Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Spray Cans ❯ Chapter 1

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

By: hfcs

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Slowly, AC tiptoed around the corner with his hand tight to her stomach. The casually capped spray paint can hung out of her baggy jacket pocket ominously and Patterson broke free from her grip to catch it and make sure it wouldn't clatter to the ground and send off an alarm. Her whole body twitched quickly with rejection as she blushed, seeing how her carelessness could have landed them both in juvie. She took on an affronted look, and started to whisper angrily at him.

“What was that?”

Patterson sighed. As enticing as her peacock-blue eyes were, her bipolar emotions and aggravating stubbornness was sometimes a drawback. The sex was good, but (he thought cheesily, never admitting this to any of his friends) he wanted more out of a relationship than just sex.

“Babe, you're the most gorgeous woman that I've ever been with in my entire life.”

She smiled a satisfied, catlike smile and at that, she pointed to a far off wall. He had learned early on that little girls, immature and impressionable, were easy to get to if he pretended like he thought that they were grown.

“Is that where you said you wanted to do it?” she asked eagerly, waiting for the irresistible smile that he was so famous around school for. She could smell it in the offing, and it was the sexiest, most beautiful thing she'd ever seen a guy do. Something inside her moved, and she craved it more that any drug she had ever tried. She knew he knew he had this strange power over almost any girl he smiled at, and she didn't care if he used her until the earth exploded, as long as he kept smiling for her. She used every single trick in her book to entice and entrap him, and keep that smile, her own personal sun, close to her

As AC had predicted, he broke out into a devious grin that seemed to light up the entire street. Art, in Patterson's opinion the only art worth looking at, was the only thing that made him truly happy. He and his friends had lately been spraying it on unclaimed territories, huge murals of music, drugs, sex, freedom, and nonconformity. He shivered with happiness as he traced the blueprints over the wall in his head.

Suddenly he heard heavy footsteps from overhead. A tall, gangly shadow emerged on top of the chosen wall. He hung over lazily, and called out to the pair.

“Let's get started. The pigs are on for another round in about two and a half hours.”

Patterson turned to AC, “Baby, will you please clock?” he pleaded with the patented smile of his.

She breathed heavily, and choked up. Quickly, she sorted out her thoughts and whispered throatily, “Yeah.”

He beamed, and she was once again dazzled. He got up and walked to the walls. The two boys quickly laid out the framework and basic images they were going to use.

They worked steadily for a while, with everything growing surreal, as the boys worked on fervently, AC watching in them wonder Then suddenly, the dark alleyway glowed with a bright light.

“Freeze. Hands up in the air please. Do not move.”

Patterson froze. A single glance at his watch told them that their time was overdue by a good twenty minutes. He then darted, grabbing AC's arm roughly. The tall boy quickly stood and ran, but faced two angry policemen. Patterson looked back and saw him.

“Chris!” he yelled.

“Go! Get AC out of here!” the thin boy hollered back. The police already had him in cuffs that looked to big for his thin wrists. At his outburst, they whacked him hard in the back of the head, the sharp crack echoing across the alley. Patterson felt his heart wrench out. This was his last look at Chris. Patterson took in Chris's red eyes, his spray cans, and added that into his record. He would probably be shipped off to a reform camp on the east coast and go into rehab for weed and crack. But the Chris that Patterson knew wasn't a druggie or a graffitist. He was a good guy, someone you wanted watching your back. Unlike most druggies that Patterson knew, Chris would choose friends over drugs, even if he was getting into tweak mode. He'd actually attempted to come clean several times, but each attempt was as unsuccessful as the last.

Patterson dragged a terrified AC along behind him and they ran until they couldn't run anymore. As soon as Patterson got his breath back, he was in a mad rage.

“What the HELL was that AC! You were supposed to be keeping time! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ATTENTION! You fricken just got my BEST FRIEND shipped off to HELL!”

She cowered in unprecedented fear. She had grown up a spoiled brat, pampered and pleasured with the best that her parents could buy. She wasn't overly bad in front of them, and the parts that were mischievous she kept very well hidden. There was never a reason for her to be yelled at. But this seething, boiling hot anger was so sudden and immense that she cowered, and even more than a normal person she absorbed the immenseness of it. No one had ever yelled at her like Patterson was yelling at her now. And Patterson yelling was as mortifying and petrifying as his smile was amazing and surreal.

