It was a beautiful day, clear blue skies, a sun that revealed all, days after the incident. Patches had been abandoned at the house after the ambulance and police left, he had not been invited after bloodying an officer’s nose, and his nonstop cursing was not welcome to the hospital.

He’d called and complained, visited and complained, beaten walls and very nearly beaten receptionists and doctors, and finally they had given him what he wanted, or said he wanted. His grandfather was home.

Or was he?

The old man was alive. Technically, legally. His eyes blinked, his lungs rose and fell, he required food through a tube and rest. Lots of rest. But that was as far as the poor man could manage, warned the aide who had dared (or lost a dare) to return him to Patches’s house. The aide lectured: he can’t speak, he can’t move, and he needs to be connected to this machine at all times. Make sure the room's not too hot and not too cold. We’ll send you new drips every week, here he’s how to change them, remember his medication. We’ll also send someone to check up on him every week too. It’s very important you keep an eye on him and call us if anything goes wrong. Anything at all. Then he told Patches, it will be okay. It’s better that he’s here, a place he’s familiar with, because there's really--

Patches told him to get lost.

The old man was slumped in a large, heavy chair on stiff wheels. It could be inclined backward for better views, or for rest. He couldn’t make a noise to request one way or the other so Patches put it at the exact center position. He pulled the chair to the back room, which opened to the sunny lawn, and set the chair in the middle of the floor. Then he turned on the monitors.

Up went the view of the front of the house, then another and another. Then the long angle of the street, both from the sidewalk and the road. The neighboring houses. A squirrel crossed the road. He'd hunt it down later.

He made sure his grandfather could see all of them. Those milky eyes were open, flickering slightly, and seemed to be pointed forward, though the head sagged and needed redajusting constantly. Patches lowered the chair and pressed his grandfather's head into the headrest - that seemed to balance it. At least he did not seem to tense. Perhaps this was what he wanted. This place wouldn’t be familiar without the monitors.

Patches looked over his work. He'd done a good job on his own.

Essentially, the told himself, nothing had changed. The old man would be here all day, only not at his workbench. That was fine. Patches never looked closely at what he was making. And it was quieter, too. There wouldn’t be forced conversations over dinner, Patches didn’t have to wait for the shower or sink anymore. It was all fine.

The next look he took at the wheelchair told him another thing was just the same, the messes on the floor. Well, at least they were in a predictable location now, and some of it went into a catheter bag that didn’t need immediate clearing. Really, things were better. Patches had more time to do what he wanted, and he wasn't relying on anyone. He’d fought for it, and things had gone back to normal.

He scooped up a cake of feces in a paper towel and scoured the area in bleach. He mopped the spot with cold water and blotted it dry. Then he set the old man back in place, poked the tube through the whithered arm, and returned to his treehouse, where he sat, legs hanging out, watching carefully, as he had been told. Things were alright, he told himself, but in spite of this he still grew furious. He wanted to tear someone apart, split their jaw, gouge out ribs and nails and throw them to the dirt. His eyes were watering with unfocused rage. But he had to stay and keep watch. How had the first incident even happened? A sudden invasion without him realizing. Had his grandfather called them? Had he let them in? Would he do it again?

Patches gave a cry, he emptied his lungs but it still sounded tiny and inadequate, smaller than the most feeble of birds he’d crushed in his youth. He’d give any for one now, to squeeze to a pulp, bones poking into his fingers and palm. He wailed again, just as pathetically. Then he smashed his fist through the outer edge of the treehouse entrance, and a splinter wedged into the soft skin above his thumb. It was all so unfair.

---

His hand was bleeding. He put his face in his knees and his nose began to clog up. He was annoyed, and didn't want to see anything. Luckily, the beeping of the monitor wired to the thing in the house was still going, so he didn't have to look.

The oppressive scent of chocolate wafted in.

"Oh, there you are."

Patches didn't say anything. He squeezed his eyes closed. The smell obviously had a bad effect on him, his throat closed and so did one nostril. The noise of fluid clicked in his skull.

"There was a guy around today, did you see that? He left on his own two feet so I guess he had proper invitation. I've never seen him before, was he a friend? Hm, not your friend, but maybe your grandpa's? Hey, can I get invited next time? I've still never been in there, and I've known you for years now. I mean, it's your house, but..."

He couldn't hear the monitors over the sound over Val's gibbering, and his own pathetic attempts to breathe. Blood seethed behind his eyes, his nose bubbled.

"Are you okay? You sound sick. I bet you a have a cold."

A hand, bony and probably unwashed for days, laid onto his back. Just a few light points, like some disrespectful bird's claw. He let it sit there for two seconds before springing up and with throbbing muscles, blindly hurling his unwanted guest out onto the lawn. Then he slipped back into the treehouse until his shoulders fell aginst the wall, and dropped into the corner and took a nap.

---

“So what’s he like today?”

Val turned up again, eventually, as filthy and as spirited as ever. He’d been going through a growth spurt and was starting to fill in his oversize coat and pants; he’d also been forced to acquire new shoes and they stood out against the rest of his obscene uniform, bright and saintly. With his shoulders stretching into the jacket top, things he’d stowed in the pockets were no longer hidden in huge folds and flaps. Their imprints were somewhat visible against his body. For instance, Patches specifically remember the day he was carrying a hammer and screwdriver, some sort of bottle, and a thin book. He also had a bag of rancid black candy, the same coal black of his hair and fingertips, but that wasn’t special. He always seemed to have some sort of snack on hand.

