Red Flags and Long Nights

The night was cold and the wind hit my face the very moment I left my apartment. Tightening my coat across my chest and flipping the collars up til they could shield my cheeks to the best of their ability, I shook the voices from my head and started moving. I had no fucking clue where I was going but I knew what the ultimate destination was. I was going to get back that demon of a guardian angel.

As I walked, I buttoned up the last few buttons on my jacket and adjusted the heavy messenger bag at my hip. I held my guitar case around my back, but it didn't exactly have my guitar in there right now. My pockets were full of junk: Cigarettes, gum, matches, the results from a test I had been given by my Doctor. I crumpled the paper up without a second thought. Understandable, as it didn't hold any good news. I stuffed the paper back in my pocket and took out my pack of Marlboros and pulled one out and lit it up. I was running out of matches this time around. At least I had a full pack of smokes.

I breathed in, and breathed out a thick cloud of smoke and watched it twist and curl in front of my face beautifully. The most beautiful thing in view, in my opinion, and I had made it from my own lips. Nicky always said the addiction would kill me, and oh man. Oh man, if only he knew how much he was right. I took another drag and smiled. I thought of it as some sort of cosmic irony, as the son of evil, what else was more ironic then the self destruction of the destructor. What else was more beautiful. Nikolaus would punch me if I ever said that too him. He was so tired of my shit. But he kept me right. I clenched the doctors note in my pocket.

A car. I needed to rent a car. I was going to head north first, Nikolaus always seemed to have a strange connection to the north. Whenever I asked him about it, he said that he fell in love with a girl in the Louisiana and she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was the most graceful and the most fierce. He told me about her and I felt guilty every time. I felt angry and guilty. Had he not fallen in love with her, he would have been spared from three years of agonizing torture. Had he not met her, he wouldn't have had to be the one to put up with me, and it was all her fault. But then I felt guilty. Because I loved her too. I had never seen her but I thanked her every night for being one of the chains in the reaction that brought me to life and gave me Nikolaus and Noah.

The nearest car rental place wasn't to far and I had plenty of money. I could easily afford it. But I only had enough money to last me that week if I was going to eat properly. Which I probably wasn't going to. I had a tendency to forget the little things that were required to stay alive. Sleep being one of the main ones, but even when I tried to sleep it was hard. Noah told me that his surrogate mother, Litith, had the same problem, and also my mother. He told me that Gods don't require sleep and food as often as humans do, but I told him that didn't make sense because I was no God. I was no demon either. I was a human being, waiting for the one day where I would die and the cycle would start all over again. That what Nikolaus told me happens. I die, and I'm reborn. I rarely ever change. Maybe my personality a little bit, but all in all, it's usually the same old thing.

In this life, I first met the twins after a money dispute I had. It was nothing special, I had gotten my ass kicked by five other guys while a woman sat watching with her tipped cinnamon cigarillo. I didn't pay her back when I was supposed to and then in came the two. Identical and magnificent as they brought my attackers down. Noah was rapid and spontaneous in his fight, using whatever item was closest as a weapon. In this case it was aerosol can and a lighter, and the heat on my face when he kept them away from me felt so warm and comforting. And then there was Nikolaus, who came in swinging his large double edged ax, stained red with his past. His movements fluid and catlike, and his eyes fierce and cold with trauma and I admired his strength almost immediately. He didn't kill anyone that day, but since then, I've decided that red was my favourite colour.

Of course I was 14 then. I still lived in Spain and I didn't know a lick of English and when they tried to explain why they were there I just smiled at them and named them, "Los ángeles de la guarda," and I idolized them. They took me away and they dropped me off in England where I learned English with ease. When they came back, I was 18 and I was ready for the adventures I knew we were going to have.

If I had known that the adventures were going to be as lonely as this, I wouldn't have left. Noah had gone two years ago, due to a fight he had with his brother. He left reluctantly, but I didn't want anymore civil disputes in our household. A year ago, Nikolaus has left me too, asking my permission of course. I saw no harm in it, until I felt his heart jump as a couple of witches tied him up in order to try and figure out how he functioned without a beating heart. I felt his pain and I came immediately. We're connected, Nicky and me.

It wasn't til then of course, that I realized I had fallen in love with him. He hated me so much, and I could see it in his eyes, in his quick glances, but I loved him. I had fallen in love with many people. Woman and men. But a Demon? Now, that was something exciting. At first I loved him for the thought of a thrill. And then I loved how passionate his hatred for me was. And then I didn't want him to hate me anymore. And it didn't feel good. When I saved him from those witches, I told this to him. And I kissed him. And I took him to bed. And then he was gone again.

