Death.

Where do you start with something like that?

The end, of course, is just a bunch of unravellings and what ifs and maybe I should have done something different. When did I see them truly smile, what joke was it that they always told, what soft moment of silence in the car when the dog had run off and the uncertainty was tender and raw.

The beginning is a lost cause. Nothing but shadow now. The beginning, if it ever happened, was a straw trick in a cafe on the far side of town, a total accident, in a shady cafe on a trivia night the streets outside abandoned in every direction.

But there’s the other thing. The thing in the middle that bonded us and haunted us and that we could never shake. The tiny red river of blood in the alley that was too rich for even the soft morning rain to blur. You kicked sand into it, you smeared it into an arc with your boot, killed a cigarette and crushed that too.

You drove slow through the streets of east van, all alleys. Kept the tempo low, dream synth on the stereo, eyes everywhere for the black and white, for the highlander with the missing plates.

By the time that we got to the Refinery the Weaponized State were finishing their set. The room was sparse with people, the door girl nodded us through.