“He’s the same," Patches snapped. "He’s always the same, you can stop asking.”

“Oh. I thought, since you were in the house for a long time today…”

“It’s the same as always. Listen to the heart machine.”

He gave Val a moment to pick out the faint, constant beeping.

”When it’s like that, don’t bother asking. Of course, he’s never going to be doing great. Whatever. I’m done now.”

It wasn’t exactly the same as always. The old man had, when Patches had turned his head, let forth a cascade of vomit down his chest. A deviation from the usual trickle of spit. His stomach contents were scarcely more than sour, yellowish water, nothing solid, but that only meant it was even harder to clear up. It needed to be fully absorbed into a towel, and disinfected extensively to get the smell out of all the cracks that liquid could seep its tiny threads into. Patches always came out of it smelling slightly like oatmeal. It was often masked by an even more unpleasant stench, the mixed concoction that came from festering in average human waste. On some days, Patches longed for a pure vomit and nothing else. But that wouldn’t happen, things never went his way, not even once.

“You should wash your hands,” Val recommended.

Patches’s hands always seemed to be soiled. No matter how much he covered, the odor stuck, the stains ingrained themselves into his skin. He couldn’t be seen like this, he’d be smelled even before that. The shame overtook him, and he hated himself and anyone he saw, anyone who might see him, even more.

He didn’t speak of his crushing condition to Val, but Val knew. Patches had to live with that, there was no way to hide it from him. Luckily, Val had nobody to tell over the lunch table, nobody to chatter with on bus, no parents to start a chain of adult gossip. Val didn't seem to bathe so perhaps he didn't even pick up the scent over his own. He had nobody to tell and nowhere to hide. So Patches accepted his presence.

But what he did do, militantly, was avoid letting any of his schoolmates know. Of course by then, they were no longer his schoolmates. Patches had stopped going to school altogether, and instead spent his days watching the vacant figure in the wheelchair, attending to the tubes and numerous brown, yellow, red spills and messes throughout the day. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to. It was a matter of priorities. He no longer ‘had to’ go to school at all, nor did he want to, so it fell off his schedule entirely. This was more important. He was definitely managing it. But god, did he hate it.

In the summer, the humidity sealed the stench in the air for days. It had been the worst season before, and now it was active torture.

In addition, Val had taken to eating that pungent black licorice. He gobbled it up so fast that there was never any to share, as he normally would with his cheese or chocolate. His breath stank of chemical preserves, sugar and acid, even when he was standing a foot away. But Patches would sit by him, and though he did not say anything, he happily took it all in, and craved the bitter black scent whenever he had to go back to scrubbing. Licorice wasn’t entirely pleasant, not something he’d go out of his way to eat (not that Val was letting him do so) but it was a distinct marker that lay outside the everyday grind of rags drenched in shit and piss. When he couldn’t get the stains and piles off his mind, purge it from the cloud that seemed to surround him, Patches thought of that other smell. Like a lifeline. Something that fought off the smell of human waste, and fueled a life that did not depend on him in the least.

He needed it. But he couldn't tell Val this either.

---

Floor cleaner and paper towels ran short in less than a week, so Patches had to make a trek to the supermarket. He was early, and lurked out of the sight in the parking lot until a small group of morning employees unlocked the door. Once inside, he built a stack of surplus supplies on a cart, and picked up a few precooked meals in boxes for himself. In the snack aisle, he humbly pulled a few bags of chips. Then he made his way straight to the register without looking at anyone but he heard mutterings.

Did you hear what happened? Terrible thing.

The clerk didn’t say anything to him, and he recognized the gangly teen in the red staff apron as an old classmate. He didn’t want to talk, anyway. Patches observed the total price on the small black panel in front of him and dug into his wallet. He was short on cash, by a significant amount.

Did he finally hurt someone? A kid wouldn't be buying that kind of thing unless... whispered a cow-faced middle aged woman to a middle aged man.

His throat seemed to be closing up and blood edged in on his vision. He had to set a hand down against the metal edge of the counter in order not to fall over.

Doesn’t know how to take care of himself.

His eyes filled with light and he scrambled around, shoving boxes of detergent crashing off the counter, threw aside a cart, sending it flying: eggs, toilet paper and all, and sank his brown fingernails into the woman’s face, smashed it into the shelf behind her, beat it once, then twice, with a fruity crunch and airy yelp sounding off in unison, each time.

He pulled his fist tight and started to wail on the man who was trying to get away, ignoring the screams of his wife or girlfriend or lover or whatever it was people called people they thought they cared for. The man was driven off his feet; fell through a shelf that was almost entirely stocked with glass jars, fell with a crack into a pile of shards and piss green vinegar.

A child came charging down the rows gleefully, slipped and fell and howled with a wordless pain. His father, or someone who evidently valued the useless screeching creature, came charging down next and stumbled like an elephant. Crack. Onto the wet glass.

