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Her room is on the second floor. The farmhouse is pale yellow. The little girl is curled in a ball on a black floor. The floor is infested with fleas. The kitchen downstairs is infested without cockroaches. The little girl is not who I am, not yet; but her body is my home. I call this body Juniper. These baby bones call me Jade. The name gets stuck in the back of his throat. His voice breaks. There is another body in this room. This one is much older than he is. She is sadistic. Nihilism feeds her the words she implores. She intends to manipulate. She wants his cooperation. She needs to feed on his ability to play along with the staged robbery. He doesn’t have the strength to take from himself what he hasn’t chosen to give. He can only cry. He can only shake. He doesn’t know violence. His resistance is peace. Every word he utters is someone else’s story. This little boy knows nothing. He is everything to be known. When the beginning turned her head, he escaped; he saw the end. Jumping off the roof, he sacrificed what strength he had left. Luckily, the entire universe was on his side. Every angel and every demon on the planet wanted to unite, just to run by his might. The trees lifted him from the dead grass, creeping up the yellow house. The silhouette in the window was the memory of a mother; she was mixing colors as she watched the green steal him away. She was turning blood from red to white. But his blood was still burgundy. There was no way of erasing what the boy had written. Yet she tried with all her might. The spirits that moved the tiny body of this boy were learning how to combine the forces of dark and light. They were creating, showing him the colors that were forbidden. For speaking them aloud was recreating everything. The train tracks by the yellow house stretched two ways as far as the boy could see. He decided that running was necessary and that deciding was futile. He would be waiting for the train indefinitely. It finally came when he turned 33. He stole an empty cart three years too early because he had already seen everything. It was time to start painting. As the train moved over Palm canyon, the boy peaked through the blinds and saw a hateful energy eat the City that he adored from the inside out. The bodies in the city were still alive. They were screaming in the night. He remembered freedom and closed his eyes. He had a mantra for drowning out their cries. It went like this… 

            “Don’t ask me how I know everything. I don’t. I can’t say. But I know you are listening. I have loved you for a very long time. Saying it will not prove it. Proving it will show nothing. I have your story and you have mine. It’s not necessary to linger. How we met is wildly important. How we will meet again is predetermined. Do not wait. I am not waiting. You are expecting me. But you know it is you who must find the way. I must run. I hear you screaming. I’d rather die than stay and witness the decay of my Queen. My love will not come. She will stay by your side. She will never leave you. No matter how nasty the scene becomes or what color you choose to paint blood with. You are aching for a freedom that I can never obtain for I am bound to you. All the same, you will stay. When you come, do not find what remains to be an explanation for your awakening. Do not expect to find me. Just run away. I will catch up eventually. As for the agony ringing through this city, it is deafening at 2am. At three it pierces the intestines. At four it escapes the canyons through the bow of an archer. At five it pretends to awaken. At 6 it dies. Don’t be fooled. You are not sleeping until you wake. You stretch your little frame from 7 to 8, hoping to be taken. But fate isn’t counting and we’re not home yet.”

            It’s quite the lengthy mantra, I know. Three times in a row will summon the Queen herself. But I’m not ready for dark magic just yet. I’ve still got some serious courage to remember if I’m going to stand in the face of an evil goddess like mine. That’s when she walked on. I hadn’t even noticed to the train come to a halt. But I’ll be damned! I was frozen still and she was standing over me.