the only time i'll be hot is when they cremate me.

_

The alarm clock glares in red, and the pages slit your fingers when the numbers scream. It's 4:00am. You wonder why you're waking up so early, why the notebook isn't telling you like it tells you your name.

Maybe you forgot to write it down. You forget everything, you realize. One day you'll die, not knowing why, or how, or anything at all.

Your hourglass is bound to fall. You're no better than the teenage monster you're sure you were, once, if you could remember you'd call yourself a right bastard, but that's the problem of it all, isn't it?

That you can't remember?

What does that even mean? What does it mean to not know something like your name? Hollow and bleeding. Your chest is a chasm, a great divide you cannot stretch your fingers through, you cannot see this loneliness back together.

_

You wonder if you sometimes repeat thoughts. You wonder if it matters when you'll just forget it after anyway.

Maybe one day you'll forget how to breathe. Won't that be funny?

_

There's something awful happening, you know. You wonder what it is. Why everyone is in a rush to leave. It might've been something important.

Nedzu stays put. He's smiling at you. Something is wrong, you know. There's an empty, awful feeling stewing in your stomach. It's an ugly color, you think.

"I'm conducting an experiment," he says. "you have a very strong radar."

"A radar?" You mutter, you wonder, you muse, "For what?"

"Oh," Nedzu says your name like an empty platitude. It makes you want to wrong his throat. "you already know the answer to that."

There's a kind of pang in your stomach. An ache. You look at the mouse-bear-thing and you wonder what you were talking about. "Sorry," you say, you don't know how you got here, what your doing at all and why you're having tea with a glorified stout, but you get up regardless. "I have to go now."

You wonder where your feet are taking you now. You ignore it. It isn't worth all the effort to think when it feels so freeing to just run.

_

You want to swallow the sun, feel the burn in your throat just to know if it's familiar. You are something made of missing pieces and muscle memory. Dipped out static and something else. Maybe you'll never name that thing, you'd want it to leave you alone for that.

Feel the red between your fingers and breath like it's a whole new experience. You wonder because that's all you are, all you'll ever be. A wonder.

It makes you miss the smell of pine and rain in the morning.

_

You look at him and his golden eyes, he's smiling sweetly. Go on, he says, you'll like it. He lies. There's blood between your teeth when you bite into the apple.

You wonder what they've put in this time. You wonder why they hate when the floors het red when they're the ones giving you cracked wine glasses and shaky hands.

I wanna die, you tell him, red making your head hurt, you wonder if grape juice stains skin.

I know, he says. He smiles, greed eating him up from his heart, black going green and red like the floor. it's fascinating.

_

You don't have any reason to do this, you muse. Not really. There's no moral obligation or anything, but you know you need to go this way. That something is happening. You don't know what it is, but it's probably bad, all things considered. You think you might've done this before and that it might've gone horribly wrong.

Like stage three cancer bad.

(Now the floors are all red. There's a thing in the corner, scowling.)

It might be immoral for you to run like this, with murder on your mind, but you think you might've always been a bit of a bastard. Maybe. It's hard to tell, really, when you can't remember your own fucking name. You think there might be something wrong with you, at this point. With the way you're all twisted up like cotton twine; curved around the edges like your hair between your fingers. You'll lose your mind at this point.

It's an ugly word, you know. The real thing hidden under that line of film.

The doors break in. You're late, you know, you can feel it, under you'd skin, your bones, and the others seem to know it too but―there's a monster in the middle that a blond man is fighting and you know you've seen it in your nightmares.

A boy with wine-red eyes and winter sky hair screams. "Defeat him, noumu!" And you have to wonder why he looks like a picture placed off. Like a dream that snapped at the threads.

Is he finally coming out, you wonder. "Shigaraki―" you say. Because you know that name is familiar with your tongue, in the way it is unfamiliar to your mind. The boy looks at you, and his eyes are so red behind that hand on his face. He looks so angry it's familiar. Off-shade, though.

"Shigaraki? Who are you?" You say. "I know you, who are you?"

He hisses at you, and you wonder if he heard you. "Shigaraki!" You scream it. "Shigaraki! I know you―" you run as fast as you can.

"Who the fuck―" he's glaring at you. There's this hollow kind of presence in his eyes, like he's a puppet and he doesn't know. 

You think you might be smiling when you died, at least this time around.

_

"Oh fuck off, Sashi." You stick your tongue out.

"Yeah!" Shutsu says, in all his pre-adolecent glory. "Fuck off!"

"Well, that's rude. You're bullying me, honestly I should tell Miyaki-san because this is harassment and―" Hisashi goes on and on. You laugh and laugh while Shutsu tilts his head, too young to really get it at all.