The upturned cart, now empty, was light enough to hurl at the register, plastic counter cracking, the cart wedging between aisles, trapping the clerk. Metal joints complained and snapped, and a wire speared through the flailing idiot’s forearm. He screamed too. Nobody could keep their damn mouths shut.

None of this solved the money problem, so Patches stalked out of the store with nothing and went to the corner of the treehouse to curl up, wipe his nose, and die.

---

Val strolled in a few days later. Their habits had become a reverse of their previous years, Val was the one who often gave the excuse ‘I’m busy’ and disappeared for days. Patches was the one who was always available, or at least present. He didn’t care that Val just walked in. He was a distraction.

Patches lay on the floor of the treehouse and listened to the beeping of the heart monitor. He was out of cleaners and all the rags were soaked near-black with grime. The room was stagnant, the house reeked; he had to leave the door open or his grandfather would surely suffocate or get mad. However, this meant that the smell permeated to the yard. He couldn’t get away from it, so he just had to face it.

Or at least bear it. His back was toward the house, so he didn’t see Val at until the latter had already put his hands up on the edge of treehouse, casting a jagged shadow over the back wall. "I see grandpa’s the same as always. Beep… beep...”

“Stop.”

“Did you sleep out here?” When Patches didn’t answer, Val shrugged and started to rip at a fresh pack of licorice. “It’s nice, right? I sleep outside all the time when it’s like this.”

Val pulled himself up into the wooden structure and landed with a thump. He was so clumsy it was amazing he was ever able to enter or exit the property unseen. “I’ve been reading about this kind of thing. You should talk to someone. That’s what all the books say.”

“You sound like my old teachers. The shittier ones who didn’t really know what to say, just repeating the same things they read in some book somewhere..”

“I don’t know. But that’s what they say. Communication. When a loved one dies, you need to talk to someone.”

“I don’t love anyone. I don't even like anything. And the old man - he’s not even dead. And who the hell do I talk to? About what? You know so much, what will fix all this? What should I say to fix him?”

“It’s not supposed to fix him. It’s supposed to fix you.”

“That’s great. Fucking great. This talk is helping already. Get out before I throw you out.”

Val continued chewing, undisturbed. “I’m not really sure what to talk about. I should read more about it. But at least I’m around. And I’m free. People have to go really far and pay a lot to talk to famous people, sometimes. This one guy in the magazine-”

The weight of pay and money and prices shot a burning sensation through Patches’s arms and he dragged himself up as if from a grave. “So you don’t know what you’re talking about. You just want to tell me what to do.”

“No, I was just going to tell you a real story. This guy, he had a problem with his wife or his wife's dad. He said he was gonna kill someone, or himself! Imagine, over one person... Anyway, he had to drive miles every weekend to see some brain doctor, and every appointment costed thousands but they just talked and you know what, he ended up--”

“You’re boring.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“If you want to help, you can buy some stuff to clean the house with. I can’t go out anymore.”

“Not at all?” Val asked, eyes wide.

“No. I have to… I have to keep watch. I have to stay and watch him. Last time I left, he made a big mess, and I think he was mad. His face...”

Val sat chewing in thoughtful silence for almost an hour before he left.

The beeping continued, sharply and soothingly throughout the afternoon and evening. Val had dropped his candy wrapper and lost it; Patches had seem him searching, fumbling about before he left. He was so thoroughly confused that Patches had to drive him out or he’d have been there for hours. When night fell Patches pulled the stolen plastic wrapper out of his sleeve and held it over his face. It masked the scent well enough, but it instilled another pain that he had been trying to ignore. He was hungry.

---

Val came through with Patches’s request. He arrived the next day towing a small supply of bleach, floor cleaner, detergent and a twelve-pack of toilet paper. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. He'd never seen Val in any store - or outside the lawn for that matter - but Val had found the time and cash to support his snack habit for years, so surely he was familiar with the shops despite his unpresentable clothing. Today, in addition to the cleaning supplies, he was balancing a party back of chocolate bars in the crook of his arm.

Unfortunately, his gifts meant Patches had a hard day’s work ahead, compensating for the days he hadn’t been able to clean up the old man’s outpour of filth. The door back into the house loomed like a monstrous mouth, foul breath extending meters out, laced with summertime flies, clawing into the forest and beyond. Little white square monitors inside flashed like teeth.

“So, you want to talk today?”

Patches set his jaw. “I didn’t promise anything. I just asked you to bring stuff, I didn’t say I would do anything after that.”

“I guess so. Can you at least say thank you?”

Patches grunted noncommittally, didn't get up. Val jumped into the treehouse, sidled up next to him. Not particularly considerate toward his host, the tails of his frayed coat rolled across Patches's cheek, and Patches swatted wildly and sat up. His stomach, which had shriveled, without even bile to support it, moaned for attention.

“Are you hungry?” Val asked stupidly, sticking his head into view.

Patches rubbed his hands over his eyes; they stung. He stung all over. In the fringes of his vision, he saw small crawling dots all over the walls and the floor and the ceiling. Had he been bit by something? Was everything infested? He pulled a grunt from the pit of his throat and swung. Val backed down a bit, but he hadn’t been the target. Wood shattered.

Light streamed through a new hole in the wall. The tiny insectoid forms faded and now all that stung were his knuckles.

