false hopes :: gun dreams

I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said that my story was completely comprised of loss; of death and of running away; of losing.

There's little losses-- everyday losses. Losing a bet, not catching the train, losing your keys. Little things that remind you that you're born to be a loser. Then there's bigger things. Losing a parent, losing two, losing a sister.

Losing a friend.
Maybe two.

But we take things on a timeline that keeps on going-- people say that time heals all wounds, but in a place this sick with false hopes and gun dreams, that's a whole big fuckin' load of bullshit.

There's very, very few things in this world that anyone can say they've mastered. But I think I'm writing this letter in this sketchbook because I've mastered something that everyone's got a diploma in. I'm gonna tie it up, put my demons away.

All these drawings.
All these images.

All this shit.

It started when I was five in Shanghai-- My mom died giving birth to my sister, Kai-huo. I don't think I even really noticed, cause I had this bawling shit factory thrown at me while my father mourned the body-- prepped it, sat with it, burned the money that he didn't have to spend for it, set out the food that we didn't have to eat for it. I was five. I didn't know anything about funerary rituals. All I knew was that my mom was gone, I was pissed off, hungrier than a wolf trapped in a cabbage field, and I had this ball of sister that spent all its time shrieking, giggling, or both at once, all while sucking on someone's thumb. It didn't seem to matter whose.

I raised my sister pretty much all on my own. After the funeral was the second lost: my father's presence. I'd climb this tree by our little shack every day, to look for his boat out in the bay, hoping that maybe the old man would come home.

He rarely ever did.

And then, one day, he just didn't come back at all.

They said there was a storm out on the sea, that week, and that the boat overturned. They said a lot of shit, when they thought I was too young to hear them. That he went out on purpose so that he could join the great beyond with his beloved. That it was fated. That it was a damn shame. A damn fuckin' shame.

I knew better, the fuckin' drunkass. Went out like he always did, hollering at his sails like a fucking retard, not paying attention that the wind itself was enough to topple his boat.

That was the third loss, I guess. But it didn't hurt so bad, cause I had the second loss as a buffer.

By then, I was nine, and she was four. We went to go live with our senile old granny in Beijing.

I ended up being a trouble maker-- but what do you expect from some nine-year-old that's used to running around in his underwear and climbing trees all day? I started running around with some kids that lived in the alleyway between my grandma's house and the cheapass noodle house that we lived next to.

I was eleven, the day that I came home to an empty house. All the shit was there, but there was no granny. No Kai-huo.

Loss four.
Loss five.

I didn't know what happened to them then, and, to an extent, I still don't know what happened to them. Maybe it's better that way-- fucked up shit happens every day in Beijing. You just gotta stay on your toes to avoid it.

The kid that took me in was named Ren-- three years older than me, and I thought he was so fuckin' cool, cause he had a weird looking nose and he had -teen at the end of his age.

He was my best friend since before I can remember. Taught me everything I know about anything. Not to leave the alleyway alone after a certain time. How to outrun a behemoth cyborg. How to stay out of the way of bounty hunters. I was so young, then. Between eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen-- I think Ren was the most important thing I had in my life. I barely even remembered my sister.

"Hey, Jin?"
"Yeah, Ren. Sup?"
"You cold, dude?"
"...A little, yeah."
"Come sleep over here."

"...yeah. Yeah. Alright."

Nevermind the fact that we spent every waking and non-waking moment together. When the boys got too old and we all split up, around the time I was fifteen, Ren and I stuck together. It seemed like it was really something... lasting. I guess.

But

it didn't help the fact that we were starving
it didn't help the fact that we slept out in the acid rain every night
it didn't help the fact that he was getting sicker and sicker from being out in the cold

...it didn't help the fact that I didn't have enough body heat to keep him warm.
even when I was breathing on him
even when I was breathing for him

That's when I picked up this flier, one day, for some experiment-- it didn't matter, to me, what it was for.

The pay was fifty thousand chips.

That was enough to pay for... well. Lots of things. We'd be back to freerunning for cash in no time, I'd thought.

So I went for it. I had no idea what they'd done to me, but I felt pretty good after it, so it couldn't have been too bad, right? Just some sleazy old doctor wanting to test out his new shit. I got doctor's visits every month for a year after, so at least I'd know if I was healthy or not.