“JESUS FRICKING CHRIST! Do you even REALIZE! What you DID! TO HELL! THAT WAS HIS LAST fricken CHANCE!” he hollered, veins popping out from his jawline and his face contorting into something reminiscent of a Picasso painting.

He breathed heavily, then punched the wall an inch shy of her right ear, she started to whimper, then cry, and it seemed to calm him down.

He stared into the sky, dropped the cans he was carrying, and then walked into the welcoming blackness. Collapsed on the ground, AC laid there limply until Justin found her. He carried her back to his house, murmuring something about “…told me he left you alone… someone to watch you… did someone die?”

She stumbled on numbly, and his voice seemed to echo in her head. He saw him, lurking in every shadow. I let you down, she cried to herself inside. She just wanted to make him smile, but she let him down. She felt her tawny hair clinging to her cheeks in damp streaks, tasted the saltiness of her tears on her lips. She remembered the salty taste of his lips as they were together, alone in a room, and then his lips contorted into ugly shapes that threw hate and despair at her.

The door opened, and Justin dragged an unconscious AC inside. She wasn't on any drugs; Patterson was completely clean and made sure all of his girlfriends were as well. She had probably passed out from shock he rationed. He checked her pressure points, and then spied Patterson peeking around the corner.

“What did you do to her!?” he rounded on him, letting his big brother instincts take over.

Patterson stared at him with dead eyes, making Justin's nerve go down.

“It was her; she did it. She didn't keep time.”

“She's a kid.”

“Just because she's you little sister doesn't mean she'd little. She's just younger than you.”

“What the hell. You were supposed to take care of her.”

“She got my best friend arrested.”

Patterson sounded hopeless. Justin remember the two always stuck together. Ruefully, he thought of the timelessly handsome features that Chris had, always paired with the attractive but just not Chrislike features that Patterson wore. But for some reason, Patterson's influx of attractive girls was higher. When Justin had attempted to bring this subject up with his sister, AC had just sighed lazily and rolled onto her bed with her back flat.

“He has the devil's very smile. Completely evil, yet dazzlingly charmant,” she had said breathlessly. That was the only time Justin had ever heard her use French to describe a guy. He looked at her now, and a feeling of deep sadness swept over him.

Patterson could see the mood changes that Justin had just gone through. He was depressed at what his life and his sister's life had turned out to be. Now was not the time to tell him his sister was an undependable skank. He slunk back to the guest room, and sat on the bed. He remembered Chris's scared expression and the penetrating crack. He wondered with a horrible fascination, at what had happened to Chris. Chris was known for his pride, and the local pigs were known for their roughness. Patterson writhed on the bed, wishing for a few blissful minutes that he was not presented with the imagination that had been given to him, that he had carefully developed and honed over the years. He fell asleep with an image of Chris, with scarlet tears and his face contorted with pain.

With AC on the couch and Patterson in the room, Justin heaved a sigh of relief and slumped into a chair. Suddenly, as if it was perfectly planned and synchronized, AC and Patterson emitted screamed of pure, undulated agony Justin looked at AC helplessly, and heard Patterson's shrieks rip through the room and the layers of his mind like a juggernaut. Justin sat in the chair, hugging his knees, and rocked back and forth as his eyes stayed bulging out.

The night went on.

Chris was staring at his prison bars. His hairy inmate had long ago gotten to sleep and the dried blood had come off his cheeks in odd, rubbery flakes.

Patterson watched Chris and AC in chains, being dragged down. His arm was outstretched and he was trying to save them, but he couldn't and he felt the horrible pain of helplessness.

AC was surrounded by Paterson's screaming face, and she was slicing one of his many chests open with a knife as his yells echoed through the very fiber of her being.

Justin still sat rocking back and forth in the chair like a madman, his mind cold and kept awake by the random cries of the strange, aching misery the sleeping pair were emitting.

The police were at the local bar, celebrating about catching one of the hooligans that had been tagging up the walls relentlessly for the past few months.

And so the world spins like it has for a thousand years. Nothing has changed.