Val waited until it was safe, and whistled. There was a tentative crinkle of plastic and then the tiny, shy but warming scent of cheap chocolate. “So, do you want one?”

Patches scowled and rubbed his hand. Val swung the bag before him. The scent of sugar was almost poisonous. His stomach tightened. He snatched the bag mid-swing.

“Give it to me.”

He shoveled the chocolate coated balls into his mouth by the handfull, crunching and catching the fragments with his hands and and pouring them back in. The smeared color of melted chocolate was a nasty reminder of the job ahead, but the taste overwhelmed him, he closed his eyes as he finished, and prodded the bottom of the bag for more. Val was behind him, looking smug but slightly nervous, as he was the one going hungry now.

Patches ignored him.

He wasn’t full, but had enough in him to enter the house and scrub things clear. The smell had fully soaked through to the walls, but the could be confined there if the room was kept slathered with soap and disinfectant. The yard was no longer held in some monstrous breath; he could keep watch without his eyes hurting at the very contact with air.

Val was happy enough to keep turning up with supplies. Funnily enough, he seemed to approach them the same way he did with his candy purchases. He bought a bottle or pack of rags or paper every single day. Patches struggled to store them all. The foyer was filled with boxes of detergent. The hall to the bathroom was walled with twelve-packs of toilet rolls. Around, but definitely not in front of, the wall of monitors, were the canisters of wet wipes, the most important tool in emergencies.

Patches brought his pillows downstairs and settled into the treehouse. Organizational issues aside, things might have been okay from then on. He almost had time to start planning for the future. If Val would listen, he could hear it. A bit of return payment for what his efforts. If he’d listen.

---

There wasn’t going to be much listening going on for the next two months. That’s what the sign on the neighboring house warned, as the construction crew stormed their way in.

At first, it all looked quite small and contained. There were only handheld power tools going in. A jackhammer or two. No cranes, no cement mixers or bulldozers. At his grandfather’s recollections, Patches knew these were the behemoths of any project. They were large, loud and dirty. Expensive, too - plus you needed special people who knew how to drive them. So the people next door must have been amateurs, untrained. Patches simply looked down on them, as he did everything.

But then the monumental demolition project began. They must have decided it a good site to drill to the center of the earth, because that’s what it sounded like. Except, if they had actually been making progress, it wasn’t evident because they were always working in the same place, with the same intensity.

The sound was tremendous, like an incessant hammer beating five hundred times a second inches from your ear, nonstop for two minutes. Keeping beat (poorly) in the background, the sharp slap of an actual hammer on metal and wood and concrete. There was no telling when a bout of hammering or drilling would start or stop but it was not random, there was no way any such phenomenon could be so malicious by chance. The blast of a new hole or nail or explosion always seemed to start mid-breath, trying to choke you out, shock you to death because it would be so funny.

Patches’s eyes brain skull head eyes all seemed to be forced into independent rattling, everything sight shaking as it hit his retinas, a shiver set deep in his muscles that took a hard minute to dissipate, his ears alternating between ringing and razing themselves to shreds again. The ever-present flies bounced on the very air, in fact he became unsure if they were flies, every speck of dust, every shadow, twitched with sickening life. The house seemed to teeter before his eyes, glass sliding door threatening to shatter when he approached. The world was hellish. Every second of screech, hammering, tearing metal made him feel as if he were dying; and in the space between he felt he was about to be murdered by some unseen force that saturated the air.

As he sat the treehouse, his own heart and teeth and brain shook like an invalid’s, but what was worse was that he could no longer hear the beeping of the heart monitor. He knew now there was nothing about the old man’s slack jawed demeanour that would tell him if somewhat was wrong, so he had grown to rely on the sound. But for nearly eight hours a day, he couldn’t hear a thing. Even in the brief lull between blasts, any sound he could scrounge up sounded impossibly distant. And all too often it was the gruff laughs or shouts of the construction workers. Or the radio, during their lunch break. As if they were contracted to make the noise nonstop under pain of death, the radio was turned up full blast, blaring the shrieks of an opera singer or other wailing woman, and the men roared and guffawed and hooted without needing even a moment to inhale or think about what to say next.

Lunch over, it was back to the shrill thunder of power tools once again.

Patches wanted to scream. He did, but rather than it coming out, even as a pathetic bleat, he just could not hear himself at all. Except at night - but that was the only time of peace he had, it would only hurt himself to make noise then. It was also the only time he had to look away, and listen to the beeping instead. His eyes could rest and close and…

Until the next morning where he was invariably shocked awake by the first drill blast of the day, delivered straight to the core, ripping fresh holes through his stomach lungs throat and not letting up until night fell again.

It bothered him greatly that the excuse for humans next door seemed so content. When he knocked on the door, really, violently, beat on it during a short lapse in mental strength one day, the denim-clad worker shrugged and laughed and said, ‘sorry, kid’ and that set the tone for any conversation he was to have with them. ‘We’ll be out of here soon. It’s just the job. Sorry, kid.”

