'Mirrors and shadows again, Simon.'

An intestine wrap of obsidian wire—the insides of anniversary mixed tapes, tugging on infinity of expulsive visceral surplus. Effect's a calming loss. We're bleeding out and we don't care anymore.

In the playground, leaning against the monkey bar, casting across children running the hopscotch board and drawing plans in chalk that will wash away tomorrow. They stamp tiny feet and chase into the afternoon. Even black is relative, they say. We fell through the world and into black and even that is relative.

To destroy you, it's bringing you with me. It's going on a vacation. It's packing apathy and vice but not carrying sunscreen. While it admires romantic sunsets, spreading toxic intelligence through this valley, and mountains provide a perfect canyon shelter for the opaque.

WANTED: merciless creature of the dark and wild, 7'5 and fingers like crescent moons, hollow skeleton, eyeless and swimming.

'I don't know where we are, Simon. Surprise makes us children.' said Ricky. He pressed his palms into the handles of the wheelchair until their knuckles went white.

Simon wheezed into the trachea tube. Pieces of windshield reflected in his face like a mosaic.

'You're being a fraidy cat, Ricky,' said the littler boy. 'Just stay behind me. I won't let anything happen to you.' He mimicked Simon's voice expertly.

Lifeless sneakers rattled lightly in the metal clamps. The wheelchair rolled uphill over divisions in the asphalt made by roots and time. A sinister netting of winter trees tangled beneath the clouds and framed the pathway in a tunnel. Everything dripped with a dew and frost glaze of the wet season, dying the backdrop like washed pebbles.

'Who's there? Simon, do you hear that person? It must be the security guard. We're just going to go into the bushes. Just for a while, ok?'

Simon's head fell sideways against his shoulder. A section of the fuschia pillow that was propping him had solidified with loose saliva, and it pressed against his wounded cheek.

The chair was rolled off the pavement and into the wilderness where nettles spun with its wheels until their rubber went brown. Track mark impressions followed the two boys on their trail and up the hillside. Ricky thought he could see the last piece of sun falling away behind a jagged skyline.

'There, you see! I told you we would get here safe.' said Ricky. He pointed his chubby hand at a building in the distance. It was an open cement garage, cluttered with wet litter and rusting junk, the scariest place he knew. A tractor was laying broken against the wall of the garage.

Ricky wheeled his older brother through the last wilted hedge and onto the walkway that led to the garage. The door was half open, enough so that Simon's crumpled form could move beneath it without trouble.

'Just a little bit more. It's here, I know it's here.' Ricky said. 'There on the floor!'

The garage was full of tools, scattered paperwork, and an old piano. Simon used to play piano, Ricky thought. The layers of dust and cobwebs indicated that no business had operated here for a very long time. On the floor, a terrible square hole featured cement stairs that descended into shadows. Ricky wheeled Simon to the stairs and stopped, his juvenile heart racing.

'You can see, Simon! We see the same! Open your eye again!' said Ricky. He noticed that he might close his eyes, open them, and there would be no difference. The passage was completely swallowed in black.

'Ricky, no! There's something in these shadows!'

Simon's eyelashes fluttered. He swung his head around and struck the padding of the chair. In the darkness came the sound of rodents scurrying and a weighted sigh of heavy lungs taking breath.

It's also a person's darkside. It can't be grasped. The veil of a core housing antipathy.

Born in the spectrum of white there is whiter and whitest. Born in the spectrum of Hell there is, other than suffering, release.

(Read Ricky is Six)
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