Quick Sketches

1 - Trevor

Damnably late. Always damnably, god-forsakenly late. What is always taking him so long?

Trevor is the kind of guy who never gets anywhere until he's there. He takes his half-distracted brain everywhere with him. Like a disoriented ghost, you never know where he is at the moment regardless of whether he's in front of you or not.

"Sorry, sorry!" he swishes in, disgruntled as a pursued pig. Hair disheveled, hands flying everywhere - - his pockets, his bag, behind his ears. "Where is that fucking pen?"

I sighed with disgust. "You somehow have it clipped on your hair." I yanked it off hard and he winced as I somehow pulled of a few strands of his hair. I was amazed about how satisfying that felt.

"Oh, fuck. Was it there all along? Fucking pen." He scratched his head. "That kinda hurt, Lily."


2 - Carl

"She says I'm not human enough." Carl shook his head. "Whatever does that mean? I'm breathing, right?"

Sherry waited a while before speaking. "You do have a tendency to be disjointed with the world. I dunno, maybe it's that."

His eyebrows went up. "Disjointed? You mean I don't connect?"

She bit her lip and took a while before she answered. "No and yes." Another pause. " Not entirely diconnected but more of avoidant somehow. It's like you put barriers on your emotions. Like checkpoints. Uhm... you're entirely too logical about how you should feel. It's as if you have standards on how much you should allow yourself to be happy about one thing, y'know, and how sad you would be for another."

Carl's shoulders stooped. He shook his head again. "That doesn't make sense!"

"Well... I am describing you, right?" Sherry said and shrugged.



3 - The Visitant

"If you are who you say you are, how come you don't know the difference between people you should bother and people you shouldn't?" Willa asked, her voice falling into an imperious monotone. "The difference between people who care and people who don't, those you should awaken and those you should let sleep?"

The kid grinned at her in response. "You're not asleep, you're just pretendin'. You're awake, just hidin'." He scratched his black, spiky hair.

"I hide? But you're the one all decked up in black mascara, wearing black clothes in a forced imitation of the dead. You make no sense."

"Hey!" The green of the kid's colored contact lenses seem to flare. "I chose to dress like this, I chose. Tomorrow, I could wear blue or neon pink. Thing that matter is I chose to live this way. What about you? What is it you want?"

"It's no business of yours!" she glared at him.

"You're moving around, half-blind, half-dead, half-mute. You're not there. You are -- dear angel -- a half-lifer."