A greater lapse of sanity happened one night, and one night only. When darkness fell and the workers had all set aside their tools and left (as loudly as possible, in a car so ramshackle it sounded like bullets being fired), he scaled the tall fence that separated his yard from the blast zone and dropped onto the grass. He took one look around, eyes still stinging and all senses blurred from a day of full body shuddering and silent howling, and tore into it. He smashed beams and beat the ends of the drills against the concrete walls. He smashed sandy windows and dug up grass with his fingers and it felt almost pleasant, to destroy something so clean. He felt - knew - he had done a thorough job. That was well and truly confirmed the next day for him.

The construction was extended another month due to unforeseen circumstances.

Go ahead, do your worst, the world dared, holding the guillotine over his head. You can’t touch anything.

All he had was himself, his treehouse, and even that had been invaded, he was surrounded. He couldn’t move or speak, his eyes were perpetually watery and his bones were sore. His hands shook constantly with terror or anger or just the sheer force of the waves in the air. He was being filled with the sounds, the vibrating particles were clawing their way past his teeth and into his skin and immediately, overcrowding, beat the walls of his innards immediately changing their minds they had to get out and get out now or he’d regret it, whatever he was doing it was wrong and it would never be right but he was not allowed to be still no dont even think about it you fuck you fucking idiot can’t do anything right cant take care of yourself you just make it worse and worse and you cant even die right you fucking

He smashed his head straight into the wooden wall. His cheek tore. Again and again, the walls his grandfather had sanded down with his own hands years ago. He might have remembered that, a time without this infernal cage, but didn’t want to remember, because what was the point? Nothing like it could happen again. But you have to keep watch and hope. That’s all there is. He beat his head again and again. The wood cracked and splintered and he fell, and started beating the floor, through the blanket he felt splinters rise and crackle.

On one such day he was vaguely aware of Val peeking over the edge of the treehouse and rounded on him, face and arms bloodied. Van struggled but that was of no importance; Patches dragged him up by his mess of seaweed hair and threw him at the wall, slammed a fist to his face and teeth, battered his ribs and neck and threw him out. If he made a noise, Patches didn’t hear. He also returned a few days later. The same happened, almost move-for-move. Val seemed more slippery, and mid dodge thought it was safe to try to speak. He wasn't heard. He left with bloody tongue.

After Val left, Patches snapped his dropped bag of gumdrops and gulped it all down, the bag held to his mouth.

So on it went. Eight hours a day. Beeping into the night. Then awoken for eight more hours of screams. Then the beeping. Then the screaming. Then the beeping. And then...

---

“Patch, get up.”

It was dark, and cold. Flies buzzed somewhere out of sight. Val was hovering over him, staring down. The raw flamelike eyes had turned full floodlamps as he had gotten older. He could stare a hole right through an unsuspecting victim. One of the lamps was smaller than the other. He had a black eye and a cut lip. Patches didn’t want to look at him. It was night, his only stretch of valuable quiet. With all the splintered holes punched into the floor, it took hours to find a posture in which he could rest without some sharp end digging into his side. He wasn't about to accept intrusions.

“Patch," Val needled on, "It’s important.”

“Go away.” The words came out mealy, his teeth turning to ooze in his mouth. His head wouldn’t even lift. “You got something to complain about, come back tomorrow.”

“I’m not mad.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you have to get up.”

Patches could only move his arm. He waved it in the air, limply for a while, until feeling returned and all the day’s anger, the blood that had been held over fire, swept into it and he clamped it like a steel vice around Val’s neck. “I’m warning you. Don't make me mad. You can’t do anything to stop me."

Val’s headlights flickered and he choked, spit running down his chin. He’d feigned pain past, only to laugh at his fine joke later, so Patches fastened his grip firmer. He could feel the rubbery tube that must have been Val’s windpipe compressing shut under his palm.

Patches pulled Val’s snapped teeth near to his face and hissed, “Go and don’t come back.”

Val fell out out of the room and down the tree, splattered to the grass like a sack of beads, old brown fabric catching on the fragmented edges of the entranceway.

Patches didn’t bother to watch him go, didn’t bother to listen. He pulled his head under the blanket and among the echoes of what he just said bouncing through his empty head, he dissolved.

---

Not 12 hours later - much sooner – maybe just four - he was shaken back to consciousness. Awoken by a metallic shriek, a thundercrack shattering the darkness behind his closed eyes. He sprang up, muscles coiled and heart thumping like a hare. Same as always. Time to begin watch.

The house was dark. The monitors on. Nothing to hear, nothing that would overcome the overflowing, clashing riot from the hell next door. Nothing to hear, but to see - something was off.

He slid off the edge of the treehouse, listening futilely.

Patches entered through the sliding door. There were no new stains on the carpet of paper towels, no fluid dripping from the seat of the chair, no extra smells. This happened sometimes. The old man had slept through the night, he was still slumbering peacefully. But that meant nobody had seen the intruder. Nobody had stopped him. It.

The pile of paper towel rolls, still in their packaging, had been disturbed. Closest to the door, two rolls had been pushed to the ground. Under the television panels, there was chest, and the drawers were pulled out, not viciously, but Patches had seen them shut and untouched for what felt like eternity - yet there they were, wedged open. At the foot of the drawers there were small, flat piles of sand and dirt, tracked in from outside. There was a dirtless stone path from the sidewalk to the front door so they must have come in through the back door, from the yard. Right by Patches as he slept. They must have known how tired he'd be. They had targeted him.

