wingborne | cuz baby you're a firework;

Prompt | Poem (in italics) by Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song | Fanart by LOSERDERE keep forever in my heart

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Arthur

wrote poems.

Alfred liked poems he kept poems on the third shelf behind the superman comic books in his bedroom where he thought nobody would look except for Arthur because Arthur had always been smart and he even measured out precisely where Alfred left his textbooks tossed carelessly at a twenty one point five degree angle with the pages crumpled by two centimeters on the bottom left where the book cover had been ripped when Alfred had been running late in the rain and couldn’t catch the cab in time at seven twenty three when his class american studies 148 had let out from room 45 in the l building.

Who are you Alfred said I don’t know who you are why are you in my house.

But Alfred was just being silly because of course they knew each other and Arthur said nervously with his palms sweating that he had just come to read Alfred a poem he had written because he knew only Alfred would appreciate the poem even if poems weren’t very hard to write they were all just noun verb object subject verb verb verb and he didn’t say this out loud because he didn’t want to scare Alfred away but when he was a child nobody had liked his poems and he had nobody else to really share his poems with because they were really insignificant compared to Alfred it was only Alfred.

I don’t know you Alfred said how did you get into my apartment please leave or I will call the police

But Arthur had already cut the phone lines he had cut them two days ago when he was in Alfred’s apartment because he couldn’t stop himself he used to be just content with smelling Alfred’s laundry at the bottom basement and to press his nose against the dry cloth of his leather jacket and run his fingers along the fur lining but it was very easy to enter into Alfred’s apartment and it wasn’t like there was anything wrong with it

since they were friends, of course.

You’re not my friend Alfred said

But that was just silly because of course they were friends, they’d been friends for several years now. Arthur couldn’t help but explain to him in his shy way that he never really had many friends he had been sent to boarding school as a child and he had been bullied and he wasn’t very good at much of anything that mattered because even if he was smart he lived alone in a small apartment or he used to except

he had moved into the apartment above Alfred so he could hear him sleep better but then that wasn’t enough for him so he had moved underneath Alfred’s bed and because Alfred was a deep sleeper who could sleep through all the blue-lighted infomercials sometimes he would stand at the foot of Alfred’s bed and touch his soft skin and watch his white t-shirt ride up over his stomach to show the thin lining of his boxers with the sheets entangled in his feet and it would be too dirty too dirty to do anything while Alfred was there but when Alfred had gone to school his university he would sometimes slip into his bed and use his hand and imagine Alfred Alfred Alfred and then he would clean up after himself

Oh God Alfred said you’re a freak

Arthur said he had written a poem because

Alfred liked poems

Wouldn’t he listen to it

Because Arthur had once been in a university in some country somewhere far away but that didn’t matter anymore but he had been working quietly on getting his degree in something insignificant but that didn’t matter anymore and he had been bullied by a man who smelled like roses who would taunt him everyday and Arthur could withstand it but one day the man had kissed him and that had been too much

too too much

so he had taken the man's cat and boiled it up and fed it to the man but the man hadn’t understood

so he had taken the man’s roommate the man who kept too many tomatoes in the room and served him with tomatoes but the man hadn’t understood

so he had kept on going until he finally found the man’s company wasn’t very unpleasant after all but then the man one day stood in front of him ashen and wideeyed and had asked what happened to his cat

they hadn’t been

friends

after

that

but it would be different with Alfred because Alfred was nice and smelled nice and watched football every Monday night and he was oblivious and sometimes he left his door unlocked and his underwear hanging on the balcony and it was very simple and pleasant and he liked Alfred very much because sometimes they had hit him when he was younger but after the man who smelled like roses he had gone back to his family and made sure he got it all right after that because

they had hit him very hard

so he fed them horse shit until their stomachs burst ruptured ripped spilled the acid into their intestines vomit gushing from their mouths kidney failing blood between their legs blood from their eyes screaming clawing on the floor of their locked rooms and he listened very pleasantly

they had broken his bones he told Alfred

they had hurt him

so he never had any friends after that except for Alfred

oh

oh god said alfred

but he loved Alfred very much so this was all very fine he had watched him sleep knew where he ate knew all his friends except sometimes he didn’t like Alfred being friends with others so sometimes he would do things like there was this tony fellow who belonged in the alien club and he had gotten too close to Alfred because he had started to look the wrong way at him the wrong way so Arthur was a very smart boy and he one day got a box and put tony in it and dug a hole by the river and put a box inside and there was nothing wrong about it

Alfred had just never seen the way tony would look at him.

But he believed in justice Arthur insisted justice justice wasn’t that what Alfred liked because like that one day a few months ago when Arthur was watching through the windows while Alfred was in class and sucking at the end of his pencil when that big man with the scarf had leaned forward and said something and they had gotten into a fight and that

that hadn’t been very nice

that hadn’t been very nice at all

so he had taken away the man’s sisters and then the man’s brothers but he had taken them away slowly because there wouldn't be much fun anything else and he had already known the man was a little not right in the head anybody would have to be to be angry with Alfred so he had taken away the man's sister first then after a week the man's brother and the man was frantic kept them all in his house but he wasn't a very good foe because they didn't want to be stuck in the house and he had killed them like sheeps to the slaughter and the man slowly cracked

bit

by

bit and he had enjoyed it enjoyed seeing the man in the scarf screaming and clutching at his little head he deserved it for alfred's sake and the man had gone mad and one day went pop pop pop with his little metal stick in the school because he had gone crazy with loneliness (that happens to some people Arthur knew) and he had been sent to a little place that was covered with white walls talking to his imaginary sisters and imaginary brothers

he had done it for Alfred of course

how long have you been following me alfred asked in his slow breathy voice

he had been following alfred for quite a while now, quite a while, watched him from the windows every night through the cracks where the curtains peeped watched him everywhere followed him to school followed him back took pictures of him and only left him to plaster his walls with pictures of him to jerk off to love him from a distance such a quiet distance and he knew alfred’s mother and alfred’s father who lived out in a farm and he had introduced himself but he would never do them any harm they were nice folks they were charming and he liked them they had another harvest this season and alfred’s brother sends his regards

Arthur had been waiting for this moment so he could read his poem so he took it out and

Alfred smashed it away with his fist and tried to run out of the room, feet stumbling after another, crashing into the wall and falling down gasping and Arthur was a little sad because he couldn’t read his poem after all it had been about Alfred noun noun verb verb subject object subject

but he wasn’t stupid and he had drugged alfred in his cocacola

he had loved alfred for such a long time so it was all right he would keep him safe

alfred was screaming but in a hoarse way so his neighbors would never hear and arthur wrapped the red scarf around his throat and pulled against the adam’s apple and he pulled and pulled and pulled while saying that he loved alfred so much and didn’t he remember when they first met it had meant so much to him and he loved him so much and this way arthur would take care of alfred forever because it was alfred’s nineteenth birthday and he didn’t want alfred growing any older than that it just wasn’t right

but he would always remember when he had first met alfred on that rainy day after he spent yet another day alone in his room doing nothing but sitting and staring and thinking if it was better to put a bullet through his brains because he had hurt, hurt so much in loneliness and wretchedness, but he had gone down to starbucks instead and there was a barista with blond hair blue eyes a charming smile with ALFRED written on the name tag and he had smiled and said

have a good day

like he meant it

and arthur had been happy.