I got an apartment soon after and Ren's health started looking up. He was back to his old self in no time, and there was no way to describe how happy I was

that i wasn't losing
that i wasn't losing
that i wasn't losing

Even though we didn't need to, anymore, we'd always sleep together. He'd come crawl into my bed, and I'd let him, because I loved him

more than
anything
in the world.

"Hey Jin?" he'd ask with his lips pressed to the back of my neck, to the divets of my spine.
"Yeah?" I'd reply, tracing the crack racing up the wall.
"We're best friends, right?"
And I'd always tell him "...Yeah."
...even though it felt like so much fuckin' more.

We'd kiss
and
we'd fuck
and
we'd do it all over again

because i loved him,
and i'm pretty sure that he loved me,
and i, for all my naivety, didn't know any better.

"Hey, Jin?"
"Yeah. What's up?"
"I don't feel so good, dude. Will you stay with me? Until I fall asleep?"
"...yeah, man. Of course I will."

.

.

.

"...hey Jin?"
"Mm?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"...Yeah."
"Do you love me?"

.

.

.

"...what the fuck sorta question is that?"
(because boys would be boys,
and any talk of love that passed between us
was always passed off as sleeptalk
where we were pretending we were sleeping between
Marilyn Monroe's titties.)

I never expected to see him cry.
Ever.

"Just... just answer me."

I think, now, I realize that he knew he was dying,
when he asked me that question.

"...Ren... yeah. I... love you."

We fucked, that night, and he cried himself to sleep on my chest, that night, but only one of us woke up the next morning.

That one of us was me, wondering what the fuck happened, Ren's cold hand clutched and stiff, threaded against my own, the liquified entirety of Ren's internal organs dripping from his lips, onto my chest, onto the bed, onto the floor. He'd thrown them up in the night, and, somehow, I hadn't woken up.

I couldn't get it out of my head that this was all my fault, for not waking up to save him.
For not figuring things out sooner.
For not saying everything I needed to say.
For not spending our time wisely enough.

I started screaming for help, Ren's dead body in my arms as I tripped out the door and started coughing up a quart of my own blood

AND
THAT'S
WHEN
IT
HIT
ME

...that this really was all my fault.

No more talking, for me.
No more lovers, for me.

Because I was a disease, from that experiment,
and there was nothing I could do about it.

If I'd only been a friend.
If I hadn't been a lover

things would've been just fine.

I cried for three weeks straight over my sixth loss of the season, and I still see him, sometimes, in my peripheral vision-- but I know it's just my head fucking around with me.

I try not to believe in things, anymore.

The day after I stopped crying, I threw myself in front of a train and walked away from the scene on my own.
The day after that, I jumped off a building and, after fifteen minutes, rolled out of the hole I made in the concrete and walked away from that, too.
The next day, I got into a fight with a biker gang, and lost pretty hardcore, but I still peeled myself off the concrete after they'd driven away.

And the sunrise after that, I disemboweled myself with a sword, and woke up two hours later with my insides neatly put back in place.

It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fucking fair.

...but there were reasons, for such thing.

In my depression, I gave myself to motorball about a month after that, when I was sixteen-- I joined the pitcrew for this up and coming motorballer by the name of Ming Wei-xia. Billed under the nickname of "The White Vixen". And man, did she earn that nickname. Girl didn't look like she could fight her way out of a card house, much less rip and tear twenty capable motorballers new assholes-- but she did it.

I'm not really sure, these days, if she was really as beautiful as I remember her-- If I just convinced myself she was because I was so vulnerable after Ren's death, but that girl... when she shirked her motorballer body and got attatched to her fleshform one...

She was absolutely something else.

Which is why I was frightened out of my mind when she started making eyes at me.

After two months, we were hanging out off the track.
After three months, we were fucking.
After four months, we were living together.

And I never said a word.

"There's something strange about the way you look at me--" she'd always giggle, in the light of morning, pressed to my side. "Like you can say all those things you write, but you just won't do it."

She was, by far, way too observant for her own good. And when, one race, her body got completely destroyed on the track, I picked up a new job to rebuild it.

Stealing spines.

After I figured out that it wasn't that easy for me to get my shit wrecked, I'd started training up. Getting stronger, getting quicker, getting better.