Patches was livid, the raw outrage scalded every inch of his skin. The blood beating in his ears muted the explosive drilling, just slightly. He hunted for the dirt trail, head bend so low he could smell the acrid alcohol tained with pine and citrus oil, five bottles worth of floor cleaner, rising from the ground. But there it was. Was it mud? What it shadow? He swiped at it, feeling nothing but a slight throb in his arms as if he were no longer connected to his limbs, but there on that disembodied hand was a speck of dirt. And another. He followed it, nose down, and rammed headfirst into the wooden stand by the staircase. A phone off its hook.

As if it would fix everything, Patches pushed the phone reset the receiver, then he went to sit in the treehouse. Feet dangling out. Gulping air that was more sawdust and concrete than oxygen. Clenching his hands on his knees, staring at the grid of monitors so hard his eyes filled with burning blood. A dense, dry silence between jackhammer bursts. He thought he heard sirens. The monitors showed the empty street. And he wondered, why had he never seen Val on the screens?

His head dropped against his knees, and he lost himself to the noise. This was how Val found him. Patches had not sensed his approach at all, until Val was sitting on the edge of the ruined wooden block with him. There was not a sound, not a flicker of sight. And today, Val wasn’t eating anything. He looked filled with regret at that last part.

“Sorry, Patch,” Val said.

“For what,” Patches gurgled like a deranged infant.

“You weren’t listening last night, so I went ahead and called. Don’t be mad.”

“You did this.”

“You’re going to have to leave. You’re probably not thinking straight so I’ll tell you what I think. It’s a good thing. You can't stay here like this. You don’t eat, you don’t move. You hit yourself on the walls so hard they break and you yell even if you can't hear it. If this keeps going, you’ll die. I said I would help you, but I never said I’d always do what you say. You get it?”

Patches stared at the grass below the treehouse. It was thin, and rotting. Had it always been that way?

“I know you didn’t want me to see your grandpa. But it’s okay. I’m still your secret. Remember when you said that? I didn’t forget. And he didn’t see me. Actually, that’s why I had to make the call. When I went in, he wasn’t seeing, he was already... already-” Val cringed at the next burst of drills. Patches wished worse on him, wished pain and death, but to form even a single word of thought was like swimming through quicksand...

Val leaned closer to Patches and said, clearly and concisely, “He was already dead.”

Patches brought his clenched hands over his face, almost a sign of prayer. He had never prayed before and he would never do so again with such anger and determination, wishing and hoping and begging for anything but where he was then.

“The beeping stopped that night. I guess you were tired, so you didn’t hear it. I took a look, someone had to. There are already worms. Anyway, the police and the doctors are probably on their way now.”

“No.”

“You’ll do what they need to, then maybe we can go eat. So let’s just… go somewhere and let them do their jobs, okay?”

“No. Not again. I’ll kill them. I’ll break their skulls and pull out their bones and kill them. I’ll stab them. I’ll kill them.”

Val crossed his arms. “You can’t keep saying that. Even if things are bad, they can get worse if anyone hears you talk like that. They’ll put you in a box, shoot you full of drugs and hypnotize you. Or something. Then you definitely won’t be able to do what you want, even if it’s something little like making a sandwich, or screaming at nothing.”

“I’ll do it anyway.”

“The guys coming right now, they’re stronger than you. There will be a lot of them. You can’t.”

“Then they can kill me, but I won’t let them do it so easy. I’ll kill them. I could do it before, I’ll do it now. At least half. You can’t stop me.” He pulled himself high, but somehow he was only eye to eye with Val. "You don’t want me to die, that’s stupid. You can’t stop me. You never could.”

Val frowned and slowly stood. “I didn’t say any of that. I don’t want to see you die here, like this. Trying to kill adults, adult cops, adult doctors. They’ll step on you. They’ll hold you down and shoot you before you can even think what to do.”

Patches smiled maniacally, his eyes could barely close in on Val, so he moved his whole body closer, clawing at his own knuckles to make sure they were holding together.

Val continued in his slow, exaggerated manner, as though he were lecturing a baby or a pet. “You have a real problem. You do the thing that you hate, like you’re the only one allowed to do it. You talk over me, you put words into my mouth. And I felt sorry for you before, because you were so sad. But in case something happens today, you need to learn. I hate it too. What makes you think you can tell me what I'm thinking? You don't know me at all. How often do you see me? You only see me when I want you to. And I don't know if you're even really looking. You sure don't fucking listen.”

He had the most immature scowl. Patches snapped. He drove a hand at his throat again with berserk force, surely just short of snapping his spine, but this time, Val did not flinch. He was smashed flat against the wall but he did not even blink. Like some strange doll that had been stitched that way, his arms remained crossed.

“I’ll kill you first. I’ll kill you, just say it again!” Patches shrieked. Spittle rained down around that headlight gaze. “Are you going to just run? Are you going to hit me back? Just try!”

"Me? I just told you, I'm trying to help." Val's scowl deepened. "But I don't have time to waste on this."

