Hauta [Kendal]

[Samael De Armas (DELETED 8006)]

There was a clot of blood on his lower lip, two days old. It had faded to the color of a particularly filthy penny; not quite copper, but no longer a true red. A shade somewhere in between. He was conscious of it in an abstract way; when the temperatures plunged, and he could feel the echo of his pulse in its thin scabbing. Moments such as these. He’d spent the better part of an hour in the parking garage. The upper most floors had collapsed, a victim of time and aging supports. It created a windfall; a place for those seeking refuge from the creeping decay of the gentrification sweeping the area in recent years.

Michael’s feet were propped against the debris of a cinder block, the corners of his mouth pulled down in a scowl. The floor beneath him was pockmarked; patches of watery stains that scored the pavement. The remnants of oil drips, perhaps. A handful, however, were too dark; lacked the tarry, insubstantial starburst of the rest. It was best not to speculate.


Sam.


He grunted, the noise as dry as the guttering hiss and catch of the Bic he thumbed. The sound was crisp, satisfying. Sam, don’t you think --- He’d turned his back deliberately on him then. It was probably why he failed to notice the girl. She had stumbled out of the cold ten minutes earlier, entering the parking garage with the air of the displaced. She hadn’t removed her sunglasses even when the murk made them unnecessary. They were a faded pink; heart shaped. Designed for a girl five years younger.


“You Sam?” She asked at last, voice like smoke. It hovered between them in the chill of the parking garage.


“Could be.”


Her eyes had narrowed at that - her face rapidly cycling between a mixture of emotions. Uncertainty. Annoyance. Fear. The fear of something not yet caged who nevertheless had tired of the chase long before it began.


“Sposed to meet a guy, that’s all,” she mumbled.



"Stood you up? What a shame.” She’d smiled then; emboldened. He winced inwardly, but echoed the expression. Not quite; hers was a quavering line, a meandering crayon in the hands of a vengeful toddler. His was closer to a coyote’s yawn; abrupt and revealing a row of teeth. He, unlike the rest of humanity, hadn’t quite adapted beyond that primal instinct; in the wild, that gleaming display of teeth is both promise and threat conjoined.


“I’m from Georgia,” she said, in the faux-shy manner of hers (or coy; she swung violently between the two, as if she couldn’t decide on which suited her irrelevant personal mythology better.) Her false lashes lowered, the effect somewhat ruined by the fact that the left of the pair had been applied with an unsteady hand, slanting slightly off center. “Just a little ways past Baldwin.” As if he couldn’t hear it in that slow drawl of hers, unspooling like the magnetic tape from a cassette tape. “You ever been?” She asked then, an inquisitive tilt to her head.


There was a smear of lipstick on her right front tooth; an anemic slash of color, the same shade of red that clotted his lower lip, like she’d bitten him. ****. Maybe she had. He probed at the scab with the tip of his tongue gingerly, his gaze fixed on the uneven line, as if mesmerized. He shook his head, no. He’d never been. She smiled at that, swaying closer. For a moment she was allowed to be worldly, something beyond her small town roots and the drugstore purchased hoop earrings that were comically large, nearly reaching her shoulders. “Where you from, sugar?” Her voice lowered, hovering somewhere between conspiratorial to seductive; heavy with the rough quality of raw honey dissolved in bourbon. The husky quality of a woman who’d cut her teeth on black and white films and truck stop diners.


Everywhere, he says. Nowhere. His gaze strayed, locking briefly with Michael’s.


The buzz of the razor against his scalp was white noise that rattled against his teeth. He was fifteen, too old to suffer the indignities of the unsteady kitchen stool and his mother’s kitchen shears. When his hair - as fine and fair as corn silk tassels and nearly as long - soaked up the worst of the summer’s heat, catching the stern eye of their mother - Michael had been the one to volunteer to trim it. His mother had conceded; it was better than running the risk of an accident, or, worse yet, the bitter sting of gossip. That she could not manage her children. That they ran as wild and ungroomed as marauding bands of feral children.


Within the next hour, the hair along the nape of his neck and the left side had been shorn close to the scalp, dirty blonde hair as muddy as freshly tilled soil in color, a handful of that soft, almost white hair remaining on the right, as long as ever. He’d met his brother’s gaze in the mirror, then; the pair exchanging brief, sly quirks of their lips - when the sharp rack of knuckles against the door drew Sam’s gaze. He flinched without meaning to, and his brother’s lips thinned, the stark hazel of his irises drowned in a gradual darkening of his pupils. Michael had been the first to reach for the thin metal latch as the door shuddered in the frame, the muffled, shrill voice of their mother emitting from the other side.


She’d stood frozen in the doorway for several minutes, her gaze drifting between the razor in Michael’s hand to the long strands of hair scattered against the cream of the cracked linoleum. The look on her face was stricken; as if the hair that dusted the floor was, instead, a pale scattering of feathers. Once white and virginal, left to blacken and wither. The touch of his brother’s hand against his shoulder ensured that neither apology or excuse made it past his lips. His gaze rose, seeking Michael’s in their joined reflection. Michael winked; the gesture subtle and sharp.


The blonde frowned, following his gaze, to the empty corner. She was offended, he realized. No longer leaning in, rocking to fit against him. She took a step back, her expression at once sharpening into something caged. Suspicious. Her lips wavered for a moment - a faint tremor - before they stole upwards in a rough approximation of a sneer. “Whatever.”


****.


Nice going, Sammy-boy.


He resisted the urge to raise his middle finger in emphatic salute. Barely. He could salvage this. Probably.