_

There's that new feeling of your lungs. You hate the way you chase this high. The fuzzy thing in your chest from not knowing. Nobody is looking for you anyway. It makes you a little giddy, all things considered.

"Hey," you say to what had to be his descendant. "how are you Shigaraki-kun?"

His eyes are so red and he looks more like the younger one, if he had green eyes than―well, sometimes family is like that. You wonder what that says about you - that when you remember you can remember only that from that far back. Though you mostly blame that on the red hands red on the white white white floors wine dripping from your burning hands―

"How the fuck do you know who I am?"

"You remind me of an old friend of mine," you say, and his eyes widen, you tack on, "but he's long dead." before the kid gets any ideas. "Shame really, you look like his brother," you don't want to do what you're planning. "he would have killed you for that."

You think he's made a very big mistake, standing so close to you, you grin. Wide as you can, you grin. Sharp as you can.

(Something pierces your ear, hits Shigaraki in the hand reaching reaching reaching toward you like a trees shadow peering in through the window in your shabby apartment that makes you feel at home, like you're back in the forest, letting starvation kick in.)

This hurt that your holding is centuries old. You'll live with it. You have to. There's no other choice, you tried.

Everyone is staring at you like you're an anomaly, like there isn't a dying man on the floor. "Oh, what about him?" You say. That snaps them out of it. They've got this, you think, so you leave. You wonder what Nedzu'll think about this.

When you kill yourself you forget, and when someone else does, you remember. It makes sense, all things considered.

(Fucking useless child, you've made the walls red again.

Wine-stained, like your not-mother's carpet.)

You'll tell Nedzu, you think. Before you make yourself forget again. You wonder if he knew it, that you were that ugly, ugly word. A damnable thing, really. Suicidal. All the things you are, wrapped up so nicely in so little of a word. You wonder how well you'll be able to day it. Suicidal.

That's all you'll ever be. Nothing better than wet socks on a rainy day. No problem to big, no inconvenience to small for your head to comprehend that being dead would be the better option.

Too fucking bad you keep forgetting you'll end up coming back.

Wait. Shit, your ear is bleeding. Maybe you'll get that checked out before you tell Nedzu about the fact homicide doesn't leave you with an empty head, when it's directed at you at least.

Your fingers are red.

There's this off kind off hollowness in your chest. You laugh about it. Red is the color of war, you think. It only makes you laugh louder.

_

You hum as a man you know, but do not remember, walks up. He's wearing brown, and you wonder what that color should mean, if yellow means happy and blue is the color of distance.

He introduces himself, and you give him the same courtesy. He squints at you, eye twitching. You wonder what it means, if he didn't know you all that well.

"Well," he says your name like it's not acclimated to his tongue. "I need to take you in for questioning."

"Okay," you smile. "do I need a lawyer for that?" You don't have a lawyer, per se, but it tends to make cops paranoid. Makes them irritated at all that pesky red tape and the lives of democracy.

He stops looking at you, you do not stop looking at him.

"No." He says. "I just need you to recount the events."

"Oh," you say. "I might not remember that all too well." You grin, wide enough to mimic Hisashi's. Or Shutsu on a particularly mischievous day.

He sighs like he knows you're going to be a pain in the ass. "Let's start at why you were there."

Well, he isn't wrong.

_

A lie is a damnable thing, you know. You smile like you were born to do it, grinning so wide you might be copying Nedzu. Or Shutsu. Or Hisashi. It's hard to tell what, with things like these, when your reflection is broken.

The one-sided glass looks back at you. You wave at yourself. Time tic-tic-tic's so slowly and you've gotten so bored that triggering yourself looks like fun. The long forgotten repeat themselves to history's text verbatim.

(Redredred painting the walls, can wine go stale?)

You wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to fly and remember the feeling after. There's an almost blank space between when you forget and remember, like a shoddy job at erasing an answer.

Someone walks in and says your name wearily, says you're released. It's cruel, you think, to ommit something crucial. You'll let the lie smoke your heart right up. Maybe you'll find a reason to live like this. Hisashi lied best. Shutsu was decent. Nedzu does half-truths like he's always stuck on the fence, balanced on his experiments; dribbling enough information to come to a number of answers, none of which make sense, all of which are correct.

Things are doomed for repetition, you muse.

("When someone kills me," you tell Nedzu the next day, after you've been fed your pills. "I remember. When I kill myself, I forget." He nods. "I find that fascinating," you say. "what happens if I plan for another person to kill me, say, hire an assassin. What would happen."

Nedzu fills his teacups with more camomile while you drink your black tea, hating the burn in an equilibrium of how much you love it, swallowing the blisters in your mouth.

