9 - Night

I tell him I think it’s the oil. I smell the pan. I hand the pan to him and he smells it. I tell him I think it is the oil in the pan and crunchy cake from frying that makes the smell, the sweet perfect good smell of the cakes that is not the water or the oil or the smoke or the powder that it was to begin with, before we brought all our shit to the table to make a pan cake out of it. I tell him that its none of those things alone, that the smell, the one we like, the one that’s making our mouths water right now is the smell of what’s left when it’s all done, the cakes ate, the pan put back and the afternoon come.

We don’t have a door or anything we can shut and since the asshole isn’t dead, we aren’t going to cook tonight. It’s not a punishment and though it feels like a game were playing its not and we know it, both of us. I’ve got the gun out, the small one, and I am just layin, watchin the black of the stairwell that just sort of falls out of the black of the room and the floor into the big empty room below us, waiting for a visitor that I WILL kill, without a thought or word.

We’re eating light out of force of habit but we both still have a gut. Can you believe it? How longs it been? He has put broken glass on the steps coming up. I wish Kasha were still here.
He doesn’t go to sleep first because I am the protector, or because he doesn’t care or because it’s my job or because he doesn’t want the asshole dead or for any reason like that. He may not even sleep when he lays down. I don’t ask him. He should have something, something his own, to think of, his own time. What’s he supposed to do anyway, wait?

The dark used to be a great and terrible thing to kill myself with. The terror, god help me the terror that I used to build in myself for it. I never got used to it, don’t like it now either but, well people, especially assholes, they are not quiet or sneaky and can’t see for shit in the dark either. And they sure as fuck don’t like runnin around in dark buildings in the dark. No, people stay put when they can’t see for shit, that’s what eased it, the terror, it was never really the dark see, it was because of it but it wasn’t just not seein, it’s the thing that you were not seein, the people, the threat right, like the asshole I found, out there fuckin around probably, right now, cussing, throwing shit, I would take the disappointment from him, from my brother, just to have that asshole dead right now. Anyway, I am sure he’ll give us a reason tomorrow if he doesn’t come running up here tonight to find an end to it.
He’s talking when I wake up.