"You never had a problem wasting all of our time before! I don't need you. If you won't go away, I'll just-"

“You can’t kill me,” Val snarled, plumes of black flame rising from behind his white steel sharp teeth. “Try and I’ll stop you and show you how it should be done.”

That was enough. Patches was out of words; it was amazing he hadn’t run out sooner. He beat Val against the wall, iron grip continuing to dig into his neck, pull tighter, swing again. Crack. Crack. When that rotted head slumped just slightly, Patches let his throat go, and before the next breath, he drove his fist into Val’s stomach. There was a small wheeze so close he heard it over screech of drills that leapt over the fence. Patches grasped that ever-familiar brown coat that disgusted him so much by the collar and threw the limp body against the wall again. The entire structure rattled. The already-beaten wall shattered, split, a crack right down the middle.

Patches beat at him, again and again, the chest and the shoulders and the arms and waist and neck and knees. He left the head for last, he wanted to see that expression, but Val was looking contemplative; almost disappointed, as if it were already over or he was already dead. In the split second that that crossed Patches’s mind, his fist hovered one second too long. Val, dead, cold, if he couldn't run, what would he do? His fist fell without thinking. The blade slipped between his fingers and thrust straight throught the meat of his palm.

Patches unleashed a noise like a gunned lion and tottered back, ripping the metal out of his hand, tearing and gouging, splitting sinew like hairs. There was a hole clear through his palm, between the bones, severing only meat, his fingers could still move though there was the feeling that they shouldn't. It enraged him. He heard sirens that may or may not have been real. A reddish fog moved in, tiny specks turning dizzying, ant-like motions within the clouds, infinitely complex, defying him with his own mind. He released all air from his body and clenched his fists again, blood pouring from the cut like he was pressing out a sponge. Fingernails scraping at the shredded skin, he turned to Val again.

Val seemed to stretch his arms, futher and thinner and closer, and out of his sleeve flew the largest centipede Patches had ever seen. Patches fell upon it instantly, horrified, and smashed it. This creature went down easy. He smashed it again and again, under his foot. It died, as was correct. There, he thought, and leaned to inspect it with a dopey smirk.

From out of sight, Val swept up to him like a shadow, placed a hand across Patches’s face, obscuring his vision further and then, out of sight, leapt and slammed his entire weight down. Swinging in an arc from a forward lean to flat on his back, the force was like getting hit by a car. Patches struggled, and those filthy claws dug further into his face. They hit a wall, the treehouse shook. In spite of never eating anythings substantial in all the years, Val was strong, and his grasp hurt, yet his face was flat, he was moving without effort.

It was enraging, and unfair. Half crazed, or more so, Patches wished Val would say something. It was as though a demon had taken over his friend, or his victim, and now he stood no chance. No chance. What the Real Val had said started to dawn on him. He was pathetic. He couldn’t even defeat this vagrant, another stupid kid, no, this person he had known all his life but somehow never really knew.

"You get it now?" Val, or whatever it was, spat. "I've been preparing for things worse than you. Things that are way above you and me now. Sick little thing. You were never in control."

His words twisted in themselves, for a moment almost weary. Patches slackened and in that moment, the demon struck. Val dug his fingers down, into Patches's cheek, under his eyes, one encroaching on the edge of his mouth, like he was picking up a bowling ball. He regained his footing and drove Patches’s head like a stone into the jagged wooden floor.

Patches gasped. A star exploded somewhere in the center of his mind and his vision went white, then blue and then a color with no name or tone. Patches eyes widened in surprise and against all odds, he went calm. His breaths flowed longer, easier. No words came to him but he was overcome with a flood of gratitude, he had never felt so calm. He stared up at Val in wonder and thought he saw a hint of affection in there that had brought him here.

Neither Patches nor Val knew it at the time, but Patches had been driven head first into an enormous splinter pushed up from one of the holes he'd punched in the floor, days ago. It was several inches long, had penetrated the base of his skull instantly and now hooked into the warm, wet swamp of his brain. It had broken through something, pierced right through to a part in Patches that no human had ever managed to reach or cure with words or love or care. The splinter would sit there for nearly half an hour, comforting him, and when unwittingly pulled free would take something with it.

Already his rage had begin to seep away, his arms and legs were only absently milling about, substantial as streamers. Purposeful as a surgeon Val laid his knee over one wrist to hold it down; they both felt the bone creak and the joint split. The other knee came down on Patches's stomach, right at the center, and every in of him down to his core gasped, was forced to the edges, trying to escape from this decrepit shell.

Val moved over him, eyes aflame, and the knife raised, still dripping. Patches had no will remaining to fight back, or even hold up his hands - he didn’t know where to put them, one seemed to have given up on following his instruction, crushed by the weight of Val’s knee, the other had left him behind. His legs soon followed suit, paralyzed by a heat radiating from his belly. When Val's knee shifted a hot tingling shot up his spine. With eyes streaming and he looked up with all he could muster which was pure, empty fascination.

Val’s eyes stared back, then slowly they narrowed and he recalled a word for them he had not thought of earlier. Not torches or headlights, but golden suns. That's what they were. Almost attractive, after just a simple change of words.

With his one free hand, Patches reached for them. Focus... no, he'd get away... now too quick. His muscles quaked, his knuckles landed with dull thud.