"Should we test it?" He asks. He smiles strained, barely contained wonder leaking from the separations in his teeth.

You humm, thoughtful. "I'll think about it, yeah?")

There's this crumbled thing that wraps in you. A broken shell of a toy you had as a kid. Vived memory and all that, still nostalgia tends to make things better even if they weren't all that good.

(Hisashi broke your arm because he thought you were trying to kidnap his brother, Shutsu almost bit your pinkie off when he thought you were taking from their food stash. You locked your room and made a safe exit on your first day there, you almost burnt the place down when they said you had to go in a car.

You did, actually, blow up the car. But that is neither here nor there.)

You smile walking home, you take a breath in, breathe out. You smile drops.

Ew. You're alive and shit.

_

There's a girl squatting at the underpass next to your apartment. She looks soft. You smile at her, ignoring the blood on her teeth. Ignorance floods your head, though you wonder why. Did something happen?, you muse.

(Look at you, you've spilled the―)

"Hello," you say politely. "what's your name? Do you want some food, I can order you some?"

She's hungry, you can tell. She's smiling though. And the world goes black. You taste red red red.

_

The hourglass turns over and sand begins to sink through to the bottom.

You need to be alone right now.
_

When you are you, there is another you in front of you. You think this version―this person who is your but not, killed you. This person is not you. You would know better.

"It's funny," you say to this funhouse mirror of yourself, mirth lilting your voice to a pitch you cannot name. "I don't need to hire that assassin now, at least."

Funhouse you tilts it's head. You wonder what it is. This nightmare version. Teeth red with your blood.

"It is! It is!" Funhouse you says. "And you were so pretty, you know." It's eyes are all bright and woozy. "All covered in red. Red's my favorite color you know? It is! It is!"

You wonder if you were that fucked in the head once.

"Thank you," you say again. "I'm going to kill myself now," you say to it. "viewer discretion is advised, especially for children. Please watch with a parent or guardian."

You wonder how long it will take. You muse about it. It's funny how people crave immortality and tell the consequences to fuck themselves.

It's a funny thing. Mortality does not loom across your shoulder, should mortality loom at all. You wonder if this makes you something of a god.

That would be funny, wouldn't it?

"Can I come?" Funhouse you asks. "I won't stop you, promise promise promise! Pinky promise!"

You wonder what it means to die if you'll live through it. Crack the hourglass, you want to spill the sand all over the floor, another broken clock.

"Okay," you say. "take me home, will you?"

"Sure!" Funhouse you says.

You tell yourself where you live. It nods. You climb a fire escape with it following behind you. Your hands scraps on the rust, but you figure it won't matter much, except funhouse you stares at the blood like it's starved for it. You wonder, for half a second.

"Do you think he'd be proud?" You ask. Because if anyone knows, it's you.

"Are you a ghost?" Funhouse you ask. And that's a silly question, you should already know the answer to.

"I wish." You say, instead of anything real. You wonder what this naive spitball version of yourself takes you for. A fool. Some child still in tragedy from an accident―

(What's your name? / These are your― )

―but maybe that makes it true.

(You've spilled the wine all over the floors again, it makes you head hurt when your drunk on red.)

You jump, and really, it's funny, the finest humour.

No matter how many shooting stars you wish on, it never comes true. You wonder if it will make things sweeter, in the long run. You wonder, you muse about a muse you had once, before the white wall red wine stains liquid gold rotting black under your nails― you wonder if Funhouse you knows.

It doesn't matter much, you decide.

The ledge has such a drab view. You wonder, blankly, if this will be the view you die on. You let it go.

Funhouse you does not.

"Let go." you say, shortly. You know your manners, so you tack on a please at the end.

"No! No no no no no! You're pretty, too pretty. This won't be a pretty way to die! Not cute at all! I'll make you pretty when you die! I will! I will! Promise! I pinky promise!"

"If you kill me," you glare at it, it should know this by now. "it won't work. You know that! You're me."

It tilts it's head, pulling you up. You curl by the ledge, standing half off with Funhouse you holding your hand in a vice. "I'm not you, silly. I'm me. I just wearing you."

"Wearing.. wear― why the fuck would you do that!?" You growl. If the was one of those comics Shutsu read you'd be fuming smoke at the mouth. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Toga Himiko! You can call me Himiko-chan though!"

"Can you not wear my skin, Himiko. It's rude and confusing."

It flushes on your cheeks. Your skin melts away from its face and you have to wonder what that spells out for you. This thing. This child. Girl. She's wearing the clothes she was wearing over your skin and you wonder, you muse― what would he think, you wonder? Do you, really?

"Thank you," you say. "follow me."

You wonder how many red flags you've both set off. You wonder how little she cares about it. After all, red is her favorite color.