And that's why I needed a car. I needed to resolve this problem. I needed to patch up this whole in my heart that Nikolaus had punctured there using a crystal dagger, beautiful and promising, like the stories of a forbidden love he had with a young American girl who he had brought him to me.

I took a right and I found the place I was looking for. The sign was missing a lot of letters so it just said RO D E'S AR REN L. It was too dark to try and figure out what the sign had tried to say before time had taken it's toll, but I also didn't car. I extinguished my cigarette on the sidewalk before I walked in and went towards the front counter, where a young woman popped her bubble gum and continued to read her magazine as if I didn't exist.

"Excuse me," I said, the English in my accent thick, almost no traces that it wasn't my first language. Except for when I said certain words but that was inevitable as well as annoying," I need a car that can take me all the way to Louisiana and back."

The woman rolled her eyes gently and reluctantly closed her magazine before meeting eyes. Her jaw dropped for a half a second and closed again as if I didn't notice, "Um, hello...sir, do you have a car in mind?"

"Anything that looks good and can give me some distance would be brilliant," I said, holding my hands in front of my mouth and breathing on them warmly. She continued to look at me almost dumbfounded. I smiled at her pleasantly, and she smiled back.

"How 'bout I take you back and show you the sweet stuff?" She said, with a flirtatious grin and gnawed on her gum, accentuating the movements of her mouth. I nodded and followed when she beckoned me. She was pretty and slender with a pants that hugged her thighs the most perfect way. She moved her hips rhythmically, back and forth, like a beacon. I knew what she was trying to do. I've seen better ways of doing it, but I understood. I admired her tenacity.

"So, where you heading stranger?" She asked me, looking behind to smile at me with her sly grin, her brown hair brushed off her shoulders.

"South. To find a good friend of mine," I responded, coldly. That was an accident, I didn't mean to sound so dead inside. She opened the door to the garage, careful, not to chip her newly painted red nails. I really loved that colour.

"Oooh, what's their name?"

"Nikolaus."

"I see, a guy friend," She smiled wider as she walked in the room, dragging her fingertips on the hood of each car she passed, "Well this is our selection, hon. They all should run pretty far. I have no doubt that anything in this room can take you places you've only dreamed of."

I don't think we were talking about cars anymore. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something pretty. It was shiny and black with a long hood and opera windows.

"I see you've spotted finest one! That's a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, I've got the registration back in the office. But we can settle that later. The keys are in the ignition, we can take it for a spin first if you'd like."

I was about to refuse. I didn't need to take it for a ride to know it was mine. But a look in her eye made me change my mind. The cogs in my brain stopped for a second as they decided the gravity of my situation. I balanced the outcomes.

Ultimately, I decided I would already be long gone by morning.

"Sounds good," I said, and looked down at her with a sly grin that I had used so many other times. She smiled and led me to the car. It was just as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside and a fantastic interior. From what I could tell, the drivers seat was comfortable, but unfortunately, the car never left the lot.

..........

The next morning, I was gone and was sitting at a diner alone, only 70 miles away from where I had been the day before.

"What can I get you, deary?" A kindly old waitress said above me.

"Well, ma'am, I'm exhausted. I think a coffee would just be fine for now, thank you," I told her with a grin. She gave me an equally large smile and was on her way. I lit a cigarette and rested my face in my palm as I watched the low volume television screen.

It was a news report, where nothing of extreme importance happened. Something about whales and the arctic whatever. Then something about how something that I couldn't hear because the volume was too damn low, like, that didn't change. I sighed and took another drag.

How the fuck was I going to find this boy? He could be literally anyway? I figured that this was a badly planned road trip. At least that what I figured before I saw an Auburned haired version of the very man I was looking for show up on the screen in front of my like a fucking miracle from God.

Except something was wrong. The picture they had showed was him in a straight jacket, being carried by men into a building, with no name in particular.

"Here you go, dear!" The old woman had come back with a mug of coffee and a thing of creamer in case it was too strong. But, I didn't care about that.

"Who's that," I asked, pointing towards the screen. She looked and she frowned.

"That young'un? That'd be that Stitches character that's been raising so much havoc down those southern parts. They finally caught him, they did. Took him to a crazy house to see if he was nuts or not. If not, then he gets the chair."

Fuck.

"Where exactly is that institution they have taken him?"

"A place called Saint Junes if I can remember correctly. Why do you need to know a thing like that?"

God fucking dammit all.

"No reason," I smiled.

I took another drag of my cigarette.