Val croaked. Patches let his fist drop. One of Val’s eyes had darkened. It wasn’t blood, but a loose slick substance like shadow or oil. His mouth opened and his teeth, almost begged to be touched with their clarity, croaked the words, “Stop looking at me.”

The knife reared, wrapped in a hand crusted with shadows. On his back, Patches followed its movement until he could not. It reached his face and then half of his world disappeared with a dull thud. The blade pressed a painful, tense half inch into the socket before the resilient sac burst and a cool fluid fountained from the fresh hole, flowing down his face. Val’s fingers twitched like worms around the knife handle, and Patches saw the gray-brown of his skin get closer and closer until he could nearly taste the salt. Val grunted and freed the knife and struck again. There was a single sharp point of pain. And again, but with less feeling, or so Patches thought.

There was an awesome, terrifying grind of bone or wood or metal, so much closer to his very being than the drilling had ever been, then a crunch.

An invisible pop.

He'd been emptied by the impact that put the first hole in his head. And now that void of feeling began to fill in with a waterfall of newly freed words and pictures and weaknesses that he had kept coiled into a tiny ball far out of anyone’s reach. He felt hot with sweat and blood and that infernal energy of Val's that now fully infested his imagination. As far as his memory told him, those blows, those stabs were still raining down on him like meteors. He was terrified, he felt disgusting, but at the same time overjoyed. He was glad, so glad that someone was here with him in this time. He wanted to thank Val and say he was right and hold him and anyone else he’d ever hurt or thought of hurting or looked at and press them to him and say they were all right.

He tried to say Val’s name, he was close, he wouldn’t miss it, but all that emerged was a whimper, and a red filmy bubble that slid between the fingers that were clamped over his mouth. His eyelids flickered, every muscle of his right eye tried to close around the metal column that stood in it, his eyelid caught on the blade and split. He tried again. He made a good effort, he thought. Another stream of fluid broke free.

Val looked at him, then past him. He mouthed something that couldn’t be heard (though the drilling had stopped by then) and gingerly placed his hand around the knife, wavered. He looked as if he were going to simply leave Patches pinned.

But at the last moment, before the aides and the doctors and the police and the construction workers and neighbors from two, three blocks away streamed in, Val snapped his fingers closed, gave the knife three shakes to loosen it, and pulled it free. Patches saw the drops fly, and Val the shadow wreathed in white sunlight that would never consume him. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed. Then Val staggered to his feet, tripped over his own shoelace and fell out the entrance of the treehouse. Patches wanted to laugh and cry.

He couldn’t do anything, of course. He was affixed to the floor by a splinter in the back of his head, by the old, decrepit, lovely thoughts stretching their legs, creeping shyly through his ribcage and over his fingertips and out the hole in his face, and taking flight. Without them, his limbs, his head, everything had become so light he didn’t think they would ever be able to lift themselves again.

He saw the remains of a centipede beside him, no more than a blue-gray paste on the ground. A pang of sadness hit him. It could not help what it was, it did not even have a face to express itself. It was such a shame.

For the first time, in as long as he could remember, he was sorry.

A shadow fell over their corpses.

“Don’t move him!” someone bellowed. Someone in a bright yellow hardhat. So they did stop, they cared, they were human too. But of course they had always been human. They had just been doing their job. And yet here they were, going above and beyond...

“Is he breathing?” Who knew the neighbors cared so much? A a middle aged man and woman circled him carefully, cupped his head, brushed blood and spit from his mouth. They didn’t hesitate, they didn’t go silent and pull false grins. “Stay with us. You’re okay. You're going to be okay.”

The doctors were hard at work. “We’ve got the old man."

"What happened here?"

"What are all these screens? Is that...”

The group huddled around him and watched him and moved him softly, caringly, to a cradle of cotton and metal. A soothing medley of clinking plastic and wheels across wood cushioned every movement. His spirit felt so gloriously free. Three people held their hands over his, whispering softly, all the way to the hospital. Patches had never felt so loved, people were so unbelievably kind after all that had happened. Val had been right all along. He knew nothing, he was only just learning. It would be such a shame to die.

His mouth wasn't moving. Adoration rushed through him, who could he tell? Val was gone. Of course, there was his grandfather. The only other person. One day he'd open his eyes again and...

His consciousness finally shut down. Until that last moment he believed he was happier than he had ever been, and would ever be, for the rest of his life.

And he was right.

When he woke, he found his body had gotten its fill of love and hate and along with them the impulse to act. He stared into the ceiling and experienced the nothingness above and within. It was a new existence. He was weightless but permanent.

He remembered his last moments in the treehouse fondly, but the time for such intensity was over, he didn't need it anymore. This was how his life was to proceed. Whenever the hint of his old rage approached, it bubbled, hardened and rolled like marbles out of his reach, as though the hole in his head had opened some drain into which all pressures could fall out unseen. For the years to come, he was able to float on a grey cloud of detachment, able to focus, able to work, able to compliment and excuse and mostly mean it, subsisting only on the memories of his final outbursts, and elation.

Even in his numbness he would admit, it wasn't bad. Especially compared to the days past. But thanks to Val he had tasted just enough of goodness then to realize – perhaps ungratefully - it wasn't good either.

☼