of one of the boy’s knives plunged into Cason’s soft flesh. His abdomen was spray-painted in pain, making Cason cry out, his eyes watering, mixing with the blood on his face and neck.
He heard Marcus gasp, and curse. The pummeling had stopped. They were frightened.
“Damien, what the hell, man!” Marcus had shouted, no doubt staring down at the mess of Cason.
“Crap!” Carl whispered over Damien’s giggles. Feet pounded against the concrete floor. It meant they were running away from him, leaving Cason to bleed out.
He rested, staring at the streetlight across the road from him. It turned off, and then turned on, and in the light of it, he can see his aunt. She wore all white, her copper hair surrounding her. She stared at him, and then the streetlight flickered. The image of his aunt was gone.
Cason wheezed. The streetlight finally gave out, and he is washed in darkness.
As blood puddle around his lower back, thoughts rushed through his mind. One unmistakable idea flitted through watery images; that if he lives, he will take his life seriously. No more parties; he won’t stretch to reach high expectations just to snap back and hurt himself like a rubber band. He’ll make a true commitment to his art, develop his artistic career.
If he lived. Life is full of “ifs” and therefore variables. Life is just circumstance. To plan and have those carefully articulated plans ruined by circumstance, by life, is too tiring; it sucks the energy out of you like a vacuum.
So he closed his eyes, and let whatever might happen, happen.