For a month, I stole five spines a night and sold them on the black market for twenty-thousand chips a pop. Wei-xia had her body back in no time, much to her surprise, and she was back on the circuit getting all the glory she deserved.

"I don't know how you got the money, Jin--! It must've been murder!"

Close. But not quite.

Wei-xia ended up becoming the second league champion. I was so proud of her, but I still couldn't say a word.

"I wouldn't be here without you, Jin," she'd say, bent over with her nose pressed to mine. "You're everything I want-- I wish I could hear your voice someday. I dream about it all the time. Maybe when I become first league champion, we can work on that, hm?"

I slowed down, over the next year, and ended up stealing a total of three hundred and fifty three spines in a little over a year. And then I just stopped. My savings were good-- I didn't need it anymore.

Until there was another motorball accident-- but this time, it was Wei-xia's spine that got crushed.

it always hits so close to fucking home.

"H-hey... Hey Jin... D-d-don't worry about...it. I went out... with the glory of the lights--! Be h-happy for me. If I die... a-and I'll love you forever, okay?"

No.
No.
No.
No.
No.

Not OKAY.

There was one more spine to steal, for this. For her.

I would not lose again.

The long and short of the matter is that I got caught.
My brainwaves got scanned by the bounty hunter that caught me,
and my past record got connected to the one that I'd gone after.

One million eight hundred and forty-four thousand chips.

That was the bounty on my scrawny ass. My little insignificant human head.

And that meant every bounty hunter and their grandmother was after my tail.

Hiding in the shadows, I went home one more time-- to kiss Wei-xia on the lips one more time. To tell her I failed to save her. I stayed there, till the morning, when she died, and left soon after, wrapped in clothing too hot for the day that had risen.

Loss number seven. Goodbye.

I hid, for a week, and killed three bounty hunters in the process. I was fortunate that only the small ones found me.

I had read, somewhere, that appealing your case with the factory could get your bounty lifted, if you agreed to work for them-- and with a bounty on my head that high, it really seemed like the only way to survive. On my way, I was approached by a young girl, probably only twelve in compare to my seventeen.

"Big brother,"
she whispered, not saying the words so much as
MOUTHING THEM.
"Run.
Now."

I don't know, to this day, if she actually was my sister-- but she was the right age and looked exactly the way she did when she was six. And there were only so many little girls that looked like me. I backed off, looking around, and before I could do anything

I was surrounded.

So I did what I could.

I grabbed my sister and ran for the factory. If I ran fast enough, I'd get them. Kai-huo was screaming NO NO PUT ME DOWN PLEASE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON, but I didn't hear her.

I lost a leg, on the steps outside the factory, but I kept going-- sister in one arm, disembodied leg in the other.

And then she exploded.

My sister fucking exploded.

Fucking hunters'd strapped a bomb to her twelve year old ass to get to me.

They'd blown up a little girl for a two million chip bounty.

Yeah, half my side was gone, and my arm was hanging by a thread, but I made it into that fucking factory, seething with so much anger that I passed out in the elevator.

I woke up, an hour later, and managed to appeal the case. I'm not sure if they believed me or not, but surely they saw it as an asset to have a hunter who could heal himself everytime that someone blew him the fuck up.

Loss number eight double whammy-- avenged.

The next night, I took the heads of all three of those fuckers-- fifteen thousand chips for three fuckfaces who blew up a little girl.

There wasn't much else to tell, between then and now. I reclused. I did my work as a bounty hunter for a couple solid years before I joined up in Asile, and I started doing what I did best.

Painting and Dying.

I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said that my story was completely comprised of loss; of death and of running away; of losing.

There's little losses-- everyday losses. Losing a bet, not catching the train, losing your keys. Little things that remind you that you're born to be a loser. Then there's bigger things. Losing a parent, losing two, losing a sister.

Losing a friend.
Maybe two.

But we take things on a timeline that keeps on going-- people say that time heals all wounds, but in a place this sick with false hopes and gun dreams, that's a whole big fuckin' load of bullshit.

There's very, very few things in this world that anyone can say they've mastered. But I think I'm writing this letter in this sketchbook because I've mastered something that everyone's got a diploma in. I'm gonna tie it up, put my demons away.

All these drawings.
All these images.

All this shit.



You've been a good sketchbook, but this is goodbye. I gotta close this book and start a new one, no matter how much I want to stare, and stare, and stare, and stare. For real.